Many people have a competitive spirit. Someone wants to be the strongest, someone faster, someone wants to become the brightest and most noticeable. Not surprisingly, there is even a book of records. And these are records in the most unexpected areas. Well, what about advances in language? Someone might think: “What record can be set here?” In fact, there are a lot of achievements related to different languages. One speaks the fastest, the other reads at an incredible speed, the third writes huge amounts of text in an incredibly short time. But this article will focus on offers.
Yeah, about the longest sentences. Such records also exist. Let's find out which sentence is the longest, and what contribution Russian classics made to these achievements.
War and Peace
When it comes to long sentences, many people think of the famous Russian classic Leo Tolstoy. He was firmly entrenched in famelover to use long and intricate speech constructions in his works. In his novels, it is easy to find sentences that take up an entire page. It amazes and amazes. For example, it is worth opening any of his works. How well do you need to speak Russian to write like that? One of Tolstoy's longest sentences can be found in the world-famous novel War and Peace.
It includes 229 words. Schoolchildren should especially pay attention to this while reading the works of the writer included in the program. Such sentences will serve as a clear example of the use of coordinating and subordinating connections, as well as various means of expression. Yes, and for those who graduated from school, but are interested in the peculiarities of the Russian language, this may also be interesting.
But even 229 words is far from the writer's limit. In his drafts, which were examined in detail, a sentence of 244 words was found. A Russian writer could easily compete for the victory in the Longest Sentence category. But he hardly worried about records when he wrote his works. It's just that Tolstoy was a talented writer, and now we can only admire his level of knowledge of the Russian language. That's who proves in practice that the Russian language is great and beautiful.
F. M. Dostoevsky
You can find other examples of some of the longest sentences in literature. F. M. Dostoevsky, like L. N. Tolstoy, was also a master of words and was able to stand out among writers with his ability to build longoffers.
Take, for example, The Brothers Karamazov, one of his most famous works. The most attentive readers will be able to find in this work a sentence consisting of 137 words. And in the novel by F. M. Dostoevsky "The Idiot" there is a sentence in which there are as many as 136 words. This statistic also shows how well the Russian classics spoke the language. And how big was their vocabulary. Who else can write such a long sentence, not lose touch, correctly punctuate and not repeat the same words? Most likely, few people can boast of such talents. But the Russian classics could. Therefore, the sentences written by F. M. Dostoevsky can also stand out among the longest sentences in the Russian language. But they are certainly not the only ones.
What is the longest sentence in Russian?
In fact, answering this question is extremely difficult. Why? Yes, all because there are many Russian-language literary works (and not only Russian-language ones), and it is simply impossible to analyze them all. In addition, there are authors who are little known. Also now, many people are blogging. Who knows, maybe among them there is a modern, but still unknown L. N. Tolstoy? Or F. M. Dostoevsky?
But among the Russian-language works, one can note those that could not go unnoticed. And they have sentences that can be mistaken for the longest. For example, among fiction, allLeo Tolstoy and the phrase written by him from "Two Hussars" stand out.
It's not for nothing that this writer is famous for writing one sentence per half (on average) page.
However, the goal of breaking the record for the longest sentence in the Russian language, apparently, came from officials. Many have long paid attention to the Law of the Samara region. It contains a sentence of 9,387 words. Just think about this number. This is about fourteen printed pages. By the way, this article does not take so much. Not even close. But this record is hard to take seriously. It is hardly proof of the richness and beauty of the Russian language. And the size of the offer has long been the object of jokes. But still, when talking about long sentences, this record is simply impossible not to mention.
Viktor Pelevin's story
Viktor Pelevin is one of the most famous modern Russian writers, and quite non-standard. His works are very often widely discussed and attract attention. Often they either find a response in the soul and find their reader, or not. But it cannot be denied that the works are catchy in any case, and it is extremely difficult to leave them unnoticed. They may or may not like them. But they are. And one of his works can also be a contender for the title of the longest sentence. Moreover, it should be noted that it is the whole work, and not just one single phrase. Why work? Yes, because his entire story "Water Tower"consists of only one single sentence.
At least this fact may interest and make you get acquainted with the works of this writer, if this acquaintance, by coincidence of some strange circumstances, has not happened yet.
World record
In the Guinness Book of Records for quite a long time, the place of the longest sentence in the world was occupied by a phrase from the famous "Ulysses" by James Joyce.
This record-breaking phrase consists of 4,391 words. One has only to try to imagine this scale and admire. To make it easier to imagine, it can be noted that this article has fewer words. Much less.
James Joyce is an Irish writer. Ulysses is his second and most famous novel. This work was created over the course of seven years. Not surprisingly, the phrase from it ended up in the record book.
Guinness record broken
However, this article has already mentioned that all these records are very, very subjective. How can you pick out the longest simple sentence? Or complex? Yes, whatever. After all, there is such a volume of various works in the world. So the record of James Joyce pretty soon faded into the background when the work of the British writer Jonathan Coe was analyzed. In his work The Rotters' Club, a phrase was discovered in which there are 13,955 words. This sentence is about three times the size of the one Joyce wrote. It's hard to even imagine such a volume. Easier to findwork and see this miracle with your own eyes.
Who else can compete?
According to some reports, Polish author Jerzy Andrzejewski could compete with Jonathan Coe in sentence length. The writer was born in 1909. One of his main works is the book "The Gates of Paradise". Readers, getting acquainted with this book, should call on their full attention and watch the long sentences. It may be possible to find another record.
Bogumil Hrabal
Another giant among the proposals can be found in one of the works of the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal. Attention should be paid to his work “Dance Lessons for Senior and Advanced Students”. This work was written in 1964. Reading it, you can find a sentence that stretches for as many as 128 pages. An entire chapter sometimes takes up less space, so the size of this sentence clearly stands out from the rest.
Other achievements in literature
If not the most, then one of the biggest sentences is found in the work of the French writer Marcel Proust "In Search of Lost Time".
More precisely, this is a world famous cycle, consisting of seven novels. In the fourth of them, called "Sodom and Gomorrah," there is a sentence that contains 847 words. Of course, after all these giant proposals, it can hardly claim the title of the largest in the world. But to compete at least for the title of the largest in French literature is quitecapable.
And yet, to unambiguously single out one author and say that this particular person wrote the longest sentence that can only be found in the whole world is simply unrealistic. After all, it is also not possible to read and analyze all existing texts. Moreover, over the years, new trends and trends appear, as well as many talented writers. You can find books that are written without a single punctuation mark at all, but they can hardly be attributed to the longest sentences. And why this race for the most-most? After all, the content is much more important. Long sentences are not always appropriate. And not everyone can feel this fine line. There are many authors who, on the contrary, tried to follow the so-called rule of the golden mean. They do not have huge, overloaded offers. And not without reason, the well-known saying appeared: “Brevity is the sister of talent.”
