Moscow Trip Report 1: Award News, Head Cold Edition

My recent week in Moscow was so filled with literary events that I’m going to split my trip report into two posts. Beyond all the material, I brought home a head cold along with a gigundo pile of books, so a slightly embellished list is about all I can handle today.

First off, Read Russia Award winners for what I think of as the global prize, for translation into all languages:

Marta Sánchez-Nieves won the nineteenth-century category for her Spanish-language translation of Lev Tolstoy’s Cевастопольские Рассказы (Sevastopol Stories), published by Alba. Anne Coldefy-Faucard won the twentieth-century award for her decades of work, in collaboration with Geneviève Johannet, on the French translation of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Красное колесо (The Red Wheel) for Fayard. Oliver Ready won the contemporary prize for his English translation of Vladimir Sharov’s Репетиции (The Rehearsals) for Dedalus Books. Finally, Kiril Kadiiski took the poetry nomination for his translation into Bulgarian of a collection of poems by Fyodor Tyutchev for Nov Zlatorog. Hearty congratulations to all!

A few award notes… The only other English-language finalist for awards this year was Boris Dralyuk’s translation of Isaac Babel’s Odessa Stories for Pushkin Press. Anne Coldefy-Faucard was also shortlisted in the contemporary literature category for her translation of Vladimir Sorokin’s Telluria. Another translation of Vladimir Sharov’s work was shortlisted: Ljubinka Milincic was recognized for her Serbian translation of Возвращение в Египет (Return to Egypt). The success of translations of Sharov’s work felt horribly bittersweet given his recent death. I felt his passing constantly: in Oliver’s acceptance speech, in discussions with friends who said many couldn’t fathom it (I fit that category), and in the portrait hanging at a bookstore. Most of all, though, I missed seeing him, if only for a brief chat.

On a more cheerful note, it was fun going to the announcement of this year’s Yasnaya Polyana Award finalists. Perhaps most interesting is that there are only three finalists from a long list (it did look pretty weak) of forty-three:

• Aleksandr Bushkovsky for his Праздник лишних орлов (The Festival of Superfluous Eagles is how Yasnaya Polyana translated the title and, well, I’m just going to roll with that given that I haven’t read the book), a collection of stories about friends who fought together in Chechnya but can’t figure out what to do with themselves upon returning home. I’ve seen the Russian word for “eagles” used for distinguished soldiers and since these guys feel lost, “superfluous” feels like it refers back to the superfluous man. 
• Olga Slavnikova for her Прыжок в длину (Long Jump), a book I find rather heavy with metaphors. Even so, I can understand Vladislav Otroshenko’s enthusiasm for the book given its real plot (the novel does just keep plugging along) and view of the world. I’ve read more than half and plan to finish it for my Big Book reading. Long Jump won the Book of the Year award while I was in Moscow, too.
• Maria Stepanova for Памяти памяти (I’ll go for In Memory of Memory since I haven’t read it yet), which is on the way in English, too. Like the Slavnikova book, In Memory of Memory is also a Big Book finalist.

For a bit of commentary on the list, visit the Yasnaya Polyana site, here.

And then there’s this, just for fun: a list of hundred of the most important Russian books in the last thirty years. It’s fitting since the second book is Sharov’s The Rehearsals. There are some interesting entries!

Disclaimers: The usual. My head is addled.

Up Next: The rest of the trip report, English-language reading roundup, and Big Book finalists.

BookExpo America 2011: Odds & Ends on Russian Books & Programs

I always seem to enjoy BookExpo America, but this year’s BEA was particularly fun thanks to increased interest in Russian literature: Russia will be the Global Market Forum country in 2012. A brief summary of a press conference about Global Market Forum, posted by BEA director Steve Rosato, mentions plans to bring more than 40 Russian writers to New York. Needless to say, I can’t wait!

This year’s BEA program included two Russian programs that covered, among other things, a bilingual reading from 2017 with Olga Slavnikova and Marian Schwartz, who translated the book for Overlook, plus an introduction to four writers – Irina Bogatyreva, Polina Kliukina, Pavel Kostin, and Andrei Kuzechkin – who were Debut Prize winners or nominees. Kostin and Kuzechkin’s Rooftop Anesthesia and Mendeleev Rock, respectively, were published, in Andrew Bromfield’s translation, by Glas in 2011, and three of Kliukina’s stories, in Anne O. Fisher’s translation, are in the Squaring the Circle anthology, also from Glas.

