Yakov Pasinkov (The Russians) 3.5Stars

 

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Title: Yakov Pasinkov
Series: (The Russians)
Author: Ivan Turgenev
Translator: Garnett
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Classic
Pages: 64
Words: 17K

There was a quote that sums up Russian Literature exquisitely:

“I felt very miserable, wretched and miserable beyond description. In twenty-four hours two such cruel blows! I had learned that Sophia loved another man, and I had for ever forfeited her respect. I felt myself so utterly annihilated and disgraced that I could not even feel indignant with myself. Lying on the sofa with my face turned to the wall, I was revelling in the first rush of despairing misery”
~bolding is mine

Reveling (I believe the double “L” in the quote is the old timey way of spelling it) in despairing misery. Do you understand that? If you don’t, or can’t, then Russian works are probably not for you. However, I CAN UNDERSTAND IT PERFECTLY! Which is why I enjoy Russian novels and novella’s so much. Even ones that have no real plot and are just ramblings about various character studies.

I was pretty pissed off that I couldn’t find a bleeping summary of this novella online. Not even that ***** liberal activist hotbed of partisanship and censorship, Wikipedia, had a separate article on this. It was just lumped in under “Works of Turgenev”. Now how lazy is that? Aren’t there any REAL Turgenev fans out there? Don’t they CARE that this novella doesn’t have its own article, that it doesn’t have an indepth summary or a bunch of blather by some idiot cramming in “meaning” from his mouth and *ss? I felt truly ashamed for anybody who claimed to be a Fan of Turgenev because they were THAT lazy. Shame on all five of them! If I ever come across them, I shall not even look at them or meet their eye.

Thankfully, I’m not a totally lazy git. Just a mostly lazy git. So I wrote a flaming synopsis, all on my own. Like a GOOD reviewer would do. In fact, I will lay claim to being one of the world’s best book reviewers, EVER, because of this masterful accomplishment. And it’s all thanks to my love of reveling in despair and misery. So there.

The End.

★★★✬☆

From Bookstooge.blog

An unnamed narrator relates his various interactions with the titular Yakov Pasinkov and various figures related to the narrator and to Pasinkov. Our narrator met Pasinkov at school, and become his mentee. They separated after school, met again years later in St Petersburg where Pasinkov smoothed over an issue for our Narrator with a young woman who the narrator was in love, as was Pasinkov. Then they separate for years again and our Narrator meets Pasinkov on his death bed, where he learns of Pasinkov’s love of the aforementioned young woman, who has since married and had a daughter. Our Narrator meets her, relates Pasinkov’s death and the woman reveals how her sister had been in love with Pasinkov. And some letters of Pasinkov reveal how he was loved by yet another peasant woman. So everybody loved somebody who didn’t love them and everybody was miserable or died, or both. The End.

• The Russians

• Leo Tolstoy

• Fyodor Dostoyevsky

• Ivan Turgenev

• Nikolai Gogol