Can you imagine tutorials like How to Suffer in Love Properly, How to Handle Confusion, How to Become a Romantic Outcast?
For the Russian nobility of the early XNUMXth century, such needs were in the order of things, and translated novels, plays and philosophical treatises served as guides. Historian and literary critic Andrei Zorin, using the example of Andrei Turgenev’s diary, shows how the complex experiences of people follow the patterns that culture gives. The young nobles suffered, like Werther with Goethe and poor Lisa with Karamzin, and learned love from Rousseau. Such «emotional matrices» (as Zorin calls them) set codes of conduct for representatives of the upper class, expanded the repertoire of possible reactions, gave an idea of nobility, forgiveness and self-sacrifice. Isn’t this what we turn to the classics for?
New Literary Review, 568 p.