Description
Composed of seven dark tales, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich presents variations on the theme of political and social self-destruction throughout Eastern Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. The characters in these stories are caught in a world of political hypocrisy, which ultimately leads to death, their common fate. Although the stories Kis tells are based on historical events, the beauty and precision of his prose elevates these ostensibly true stories into works of literary art that transcend the politics of their time.
Genres
Collection
Publication
New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, [1978]
Pages
135
User reviews
LibraryThing member labfs39
This thin volume is part of the Writers from the Other Europe series, edited by Philip Roth. It contains seven short works, including the titular story, with interwoven themes and some recurring characters. Although none of the characters are Serbo-Croatian and the stories are set in former
One story, "Dogs and Books", is set in 1330 and describes the persecution of Jews in France by the Inquisition. Baruch David Neumann is forcibly converted to Christianity and then fights to prove that conversion by force is not legal or morally binding. A mob disagrees with his learned argument:
I was busy reading and writing when a great number of these men burst into my chamber, armed with ignorance blunt as a whip, and hatred sharp as a knife.
I love that line.
It wasn't my silks that brought blood to their eyes, but the books arranged on my shelves; they shoved the silks under their cloaks, but they threw the books on the floor, stamped on them, and ripped them to shreds before my eyes.
The parallels between this attack by the Inquisition and later attacks on intellectuals by the NKVD (or the Gestapo, for that matter) are striking.
On August 16, 1330, Baruch finally wavered, confessed, and affirmed that he had renounced the Jewish faith. Since they had read to him the record of the hearing, the said Neumann, when asked whether he had made his confession under torture or immediately thereafter, answered that he had made his confession immediately thereafter, about three o'clock in the morning, and on that same day in the evening hours he made the same confession without having been first brought into the torture chamber.
And so is a man broken. No matter who is holding the whip.
The collection ends with a pseudo-biography, "The Short Biography of A.A. Darmolatov", and the following postscript:
He remains a medical phenomenon in Russian literature: Darmolatov's case was entered in all the latest pathology textbooks. A photography of his scrotum, the size of the biggest collective farm pumpkin, is also reprinted in foreign medical books, where elephantiasis (elephantiasis nostras) is mentioned, and as a moral for writers that to write one must have more than big balls.
As Kiš discovered to his own detriment.
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Comintern countries, the depiction of ill treatment at the hands of Stalinists was enough to enrage Yugoslavs when the book was published in 1976. Critics also attacked the book as plagiarism, because of a technique Kiš used of including quotes directly lifted from other texts. Although he defended his use of textual transposition, the flap was enough to cause him to eventually flee to Paris where his marriage and his health deteriorated. His last work of note, [Encyclopedia of the Dead], partially rehabilitated him, and he finally won the [[Andric]] Prize.One story, "Dogs and Books", is set in 1330 and describes the persecution of Jews in France by the Inquisition. Baruch David Neumann is forcibly converted to Christianity and then fights to prove that conversion by force is not legal or morally binding. A mob disagrees with his learned argument:
I was busy reading and writing when a great number of these men burst into my chamber, armed with ignorance blunt as a whip, and hatred sharp as a knife.
I love that line.
It wasn't my silks that brought blood to their eyes, but the books arranged on my shelves; they shoved the silks under their cloaks, but they threw the books on the floor, stamped on them, and ripped them to shreds before my eyes.
The parallels between this attack by the Inquisition and later attacks on intellectuals by the NKVD (or the Gestapo, for that matter) are striking.
On August 16, 1330, Baruch finally wavered, confessed, and affirmed that he had renounced the Jewish faith. Since they had read to him the record of the hearing, the said Neumann, when asked whether he had made his confession under torture or immediately thereafter, answered that he had made his confession immediately thereafter, about three o'clock in the morning, and on that same day in the evening hours he made the same confession without having been first brought into the torture chamber.
And so is a man broken. No matter who is holding the whip.
The collection ends with a pseudo-biography, "The Short Biography of A.A. Darmolatov", and the following postscript:
He remains a medical phenomenon in Russian literature: Darmolatov's case was entered in all the latest pathology textbooks. A photography of his scrotum, the size of the biggest collective farm pumpkin, is also reprinted in foreign medical books, where elephantiasis (elephantiasis nostras) is mentioned, and as a moral for writers that to write one must have more than big balls.
As Kiš discovered to his own detriment.
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LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind
A collection of seven sparse tales about the dark comedies of life in the Comintern, and how revolutions devour their own children, as Saturn did. Bitterly mocking these cruel moments of fate. Read them all in one sitting, after bedtime, and will stay with me long after.
LibraryThing member MeditationesMartini
This is a series of basically allegorical short stories, really cameos or vignettes, about people to whom Communism brought a swift or agonizingly long and difficult death. I was missing basically the whole layer of correspondences to Kiš's own Yugoslavia (the stories formally all take place
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elsewhere), but I thought this was wonderful--cold and unflinching about the horrors humans visit on humans but still somehow finding a way to keep you believing in our essential dignity and perhaps even decency as persons, and to pin the blame for making us monsters squarely on the ideology that values ideology over not making us monsters. I guess there's a "plagiarism controversy" and I didn't look into it, but I found this book strangely heartening as well as an artisanal wonder, and I recommend it. Show Less
LibraryThing member ivan.frade
You can read this book as a description of the East Europe history (the reviews usually focus on this point), but you can also read it as a collection of stories with characters crossing their paths between them in an almost magical style. Good stories, great descriptions of the characters, their
Very well written, It is a must read, specially if you like (or are curious about) the east europe style.
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personal story and their failure or success in life. Very well written, It is a must read, specially if you like (or are curious about) the east europe style.
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LibraryThing member kant1066
Danilo Kis is someone whom I have wanted to read ever since I heard Susan Sontag share her admiration for him in an interview several years ago. This novel, really a collection of short stories whose characters are thematically interwoven over space and time, details a series of lives as they
He is deserving of a bigger audience in both Europe and the United States.
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encounter revolutionary movements, and how those revolutions have irrevocably changed the lives of the people involved. Being a Yugoslav, Kis' primary interest might have been the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, but the story set in the fourteenth-century shows the universality of Kis' concern. Regardless of setting, each of the stories is set against a mental landscape of prisons and human abattoirs where suffering and horror are par for the course. Kis uses a lyrical, detached style which softens and distances itself from the horror we know is occurring, creating a kind of "litterature verite," full of horrible whimsy, making the stories irresistible to read.He is deserving of a bigger audience in both Europe and the United States.
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LibraryThing member jonfaith
Jesus, that was my husk of a response after I finished this one on a rainy afternoon, still jet-lagged from a honeymoon of sorts in London and back in Indiana, one foaming with the necessity of quickly organizing most aspects of my life.
Original publication date
1976 (original Serbo-Croatian)
1978 (English translation)