Tag: russian lit

The Fatal Eggs by Mikhail Bulgakov

~ winstonsdad ~ 7 Comments

The Fatal Eggs by Mikhail Bulgakov

Russian fiction

0riginal title –  Роковые яйца

Translator – Hugh Aplin

Source – Personal copy

I added this last minute to the 1925 club as I had the book and it wasn’t among the four books I had picked, but with finishing one book quicker than expected, I managed to read this book. It was actually the cover that caught my eye initially. I also hadn’t yet reviewed a book by Bulgakov on the blog. I thought I had, but looking back, I mustn’t have reviewed one a few years ago. I haver a few of his books on my tbr. He is best known for The Master and Margarita, which he wrote after this book. He actually had a sprint of writing, as he had three books available for 1925, written but not published til this year. This book was finished in 1924 but came out fully in 1925, and is hard to pigeonhole. It has sci-fi elements, satire, commentary, and critique of the early years of Soviet rule.

The start of the horrifying catastrophe must be considered as having been made specifically on that ill-starred evening, just as the first cause of that catastrophe should be considered to be specifically Vladimir Ipatyevich Persikov.

He was exactly fifty-eight years old. He had a remarkable head, pestle-like, bald, with tufts of yellowish hair sticking out along the sides. He had a clean-shaven face, the lower lip poking forward. Because of this, Persikov’s face eternally bore a rather capricious stamp. On a red nose were small old-fashioned glasses in a silver frame, he had brilliant little eyes, was tall, rather stooped. He spoke in a thin, squeaking, croaking voice and had, among other oddities, this one: when he was saying anything weightily and confidently, he turned the index finger of his right hand into a hook and narrowed his little eyes. And as he always spoke confidently, since his erudition in his field was absolutely phenomenal, the hook appeared very frequently before the eyes of Professor Persikov’s interlocutors. Whereas outside his field, i.e. zoology, embryo-logy, anatomy, botany and geography, Professor Persikov said almost nothing.

The events follow after his wife had left him

The book focuses on a scientist, Professor Presikov, who studies Amphibians. I laughed at the early pages when there was a note left by his wife, saying how unhappy she’d be remembering the frogs he kept.I was reminded of the UK comedy series League of Gentlemen, which had a man who kept toads as pets. Anyway, after his wife left, he lost rooms in his house under the new soviet system, then fell out of favour, then back into favour. Still, one day, he was gone, his quality Ziess lens microscope. He finds that some of the red light from it, left in the sun, has triggered a reaction during binary fission. This is the early days of discoveries like X-rays and early nuclear ideas, so when the amphibians produce lots of spawn, it leads to a frenzy of press, and other agencies want to use this discovery for their own ends. So when they want the ray tried on different farm animals, it has unexpected consequences, and then some eggs are done, and it goes from bad to worse. This is a book that captures every nugget of the time and some of its ideals.

On the second evening the professor, looking pinched and pale, without food, keeping himself going only with fat roll-ups, studied the new generation of amoebae, while on the third day he moved on to the primary source, that is to the red ray.

The gas hissed quietly in the burner, again the traffic shuffled along the street, and the professor, poisoned by the hundredth cigarette, half closing his eyes, leant onto the back of his revolving armchair.

“Yes, it’s all clear now. They were brought to life by the ray.

It’s a new ray, studied by nobody, discovered by nobody. The first thing that will have to be cleared up is whether it results only from electricity, or from the sun as well,’ Persikov muttered to himself.

the ray is an accident really .

This book has already been translated four times. This is the third translation; a newer one came out a few years ago. He read the book out when it came out, and it was well received, with parts of it giving nods to specific policies in the soviet union at the time. It also captures that early sci-fi of unknown rays. What is the red ray he has found? Ideas about science and improving or increasing food production. It is comic in places when things go wrong. He did worry that this satire might have gone too far with its nods to specific Soviet policies of the time and the way the characters might be thinly veiled reflections of actual people of the time. I felt this would go well after cement, as this is the sort of book the Soviets would have hated; they loved the social realism fiction, not Sci-fi satire like this. Have you read any of his books this year ?

Sofia Petrova by Lydia Chukovskaya

~ winstonsdad ~ 6 Comments

Sofia Petrova by Lydia Chukovskaya

Russian fiction

Original title –Софья Петровна

Translator – Aline Werth

Source – Personal copy

One of the few things I have liked and really got into since I’ve been blogging is the publisher Persephone Books. When I first started blogging, there was a phone book week. Sadly, one of the first weeks I joined in, their books were all English and American books that had fallen out of print. However, they have since brought a few books in translation out, and this is their latest. Lydia Chukovskaya was known for her advocacy for the great Russian writers who were banned under the Soviet. Her husband worked for a publisher that was shut down for being too bourgeois by Stalin. She would have been arrested had she not been at home when the arrests were made. After that, she spent many years wandering. Directly after this incident, she wrote this book, not long after losing her husband. It captures a woman discovering how Stalin’s Russia suppressed people’s thoughts.

The typists were a bit afraid of her, and called her the school-marm behind her back. But they obeyed her. And she set out to be strict, but fair. In the lunch hour, she chatted in a friendly way with those who did their work well and con-scientiously, talked about how difficult it was to make out the director’s writing, and how lipstick didn’t suit everyone by any means. But with those who were capable of writing things like rehersal’ or ‘collictive’ she adopted a haughty manner.

There was one typist, Erna Semyonovna, who really got on Sofia Petrovna’s nerves. She made a mistake in almost every word, and smoked and chattered impudently all the time she was working. She reminded Sofia Petrovna vaguely of a cheeky housemaid they had once had in the old days, whose name was Fanny, and who had been rude to Sofia Petrovna and had flirted with Fyodor Ivanovich …

What was the point of keeping on anyone like that!

Her working in her typing job !!

