There is controversy about a new station on Moscow's metro line named in tribute to Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. Apparently it is not a particularly upbeat place.
The station, called Dostoyevskaya, is decorated with brooding grey and black mosaics that depict violent scenes from the 19th-century writer's best-known novels. One mural re-enacts the moment when the main character in Crime and Punishment murders an elderly pawnbroker and her sister with an axe.Assorted psychologists are trotted out to suggest that the dour decorations will inevitably draw suicides to the station, but the subway's a pretty depressing place to be no matter where you are. I'm sure Russians, a race of gloomy alcoholics who love dark humor almost as much as they love beating their wives, will actually draw some kind of enjoyment from the whole thing. Meanwhile, as far as I can tell, they have not yet dedicated a station to Dostoevsky's contemporary Leo Tolstoy, but if they ever do those murals are going to pretty much paint themselves.Another shows a suicide-obsessed character in The Demons holding a pistol to his temple. If that was not enough to darken the mood, shadowlike characters are shown flitting across the cavernous new station's walls and a giant mosaic of a depressed-looking Dostoevsky stares out at passengers.
Total no-brainer - the man did write a novella called "Notes from Underground" after all.
Goncharev Station: where the trains never get around to arriving, because there are always so many things to be done and so many little household duties to attend to; really, where would one start? Best to stay in bed.
Nabokov Station is where the perverts hang out.
Pushkin station, for canoodling, secret duels and growing awesome sideburns.
Checkov Station, where if you've got a transfer you have to use it by the third stop.
Oh, fuck me: 'Chekhov'.
Still not as bad as that mural in the Denver Airport.
Nothing is as bad as any aspect of the fucking Denver Airport.
There's something sort of terrifying about all of those little whirlygigs lining the transport tunnel.
HAVE YOU BEEN TO DETROIT???
To bad it wasn't a station devoted to Tolstoy.
The daily reenactment of the climax of Anna Karenina would have been a real treat.
Dang, you already made this joke.
How about a trolley stop commemorating the opening chapter of "The Master and Margarita?"
A la Denver, I demand a 32-foot-tall blue fiberglass demon cat standing on its hind legs. Holding a gun and a Primus stove.
Yes, please! *excited clapping* Severed Berlioz head optional, to avoid scaring the kiddies.
You'd have to be an Idiot to go down there.
So you went with that one, instead of 'Grand Inquisitor Station' Yockeem Smirnoff?
I hope the trains are more reliable than the narrator!!!!
That was not intended to be a reply. Unless you want it to be.
Solzhenitsyn themed station please.
Ivan Drago themed station please.
What on earth would that look like? A shack made of driftwood and barbed wire? Put a soup-stand in it that serves broth made from one potato, dirt, frozen moss, snow-water, and a handful of stones.
And the blood of Rocky Balboa.
I'd assume it looks like the crushing political reality of an oppressive political system being revealed.
So, recessed lighting?
LOOKS LIKE SKY... BUT IS ACTUALLY CEILING.
I saw one of those at Grand Central once.
oppressive political system = The Venetian Las Vegas.
Hopefully Martin Donovan will visit and scrawl 'KNOWING IS NOT ENOUGH' somewhere.
fskdjfaslkdfjmartindonovan
The artist responsible for the murals, Ivan Nikolayev, said he did not understand his critics. 'What did you want? Scenes of dancing? Dostoevsky does not have them.'
Huh? The Brothers Karamazov has a shitload of dancing. Well, at least in the movie it did.
That was Fiddler on the Roof.
At Prague's Kafka Terminal, there are no trains, no routes, and you spend your whole life trying to get nowhere.
Ha!
I hear at the Sartre Station in Paris there is no exit.
Log into foursquare. You're about to become mayor of this comment section.
The Henry James Station in New York, considered contrarily, is serviced by a plethora of entrances and exits, many containing various disquieting sequences of stairs, upon which commuters tred or trip according to mood and time of day; the whole withal containing as it were a multiple variation of those scores of sons of Adam who bend their way to and from home in daily pursuit of labor's bread and once in a great while, the subtle step of the Princess Cassimassmia.
The Ernest Hemmingway Station in Madrid is a clean well-lighted place.
It's a white elephant.
The William Burroughs Station is CENSORED BY THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO THE HUMAN GAG REFLEX
I look forward to the Rnst Vincnt Wright Mmorial Station.
The Lewis Carroll Station in Oxford is-why it's getting all sort of soft and filmy, like gauze. But I wonder what latitude or longitude it's at?
This isn't really literary, but in the Netherlands there is a train station inspired by Escher... whooo! Those stairs are a doozy!
Hey, anyone else think that it's not so much journalism that's suffering right now as photojournalism? It took me a while to find a single, small, photo of said mosaics:
http://www.russia-ic.com/news/show/10305/
Flickr has a couple good ones, I guess it's just official nes sources who don't like taking pictures anymore:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/dostoyevskaya/
Now that I've seen those photos of the interior, it's actually quite elegant. I love the swooping, asymmetrical (?) arched ceiling, and the gray-on-gray color scheme is lovely. It has a nice "oh, we've unearthed an alien tomb" look to it.
Russia isn't exactly journalism (photojournalism or not) friendly.
Here you go photos: Nice axe morder about to happen!
http://www.rferl.org/content/Notes_From_Moscows_Underground/2042065.html?page=1&x=1
they don't really look like "mosaics" though
Themes that most of us try to avoid via gambling, whoring, drinking and occasionally self annihilation at least in the comfort of our own homes.
http://scallywagandvagabond.com/2010/06/dostoyevskaya-has-just-opened-as-moscows-new-subway-line-and-the-city-is-on-suicide-alert/
I'm looking forward to the Chicago Upton Sinclair/"The Jungle" El station and the Los Angeles Metro "Less Than Zero" rail station.