Naked Year

Pilnyak Boris

Description

It was his novel The Naked Year, a flinchingly honest portrayal of life in post-Revolutionary Russia, that catapulted Pilnyak into notoriety. The Naked Year follows the provincial town of Ordinin through 1919, a year of war, illness, and tumultuous change. The village and its inhabitants--merchants, nobles, peasants, and communists alike--experience firsthand the impact of the violent revolutionary struggle of the Reds, Whites, Blacks, and Greens, until their world eventually dissolves into chaos. So lyrical and surreal that it has been called the "anti-novel," The Naked Year captures the emotional heart of a land trapped in the horrific gap year between frenzied Revolution and rigid Soviet control

Informations

• Publié par: ABRAMS BOOKS
• Date de parution: 27 août 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781468308136
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Firebird in Russian folklore is a fiery, illuminated bird; magical, iconic, coveted. Its feathers continue to glow when removed, and a single feather, it is said, can light up a room. Some who claim to have seen the Firebird say it even has glowing eyes. The Firebird is often the object of a quest. In one famous tale, the Firebird needs to be captured to prevent it from stealing the king’s golden apples, a fruit bestowing youth and strength on those who partake of the fruit. But in other stories, the Firebird has another mission: it is always flying over the earth providing hope to any who may need it. In modern times and in the West, the Firebird has become part of world culture. In Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Firebird, it is a creature half-woman and half-bird, and the ballerina’s role is considered by many to be the most demanding in the history of ballet.
The Overlook Press in the U.S. and Gerald Duckworth in the UK, in adopting the Firebird as the logo for its expanding Ardis publishing program, consider that this magical, glowing creature—in legend come to Russia from a faraway land—will play a role in bringing Russia and its literature closer to readers everywhere.

