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袙芯褋锌芯屑懈薪邪薪懈褟 芯 斜褍写褍褖械屑. 袠蟹斜褉邪薪薪芯械 懈蟹 薪械懈蟹写邪薪薪芯谐芯
袝褖械 芯写薪芯 懈屑褟 胁芯蟹胁褉邪褖邪械褌褋褟 泻 薪邪屑 "懈蟹 薪械斜褘褌懈褟" - 小懈谐懈蟹屑褍薪写 袛芯屑懈薪懈泻芯胁懈褔 袣褉卸懈卸邪薪芯胁褋泻懈泄 (1887-1950). 袩褉懈 卸懈蟹薪懈 械屑褍 褍写邪谢芯褋褜 芯锌褍斜谢懈泻芯胁邪褌褜 胁褋械谐芯 胁芯褋械屑褜 褉邪褋褋泻邪蟹芯胁 懈 芯写薪褍 锌芯胁械褋褌褜. 袦械卸写褍 褌械屑, 胁 谢懈褌械褉邪褌褍褉薪褘褏 泻褉褍谐邪褏 械谐芯 胁褉械屑械薪懈 械谐芯 褋褔懈褌邪谢懈 锌懈褋邪褌械谢械屑 械胁褉芯锌械泄褋泻芯泄 胁械谢懈褔懈薪褘. 袣褉卸懈卸邪薪芯胁褋泻芯屑褍 褋胁芯泄褋褌胁械薪薪褘 褎懈谢芯褋芯褎褋泻懈泄 胁蟹谐谢褟写 薪邪 屑懈褉, 褌褟谐芯褌械薪懈械 泻 褎邪薪褌邪褋屑邪谐芯褉懈懈, 泻 褌芯屑褍 卸械 芯薪 斜谢械褋褌褟褖懈泄 褋褌懈谢懈褋褌 - 械谐芯 锌械褉芯 薪邪褏芯写褔懈胁芯, 懈褉芯薪懈褔薪芯, 懈蟹褟褖薪芯.
袙 泻薪懈谐褍 胁芯褕谢懈 锌褉芯懈蟹胁械写械薪懈褟, 芯斜褗械写懈薪械薪薪褘械 胁 芯褋薪芯胁薪芯屑 "屑芯褋泻芯胁褋泻芯泄" 褌械屑芯泄. 袩械褉械写 薪邪屑懈 袦芯褋泻胁邪 20-40-褏 谐芯写芯胁 褋 械械 斜褘褌芯屑, 薪褉邪胁邪屑懈, 芯斜褖械褋褌胁械薪薪芯泄 卸懈蟹薪褜褞.
袙 泻薪懈谐褍 胁芯褕谢懈 锌褉芯懈蟹胁械写械薪懈褟, 芯斜褗械写懈薪械薪薪褘械 胁 芯褋薪芯胁薪芯屑 "屑芯褋泻芯胁褋泻芯泄" 褌械屑芯泄. 袩械褉械写 薪邪屑懈 袦芯褋泻胁邪 20-40-褏 谐芯写芯胁 褋 械械 斜褘褌芯屑, 薪褉邪胁邪屑懈, 芯斜褖械褋褌胁械薪薪芯泄 卸懈蟹薪褜褞.
463 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1929
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7,078 people want to read
About the author
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
51听books200听followersSigizmund Dominikovich Krzhizhanovsky (Russian: 小懈谐懈蟹屑褍虂薪写 袛芯屑懈薪懈虂泻芯胁懈褔 袣褉卸懈卸邪薪芯虂胁褋泻懈泄) (February 11 [O.S. January 30] 1887, Kyiv, Russian Empire 鈥� 28 December 1950, Moscow, USSR) was a Russian and Soviet short-story writer who described himself as being "known for being unknown" and the bulk of whose writings were published posthumously.
Many details of Krzhizhanovsky's life are obscure. Judging from his works, Robert Louis Stevenson, G. K. Chesterton, Edgar Allan Poe, Nikolai Gogol, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and H. G. Wells were major influences on his style. Krzhizhanovsky was active among Moscow's literati in the 1920s, while working for Alexander Tairov's Chamber Theater. Several of Krzhizhanovsky's stories became known through private readings, and a couple of them even found their way to print. In 1929 he penned a screenplay for Yakov Protazanov's acclaimed film The Feast of St Jorgen, yet his name did not appear in the credits. One of his last novellas, "Dymchaty bokal" (The smoky beaker, 1939), tells the story of a goblet miraculously never running out of wine, sometimes interpreted as a wry allusion to the author's fondness for alcohol. He died in Moscow, but the place where he was buried is not known.
In 1976 the scholar Vadim Perelmuter discovered Krzhizhanovsky's archive and in 1989 published one of his short stories. As the five volumes of his collected works followed (the fifth volume has not yet reached publication), Krzhizhanovsky emerged from obscurity as a remarkable Soviet writer, who polished his prose to the verge of poetry. His short parables, written with an abundance of poetic detail and wonderful fertility of invention 鈥� though occasionally bordering on the whimsical 鈥� are sometimes compared to the ficciones of Jorge Luis Borges. Quadraturin (1926), the best known of such phantasmagoric stories, is a Kafkaesque novella in which allegory meets existentialism. Quadraturin is available in English translation in Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida, Penguin Classics, 2005.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 143 reviews
January 23, 2023
The train is on the track but it won鈥檛 go to any capital town鈥� It is The Branch Line and past the way stations of dreams, the train will go straight into the irreal future鈥� If you want to jump aboard then jump right now鈥�
Even the dreams may be disastrous but anyway it is better to dream than not. And Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky embarks on his mind-bending journey through all sorts of the phantasmal plots and he takes us along鈥�
Without imagination there would be no man but only some dumb and inert creature.
Sweet dreams cannot withstand reality, sleepy reveries wear out faster than socks; whereas a heavy dream, a simple but well-made nightmare, is easily assimilated by life. Where dreams unburdened by anything disappear like drops of water in the sand, dreams containing a certain harshness will, as they evaporate in the sun, leave a hard kernel on the roof of Plato's famous cave: these deposits will collect and accrue, eventually forming a swordlike stalactite.
Even the dreams may be disastrous but anyway it is better to dream than not. And Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky embarks on his mind-bending journey through all sorts of the phantasmal plots and he takes us along鈥�
A philosophy of life is more terrible than syphilis and people 鈥� you have to give them credit 鈥� take every precaution not to become infected. Especially by a philosophy of life.
Without imagination there would be no man but only some dumb and inert creature.
May 26, 2015
A philosophy of life is more terrible than syphilis and people - you have to give them credit - take every precaution not to become infected. Especially by a philosophy of life.
Obscure authors are only exhumed with praise, not sober reflections on potential inclusion in the canon. No, hysterics and mashed analogies are required; its as if ______ had a baby who grew addicted to mescaline and rewrote _____. Rebirth also requires nudges and casual mention. I suppose that was 欧宝娱乐 has become a nudging machine for the authors without bodies. Can you feel the tension between the molecular and molar now? I thought you could.
This collection is astounding. These are stories of the highest order. These pieces are in the ball park with Borges and Kis.: I mean that. That said, they remain unusually foreign and unique. This isn't as if anyone went drinking with anyone else as interpreted by Ozu or Bresson; such be Rhizomic. These are dreamy portraits which ponder the possible and deflate in the face of the horrific
Everyone needs to read these, quickly now.
Obscure authors are only exhumed with praise, not sober reflections on potential inclusion in the canon. No, hysterics and mashed analogies are required; its as if ______ had a baby who grew addicted to mescaline and rewrote _____. Rebirth also requires nudges and casual mention. I suppose that was 欧宝娱乐 has become a nudging machine for the authors without bodies. Can you feel the tension between the molecular and molar now? I thought you could.
This collection is astounding. These are stories of the highest order. These pieces are in the ball park with Borges and Kis.: I mean that. That said, they remain unusually foreign and unique. This isn't as if anyone went drinking with anyone else as interpreted by Ozu or Bresson; such be Rhizomic. These are dreamy portraits which ponder the possible and deflate in the face of the horrific
Everyone needs to read these, quickly now.
December 9, 2013
If you read these stories while populating the shadows in the back of your mind with Kafka, Szerb, and Bulgakov, you will find yourself imagining a literal existence of the zeitgeist, expecting it at any minute to startle you with table-rapping or producing manifestations of luminous text-textured protoplasm. How is it possible that Krzhizhanovsky and Kafka did not know each other unless the transmission was clairvoyant, the medium the ethereal zeitgeist? Look! There it is! Oh, wait, that's just the ghost of Gogol.
These stories have that cold yet seductive tone by which a deadpan delivery narrates the most dreary fabulism and chilly surrealism. The most haunting one is the opener, when a man stuffed like old letters into his shoebox of an apartment is approached by a pair of salesmen straight out of . Gorgeous, just gorgeous.
Summaries of his work will highlight the oppression experienced by the writer, but do not be led to believe that these are neat political allegories; we are a long way from the cozy idyll of . Dreamlike is such an overused descriptor of fiction that I would resist it were there any other thing in this dimension to compare with Krzhizhanovsky's world. The most his work has in common with dreams is that nonplussed affect your floating-eyeball mind often takes on while cataloging the most bizarre events. This is fantastic literature that does not know it is fantastic, calling for no heightened description nor hyperbolic language. There is simply what happens, but the flatness of tone goes unnoticed, drowned by the dread-sensation it signals with the impression that under--or behind, or within--all the proceedings is something knowable only through these unreal approximations.
These stories have that cold yet seductive tone by which a deadpan delivery narrates the most dreary fabulism and chilly surrealism. The most haunting one is the opener, when a man stuffed like old letters into his shoebox of an apartment is approached by a pair of salesmen straight out of . Gorgeous, just gorgeous.
Summaries of his work will highlight the oppression experienced by the writer, but do not be led to believe that these are neat political allegories; we are a long way from the cozy idyll of . Dreamlike is such an overused descriptor of fiction that I would resist it were there any other thing in this dimension to compare with Krzhizhanovsky's world. The most his work has in common with dreams is that nonplussed affect your floating-eyeball mind often takes on while cataloging the most bizarre events. This is fantastic literature that does not know it is fantastic, calling for no heightened description nor hyperbolic language. There is simply what happens, but the flatness of tone goes unnoticed, drowned by the dread-sensation it signals with the impression that under--or behind, or within--all the proceedings is something knowable only through these unreal approximations.
