Classical literature (Russian). Russian classical literature: list of the best works
Can short stories about love reflect all the faces of this versatile feeling? After all, if you look closely at trembling experiences, you can notice tender love, serious mature relationships, destructive passion, selfless and unrequited attraction. Many classics and modern writers turn to the eternal, but still not fully understood theme of love. It’s not even worth listing the huge works that describe this exciting feeling. Both domestic and foreign authors intended to show the quivering beginning not only in novels or stories, but also in small stories about love.
Variety of love stories
Can love be measured? After all, it can be different - to a girl, mother, child, native land. Many little stories about love teach not only young lovers, but also children and their parents to express their feelings. Anyone who loves, has loved, or wants to love, would do well to read Sam McBratney's very touching story "Do You Know How Much I Love You?" Just one page of text, but so much sense! This little love story of a bunny teaches about the importance of admitting your feelings.
And how much value there is in a few pages of Henri Barbusse’s story “Tenderness”! The author shows great love, causing boundless tenderness in the heroine. He and She loved each other, but fate cruelly separated them, since She was much older. Her love is so strong that the woman promises to write letters to him after breaking up so that her loved one will not suffer so much. These letters became the only connecting thread between them for 20 years. They were the embodiment of love and tenderness, giving strength to life.
In total, the heroine wrote four letters, which her beloved received periodically. The ending of the story is very tragic: in the last letter, Louis learns that She committed suicide on the second day after breaking up, and wrote these letters to him with a view to 20 years in advance. The reader does not need to take the heroine’s action as a model; Barbusse simply wanted to show that it is important for a selflessly loving person to know that his feelings continue to live.
Different sides of love are shown in R. Kipling's story "Arrows of Cupid" and in Leonid Andreev's work "Herman and Martha." The story of Anatoly Aleksin’s first love, “Home Essay,” is dedicated to his youthful experiences. A 10th grade student is in love with his classmate. This is the story of how the hero’s tender feelings were cut short by the war.
The moral beauty of lovers in O. Henry's story "The Gift of the Magi"
This story by a famous author is about pure love, which is characterized by self-sacrifice. The plot revolves around a poor married couple, Jim and Della. Although they are poor, they try to give each other nice gifts at Christmas. To give a worthy gift to her husband, Della sells her gorgeous hair, and Jim traded his favorite valuable watch for a gift.
What did O. Henry want to show with such actions of the heroes? Both spouses wanted to do everything to make their loved one happy. The true gift for them is devoted love. Having sold things dear to their hearts, the heroes did not lose anything, because they still had the most important thing - priceless love for each other.
A woman's confession in Stefan Zweig's story "Letter from a Stranger"
The famous Austrian writer Stefan Zweig also wrote long and short stories about love. One of them is the essay “Letter from a Stranger.” This creation is imbued with sadness, because the heroine loved a man all her life, but he didn’t even remember her face or name. The stranger expressed all her tender feelings in her letters. Zweig wanted to show readers that real selfless and sublime feelings exist, and you need to believe in them so that they do not become a tragedy for someone.
O. Wilde about the beauty of the inner world in the fairy tale “The Nightingale and the Rose”
A short story about O. Wilde’s love “The Nightingale and the Rose” has a very complex idea. This fairy tale teaches people to value love, because without it there is no point in living in the world. The Nightingale became the spokesman for tender feelings. For their sake, he sacrificed his life and his singing. It is important to find out love correctly, so as not to lose a lot later.
Wilde also argues that you don’t need to love a person just for their beauty, it is important to look into his soul: perhaps he only loves himself. Appearance and money are not the most important thing, the main thing is spiritual wealth, inner peace. If you only think about appearance, it can end badly.
Trilogy of Chekhov's stories "About Love"
Three small stories formed the basis of A.P. Chekhov's "Little History". They are told by friends to each other while hunting. One of them, Alyohin, spoke about his love for a married lady. The hero was very attracted to her, but was afraid to admit it. The characters' feelings were mutual, but not revealed. One day, Alyohin finally decided to confess his affection, but it was too late - the heroine left.
Chekhov makes it clear that you don’t need to close yourself off from your real feelings, it’s better to have courage and give free rein to your emotions. He who encloses himself in a case loses his happiness. The heroes of this short story about love themselves killed love, sank to base feelings and doomed themselves to misfortune.
The heroes of the trilogy realized their mistakes and are trying to move on; they do not give up, but move forward. Perhaps they will still have a chance to save their souls.
