Anatoly Mariengof has been pretty much forgotten. To the extent he’s remembered at all, it’s as an imaginist poet and as a writer of memoirs, and then only because he was a close friend of Sergei Esenin, perhaps the most beloved poet of the early revolutionary years and an object of enduring fascination since his 1925 suicide. He gets wildly varying treatment in the standard English-language histories. Edward J. Brown’s excellent Russian Literature since the Revolution doesn’t mention him at all, A History of Russian Literature
Those of you who remember I was working my way through the books of 1978 may wonder what I was doing reading a book from half a century earlier. As I mentioned here, I was reading Valentin Kataev’s Алмазный мой венец [My diamond crown] a couple of weeks ago (I wound up being a bit unhappy with it, because he ends up slandering Isaak Babel, who was not only a greater writer but who was tortured and killed by the regime while Kataev was climbing the ladder of Soviet success to the point that in old age he was living the good life and visiting Italy and Paris), and a large part of it is about his close friendship with Yuri Olesha, with frequent mentions of Olesha’s 1928 Три толстяка [The Three Fat Men], and I thought “Hey, I have that book and have long meant to read it, why don’t I read it?” So I did (I wasn’t thrilled — it was way too cartoon-revolution-for-kiddies), and then I noticed that the Mariengof book was published the same year, and I thought “Hey, I have that book and have long meant to read it, why don’t I read it?” So I did.
A basic summary of what plot there is makes it sound like a Noel Coward play: A is in love with B who betrays him with C and then cheats on them both with D, and they all sit around having drinks with each other and exchanging witty remarks. But they’re Russian, in the violent and starving years after the October Revolution, and that changes everything. The first section, 1918, begins with bookish young Vladimir declaring his love for Olga (he brings her flowers, which she appreciates: “all the other men bring women flour and millet”) and crying for happiness after she marries him, and ends with her telling him she’s cheating on him with his Bolshevik brother Sergei and his deciding on suicide. The next, 1919, opens with the failure of the suicide (he climbs to the top of a building but can’t bring himself to end his life on the disgusting trash heap below); he takes a lover himself, and Sergei is sent off to command troops at the front. Eventually Olga gets a letter from him and exclaims “Это замечательно!” [That’s splendid/remarkable!]. It turns out Sergei (Vladimir’s brother) has shot Gogo (her brother, who had joined the Volunteer Army opposing the Reds). At the end of the chapter they go off to the station to greet the returning Sergei, who has been badly wounded.
Now we jump several years to 1922; NEP has begun (the return of capitalism, in limited but shocking doses, to the country exhausted and ruined by War Communism), and the repellent Dokuchaev appears. He makes money off everything: rice, millet, salt, sugar, gold, Kerensky banknotes, diamonds, dollars, Coty face powder, silk stockings, bras, Old Master paintings, miniatures, morphine, cocaine, and Jews (there’s an even longer list in the original). He is smitten with Olga, and she, though disgusted by him, agrees to become his mistress. He tells Vladimir proudly about his latest coup: he bought a load of paraffin and sold it to various Soviet institutions, making a profit each time. Vladimir can’t resist telling Sergei and Olga about it, and soon Dokuchaev is arrested — Sergei tells Vladimir “We were able to verify your information.” Vladimir is briefly upset (he didn’t think he had been making a denunciation, just telling an amusing story). Then comes the final chapter, 1924. Vladimir gets a letter from Dokuchaev, who’s managed to land on his feet (Olga refuses to read it because she doesn’t like letters with grammatical mistakes). Sergei is expelled from the Party, and Olga will no longer accept his visits or open his letters. Vladimir urges her to find some activity — become an actress, a mother, a debauchee, anything to distract her from her boredom and lethargy (she just lies around all day) — but she rejects all suggestions. I won’t spoil the ending, though it’s not a surprise when it comes, because it’s very effective.