2011 releases of newly translated Russian books from American publishers include, listed by publication date:

Twelve Who Don’t Agree, by Valery Panyushkin, translated by Marian Schwartz, due out July 16, from Europa Editions. For a taste of Panyushkin, try the recent New York Times piece “Was It Something I Wrote?” I’m looking forward to reading Twelve.

Apricot Jam, a story collection by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by ? (I’ll see if I can get the name and add it), due out in September, from Counterpoint. (PDF catalogue) Since Counterpoint’s description refers to the eight stories, written in the 1990s, as “paired,” I’m figuring they’ve preserved (no pun intended) the Apricot Jam story cycle presented in this Azbuka-klassika Russian edition and a book on my shelf.

Thirst, a novel by Andrei Gelasimov, translated by Marian Schwartz, due out November 22, , from Amazon Crossing. I read and enjoyed Thirst years ago, before I started blogging, and was interested to see that Amazon Crossing will be publishing several other Gelasimov books.

The Letter Killers Club, by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, translated by Joanne Turnbull, due out December 6, from New York Review Books. This is a great incentive for me to finally read some Krzhizhanovsky. NYRB also has more Vasily Grossman and Andrey Platonov on the way, in the more distant future.

I’ll be writing more about these books later this year. [Edit: A previous post covers other translation releases for 2011.]

One other note: I finished out my four days in New York with an unexpected visit to the Chelsea Art Museum for a fantastic exhibit: Concerning the Spiritual Tradition in Russian Art: Selections from the Kolodzei Art Foundation. I spent several hours at the museum with Tatiana and Natalia Kolodzei, who gave me a personal tour of the exhibit. If you’re in the New York area, I highly recommend a visit. The exhibit closes June 11; Natalia will offer a gallery talk on June 11 at 4 p.m.

That’s it for today. I’ll be back tomorrow with a brief post on the winner of the NatsBest.

Up Next: The 2011 NatsBest winner, then Vsevolod Benigsen’s ГенАцид (GenAcide). I’m looking forward to getting back to my usual reading pace after a spring of colds and wonderful but exhausting travel.

Disclaimers: The usual. I’ve discussed translated fiction with all the publishers named in this post.

Favorite Russian Writers A to Я: Erofeev and Esenin

I’ve been struggling over the small pool of letter “E” writers for a some time, hoping more contenders for favorites would emerge from some foggy compartment of my reading memory. Увы, alas, nothing, though there are some worthy writers:

Though Venedikt Erofeev may not be as big a favorite as some of my picks for previous letters, his Москва-Петушки (Moskva-Petushki or Moscow to the End of the Line) is a Soviet-era underground classic that has cult followings in and outside Russia. I wrote a bit about this short novel in a past post. What can I say? It’s a book about life and drinking (or drinking and life?), and its motifs live on. I felt them particularly strongly when I read Vladimir Makanin’s Андеграунд, или герой нашего времени (Underground or A Hero of Our Time) (previous post), plus several theaters have adapted the novella for stage.

On the lyrical side, I’ve always had a fascination with Sergei Esenin’s poetry. I guess I probably identify with his combination of rural and urban themes. And his physical and emotional wanderings. Esenin died in 1925 but he retains a place in Russian cultural life: Russian TV ran a miniseries about him in 2005, singer Aleksandr Novikov has made several albums of songs based on his poetry, and there is a Esenin Café in Moscow. Then there is this: last month’s online auction of items related to Esenin’s last days. The lot contained the rope with which he hanged himself, a lock of hair that his mother cut off his body, and a portrait of Esenin in his coffin. The items evidently sold for a little over two million rubles, but part of me wishes this story were not true because if feels so ghoulish.

The E-List for Future Reading: I’ve long felt a little guilty for not reading Venedikt Erofeev’s play Вальпургиева ночь (Walpurgis Night). Then there is Viktor Erofeev’s Русская красавица (Russian Beauty), which has also stood unread on my shelf since the early ‘90s. I just never seem to get to it. I’m sure I’ll read more from Mikhail Elizarov after enjoying his Библиотекарь (The Librarian) (previous post) this past summer -- several story collections are available but I’m hoping for another novel.

