Of Nikolai Gogol’s achievement in his short comic masterpiece, How the Two Ivans Quareled, a nineteenth-century critic said, “To make us laugh to the point of tears at the stupidities, worthlessness and imbecility of these living lampoons of mankind is amazing, but then to make us pity those idiots with all our hearts--that is the divine art that is called creativity.” This exquisite collection of wildly funny tales, including Gogol’s, should once and for all dispel the too commonly held view that great Russian literature is relentlessly gloomy. On the contrary, among the works of Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Krylov, and Saltykov may be found examples of comic fiction that rank with the very greatest of that genre: Krylov’s hilarious account, for instance, of an absurdly vulgar landowner who values horses above humans; Dostoyevsky’s political satire in which “a gentleman of a certain age and a certain appearance” is swallowed alive by a crocodile; Tolstoy’s anarchic voyage into a world of crazy make-believe.

A dozen great pieces of comic fiction are presented here in brilliant, spirited translations by Guy Daniels, who has also provided an illuminating introduction dealing with this fascinating side of Russian literature.

Contents:

• Introduction by Guy Daniels
• A Note on the Translations
• Civil Service Grades and Corresponding Military Ranks in Nineteenth-century Russia
• Ivan Krylov
  • A Panegyric in Memory of My Grandfather
• Nikolai Gogol
  • The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  • The Crocodile
• Mikhail Saltykov
  • How One Muzhik Looked After Two Generals
  • The Eagle as Patron of the Arts
• Anton Chekhov
  • The Death of a Civil Servant
  • A Calculated Marriage
  • The Culprit
  • The Exclamation Mark
  • The Speechmaker
  • Who Is to Blame?
  • A Defenseless Creature
• Leo Tolstoy
  • Ivan the Fool