Great Russian literature is not only big names and textbooks, an important part of it stands in the back rows . The editors of "Shelf" decided to tell about their favorite writers of the second row - maybe you will love them too . Varvara Babitskaya, Lev Oborin, Polina Ryzhova and Yuri Saprykin are the editors of the shelf .
A year passes, and, according to the impatient world, a decade passes . What trends appeared in the literature, what did it manage to explain to us about the world and about itself? The editors of Shelf, helping themselves with strong drinks (New Year!), remember the most important thing - in prose, poetry, theater, non-fiction .
A house in Russian literature is not just a dwelling: it is a place where you feel good, where you want to return, but most often this place turns out to be an unattainable dream . What kind of house did Russian writers — and the heroes of their books — dream about? In what did they see the ideal of home comfort - and which houses seemed unbearable to them?
The editors of "Shelf" Varvara Babitskaya, Lev Oborin, Polina Ryzhova and Yuri Saprykin discuss what Russian literary megalomania is . How are texts of large volume and ambitions of a planetary scale connected? How did literature, trying to explain the world, come to the need to change it?
The editors of "Shelf" decided to discuss how Russian literature speaks of love, and use the ancient classification for this: storge, eros, philia, agape . In this issue we are talking about storga, family love: why do many childhood memories leave a bright impression, despite the difficult details .
The Possessed is a novel that some understand as a political pamphlet, others as a terrible and come true prophecy about the Russian revolution . Some understand it as a space where the writer’s favorite metaphysical ideas collide. The editors of Polk decided to discuss Dostoevsky's novel on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of his birth .
"Shelf" discusses the work of literary memory: how the authors of memoirs preserve the details of literary life and what it means to "lie like an eyewitness" in relation to texts about Akhmatova and Mandelstam, Mayakovsky and Yesenin . How do some memoirists create myths about great writers, while others debunk these myths?
The editors of the Polka project discuss one of the main ethical conflicts in Russian literature (and life in general) How writers of the 19th century learned to recognize the feelings of a woman and figured out which is stronger - duty or love, attraction or morality.
The editors of "Shelf" discuss their personal stories and rationalization proposals . Is it possible to read The Wizard of Oz and Hesse at the same time? Should books that are too old be removed from children? How to shovel the school curriculum in literature and add "Harry Potter" there?
The editors of Polkka are sorting it out 210 years since the birth of the great author . Gogol's works have been perceived over the past 150 years in completely different ways.