Page 42 - (DK Eyewitness) Top 10 Travel Guide - St. Petersburg

40 ❯❯ The Top 10 of Everything

Writers

his infamous, untitled poem about
Stalin, in which he wrote of the
dictator’s “cockroach whiskers” and
his “fingers as fat as grubs”. The
poem, which ultimately led to his
death, became known as the
“16-line death sentence”.
Kharms (1905–42)
5
Daniil Kharms wrote some of
the most ori ginal Russian literature,
which was suppressed by Stalin
due to its downright oddness rather
than any overt political message.
The absurdist writer starved to
Alexander Pushkin death in the World War II siege of
the city (see p38).
Pushkin (1799–1837)
1
Alexander Pushkin’s
masterpiece is Evgeniy Onegin
(1825–32), a novel set in verse form.
He was the first writer to explore
the rich potential of the Russian
language as spoken by the common
people. He was killed in a duel.
Gogol (1809–52)
2
Although born in the Ukraine,
a huge amount of Nikolai Gogol’s
strik ingly original work, such as
The Nose (1835) and The Overcoat Daniil Kharms
(1842), is set in St Petersburg. Bely (1880–1934)
Dostoevsky (1821–81)
3 6
Although born in Moscow,
Andrey Bely reached the
The author of some of
the world’s most profound pinnacle of his career
literature, such as Crime with his symbolist
and Punishment (1866), masterpiece, Petersburg
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1913), a chaotic,
spent much of his life prophetic novel that
in St Petersburg. It was has been compared to
here in 1849 that he the works of Irish
was sub jected to a writer James Joyce.
mock ex ecution for
Nabokov
“revolutionary activities”, 7
the trauma of which (1899–1977)
influenced his future Fyodor Best known for Lolita,
literary work. Dostoevsky Vladimir Nabokov was
born in St Petersburg in
Mandelstam (1891–
4 1899 and grew up trilingual, fluent in
1938)
Russian, English and French. His
The author of symbolic, taut poetry, family moved to Europe in 1918 and he
Osip Mandelstam composed in 1933 wrote many of his novels in English.

040-041_Top_10_St-Petersburg.indd 40 10/10/2016 11:59