Read
July 5, 2017You're sitting in a bar, of sorts, and a rather shabby fellow comes in, dirty scarf trailing, and he does not stop at the table of students, or to the officers in their greatcoats. No. He pauses, and heads for you. A polite slight bow. And then he says, "I wonder, citizen, if you wouldn't like to acquire a philosophical system?"
You are looking through old books. And you find an old bookmark: a flat body of faded silk and needlepoint designs trailing a swallowtail train. It was left in a book you didn't finish and, that, a long time ago. Thus do long sea voyages part sailors from their wives.
You visit, more and more often, a cemetery. You walk in--first past a chaos of crosses, then past the inner wall--to the new crossless cemetery... You meet the old gravedigger there. You offer him a smoke. He smokes and points out Actors' Row, Speakers' Corner, Writers' Impasse. Then he tells you about the buried man who visits him.
A sampling, and a tease, what's there above, about the 'fantastical' stories in this volume. It's my second foray into Krzhizhanovsky. And, yes, it's pronounced exactly as it looks. I read and reviewed that. It's mind-bending without, you know, violating any of the applicable controlled substances statutes. Krzhizhanovsky worked as a lawyer but he wrote, a lot. You could read Krzhizhanovsky as science fiction. Or you could read him as political satire. The Soviets read him as the latter. So these stories, written in the 1920s, sat in a desk drawer, published finally in 1989.
I interrupted my reading of Victor Serge's to read this. Serge's book was very well-written, about the travails of Soviet counter-revolution. But that's a story I know. So I turned here, knowing from previous experience that I'd be turned upside down.
The title piece - 'Memories of the Future' - in its abstract nugget is about a man who builds a time machine. And that's silly, yes. Although there's enough algebra here to appeal to sci-fi fans; and enough wry to satisfy those looking for political skewering. I liked it instead for the wordplay. I liked how, in the telling, Krzhizhanovsky would channel characteristics of his characters. An examining doctor became 'the palm'; an interested party, with shabby attire, became 'the faded piping'; the General wasn't the General, he was 'the General's collar'.
Our inventor is his first subject. He travels. And eventually, he meets a group of potential investors who want to hear about his 'travel'. They are described thusly:
Among Moscow's "Izvestians" scattered about on straight-legged benches and stools one might spot: a fashionable poet with a lyrical incandescence in his cold-blooded breast; a learned linguist who never opened his mouth--people called him "a mute in twenty-six languages"; a famous film director whose ever-gesticulating thoughts made him look like a six-armed Vishnu; a long-faced novelist with legs squeezed into gaiters, cheeks that twitched, and a habit of saying "as I was saying"; the fleshy, gray-fringed brow of a venerable critic; the abstractionist's deep d茅collet茅; the round, carefully combed-over bald spot--like an eye on the back of of his head--of a publisher; the crook of a nervous hand sticking out of a cartoonist's cuff.
What they (you) hear is vague, obscured. It is 1929. I'd be careful in the late 1930s, he says.
When he went poof, there was a new tenant. But our inventor was still there:
There's a very peaceable little worm that bores into walls and cabinets and desks and taps: rat-tat-tat. A meticulous timber worm, only I don't remember the Latin name. In France they call it "fate": destin, or something like that. Well, this little worm, this destin, has given you a fright. Plain as day.
Am I wrong to hum: da-da-da-dum?
You are looking through old books. And you find an old bookmark: a flat body of faded silk and needlepoint designs trailing a swallowtail train. It was left in a book you didn't finish and, that, a long time ago. Thus do long sea voyages part sailors from their wives.
You visit, more and more often, a cemetery. You walk in--first past a chaos of crosses, then past the inner wall--to the new crossless cemetery... You meet the old gravedigger there. You offer him a smoke. He smokes and points out Actors' Row, Speakers' Corner, Writers' Impasse. Then he tells you about the buried man who visits him.
A sampling, and a tease, what's there above, about the 'fantastical' stories in this volume. It's my second foray into Krzhizhanovsky. And, yes, it's pronounced exactly as it looks. I read and reviewed that. It's mind-bending without, you know, violating any of the applicable controlled substances statutes. Krzhizhanovsky worked as a lawyer but he wrote, a lot. You could read Krzhizhanovsky as science fiction. Or you could read him as political satire. The Soviets read him as the latter. So these stories, written in the 1920s, sat in a desk drawer, published finally in 1989.
I interrupted my reading of Victor Serge's to read this. Serge's book was very well-written, about the travails of Soviet counter-revolution. But that's a story I know. So I turned here, knowing from previous experience that I'd be turned upside down.
The title piece - 'Memories of the Future' - in its abstract nugget is about a man who builds a time machine. And that's silly, yes. Although there's enough algebra here to appeal to sci-fi fans; and enough wry to satisfy those looking for political skewering. I liked it instead for the wordplay. I liked how, in the telling, Krzhizhanovsky would channel characteristics of his characters. An examining doctor became 'the palm'; an interested party, with shabby attire, became 'the faded piping'; the General wasn't the General, he was 'the General's collar'.
Our inventor is his first subject. He travels. And eventually, he meets a group of potential investors who want to hear about his 'travel'. They are described thusly:
Among Moscow's "Izvestians" scattered about on straight-legged benches and stools one might spot: a fashionable poet with a lyrical incandescence in his cold-blooded breast; a learned linguist who never opened his mouth--people called him "a mute in twenty-six languages"; a famous film director whose ever-gesticulating thoughts made him look like a six-armed Vishnu; a long-faced novelist with legs squeezed into gaiters, cheeks that twitched, and a habit of saying "as I was saying"; the fleshy, gray-fringed brow of a venerable critic; the abstractionist's deep d茅collet茅; the round, carefully combed-over bald spot--like an eye on the back of of his head--of a publisher; the crook of a nervous hand sticking out of a cartoonist's cuff.
What they (you) hear is vague, obscured. It is 1929. I'd be careful in the late 1930s, he says.
When he went poof, there was a new tenant. But our inventor was still there:
There's a very peaceable little worm that bores into walls and cabinets and desks and taps: rat-tat-tat. A meticulous timber worm, only I don't remember the Latin name. In France they call it "fate": destin, or something like that. Well, this little worm, this destin, has given you a fright. Plain as day.
Am I wrong to hum: da-da-da-dum?
December 1, 2012
Coming up, Knig-o-lass will teach us how to pronounce this writer鈥檚 cumbersome surname. In the meantime, here鈥檚 seven fantastical stories. 鈥楺uadraturin鈥� is a slice of Russian absurdism qua Gogol. 鈥楾he Bookmark鈥� is an early, essentially metafictional story about storytellers losing control of their characters and other opaque meanderings. 鈥楽omeone Else鈥檚 Theme鈥� continues the literary satire, spliced with a fantastical layer that makes the story impossible to pin to one thing . . . halfway into certain pages it seems the story has morphed into another entirely. 鈥楾he Branch Line鈥� and 鈥楻ed Snow鈥� are entirely fantastical dream-narratives with shades of Bulgakovian magic, closer to surrealism in style. 鈥楾he 13th Category of Reason鈥� is irresistible black comedy. 鈥楳emories of the Future鈥� transports the time-machine yarn to Stalinist Russia in an extremely detailed SF number that predates the nouveau roman鈥檚 contraptive exactitude. Joanne Turnbull (translator) preserves the wordplay and unusual snakiness of his sentences, making this septet an uneven but quiet delight.
Main feature: Here is Knig-o-lass pronouncing .
Sorry Ticketholders: Knig-o-lass removed the recording without telling me when I expressly asked her to tell me if she wanted the link removed. People behave oddly.
Main feature: Here is Knig-o-lass pronouncing .
Sorry Ticketholders: Knig-o-lass removed the recording without telling me when I expressly asked her to tell me if she wanted the link removed. People behave oddly.
October 7, 2019
First Inklings
Written in 1920鈥檚 Russia, these stories are contemporaneous with literary modernism, but anticipate the traits of postmodernism.
Not only do they move away from traditional realism, but they embrace metaphysics, while still retaining a connection to empiricism.
In the earlier stories in this volume, it's clear that Krzhizhanovsky was interested in (and perplexed by) philosophy 鈥� particularly the work of Plato and Kant:
鈥淚 used to write about Kant. But now I can't: Kant is cant.鈥�
Not only do objects or things have shadows, but shadows become objects or things. Phenomena become noumena. The metaphysical becomes physical. The ideal becomes material (if not perfect).
In the Soviet Union, the perceived oppression of the population becomes tangible. You can not only sense it intellectually, but you can almost touch or feel it:
鈥淗aven't you noticed how in the last few years our life has been permeated by nonexistence?鈥�
Blind and Slippery Ism's
This perspective doesn't come across as mere anti-Communism on the part of a 1920鈥檚 Soviet citizen. For much of the book, I looked for evidence that the explicit target was historical materialism. However, over time, I wondered whether the implicit criticism was equally applicable to the myth of the invisible hand of capitalism. Thus, the critique could apply equally to the justification of both economic and political systems. The dark shadows of both systems oppress much of the population. We are all oppressed by the myths that prevail in our society:
鈥淚t was a period when creeping about everywhere, attaching itself to this name and that, was a blind and slippery 鈥榠sm'.鈥�
A Present from the Past
The role of a writer such as Krzhizhanovsky is to diagnose and understand the operation of society through fiction.
In the eponymous story, a character pleads, 鈥淭ake me to the land of those who understand.鈥�
To which, another responds (quoting a poem from the past), 鈥淲ho perish.鈥�
To have insight and understanding in dangerous or divisive times is to risk death. Especially for a non-conformist artist, writer or activist. Krzhizhanovsky saw in the present what would still be there in the future, perhaps even in the future that, from his perspective, is (our) now, a century later.
SOUNDTRACK:
The Soundtrack of Our Lives - "Galaxy Gramophone" (from the album "A Present from the Past")
Written in 1920鈥檚 Russia, these stories are contemporaneous with literary modernism, but anticipate the traits of postmodernism.
Not only do they move away from traditional realism, but they embrace metaphysics, while still retaining a connection to empiricism.
In the earlier stories in this volume, it's clear that Krzhizhanovsky was interested in (and perplexed by) philosophy 鈥� particularly the work of Plato and Kant:
鈥淚 used to write about Kant. But now I can't: Kant is cant.鈥�
Not only do objects or things have shadows, but shadows become objects or things. Phenomena become noumena. The metaphysical becomes physical. The ideal becomes material (if not perfect).
