Nikolai Leskov: Vale of Tears and 'On Quakeresses', translated with Commentary and Notes by James Muckle
Dostoevsky: on the Threshold of Other Worlds
Essays in Honour of Malcolm V Jones
Edited by Sarah Young and Lesley Milne
A score of scholars from around the world unite to present this tribute to the distinguished and greatly respected Dostoevsky scholar, Malcolm Jones, Emeritus Professor in Residence at the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom, in the year of his 65th birthday.
Bramcote Press is proud to publish this collection of essays in conjunction with the University of Nottingham. The volume is now available. Individual customers may order copies at reduced price: £25, $56, €39. These prices include a sum for postage, by Air Mail overseas. This offer is strictly subject to cheque/check being sent with order. We can accept cheques drawn in sterling, US dollars or euros. .
ISBN 978-1-900405-13-3
Hardback, xx + 276 pages, full price £49.50, US$94, €73.
Contents: Robert L Belknap, The siuzhet of Part I of Crime and Punishment. Jacques Catteau, Whence came Ivan Karamazov’s nightmare? Boris Christa, Rakolnikov’s wardrobe: Dostoevsky’s use of vestimentary markers for literary communication in Crime and Punishment. Erik Egeberg, Reading The Gambler as Roulettenburg. Horst-Jurgen Gerigk, Narrative technique as “maieutics”: Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Alexandra K Harrington, Finding form for chaos: Dostoevsky’s The Adolescent and Akhmatova’s Poem Without a Hero. Sarah Hudspith, Dialogues with Dostoevsky in Tolstoy’s Resurrection. Tat’iana Kasatkina , “The hero’s mistake” as special device in Dostoevsky’s works. Deborah A Martinsen, Of shame and human bondage: Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. Arnold McMillin, “A more important connection than people think”: Dostoevsky and music. John McNair, Dostoevsky, “Bobok”, Pierre Bobo and Boborykin. Robin Feuer Miller, Crime and Punishment in the classroom: the elephant in the garden. Rudolf Neuhauser, The Genres of novel and tale in Dostoevsky’s works. Richard Peace, Apollon Maikov and the cult of the leader. Diane Oenning Thompson, Dostoevsky and music. Boris Tikhomirov , Dostoevsky on children in the New Testament. Vladimir Tunimanov, Dostoevsky in the lectures and conversations of Merab Mamardashvili. Valentina Vetlovskaia, Dostoevsky and Pushkin: Petersburg motifs in Crime and Punishment. Sarah Young, Buddhism in Dostoevsky: Prince Myshkin and the true light of being. Vladimir Zakharov, Dostoevsky’s fantastic pages. Irene Zohrab, Public education in England in the pages of “The Citizen” (1873-1874) during Dostoevsky’s editorship.
James P.Scanlan of Ohio State University writes in the Russian Review:
The editors and authors, ... by focusing on Dostoevsky and respecting the particular interests of the honoree, have succeeded admirably in combining richness and coherence, producing not only an appropriate tribute to Malcolm Jones but a valuable contribution to Dostoevsky studies.
Ulrich Scmidt of the Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, writes in Dostoevsky Studies:
Die Festschrift für Malcolm Jones bildet in einer Sammlung von anregenden Aufsätzen den "state of the art" ab und ehrt einen Literaturwissenschaftler, dessen Arbeiten kein Dostoevskij-Forscher unbeachtet lassen kann.
[This collection of stimulating essays represents the 'state of the art', and honours a literary scholar whose works no student of Dostoevsky can ignore.]
The Priest Who Was Never Baptized. Stories factual and fictional of Russian life in the nineteenth century.
by Nikolai Leskov, translated by James Muckle.
216 pages, boards
price: £13.95/$26.95. ISBN 978-1-900405-12-6
Special price offer below to individual customers
Leskov (1831-95) wrote these immensely entertaining stories between 1876 and 1890 and in every case he claimed they were real-life events; the second of them purports to be an academic article recounting a curious scandal in the Province of Orel. As our sub-title implies, fact and fiction are almost impossible to separate here, but Leskov's portrait of life in Russian (and in one case - in the first story - Ukrainian) villages is vivid, enormously amusing and occasionally disturbing. Leskov creates lively and colourful characters from all stations in life. Intrigue, near-tragedy, comedy of character and high farce alternate and keep the reader guessing.
Leskov paints a multi-facetted portrait of the village clergy: great saints and disreputable sinners among them. The villagers are warm, shrewd and at the same time superstitious, credulous and even cruel. The gentry and civil authorities can be equally wrong-headed. Leskov the moralist and Christian thinker has a field day.
The last three of these stories take up Tolstoyan themes, and the final story is - intriguingly - unfinished. The tales are:
The Priest who was never baptized,
Rebellion among the gentry in the parish of Dobryn,
Selivan, the bogeyman
A Pygmy
Wrong done at Christmas
Vexation of spirit
A Response to "The Kreutzer Sonata".
We are proud that this volume has been reviewed in the Spectator by John Bayley, who wrote:
"James Muckle gives a good selection of [Leskov's] shorter pieces... All Leskov's tales and sketches have a kind of unpredictable originality about them. He can deliberately mix fact and fiction, giving the reader no idea of what will happen next, and whether it is 'true' or not.
