Leonid Tsypkin

Leonid Tsypkin: SLI or ILI; or LII/EII

from Summer in Baden-Baden by Leonid Tsypkin (translated by Roger and Angela Keys); pages 93-4:

Anna Grigor’yevna was overcome with fatigue and sat down on a bench with a marvellous view opening out over the Rhine and Baden-Baden, while Fedya went over to the edge of the platform and cried out: ‘Farewell, Anya, I am about to throw myself over!’ – and somewhere far beneath them the blue Rhine meandered picturesquely and Baden-Baden spread out with its gothic churches, its sharp-ridged tiled roofs and its luxuriant green parks and gardens – and down there, to the left of the red-brick church, surrounded by greenery, was the white, almost toy-like building of the Kurhaus where, in the smoky air beneath the yellow light of chandeliers, money was being staked and lost with hands stretching out towards it, greedily raking it in – and all these gamblers were like marionettes from a puppet-theatre with some invisible person pulling invisible threads, and the puppets in their tailcoats with their yellow, waxen features jerking about, performing their unnatural movements – and how extraordinarily different all this was from the immense spaces revealing themselves as he gazed from the edge of the platform! – and swallows flew past almost at the same level as he was, and somewhere higher up, parallel to the crags overhanging the castle, some larger birds were hovering – mountain eagles, perhaps, or possibly hawks – and above even all this was the dark blue sky, so dark that it seemed almost to blend into some cosmic blackness giving the impression that stars would appear at any moment – and he felt a strange urge to fling himself from the platform where he stood and to soar off somewhere up and beyond, towards this blue-black sky, to merge with it, to merge with other worlds perhaps in the process of birth or newly-born and already inhabited by a human race experiencing its golden age.


pages 119-20:

. . . . most interesting were her stories of the Leningrad Blockade, how people actually ate the dogs and cats, how she gave two beautiful lengths of cloth belonging to Mozya in exchange for a loaf of bread, and how Mozya, who was so weak he could scarcely get up, gained strength before her very eyes when she fed him with this bread as well as two chunks of horse-flesh which she had managed to get in the special retail establishment for scientists, after she had spent a whole twenty-four hours standing in a queue, and how when going down Nevsky Prospect or crossing the Kirov Bridge, which she would do twice a day since the Institute where she worked was situated on Petrograd Side, she would see frozen corpses being dragged along on toboggans, and how people would collapse before her very eyes, freezing to death on the same spot, with their bodies either being picked up or not, in which case they would become frozen to the pavement or the roadway and remain lying there till the following spring.


pages 84-5, 88:

. . . . the speed of his fall exhilarated him more and more – if he had been unable to cross a particular barrier in his movement towards the summit and was now hurtling downwards, then was there not also some kind of line or boundary here which would stop him? – because, after all, there were no external circumstances here, and all he had to do was surrender himself to this movement, to this physical principle, and so, shutting his eyes, he continued to fly downwards, the familiar figures performing their round-dance, now already somewhere above him, grinning and pointing their fingers at him again, winking and smirking meaningfully at each other – Turgenev with his majestic bearing, his lion’s mane and his lorgnette directed towards him, Goncharov, wheezing after his six-course breakfast, Nekrasov and Belinsky, maundering on abstractly about some extraneous subject, Panayev with his pendulous, moist moustache and his drunken stare, and beyond them more figures and faces, familiar and unfamiliar, all exchanging glances and winks, pointing towards him – but, strangely enough, their dance seemed somehow pathetic – and they had not been privileged to experience the dizzy descent he had surrendered to – and the humiliating things were always median and mediocre, aiming at moderation and discretion – and this was precisely what they were – only an all-consuming, all encompassing idea could liberate a man, make him free and place him above everything else, even if the means of realizing this idea had to be a crime – and all these worthy gentlemen were incapable not only of surrendering themselves to such an idea, but even of beginning to comprehend it, and they were all constantly engaged in calculation and circumspection, subordinating their lives to material considerations.