The genius of the book is that all this is laid out not in sweeping Tolstoyan exposition or anguished Dostoevskian self-revelation but in short bursts of dialogue or event, interspersed with even briefer accounts of what’s going on in the country at large, usually snippets from newspapers about battles, decrees, or starvation. Mariengof may not have invented this “collage” method, but I can’t think of an earlier example — the first volume of Dos Passos’s U.S.A. trilogy didn’t appear until 1930. It works brilliantly: we get the contrast between the self-absorbed lives of the protagonists and the agony of their countrymen without having it spelled out, and we are at enough of a remove from the plot we can appreciate it without being immersed in it. If Mariengof had had his hero go on and on about how he loved Olga and how wonderful she was, we would resist and think “actually, she’s pretty awful”; as it is, we just accept the love (people love awful people all the time, after all) and follow the ensuing pattern of consequences. And the little stories (Mariengof said one of his main sources of inspiration was the anecdote) are wonderful; I’d translate the unforgettable scene (1922, section 26, starting “Холодное зимнее небо затоптано всякой дрянью”) in which Dokuchaev bullies a desperate coachman with a starving horse to take even less for a ride than he usually charges or his lively explanation of proper cockfighting technique (section 45, starting “У меня, Владимир Васильевич, дед был отчетливый старик”), but this post is already too long; I’ll just quote a seasoned criminal’s response to the question of how he ended up in jail: “Кажись, братишка, за то, что невеpно понял революцию.” (It seems, brother, it’s because I incorrectly understood the revolution.) It sums up 1920s Russia perfectly.
I have to say, Mariengof is very fond of obscure words; for example, the narrator describes a fancy coffeecup thus: “Я вижу блягиль, медянку, ярь и бокан винецейский.” (I see blyagil′ [pale yellow], medyanka [verdigris], yar′ [verdigris], and bokan vinetseiskii [crimson lake; it would normatively be spelled bakan venetseiskii].) I enjoy it when I can figure out what he means, but he’s stumped me with “…крепленного известью, крухой и мелью с хряцем.” If anyone can explain “кpухой и мелью с хpяцем” to me, I’ll be grateful.
And now on to Kaverin’s Скандалист [The troublemaker], a roman à clef featuring Viktor Nekrylov [=Shklovsky], also from 1928. But eventually I’ll make my way back to the 1970s!
Your description certainly made me want to know more about it. I found another blog (literalab, “Central European literary life”) who is just as enthusiastic about it as you, but describes it from an utterly different direction. I’d like to read this.
The Bell and Coleman translation is from 1930 (as “Marienhoff”). The 1973 is a reprint.
I don’t have anything useful to say, definitely don’t know what “кpух[а] и мель[] с хpяцем” means. Judging by similarities to the words I know, nothing good. I read Cynics about 3 decades ago and don’t remember a thing. Liked it, but not too much. Probably, was not “ready”.
Mariengof may not have invented this “collage” method, but I can’t think of an earlier example — the first volume of Dos Passos’s U.S.A. trilogy didn’t appear until 1930.
An earlier near-example might be the typographical humor of John Phoenix (pseudonym of George Horatio Derby, 1823-1861). You can see examples at
https://michaelkelly.artofeurope.com/phoenix.htm
and a Russian who gets theoretical about it is S. M. Eisenstein in “Dickens, Griffith, and the Film Today.”
@hat
вышками из бутового камня и киpпича полевых саpаев, кpепленного известью, кpухой и мелью с хpяцем.
towers made of foundation [or paving?] stones and bricks from farm outbuildings, “mortared” with lime [i.e., calcium carbonate], krukh, and flour with cartilage/gristle [khrjats = khrjashch].
AJP would have known the correct verb for “mortared” and what krukh might be.
This might be clearer with a longer excerpt, but from this alone and very little Russian, I’d say khrukh could be either the material used as aggregate (coarse sand?) or a type of fiber for reinforcement — often horse hairs, but also different types of plant fibers. “Flour with gristle” makes little sense on its own, though, so maybe кpухой и мелью с хpяцем should be read as a complementary phrase modifying известью, if the lime for the mortar was produced from animal carcasses.
Also, I want to make a pun on известью, but I’m not up to it.
I found another blog (literalab, “Central European literary life”) who is just as enthusiastic about it as you, but describes it from an utterly different direction.