In the Soviet Union, the perceived oppression of the population becomes tangible. You can not only sense it intellectually, but you can almost touch or feel it:
鈥淗aven't you noticed how in the last few years our life has been permeated by nonexistence?鈥�
Blind and Slippery Ism's
This perspective doesn't come across as mere anti-Communism on the part of a 1920鈥檚 Soviet citizen. For much of the book, I looked for evidence that the explicit target was historical materialism. However, over time, I wondered whether the implicit criticism was equally applicable to the myth of the invisible hand of capitalism. Thus, the critique could apply equally to the justification of both economic and political systems. The dark shadows of both systems oppress much of the population. We are all oppressed by the myths that prevail in our society:
鈥淚t was a period when creeping about everywhere, attaching itself to this name and that, was a blind and slippery 鈥榠sm'.鈥�
A Present from the Past
The role of a writer such as Krzhizhanovsky is to diagnose and understand the operation of society through fiction.
In the eponymous story, a character pleads, 鈥淭ake me to the land of those who understand.鈥�
To which, another responds (quoting a poem from the past), 鈥淲ho perish.鈥�
To have insight and understanding in dangerous or divisive times is to risk death. Especially for a non-conformist artist, writer or activist. Krzhizhanovsky saw in the present what would still be there in the future, perhaps even in the future that, from his perspective, is (our) now, a century later.
SOUNDTRACK:
The Soundtrack of Our Lives - "Galaxy Gramophone" (from the album "A Present from the Past")
February 28, 2011
So I can鈥檛 decide what鈥檚 more shocking: that this guy is this good, or that these stories sat for decades in a Soviet basement. Sigizmund (I鈥檒l call him by his first name as I don鈥檛 want to repeatedly type his Scrabble masters wet dream of a last name) is one of those writers whose life was in a way the finest distillation of his artistic themes. For Sigizmund this was alienation, victimization, and endless imagination in the face of institutionalized ignorance. He reminds me of Nabokov, Borges, Kafka: the metaphysical greats; he wields a perfect blend of philosophy and fiction with stories like 鈥淩ed Snow鈥� where 鈥楰ant鈥� is used as a swear word because he is a deity with the required sanctity needed to be profaned. This is a world where people stand in line for wisdom and logic not wheat bread and liquor. The state obliges, handing out syllogistic propositions which the citizens attempt to trade like baseball cards.
His motivation for writing these stories is known to be pure as Sigizmund was never properly published (read remunerated) in his lifetime (an essay on the art of titling works of fiction being the only subject innocuous enough to get by the censors). His stories were deemed to 鈥榬adical鈥� (whatever that means) and to 鈥榚xperimental鈥� (meaning again murky). These of course were euphemistic ways of saying 鈥榶our stories don鈥檛 glorify the communist party鈥� and this is the very reason why didactic soviet fiction is banausic and dead to posterity while Sigizmund鈥檚 stories are alive and offer a refreshing unique approach to Russian literature during the 1920鈥檚.
The first story in the collection is the one with the most resemblance to Kafka. A hermetic Citizen X buys a wonder-product called Quadraturin which promises to enlarge his living space - a sorta Freudian exegesis just waiting to happen. Thus his cramped 86 square feet slowly begin to expand, with a horripilative outcome: if House of Leaves is a good Portland microbrew, then 鈥淨uadraturin鈥� is a shot of top shelf Russian vodka (and not the imported Smirnoff that you can buy for 19.99 at Walgreens, that鈥檚 more like Tolstoy, Sigizmund has not been commoditized). All alcoholic metaphors aside, Sigizmund really excels in surface level innovation. He鈥檚 a master of synecdoche, with characters called by a single trait (鈥渁 pair of eyeglasses that popped out suddenly from behind a newspaper鈥�), or dialogue divorcing from characters (鈥渢hen suddenly he nearly knocked into these words emanating from the fog: 鈥極h, dear sir, from your apartment you say鈥ut I鈥檝e been evicted from my own head鈥欌€�). He also marries static objects with action verbs 鈥渢he carriage steps tumble his feet to the ground鈥�. He then spins these innovations into larger more penetrating themes - shining a light on the grotesque hilarity of Group Think, or revealing the practiced art of subjugation.
His story structures are easy to label postmodern, until you remember he wrote these stories in the 1920鈥檚, thirty years before the Godfather of postmodernism wrote his first bestseller (鈥淟olita鈥�). From a leveled frame tale reminiscent of David Foster Wallace鈥檚 Oblivion stories (which is sort of a 鈥榤emory of the future鈥�, if you鈥檒l allow me, as Wallace wrote 70 years after Sigizmund), to a character overhearing conversational detritus, which just happens to be parts of the text of the story your reading (a Cortazar contagion), Sigizmund is constantly a decade or two ahead of his contemporaries. While modernism was hitting its stride, Sigizmund was running meta-marathons. The reason is probably his isolation added with extreme genius and lyrical legerdemain. Yet ultimately he had to sacrifice acclaim, sustenance, and artistic community in order to achieve the singular spectacular texts he was able to conjure from his insularity. But it was this sacrifice that carved out his niche: first in the basement of a Soviet archive (like a Borges story), then into the pale post breakup Russian light, and finally into the international literature canon, where his stories stand as complex as his name.
His motivation for writing these stories is known to be pure as Sigizmund was never properly published (read remunerated) in his lifetime (an essay on the art of titling works of fiction being the only subject innocuous enough to get by the censors). His stories were deemed to 鈥榬adical鈥� (whatever that means) and to 鈥榚xperimental鈥� (meaning again murky). These of course were euphemistic ways of saying 鈥榶our stories don鈥檛 glorify the communist party鈥� and this is the very reason why didactic soviet fiction is banausic and dead to posterity while Sigizmund鈥檚 stories are alive and offer a refreshing unique approach to Russian literature during the 1920鈥檚.
The first story in the collection is the one with the most resemblance to Kafka. A hermetic Citizen X buys a wonder-product called Quadraturin which promises to enlarge his living space - a sorta Freudian exegesis just waiting to happen. Thus his cramped 86 square feet slowly begin to expand, with a horripilative outcome: if House of Leaves is a good Portland microbrew, then 鈥淨uadraturin鈥� is a shot of top shelf Russian vodka (and not the imported Smirnoff that you can buy for 19.99 at Walgreens, that鈥檚 more like Tolstoy, Sigizmund has not been commoditized). All alcoholic metaphors aside, Sigizmund really excels in surface level innovation. He鈥檚 a master of synecdoche, with characters called by a single trait (鈥渁 pair of eyeglasses that popped out suddenly from behind a newspaper鈥�), or dialogue divorcing from characters (鈥渢hen suddenly he nearly knocked into these words emanating from the fog: 鈥極h, dear sir, from your apartment you say鈥ut I鈥檝e been evicted from my own head鈥欌€�). He also marries static objects with action verbs 鈥渢he carriage steps tumble his feet to the ground鈥�. He then spins these innovations into larger more penetrating themes - shining a light on the grotesque hilarity of Group Think, or revealing the practiced art of subjugation.
His story structures are easy to label postmodern, until you remember he wrote these stories in the 1920鈥檚, thirty years before the Godfather of postmodernism wrote his first bestseller (鈥淟olita鈥�). From a leveled frame tale reminiscent of David Foster Wallace鈥檚 Oblivion stories (which is sort of a 鈥榤emory of the future鈥�, if you鈥檒l allow me, as Wallace wrote 70 years after Sigizmund), to a character overhearing conversational detritus, which just happens to be parts of the text of the story your reading (a Cortazar contagion), Sigizmund is constantly a decade or two ahead of his contemporaries. While modernism was hitting its stride, Sigizmund was running meta-marathons. The reason is probably his isolation added with extreme genius and lyrical legerdemain. Yet ultimately he had to sacrifice acclaim, sustenance, and artistic community in order to achieve the singular spectacular texts he was able to conjure from his insularity. But it was this sacrifice that carved out his niche: first in the basement of a Soviet archive (like a Borges story), then into the pale post breakup Russian light, and finally into the international literature canon, where his stories stand as complex as his name.
August 25, 2020
Aside from the eerie 'Branch Line'鈥攚hich portrays a somnolent, oneiric city as explored by a solitary individual known as Quantin鈥攖hese stories felt to me like window dressing for the final novella, 'Memories of the Future'鈥攖he fictional biography of an autodidactic inventor obsessed with building a time machine. The other stories are impressive, especially for the time they were written, but I did not particularly connect with them. Of course, none of these were even sent to a publisher during Krzhizhanovsky's lifetime due to what would have been interpreted as their subversive nature by the many watchful eyes in the new Soviet Union.
A few passages from 'Memories of the Future':
A few passages from 'Memories of the Future':
Behind me was a blank, a chain of three or four years gone completely out of my head. One can't get used to life if behind one is not-life, a gap in existence. Those destitute years stained with blood and rage when crops and forests perished while a forest of flags rose in revolt鈥攖hey appeared to me as a hungry steppe, I walked through them as through a wasteland, not realizing that...that in a certain present there is more of the future than in the future itself. People tear off their days like the pages from a tear-off calendar, only to sweep them out with the rubbish. Not even to their gods do they give the power over the past.
My sense of the people now surrounding me is that they are people without a now, people whose present has been left behind, people with projected wills, with words resembling the ticking of clocks wound long before, with lives faint as the impression under the tenth sheet of carbon.
Someday a historian, in describing the times we live in now, will say, 'It was a period when creeping about everywhere, attaching itself to this name and that, was a blind and slippery "ism."'
How strange, only recently I was forcing the stars to race through the night like a blue swarm of fireflies, and now here I am with you, again on this absurd and sleepy raft that can float only downstream and only with the current, and which we call: the present. But I can't accept this. Even if my machine is wrecked, my brain is not. Sooner or later I'll finish the journey I began.