Kuprin's love stories
Sacrificial love, giving all of oneself without reserve to a loved one, is inherent in Kuprin’s stories. So Alexander Ivanovich wrote a very sensual story “The Lilac Bush”. The main character of the story, Verochka, always helps her husband, a design student, with his studies so that he receives a diploma. She does all this in order to see him happy.
One day Almazov was making a drawing of the area for a test and accidentally made an ink. In place of this blot he drew a bush. Verochka found a way out of this situation: she found money, bought a lilac bush and planted it overnight in the place where the blot appeared on the drawing. The professor checking the work was very surprised by this incident, because before there was no bush there. The test was submitted.
Verochka is very rich spiritually and mentally, and her husband is a weak, narrow-minded and pathetic person compared to her. Kuprin shows the problem of unequal marriage in terms of spiritual and mental development.
Bunin's "Dark Alleys"
What should short love stories be like? The small works of Ivan Bunin answer this question. The author wrote a whole series of short stories under the same name with one of the stories - “Dark Alleys”. All these little creations are connected by one theme - love. The author presents the reader with the tragic and even catastrophic nature of love.
The collection "Dark Alleys" is also called the encyclopedia of love. Bunin in it shows the contact of two from different sides. In the book you can see a gallery of female portraits. Among them you can see young women, matured girls, respectable ladies, peasant women, prostitutes, and models. Each story from this collection has its own shade of love.
Many of us have been left with the conviction since school that for the most part Russian classics are rather boring and unimaginably drawn out works of several hundred pages about the hardships of life, mental suffering and the philosophical quests of the main characters. We have collected Russian classics that are impossible not to read to the end.
Anatoly Pristavkin “The golden cloud spent the night”
“The golden cloud spent the night” by Anatoly Pristavkin is a piercingly tragic story that happened to the orphaned twin brothers Sashka and Kolka Kuzmin, who were evacuated along with the rest of the orphanage pupils to the Caucasus during the war. Here it was decided to establish a labor colony to develop the land. Children turn out to be innocent victims of government policies towards the peoples of the Caucasus. This is one of the most powerful and honest stories about war orphans and the deportation of the Caucasian peoples. “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” has been translated into 30 languages of the world and is rightfully one of the best works of Russian classics. 10th place in our ranking.
Boris Pasternak "Doctor Zhivago"
Novel Boris Pasternak "Doctor Zhivago", which brought him world fame and the Nobel Prize - in 9th place in the list of the best works of Russian classics. For his novel, Pasternak was sharply criticized by representatives of the country's official literary world. The book's manuscript was banned from publication, and the writer himself, under pressure, was forced to refuse to receive the prestigious award. After Pasternak's death, it was transferred to his son.
Mikhail Sholokhov "Quiet Don"
In terms of the scale and scope of the period of life of the main characters described in it, it can be compared with “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy. This is an epic story about the life and destinies of representatives of the Don Cossacks. The novel covers three of the country's most difficult eras: the First World War, the 1917 Revolution and the Civil War. What was going on in the souls of people in those days, what reasons forced relatives and friends to stand on opposite sides of the barricades? The writer tries to answer these questions in one of the best works of Russian classical literature. “Quiet Don” is in 8th place in our ranking.
Stories by Anton Chekhov
A generally recognized classic of Russian literature, they occupy 7th place on our list. One of the most famous playwrights in the world, he wrote more than 300 works of various genres and died very early, at 44 years old. Chekhov's stories, ironic, funny and eccentric, reflected the realities of life of that era. They have not lost their relevance even now. The peculiarity of his short works is not to answer questions, but to ask them to the reader.
I. Ilf and E. Petrov “Twelve Chairs”
Novels by writers with a wonderful sense of humor I. Ilf and E. Petrov “The Twelve Chairs” and “The Golden Calf” take 6th place among the best works of Russian classics. After reading them, every reader will understand that classical literature is not only interesting and exciting, but also funny. The adventures of the great schemer Ostap Bender, the main character of the books by Ilf and Petrov, will not leave anyone indifferent. Immediately after the first publication, the writers' works were received ambiguously in literary circles. But time has shown their artistic value.
In fifth place in our ranking of the best works of Russian classics - "The Gulag Archipelago" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. This is not only a great novel about one of the most difficult and terrible periods in the history of the country - repressions in the USSR, but also an autobiographical work based on the author’s personal experience, as well as letters and memoirs of more than two hundred camp prisoners. The release of the novel in the West was accompanied by a loud scandal and persecution launched against Solzhenitsyn and other dissidents. Publication of The Gulag Archipelago became possible in the USSR only in 1990. The novel is among best books of the century.
