Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia - Softcover

Figes, Fellow Orlando

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312421958 ISBN 13: 9780312421953

Publisher: Picador USA, 2003

Synopsis

Beginning in the eighteenth century with the building of St. Petersburg and culminating with the Soviet regime, Figes examines how writers, artists, and musicians grappled with the idea of Russia itself--its character, spiritual essence, and destiny. Skillfully interweaving the great works--by Dostoevsky, Stravinsky, and Chagall--with folk embroidery, peasant songs, religious icons, and all the customs of daily life, Figes reveals the spirit of "Russianness" as rich and uplifting, complex and contradictory--and more lasting than any Russian ruler or state.

About this title

Review:

As epic and ambitious as his first book A People's Tragedy, Orlando Figes's Natasha's Dance is a sweeping panorama of Russian culture over the centuries. It takes its title from a scene in War and Peace in which the upper-crust Natasha Rostov, visiting her countrified "Uncle", falls instinctively into the rhythms of a peasant dance. Figes finds in this scene an ideal metaphor for his book's central theme--the perpetual see-sawing between the European cultural ideals of the aristocracy in St Petersburg and an "authentic" Russianess, usually seen as embodied in the peasantry and the country. The great debate in Russian culture has been between those who have seen it as a naturally "Western" society and those who have seen its destiny as lying in the East and its vast hinterland.

Around this supporting central theme, Figes has constructed an imposing edifice. The range of his knowledge and the sureness with which he deploys it are very impressive. Whether writing about the music of Stravinsky and Shostakovich or the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, the buildings of St Petersburg or the poetry of Akhmatova, he has something new and original to say. The great cultural achievements of Russia often seem, for those who have only a little knowledge of Russian history, like giant mountains suddenly rising out of featureless terrain. Figes's excellent book gives them a context and fills out many of the details of the surrounding landscape.--Nick Rennison

Review:

"Scintillating. . .an exceptional history of Russian culture and a joy to read." --San Francisco Chronicle

"Stunning and ambitious. . .Figes captures nothing less than Russians' complex and protean notions regarding their national identity." --The Atlantic Monthly

"Staggering. . .A vivid, entertaining, and enlightening account of what it has meant to be culturally a Russian over the last three centuries." --Los Angeles Times

"[A] masterly work." --New York Review of Books

"A big, bold, interpretative cultural history." --Foreign Affairs

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador USA
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0312421958
• ISBN 13: 9780312421953
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 784