Sofia Petrovna loses her husband a well known doctor leaving her to have to find a job. She takes a lesson and find out she is actually good at typing and gets a job at a large publishing house, where after a short time she becomes the head typist as she is better than some of the other women in the office there is some great observation of her typing colleagues’ woman more into the ment hat there jobs. Sofia lives in her apartment with her son, who is just coming to the end of his school career, so when Kolya starts a job with a new friend and suddenly finds a way to improve his craftsman job, he is in the paper. Meanwhile, some of her dead husband’s friends have been arrested, and then suddenly her son is arrested. She is told by Alik, the friend her son worked with. Then he writes to her. This book captures how the writer herself must have felt caught up in the madness of the purges.

Suddenly there was a ring at the door, and a second ring.

Sofia Petrovna went to open the door. Two rings – that was for her. Who could it be, so late?

There on the threshold stood Alik Finkelstein.

Alik there alone, without Kolya – it was unnatural…

‘Kolya?!’ Sofia Petrovna grabbed Alik by the dangling end

of his scarf. ‘Is it typhoid?’

Alik, without looking at her, slowly took off his galoshes.

‘Shhh!’ he said at last. ‘Let’s go into your room.’ And he tiptoed along the corridor.

Sofia Petrovna, beside herself with anxiety, followed him.

‘Don’t be alarmed, for heaven’s sake, Sofia Petrovna,’ he began, when she had closed the door behind her, ‘calm down, Sofia Petrovna, please do. There’s nothing to be frightened about. It’s nothing terrible. The day before the day before yesterday… or when was it? the day before the last day off, anyway . .. Kolya was arrested.’

He sat down on the divan, tore off his scarf, threw it down on the floor and burst into tears.

When she finds lut what has happened to her son?

I’m pleased I saw this for this year’s Women in Translation Month. It is a publisher I like and one that hasn’t put out many books in translation. It is always fun when they do. This book captures the paranoia and sheer fear family members had at this time, the madness and sheer unexpected arrest and moves during the Purges. The book was banned for many years in Russia. It first came out in France in Russian. She was a champion of the dissident Soviet writers and a respected voice for the dissident writers. Conversations she had over these years have been published and are meant to give a great insight into what it was like to be caught up in the Stalin Purges, as she was when she lost her husband. The book was, of course, passed around in Samizdat in Soviet era Russia; those handwritten pages show how the regime made people bring more people into their crimes as they were seen. Have you read this or any other book that covers the Stalin Purges? If you want a book that maybe captures the madness THAT orwell tried to show in his novels around that time, this is a perfect example of how it was to be in Stalin’s Russia!!

 

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Nikolai Leskov

~ winstonsdad ~ 10 Comments

 

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Nikolai Leskov

Russian fiction

Original title – Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uyezda

Translator – Robert Chandler

Source – Personal copy

One of the aims of this year was to get more familiar with Russian Classics. I read War and Peace early on in the blog, and she and there have read a number of other books that have come from the likes of Pushkin Press when they have brought out a new collection of stories by a writer or a new Translation. However, this writer may not be as well-known as other writers on the same page. He was well-regarded among his fellow Russian writers but was never taken in the English-speaking world. This book is better known for being the basis of Shostakovich’s Opera, which is based around the book, and a few years ago, there was a film made of the novella as well. Leskov had a Harder upbringing than some of his fellow Russian writers. He worked as a clerk in the criminal court. He climbed and eventually was able to get a transfer to Kyiv. He ultimately went to work for a private company and got drawn into journalism and then to literary writing. He is known for his wordplay. There is an excellent LRB podcast about this book with Robert Chandler, the book’s translator.

Katerina Lvovna was not exactly a beauty, but there was something pleasing about her nevertheless. She was only in her twenty-fourth year; she was short but shapely, with a neck that could have been sculpted from marble; she had graceful shoulders and a firm bosom; her nose was straight and fine, her eyes black and lively, and she had a high white forehead and black, almost blue-black hair. Herself from Tuskar in the province of Kursk, she had been given in marriage to a local merchant by the name of Izmailov; she did not, however, love him or feel any attraction towards him – it was simply that he had asked for her hand and she, being poor, could not afford to be choosy. The Izmailov family was of no small importance in our town: they traded in white flour, rented a large mill in the district, and owned profitable orchards on the outskirts of town as well as a fine town house. In short, they were well-to-do. Moreover, they were not a large family: there was only the father-in-law, Boris Timofeyevich Izmailov, a man of nearly eighty who had long been a widower; Katerina Lvovna’s husband, Zinovy Borisovich, who was a little over fifty; and Katerina Lvovna herself. That was all. Although Katerina Lvovna and Zinovy Borisovich had been married for five years, they still had no children.

The children or lack of is mentioned by her father in Law

This book is one of those books that, when you finish it, you go through all that happened in so few Pages. The book follows Katerina Lvovna, a wife of a much older man. By marriage, he is away working after the book’s opening, and we see how her husband’s father, Boris, wants children. He tells her how Zinovy has already been through a wife and is pushing his young wife for a child. But when a dam breaks on one of his properties, Katerina is left home alone. She has the house to herself, and as she is alone, she eventually starts a relationship with the Steward who has Left Sergei. She flirts with him, But she is told he is a womaniser. But when she is caught with Sergei in the bed with him by her father-in-law Boris. This one event sets her on a path of killing people and a series of events that change the whole course of her life and her connection over the years that follow. Sergei it shows a one-sided affair with a man who is more interested in Women than romance. But the knock-on effect on the woman that loves him. A Lady Macbeth indeed.

‘I know very well, master, where I’ve just been, and I advise you, Boris Timofeyevich, to listen to me and mark my words: what’s done can’t be undone, and it’s best not to bring shame on one’s own house. What do you want of me? What satistaction do you require?”