. . . . once again he was flying downhill, bruising himself painfully against things and feeling that he had nothing to hold on to – and that whole theory of his about falling was worthless – he had simply invented it to make his injuries less painful, presenting the wounds to himself and everyone else surrounded by the self-sacrificial halo of some great ‘idea’ – but do we not all do the same thing, deceiving ourselves time and time again as we think up convenient theories designed to soften the blows continually rained on us by fate or to justify our own failures and weaknesses? – and is this not the explanation of the so-called crisis which Dostoyevsky went through during his penal servitude? – could his morbid pride ever have become reconciled with the humiliations to which he was subjected there? – no, he had only one way out: to consider these humiliations as his just deserts – ‘I bear a cross, and I have deserved it,’ he wrote in one of his letters – but in order to bring this about he had to represent all those earlier views of his, for which he had suffered, as erroneous and even criminal – and this he did, unconsciously, of course – the human psyche’s need for self-preservation, especially the psyche of a man not too strong in spirit . . . . condemned him to this, not only against the dictates of reason, but radically altering any rational argument, adapting it to his own subconscious requirements, and only occasionally, at extreme moments in his life, like a voltaic arc in the submerged darkness, would those suppressed and saturated visions and images blaze up, illuminating with their merciless light scenes and tableaux from his life in penal servitude and exile, and then, shuddering, he would be forced to do mental battle with those who insulted him, being defeated even in this domain . . . .





pages 67-70:

From his study in Staraya Russa he could see both Cathedral Square and the river embankment with the street adjoining it, because the house in which he lived was, as ever, in a corner position and the windows of the study were placed, furthermore, at the very apex of the house – and as he paced up and down the study, looking out of the window time and again at the cupola of the Cathedral of the Assumption, gleaming gold in the rays of the setting sun, he dictated ‘The Grand Inquisitor’ to Anna Grigor’yevna – and the fearsome judge in his black robes opened with a rattle of chains the iron door concealing the prisoner, dressed in raiment untouched after two thousand years and wearing a crown of thorns, as He returned to an earth just as sinful as in those distant times and experienced once again the same bitter taste of incomprehension and alienation and was condemned yet again to torment and suffering to redeem the sins of others (were they not also His own?), demanding of people such extremes of courage and suffering as only He was capable of – but the whole profound philosophical and religious essence of ‘The Grand Inquisitor’ was later expounded by Rozanov, declared by one contemporary to be spiritually in tune with the author of The Brothers Karamazov – and this harmony of spirit could possibly be seen in the strange knobbly cone-shape of his skull, or even perhaps in his strange and signal fate, becoming the husband of the woman who once travelled Italy with Dostoyevsky and shared the same cabin with him on board ship, where he pleaded for her friendship, and only friendship, and begged to be her confidant in that affair with the empty-headed Spaniard who passed himself off as a baron or viscount and then abandoned her like some dispensable object, like some threadbare dress, trampling on her feelings and her pride, which somehow made her even more desirable – but he had every reason to think that she later repented all this and in any case, a year before their ill-fated journey, while he was still in Petersburg, had she not visited him at his flat in the corner house by the canal, in the early autumn twilight, all shivery from the rain and the penetrating cold, with lowered veil, the natural heroine of many a Balzac novel? – or was this all his later imagining, or perhaps the invention of his biographers, or perhaps even her own?

The train had long since resumed its journey, leaving Bologoye far behind with its one spectral kiosk lit by a paraffin-lamp – and the carriage lurching from side to side together with all the passengers sitting in it, the frosted-glass lamp-shades and the suitcases, were all reflected over and over again in the dark windows beyond which the invisible snowy wastes drifted past – and I had to hold on to Anna Grigor’yevna’s Diary to prevent it falling off the folding-table in front of me onto the floor and also to stop the words jumping about before my eyes.

When he arrived home, Fedya fell onto his knees before Anna Grigor’yevna so that she was quite taken aback and began to retreat into the corner of the room, as he crawled after her, still on his knees, and saying over and over again: ‘Forgive me, forgive me!’ and ‘You’re my angel!’ – but she continued to side-step, so he jumped to his feet and began to drum his fists against the wall – and then he began to hammer his own head, as if by design, as though he was playing out some kind of farce, so that she briefly felt like laughing, but she was afraid that their landlady might hear and, apart from that, it might lead to another fit – so she ran up to him and tried to restrain him – and his face was pale, his lips trembled and his beard was twisted to one side – and kneeling before her yet again, he repented his losses and the fact that he made her unhappy, but she was unable to take in his words or understand the full depth of his suffering and humiliation and, standing in the corner of the room, she looked at him in amazement and even with an unfriendly kind of smile – could it be that she was laughing at him? – so he leapt up and began to drum the wall again so that, at last, she would have to realize, that they would all realize . . . Let the landlady know about it! Let them all know about it! . . . and he pounded the wall in a frenzy, but nobody could have been bothered because nobody stirred on the other side, and Anna Grigor’yevna continued to stand in the corner of the room – and he started to rush around, crashing into chairs and hurling them to one side, striking his head with his fists so hard that his hands began to ache – and she ran up and tried to restrain him, her face expressing nothing but fear now – So! She was afraid of the noise, of the publicity, nothing else! – and he pushed her away and started to rant on about jumping from the window that very second, knowing at the same time that he certainly would not.

