Thinking about typical American novels in my last post made me wonder about another group of novels. I
love Russian literature, and I've never thought about themes in their covers.
Maybe that's because I don't speak Russian, so I always read English translations, and the covers aren't original. They're Canadian (or, more likely, American) artists' representations of the story. That means they're not quite accurate, because they don't quite reflect the author's intention. In my opinion, Russian literature is a completely different genre, not at all like Western stories. In general, Russia is a cold, harsh country with a long and difficult history. Russia has been through so much, and so (now I'm stereotyping) Russians tend to be able to endure a lot more than Westerners, while Westerners probably have a more fully developed sense of humour. That's not always true, but in general I think it's fairly accurate.
So, I looked up Russian covers of two novels I really love:
This cover of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's
Crime and Punishment is powerful because it's so bare. The one lone axe, a symbol of Raskolnikov's guilt, is pivotal in the story (he couldn't have killed the old woman without it), although Dostoyevsky doesn't spend much time talking about it the novel. The simple drama of this cover is perfect.
There isn't much to say about this one. The cover isn't nearly as powerful as
Crime and Punishment, but Tolstoy's
Anna Karenina has a very different kind of drama. It's probably significant that Anna is so alone in the foreground, even in a crowded ballroom. Unfortunately, the image is so common (
lots of covers are images of faces, as I want to talk about next time) that it feels uninteresting and unexciting.
No comments:
Post a Comment