‘I want, you viper, to give you five hundred strokes of the lash, said Boris Timofeyevich.

I’m the culprit, you’re the judge. Tell me where I’m to go – and do as you wish. Drink the blood from my veins.’ Boris Timofeyevich led Sergei down to his stone storeroom and lashed him with a whip until the strength gave out in his arm. Sergei didn’t even let out a groan, though he chewed through half of his shirtsleeve.

When they get caught by Boris

I haven’t seen the opera or film of this book. I will be watching the film at some point. I have found it online. The title shows how rare it is for a woman to kill like Lady Macbeth, and here we see Katerina do it. We see a woman driven by the desire for both desire and freedom. But then the unravelling after what happens when they are caught by Boris, both her decision to kill him and also the long-term relationship between Katerina and Sergei. It shows how females struggle to break free of marriage when trapped in one. How by her father in law she is viewed as a baby-making machine. Then there is her relationship with Sergei, a womaniser, but she never quite sees it. She is blind to him until the end of the book!! I would be interested to see if Robert Chandler has done any more books by him. I like the other translations he has read over the years. Have you read Leskov?

Wound by Osaka Vasyakina

~ winstonsdad ~ 4 Comments

Wound by Oksana Vasyakina

Russian FIction

Original title -Рана

Translator – Elina Alter

Source – Review copy

Well, on to the second book for this year’s Woman in Translation month, and we are with a debut novel in ENGLISH FROM THE Russian poetess and curator Osaka Vasyakina with one of the first Lesbian novels in Russian. The book won the NOS prize in Russia when it came out. Osakana lives in Moscow, where she teaches writing and feminist literature. This book is the first of three she has written about her family. This one follows the death of her mother. The other two books are about her father, that died of Aids and her aunt Rose. The book is formed of the journey she took with her mother’s ashes to the small working-class town she grew up Siberia.

The cousin didn’t know that I was a lesbian. But I wanted to say to him that he knew nothing about gay people. Why do you have this fixation on anal penetration? Why do you want to insert an automatic rifle lubed with lard into the German’s anus? I wanted to ask. But I didn’t bother. And after all, condoms don’t hurt anyone, rather they help save lives. While what’s a rifle for? A rifle exists to kill people.

It was stuffy from the heat and the stink of the little pine tree air freshener. What misery, I thought. And said nothing.

She kept her sexuality secret from ost of her family.

The book opens as Oskana’s mother is on her deathbed. We see her talking and interacting with the nursing staff as she nears the end of her battle with Breast cancer in a hospice. Then as she passes, she thinks about her own position, and at that moment, she is dealing with an accusation of sexual assault. This leads her to feel about her partners and the consent of those partners and her current situation. So over time, this happens as she lays her mother’s ashes in her home town in distant Siberia. So she gets her mother’s ashes as she heads on a mammoth train journey into her own past her mother’s past as the train mothers closer to her mothers home town we see a woman dealing with her mother’s death as grief-stricken but also how her mother dealt with her sexuality and how that affects her life. This shows how hard it is to be a lesbian under Putin’s regime. It also has a poet’s soul in it. The middle section, an ode to her mother, is a powerful piece of writing.

And also love. Though love is more complex than death.In death only one person is involved, but love is a space of cooperation. I tried to weld love and death together inside myself. I didn’t want vulgarity; I wanted life, a daily practice, labour. And then I wrote a poem. Love brought me pain, and death brought me pain. But love brought the pain of being, while death brought the pain of non-being. And that was where they met, through pain.

women young women are becoming sand
beautiful slim in nylon glitter are becoming sand
I’m reading you Inna Lisnyanskaya’s poems from her book
In the Suburbs of Sodom
and in one poem she compares her stomach her old worn-out stomach.                                                         to waves of sands

She writes poetry around her mothers death on the train ride.

This is a powerful book from a strong female voice. In fact, this is maybe the perfect book for women in translation month. I works like this are what it is all about, those voices that should be heard worldwide. Oksana Vasyakina is a brave writer. She has written here the first openly lesbian novel written in Russian, although it is just one part of the story of her life and the life with her mother. But current events in her life, with the accusations and such, show how hard it is to be Homosexual in Russia. But most of all, this book mediates a mother-daughter relationship and the ghosts of that relationship now that her mother has passed. As she heads on the train, we see the lacework of her mind piece together the past and their relationship as we head to her mother’s cold and working-class history of the village her mother is from. The book I recalled Maria Stepnova’s book in memory of a Memory, another Russian book dealing with memories and death, the ghost we all have in our past and what happens when we open our minds and let those ghosts and memories free to walk on the page and her they have such heartfelt words. Have you read this book? What are your woman in translation plans?

Winston’s score – = A powerful book around the loss of a mother from the daughter’s perspective.

In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova

~ winstonsdad ~ 6 Comments

In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova

Russian Literature

Original title -Памяти памяти

Translator – Sasha Dugdale

Source – Personal copy

This was a book that was mentioned before the prize and others questioned if it was a novel at all well it for me fits in that ground between fiction and non-fiction a personal quest the likes of we have seen in books from writers like  Sebald and one of my favorite books of recent year Dušan Šarotar book Panorama. This is a prose work from the Russian writer and Poet Maria Stepanova a graduate of Gorky literature Institute she has been a big presence online in Russian Literature having been behind the site’s open space a Russian daily cultural site and the Colta website project. She is married to a well-known Russian Critic and Journalist this is the first work of hers to be translated she has also a poetry collection that has also been translated by Sasha Dugdale that has also come out she has won a number of the big prizes. So we are off on the next stop on the Booker international list!!