Nikolai Gogol “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka”
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is a universally recognized classic of world significance. The crowning achievement of his work is considered to be the novel “Dead Souls,” the second volume of which was destroyed by the author himself. But our ranking of the best works of Russian classics includes the first book Gogol – “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka”. It’s hard to believe that the stories included in the book and written with sparkling humor were practically Gogol’s first experience in writing. Pushkin left a flattering review of the work, who was sincerely amazed and fascinated by Gogol’s stories, written in a living, poetic language without feigned affectation and stiffness.
The events described in the book take place in different time periods: in XVII, XVIII XIX centuries.
Fyodor Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment"
Novel “Crime and Punishment” by F. M. Dostoevsky takes third place in the list of the best works of Russian classics. It has received the status of a cult book of world significance. This is one of the most frequently filmed books. This is not only a deeply philosophical work in which the author poses to readers the problems of moral responsibility, good and evil, but also a psychological drama and a fascinating detective story. The author shows the reader the process of turning a talented and respectable young man into a killer. He is no less interested in the possibility of Raskolnikov’s atonement for his guilt.
Great epic novel Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy "War and Peace", the volume of which has terrified schoolchildren for many decades, is actually very interesting. It covers the period of several military campaigns against the strongest France at that time, led by Napoleon Bonaparte. This is one of the brightest examples of the best works of not only Russian, but also world classics. The novel is recognized as one of the most epic works in world literature. Here every reader will find his favorite topic: love, war, courage.
Mikhail Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita"
Topping our list of examples of the best classical literature is the amazing novel. The author never lived to see the publication of his book - it was published 30 years after his death.
The Master and Margarita is such a complex work that not a single attempt to film the novel has been successful. The figures of Woland, the Master and Margarita require filigree accuracy in conveying their images. Unfortunately, no actor has yet managed to achieve this. The film adaptation of the novel by director Vladimir Bortko can be considered the most successful.
Dear friend! On this page you will find a selection of small or rather even very small stories with deep spiritual meaning. Some stories are only 4-5 lines, some a little more. Every story, no matter how short, reveals a larger story. Some stories are light and humorous, others are instructive and suggest deep philosophical thoughts, but all of them are very, very sincere.
The short story genre is notable for the fact that in a few words a big story is created, which invites you to stretch your brains and smile, or pushes the imagination into a flight of thoughts and understandings. After reading just this one page, you may get the impression that you have mastered several books.
This collection contains many stories about love and the theme of death, so close to it, the meaning of life and the spiritual experience of every moment. People often try to avoid the topic of death, but in several short stories on this page it is shown from such an original side that it makes it possible to understand it in a completely new way, and therefore begin to live differently.
Happy reading and interesting emotional experiences!
“Recipe for female happiness” – Stanislav Sevastyanov
Masha Skvortsova dressed up, put on makeup, sighed, made up her mind - and came to visit Petya Siluyanov. And he treated her to tea and amazing cakes. But Vika Telepenina didn’t dress up, didn’t put on makeup, didn’t sigh - and simply came to Dima Seleznev. And he treated her to vodka with amazing sausage. So there are countless recipes for women’s happiness.
"In Search of Truth" - Robert Tompkins
Finally, in this remote, secluded village, his search ended. Truth sat in a dilapidated hut by the fire.
He had never seen an older, uglier woman.
- Are you - Really?
The old, wizened hag nodded solemnly.
- Tell me, what should I tell the world? What message to convey?
The old woman spat into the fire and answered:
- Tell them that I am young and beautiful!
"Silver Bullet" - Brad D. Hopkins
Sales have fallen for six straight quarters. The ammunition factory suffered catastrophic losses and was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Chief Executive Scott Phillips had no idea what was going on, but shareholders were sure to blame him.
He opened the desk drawer, took out a revolver, put the muzzle to his temple and pulled the trigger.
Misfire.
“Okay, let’s take care of the product quality control department.”
"Once Upon a Time There Was Love"
And one day the Great Flood came. And Noah said:
“Only every creature - in pairs! And for singles - ficus!!!"
Love began to look for a mate - Pride, Wealth,
Glory, Joy, but they already had companions.
And then Separation came to her and said:
"I love you".
Love quickly jumped into the Ark with her.