June 24, 2012
Really an amazing read. It's getting harder these days to experience something that is really inventive but this author accomplishes that task, at the least, with ease and grace. If you're familiar with the sort of fantastic reality of writers like Schulz, the younger Karinthy (Metropole), Kosztolanyi (Kornel Esti), Bely's Silver Dove and Yuri Olesha (Envy) you will find it a bit easier to digest these oddities. If you say Krzhizhanovsky three times fast whilst looking in the mirror you would see a free coupon appear for his next NYRB release if Sigi controlled reality as well as he controlled his prose. I must confess at times I found his writing a bit exhaustive - but I'm not sure if it was my condition, the translation, or the sheer density of ideas presented in his writing. This is very dense reading apart from The Branch Line which shares Szerb's light touch. I understand the Sigi was once at work on a libretto for Prokofiev's Eugene Onegin but I think he would have better suited for Stockhausen's more ear-friendly moments. Like Schulz (Street of Crocodiles) and Szerb (Pendragon Legend) themselves - Krzh's Shterer spans the heights of intellectual contemplation and the bowels of the concentration camps. All three writers seem be be so acutely aware of the potential/threat of human cruelty that they were compelled to the fantastic. If you can watch Willy Wonka and perceive the Swift-like notions of social criticism as reflected by the carnival mirror rather than observed through a looking-glass you should enjoy Krzhizhanovsky. My biggest challenge is trying to decide who to share this book with next. It's almost too scientific for the surrealists, too playful for the symbolists and too pointed for the absurdists. My smallest challenge is loving it unconditionally - and seeking out more K-r-z-h-i-z-h-a-n-o-v-s-k-y.
November 6, 2018
Somewhere on the line that connects Franz Kafka with Jorge Luis Borges, you will find Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, the Polish/Ukrainian/Russian author of Memories of the Future. Very little of SK's work was published during his lifetime because, not surprisingly, little of it ever got past the Soviet censors. Nothing of what he wrote could conceivably be regarded as Socialist realism.
Instead, SK wrote speculative fantasy of a very high caliber. Most of the stories in this collection, especially the eponymous novelette, challenge the reader to confront his assumptions about life, thought, death, time, and damned near everything else.
I myself feel I will need to read this book again because I feel I missed too much. And, to be sure, I will try to get his other books as published by New York Review of Books (NYRB) Classics.
Instead, SK wrote speculative fantasy of a very high caliber. Most of the stories in this collection, especially the eponymous novelette, challenge the reader to confront his assumptions about life, thought, death, time, and damned near everything else.
I myself feel I will need to read this book again because I feel I missed too much. And, to be sure, I will try to get his other books as published by New York Review of Books (NYRB) Classics.
July 5, 2021
June 2011
Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but my brain certainly feels like a pillow.
The seven stories in Memories of the Future, all written in Moscow in the 1920s, didn't quite get Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (may I call you Siggy?) in trouble, but they were still too subversive--not Soviet-friendly enough, that is--to be published; they certainly didn't capture the mood the government wanted the times to have. Siggy's vision of the present situation was hardly ideal, or pleasant--never mind that his vision of the future, as told in the title story, was even worse.
In "Memories of the Future," a hapless inventor finds his work on a time machine delayed for years by revolution and war; when he finally finishes and tests the device, the future he finds is just as unsatisfying as the present. In "Quadraturin," (check out the short film ), a man tries to escape the allotted eighty-six square feet of his apartment by applying a "biggerizing agent" to the walls, and ends up lost in his own room. A corpse in "The Thirteenth Category of Reason" misses his own funeral and gets little sympathy from the living. In "Red Snow," a man with a very hard job--"being out of a job"--resigns himself to wandering the streets, and even ignores the line for logic. Elsewhere, wanderers, misfits, and the out-of-luck trade themes and swap stories-within-stories, because there seems to be nothing else to do.
I'll admit, I bought this book because I liked the cover, and because I couldn't pronounce the author's name, and because it was published by NYRB. As penance for being somewhat shallow, I'll also admit that a lot of what Siggy--sorry, Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky--wrote went wayyy over my head. Siggy K. was a fantastic, brilliant, clever, super-imaginative genius writer whose brain could run circles around my own poor pillow-brain, and each of these stories is testament to that. One read-through isn't going to be enough--I'll need several, because Krzhizhanovsky deserves to be read by more and better readers, and to skim through it and hope to 'get' his work just won't cut it.
"...As for the human brain's affinity for pillows, it's entirely natural: they're related, after all, the pillow and the brain. For what do you have under the crown of your head? A grayish white, porous-plumose pulp wrapped in three pillowcases. (Your scientists call them membranes.) Yes, and I maintain that in the head of any sleeper, there is always one pillow more than he thinks. No point pretending to have less. No, sirree. Off you go!"
(From "The Branch Line", p. 96)
Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but my brain certainly feels like a pillow.
The seven stories in Memories of the Future, all written in Moscow in the 1920s, didn't quite get Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (may I call you Siggy?) in trouble, but they were still too subversive--not Soviet-friendly enough, that is--to be published; they certainly didn't capture the mood the government wanted the times to have. Siggy's vision of the present situation was hardly ideal, or pleasant--never mind that his vision of the future, as told in the title story, was even worse.
In "Memories of the Future," a hapless inventor finds his work on a time machine delayed for years by revolution and war; when he finally finishes and tests the device, the future he finds is just as unsatisfying as the present. In "Quadraturin," (check out the short film ), a man tries to escape the allotted eighty-six square feet of his apartment by applying a "biggerizing agent" to the walls, and ends up lost in his own room. A corpse in "The Thirteenth Category of Reason" misses his own funeral and gets little sympathy from the living. In "Red Snow," a man with a very hard job--"being out of a job"--resigns himself to wandering the streets, and even ignores the line for logic. Elsewhere, wanderers, misfits, and the out-of-luck trade themes and swap stories-within-stories, because there seems to be nothing else to do.
I'll admit, I bought this book because I liked the cover, and because I couldn't pronounce the author's name, and because it was published by NYRB. As penance for being somewhat shallow, I'll also admit that a lot of what Siggy--sorry, Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky--wrote went wayyy over my head. Siggy K. was a fantastic, brilliant, clever, super-imaginative genius writer whose brain could run circles around my own poor pillow-brain, and each of these stories is testament to that. One read-through isn't going to be enough--I'll need several, because Krzhizhanovsky deserves to be read by more and better readers, and to skim through it and hope to 'get' his work just won't cut it.
October 19, 2019
The story "Memories of the Future" is the last one in this collection. I almost gave up before getting there, because while there is definitely good ideas and writing here, there are some stories that I do not understand AT ALL. ("Red Snow" and "The 13th Category of Reason".) I'm glad I continued because that last story was really great for me.
It is a story of an inventor and his time machine. But mostly about the inventor trying to build a time machine. He loses his university job, has to support himself on meager income, gets drafted into the war, sent to a German prisoner-of-war camp, inherits money, has that money taken away and given to "the people", has to move into a tiny room in a common house, etc., etc. That little history lesson on Russian life, probably similar in some ways to the writer's own life, was very well done. The actual time machine is, of course, not very scientific, but it doesn't matter. It is a great story.
I also really enjoyed the surreal "The Branch Line" where a guy takes the wrong train and ends up in the land of dreams and nightmares.
People keep comparing this to Kafka, and I guess that is in the right ballpark for some stories, and they both read their stories among friends but published very little while alive. But I'd point more toward Borges, and Bruno Schulz , and maybe . "The Branch Line" is almost like Boris Vian. But these stories are really a dream-like world of their own.
These stories take concentration, you must be fully awake to parse them and their many allusions to philosophers, artists, and Soviet history. (Just pronouncing his name is hard enough for an English speaker. Just call him "Ziggy" instead.) I don't understand all the allusions, and I'm rarely fully awake, so they don't work perfectly for me but your mileage may vary.
The translation is fluid. Notes in the back are helpful in identifying the references to philosophers (especially Kant) and Russian writers.
It is a story of an inventor and his time machine. But mostly about the inventor trying to build a time machine. He loses his university job, has to support himself on meager income, gets drafted into the war, sent to a German prisoner-of-war camp, inherits money, has that money taken away and given to "the people", has to move into a tiny room in a common house, etc., etc. That little history lesson on Russian life, probably similar in some ways to the writer's own life, was very well done. The actual time machine is, of course, not very scientific, but it doesn't matter. It is a great story.
... their memories weren't up to much: in their wrangling with questionnaires they were constantly having to pigeon-hole their lives -- no easy task -- from 1905 to 1914, from 1914 to 1917 [ ... ] they were always having to quickly forget one past and learn another, while memorizing the present according to the latest editions of the papers.(The questionnaires were used to determine who should be rewarded or punished for their life pre-revolution. Remembering the lies you made-up were important!)
I also really enjoyed the surreal "The Branch Line" where a guy takes the wrong train and ends up in the land of dreams and nightmares.
People keep comparing this to Kafka, and I guess that is in the right ballpark for some stories, and they both read their stories among friends but published very little while alive. But I'd point more toward Borges, and Bruno Schulz , and maybe . "The Branch Line" is almost like Boris Vian. But these stories are really a dream-like world of their own.
These stories take concentration, you must be fully awake to parse them and their many allusions to philosophers, artists, and Soviet history. (Just pronouncing his name is hard enough for an English speaker. Just call him "Ziggy" instead.) I don't understand all the allusions, and I'm rarely fully awake, so they don't work perfectly for me but your mileage may vary.
The translation is fluid. Notes in the back are helpful in identifying the references to philosophers (especially Kant) and Russian writers.
February 19, 2018
Krzhizhanovsky鈥檚 The Bookmark is the best short story I've read in years. It brings to mind The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim by Borges, who reviews the work of a fictional author and summarizes some of the author's works, except that in The Bookmark you actually get to hear the complete (or nearly complete) stories of the fictional creator, which are every bit as engrossing as they are depicted as being. Walking the streets of Moscow, the narrator chances to sit on a bench by a man spinning a tale of the Eiffel Tower run amok, and other fantastic stories follow. Fantastic in terms of quality, not genre: the storyteller sometimes delivers impossible tales, others are utterly realistic; all of them are good. This is a five star story, and it's worth reading the collection for it alone.
But it's not the only good story in Memories of the Future, there are several other strong tales in this Krzhizhanovsky compilation (though none to match The Bookmark). The first story, Quadraturin, might be a bit misleading because it's prone to making you think that Memories of the Future will consist of enjoyable but familiar surreal stories, setting up a topical problem (too small of a living space), and giving a careful-what-you-wish-for resolution. But it's good nonetheless, and even a collection consisting entirely of such stories would have been enjoyable. However, it's actually by far the most standard of the tales contained here.
