"Animals and plants fight for existence, but people fight for supremacy." (83)
Vasily Grossman joined the Russian front as a reporter for the Soviet da
"Animals and plants fight for existence, but people fight for supremacy." (83)
Vasily Grossman joined the Russian front as a reporter for the Soviet daily newspaper Red Star after the Germans invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June, 1941. While he was there, he didn't shy away from the action of the war—he spoke to soldiers and generals alike, gathering perspectives and learning about what war means for all of those who were involved. He later received some time off from reporting to write a novel about the war—The People Immortal—which was serialized in Red Star in July and August. The novel was well-received. It was, of course, a propaganda piece—meant to motivate and inspire the Russian soldiers. In that sense, it doesn't reach the artistic heights of a work like Life and Fate. It couldn't, given the circumstances in which it was written. But Grossman is too much of a writer and artist for the novel not to become something more than what is what intended to be—or rather, what it was allowed to be. There are glimpses of Grossman's vision and humanity in The People Immortal, as well as some genuinely compelling writing.
The following line from the novel is ironic, given the deep tension at the time between honest reporting and faithfulness to artistic vision on the one hand and meeting the strict requirements of Soviet censors on the other hand, which Grossman must have realized:
"In those difficult days, people wanted only the truth, however difficult and cheerless it might be." (193)
Grossman did as much as he could to report and tell not just the Soviet truth, but also his—and dare I say the—truth.
This edition includes very helpful notes to the text, many of which mark sentences that were either removed by editors/censors or by Grossman himself (probably in anticipation of censors), as well as additional resources that explain and expand on the novel and its historical significance....more
This is a succinct, measured, and well-researched biography of Mikhail Bulgakov that follows his life and works in chronological order. It includes plThis is a succinct, measured, and well-researched biography of Mikhail Bulgakov that follows his life and works in chronological order. It includes plenty of pictures, which adds a nice touch. Given that there are still so few biographies of Bulgakov (at least in English), this is probably the one to read—or at least to start with—for the time being, even if the picture that J. A. E. Curtis sketches is incomplete. To be fair, this is inevitable, given that much more than 200 pages are needed to come anywhere close to describing this man's life and the tempestuous times in which he lived. The chapters (preceded and succeeded, respectively, by a prologue and epilogue) are as follows:
1. Medicine and literature, 1891-1921 2. Moscow, 1921-6 3. Four Plays, 1926-9 4. The Years of Catastrophe, 1929-36 5. The Master and Margarita, 1936-40
I like the close attention to his plays, which have generally received less discussion than his novels. The commentary on Bulgakov's relationship with Stalin was also interesting. Hopefully, a proper 600-plus-page biography of M. A. is on the horizon—much more remains to be said....more
"The quality that we call beauty, however, must always grow from the realities of life, and our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms, presently cam
"The quality that we call beauty, however, must always grow from the realities of life, and our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms, presently came to discover beauty in shadows, ultimately to guide shadows towards beauty's ends." (29)
I'm going through a bit of a Tanizaki phase—having just read The Makioka Sisters, I felt like reading In Praise of Shadows, and picked it up (rather appropriately) late last night. Interestingly, Shadows seems to be Tanizaki's most popular work, at least on here; I see that it has over twice as many ratings on Goodreads than The Makioka Sisters. For either work, the absolute numbers are still painfully too small—but I find it curious that the essay should be more widely read than his magnum opus (which stands alone on a delicate, elevated platform—or should I say a barely-candle-lit room?). I suppose that's how it goes. The essay is not an essay in the traditional Western sense; it doesn't have a strict logical structure, and reads more like a collection of loosely related thoughts on a single theme: the importance of shadows and darkness for Japan, the Japanese, and Japanese aesthetics. It is at times playful and humorous, and at other times more serious to the point of becoming a lament for modernity (with Tanizaki gracefully taking up the position of an aging man reflecting on bygone times). There are some beautiful, quotable passages; and while the essay has merit in and of itself, it also reveals some of Tanizaki's literary aesthetics, which helps shed light (sorry) on his fiction.