But Separation actually fell in love with Love and did not
I wanted to part with her even on earth.
And now Separation always follows Love...
“Sublime Sadness” – Stanislav Sevastyanov
Love sometimes brings sublime sadness. At dusk, when the thirst for love was completely unbearable, student Krylov came to the house of his beloved, student Katya Moshkina from a parallel group, and climbed up the drainpipe to her balcony to make a confession. On the way, he diligently repeated the words that he would say to her, and got so carried away that he forgot to stop in time. So I stood sad all night on the roof of the nine-story building until the firefighters removed it.
“Mother” – Vladislav Panfilov
The mother was unhappy. She buried her husband and son, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. She remembered them small and thick-cheeked, and gray-haired, and hunched over. The mother felt like a lonely birch tree among a forest scorched by time. The mother begged to grant her death: any, the most painful one. Because she is tired of living! But I had to live on... And the only joy for the mother were the grandchildren of her grandchildren, just as big-eyed and chubby-cheeked. And she nursed them and told them all her life, and the lives of her children and her grandchildren... But one day giant blinding pillars grew around her mother, and she saw how her great-great-grandchildren were burned alive, and she herself screamed from the pain of melting skin and pulled to the sky withered yellow hands and cursed him for her fate. But the sky responded with a new whistle of cutting air and new flashes of fiery death. And in convulsions, the Earth began to stir, and millions of souls fluttered into space. And the planet tensed up in nuclear apoplexy and exploded into pieces...
The little pink fairy, swinging on an amber branch, chirped for the umpteenth time to her friends about how many years ago, flying to the other end of the universe, she noticed a bluish-green small planet sparkling in the rays of space. “Oh, she’s so wonderful! Oh! She is so beautiful! - the fairy cooed. “I've been flying over the emerald fields all day! Azure lakes! Silvery rivers! I felt so good that I decided to do some good deed!” And I saw a boy sitting alone on the shore of a tired pond, and I flew up to him and whispered: “I want to fulfill your deepest wish! Tell me it!” And the boy looked up at me with beautiful dark eyes: “It’s my mother’s birthday today. I want her, no matter what, to live forever!” “Oh, what a noble desire! Oh, how sincere it is! Oh, how sublime it is!” - the little fairies sang. “Oh, how happy is this woman who has such a noble son!”
“Lucky” – Stanislav Sevastyanov
He looked at her, admired her, trembled when he met: she sparkled against the background of his mundane everyday life, was sublimely beautiful, cold and inaccessible. Suddenly, having given her plenty of his attention, he felt that she, as if melting under his scorching gaze, began to reach out to him. And so, without expecting it, he came into contact with her... He came to his senses when the nurse was changing the bandage on his head.
“You are lucky,” she said affectionately, “rarely anyone survives from such icicles.”
"Wings"
“I don’t love you,” these words pierced the heart, turning out the insides with sharp edges, turning them into minced meat.
“I don’t love you,” simple six syllables, only twelve letters that kill us, shooting merciless sounds from our lips.
“I don’t love you,” there is nothing worse when a loved one says them. The one for whom you live, for whom you do everything, for whom you can even die.
“I don’t love you,” my eyes darken. First, peripheral vision turns off: a dark veil envelops everything around, leaving a small space. Then flickering, iridescent gray dots cover the remaining area. It's completely dark. You only feel your tears, a terrible pain in your chest, squeezing your lungs like a press. You feel squeezed and try to take up as little space as possible in this world, to hide from these hurtful words.
“I don’t love you,” your wings, which covered you and your loved one in difficult times, begin to crumble with already yellowed feathers, like November trees under a gust of autumn wind. A piercing cold passes through the body, freezing the soul. Only two processes, covered with light fluff, already stick out from the back, but even this withers away from the words, crumbling into silver dust.
“I don’t love you,” the letters dig into the remains of the wings like a screeching saw, tearing them out of the back, tearing the flesh to the shoulder blades. Blood flows down the back, washing away the feathers. Small fountains gush out from the arteries and it seems that new wings have grown - bloody wings, light, airy and spraying.
“I don’t love you,” there are no more wings. The blood stopped flowing, drying into a black crust on the back. What used to be called wings are now only barely noticeable tubercles, somewhere at the level of the shoulder blades. There is no more pain and the words remain just words. A set of sounds that no longer cause suffering, that don’t even leave traces.