Next comes The Bookmark, already discussed, then Someone Else's Theme, a story also dealing with a run-in with a stranger that has a particular view of the world, this time a philosophical one that was intriguing but nevertheless a step down from its predecessor. Then comes The Branch Line and Red Snow, two stories where the strangeness of Krzhizhanovsky's stories is at its zenith, literally concerning dreams instead of merely being dreamlike. The Thirteenth Category of Reason is a return to a more standard story, a gravedigger relaying an anecdote about a bothersome corpse and their travels together. Lastly comes the longest, titular story Memories of the Future, as much of a hard science fiction take on time travel that I've ever read, though it also discusses the psychological aspect of such a topic as well. It spends much of its length discussing the technical side of time travel, but the most interesting aspect of the story is how other people react to the main character Shterer's obsession: the people around Shterer see the possibility of a time machine as a way to escape their poverty, pending prosecution, or death itself. Others fear knowledge of the future, and its contradiction of the soviet party line.
Thus, there are a variety of stories here, told in a variety of styles (Memories of the Future, for instance, taking the form of a summarized biography of the main character, with frequent reference to another biography of that character written by another character in the story). Despite this, though, all of the stories are distinctly Russian, dealing with the post-Revolution world that Krzhizhanovsky inhabited. They are critical of the system, even suggesting the eventual demise of the Soviet Union, so it's easy to see why they weren't published in Krzhizhanovsky's lifetimes. I'm glad they were eventually, though.
After reading The Bookmark, I knew that this wouldn't be the last thing I read by Krzhizhanovsky, even if the rest of the stories were garbage. And they weren't garbage, this collection would have been solid even if it lacked The Bookmark, even if some tales were a bit underwhelming. As a whole, Memories of the Future averages out to four stars. One more thing to note is that Joanne Turnbull's translation was masterful, and I'm glad she is the one who has tackled Krzhizhanovsky's other works.
Postscript, February 18, 2018: It's been just shy of nine months since I read Memories of the Future, and the strength of The Bookmark has stuck with me in a way that few stories do. From the cat on the ledge to the couple reliving their days in poverty with their friends, it's a masterpiece (it's so great that I'm surprised to find I didn't go into more detail about it in this review). Oftentimes my approach is to average out my feeling towards the stories in a collection, which almost always results in a middling rating unless I'm reading something by Calvino or Borges. Here, I think the more appropriate move is to rate the collection based on its best story. So, for me Memories of the Future is a five star collection, the mediocre parts of it fading away and the best imprinting themselves upon your memory in the best possible way.
But it's not the only good story in Memories of the Future, there are several other strong tales in this Krzhizhanovsky compilation (though none to match The Bookmark). The first story, Quadraturin, might be a bit misleading because it's prone to making you think that Memories of the Future will consist of enjoyable but familiar surreal stories, setting up a topical problem (too small of a living space), and giving a careful-what-you-wish-for resolution. But it's good nonetheless, and even a collection consisting entirely of such stories would have been enjoyable. However, it's actually by far the most standard of the tales contained here.
Next comes The Bookmark, already discussed, then Someone Else's Theme, a story also dealing with a run-in with a stranger that has a particular view of the world, this time a philosophical one that was intriguing but nevertheless a step down from its predecessor. Then comes The Branch Line and Red Snow, two stories where the strangeness of Krzhizhanovsky's stories is at its zenith, literally concerning dreams instead of merely being dreamlike. The Thirteenth Category of Reason is a return to a more standard story, a gravedigger relaying an anecdote about a bothersome corpse and their travels together. Lastly comes the longest, titular story Memories of the Future, as much of a hard science fiction take on time travel that I've ever read, though it also discusses the psychological aspect of such a topic as well. It spends much of its length discussing the technical side of time travel, but the most interesting aspect of the story is how other people react to the main character Shterer's obsession: the people around Shterer see the possibility of a time machine as a way to escape their poverty, pending prosecution, or death itself. Others fear knowledge of the future, and its contradiction of the soviet party line.
Thus, there are a variety of stories here, told in a variety of styles (Memories of the Future, for instance, taking the form of a summarized biography of the main character, with frequent reference to another biography of that character written by another character in the story). Despite this, though, all of the stories are distinctly Russian, dealing with the post-Revolution world that Krzhizhanovsky inhabited. They are critical of the system, even suggesting the eventual demise of the Soviet Union, so it's easy to see why they weren't published in Krzhizhanovsky's lifetimes. I'm glad they were eventually, though.
After reading The Bookmark, I knew that this wouldn't be the last thing I read by Krzhizhanovsky, even if the rest of the stories were garbage. And they weren't garbage, this collection would have been solid even if it lacked The Bookmark, even if some tales were a bit underwhelming. As a whole, Memories of the Future averages out to four stars. One more thing to note is that Joanne Turnbull's translation was masterful, and I'm glad she is the one who has tackled Krzhizhanovsky's other works.
Postscript, February 18, 2018: It's been just shy of nine months since I read Memories of the Future, and the strength of The Bookmark has stuck with me in a way that few stories do. From the cat on the ledge to the couple reliving their days in poverty with their friends, it's a masterpiece (it's so great that I'm surprised to find I didn't go into more detail about it in this review). Oftentimes my approach is to average out my feeling towards the stories in a collection, which almost always results in a middling rating unless I'm reading something by Calvino or Borges. Here, I think the more appropriate move is to rate the collection based on its best story. So, for me Memories of the Future is a five star collection, the mediocre parts of it fading away and the best imprinting themselves upon your memory in the best possible way.
January 22, 2023
The perfect combination of an almost mathematical intelligence and absurdism.
July 3, 2021
An uneven collection of short stories. Some stories are reminiscent of Gogol, others of Borges (who Krzhizhanovsky preceded, of course). As I am a fan of Gogol, but not particularly fond of Borges, it's easy to conclude which ones I most appreciated. In fact, the first short story, "Quadraturin", a delightful surreal tale in the Eastern vein, is probably the most Gogolian and my favorite. It features other nice stories, and a few of them are even metafictional, while others, like "Branch Line", are too oniric and thus boring for my taste.
An interesting short stories collection, but not necessarily a book I will ever want to reread.
An interesting short stories collection, but not necessarily a book I will ever want to reread.
March 26, 2023
鈥淜nown for being unknown,鈥� Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (which I think is approximately pronounced ker-ziz-an-off-skee) was born in Kyiv at the turn of the century and lived in Russia through the revolution and published a number of pieces in his lifetime. However, this collection from NYRB features unpublished works deemed too subversive to even show to publishers at the time. Memories of the Future is like a time capsule, beautifully preserved and presented today with only the context of time to fill in its gaps.
What immediately strikes you about Krzhizhanovsky鈥檚 writing is how familiar it feels in style and syntax鈥攖he stories unfurl in labyrinthian ways akin to the works of contemporaries like Jorge Luis Borges with a social critique and personal life philosophizing of Franz Kafka. And while Krzhizhanovsky deserves to be as prominent of a voice in conversation when discussion others like the aforementioned, he鈥檚 also writing in a league of his own in his technical and scientific expression, especially on display in the titular story, where a man creates a 鈥渢imecutter鈥� to travel any which way he pleases across the years. There鈥檚 subtlety and nuance to the writing and the plotting, but what is most striking in the story is the way in which Krzhizhanovsky philosophizes the science and physics of time鈥攄iscussing the 鈥渄ilation鈥� of time, and its nature as a 鈥渞adial鈥� 鈥渨ind鈥� that 鈥渂uffets鈥� us in oscillation, carrying along it like riding a wave or a gust.
Mysterious things happen to the characters within these tales, strange and supernatural things. For example, in the opening story, a man receives a magical elixir that can expand the space of his small, cramped apartment simply by wiping it on any surface he wants enlarged. After accidently spilling the contents of the vial, he soon is faced with the terrifying reality of his rapidly, perpetually expanding room, which grows so large that he becomes isolated in much the same way he was isolated before.
The stories are at first whimsical in their telling and conceit, but quickly transform into haunting allegories and philosophical examinations of modern human spirit, where desires are inverted and are catalyst for the fall of the protagonists. The tales also operate on a kind of dream logic, where events happen in often unexpected and roundabout ways, and presage the works of writers like Barth, Coover and Pynchon, who employ this surrealist mode in even more hyperrealistic fashion a half century after Krzhizhanovsky.
It's a gift that writers like Krzhizhanovsky, who despite being too 鈥渄angerous鈥� for their time, can be found and enjoyed anew. Reading this short collection is like getting a glimpse at the seed of influence for the most adventurous and daring of fiction in the decades following it. Highly recommend for anyone fans of the names mentioned throughout this review, or for anyone interested in buried authors whose works still live and breathe with renewed vigor today.
What immediately strikes you about Krzhizhanovsky鈥檚 writing is how familiar it feels in style and syntax鈥攖he stories unfurl in labyrinthian ways akin to the works of contemporaries like Jorge Luis Borges with a social critique and personal life philosophizing of Franz Kafka. And while Krzhizhanovsky deserves to be as prominent of a voice in conversation when discussion others like the aforementioned, he鈥檚 also writing in a league of his own in his technical and scientific expression, especially on display in the titular story, where a man creates a 鈥渢imecutter鈥� to travel any which way he pleases across the years. There鈥檚 subtlety and nuance to the writing and the plotting, but what is most striking in the story is the way in which Krzhizhanovsky philosophizes the science and physics of time鈥攄iscussing the 鈥渄ilation鈥� of time, and its nature as a 鈥渞adial鈥� 鈥渨ind鈥� that 鈥渂uffets鈥� us in oscillation, carrying along it like riding a wave or a gust.
Mysterious things happen to the characters within these tales, strange and supernatural things. For example, in the opening story, a man receives a magical elixir that can expand the space of his small, cramped apartment simply by wiping it on any surface he wants enlarged. After accidently spilling the contents of the vial, he soon is faced with the terrifying reality of his rapidly, perpetually expanding room, which grows so large that he becomes isolated in much the same way he was isolated before.
The stories are at first whimsical in their telling and conceit, but quickly transform into haunting allegories and philosophical examinations of modern human spirit, where desires are inverted and are catalyst for the fall of the protagonists. The tales also operate on a kind of dream logic, where events happen in often unexpected and roundabout ways, and presage the works of writers like Barth, Coover and Pynchon, who employ this surrealist mode in even more hyperrealistic fashion a half century after Krzhizhanovsky.
It's a gift that writers like Krzhizhanovsky, who despite being too 鈥渄angerous鈥� for their time, can be found and enjoyed anew. Reading this short collection is like getting a glimpse at the seed of influence for the most adventurous and daring of fiction in the decades following it. Highly recommend for anyone fans of the names mentioned throughout this review, or for anyone interested in buried authors whose works still live and breathe with renewed vigor today.