Wow, thanks very much for that — it is indeed a different direction, and I got quite a lot from it (and it would have made me want to read the book if I hadn’t already read it). Also, it seems there’s a more recent (and probably better) English translation by Andrew Bromfield.
An earlier near-example might be the typographical humor of John Phoenix
It’s not an example at all, since it’s just random stuff stuck together, whereas what I’m talking about is specifically a novel where the plot is interspersed with bits of fact, κατ’ ἐξοχήν from newspapers. Solzhenitsyn used this technique to good effect in The Red Wheel, and I’m heartened to learn from that article that “A grant from an anonymous donor is enabling the epic cycle of novels to be published in English for the first time” — I hope people actually read it. It’s clunky and overstuffed but a fascinating look at the period.
For those who read Russian, there’s a good piece by Konstantin Speransky about Mariengof and his novel here (and for those who don’t, there are a bunch of great photos, including one at the top showing him in a Wildean pose — Oscar Wilde was a role model for the imaginists).
(Not from animal carcasses, but with animal bones thrown into the kiln. I don’t know if this is done.)
Not relevant to the translation itself, but I tried putting the text into Google Translate and discovered that you have Roman p in lieu of Cyrillic р.
So where the South Slavic kruh is bread, West Slavic kruch is a saltstone, and both come from words for chunks or fragments. I’ve got nothing for the rest.
Krukh sounds as a relative to (onomatopoetic) kroshit’/kroshka/krushit’.
Does not krukhoj imply nominative krukha?
For krukh Dahl also has круховая известь, which must be quicklime:
«Известь серая — самая нужнейшая вещь каменным строениям; оная ж бывает разная в доброте своей, ибо из разного камня выжигаема бывает и разными имянами называетца по урочищам тех мест, где оную промышленники жгут. Между всеми ж разными ее званиями именуютца две — распускпая и круховая [гашеная и негашеная]; распускная, которую промышленники при зжении на местах водою взмачивают, оттого оная распускаетца и называетца распускная; круховая та есть, которую водою при зжении на местах не взмачивают, а привозят в продажу, какова она созжена бывает, которая признаваетца по большой части за лутшую; токмо особливо доброта извести находитца по месту того натуралного камня, ис которого известь зжена бывает. Белая такожде выжигаетца. из особливого ж природою натуралного камня, почему оная белая и бывает; и как оная известь цветом своим с протчею известью разнство имеет, такожде и в качестве добротою своею, которая более употребляетца в штукаторную работу» (стр. 50).
При выборе извести для различных частей сооружения предписывается учитывать свойства известей тех или иных месторождений. При устройстве фундаментов «под ту [ревельскую и тосненскую] плиту и кирпичь должно известь употреблять уже сеяную, круховую, а паче которую привозят па барках, называемую свинорецкую; к тому ж и еще привозят известь круховую гостилицкую, а не так как сяскую распускную, которую не токмо в строение партикулярное, но и в фундамент употреблять сумнително, ибо во многой той сяской извести находитца песку, а уже при работе того и класть невозможно, или паче чаяния для зжения той извести кладут в печи негодную песчаную плиту» (стр. 71).
Does not krukhoj imply nominative krukha?
Yes, and thanks for that great Dahl find; that’s obviously what M had in mind, however he got his odd form.
I tried putting the text into Google Translate and discovered that you have Roman p in lieu of Cyrillic р.
If you’ll tell me where, I’ll fix it.
Bone is calcium phosphate (mostly), not calcium carbonate, so I doubt it would make sense.
Eggshell is calcium carbonate.
(I fixed the odd non-Cyrillic p’s.)
Dahl* has kruxovaja izvest’. I give a link to Vasmer, but the entry in Dahl’s dictionary is below.
The quotation above is from a treatise Очерки истории вяжущих веществ от древнейших времён до середины XIX века by Значко-Яворский И.Л. from 1963, quoting:
«Должность Архитектурной Экспедиции» (1737—1740 гг.) by Комиссия о Санкт-Петербургском строении.
The history of binders can be downloaded as DjVu in surprisingly good quality. The text is page 325.