The wounds have healed. Time cures…
Time heals even the worst wounds. Everything passes, even the long winter. Spring will come anyway, melting the ice in the soul. You hug your loved one, the dearest person, and clasp him with snow-white wings. Wings always grow back.
- I love you…
“Ordinary scrambled eggs” – Stanislav Sevastyanov
“Go, leave everyone. It’s better to be alone: I’ll freeze, I’ll be unsociable, like a bump in a swamp, like a snowdrift. And when I lie down in the coffin, don’t you dare come to me to sob to your heart’s content for your own good, bending over the fallen body left by the muse, and the pen, and the shabby, oil-stained paper...” Having written this, the sentimentalist writer Sherstobitov re-read what he had written thirty times, he added “cramped” in front of the coffin and was so imbued with the resulting tragedy that he could not stand it and shed a tear for himself. And then his wife Varenka called him to dinner, and he was pleasantly satisfied with vinaigrette and scrambled eggs with sausage. Meanwhile, his tears had dried up, and he, returning to the text, first crossed out “cramped”, and then instead of “laying down in a coffin” he wrote “laying down on Parnassus”, because of which all subsequent harmony went to waste. “Well, to hell with harmony, I’d better go and stroke Varenka’s knee...” Thus, an ordinary scrambled egg was preserved for the grateful descendants of the sentimentalist writer Sherstobitov.
"Destiny" - Jay Rip
There was only one way out, for our lives were intertwined in too tangled a knot of anger and bliss to solve everything any other way. Let's trust the lot: heads - and we will get married, tails - and we will part forever.
The coin was tossed. She tinkled, spun and stopped. Eagle.
We stared at her in bewilderment.
Then, with one voice, we said, “Maybe one more time?”
“Chest” – Daniil Kharms
A man with a thin neck climbed into the chest, closed the lid behind him and began to choke.
“Here,” the man with a thin neck said, gasping, “I’m suffocating in the chest, because I have a thin neck.” The lid of the chest is closed and does not allow air to reach me. I will be suffocating, but I still won’t open the lid of the chest. Little by little I will die. I will see the struggle of life and death. The fight will take place unnaturally, with equal chances, because death naturally wins, and life, doomed to death, only fights in vain with the enemy, until the last minute, without losing vain hope. In this same struggle that will happen now, life will know the way to win: for this, life must force my hands to open the lid of the chest. Let's see: who wins? Only it smells awfully like mothballs. If life wins, I’ll cover the things in the chest with shag... Here it begins: I can’t breathe anymore. I'm dead, that's clear! There is no salvation for me anymore! And there is nothing sublime in my head. I'm suffocating!...
Oh! What is it? Now something has happened, but I can't figure out what it is. I saw something or heard something...
Oh! Did something happen again? My God! I can't breathe. I think I'm dying...
What else is this? Why am I singing? I think my neck hurts... But where is the chest? Why do I see everything that is in my room? There's no way I'm lying on the floor! Where's the chest?
The thin-necked man rose from the floor and looked around. The chest was nowhere to be found. On the chairs and bed were things taken from the chest, but the chest was nowhere to be found.
The man with the thin neck said:
“This means that life has defeated death in a way unknown to me.”
"Wretched" - Dan Andrews
They say evil has no face. Indeed, no feelings were reflected on his face. There was not a glimmer of sympathy on him, but the pain was simply unbearable. Can't he see the horror in my eyes and the panic on my face? He calmly, one might say, carried out his dirty work professionally, and at the end he politely said: “Rinse your mouth, please.”
"Dirty laundry"
One married couple moved to live in a new apartment. In the morning, as soon as she woke up, the wife looked out the window and saw a neighbor who was hanging out washed clothes to dry.
“Look at her dirty laundry,” she told her husband. But he was reading the newspaper and did not pay any attention to it.
“She probably has bad soap, or she doesn’t know how to do laundry at all. We should teach her.”
And so, every time the neighbor hung out the laundry, the wife was surprised at how dirty it was.
One fine morning, looking out the window, she cried out: “Oh! Today the laundry is clean! She must have learned how to do laundry!”
“No,” said the husband, “I just got up early today and washed the window.”
“I couldn’t wait” – Stanislav Sevastyanov
It was an unprecedented wonderful moment. Disdaining unearthly forces and his own path, he froze to look at her for the future. At first she took a very long time to take off her dress and fiddle with the zipper; then she let her hair down and combed it, filling it with air and silky color; then she pulled at the stockings, trying not to get them caught with her nails; then she hesitated with the pink lingerie, so ethereal that even her delicate fingers seemed rough. Finally she undressed all - but the month was already looking out the other window.