February 5, 2021
Memories of the Future: Six short stories and one novella of incredible invention 鈥� science fiction and fantasy, dreamy, sometimes nightmarish tales elevated to exceptional literature.
Just a sample: Quadraturin: a man hopelessly lost in the blackness of his ever-expanding room. Someone Else's Theme: a strange drifter selling philosophical systems, 鈥渆ven in installments,鈥� but to what end, to eventual nonexistence? Red Snow: a jobless man stumbles through the nightmarish, Kafkaesque Moscow streets where 鈥渓ife has been permeated by nonexistence鈥� in search of work, only to find people waiting in line for a syllogism.
Krzhizhanovsky's stories require multiple readings, for they follow a unique logic, the logic of dreams and nightmares, of myth and fairy tales. They are strange, can be darkly humorous, breathtaking, disorienting. Great stuff.
Just a sample: Quadraturin: a man hopelessly lost in the blackness of his ever-expanding room. Someone Else's Theme: a strange drifter selling philosophical systems, 鈥渆ven in installments,鈥� but to what end, to eventual nonexistence? Red Snow: a jobless man stumbles through the nightmarish, Kafkaesque Moscow streets where 鈥渓ife has been permeated by nonexistence鈥� in search of work, only to find people waiting in line for a syllogism.
Krzhizhanovsky's stories require multiple readings, for they follow a unique logic, the logic of dreams and nightmares, of myth and fairy tales. They are strange, can be darkly humorous, breathtaking, disorienting. Great stuff.
June 22, 2023
Russian absurdist speculative fiction on a whole different level, Sigizmund's collection is more miss than hit, but when it hits, the unraveling of logic streams deep in dreamstate with a pure disdain of the classical Soviet mode of storytelling. Both 'The Bookmark' and 'Somebody Else's Theme' read like straightjacket scripts where ideas falsify nature -- hell, the Eiffel Tower leaves its square and does as much damage to France as Godzilla did to Tokyo -- and themes of the mind betraying its body show much intellectual discourse, quite playfully, and which permeates the daily life of Moscow's inhabitants like a drug absorbed by ideas and inks. Far out shit here. But many of the other tales feel like someone drunk trying to relay "a wild dream" they had, full of second-guesses and self entertainment that we (as listeners) lose track of, and impatiently wait for the ending. Also of note is Krzhizhanovsky playing around with the zombie tale with a wise peasant corpse unable to find his grave and stay buried in 'The Thirteenth Category of Reason'. And the time travel tale 'Memories of the Future' is unfortunately muddled with too many ideas too quickly - the humor seems to ill fit the framework. Still, very solid work, but its un-even-ness does scatter the attention span. Sometimes a madman's philosophy is simply mad, and nothing else.
July 26, 2023
Surrealist short stories written in the 1920s, very little of which was published in his lifetime. Out of favor with the authorities, post revolution, Krzhizhanovsky mostly lectured or read his work.
This is obviously a translation, and has very useful notes. The author was very erudite, and I would have missed the numerous references to authors, theories, places and events without them. I am not very mathematically or philosophically oriented, so much of the text was meaningless to me, and I was unsure what was surreal or actual theory.
I read this for a book group, so perhaps after we discuss the book, I will have a greater appreciation for it.
This is obviously a translation, and has very useful notes. The author was very erudite, and I would have missed the numerous references to authors, theories, places and events without them. I am not very mathematically or philosophically oriented, so much of the text was meaningless to me, and I was unsure what was surreal or actual theory.
I read this for a book group, so perhaps after we discuss the book, I will have a greater appreciation for it.
Read
February 17, 2010Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Memories of the Future (tr. from the Russian by Joanne Turnbull)
This book written in the 1920s in Russia by a man who couldn鈥檛 publish because what he wrote couldn鈥檛 satisfy the 鈥渞ealist鈥� taste of the Communist authorities is not an easy read, but it has some extraordinary pages. Some American reviewers call him 鈥渟urrealist鈥� because the reality he describes doesn鈥檛 correspond to their definition of reality. Bullshit! What would people do if the word 鈥渟urrealist鈥� didn鈥檛 exist? This has nothing to do with surrealism. Maybe the Soviet reality of the time was surreal, but poor Sigizmund had no intention of being 鈥渟urrealist鈥�! Let鈥檚 remember that the surrealists were either being playful or were trying to subvert the 鈥渞ational鈥� way of looking at things. But Russian and East European writers don鈥檛 need to 鈥渟ubvert鈥� this rational way of perceiving the real because they don鈥檛 perceive it in this rational way to being with. They are naturally 鈥渋rrational鈥� (that is, according to the Western definition of 鈥渞eason鈥�)鈥攊e, they do not necessarily use a cause-effect logic.
SK was a kin soul to Felipe Alfau. His characters not only become independent of their creator, but turn into critics, denying their author鈥檚 existence鈥斺€渢hey are the book鈥檚 atheists.鈥�
In one of the book鈥檚 dialogues, one of the characters asks, 鈥淲hat distinguishes a creator of culture from its consumers?鈥�
The answer is the best definition of the artist I have ever read:
鈥淗onesty鈥濃€攁nd this is why:
What distinguishes them is the fact that, unlike other people, the creator gives back what he receives on credit from nature. Every day the sun 鈥渓ends its rays to every one of us.鈥� To give something back is a duty of anyone who 鈥渄oesn鈥檛 wish to be a thief of his own existence. Talent is just that, a basic honesty on the part of 鈥業鈥� toward 鈥榥ot I鈥�, a partial payment of the bill presented by the sun: the painter pays for the colors of things with the paints on his palette [鈥�:] the philosopher pays for the world with his worldview.鈥�
This book written in the 1920s in Russia by a man who couldn鈥檛 publish because what he wrote couldn鈥檛 satisfy the 鈥渞ealist鈥� taste of the Communist authorities is not an easy read, but it has some extraordinary pages. Some American reviewers call him 鈥渟urrealist鈥� because the reality he describes doesn鈥檛 correspond to their definition of reality. Bullshit! What would people do if the word 鈥渟urrealist鈥� didn鈥檛 exist? This has nothing to do with surrealism. Maybe the Soviet reality of the time was surreal, but poor Sigizmund had no intention of being 鈥渟urrealist鈥�! Let鈥檚 remember that the surrealists were either being playful or were trying to subvert the 鈥渞ational鈥� way of looking at things. But Russian and East European writers don鈥檛 need to 鈥渟ubvert鈥� this rational way of perceiving the real because they don鈥檛 perceive it in this rational way to being with. They are naturally 鈥渋rrational鈥� (that is, according to the Western definition of 鈥渞eason鈥�)鈥攊e, they do not necessarily use a cause-effect logic.
SK was a kin soul to Felipe Alfau. His characters not only become independent of their creator, but turn into critics, denying their author鈥檚 existence鈥斺€渢hey are the book鈥檚 atheists.鈥�
In one of the book鈥檚 dialogues, one of the characters asks, 鈥淲hat distinguishes a creator of culture from its consumers?鈥�
The answer is the best definition of the artist I have ever read:
鈥淗onesty鈥濃€攁nd this is why:
What distinguishes them is the fact that, unlike other people, the creator gives back what he receives on credit from nature. Every day the sun 鈥渓ends its rays to every one of us.鈥� To give something back is a duty of anyone who 鈥渄oesn鈥檛 wish to be a thief of his own existence. Talent is just that, a basic honesty on the part of 鈥業鈥� toward 鈥榥ot I鈥�, a partial payment of the bill presented by the sun: the painter pays for the colors of things with the paints on his palette [鈥�:] the philosopher pays for the world with his worldview.鈥�
April 8, 2011
Deft, precise words and an ever-so-dry humor charting the contours of a fantastic embedded in the quotidian, equal parts Gogol and Borges but with a philosophical, even metaphysical density that may exceed either. So so great, and highly original, especially for its time and place (Stalinist Russia). So much so that Krzhizhanovsky didn't even attempt to publish these very-non-socialist-realist stories, and they languished in a vault until the 70s. Thankfully they survived and are starting to come into translation. Excitingly, these are only seven of his hundred or so stories and novellas (and there're apparently a handful of novels out there as well).
Jesse has written much more on this already, so I'll defer further description to .
Jesse has written much more on this already, so I'll defer further description to .
August 25, 2018
Pretty wonderful stories of ideas, strange and claustrophobic and surreal and biting. Devoid of socialist realism or prol art student experimentation, these tales are proto-science fiction or weird tales of mystery.
QUADRATURIN - a smear of a new solvent achieves the poor Moscovite's dream of unlimited living space. To much horror.
THE BOOKMARK - the story soars through the tight pages of other people's reading
SOMEONE ELSE'S THEME - examines the errant, moorless scholar, the critic, and a narrator intent upon retracing the magic of enlightened conversation.
THE BRANCH LINE - exists to illustrate the terror of commuting, the disruption of modern rail travel.
RED SNOW - art and death and the meaning of other peoples' grave sites.
THE THIRTEENTH CATEGORY OF REASON - a ghost tale of living too long.
MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE - HG Well's Time Machine update for the end of history. Stalin makes the protagonist disappear in the end.
Khzhizhanovsky is no poet, nor does he master the perfect turn of the phrase to imbue his stories with a universal charm. The cold, neither, creeps in between the floorboards nor frosts the souls of the passerby because he writes IDEAS, not stories. These tales bristle with profundity and struggle through systems, the chickenwire of the post-war Revolutionary Soviet society. These stories bring forth the "end of history" in each profound last paragraph and every last line an epitaph.
Fine addition to the ever growing wealth of literature dealing with the failure of the bourgeoisie intellectual pencil pusher, haunted by his own irrelevant mortality.
QUADRATURIN - a smear of a new solvent achieves the poor Moscovite's dream of unlimited living space. To much horror.
THE BOOKMARK - the story soars through the tight pages of other people's reading
SOMEONE ELSE'S THEME - examines the errant, moorless scholar, the critic, and a narrator intent upon retracing the magic of enlightened conversation.
THE BRANCH LINE - exists to illustrate the terror of commuting, the disruption of modern rail travel.
RED SNOW - art and death and the meaning of other peoples' grave sites.
THE THIRTEENTH CATEGORY OF REASON - a ghost tale of living too long.
MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE - HG Well's Time Machine update for the end of history. Stalin makes the protagonist disappear in the end.