—-
* transliterated as “Dal”, but should I write those Gramsci who taught some people around me to play the … — oh, is it “recorder”? Blockflöte? An unexpected name … — anyway, the flute, “Gramshi” and Antonio Gramsci as “Gramsci”?
The are well known musical family in Moscow.
That is, they are well known among people who play the Blockflöte/recorder or listen to music for it. But when I was a teenager these people included every second girl and some boys.
So Gramsci taught quite a few of sisters and freinds of my classmates.
those Gramsci who taught some people around me to play the…
…so it wasn’t just me. Antonio Gramsci (the one whose lifetime intersected with mine) taught me, as I used to say, flute and derivatives; I don’t seem to recall any of the flute lessons (any more), and I recall very little (if any) of the derivatives lessons, though admittedly I was about four or five years old at the time.
Back then, their family consisted of Antonio, his father Giuliano (now deceased, IIRC), Antonio’s wife (whose name I have apparently forgotten), and their little children Tarquinius and Galatea (whose names I found interestingly exotic). IIRC they’ve had a few more children since.
Come to think about it, by now Tarquinius and Galatea should be well into their twenties and might actually already have their own children (…not with each other, obviously).
David M.: Bone is calcium phosphate (mostly), not calcium carbonate, so I doubt it would make sense.
Yes, me too. And it’s a dead end anyway, since …
Drasvi: For krukh Dahl also has круховая известь, which must be quicklime:
Yes, but I suspect the non-compositional meaning here to be something like “granular lime”. Since quicklime has no use as a fastener*, I’d suggest it’s used by Mariengof with a more basic meaning “grainy”, describing poor or ageing and dried-out lime mortar. Could the meaning of the phrase be something like “rough and mealy with lumps”, with an intended association to cheap meat?
*) I meant to mention a couple of comments ago that “fastener” is the original meaning of ‘lime’.
It struck me that krux and rough might be cognates, but alas, no *h- reconstructed for the latter.
What does have an h-, though, is ON hrogn etc. “roe (of fish)”. I gather that it goes back to a Gmc.-BSl. *kr(V)k- with cognates all over Baltoslavia meaning “frog egg(s)” and a related Lithuanian verb meaning “become stiff or lumpy”. But I don’t know how to connect Ru. krukh. No further etymology, so maybe it’s from the Pitted Ware language.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/kruxъ
Yes, sorry. It’s *kr(V)k- that lacks further connections.
(according to Bjorvand & Lindeman)
Mariengof may not have invented this “collage” method, but I can’t think of an earlier example — the first volume of Dos Passos’s U.S.A. trilogy didn’t appear until 1930.
There were no newspapers in Sterne’s day, but his use of Burton and Swift and Francis Bacon in Tristram Shandy is very similar, I think. He did it so subtly however that nobody noticed for almost forty years, by which time Sterne had been thirty years dead.
But I first met the “collage method”, what McLuhan called the “[Harold] Innis mode”, in Stand On Zanzibar, and I bet you did as well. (Which reminds me: why do people call SoZ and The Shockwave Rider “dystopian”? They begin in storm and stress, but they end in hope. Who would call Kolyma Stories or A Journal of the Plague Year, or The Wizard of Oz dystopian?
He did it so subtly however that nobody noticed for almost forty years, by which time Sterne had been thirty years dead.
If you do it subtly, it’s not the same thing at all, because the whole point is the sharp contrast.
Obviously the most well-known of the imaginist poets must have been Nabokov, since he studied imagines when not writing poetry.
@drasvi, January First-of-May: I find it very peculiar that, for seemingly linguistic rather than musical reasons, transverse flutes and recorders are typically treated as if they were members of the same instrument family. Both are wind instruments, with holes mostly stopped directly by fingertips, but that is the extent of their actual similarity. The conflation seems to be entirely due to transverse “flutes” not having been given a different name from that used for older recorders, pan flutes, etc. It all leads to older pieces of music written for recorder often being performed (especially before the late twentieth century) with modern flutes, and inversely, flute music being played on the recorder. I have even encountered instances where people who ought to have known better assumed that professional-level competence on one instrument was equivalent to the other.