"Wealth"
One day a rich man gave a poor man a basket full of trash. The poor man smiled at him and left with the basket. I emptied it, cleaned it, and then filled it with beautiful flowers. He returned to the rich man and returned the basket to him.
The rich man was surprised and asked: “Why are you giving me this basket filled with beautiful flowers if I gave you garbage?”
And the poor man replied: “Everyone gives to the other what he has in his heart.”
“Don’t let good things go to waste” – Stanislav Sevastyanov
“How much do you charge?” - “Six hundred rubles per hour.” - “And in two hours?” - “A thousand.” He came to her, she smelled sweetly of perfume and skill, he was worried, she touched his fingers, his fingers were disobedient, crooked and absurd, but he clenched his will into a fist. Returning home, he immediately sat down at the piano and began to consolidate the scale he had just learned. The instrument, an old Becker, was given to him by his previous tenants. My fingers ached, my ears felt stuffy, my willpower grew stronger. The neighbors were banging on the wall.
“Postcards from the Other World” – Franco Arminio
Here the end of winter and the end of spring are approximately the same. The first roses serve as a signal. I saw one rose when they were taking me in an ambulance. I closed my eyes, thinking about this rose. In front, the driver and nurse were talking about a new restaurant. There you can eat your fill, and the prices are meager.
At some point I decided that I could become an important person. I felt that death was giving me a reprieve. Then I plunged headlong into life, like a child with his hand in a stocking with baptismal gifts. Then my day came. Wake up, my wife told me. Wake up, she kept repeating.
It was a fine sunny day. I didn't want to die on a day like this. I always thought that I would die at night, with dogs barking. But I died at noon when a cooking show started on TV.
They say people most often die at dawn. For years I woke up at four in the morning, stood up and waited for the fateful hour to pass. I opened a book or turned on the TV. Sometimes he went outside. I died at seven in the evening. Nothing special happened. The world has always caused me vague anxiety. And then this anxiety suddenly passed.
I was ninety-nine. My children came to the nursing home just to talk to me about my centenary celebrations. None of this bothered me at all. I didn't hear them, I only felt my fatigue. And he wanted to die so as not to feel her either. This happened in front of my eldest daughter. She gave me a piece of apple and talked about a cake with the number one hundred on it. The one should be as long as a stick, and the zeros should be like bicycle wheels, she said.
My wife still complains about the doctors who didn’t treat me. Although I always considered myself incurable. Even when Italy won the World Cup, even when I got married.
By the age of fifty, I had the face of a man who could die any minute. I died at ninety-six, after a long agony.
What I always enjoyed was the nativity scene. Every year he turned out more and more elegant. I displayed it in front of the door of our house. The door was constantly open. I divided the only room with red and white tape, like when repairing roads. I treated those who stopped to admire the nativity scene with beer. I talked in detail about papier-mâché, musk, sheep, wise men, rivers, castles, shepherds and shepherdesses, caves, the Baby, the guiding star, electrical wiring. Electrical wiring was my pride. I died alone on Christmas night, looking at the nativity scene sparkling with all the lights.
Anna Karenina. Lev Tolstoy
The greatest love story of all time. A story that has not left the stage, has been filmed countless times - and has still not lost the boundless charm of passion - destructive, destructive, blind passion - but all the more bewitching for its greatness.
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Master and Margarita. Michael Bulgakov
This is the most mysterious of the novels in the entire history of Russian literature of the 20th century. This is a novel that is almost officially called “The Gospel of Satan.” This is “The Master and Margarita”. A book that can be read and reread dozens, hundreds of times, but most importantly, it is still impossible to understand. So, which pages of “The Master and Margarita” were dictated by the Forces of Light?
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Wuthering Heights. Emily Brontë
A mystery novel included in the top ten best novels of all time! The story of a stormy, truly demonic passion that has been exciting the imagination of readers for more than one and a half hundred years. Katie gave her heart to her cousin, but ambition and a thirst for wealth push her into the arms of a rich man. Forbidden attraction turns into a curse for secret lovers, and one day.
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Eugene Onegin. Alexander Pushkin
“Have you read “Onegin”? What can you say about “Onegin”? These are the questions that are constantly repeated among writers and Russian readers,” noted the writer, enterprising publisher and, by the way, the hero of Pushkin’s epigrams, Thaddeus Bulgarin, after the publication of the second chapter of the novel. For a long time now it has not been customary to evaluate ONEGIN. In the words of the same Bulgarin, it is “written in Pushkin’s poems. That's enough."
