{"id":2079835,"date":"2018-08-08T10:37:46","date_gmt":"2018-08-08T17:37:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dostoevsky-bts.com\/blog\/?p=2079835"},"modified":"2018-08-08T10:37:46","modified_gmt":"2018-08-08T17:37:46","slug":"reacquisition-glory-status-pt-ii-village-stepanchikovo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dostoevsky-bts.com\/blog\/reacquisition-glory-status-pt-ii-village-stepanchikovo\/","title":{"rendered":"The Reacquisition of Glory and Status, Pt. II: The Village of Stepanchikovo"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"Stepanchikovo\"<\/a><\/td>\n\"Stepanchikovo-2\"<\/a><\/td>\n;<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Following the crickets that chirped in the wake of Uncle\u2019s Dream<\/em>, Dostoyevsky continued his foray into comedy, his determination to re-enter St Petersburg society unswayed, thankfully to all who admire Russian classics and VM Productions’ films<\/a>. His next attempt was another comedic scenario titled The Village of Stepanchikovo<\/em> and its Inhabitants, considered by some to be escapism for his part from a miserable life situation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Dickens-Gogol\"<\/a>The availability of Charles Dickens’ novels in exile gave Dostoyevsky the urge to indulge in caricature and comical absurdity. The shadow of Gogol likewise hung heavily over the troubled master, as denouncing Gogol’s defense of the tsar had made him a capital criminal while associated with the Petrashevsky Circle<\/a>. Though membership in this group would nearly cost the young writer his life, he would still have the last laugh in Gogol\u2019s own style. As Dostoyevsky himself once said, \u201cwe all emerged from Gogol\u2019s Overtcoat<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The-Overcoat-Book-Nicoli-Gogol-\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This last laugh would at most be shared with a friend or two as The Village of Stepanchikovo<\/em> witnessed a similar silence as Uncle\u2019s Dream, only receiving several belated reviews associating it with \u201ccounterfeit humor\u201d and \u201csocio-political irrelevance.\u201d Over a century and a half later, however, Stepanchikovo<\/em> maintains a unique charm that even transcends Gogol\u2019s contributions to the canon of Russian classics in its own weird way.<\/p>\n

In the story, a young student named Sergey hears of strange behavior afoot at his uncle\u2019s estate in a village called Stepanchikovo. Returning home (for he is an orphan raised by his uncle, who is a colonel), he finds that his uncle, a kind and honorable man, has fallen under the dominion of a pseudo-intellectual named Foma Fomich Opiskin, a caricature of Gogol who alongside the uncle\u2019s mother dominates the poor colonel and his household.<\/p>\n

\"Stepanchikovo-3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sergey wishes to help his uncle and do something about this intruder, but his attempts to change things only prove to be ineffectual and only add to the drama. A situation many of us have indeed borne witness to within or outside of a Russian classic.<\/p>\n

It was this novel that generated the comment from a critic that comedy \u201cis not Mr. Dostoyevsky\u2019s forte.\u201d While this was Dostoyevsky\u2019s last major attempt at comedy, here are four reasons to read The Village of Stepanchikovo<\/em>:<\/p>\n

1. Technically not a novel – called a povest in Russian, or \u2018tale:\u2019 longer than a novella, shorter than a novel.<\/p>\n

2. Attempt at drama – Dostoyevsky had first envisaged this story as a play, but in between finances and troubles with the censor a play would have been unfeasible. It did not stop this povest from being an influence on Chekhov, particularly Uncle Vanya<\/em>.<\/p>\n

3. Emergence of the Grotesque – Dostoyevsky\u2019s previous works featured bleak, absurd or ridiculous situations that defined these characters. With the exception of the doppelg\u00e4nger in The Double, Opiskin is the first of Dostoyevsky\u2019s many future characters to be truly grotesque, making him one of many harbingers of greatness and The Village of Stepanchikovo<\/em> an outline of sorts for his greater works.<\/p>\n

4. Happy ending – a rare phenomenon even in Dostoyevsky\u2019s comedy.<\/p>\n

\"Scene<\/a>

Scene from the movie \u201cThe Village of Stepanchikovo and its People\u201d (Russia, 1973)<\/p><\/div>\n

********<\/p>\n

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\"method-without-title\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/td>\n\"Hurley<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

\"signupnow-ribbon-orange\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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*******<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Edited (& the visual material) by VM Productions<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

; Following the crickets that chirped in the wake of Uncle\u2019s Dream, Dostoyevsky continued his foray into comedy, his determination to re-enter St Petersburg society unswayed, thankfully to all who admire Russian classics and VM Productions’ films. His next attempt was another comedic scenario titled The Village of Stepanchikovo and its Inhabitants, considered by some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":2103368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false},"categories":[61,1],"tags":[549,518,125,550,413,551,552,454,202,553],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dostoevsky-bts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079835"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dostoevsky-bts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dostoevsky-bts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dostoevsky-bts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dostoevsky-bts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2079835"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/dostoevsky-bts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2099284,"href":"https:\/\/dostoevsky-bts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2079835\/revisions\/2099284"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dostoevsky-bts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2103368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dostoevsky-bts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2079835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dostoevsky-bts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2079835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dostoevsky-bts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2079835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}