I actually have nothing against music being played on instruments it was not originally written for. I have heard some very interesting concerti with the solo instruments changed. (Obviously, a lot of music gets transferred to piano versions as well, since the piano is the most versatile acoustic instrument.) However, this is unfortunately often done not for any particular artistic reason, but because two different classes of instruments are both known as “flutes.”
@Trond Engen: I just remembered that “frogs eggs” was one of the two names (the other being “lord of the flies”) given to the mysterious substance that features in Lem’s His Master’s Voice. Having only read the novel in translation, I do not know what name Lem used for the stuff in Polish, but it would certainly fit if the original term for “frogs eggs” were a conventionalized phrase like “lord of the flies” is.
Brett, In this case, the translations from Polish are quite literal : “Władca much” and “jaja żabie”. In any case, both names are jokes – lord of the flies is named for its observed effect on insect behaviour, and not in reference to anything Satanic. Similarly, frog eggs is just a literal description of the substance (a lumpy jelly).
“Both are wind instruments, with holes mostly stopped directly by fingertips, but that is the extent of their actual similarity. “
I think they are still more similar than a recorder and pan flute. The principal difference is mostly in the mouthpiece.
I was really confused when I first heard about playing the recorder.
Norw. blokkfløyte is a transparent half-calque from German. I guess most of our pre-jazz musical terminology came that way.
The mouthpiece of a recorder vs. the head joint of a flute:
Similarity:
a) both are reedless.
b) edge-blown
Differences:
c) end-blown vs. side-blown.
d) the recorder has a duct.
(a) and (b) are, actually, very important. (c) and (d) are independent: you can be end-blown without a duct.
(c) affects how you hold it (and what you look like:)). It must affect the sound as well, but I do not know how. Also it must affect what body you can attach to it. (d) means important requerements for blowing skill when you play a concert flute. Meanwhile, everyone can learn to play something simple on a recorder within a few minutes. I assume, a concert flute also gives much more freedom.
The body: size and shape are similar and holes are placed along most of its length. But then there are variations and I am afraid, there are variations in both transverse flutes and end-blown ones.
@Trond Engen: The instrument name probably comes from an archaic sense of the verb record: “to learn by heart, to commit to memory, to go over in one’s mind; (also) to repeat or say over as a lesson or portion of memorized text, to recite” (per the OED). There are also several more derived verb senses of record that apply this specifically to birdsong (or human imitations of birdsong).
The OED entry for the musical instrument itself includes this note:
I had not seen the different British names for the recorder sizes. The ones used in American schools are essentially all soprano, although there are even smaller children’s recorders as well. As I child, I had both a soprano recorder and a smaller sopranino recorder, five half-steps (British semitones) higher
@Brett, I am also surprised that the word means both things. A foreign word entered Russian to mean the whole class of such instruments – and that it is when there is no shortage of native words. This is unsurprising, our native words are not really used today:) But then, I would expect a modern concert flute to have an unusual specialized name*, but this name is the same as the name for the class.
—
*The transverse flute arrived in Europe from Asia via the Byzantine Empire, where it migrated to Germany and France.
…..
Beginning in the 1470s, a military revival in Europe led to a revival in the flute.”
(WIkipedia)
And yes, in Russian: blokflejta, flejta and mundshtuk, “mouthpiese”.
I have even encountered instances where people who ought to have known better assumed that professional-level competence on one instrument was equivalent to the other.
A freind of mine is a domra player (not to be confused with dombra). When he was a student in a musical college he used to impress guitar students with his speed (on a guitar). Of course he was the first to tell that he is not a guitar player and can offer nothing but machine-gun speed, but the guys (and gals) were impressed anyway, of course.
I actually doubt that.
Are they now? Back in my day (some 25 to 30 years ago), most were made of wood.
Me neither.
And I didn’t know about sopranino recorders – unless they’re the same as piccolo recorders, but those are so small they should be higher still.
(Like… men physically able to play the piccolo recorder are mocked in America.)
transverse flutes
…huh. If I hadn’t looked them up I wouldn’t have guessed they were a thing.