Memory is handed down, history is written down; memory is concerned with justice, history with preciseness; memory moralizes, history tallies up and corrects; memory is personal, istory dreams of objectivity; memory is based not on knowledge, but on experience; compassion woth, sympathy for a desperate pain demanding immediate involvement. At the same time the landscape of memory is strewn with projections fantasiesand misrepresenations – the ghost of today, with their faces turned to the past. Hirsch writes

I love pasages like this that describe what a memory is to us as against history

How to capture this book as it isn’t a novel it is a sort of patchwork of pieces that are all come about from when she cleared her aunt apartment what she does is build a picture of her family as she says they are just ordinary Russian jew family she uses the similar idea to Sebald a sort of post-memory of these lives that haunt her past and the flat she is clearing as she looks at the flotsam and jetson we all leave behind us the photos and letters that are full of ghosts that maybe she is the last to know who and what they were. And in the time they lived in the Ginzburgs is a family that had not lost lives in the Stalin days and with the exception of one member of the family went through the second world war the son of the aunt died in Leningrad it is a touching section a letter from him is followed by the letters of his death.  There is also a piece about how Dickens kept there spirit up in the war when reading great expectations. Near the end of the book her thoughts taker her to the American artist Joseph Cornell(this is a strange series of connections I recently got a novella that is about this artist) he made boxes that are little worlds in themselves and the fact this is her box.

The cemetry as address book foor all humanity sets out everything we need to know with concision. in effect it comes down to names and dates- we don’t need to know any more. We read and remember at most two or three familiar names, for who could fix all its thousands of pages in mind? But supposing those who lie there have an interest in whether they are remembered? All they can hope for is a passerby to stop and read, a strangers, filled with an age- old curiosity about life beforehe appeared in the world, who will pick out their grave from all others, and stan and remark on it. This belief in the redemptive regard of a stranger

What are we this hits it on the head at least a grave that occasionally catches a passerby eye.

I am a fan of this sort of book it is like being on a trip with someone a quest for life it is like breath on the embers of a dying flame just to get them to reignite and spark off again that one last surge of heat. Sebald and Pamuk have influenced her she says that a few times in the book. Unlike those, this is a story of lives that have nothing other than they lived through some of the grimmest and hardest times in Russian history and managed to get through without making a real mark which is an achievement how to avoid death in the siege and then before that Stalin’s purges is a story in itself. what are we when we have gone that is the question without someone to remember us to pass that memory on like an Olympic torch? This is the patchwork quilt of her aunt’s world made up of pieces but in places, there are Maria’s own thoughts filling the spaces in their lives.  Russian Jews family caught in Amber.

Winstons score –  +A a book that just makes you know why you love reading that is something special.

Lives and Deaths essential stories by Leo Tolstoy

~ winstonsdad ~ 3 Comments

Lives and Deaths essential stories by Leo Tolstoy

Russian Fiction

Translator – Boris Dralyuk

Source – review copy

It has been 8 years since I read the new translation of War and Peace by Tolstoy so when I was offered the chance to review a collection of stories by the master that revolved around life and death. I couldn’t say no when I was offered the chance to read these for new translations from Boris Dralyuk. The stories are mainly from later in his writing life the earliest is from 1859 the latest is from 1905. The main story in the collection is the Death of Ivan Ilyich a novella the pother three stories in the collection are Three deaths, pace-setter, and Alyosha the pot. all center around death.

The announcement was bordered in  black ” It is with deepest sorrow that Praskoyva FyodofovnaGolovina informs relatives and friends of the demise of her beloved spouse, Member of the appellate court Ivan Ilyich Golovin, which occured on 4TH Febuary 1882. The funeral will be held on friday at one o’clock in the afternoon”

Ivan Ilyich had been a collgue of the assembled gentlemen, well liked by all of them. He had been ill for several weeks; they had heard the illness was incurable.His position had been kept open, but itwas assumed that, in the event of his death, Alekseyev would be appointed to replace him.

The opening of Ivan Ilyich that sees him=s death notice and we then see what haopened in the weeks before.

Well,  the main part of this collection is the Death of Ivan Ilyich. Ivan is a Judge and has a settled life the story opens with people reading a notice of his death but then we see the events that lead to his death. He has just moved into a new house when he has a fall and gets pain on his left side, Then he starts to have a bad taste in his mouth as he gets worse one of his friends Peter sees his friend is getting worse. His wife Praskovya is well to put it one way more of a lady who lunches and has her own life and is only trouble when Ivan’s illness affects their activities together. Ivan questions after he gets the word from the doctor that he is going to die why it is happening to him. We have the three deaths of a noblewoman a lady is traveling on a coach and at the posting station is seen by a doctor who says she won’t make it home but she wants to be home to die. Uncle Hvedor an old coachman is dying in the common room of the posting station. we have a tree dying as the third death. The Pacesetter is set in a stable and told from the point of view of the horses in the yard. Then the last story Alyosha the pot about a quiet young man called the pot after he broke a pot when he was a youth and is a meek soul.

Alyosha was the younger brother. They nicknamed him Pot because one day his mother sent him to the deacon’s wife with a pot of milk, but he stumbled and fell, and the pot broke. His mother gave him a whipping and the boys teased hom, called him “Pot” .The nickname stuck – Alyosha the Pot

Alyosha was a thin little felow, with lop-ears (His ears were like wings), with a big nose. The boys used to teasehim, shouting “Alyosha’s nose is like a dog on a hill” There was a school in the village, but Alyosha didn’t have much time for it

THe youg mannamed pot is a meek young man in his lfe.

I hadn’t read Ivan Ilyich before so was pleased to have read this new translation from a Judge that in many ways his life with a wife that is caught up in her own world and a man that has maybe been to up himself that hadn’t seen his impending death coming it brings up the question of what our lives are valued for and even we think we may be entitled to live longer that is not always the collection the other stories show three different deaths from the highest and lowest of society to that of a tree. Then we have the goings-on of a  stable told from the horse point of view his imagining of their social world is interesting then the quiet Alyosha life is summed up in a mere ten -pages. The stories show how he viewed death change from the earliest story three deaths which were written nearly thirty years earlier than the other works the later maybe shows how when we get to view death differently the older we get.

