Book Review: 1917: Stories and Poems from the Russian Revolution
It took me a long time to get through 1917: Stories and Poems from the Russian Revolution, because like any story collection the quality is varied, and I found the poems in particular a slog. I’m not sure if it’s that poems in translation almost invariably lose something - you would need, I think, a great artist to translate a poem into another language without losing something; and how many great artists want to devote themselves to translating someone else’s work?
Or if it’s because the Kindle is simply a very bad medium for reading poetry, because it doesn’t properly preserve the line breaks. (I read this book as file from Netgalley, so Kindle was my only option.) Either way, I bogged down a long time on poor Alexander Blok and his ilk.
The stories are a mixed bag too, but some of them are gems. Two in particular stick in my mind: Teffi’s “The Guillotine,” a satirical story about a group of people who head to their morning guillotine appointment as if they were going to an open-air lecture (complete with complaints about the crowd: why’s everyone shoving so much? So rude!).
And then there’s Yefim Zozulya’s “The Dictator: The Story of Ak and Humanity,” in which the Council of Public Welfare running the city of Ak issues a decree that they have decided to liquidate all “superfluous persons.” “Those who lack the courage to terminate their existence, if ordered to do so by the COUNCIL OF PUBLIC WELFARE, will be aided by the COUNCIL. The sentences will be carried out by the friends and neighbours of the condemned, or by a special military detachment,” the poster announces ominously.
It’s black, black, black humor, a grimly hilarious commentary on human nature. Worth getting your hands on the collection to read this story alone.
An extra note of interest: “The Story of Ak and Humanity” is translated by Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman’s boyfriend who was deported to the Soviet Union with her during the Red Scare post-World War I. So the story is not only written by someone who witnessed the Russian Revolution, but translated by a man who saw it too, and grew so disillusioned that he wrote The Bolshevik Myth to outline the flaws of the Revolution.
And now I want to read that too. Goddammit, there are just too many books in this world and not enough time to read them all.
Or if it’s because the Kindle is simply a very bad medium for reading poetry, because it doesn’t properly preserve the line breaks. (I read this book as file from Netgalley, so Kindle was my only option.) Either way, I bogged down a long time on poor Alexander Blok and his ilk.
The stories are a mixed bag too, but some of them are gems. Two in particular stick in my mind: Teffi’s “The Guillotine,” a satirical story about a group of people who head to their morning guillotine appointment as if they were going to an open-air lecture (complete with complaints about the crowd: why’s everyone shoving so much? So rude!).
And then there’s Yefim Zozulya’s “The Dictator: The Story of Ak and Humanity,” in which the Council of Public Welfare running the city of Ak issues a decree that they have decided to liquidate all “superfluous persons.” “Those who lack the courage to terminate their existence, if ordered to do so by the COUNCIL OF PUBLIC WELFARE, will be aided by the COUNCIL. The sentences will be carried out by the friends and neighbours of the condemned, or by a special military detachment,” the poster announces ominously.
It’s black, black, black humor, a grimly hilarious commentary on human nature. Worth getting your hands on the collection to read this story alone.
An extra note of interest: “The Story of Ak and Humanity” is translated by Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman’s boyfriend who was deported to the Soviet Union with her during the Red Scare post-World War I. So the story is not only written by someone who witnessed the Russian Revolution, but translated by a man who saw it too, and grew so disillusioned that he wrote The Bolshevik Myth to outline the flaws of the Revolution.
And now I want to read that too. Goddammit, there are just too many books in this world and not enough time to read them all.