As far as I’m concerned, a transverse flute looks like exactly what the name says – a flute (of the variety I’m used to, i.e. a recorder) turned 90 degrees. It’s apparently not quite that (what are those circular protrusions?), but it seems to work in a similar way (though obviously with completely different gestures).
…I grew up with a bunch of books that (among other things) described the fingering positions for a lot of different notes on several different varieties of (mostly recorder-type, I think) flute.
They all looked pretty complicated; IIRC there was a sequence of common notes that could basically be summarized as “close all the holes up to point X” for different values of X, but outside of that sequence the positions got weirder, with a few of the particularly exotic notes even requiring partially closed holes in a few places.
(I think at least one of the models involved had double holes in said few places, to simplify the partial closing… I said it was complicated.
It was also about twenty to twenty five years ago – i.e. ages 4 to 10 or thereabouts – and I honestly just don’t recall much actual detail.)
When I was a kid we were told that frog’s eggs (which we were hoping to find in the marshes) resembled tapioca pudding (which we were presumed to recognize).
It’s true. It’s all true.
I actually doubt that.
You can manipulate air flow. It is a degree of freedom.
On the other hand, a recorder means control over holes… I don’t know, if you can do that with a concert flute, produce semitones and microtones by closing a hole incompletely, and if it is practiced by professional recorder players. But you can do that.
@January First-of-May, by “transverse flute” (поперечная флейта?) I meant any flute that is turned 90 degrees, including concert flutes. And I just learned about:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fife_(instrument) (<Pfeife < [fifre? <] pipare says Wikipedia…)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_system_flute
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_flute
with a few of the particularly exotic notes even requiring partially closed holes in a few places.
Ah.
Well, I am not a musician. I was doing it constantly, with both recorders and tin whistles, but I thought it is a crude method:) And I am a crude guy. That domra-player mentioned above once made (here, in my house) a harp from a hockey stick (I do not play hockey) and a string for tennis racket (I do not play tennis). The (large) pegs were cut from the very same stick.
It sounded interesting.
When you suck the air in, your flute still produces musical noice (or else, whispers the very same tune). When I was too drunk to read anything (happened to me when I was a student), I used to do that in Moscow metro: play something, so that no one but me can hear it.
My childhood experience with piano was less pleasant. Always some little girl appears and says very seriously: “Stop raping the instrument!”*
—
*”violating” actually is a more accurate translation
For the soprano recorders I played (and most of the ones meant for kids in the 1980s were plastic, although cheap wood ones were also available), there were two kinds of partial hole coverings. For several of the finger holes on the upper surface (would that be “ventral”?) of the instrument, the holes were actually twofold—with a large and a small one side by side. For simple tones, you covered them both, but sometimes to get the correct pitch required just covering the smaller hole. However, the recorder, unlike most other wind instruments, also has a thumb hole on its lower surface,* and depending on how high a pitch you wanted, you might cover this hole entirely, halfway, or not at all. However, I never saw examples that split the thumb hole in two for ease of partial coverage.
As to the transverse flute: While, strictly speaking, the “transverse” part come from the fact that it is played with the barrel parallel to the ground, there is also another fashion in which the standard orchestral flute is importantly transverse. Unlike all other symphonic wind instruments, it is winded by blowing across the air intake, rather than into into it. That’s the same way that a jug player winds their instrument, but it is not used much otherwise.
* I assume that the thumb hole is common to all recorders, but I do not actually know for sure. Web sources agree that there is, as noted, one more size even smaller than the sopranino.** I have probably seen these played, but I have never handled one myself, so I cannot attest swear that it also has a thumb hole. However, all the lower-pitched versions definitely do.
