Taras Bulba

bq.. It’s a curious thing, but perhaps the greatest historical novel ever written came from a literature that hardly existed at the moment of the book’s composition. In the early 19th century, Russia had only the thinnest gloss of modern European civilization, and, apart from the efforts of Pushkin, the Russian language had hardly produced a book worth reading. And then came Nikolai Gogol, who, before his death in 1852 at the age of 43, suggested, in the barest handful of works, every path down which Russian literature would subsequently head. An “epic poem,” he called “Taras Bulba”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679642552/christianitytoda when he transformed an 1835 short story into a novel in 1842, though the book is entirely in prose and runs fewer than 150 pages. As it happens, Gogol was right. “Taras Bulba”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679642552/christianitytoda is an epic, and it’s structured like a poem. Tolstoy could not have written “War and Peace”:http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/product/?item_no=00841&p=1006323 without the epic feeling Gogol gave Russian literature?any more than Solzhenitsyn could have written “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”:http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/product/?item_no=527097&p=1006323 without the imagistic logic of poetry, rather than the narrative logic of fiction, with which Gogol endowed his nation’s prose.

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3 thoughts on “Taras Bulba”

  1. Greatest historical novel ?????????? I suggest that you read the three novels written by Henryk Sienkiewicz ( known as the trilogy). titles:- I. By Fire and Sword, II. The Deluge, and III. Sir Wolodyjowski.

    Taras Bulba, though written with a historical flair, has nothing to do with historical fact ! The above titles, though I agree, may be biased ( Polish point of view), are set amongst authentic facts and give a true insight to the life of 17th century central-eastern Europe.

  2. Taras Bulba, weather true or a product to rewrite history for the sake of a good story, it is a sample of everys countrys historical past. It seems that as a people we learn little from history, and hence the world to day is as divided as ever. If you pray the Lords prayer, Mathew 6:9 God promises under his rule there will be everlasting peace for all mankind of every national group. What a wonderfull time for the future.

  3. Taras Bulba is a wonderful fiction story about a ukrainian hero!

    The trilogy written by Mr. Henryk Sienkiewicz give to us a good insight to the life of 17th Century but, only from the polish point of view! He was not generous and truer with the most brilliant time of the ukrainian history: the Cossack’s Glory.

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