This edition published in the United States and the United Kingdom in 2013 by Ardis Publishers, an imprint of Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc. New York and London
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ISBN PRINT: 978-1-4683-0639-2
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The translator wishes to acknowledge the deep debt of gratitude which he owes to Professor Marcus Wheeler of The Queen’s University of Belfast for patiently reading the translation in manuscript form and for making many useful suggestions and correcting many mistakes. He also wishes to thank Mr. Richard Danik, also of Queen’s, for identifying individual linguistic and dialectical obscurities.
Contents
INTRODUCTION
Ordinin-Town
China-Town
EXPOSITION
Chapter I
Tamotoes Sold Here
Olenka Kuntz and the Warrant
The Death of Old Arkhipov
Chapter II
The Ordinin House
Two Conversations. The Old Men
Denouements
Chapter III
About Freedoms Through Andrei’s Eyes
Through Natalya’s Eye
Through Irina’s Eyes
Chapter IV
Commutators–Accumulators
The Provinces, Y’Know.–Town Tators
The Monastery Vvedenyo-na-Gore
Fire–Lators
Chapter V
Deaths (Triptych the First)
The Death of the Commune
The First Dying
Third Part of the Triptych (the darkest)
Chapter VI
and Penultimate. The Bolsheviks (Second Triptych)
Leather Jackets
China-Town
Third Part of the Triptych (the brightest)
Chapter VII
(the last, without a title)
CONCLUSION
The Last Triptych (material, in essence)
Incantations
Conversations
Wedding
Outside the Triptych, at the end
AFTERWORD
Selected Bibliography of Works about Pilnyak
Introduction
In the book A Rational Existence , or a Moral View of Life’s Worth is the sentence:
Every moment vows to fate to keep a profound silence about our destiny, even up to the time that fate unites with the course of our life; and then, when the future is silent about our destiny, with every passing moment eternity may begin.
Born in the deaf years
They do not remember their way.
We, the children of Russia’s terrible years,
Are unable to forget anything.
A. Blok
ORDININ-TOWN
O N THE TOWN K REMLIN’S G ATES was inscribed (now destroyed):
Save, O Lord,
This town and Your people
And bless all those
Who enter these gates
And here is an excerpt from the decrees of the Ordinin Orphans Court:
On Monday the seventh day of January in the year 1794, the following members arrived at the Chambers of the Ordinin City Orphans Court at twelve o’clock noon:
Dementy Ratchin, the City Mayor.
The councilors: Semyon Tulinov, Stepan Ilin, Stepan Zyabov, the city elder.
They heard– –
They decreed: thank and honor City Mayor Dementy Ratchin, a famous and honorable man.
Signing were– –
All left the Chambers after one o’clock in the afternoon and proceeded to the Cathedral for prayers.
This decree was written exactly one hundred years before the birth of Donat; Donat discovered it when he was sacking the Ordinin Archives. This decree was written on blue paper, with a goose-quill, with fanciful curlicues.
The famed Ratchin family of merchants was two hundred years old; formerly they had owned salt-mines, dealt in wheat and live-stock–for two hundred years (great-grandfather, grandfather, father, son, grandson, great-grandson) in one place, the salt stalls (now destroyed), on Tradesmen’s Square (now Red)–every day they stood behind the counter, clicked abacuses, played checkers, drank tea from a teapot (to spill it in figures of eight across the floor), received customers, and swore at the bailiffs.
Ivan Emelyan Ratchin, Dementy’s grandson, Donat’s grandfather, took his place behind the counter forty years ago when he was a curly-haired youth; since then much had passed; he grew wizened, went bald, bought spectacles, began to walk with a cane, always in a quilted coat, always in a quilted cap. He was born right here, in Zaryadye, in his two-story house behind the gates with the wolf-hounds; here he brought his wife, from here he carried out his father’s coffin, here he ruled.
In the Kremlin were the official buildings and churches; below the Kremlin, in a ravine, the Vologa river flowed, and beyond the Vologa lay the meadows, Redenev Monastery, Yamsky Settlement (the railway in those times passed by a hundred versts away). All day and all night, every five minutes, the clock in the cathedral rang out–dong! dong! dong!–And the first to wake up in the Kremlin were the geese (pigs were not kept in the Kremlin because the streets were cobbled). Soon after the geese came the tavern drunks, the beggars and the Fools-in-Christ. The police made their way to the City Hall with tables on their heads (the Governor of the province had issued a decree that the police supervisors must make nightly rounds and sign in the books, and he ordered that the books be fastened to the tables, –the supervisors did sign them, only not at night, but in the morning, and not in their booths, but in the offices where the tables were brought to them). Walking about the town at night was unwillingly permitted, and if a policeman asked, half asleep:
“Who goes there?”
one always had to answer
“A resident!”
In the chancery offices and precinct buildings, as is to be expected, they beat people, especially the drunks, cruelly and thoroughly, and Officer Babochkin was an expert.
The tavern drunks gathered at the government bar very early; they would sit down on the grass and patiently wait for it to open. The merchants passed by, crossing themselves. Pious Father Levkoev, a passionate fisherman, would run by from the river, hurry into the stalls with his keys and open up his ecclesiastical business: pious Levkoev was a respected man and his only fault was that in the summer worms would crawl out of his pocket, a result of this fishing passion of his (the poet-informer Varygin even informed the bishop about this). The drunkard Ogonyok the Classicist would shout to the clergyman, “Most merciful sir!.. Understand?..”
But the clergyman would just wave him aside.
And right after the clergyman, the teacher Blanmanzhov would come out through his wicket gate, in a military coat, with an umbrella and galoshes, following the clergyman to his ecclesiastical business to drink a cup of tea and have a chat. Ogonyok (a bright spot) would confidently walk up to him and say:
“Kind sir! Vous comprenez? Ogonyok the Classicist is talking to you…” And Blanmanzhov would give him a small coin. Blanmanzhov was renowned for his geography and his wife, who would walk to church wearing a traditional Russian headscarf, but went naked at home, and summer and autumn sold fruit from her garden through a small window wearing just her slip.
Truskov the slaughterman would come to the vodka shop and drink a couple of “scoundrels.” Tradesmen and hawkers would come and walk through the market. The drunks would buy some “dog’s delight” and then wander off about their business. Cabbies drove up on their “wheels,” saying, half asleep, “Plez! Pleze!”
And over the town the sun would rise, always beautiful, always extraordinary. Over the earth, over the town, the springs, summers, autumns and winters would pass, always beautiful, always extraordinary.
In spring the old women and children went to Nikola-Radovanets, to the Kazan Monastery on a pilgrimage, listened to the larks, grieved over the past. In autumn the children would fly snake kites with rattles. During the autumn, during the winter carnival, and after Easter, the matchmakers got b