Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
NYRB Classics (2009), Paperback, 256 pages
Description
"Written in Soviet Moscow in the 1920s but considered too subversive even to show to a publisher the seven tales included here attest to Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky's boundless imagination, black humor, and breathtaking irony- a man loses his way in the vast black waste of his own small room; the Eiffel Tower runs amok; a kind soul dreams of selling everything you need for suicide ; an absentminded passenger boards the wrong train, winding up in a place where night is day, nightmares are the reality, and the backs of all facts have been broken; a man out looking for work comes across a line for logic but doesn't join it as there's no guarantee the logic will last; a sociable corpse misses his own funeral; an inventor gets a glimpse of the far-from-radiant communist future."… (more)
Media reviews
In the 1920s, a disaffected Soviet encyclopedia editor named Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky — a man haunted by Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” and by Communist realities — began writing a series of philosophical, allegorical, fantastical short stories. Seven of them appear in “Memories of
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the Future,” a selection of his fiction that takes its title from the book’s longest entry — the tale of a brusque monomaniac who builds a “timecutter” to eject himself from 1920s Moscow. None of these stories were published in Krzhizhanovsky’s lifetime. This was not because the work had been rejected or because it was, well, a little weird. Krzhizhanovsky, it seems, was too proud, too shy or (more likely) too frightened to show them around — given that he was spinning his dystopic fictions at about the same time that Stalin was collectivizing the Soviet countryside. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member Ifland
What distinguishes an artist from the other people?
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Memories of the Future (tr. from the Russian by Joanne Turnbull)
This book written (but not published) in the 1920s in Communist Russia is not an easy read, but it has some extraordinary pages. Some American reviewers
SK was a kin soul to Felipe Alfau. His characters not only become independent of their creator, but turn into critics, denying their author’s existence—“they are the book’s atheists.”
In one of the book’s dialogues, one of the characters asks, “What distinguishes a creator of culture from its consumers?”
The answer is the best definition of the artist I have ever read:
“Honesty”—and 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 “lends its rays to every one of us.” To give something back is a duty of anyone who “doesn’t wish to be a thief of his own existence. Talent is just that, a basic honesty on the part of ‘I’ toward ‘not I’, a partial payment of the bill presented by the sun: the painter pays for the colors of things with the paints on his palette […:] the philosopher pays for the world with his worldview.”
In other words: Honesty toward a higher order of things (not toward your next-door neighbor)
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Memories of the Future (tr. from the Russian by Joanne Turnbull)
This book written (but not published) in the 1920s in Communist Russia is not an easy read, but it has some extraordinary pages. Some American reviewers
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call SK “surrealist” because the reality he describes doesn’t correspond to their definition of reality. Bullshit! What would people do if the word “surrealist” didn’t 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 “surrealist”! Let’s remember that the surrealists were either being playful or were trying to subvert the “rational” way of looking at things. But Russian and East European writers don’t need to “subvert” this rational way of perceiving the real because they don’t perceive it in this rational way to being with. They are naturally “irrational” (that is, according to the Western definition of “reason”)—ie, 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’s existence—“they are the book’s atheists.”
In one of the book’s dialogues, one of the characters asks, “What distinguishes a creator of culture from its consumers?”
The answer is the best definition of the artist I have ever read:
“Honesty”—and 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 “lends its rays to every one of us.” To give something back is a duty of anyone who “doesn’t wish to be a thief of his own existence. Talent is just that, a basic honesty on the part of ‘I’ toward ‘not I’, a partial payment of the bill presented by the sun: the painter pays for the colors of things with the paints on his palette […:] the philosopher pays for the world with his worldview.”
In other words: Honesty toward a higher order of things (not toward your next-door neighbor)
Show Less
LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind
First off, the author's name is pronounced Kurr-zheh-zhuh-nov-skee. Now you, too, can dazzle and impress your friends!
This is a set of unpublished short stories written in 1920s Soviet Russia, and were never shown to a publisher, out of fear of being too subversive and dangerous to show. These were
These stories are very much a grab bag. Some are like Kafka's parables, darkly humorous, (ex: Quadraturin), some are dreamy surreal narratives (the Eiffel tower galloping along the streets of Paris) and some are so boring as to be incomprehensible.
But even the 'worst' stories still have fun ideas to play with, the fragments of interesting ideas, and broken pieces of brain candy. One story (not a bad one, for example) is about a mad scientist who wants to make time go in a circle, and another is about a street peddler who sells philosophical systems and aphorisms.
These are the sort of stories that Stalin's dreary little world needed, and also the sort which our slightly less dreary world could use as well.
This is a set of unpublished short stories written in 1920s Soviet Russia, and were never shown to a publisher, out of fear of being too subversive and dangerous to show. These were
Show More
also concurrent with the decline of the Soviet avant garde, and their gradual replacement with the institutional kitsch of Stalin's joyous peasant propaganda.These stories are very much a grab bag. Some are like Kafka's parables, darkly humorous, (ex: Quadraturin), some are dreamy surreal narratives (the Eiffel tower galloping along the streets of Paris) and some are so boring as to be incomprehensible.
But even the 'worst' stories still have fun ideas to play with, the fragments of interesting ideas, and broken pieces of brain candy. One story (not a bad one, for example) is about a mad scientist who wants to make time go in a circle, and another is about a street peddler who sells philosophical systems and aphorisms.
These are the sort of stories that Stalin's dreary little world needed, and also the sort which our slightly less dreary world could use as well.
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LibraryThing member Petroglyph
This is a collection of weirdly imaginative, usually surreal, and always interesting tales. Written in the 1920s by a slightly subversive author whose stories couldn’t be published until after his death, these tales are darkly whimsical reflections on Soviet society: Existential despair in a room
Several of these are very entertaining in an off-beat, slighly unusual kind of way, as though they were written in a culture with perceptibly different standards, tropes and expectations. Some would do very well in collections of Early Science Fiction. Most of these tales would appeal to those with an academic interest in Literature or Criticism, because they are explicitly about writing, reading, engaging with literature, and confronting themes with Theories. This is why I’d recommend spacing these stories out a bit: they’re very different tales, but the approach gets a bit samey after three or four in quick succession.
If you’d like your Borges with more black humour and set in Moscow, less everything-and-the-kitchen-sink and more focused, then give Krzhizhanovsky a try.
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that gets bigger on the inside, everyday Literary Criticism on a city bench, a vagrant table-to-table philosopher who sells aphorisms and totally original systems of thought for a living, a Time Traveller struggling to build and rebuild his machine after the war. Several of these are very entertaining in an off-beat, slighly unusual kind of way, as though they were written in a culture with perceptibly different standards, tropes and expectations. Some would do very well in collections of Early Science Fiction. Most of these tales would appeal to those with an academic interest in Literature or Criticism, because they are explicitly about writing, reading, engaging with literature, and confronting themes with Theories. This is why I’d recommend spacing these stories out a bit: they’re very different tales, but the approach gets a bit samey after three or four in quick succession.
If you’d like your Borges with more black humour and set in Moscow, less everything-and-the-kitchen-sink and more focused, then give Krzhizhanovsky a try.
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LibraryThing member ECBesa
I was impressed by the review but the first few stories where I read a few pages each night was disjointed that I felt I need to re-read this book. The last story which bears the title of the book is very impressive.
LibraryThing member viviennestrauss
If you enjoy Orwell, Huxley or Kafka, you will enjoy this.
Awards
Best Translated Book Award (Shortlist — Fiction — 2010)
Language
Original language
Russian
Original publication date
1927-1929
Physical description
256 p.; 8.04 inches
ISBN
1590173198 / 9781590173190