The Funeral party by Ludmilla Ulitskaya

~ winstonsdad ~ 2 Comments

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Funeral Party by Ludmilla Ulitskaya

Russian fiction

Original title -Веселые похороны

Translator – Cathy Porter

Source – personal copy

when the Nobel was due a few weeks ago there were a few betting sites giving odds less than normal but as ever I marked a few of the names that I hadn’t read and haven’t  got books by and the Russian writer Ludmilla Ulitskaya was high on the list and has had a lot of books translated into English over the years. Her first novella was published in 1992 in Russian she has won the Russian booker and was up for the old Man booker prizes and has won awards around the world. She is known for not delving into the past of her characters but the present and moving forward with the situations they are in.

The heat was terrible, with one hundred percent humidity. It was as if the whole of this great city, with its inhuman buildings, its magical parks, its different coloured people and dogs, had reached the point od a phase transition and at any momentits semi-liquefied people would float up int the soupy atomsphere.

The shower was permanently occupied, with a que of people standing outside, For a long time they hadn’t bothered with clothes, although Valentina wore a bra to prevent her large breasts chafing in the heat; normally she never wore one. Everyone was dripping wet, the sweat failed to avaporate from their bodies, towels didn;t dry and hair had to be dried with Hair dryer.

The opening lines give a view of the heat that summer in New york in Alik’s  small apartment

The book follows the last days of a Russian Emigres Alik an artist as he is dying. Those gathered around him remember him and also in the background there is the Uprising in Moscow where tanks came into the city in 1991 as it is a red hot summer in New York. As his wire Nina a drinker but also religous wants him to come back into the church. He has done artworks around the last supper and is an agnostic but will agree if there is also a rabbi with the priest! Alik has fallen on hard times and his bills are being sorted by another of the women around his bed Irina she maybe shows how some Russian Emigres came to thrive in the US. She was an Acrobat and former lover of Alik but has become a reasonable succesful lawyer and pays her old friend’s bills. The woman he was meant to marry in the US Valentina is there a marriage that never happened. Maria an older woman a motherly figure that is trying to save him with her mix of old fashion herbal remedies. One few other men is Firma a Russian doctor reduce to a lab assistant as he isn’t able to pass his US medical exams. What we see is how each has interacted with this Artist that until now was the glue between these people and a vibrant man to be around. As they visit him this hot summer some of his old lady friends get too hot and a strip off this is all part of the comic side of this book.

Father victor arrived at about nine, without socks and in sandals, carrying an attache case and a bulging plastic bag. He was wearing a baggy hirt tucked into light, shortish trousers, and a baseball cap with the innocuous letters “N” and “Y” on it

He tyook off the cap as he came in and rested it on the crook of his arm, greeting everyone with a smile which wrinkled his short nose.

Because it was Saturday there was a large number of visitors: valentina, giola with the little grey dostoyevskt under her arm, Irina, Maika, Faika, Libin and his girlfriend, all the usual crowd. Also present were the Beginsky sisters, recently arrived from Washington

The crowd around his dying bed every day.especially at the weekend

This book captures the myriad of emigres experiences from the settle and succesful to those broken by coming to the US to follow there American dream Alik himself has seen both sides of this world since his arrival in America. He is a womans man given by the women around him in his last days his wife the woman that should have been his wife his ex-lover and the motherly figure all have deep connections to this man this is what Ludmila does so well in this book and that is build up the layers and connection in each characters life. There is a comic tone at times in this book it isn’t all doom and gloom in this small room as some of the women around strip off shocking some of his other visitors. Lisa reviewed this book a number of years ago, I said then I must get a copy I finally did and enjoyed it tis is a writer I will be reading again at some point Nobel win or not !!

 

The Last Summer by Boris Pasternak

~ winstonsdad ~ 4 Comments

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Last Summer by Boris Pasternak

Russian fiction

original title – Povest

Translator – George Reavey

Source – Personal copy

I love the lesser works of better-known writers, especially if like Pasternak they have won the Nobel prize. and this is a perfect example of that book Pasternak is known mainly known for Doctor Zhivago. His poetry is available. but this book and other novels by him are less available The last summer hasn’t had a new edition since 1990. Written in 1944 it seems a personal book as Pasternak was also based in the Ura in Perm l in a chemical factory like the main character in this book. He also taught a family in Moscow like Serezha the main character in the book.

At the beginging of 1916, Serezha came to stay with his sister, Natasha, in Solikmsk. For the [ast ten years the scattered fragments of this tale have kept coming into my mind, and in the early days of the revoloution some portions f it found their way into print.

But the reader had better forget about these earliest versions of he will become confused as to what the fate ultimately befell each character. I have changed the names of a number of these charactes; as to the fates themselves, I shall leave them as I had found them in those years in the snow under the trees; and there will be no difference of opnion between my novel in verso, spetrsky which I wrote at a later date, and this prose offering; the life in both of them is the same.

The opening shows how the main character is remember the times earlier !

The book was written in 1934 which may be meant the events he recounts in the book have been tinge by the years between the setting of the book. The book is set in 1916 in the middle of the Great War. We meet a tired man is on his way back to his family well his sister. On a long journey from the Urals homeward bound, he drifts into memories of the last summer he had before the war when the world around him seemed a different world the last summer before the war. He was working as a tutor to a rich Moscow family and the world seemed at his feet as he meets many writers and fell in love with the companion of his employer Mrs. Arid and discovered woman at night as he visited  Saskia a prostitute and other ladies of the night as he discovers his sexual side and a world that he seemed to be going forward. This isn’t a war novel there isn’t much mention of the war but it may be also is like holding a breath as it is just before the  Soviet regime took other which at the time Serezha is meant to be isn’t in foreground although there had been failed coups before that are mention the growing strikes that peppered Russian life in pre-revolution Russia.

