(no subject)

[throughblueeyes.livejournal.com]

I myself am russian and i have to do an assignment on 19th century russia (1800-1917) and was wondering if anyone knew of anything about the cultural aspects..
i have
+ matroshki
+ hahlama (sp?)
+ camavar

is there anything else i could possibly bring in to show to the class which might reflect that time period?
how people dressed?

thanks in advance!

Comments

[laier.livejournal.com]

+ matroshki
+ hahlama (sp?)
+ camavar

you mean "Матрёшки", "Хохлома" and "Самовар"?

[throughblueeyes.livejournal.com]

yes i do

[nale.livejournal.com]

My suggestion is to move a bit from folklore to, ahem, more advanced art, music and literature. _S_amovar, Khokhloma and Matryoshki have been there before XIX century (and are still there) and are not specific to exactly that period.

Think Patriotic War of 1812, Denis Davydov (a poet-partisan), Karl Brullov (a painter), Piotr Chaikovsky (a composer), Ilya Repin (a painter), Feodor Shalyapin (a singer), etc. - there's billion of persons who would make a great subject for such an assignment.

[throughblueeyes.livejournal.com]

and Pushkin of course.

[nale.livejournal.com]

Yes, of course. :-)) But I thought this would be too commonplace.

[yms.livejournal.com]

Матрёшки are not so old, see the parallel thread (http://www.livejournal.com/community/learn_russian/140667.html?thread=1567611#t1567611).

[nale.livejournal.com]

All right, you win. :-) I didn't know that.
I just don't particularly like the stereotypes; you know - samovars, vodka, bears, etc., etc. Russian culture of XIX century was, obviously, more than that. But then Матрёшка will not be a bad idea - how it all began and all.

[throughblueeyes.livejournal.com]

icon = yozhik v tymane?

[yms.livejournal.com]

Sure :)

[throughblueeyes.livejournal.com]

ever seen the cartoon?

[yms.livejournal.com]

I lived in USSR :) Which means, I saw it a lot of times on the TV from my childhood. And other cartoons by Norstein too.
BTW, it's downloadable here (http://www.izvestia.ru/data/inauka/video/ezhik.zip) as a zipped DivX.
And there is a fan's site (slow):
http://hedgehoginmist.narod.ru/
(the original stories are by Sergey Kozlov)

[throughblueeyes.livejournal.com]

thanks but by your reply "sure :)" i wasnt sure if that was sarcasm or not but yeah i like it

[yms.livejournal.com]

i wasnt sure if that was sarcasm

oh no, i don't feel such nuances in english. it was just a positive answer with a smilie, because it's quite natural that an exUSSR person has seen this cartoon.

[margaritka.livejournal.com]

try to find the book 'land of the
firebird' by suzanne massie. there's
some nice cultural descriptions in it.

[yms.livejournal.com]

You will be surprised, but in most of the 19th century there was no such stuff as матрёшки :) They first appear about 1895 and possibly originate from some Japanese toy depicting Buddas...

[noser.livejournal.com]

Well, that fits nicely into 1800-1917, doesn't it?

[yms.livejournal.com]

It does, but people usually think they are much older...

[halina.livejournal.com]

Хохлома, самовар и матрешка - to my mind is a bad taste in illustrating of XIX century.

If you want folk tradition - take some peasants clothes & culture (traditions) and compare with very different European fashion (& culture, they spoke French better than Russian in the beginning of 19th!) of noble classes.

The main event of 19th was the abolition of serfdom.
Russia of 19th century was not all-in-one. Two different cultures: peasants & nobles, and some citizens-merchants-officers between them.

I can recommend take pictures of clothes & houses. ;) Objects of material culture, artefacts not "brands" (like матрешка, хохломма, гжель, самовар и проч.) But samovar not very bad indeed. Or take pictures of artists of that perod. They very liked to paint genre-pieces. It can be the best choice. (If you want to show the epoch...)

[throughblueeyes.livejournal.com]

i figured a show-and-tell type of thing for the introduction would better suit the presenation because a lot of americans know about them and associate russian culture with that..

but then, of course, go into further detail because it was also known as the "golden ages for russian literature and arts"