** Apparently, sopranino can also be used to describe a smaller version of the clarinet*** (the standard clarinet being soprano), but I have never heard it that way (although I have only played one piece of music that actually called for a sopranino clarinet). It was just known as an “A♭ clarinet.” (If it was necessary to distinguish a standard clarinet, that was a “B♭ clarinet,” almost an octave lower.) Identifying instruments by a specific pitch is actually more useful than you might think, because music for these wind instruments is typically written in transposing notation. That means that a written C in a clarinet part will produce an actual (“concert”) pitch of B♭ or A♭, depending on the instrument. Not playing any family of woodwind instruments, I cannot comment on whether or not this is actually a useful notational convention; however, it can make it a challenge to figure out what a piece is supposed to sound by comparing the parts for different instruments.
*** The clarinets are the most important family of instruments that use finger holes—although even the highest-pitched examples use a mixture of finger holes and keys, and the bass clarinet (like most woodwinds) has keys only
It wasn’t calumny if Kataev saw Babel as a perpetrator-turned-victim. Kataev merely sold his pen to the Bolsheviks while Babel was a true believer in a “holy Revolution,” an enthusiastic supporter of revolutionary violence and even a minor accessory to it (in 1917-18, in the Polish war, and during the collectivization in the early 1930s).
“…the first volume of Dos Passos’s U.S.A. trilogy didn’t appear until 1930.” But Manhattan Transfer appeared as early as in 1925. In April 1927, D. H. Lawrence wrote of it:
Brodsky wasn’t the greatest expert on 20th century Russian prose but did a lot of reading up in his mature years. He must have delighted in discovering great half-forgotten novels, novellas and short-story collections from the same period as The Cynics. He claimed that Mariengof’s novel was the first instance of the “cinematic eye” (kinoglaz) in Russian literature. I would guess that Brodsky picked the kinoglaz idea from Susan Sontag, who had compiled a list of “novels with cinematic structure” in her diary in 1966.
It wasn’t calumny if Kataev saw Babel as a perpetrator-turned-victim. Kataev merely sold his pen to the Bolsheviks while Babel was a true believer in a “holy Revolution,” an enthusiastic supporter of revolutionary violence and even a minor accessory to it (in 1917-18, in the Polish war, and during the collectivization in the early 1930s).
Then he was a hypocrite, because he himself, however he may have felt privately, kept putting in enthusiastic paeans to Lenin and the glorious Revolution in all these memoirs. And plenty of his pals were fans of the regime. No, I think it was jealousy. (I mean, he specifically said he’d made advances in prose beyond poor backward Babel.)
But Manhattan Transfer appeared as early as in 1925.
Ah, thanks for that! So it was definitely in the air in the ’20s. I’d love to see a through study of the history of the idea.
Brodsky wasn’t the greatest expert on 20th century Russian prose but did a lot of reading up in his mature years. He must have delighted in discovering great half-forgotten novels, novellas and short-story collections from the same period as The Cynics.
I agree on all counts. I certainly didn’t trust his judgment blindly, but I figured it was worth checking the book out. (This is, after all, the guy who raved about School for Fools when he thought the anonymous MS was by a friend of his, and then trashed it and urged the Proffers not to publish it once he found out it was by some nobody named Sokolov. What a jerk.)
No, why? Import pīp- into early West Germanic, and you get pfeif- in modern Standard German.
pfeifen “whistle” (v.)
Pfeife “whistle” (n.), “pipe”, literarily also “stupid useless person”
Mariengof’s autobiography is available in French. It’s called “Mon siécle, ma jeunesse” and contains an interesting picture of the post-revolutionary years and the circle of writers with whom he interacted.
The translation is by Anne Marie Tatsis-Botton, and was published by Les Editions Noir sur Blanc in 2019. She has also translated Krzhizhanovsky, so she should be up for this, too.
http://www.leseditionsnoirsurblanc.fr/mon-siecle–ma-jeunesse-
anatoli-mariengof-9782882505781
The full title corresponding to the Russian version would be “Mon siècle, ma jeunesse, mes amis et amies,” judging by the Collected Works published in 2013 in Moscow (downloadable from imwerden.de). His collection of random thoughts and memories, “This is for you, descendants,” is also excellent.
Mariengof’s name has never been completely forgotten but his early work was effectively banned under the Soviets. His name remained in print because he was a close friend of Yesenin’s and the dedicatee of some of his poems, including Pugachov.