The weather was stifling. Serezha, with the aid of a grammar, was refreshing his scant and neglected study of english. At dinner time, he and Harry used go upstairs to the ballroom where they kicked their heels while waiting for Mrs Frsteln to appear. Then they would follow her into the dining-room. Mrs Arild would arrive in the ballroom five to ten minutes before Mrs Fresteln; and Serezha would talk loudly with the Danish woman until the ladt of the house emerged znd then part from her with obvious regret.

His budding romance to the Lady’s companion is in fleeting momnets as these things where at the time.

This is a strange novel it has a certain dream-like feel throughput as the memories have sepia tones at times but there is also a strong feel of Pasternak look back from post-revolution times the book was written in 1934 which is just the time Pasternak and his friends really fell foul under Stalin regime. A close friend Mandelstam was arrested,  this lead to Pasternak getting a call from Stalin about his friend. But later laid the path for Pasternak troubles in his future writing. The is a touch of \bildungsroman about the summer in Moscow Serezha had spent. But also a feeling of Lost love which is something Pasternak was dealing with at the time as he had a romance with the daughter of the family he was brought in to teach Ida. A lost novella that needs reading it is short but feels like most great Novellas do as much more.

Have you a favorite lesser work of a great writer?

Rapture by Iliazd

~ winstonsdad ~ 3 Comments

Rapture

Rapture by Iliazd

Russia fiction

Original title – Voskhishchenie

Translator – Thomas J Kitson

Source personal copy

I’ve been admiring the Russian library series since they came out a couple of years ago they have such eye-catching cover and the books themselves as works of Russian literature are all very interesting. So I decided earlier this year to buy a few of them this was the first. Iliazd or Illa Zdanevich as he was known . A Georgian born Russian exile writer. His own life is as interesting as his novel is, He was an Exile in Paris a writer this was his second novel and came out in 1930. But he also an Avant-garde artist a to the likes of Picasso, Chagall, Miro, and Max Ernst. He has a number of solo exhibitions at the Pompidou and Museum of modern art after he died. There is a great intro to the book that describes him in late life living with thirty cats and in a huge sheepskin coat herding these cats as he took them out around Paris. There is a great intro I recommend reading it

So on account of her useless qualties, because of the mountains, and thanks to the back of beyond, Ivlita’s lot was becoming more complicated and confused, although thus far she herself suspected nothing. And for that reason, the girl’s exostence remained just as dull and even as ever nothing more than a reflection of the seasons.

Ivlita is considered useless but is a real beauty in Laurence’s eye a simple man himself.

This is a story of one man’s story that of a draft dodger Laurence. A man that has tried to avoid the draft by going on the run in the Highlands as he heads on the way he finds a beautiful woman Ivlita in a wooden house and decides to liberate her as he sees it. They end up in the cave in the mountains but over time he is drawn into a gang of revolutionaries that make him do increasing acts of violence like casting bombs. He is a man that has been caught by there dreams. But is it his battle of there battling he went on the run to escape violence and he worships the young now pregnant women he brought to the hills as he heads back to the city to get money and do the attacks but is he with the right women is he doing the right thing?

Laurence was wary of being rousted out during the night, since he couldn’t be certain the highlanders weren’t concealing beneath their courtesy a resolution to assault him, But he needed to sleep inordinately after blundering two whole days in the woods and drinking so much now; he was also taking account of the acute possibility that gendarmes would be searching the vicinity for him (while, as it happens, the townsfolk had swiftly headed home after the murder).The cretins stable, then, was an impregnable fortress.

Laurence finally arrives in the highlands but is still looking over his shoulders to see if he gets caught ?

This is an interesting novel. It is a simple adventure story in a way a man on the run falls for a woman is a classic adventure story line. His acts of robbery and terrorism and daring adventure have echoes of earlier books. For me, Buchan and those writers of early spy fiction from Conrad and Le Queux came to mind. Laurence is a sort of early anti-hero caught up in what is around him like Hanny in 39 steps. there is something of an old-fashioned tale there. But there is an undercurrent of a writer trying to experiment. Here dead characters returning almost a sense of that magical nature of the countryside a sort of early magic realism which is maybe a nod to his artistic world. Then there is the exile question of what the revolution brought. to a simple man like Laurence got caught up on the run but is lead into the frontline by others in the gang!! then there is also a sense of speed in the writing no full stops is something you as the story rolls like a juggernaut what will happen to Laurence in the end? An interesting book from a writer that was banned in the Soviet Union now finally in English after eighty years. I love the cover of this book and all in the series such an eye-catching design.

Have you read a Russian library book?

Midnight in the century by Victor Serge

~ winstonsdad ~ 3 Comments

Midnight in the Century

Midnight in the century by Victor Serge

Russian fiction

Original title –  S’il est minuit dans le siècle

Translator – Richard Greeman

Source – Personal copy

I left it to the last weekend to cover my last two NYRB fortnight reads. The first is the second book by Victor Serge I have covered on the blog I reviewed Conquered city a few years ago I went out and got a few more books from him. Serge had an interesting life growing up in an exiled family in Brussels at the turn of the century he was a firebrand and an anarchist in France in 1912 he was sentenced to five years and then expelled to Spain in 1917. He went to Russia in 1919 and joined the Bolsheviks and after that worked in the communist Press service until in 1928 he fell foul of the government and then in 1933 was arrested by Stalin’s police and held for 80 days and the sent in exile in Orenburg a remote city in Russia. He left Russia after two years there.