"I have written all this because I have thought that there might still be somewhere, possibly in literature or the arts, where something could be saved. I would call back at least for literature this world of shadows we are losing. In the mansion called literature I would have the eaves deep and the walls dark, I would push back into the shadows the things that come forward too clearly, I would strip away the useless decoration." (63)
"We clutch at life with convulsive intensity—that's how we get caught. We want to go on living at any, any price. We accept all the degrading condi
"We clutch at life with convulsive intensity—that's how we get caught. We want to go on living at any, any price. We accept all the degrading conditions, and this way we save—not ourselves—we save the persecutor. But he who doesn't value his life is unconquerable, untouchable. There are such people! And if you become one of them, then it's not you but your persecutor who'll tremble!"
"To be 100% serious about nothing, about absence, about the void which is fullness, is the destiny and task of the poet. The poet is someone who feast
"To be 100% serious about nothing, about absence, about the void which is fullness, is the destiny and task of the poet. The poet is someone who feasts at the same table as other people. But at a certain point he feels a lack. He is provoked by a perception of absence within what others regard as a full and satisfactory present. His response to this discrepancy is an act of poetic creation…" (108)
In Economy of the Unlost, Anne Carson has Paul Celan meet Simonides of Keos through, somewhat awkwardly, Karl Marx. The question that ties the book together is: What exactly is lost to us when words are wasted? If the question is vague (though interesting!), the answers that Carson gives are vaguer. The book is uncharacteristically lax. The discussion often feels dawdling and arbitrary—like when Carson discusses gift exchange and money as the two systems of valuation in between which Simonides of Keos was caught, but inexplicably ignores the extant barter system. The analysis of some of the poems—especially Celan's—struck me as far-fetched. While I had high expectations for Economy of the Unlost, it is the weakest work by Carson that I have read so far. It is well-written—Carson never disappoints there—and some parts of it are definitely interesting—mostly the sections about Simonides—but that is not quite enough to carry the book. ...more
"Jakob fell silent once more. Nervously he closed his eyes. Then he said: "Why this?" "What?" the doctor asked. "All of this," he said. "All this busines
"Jakob fell silent once more. Nervously he closed his eyes. Then he said: "Why this?" "What?" the doctor asked. "All of this," he said. "All this business." (127)
Psalm 44 is based on a newspaper article that Kiš found, which described a Jewish family's pilgrimage to Auschwitz, where their child was—almost miraculously—born; it is also inspired by the memory of his Jewish father, who disappeared in the very same camp.
The story is lyrically told and often switches between the present and the past by means of flashbacks, in an attempt to capture and reconstruct what must have been the inmates' utter confusion. The minutiae of camp life and commitment to historical veracity that you might find in other works of Holocaust literature are not Kiš's primary focus; instead, he often favors emotional, psychological, and symbolic description. Several incidents portraying the brutality of the Nazis and Nazi sympathizers are hard to read and forget.
Reflecting back on the novel that he wrote when he was twenty-five years old, Kiš found Psalm 44 to be too 'heavy-handed,' making its points too directly and without enough 'ironic detachment'. I think that these (self-)criticisms are fair; the portrayal of Josef Mengele as Dr. Nietzsche, for example, comes across as somewhat grating and gratuitous. Nevertheless, for all of its perhaps youthful flaws, Psalm 44 offers an artistic window into a period of history—into a collection of experiences—which we still haven't fully understood (and perhaps never will)....more
I had read The White Guard, Flight, and Molière, but not yet the other plays included in this volume. Madame Zoyka is about a woman who turns her aparI had read The White Guard, Flight, and Molière, but not yet the other plays included in this volume. Madame Zoyka is about a woman who turns her apartment—which is considered too large for her by state regulations—into a dress shop; which, in fact, doubles as a front for prostitution by which she hopes to make enough money to escape Moscow. Adam and Eve, in the spirit of The Fatal Eggs, is about a world war in which poisonous gas is dropped from the sky to obliterate people. A 'mad' scientist has invented an antidote to the gas, which he proposes to share not just with citizens of the Soviet Union, but with the entire world (madness indeed! who would save their enemies?). The theme of simultaneous reward and punishment, which some have argued was taken from Xerxes (http://slovene.ru/ojs/index.php/slove...), is fascinating. The Last Days is about Pushkin's death in a duel and the fateful events that preceded it.