Please let me know who I’ve have missed!

News Roundup: Survey Says, Awards, and Gulag

1. Survey Says: Master and Margarita! Please don’t ask me about survey methodology… but OpenSpace.ru reported earlier this week that the research center of the SuperJobs.ru portal polled 3,000 Russians and found that their favorite book was Mikhail Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita. Sixteen percent voted for M&M. Respondents were allowed to name several books.

Runner up was Lev Tolstoy’s War and Peace (see sidebar for previous posts on W&P) with 7 percent, followed by Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, at 3 percent. Others on the list, with 1 percent: Dostoevsky’s Idiot and Brothers Karamazov, Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Ilf and Petrov’s The Twelve Chairs, Aleksandr Pushkin’s Evgenii Onegin, Mikhail Sholokhov’s Quiet Flows the Don, Aleksandr Griboedov’s To Woe from Wit, and Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls.

Foreign books were also eligible. The one-percenters: Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, Alexandre Dumas’s Count of Monte Cristo and Three Musketeers, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, and Erich Maria Remarque’s Three Comrades.

2. Yasnaya Polyana Award Finalists. The three finalists for the Yasnaya Polyana literary prize are: Vasilii Golovanov for Остров (The Island), Igor’ Malyshev for Dom (The House), and Roman Senchin for Елтышевы (The Yeltyshevs) (book in Russian: beginning end). OpenSpace.ru writes that one of the prize’s jury members, Lev Anninskii, says the finalists were chosen because their books give Russian readers hope that the country will come out of its moral crisis.

The only writer of the three that I’ve read is Senchin: His Нубук (Nubuck) is about, yes, selling shoes in the 1990s. His Минус (Minus) has been translated into English, by Arch Tait. The publisher, Glas, has information and a link to an excerpt here.

The Rasskazy anthology I keep writing about contains a Senchin story, too, “Тоже история” (“History”), translated by Victoria Mesopir. The story has a documentary feel, first introducing a 62-year-old historian studying 1930s Germany, then placing him in the middle of contemporary Russian history, when he happens upon an opposition demonstration. Though the historical parallels felt a little too obvious for me and I’m not a big fan of meeting contemporary public figures in fiction, something about Senchin’s portrayal of the historian, a well-read man who is ignorant of his own country’s present, felt familiar and true.

3. Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag in Schools. The New York Times, among others, reported that excerpts of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Архипелаг ГУЛАГ (The Gulag Archipelago) have become part of the Russian school program. (Times story, from the Associated Press, here.) OpenSpace notes (here) that the program for schoolchildren already included Solzhenitsyn’s “Матренин двор” (“Matryona’s Home”) and Один день Ивана Денисовича (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich) (previous post on Ivan Denisovich).

Photo: “A sculpture of the cat Behemoth from the novel The Master and Margarita, on a wall in Andriyivskyy Descent, Kyiv,” 2005, from Wikipedia Commons, user Boulgakov.

The 2008 Big Book Winner...

Vladimir Makanin won the 2008 Big Book (Большая книга award today for Асан (Asan), a novel about the Chechen war. I’d been eying Asan on my favorite Russian book site so just ordered it up. I’ve enjoyed Makanin’s writing since the first sentence I read, in which a giant hand swoops down to catch, if only temporarily, a man as he walks down the street.

Second prize went to Liudmila Saraskina for her biography Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and third prize was awarded to Rustam Rakhmatullin for Две Москвы, или Метафизика столицы (Two Moscows or the Metaphysics of the Capital)

A posthumous jury prize went to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Rakhmatullin and Saraskina also won readers’ choice awards, along with Vladimir Kostin, for his collection Годовые кольца (Growth Rings).

I included summaries of Big Book finalists in this previous entry.

Good night!

Further information in Russian:

“Триумвират достойных” – about the winners, particularly Makanin.

“Книжное казино” – Echo of Moscow Russian radio show from November 23, 2008, with Big Book finalists Pavel Basinskii and Margarita Khemlin.