Mikhail Ivanovich Kostrov, who was not at all superstitous, had a feeling that things were about to happen in his life, They were heralded by almost imperceptable signs. So it was for his arrest. There had been the perculiar tone of voice with which the rector had told him: “Mikhail Ivanovich, I’ve decided to suspend your course for the moment …. you’re up to the directory.* aren’t ypou ? ” Fear obviously, of allusions to the new political turn “So” the rector continued, “prepare me a very short  course on Greece”.

The start of the troubles and Exile for Kostrov when he is called in and arrested.

That two years in Exile is the backbone to this novel and is about a city of Exiles. Chenor also called Blackwaters is where these exiles all live. The place is a mix of Old Bolsheviks like Rhyzik and the narrator, young workers Rodion a man that has taught himself and a splattering of Orthodox church believers and all those that Stalin didn’t want are thrown into the melting pot that is Chenor. It is an insider view into what it was like in Stalin’s Russia as we find out how people got there the fear that everyone at the time lived under the hopelessness of being stuck in exile and no chance of escape. This is the burnt embers of those that shone brightly but were stubbed out by Stalin’s policies and violent regime. We see how Kostrov at the start of the book is sold out by a colleague that was the reason he ended up in Exile. The book sees one of them trying and succeeding in escaping the city.

The forest line grows darker at the horizon. A little over two centuries ago, peasants fleeing serfdom built this little town on the bluff overlooking the river bend. They thought they had gone far enough into the inclement North to be forgotten. They were only half right, but what could they do? however far you flee, your grandchildren will have to flee one day in their turn.

This captures the hopelessness of living in Chenor set up by those that fled serfdom has now trap those there two centuries later.

This is one of those books that draw you into the world he saw that of being an exile and also of living in everyday  Stalin Russia where no one is what the seems. The dreams of the early days of the Bolshevik revolution seems very far and distance in the Russia they are living in. I have read other accounts from the like of Arthur Koestler Darkness at noon (strange the title has a similar tone to the title of this book) also Solzhenitsyn wrote about the cruel nature of the Stalin regime. This is an Orwellian world from the start when our main character is sold out by a colleague at work. Serge is one of those writers that is able to turn his own experience no matter how dark and black they were into touching and heartfelt prose in this great translation.  This is another example of why over the last ten years of the blog I have slowly been buying NYRB books my only wish is they were easily available to buy locally I have brought a few in Sheffield but most I have to buy online. Have you read Serge.

 

Eleven Prague Corpses by Krill Kobrin

~ winstonsdad ~ 9 Comments

Eleven Prague Corpses

 

Eleven Prague Corpses by Krill Kobrin

Russian fiction

Original title – 11 пражских трупов

Translator – Veronika Lakotova

Source – personnel copy

I was saying I was overwhelmed with reviews and what is annoying I am reading fast than I can review so I let books slip and this was nearly one of those. This book grabbed me with the description of Krill as a writer he is interested in the cultural history of Russia and the Czech Republic. He is one of the founds of Russian Psychogeography and one of his novels is a tribute to Flann O’Brien. Oh, and he is also called the Russian Borges (i do hate that but I can see it here as Borges like twisting the detective short story as well).

Maurice approached me at the fuenral. He said – stuttering as usual and as usual in broken English – ” An apprpriate way of dying for a former restaurant critc isn’t it ? Professional, so to speak. Acute Pancreatitis. Caused by what ? by the excepitonal Czech dumplings pork, and beer. Anf of course, by always exceptional czech doctors. Dammned Prague.” It started to drizzle, the heavy scent of the earht mixed with the smell of damp clothes.It was difficult to breathe. “Dammned Prague”I agreed.” Dammned Central Europe”

His dislike of his hime is shown here but also the inkling of the first death being more than it seemed.

The series of Stories in this collection is narrated by an unnamed narrator. Now I am never sure as it is one guy or a collection of guys all Russian that all have a strong dislike of the home Prague. So the eleven short stories all tell various stories of deaths in and around Prague and how are the narrator was connected to them. From the death of a restaurant critic to the death of a teacher our narrator at times is an obituary writer and seems to be there or hear about these events shortly after they happen from people involved in a High school massacre in the US turning up in Prague. He hates the city and sees it as too Kafkaesque at times the shadow of Kafka hanging over his world as the deaths keep plying up. But Like Holmes he has logic on his side and clearly cuts through each death.

The next day I rang the Private British school to nail down some of the details of the late Mr. Lengthy’s life. Of course, of course, Mr  Taborsky. Such a sad loss for us. Yes, yes, we’ve sent everything you’ll need for the opbituary. Nothing to add. A detail? A striking detail? Hmmm you might be interested – the russian students of our school called him”London Dandy”. Yes yes, in russian “dan-dee Long-dong-ski” You unerstand russian ? oh excellent . Mr Lenghty wasn’t a fop, no, don’t imagine that please, nuthe did dressin an impecable was, and he took special care of his hands. A little old fashion isn’t it?

I was remind of a watson description in a Holmes cases here of small characteristics of people.

This is an interesting take on the detective short that has lots of Nods to classic writers like Doyle and Christie, in particular, there is a sense of this in the use of a British restaurant critic and English master in two of the stories. There is also a sort of Russian distaste of Prague underlying the stories as well the feel of him not fitting into the city now. The sense of Kafka looming over the city. Prague itself is a character in this book rather like the London of Doyles Holmes of the Devon setting of Christie’s books. The Borges claim holds up as the books have that sense of twist styles and shift settings and using plots from other writers in new ways that Borges did so well in his own stories. The narrator has a pinch of Holmes, Poirot and for me a nod to those hard-boiled crime detectives of classic American Noir. There is a clear logical min there like Holmes a man out of place like Poirot the Belgian in England. But also a world-weariness of the classic American detective those that hate there beat at times that are drawn to the dark side of the city.