Bulgakov never had the chance to see the success of his plays; nor, for that matter, to witness any of his fiction being appreciated. What makes this especially sad is that he was not just so brilliant, but also so deserving. There are few writers that I know who were as brave as Bulgakov. No matter how many times he lost against the censors, he kept trying, believing completely in Art—his art. A line from Adam and Eve gets right at the core: "Look, everyone—look at Ponchik-Nepobeda, who once had real talent but destroyed it, and himself, by writing just the sort of trashy, arse-licking novel that the Soviet cultural policemen wanted him to write!"
I like to think of the epigraph to The Last Days, which is taken from Eugene Onegin, as applying to Bulgakov himself:
"And kept safe by fate Perhaps these lines of mine Will not in Lethe sink…"
He let nothing destroy his talent—to posterity's benefit. Now let us all keep Bulgakov afloat....more
"“Life is beautiful, he thought, it was beautiful. Twelve hours before my death I have to find out that life is beautiful, and it's too late. I've bee
"“Life is beautiful, he thought, it was beautiful. Twelve hours before my death I have to find out that life is beautiful, and it's too late. I've been ungrateful, I've denied the existence of human happiness. And life was beautiful. He turned red with humiliation, red with fear, red with remorse. I really did deny the existence of human happiness, and life was beautiful. I've had an unhappy life … a wasted life as they say, I've suffered every instant from this ghastly uniform, and they've nattered my ears off, and they made me shed blood on their battlefields, real blood it was, three times I was wounded on the field of so-called honor, outside Amiens, and down at Tiraspol, and then in Nikopol, and I've seen nothing but dirt and blood and shit and smelled nothing but filth … and misery … heard nothing but obscenities, and for a mere tenth of a second I was allowed to know true human love, the love of man and woman, which surely must be beautiful, for a mere tenth of a second, and twelve hours or eleven hours before my death I have to find out that life was beautiful." (65)
Heinrich Böll's first novel, The Train Was on Time (1943), was my first encounter with his writing. It's a striking novel that made a big impression—I'll surely be collecting the rest of his work. ...more
I finally decided to read the unabridged version of Joseph Frank's monumental biography of Dostoevsky. The first volume (of five)—The Seeds of Revolt,I finally decided to read the unabridged version of Joseph Frank's monumental biography of Dostoevsky. The first volume (of five)—The Seeds of Revolt, 1821-1849—covers Dostoevsky's life from birth to the time of his arrest due to his association with the Petrashevsky Circle.
When you embark on the unabridged work, you expect minutiae—but even when Frank lingers, as he does in describing the various characters involved with Petrashevsky, he never makes you lose interest. And Frank the literary critic—coinhabiting the pages with Frank the biographer—is what ultimately elevates the biography to higher art. What I love especially about Frank's approach—here as elsewhere—is how measured he is without shying away from occasionally offering a strong opinion of his own. The following is just a short example:
"To attain a proper perspective on Dostoevsky's minor fiction in the 1840s after Poor Folk is by no means an easy task. It is impossible, of course, to agree with the almost totally negative evaluation of his contemporaries, especially since we can discern, with the benefit of hindsight, so many hints of the later (and much greater) Dostoevsky already visible in these early creations. On the other hand, in rejecting what seems to us the distressing myopia of his own time, we should not fall into the equally flagrant and perhaps less excusable error. We should not blur the line between potentiality and actuality, and read his work as if it already contained all the complexity and profundity of the major masterpieces. Some of the more recent criticism, especially outside of Russia, has fallen into this trap; and these slight early works—The Double is a good case in point—have sometimes been loaded with a burden of significance that they are much too fragile to bear." (295)
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