TMoP, Chap 1, Page 1, Paragraph 1

Thu Sep 18 23:10:02 CDT 2008

It's been some years since I was in Petersburg. Then Russia was in the  
throes of the problems of switching from communism to whatever  
governmental form they will eventually take - I doubt the current  
political situation will last. Hotels were already expensive while  
most public venues ridiculously cheap. A subway ride was less than a  
penny at the conversion rates then, and an evening at a classical  
music concert about a dollar if you went to the box office, looked  
Russian, and didn't say anything. Prices for the same ticket at the  
hotel were comparable to Western Europe.

At the end of Nevsky Prospect was a cemetery where many famous  
Russians were buried. I went there to look for the graves of the  
composers, Borodin , Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glinka  
as well as the Swiss mathematician, Euler. I was going to buy some  
flowers to place on their graves but when I got there found no one  
selling flowers. How odd as there were many flower venders all over  
Petersburg. I'm not sure yet why, but as I wandered around in the  
light rain, I found myself tearing up. I knew the music of these  
composers but none of them were close to the top of a list of  
favorites. It was a strange reaction, I thought. It was about then I  
found myself staring at the marker for Doestoyevsky. I hadn't known he  
was also buried there. The rain gathered strength and since I had no  
flowers and hadn't yet found Euler's grave, I left planning to return  
the next day.

The next day was sunny and I bought flowers at the hotel before I  
left. Again as I approached the gates to the cemetery I found myself  
starting to tear up. I was half amused by the silliness of crying over  
the graves of men I had never known but who, nonetheless, must have  
left some curious impression on my brain. As I turned in to  the gate,  
I heard several feminine voices at the ticket kiosk. Three middle aged  
Japanese ladies were inquiring, in heavily accented English about the  
whereabouts of Tchaikovsky's grave. The attendant, a stout dour older  
woman, dressed in classical, almost cliched, drab communist clothes,  
couldn't understand a  word and simply replied to their questions with  
Russian they clearly did not understand. I volunteered to show them  
the way and the four of us set off. I stopped at Borodin and mentioned  
his name. The frowned and asked each other, in Japanese, who this was.  
I hummed a bit of his string quartet, the section that was made into a  
musical with the line, "stranger in paradise". This they recognized  
and their faces lit up. Next was Mussorgsky and again the puzzled look  
so I broke into the Great Gate of Kiev from his Pictures at an  
Exhibition. This they knew and again smiled and passed messages back  
and forth, seemingly happy to find a trove of graves. At Tchaikovsky's  
grave they wanted to take pictures of me putting some flowers there,  
then they borrowed some flowers from me so each could have their  
picture taken putting them on Tchaikovsky's grave. Whatever tears  
being generated earlier quickly dried up and I found myself smiling  
and laughing as we wandered around. I took them to Doestoyevsky's  
grave but I'm not sure they recognized the name. I still had three  
flowers left that I had saved for Euler.

Euler was problematical. I had no idea what his name would look like  
spelled in the Cyrillic alphabet. The attendant was, of course, no  
help. However a Canadian woman, an immigrant to Canada from Russia,  
heard my conversation with the attendant and volunteered to help. I  
asked her what Euler would look like in Russian. She frowned and  
thought for a while and finally said, smiling, it could not be spelled  
in Russian. Still I wanted to find it and she agreed to help. We  
divided the place up and started a gravestone by gravestone search. We  
did find it. There were no flowers on it then. But after the three  
hundredth birthday celebrations last year, I'm sure there were many  
left behind.

http://www.asergeev.com/pictures/archives/compress/2004/406/25.htm

Lawrence, already feeling out of his mind for volunteering to host  
part of this...

s later joined by those of Dostoyevsky and Tchaikovsky; fellow  
composers Rimsky-Korsakov, Glinka, and Mussorgsky; the architects of  
St. Petersburg's key monuments; and the brilliant and remarkable  
founder o
On Sep 18, 2008, at 7:27 PM, David Mugmon wrote:

> For what it's worth, I'll be reading and mostly lurking.  I may  
> manage a pithy comment or
> two if we're lucky.
>
> I've read some Dostoyevsky, alas, not Demons.  This will be my first  
> Coetzee and I'm
> looking forward to it.
>
> Some nice, albeit modern, photos of St. Petersburg...
>
> http://www.iht.com/slideshows/2007/01/01/travel/web.0102trstpeteslide.php?index=3
>
> David M.
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 4:37 PM, Lawrence Bryan  
> <lebryan at speakeasy.net> wrote:
>
> Yes, although for me I thought of a film script. It does give a  
> certain strange uneasiness to the reader.
>
> I guess there's no easy way to find out how many of us are reading.
>
> Lawrence
>
> On Sep 18, 2008, at 7:50 AM, Joe Allonby wrote:
>
>> Reads like stage directions.
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 6:33 AM, Richard Ryan <richardryannyc at yahoo.com 
>> > wrote:
>> "October, 1869.  A droshky passes slowly down a street in the  
>> Haymarket district of St Petersburg.  Before a tall tenement  
>> building the driver reins in his horse."
>>
>> One of the first things that might strike a reader inclined to  
>> notice and ponder such aspects of "The Master of Petersburg" is  
>> that the novel begins in the third person present, or more  
>> precisely, the third person limited present.  Without being  
>> literally a stream of conscious novel, the effect of this viewpoint  
>> is to give the novel a certain psychological immediacy, an  
>> internalized quality.  At the same time, the authorial voice  
>> maintains at least the vestiges of realism and objectivity  
>> traditionally associated with the third person viewpoint.
>>
>> The third person present is a rare enough point of view that  
>> Wikipedia's list of novels by viewpoint doesn't include any told in  
>> this person and tense (a deficiency which can now be corrected....)
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_novels_by_point_of_view
>>
>>
>>
>
>

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