The Beauties essential stories by Anton Chekhov

~ winstonsdad ~ 4 Comments

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Beauties essential stories by Anton Chekhov

Russian fiction

Translator- Nicolas Pasternak Slater

Source – review copy

I have read Chekhov before and my good friend Rob of rob around books has read and reviewed a lot of his stories.Chekhov is considered one of the first modern writers alongside Ibsen and Strindberg, he was a doctor by trade and wrote in his spare time in his short life of just 44 years he produced a number of works both short stories and Plays. He started writing to pay for his tuition. This is a new translation of thirteen of his stories by the nephew of the great Russian writer Boris Pasternak.

It was a moth-like beauty – the beauty that goes so well with a waltz, or darting accross a garden, or with laughter and merriment , and which has no buisness with serious thoughts, sorrow or repose.It seemed as if a good gust of wind blowing along the platform, or a sudden shower, would be enough to make that fragile body suddenly wilt, scattering its caoricious beauty like pollen from a flower.

“Ye-es…” sighed the officer. when the second bell sounded and we walked back to our carriage

One night on a platform a glimpse of a beauty on the platform.

There is a thirteen stories in this collection I will just describe a few of them here. The first the title story is a tale of beauty. It follows a man who is stopped for a few minutes at a station one night ,  when he glimpses a great Armenian beauty, which he had met many years earlier when they visit the girl’s grandfather. A day in the country follows a day in the life of a man Terenty , he is found by a little girl and he spends time with her and her brother both orphans we follow them through the day. Grief deals with a couple a drunk husband a loss of a son, a failing marriage  a wife who may actually also be dead. The husband laments how much his wife changed from the merry lass he married. The huntsman like the previous story I mention also deals with a couple this time a hunter Yegor now working for local landowner as a huntsman for him. They  meet one day on a country path his wife whom he hasn’t seemed for many years. She tries to persuade him to spend more time with her, but he has other ideas.

“It’s a long time since I saw you last, Yegor Vlasych..”says Pelageya, gazing tenderly at the huntsman’s shoulders as he moves.”Ever since Holy week, when you looked into our hut fr a minute and had a drink of water- we haven’t seen you since then.. Dropped in for a minute in Holy week, and God knows whay state you were in then.. drink and all … swore at me,beat me up, and walked out.. and I’ve been waiting and waiting.. worn my eyes out with watching for you … Oh, Yegor Vlasych, Yegor Vlasych! If only you’d come by some time

Husband and wife meet , a sad wife wants he even thou he beat her last time a sign of the times the bopok was written !!

I think most readers of this blog will know Chekhov.If not this new Pushkin collection edition would be a perfect place to start, I would think. I have read other translations of these stories, I like Pasternaks Slater use of words and he has done a great job keeping the wry humour of Chekhov also his sense of human nature. The collection has a good selection of his stories through out his career. I was touched by the beauties a story which is a bit like a story version of the you’re beautiful by James Blunt a glimpse of a beauty on a train platform echos with a memory of meeting another beauty years earlier. I also remembered the lines of Jack Palance in City slickers talking about his one love a woman he glimpse for a matter of moments earlier in his life has imprinted on his memory like the young man on the train in the beauties. A nice collection for any fan of Russian lit.

Moscow in the 1930’s by Natalia Gromova

~ winstonsdad ~ 4 Comments

Moscow in the 1930’s by Natalia Gromova

Russian fiction

original title – Последняя Москва.

Translator – Christopher Culver

Source – review copy

Well its a second visit to the Russia this woman in translation month , This time we have a historic novel about writers. Natalia Gromova is from a russian military family , she has lived in Moscow since an early agee and got a job at 16 working in the state historical library whilst finishing her studies , she has work for the Soviet encyclopedia in the past but since the mid 90s has been writing books that she use the historic archives to put together historic novels from original diaries , letters and articles of the time .

Alexander Fyodorovich served Russian literature like a priest: literature had completely replaced religion for his generation. But neither literature nor culture , as it became clear later, could save them from the chaos of revolution and then all ugly realities of Soviet life. many of these high-born gymnasium teachers and university professors looked at the complex issues of society and politics with disgust, and the consequences of this naturally fell on the heads of their children, who swept into the maelstrom of history.

I loved this passage about how literature took over religion in some in the 30’s

Moscow in the 1930’s is set during those pre war years of Stalin rule , we are drawn into a world of house and place that arent there anymore .This stitches together the diaries of writers like Olga Bessarabova, Vavara Grigiryena  are the two main sources for this work  well-known and now even forgotten to paint a picture of a world of writing at the time the friendships . People like Maria Belkina a well-known writer in her time but now forgotten to us in english. I loved the way Natalia brought us behind the doors of these writers as they discuss the works of the day and the writers Bulgakov who at the time was working on his own masterpiece that was set also in Moscow the Master and the Margarita during the 30’s .Daniil andreyev is another character who is in the story he was even in the book arrested by Stalin it turns out a lot of his great works were destroyed by The state secret police .

The more I read , the more colourful a picture I got of an old Moscow home . There were more than enough of these in the past. TO a degree, these Moscow homes were literary figures in themselves: fro the Rostovs happy home on Provarskaya street in War and Peace to the home of Gromeko family on the Arbat in Doctor Zhivago. Here the doors were always wide open, the house would teem with guests, a number of relatives would be resident, and holidays would be regularly celebrated, with Christmas festivities for children and adults

In her diary, Olga Bessarabova described the Dobrov home in the same way

An open door for the writer of the day to spend time with Olga and her family .

This is one of those books you need a notebook next to you as you read to note the names of the writers mention and their works . I did this and then looked to see what is available not much but I still have some to check out further Andreyev for example his later book roza mir , rose of the world came out in the late 90’s. Natalia Gromova brings a long gone Moscow to life , this is one of a number of books she has written using the same technique of real diaries and setting as a frame for her novels .I found this compelling if a slow read so much to absorb makes it a book that I will be rereading and discovering again.