Back to (Modern) Classics: Solzhenitsyn's "One Day"

The Writer: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Alexander Solzhenitsyn)

Work and Date: Один день Ивана Денисовича (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich) (1959). The book’s Russian title would be translated literally as One Day of Ivan Denisovich.

Why it’s important: The literary journal Новый мир (Novyi mir or New World) published One Day in 1962, during the Khrushchev-era thaw, providing readers with a fictionalized account of one day in the bleak life of a political prisoner in a Soviet camp.

Online criticism, analysis, and background: Harrison Salisbury’s 1963 review from The New York Times. Sheila Fitzpatrick’s “Like a Thunderbolt” is a London Review of Books piece about Liudmila Saraskina’s Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; Fitzpatrick includes background on the publishing of One Day and the nonpublishing of other works. Michael Scammell’s “Solzhenitsyn the Stylist,” from the New York Times Book Review, is a brief but helpful piece.

IMHO: I first read One Day about 20 years ago, in English translation. Rereading it this fall in Russian was a completely different experience. I’d remembered simple language, but the original is a complicated blend that incorporates dialect and accents, curses, and camp slang.

Since I was already familiar with what happened during Ivan Denisovich Shukhov’s day and have read many other accounts of prison camps, what struck me most during my rereading was how Solzhenitsyn varied his language to create atmosphere. The central portion, for example, when Ivan Denisovich works as a member of a brigade, seems to contain many passages with choppy writing and lots of exclamation marks, highlighting the fast pace of lunch and work, both of which warm Ivan Denisovich.

Back in the barracks, when Shukhov returns from work, Solzhenitsyn’s language feels stylistically simpler, calmer. There is less dialect, sentences seem longer, and my impression is that exclamation marks become sparser. This was my favorite part of the book: the more relaxed style truly reflected the content, as the men waited in line for packages, went for their evening meal, submitted to two evening headcounts, and conversed.

Although I gained a new appreciation for how Solzhenitsyn wrote and structured One Day, I still can’t say it’s a personal favorite. It’s a very, very good book, and I have tremendous respect for Solzhenitsyn’s ability to describe so much, so humanly, so almost-perfectly, in so few words. I have occasionally heard Russians praise One Day but downplay its importance a bit because it shows a relatively easy day in a prison camp – solitary confinement cells, for example, are only mentioned, not observed. To my mind, Solzhenitsyn simply chose to focus on one side of camp life, writing a publishable book and showing, very successfully, how prisoners can maintain their dignity despite the system’s constant humiliations. 

I can’t honestly tell you why I’ve never felt enthusiastic about One Day. Perhaps it’s because I read and enjoyed Solzhenitsyn’s full-length novel, В круге первом (The First Circle), first. The First Circle and Раковый корпус (Cancer Ward) both have plenty of space for extended metaphors that specialized settings – a prison camp for scientists and a hospital, respectively – can spawn. Another thought: unless Dostoevsky is the author, I generally prefer long, messy novels to short, neat books or stories… though there are short stories, like Pushkin’s “Пиковая дама” (“The Queen of Spades”) or Gogol’s “Шинель” (“The Overcoat”), that I love every time.

I’ll leave you with two motifs from One Day that I particularly liked. Solzhenitsyn makes nice use of two recurring symbols in One Day: the sun and the moon, representing the passage of time. They also seem to refer to universality and separation since everyone, whether inside or outside the camp, sees the same sun and moon. Still, I think the saddest line in the book is when Ivan Denisovich wonders whether or not he wants to be free again.

Summary: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich focuses on a Soviet political prisoner’s workday, incorporating bits of material that tell of his life and family. The book is neatly structured and provides glimpses into the freedoms and limitations of a prison camp and Soviet life. It is an excellent introduction to fiction about Soviet prison and political “crimes,” and I particularly recommend it to readers who either don’t like long novels or have difficulty keeping track of Russian names.

Anna K. (Again) & Solzhenitsyn's Style

It’s a lazy, long weekend in this household, but here are quick links to a couple items in this week’s New York Times Book Review…

-Irina Reyn’s What Happened to Anna K., reviewed in the “Fiction Chronicle” column by Jeff Turrentine, sounds like an interesting cross-cultural novel about a Russian émigré, Anna, who regrets her decision to marry a wealthy Russian man.