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Notre Dame Cathedral. Victor Hugo
A story that has survived centuries, become canon and given its heroes the glory of household names. A story of love and tragedy. The love of those to whom love was not given and not allowed - by religious dignity, physical weakness or someone else's evil will. The gypsy Esmeralda and the deaf hunchback bell-ringer Quasimodo, the priest Frollo and the captain of the royal riflemen Phoebe de Chateaupert, the beautiful Fleur-de-Lys and the poet Gringoire.
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Gone With the Wind. Margaret Mitchell
The great saga of the American Civil War and the fate of the headstrong Scarlett O'Hara was first published more than 70 years ago and does not become outdated to this day. This is Margaret Mitchell's only novel for which she received a Pulitzer Prize. A story about a woman whom neither an unconditional feminist nor a staunch supporter of house-building is ashamed to emulate.
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Romeo and Juliet. William Shakespeare
This is the highest tragedy about love that human genius can create. A tragedy that has been filmed and is being filmed. A tragedy that does not leave the theater stage to this day - and to this day it sounds as if it was written yesterday. Years and centuries go by. But one thing remains and will forever remain unchanged: “There is no sadder story in the world than the story of Romeo and Juliet...”
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The Great Gatsby. Francis Fitzgerald
“The Great Gatsby” is the pinnacle not only in Fitzgerald’s work, but also one of the highest achievements in world prose of the 20th century. Although the novel takes place in the “roaring” twenties of the last century, when fortunes were made literally from nothing and yesterday’s criminals became millionaires overnight, this book lives outside of time, because, telling the story of the broken destinies of the generation of the “Jazz Age”.
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Three Musketeers. Alexandr Duma
The most famous historical and adventure novel by Alexandre Dumas tells about the adventures of the Gascon d'Artagnan and his musketeer friends at the court of King Louis XIII.
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Count of Monte Cristo. Alexandr Duma
The book presents one of the most exciting adventure novels of the classic of French literature of the 19th century, Alexandre Dumas.
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Triumphal Arch. Erich Remarque
One of the most beautiful and tragic love novels in the history of European literature. The story of Dr. Ravic, a refugee from Nazi Germany, and the beautiful Joan Madu, who is entangled in the “unbearable lightness of being,” takes place in pre-war Paris. And the alarming time in which these two happened to meet and fall in love with each other becomes one of the main characters of the Arc de Triomphe.
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The man who laughs. Victor Hugo
Gwynplaine, a lord by birth, was sold as a child to comprachicos bandits, who made a fair jester out of the child, carving a mask of “eternal laughter” on his face (at the courts of the European nobility of that time there was a fashion for cripples and freaks who amused the owners). Despite all the trials, Gwynplaine retained the best human qualities and his love.
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Martin Eden. Jack London
A simple sailor, in whom it is easy to recognize the author himself, goes through a long, full of hardships path to literary immortality... By chance, finding himself in secular society, Martin Eden is doubly happy and surprised... both by the creative gift that awakened in him, and by the divine image of the young Ruth Morse, so not similar to all the people he knew before... From now on, two goals are relentlessly facing him.
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Sister Kerry. Theodore Dreiser
The publication of Theodore Dreiser's first novel was fraught with such difficulties that it led its creator to severe depression. But the further fate of the novel “Sister Carrie” turned out to be happy: it was translated into many foreign languages and republished in millions of copies. New and new generations of readers enjoy immersing themselves in the vicissitudes of Caroline Mieber's fate.
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American tragedy. Theodore Dreiser
The novel “An American Tragedy” is the pinnacle of the work of the outstanding American writer Theodore Dreiser. He said: “No one creates tragedies - life creates them. Writers only portray them.” Dreiser managed to portray the tragedy of Clive Griffiths so talentedly that his story does not leave the modern reader indifferent.
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Les Misérables. Victor Hugo
Jean Valjean, Cosette, Gavroche - the names of the heroes of the novel have long become household names, the number of its readers in the century and a half since the publication of the book has not become smaller, the novel has not lost popularity. A kaleidoscope of faces from all layers of French society in the first half of the 19th century, bright, memorable characters, sentimentality and realism, a tense, exciting plot.