"One of the most intriguing pieces in this collection is the author's 'Response to the Kreutzer Sonata'. Leskov's piece of criticism done in imaginative form, a story in itself, is far from Tolstoyan language... Stories like 'A Pygmy' and 'The Priest who was Never Baptized' show Leskov at his best and also at his most eccentric. [Leskov] is a writer who deserves study among the other great Russians of the nineteenth century." The Spectator, 10 April 2004, pp. 40-41.
Martin Bidney wrote in the Slavic and East European Journal of 'this entertaining and instructive collection of seven colorful, well-rendered tales... "The Priest who was Never Baptized" is... a wonderfully wacky comedy, filled with mutual misunderstandings of scriptural argumentation and featuring, as well, a superbly Leskovian farcical plot... As a religious humorist Leskov has no equal... In "Selivan, the Bogeyman", a parable against the hate that is born of reasonless fear blossoms into a richly poetic work of fiction because of the author's fascination with the imaginative vigor of the popular world of superstitious imaginings...'
'Leskov...complicates moral issues to lead us to fruitful questioning while at the same time showing his narrative connoisseurship of contradictions and distrust of easy solutions.'
Wendy Ansley wrote in the SCRSS Newsletter:
'No reader can fail to find entertainment in these snapshots of daily life in 19th-century Russia and Ukraine.'
Michael Pursglove wrote in the East-West Review:
'The volume is another contribution by the UK's leading Leskov expert.'
'When faced with the [tricky] problems posed by the translation of local rustic speech, full as it is of malapropisms and folk etymology,... the results are impressive, and nowhere does the dialogue lapse into the sort of Loamshire favoured by some less skilled translators.'
'Despite a handful of typographical errors, the book is very well produced and competitively priced.'
Special offer: customers sending cheque/check with order direct to us at Ilkeston may receive copies of The Priest Who Was Never Baptized for £10.95/$25.00: this price, like all our prices, includes postage: the US dollar price includes air mail postage.
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Nikolai Leskov: Vale of Tears and 'On Quakeresses', translated with Commentary and Notes by James Muckle |
1991, 126 pages, paperback, ISBN 978-0-9517853-0-0, price: £6.95/$11.95
This was the first, and remains the only, translation into English of Vale of Tears (1892). Leskov spent much of his life swimming against the current: expressing enlightened liberal views while more fashionable writers were hurling immoderate radical abuse at the authorities and at their own opponents, and sympathetically and dispassionately portraying Christian believers when popular intellectual attitudes were militantly agnostic and anti-clerical. In this story he paints a highly entertaining portrait of the village Russia of his childhood, pays tribute to the work of Quakers in famine relief, and gives a moving account of the spiritual awakening of his young narrator, who perhaps reflects the experience of the author himself. 'On Quakeresses' is a short article written as a 'Postscript' to Vale of Tears in response to those readers of the story who in the early 1890s expressed disbelief that Quakers had been active in Russia at the time portrayed in the story, the 1840s.
Reviewers write:
'A vivid and powerful narrative' - Brian Greet, Methodist Recorder.
'A curious and captivating work...a good story, well told' - George Peck, Friends Journal.
'Vale of Tears gives one of those powerful timeless insights into human character, suffering, and reactions to suffering, for which Russian literature is so notable' - Derek Offord, Slavonica.
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Aleksandr Vampilov: Duck-Hunting and Last Summer in Chulimsk translated by Patrick Miles. NO LONGER AVAILABLE |
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Nikolai Leskov: Schism in High Society. Lord Radstock and his Followers, edited and translated by James Muckle |
1995, 122 pages, Introduction, Afterword, Bibliography, Index. Hardback: ISBN 978-0-9517853-5-5, price £13.95/$21.95, and paperback: ISBN 978-0-9517853-4-8, £6.95/$13.95
Lord Radstock was an English Christian evangelist who created a great stir in Russian society in the mid-1870s. That a significant number of very influential people joined his movement alarmed traditionalists in the Russian Orthodox Church and in government; that so many of their servants did too seemed to threaten the social and religious order. Radstock and his followers were subjected to much scurrilous and disgraceful criticism at the time.
Leskov's informative, balanced and entertaining study was written to recall Russian church and society to a sense of proportion. (He failed!) It gives a lively picture of the social and religious context of the day, and of the clash between two very different religious cultures, Russian Orthodoxy and English Evangelical Protestantism. Leskov wrote many studies of evangelical movements and preachers in Russia, of which Schism in High Society is the most striking example.
As well as the Introduction and substantial Afterword, the Editor has provided nearly two hundred footnotes which elucidate the historical, biographical, literary, and religious context.
Reviewers write:
'An inspiring account of a dedicated evangelist...It also is a document of great value for the history of Russian evangelicalism...Leskov strikes chords on both sides of the contemporary Orthodox-Evangelical debate. East-West Church and Ministry Report.
'A small, but significant step towards acquainting English speakers with Leskov's extensive journalistic work...The translator has managed very well to retain Leskov's playfully ironic tone...and has produced a very readable and enjoyable text...Annotation throughout the essay is excellent.' Symposion.
'Muckle's slim volume, with its cogent introduction, detailed notes, informative afterword, and a helpful bibliography, is an excellent source of information for students in various disciplines.' ISRE Newsletter.
'This is a commendable work of scholarship and a valuable contribution to nineteenth-century religious and literary history.' Hugh McLean, Slavonica.
| The Priest Who Was never Baptized. Stories factual and fictional of Russian life in the nineteenth century. |
by Nikolai Leskov, translated by James Muckle.
2004.
See Bramcote News Page for full details and for special price offer.
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