American Professor Irwin Weil started the “Tolstoy Readings” in Kazan

American Professor Irwin Weil started the “Tolstoy Readings” in Kazan

<p> (KZN.RU, October 2, Alena Miroshnichenko). The famous American Slavicist, Ph.D. in Philosophy, Professor Irwin Weil started the “Tolstoy Readings” in Kazan. He gave a lecture on the theme “Tolstoy and Gorky: the fateful meeting of two great writers” in the city cultural and leisure complex named after V. Lenin. </p> <p> </p> <p> The “Tolstoy readings” are five free lectures for several hundred Kazan teachers of Russian language and literature, school librarians, and high school students who are interested in humanitarian subjects. The project runs from October to December 2018 on the initiative of Ilsur Metshin, the Mayor of the city. It is timed to the year of Leo Tolstoy. The “Tolstoy Readings” are held as part of the art-residence “Staro-Tatarskaya Sloboda”. Lectures are designed to motivate students for a deeper study of the Russian classics’ work. </p> <p> </p> <p> Azat Abzalov, the head of the Kazan Department of Culture, welcomed the guest and noted that the name of Tolstoy means a lot for Kazan. And the arrival of the legendary man Irwin Weil is a great gift for connoisseurs of literature. “It is important that the name of Tolstoy sounds very bright and weighty outside our country. One of the brightest legacies of our country is literature”, said A. Abzalov. He added that in the year of Tolstoy there was planned a huge amount of events, attention to the heritage of our compatriot in the city. </p> <p> </p> <p> Today, Professor Irwin Weil shared with Kazan teachers and their students his view of the great works of Russian literature, his understanding of their work. “I wrote about Gorky and Tolstoy, they interest me very much. I would like people here to hear how we approach these writers in the United States. I think that both authors were very interesting people and there was a very strong relationship between them. Today I hope to talk about it. Russian literature is the most popular non-English literature in America. Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Turgenev, Chekhov, Gorky are of interest not only to my students, but also to all who love literature. These are the Russians who have created perhaps the best literature in the world”, said Irwin Weil, who speaks Russian perfectly. </p> <p> </p> <p> He first came to Russia in 1960 and from that moment visited the country about a hundred times. However, Weil came in Kazan for the first time. “I heard that there are very interesting Gorky museums in Kazan. And I heard that this is a city with a long history. Therefore, I wanted to see it and speak here for you”, he said. </p> <p> </p> <p> Irwin Weil devoted most of his life to studying Russian literature. He authored monographs and numerous articles on Russian literature and music, as well as lectures on Russian literature: L. Tolstoy, F. Dostoyevsky, V. Nabokov, and the book “Maxim Gorky. A Look from America”. Irwin Weil created a unique stage course “Russian music in the Context of Russian Culture”. In 1983, he was awarded the gold medal of Pushkin for his great services in the distribution of the Russian language. </p> <p> </p> <p> Today's guest is often called a legend man. He was born in 1928 in the city of Cincinnati in Ohio, on the banks of the Ohio River. In 1951, he graduated from the Faculty of Slavic Studies at the University of Chicago. In 1960, he presented his doctoral dissertation at Harvard University. After receiving his doctorate, Irwin Weil lectured on Russian linguistics and Russian literature in many universities around the world. From 1966 to the present, he teaches at Northwestern University. As the professor himself admitted, he still continues to study in his 90 years old. </p> <p> </p> <p> Ilnar Khidiyatov, the head of the Kazan Department of Education, noted that the American researcher was interested in Russian literature and studied it even in the most difficult times. “In the years of the most difficult relations between the countries of the USA and the USSR, in the years of the Cold War, he continued to study history, culture, literature. He continued to give lectures, which were attended by 800 people a day. It means a lot”, he marked. </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> Following Weil, Anastasia Tolstaya, great-great-granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy, the eldest daughter Vladimir Tolstoy (adviser to the president of Russia on cultural policy, the former director of “Yasnaya Polyana”), Sergey Shargunov, the laureate of many Russian and European competitions, Vladislav Otroshenko, a writer and literary critic, will give lectures at the “Tolstoy Readings”. </p>

2018-10-02T17:39:55+0300