Khzhizhanovsky is no poet, nor does he master the perfect turn of the phrase to imbue his stories with a universal charm. The cold, neither, creeps in between the floorboards nor frosts the souls of the passerby because he writes IDEAS, not stories. These tales bristle with profundity and struggle through systems, the chickenwire of the post-war Revolutionary Soviet society. These stories bring forth the "end of history" in each profound last paragraph and every last line an epitaph.
Fine addition to the ever growing wealth of literature dealing with the failure of the bourgeoisie intellectual pencil pusher, haunted by his own irrelevant mortality.
May 31, 2021
4.5/5
Of course, one shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater, but if the baby wants to throw itself out, my office will make all the arrangements.I'm currently watching a Korean horror drama centered around the idea of people physically transforming into horrible, human eating, and borderline immortal monsters upon the point that they emotionally succumb to despair. I've had to space it out because of how heavy the subject matter is for the most part, but the fact that I love it so much because of how good it is in its quality has got me thinking about works of fiction that incorporate the bending of the credibility of reality in its framework, whether supernatural, science fiction, surrealism, or whatever else things are calling themselves these days. With that show, it's the deftness with which a multitude of sympathetic characters are drawn with a mere few strokes of causes and reactions, alongside the deep and complicated bonds between the cast and the ease in which the narrative captures humor, tranquility, love, compassion, and other rays of shining light in the midst of a veritable apocalypse. Comparatively, this collection of story is less diverse in its characters and less brutal in its plot points, and I wouldn't be surprised if most of the cast, especially the main third person point perspective for each story, is little more than Krzhizhanovsky in yet another character guise doing his best to survive yet another theme. However, the touches of marvel, the hints of terror, the light brushes of knowledge, and the insatiable need explore the impact of current times on the human spirit, even at the expensive of maintaining "realism" in one's stories: it took me reading this alongside watching the aforementioned series to realize that this is what I look for when I am in the mood to read something more fantastical, and for that, I must give the work full credit.
[O]ur papers aren't in the habit of printing notices like:I mentioned "The Bookmark", the second in this collection, as being one of the best short stories of all time, and at the end of my reading, I stand by that. The others are, in order, "Quadraturin", "Someone Else's Theme", "The Branch Line", "Red Snow", "The Thirteenth Category of Reason", and, finally, the titular piece, "Memories of the Future". Other reviews talk about Kafka and a whole host of associated "weird" writers. Me, I was and am still thinking of Le Guin, Butler, Delany, and even, in the case of "The Branch Line", the films of Ghibli, although, thinking about the reasons why I resonate so much with Kafka, I'd be glad to include him as well. For what I'm concerned with is how apparent it is that Krzhizhanovsky, who had a wealth of languages at his disposal and an even broader range of knowledge to draw upon, was, in some way, simply trying to figure out what impact Soviet Russia was having on its people, its culture, and, ultimately, its reality, through setting up short pieces of writing, each with their own peculiar, extra-odinary conceit, and observing how they each fall out. Much as parallels can be seen between 'Sweet Home', the television series I talked about previously, and the ongoing pandemic, Krzhizhanovsky's strength lies in the fact that he wasn't boiling down the issue to '____ good, ____ bad', but what happens to the people in a utilitarian state who need art to live , or what will happen to science in the service of the people's questionnaire, or how far do things have to go before the so called constraints of reality in the form of time and space and the not so solid boundaries of dreams such as those of mathematics or philosophy become tools to wield rather than limits to respect?
LOST
MY SOUL
I BEG YOU, FOR A SUBSTANTIAL REWARD...
The future master of durations dried his eyes with small fists and asked, "And if time breaks, will we mend it too?"Very weighty questions indeed, but I wouldn't have loved it so much if Krzhizhanovsky hadn't been so carefully methodical in his thought experiments, or hadn't cared so much about the small, tragic figures making their way through the stories, trying their best to get by on their training and their dignity. Many a writer, more than a few editors, a carpenter turned bureaucrat, gravedigger possibly become necromancer, theme writer become dogknapper turned anti-sympathy, or anti-symp, agitator (it was very strange coming across that one in line with todays modern day jargon of 'simp', aka a fan who would probably go so far as to physically sacrifice themselves for the sake of their human idol), a train traveler, a Rromani fortune teller, and even a sex worker, who doesn't appear for very long, but isn't just shoved it for a "twist" or some other payout of pathos fueled by violation, but just as another person, figuring things out in a world that's weird enough without time travelers and headless solicitors coming into it. It also helps that Krzhizhanovsky apparently had my very dry, often to the point of being pitch black, sense of humor, and I can just picture him, fresh off of a spiel that referenced a good half a dozen pivotal thinkers in the areas of philosophy or calculus, only to follow it up with a sentence or phrase wry enough to even curl up a corner of his own lips in a semi smile. In light of that, if you honestly don't know what the big deal is about these stories, that's fine, as there's definitely a strong level of personal bias running through my own appreciation. Krzhizhanovsky's need for personal privacy was intense enough to keep his eventual wife at arms length for a quarter of a century, even holding off on sharing an apartment when it became possible (see "Someone Else's Theme" for a semi-explanation of such), and lord do I understand that.
His father, following the old clock's lead, fell silent. He sat up and eyed his child with not a little uneasiness.
"Hello, this is 1928 speaking. Where are you?"
"In 1943," the muffled reply might be.
Christianity collapsed, I say, only because the world did not.I very rarely give out five stars these days, so when it happens, even I have to sit up and pay attention. This collection almost didn't make it due to its actual rating resting on the half star line, as I felt that the pace and precision of Krzhizhanovsky's efforts sagged a bit in "The Branch Line" and some of the middle stages of "Memories of the Future". However, the aforementioned "The Bookmark" did its part, as did "Red Snow", which is incredibly horrifying in a way that really digs into the marrow of the dehumanizing aspects of the Soviet experiment that I'm not surprised that Anna Gavrilovna Bovshek, Krzhizhanovsky's partner, kept it with her rather than consigning to the archives with practically everything else of her second husband's work during the 1950s. In terms of reasons why you, reader, should read this collection, it's easy to throw out fancy sounding dualisms such as "neoligistic whimsy", "feverish invention", and "existential angst" in hopes of drawing in as many disparate readers as possible, as did the New York Times review of this collection. A more accurate way of determining whether you'd like this or not is to think very carefully about how invested you are in figuring out how humanity can not only best survive amongst itself, but even thrive, whether one is inclined towards the literary, the scientific, the mystical, or a confluence of all three on the cutting edge of what is yet to come. For I have a feeling that, every so often, Krzhizhanovsky recognized the good in what the revolution in his country was trying to achieve, and it was only after so many broken promises that he resigned himself to keeping his head above water and typing out his experiments, bewilderment, anger, and other clandestine musings on art, physics, and the human spirit below. It also wouldn't hurt to share his sense of humor, for, as he perfectly states in his much secreted away "Red Snow,""In hopelessness, too, you see, there's a razor-sharp delight.", and resonating with that is half the journey.
And, looking away, he declaimed: "'Take me to the land of those who understand.'"
"'Who perish,'" the linguist corrected him.
"It's the same thing."
And the three went on with their work.
"So there's no hope?"
"None."
I hadn't gone more than a dozen paces when鈥攖hrough the noise and hubbub of the square鈥攈is voice overtook me.
"And even so!"
I turned around.
He was standing on the curb, smiling brightly and serenely, and repeating, no longer to me, but to the starburst of streets before him: "And even so."
Those were our final parting words.
April 10, 2016
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky never managed to get a book published in the Soviet Union in his lifetime (1887 - 1950). It was not until 1989 that his work started to be published, now stretching to five volumes in Russian. So it was with delight that I discovered this translation of probably his best known short story and six other short works in 'Memories of the Future', published by the New York Review of Books and translated by Moscow-based Joanne Turnbull.
What a gem this book has turned out to be. After reading as much of Bulgakov, Kharms and Grossman as I have been able to get hold of, Krzhizhanovsky has to be included with them. Had more of his work been published during his lifetime with the encouragement this would have engendered then I personally think another Russian name would be added to the canon of European masters-who-changed-our-perceptions-of-literature. Too strong? Get the book and read for yourself.
Krzhizhanovsky's background appears to be very similar to another Polish Ukrainian Russian - the composer Karol Szymanowski. The composer turned to Poland whilst the writer turned to Moscow - one to become grumpier and fated to be hailed as the new Messiah for the rise of a post-Chopin Polish music, and the other to all but vanish into obscurity despite his incredibly well-read and intellectual background in both Philosophy and all the Arts.
As I lived very close to where Krzhizhanovsky used to live on old Arbat I feel akin in a way and also appalled that I did not know this before leaving for Mayakovskaya. Every story within this book has at its kernel a gem of an idea, and every story has at least one section that you want to underscore, highlight and write down for reference. They tend to feel like they have a 'science-fiction'-like (hawk...spit) quality, but these are not science-fiction. Everyone asks, however, for engagement by the reader. This is not some cosy little volume of Chesterton or Huxley.
'Quadraturin', the first story, reads like a short Kafka exercise in which a room's inhabitant disappears in the suddenly expanding dimensions of his previously assigned cosy cubby-hole. The second story 'The Bookmark' removes the writer from the writing by several dimensions and we are off into Flann o'Brien / Third Policeman / At-Swim-Two-Birds territory with a particular Russian slant. This is a writer writing about a writer writing about a book in which a writer........ you get the picture. It contains what could very well be some pithy autobiographical stuff too
and....
The fun doesn't stop there. The next story is 'Someone Else's Theme', a wild adventure again about a wordsmith who encounters a Theme-Giver and looks to seek him out again. We're into the realm of meta-fiction again where characters talk about their lack of existence and writers fight their creations. Read this deeply and you begin to sense Krzhizhanovsky's suggestion that there is a character-like made-upness about the nature of existence. This most certainly is the existential short story with reflections by readers on characters in books and that inflexion that takes place at that point. A truly deep, psychological and meaningful story which just gets better the more you consider it. 'Someone Else's Theme' will give you hours of contemplation and pleasure as you unravel this multi-stranded tale.
'The Branch Line' is the slightest of the short strories being an evocation of dream to reality during a railway journey. But its a dream of dreaming itself and a fantasy on the 'heavy industry' of dreaming with Stakhanovites called up to the maintenance and vorsprung of Soviet dreaming.
'Red Snow' and 'The Thirteenth Category of reason' I will leave for you to discover, only to say that Krzhizhanovsky read Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason' as an adolescent (or at least according to the burgeoning copying from one internet site to another so beloved of yoof-innernet geekdom out there).
