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As someone who's read Anna Karenina three times and yet despises anyone in Russia who puts up a Z, or who idolizes Stalin. The cleanest way out is to separate
by UIUC_06 4y ago
As someone who's read Anna Karenina three times and yet despises anyone in Russia who puts up a Z, or who idolizes Stalin.
The cleanest way out is to separate them. The work of art stands on its own, and you can't critique The Epic of Gilgamesh by complaining that they still had slaves back then and there was no health care system.
I haven't read Pushkin, not being into poetry OR speaking Russian, but if Pushkin said some evil things in "To the Slanderers of Russia", you just have to concentrate on the poetry he wrote that does speak to you. Apparently that's difficult but passing moral judgment is easy?
- dynamic_sausage 4y agoSee, this is a really interesting point there: do we separate the speaker and the speech, or do we lump them together? I.e., if a Hitler (you saw that coming) says something demonstrably true, while a Pope (yep) says something demonstrably false — who do we agree with? Working out an answer to this question in a clear form has repercussions for the cancel culture, institutions created by slave owners, etc, etc, etc. It isn't new either. People struggled with the oeuvre of writers who supported Nazism way back when: do we read them or do we forget them? Knut Hamsun comes to mind. Rolf Nevanlinna would be a similar example in mathematics.
- throwaway_4ever 4y agoHeidegger was a big one
- bazoom42 4y agoI dont think great litterature can be neatly compartmentalized like that.