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The adventures of the good soldier Schweik. Jaroslav Hasek
A great, original and outrageous novel. A book that can be perceived both as a “soldier’s tale” and as a classic work directly related to the traditions of the Renaissance. This is a sparkling text that makes you laugh until you cry, and a powerful call to “put down your arms,” and one of the most objective historical evidence in satirical literature.
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Iliad. Homer
The attractiveness of Homer's poems is not only that their author introduces us to a world separated from modernity by tens of centuries and yet unusually real thanks to the genius of the poet, who preserved in his poems the beat of contemporary life. Homer's immortality lies in the fact that his brilliant creations contain inexhaustible reserves of universal human values - reason, goodness and beauty.
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St. John's wort. James Cooper
Cooper managed to find and describe in his books the originality and unexpected brightness of the newly discovered continent, which managed to captivate the whole of modern Europe. Each new novel by the writer was eagerly awaited. The exciting adventures of the fearless and noble hunter and tracker Natty Bumppo captivated both young and adult readers..
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Doctor Zhivago. Boris Pasternak
The novel “Doctor Zhivago” is one of the outstanding works of Russian literature, which for many years remained closed to a wide range of readers in our country, who knew about it only through scandalous and unscrupulous party criticism.
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Don Quixote. Miguel Cervantes
What do the names of Amadis of Gaul, Palmer of England, Don Belianis of Greece, Tyrant of the White tell us today? But it was precisely as a parody of the novels about these knights that “The Cunning Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha” by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was created. And this parody has survived the genre being parodied for centuries. “Don Quixote” was recognized as the best novel in the entire history of world literature.
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Ivanhoe. Walter Scott
“Ivanhoe” is a key work in the series of novels by W. Scott, which take us to medieval England. The young knight Ivanhoe, who secretly returned from the Crusade to his homeland and was deprived of his inheritance by the will of his father, will have to defend his honor and the love of the beautiful lady Rowena... King Richard the Lionheart and the legendary robber Robin Hood will come to his aid.
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Headless horseman. Reed Main
The plot of the novel is so skillfully constructed that it keeps you in suspense until the very last page. It is no coincidence that the exciting story of the noble mustanger Maurice Gerald and his lover, the beautiful Louise Poindexter, investigating the sinister mystery of the headless horseman, whose figure terrifies the inhabitants of the savannah upon his appearance, was extremely loved by readers in Europe and Russia.
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Dear friend. Guy de Maupassant
The novel “Dear Friend” became one of the symbols of the era. This is Maupassant's most powerful novel. Through the story of Georges Duroy, who is making his way to the top, the true morals of high French society are revealed; the spirit of corruption that reigns in all its spheres contributes to the fact that an ordinary and immoral person, such as Maupassant’s hero, easily achieves success and wealth.
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Dead Souls. Nikolay Gogol
The publication of the first volume of N. Gogol’s “Dead Souls” in 1842 caused heated controversy among contemporaries, splitting society into fans and opponents of the poem. “...Talking about “Dead Souls”, you can talk a lot about Russia...” - this judgment of P. Vyazemsky explained the main reason for the controversy. The author’s question is still relevant: “Rus, where are you rushing, give me the answer?”
This article is intended for persons over 18 years of age
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At different times, the fund of classical literature was replenished by outstanding geniuses of their peoples and their eras. We love them for the opportunity to plunge into the world of the distant past, which is why classical literature remains popular at all times.
Classical literature: general characteristics
It happens that a certain mood makes us pay attention to classic books, because the most famous works are often the best. Not in vain, because it was these best works that inspired other famous authors - representatives of subsequent popular generations in literature. The golden classics, an eternal series of books, will be a salvation for those who are not seduced by modern literary works, because it was the authors from this list of classics who were genre pioneers long before the postmodern era arrived, and the literary world burst into flames with all the genre diversity that was difficult even imagine in the conventional 19th century. Nevertheless, all this became possible precisely thanks to the classics, as evidenced by numerous reviews.
Books of world classics: list
As you know, classical works are not just books, but also markers of an era, which are considered exemplary examples of how the best writers saw their literary heritage. In addition, most often the problems of classical works resonate with the worldview of an entire generation, which makes the mass reader love these books with all his soul. This is also the reason that these books are often included in the school curriculum of different countries, because such works help to understand what a whole cross-section of society was thinking and breathing in a specific time frame.
This list contains just some of the best examples of classic literature. But if you are wondering what to read from the literature included in the golden fund of world culture, then here you will definitely find something for yourself.