'Memories of the Future' itself is an absolute belter of a tale which I am not about to give away. But it is about Time Travel and has absolutely nothing to do with H G Wells. I keep looking for a picture of Krzhizhanovsky, and when I find it I think it will be the face of Shterer, the protagonist, that I see as I read the tale.
What else can I say?
get this book - its a belter and reveals an undiscovered genius who '........ coulda been a contender' errrrrrrr for something. A great writer.
What a gem this book has turned out to be. After reading as much of Bulgakov, Kharms and Grossman as I have been able to get hold of, Krzhizhanovsky has to be included with them. Had more of his work been published during his lifetime with the encouragement this would have engendered then I personally think another Russian name would be added to the canon of European masters-who-changed-our-perceptions-of-literature. Too strong? Get the book and read for yourself.
Krzhizhanovsky's background appears to be very similar to another Polish Ukrainian Russian - the composer Karol Szymanowski. The composer turned to Poland whilst the writer turned to Moscow - one to become grumpier and fated to be hailed as the new Messiah for the rise of a post-Chopin Polish music, and the other to all but vanish into obscurity despite his incredibly well-read and intellectual background in both Philosophy and all the Arts.
As I lived very close to where Krzhizhanovsky used to live on old Arbat I feel akin in a way and also appalled that I did not know this before leaving for Mayakovskaya. Every story within this book has at its kernel a gem of an idea, and every story has at least one section that you want to underscore, highlight and write down for reference. They tend to feel like they have a 'science-fiction'-like (hawk...spit) quality, but these are not science-fiction. Everyone asks, however, for engagement by the reader. This is not some cosy little volume of Chesterton or Huxley.
'Quadraturin', the first story, reads like a short Kafka exercise in which a room's inhabitant disappears in the suddenly expanding dimensions of his previously assigned cosy cubby-hole. The second story 'The Bookmark' removes the writer from the writing by several dimensions and we are off into Flann o'Brien / Third Policeman / At-Swim-Two-Birds territory with a particular Russian slant. This is a writer writing about a writer writing about a book in which a writer........ you get the picture. It contains what could very well be some pithy autobiographical stuff too
"You say this is 'nonsense'. Not at all: we writers write our stories, but literary historians in whose power it is to admit us or not to admit us into history, to open or slam the door, also want, you see, to tell stories about stories. Otherwise, their stuck. And so the story that can be told in ten words or less, the one easily summarised, squeezes in the door, while writings, which cannot produce that something,remain..... nothing.
and....
" ...the land's noblest and richest magnates raised animals disputans. There isn't anything to argue about in an isolated country where everything has been determined and predetermined in saecula saeculorum but these disputants were trained for the purpose, fed a special diet that itrritated the liver and sublingual nerve, then pitted against one another and forced to argue till they were hoarse and foaming at the mouth - to unanimous laughter and merry halloos of those that still remembered the old traditions.
The fun doesn't stop there. The next story is 'Someone Else's Theme', a wild adventure again about a wordsmith who encounters a Theme-Giver and looks to seek him out again. We're into the realm of meta-fiction again where characters talk about their lack of existence and writers fight their creations. Read this deeply and you begin to sense Krzhizhanovsky's suggestion that there is a character-like made-upness about the nature of existence. This most certainly is the existential short story with reflections by readers on characters in books and that inflexion that takes place at that point. A truly deep, psychological and meaningful story which just gets better the more you consider it. 'Someone Else's Theme' will give you hours of contemplation and pleasure as you unravel this multi-stranded tale.
'The Branch Line' is the slightest of the short strories being an evocation of dream to reality during a railway journey. But its a dream of dreaming itself and a fantasy on the 'heavy industry' of dreaming with Stakhanovites called up to the maintenance and vorsprung of Soviet dreaming.
'Red Snow' and 'The Thirteenth Category of reason' I will leave for you to discover, only to say that Krzhizhanovsky read Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason' as an adolescent (or at least according to the burgeoning copying from one internet site to another so beloved of yoof-innernet geekdom out there).
'Memories of the Future' itself is an absolute belter of a tale which I am not about to give away. But it is about Time Travel and has absolutely nothing to do with H G Wells. I keep looking for a picture of Krzhizhanovsky, and when I find it I think it will be the face of Shterer, the protagonist, that I see as I read the tale.
What else can I say?
get this book - its a belter and reveals an undiscovered genius who '........ coulda been a contender' errrrrrrr for something. A great writer.
March 8, 2014
I so, so badly wanted to like this book after reading an article a few years back about the rediscovery of Krzhizhanovsky's work. Heralded as a great surrealist, Kafkaean master in that piece and elsewhere, I was taken aback to find K.'s short stories pretty mundane and, well, not very good. The longest work, "Memories of the Future" is probably the best, the story of a young guy obsessed with time building a machine he calls the "timecutter" and then maneuvering through the nascent Soviet state trying to get sponsorship for it. But even this falls pretty flat. The opening story about a paste that makes a man's very small room expand exponentially was good, too, but the rest was shrecky. Also, some of the over-described stories from the back cover all occur in one particular story, a little misleading. For instance, as awesome as it sounds there is no story about the "Eiffel Tower" running amok: that's part of another story and is of dubious worth.
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December 19, 2023delicious selection of krzhizhanovsky's !Russian silver age short stories ! especially the first & last. Do go look if you like bulgakov, esp his Heart of the Dog era. Or most any silvers! Tho this absolutely pre-dates much of Bulgy. Whiffs of kafka too in the first, 'Quadraturin', which I love to see. nice to think about this evolutionary Dostoevsky-kafka line... we won't be so simple
unexpectedly, Kant is a theme. huh.
The last, longest story gives us the title! ANd is very literally a time travel/machine narrative, from the 1920s. only it's keen to also establish the SCIENCE of the matter & set it amid the chaos of ww1 & the russian civil war and so forth,, what a bizarre & ambitious number for a little short story but it ? works? ? miracle
unexpectedly, Kant is a theme. huh.
The last, longest story gives us the title! ANd is very literally a time travel/machine narrative, from the 1920s. only it's keen to also establish the SCIENCE of the matter & set it amid the chaos of ww1 & the russian civil war and so forth,, what a bizarre & ambitious number for a little short story but it ? works? ? miracle
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March 3, 2017Death does great things for a man. I happened to read a good bit of this in a university cafe and while returning to my chair, overlooking the crowd, I thought, "It's funny because if any Creative Writing students ever gave me a manuscript anything like Krzhizhanovsky I'd give them a poor grade for wasting my time, but when a long dead writer whose work is unknown and whose name is unpronounceable does it I'll give it a go." I would say it wasn't what I expected, but considering I had no idea what to expect I'll just say there were several turns of phrases worthy of underlining and I look forward to Autobiography of a Corpse. For seemingly unrelated reasons I recalled reading Bruno Schulz in a laundromat off of Clement Street in San Francisco wherein once finished I felt compelled to seek out whatever else I could by Schulz because despite the lack of anything specific, I felt drawn to the atmosphere. Everyone should have a place on their shelf for Krzhizhanovsky. Imagine if you were at a party and someone brought up Krzhizhanovsky. No wait that might be the most churlish thing imagineable. I came to this party to hear lesbian feminists embrace Sharia Law what the fuck is that one doing talking about Krzhizhanovsky. Why is this visual artist in his third year at Pratt trying to explain the virtues of Communism to me? This place is a pigsty. A sheer sty of pigs. Last year that one was saying President Trump was putting everyone in concentration camps but like everyone's still here. This place is such a pigsty. Oh right and then of course whoever mentioned Krzhizhanovsky before is leaving without saying goodbye because she has to fly back home to Beirut. "Wait I thought Beirut was like a band." So I left and walked to Coney Island. It took twelve hours. I ate nothing but locusts and wild honey on the way. Those Dr Scholls from Christmas came in hand. I got there early and finished the last/title story on the tattooed gum strewn steps. I thought. I didn't even hear her coming down the steps.
December 11, 2012
I have to admit I was very excited to pick this book up and read it. I went into it knowing I may not enjoy the writing style. I both did and didn't. The book is a compilation of seven short stories. I thoroughly enjoyed three of the seven. The other four were, and you can quote me on this, "meh".
The three I enjoyed were:
Quadraturin, a story about a man in a tiny apartment who is given a salve that, when applied to the walls of the apartment, will make it grow. This was a fun story about being careful what you wish for. It is also a story about the harsh living conditions in Moscow at the time of the writing.
The Thirteenth Category of Reason. This one was my favorite. It is about a grave digger and a corpse that visits him. Again, it tells the story of the circumstances in Russia at the time the author is writing the book. The masses of people and that many of them are merely like walking corpses due to the oppression and depression. I actually have a son who lives in Russia and many of these depressions are in fact alive and well.
Memories of the Future. I've always enjoyed stories about time and time travel. This one reminded me some of Wells's The Time Machine.
I really didn't care for the other four stories so I won't comment on them much. If you are reading this review you have likely read other reviews on them and I too found them a little difficult to follow. His writing style is to take you from one thing to the next and it can be done quickly and if you aren't following his train of thought, you will feel left behind.
It is because I only enjoyed three of the seven that I gave the book three stars. The ones I liked would be rated higher and the ones I disliked, lower. I'll simply average them out to a three.
I hope this doesn't discourage you from reading the compilation. Read my favorite first if you like. Then, if it is to your liking, keep going. There is a lot to learn about Russia during the early 20th century. Enjoy!
August 21, 2011
Sometimes it takes a bit of work to read a work of genius, but Krzhizhanovsky is worth the effort. Writers and teachers of writing speak of narratives being either character driven or plot driven; the stories comprising Memories of the Future are driven by ideas, oftentimes breathtaking in their scope, intelligence, and force of imagination. Reminiscent of his contemporary, Andrey Platonov, Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky's forays into surreal landscapes provide both the author and reader a vantage point from which to view Soviet Russia--through a distorted lens into a funhouse mirror--as perhaps the safest alternative to a direct examination of an environment in which artistic and other individual freedoms were suppressed. The story "The Branch Line" is a case in point. There the protagonist finds himself exiting a train in a place where the residents are manufacturing nightmares with the intention of shipping them back to the realms of daylight consciousness. "!ALL HANDS TO THE HEAVY INDUSTRY OF HEAVY DREAMS!" a sign proclaims, at which the main character tells himself "I'd better turn back." Once he is off the rails, as it were, turning back is easier said than done. These are chilling, sobering, thoughtful tales, all the more remarkable for having survived the times in which they were written.
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