-This week’s essay, “Solzhenitsyn the Stylist,” by Michael Scammell, examines Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s writing style. Scammell concludes: “In remembering Solzhenitsyn, I would hate to lose sight of the irreverent, even playful, outsider and versatile stylist who preceded the solemn historian and gloomy prophet.” Scammell includes mentions of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, “Zakhar-the-Pouch,” and The Gulag Archipelago.

Irina Reyn on Amazon
Alexander Solzhenitsyn on Amazon

News Roundup: Mandelshtam, Solzhenitsyn, and Rasputin

This week’s Russian news included several items involving writers:

A monument to poet Osip Mandel’shtam will be unveiled in Voronezh on October 2, 2008, opposite the house where Mandel’shtam lived during his 1934-1937 exile.

A fitting 1935 poem from Mandel'shtam's “Voronezh Notebooks”:

“Пусти меня, отдай меня, Воронеж:”

“O, let me go, Voronezh, O return me”

Two news stories mentioned posthumous honors for Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. “Большая книга” (“Big Book”) will make a special award to Solzhenitsyn for honor and merit (“честь и достойнство”). The award recognizes, among other qualities, the writer’s ability to remain true to himself and his beliefs. In other news, the Moscow street “Большая Коммунистическая” (“Big Communist Street”) will be renamed for Solzhenitsyn.

On to the slightly weird... When I first saw a headline saying that Valentin Rasputin was going to look at Lake Baikal from the “Mir,” I wondered if a journalist had forgotten that the Mir space station came down to earth in, ah, 2001. No! On Thursday, Rasputin took part in an underwater expedition in a deepwater vehicle that’s also called Mir, which means both “peace” and “world.” Rasputin is known for his activism for protecting Baikal as well as a nationalist bent, which some call “Siberian nationalism.”

One report says Rasputin spent three hours underwater, descending 800 meters. Rasputin told reporters that the underwater world includes beauty, order, friendliness, and a complete absence of aggression. “Yes, the lowest organisms dwell there, but they are somehow higher than us,” he said (my translation).

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“Почти счастливый” (“Almost Happy”) is how the Russian news site lenta.ru titled a commentary about the death of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The phrase “almost happy” turns up at the end of Один день Ивана Денисовича (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich):

“Прошёл день, ничем не омрачённый, почти счастливый.”

“The day had passed, undarkened by anything, almost happy.”

Reading Michael T. Kaufman’s lengthy and balanced New York Times obituary of Solzhenitsyn reminded me of episodes I’d forgotten from Solzhenitsyn’s life: the hermit-like Cavendish years, the train trip across Russia, the spousal drama. I’d forgotten his crankiness, probably because I’ve focused for years on what I admire most: Solzhenitsyn’s willingness to ignore consequences and speak out against the Soviet regime.

I also admire much of his fiction, particularly Раковый корпус (Cancer Ward), my favorite, thus far, of Solzhenitsyn’s works… though Ivan Denisovich has stood on my “To Read” shelf for months, awaiting a rereading. One book is compact, the other baggy, but both take place in enclosed places and address what it means to live and be human.

In death, Solzhenitsyn will rest at Donskoi Monastery in Moscow. Donskoi Monastery and its cemetery were always modest, not a destination of dozens of tour buses, like Novodevichii Monastery and its famous graveyard. I lived near Donskoi Monastery during my first year in Moscow, and sometimes went to sweep old leaves off the grave of Mikhail Kheraskov, an eighteenth-century writer I studied in grad school.

I always think of those days when I hear these lines from Aleksandr Gorodnitskii’s song “В Донском монастыре,” (“At the Donskoi Monastery”). Now when I hear them, my thoughts will broaden to remember Solzhenitsyn’s writings and imagine his grave, too, in a place I used to visit.

“Листопад в монастыре. (“The fall of leaves at the monastery.)
Вот и осень, - здравствуй. (Here’s autumn – Hello.)
Спит в Донском монастыре (Sleeps at Donskoi Monastery)
Русское дворянство.” (The Russian nobility.”)

Edit: Excerpts of original translations of Solzhenitsyn on Mikhailych’s Weblog