They were both breathing heavily, as they looked at each other, she with fear and desperation, he with the hatred and hostility of a hunted animal – and his lips trembled as they had before, his face twisted by an agonizing convulsion – ‘Fedya! Darling!’ she cried as she rushed towards him and, cradling his head in her hands, pressed herself up against him – and all the injuries, afflictions and insults of the day which had built up inside him rushed to his throat in a sudden lump all at one go, as it used to be when he was a child, after the usual scene made by his father, when his mother would slip secretly into the nursery to see him and, making no sound with her feet, would go up to his bed and, thinking he was asleep, lean over him to stroke his face gently and kiss him – and the lump in his throat turned into sobbing, muffled and suppressed at first, but then increasingly loud, cathartic, agonizingly exquisite to the point of choking – and supporting him as she wiped his tears with her handkerchief, Anna Grigor’yevna led him to the bed, took off his frock-coat and waistcoat, helped him to lie down and covered him up – and it felt so odd that such a serious and clever man as her husband could cry – it must be a kind of fit, the same illness, and she was filled with a pang of pity for him and, at the same time, a vague feeling of responsibility, as if he were her child – and he still sobbed, but this was only water splashing against a boulder which has rolled down the bank into the lake – then she bustled about, wrapping his head in a damp towel, and he kept on kissing her hands and calling her his angel – and then, with many digressions and confusions, he told her the tale of the incident in the gaming-room, but she said that it was all right and that, of course, the stranger must have heard Fedya call him a scoundrel because everyone knew that Russian word, and if he hadn’t understood, then all the others would have done so, and that he shouldn’t have had anything to do with a scoundrel like that in any case – and he began to kiss her hands again because now he was doubly grateful to her, but after lunch, when they went for a walk down the Lichtenthaler Allee where many other people were out, Fedya started to collide with any man coming in the opposite direction whether alone or in the company of a lady – the squashed face and protruding ears of the gentleman who had insulted him, rose up before him again – and now he knew what he should have done: he should simply have pushed him, casually, but energetically enough for him to have fallen down or even just staggered or, failing that, for him at least to have realized he was not getting off scot-free with his wretched trick – and the stranger with the squashed face remained omnipresent, appearing one minute from a side-avenue with Fedya rushing to head him off, or walking behind him the next, with that measured, self-confident step of his, and he had to be diverted from that pace, a forcible intervention by someone else, or he would overtake Fedya and Anna Grigor’yevna and then have to be caught up with and given the requisite lesson – and Anna Grigor’yevna tried to restrain Fedya, but he kept on bumping into respectable Germans walking towards him or else he would suddenly try to overtake an unknown gentleman with the result that she would even find herself left briefly alone in the middle of this strolling, well-dressed crowd, gripping her parasol and lace shawl, the one given to her as a present by her mother and pawned by Fedya a few days later after yet another losing spell – but eventually she managed to entice him into one of the side-avenues where there were hardly any people, and from there they went to a concert.

A July evening was descending on the spa-town of Baden-Baden and in the distance violet storm-clouds hung over the Schwarzwald, the Thüringer Wald or wherever, and much further beyond there were flashes of lightning – and nearer the city, on the surrounding hills covered with dark vegetation, could be made out the Altes and Neues Schloss, red-brick with crenellated towers, as well as far more ancient courtly castles – and a few days later Anna Grigor’yevna was running up the stone steps of either the Altes or the Neues Schloss – escaping from Fedya who, after losing, was begging her for the last coin she had left, which she had to keep to pay their landlady because otherwise they would simply be evicted from the flat – and she ran up the steps with unusual ease, as if she were not carrying Sonechka or Misha at all, but then when she reached the third platform she suddenly felt ill with a terrible stomach-ache and nausea, so that she was obliged to sit down on a bench, and all the passers-by stared round at her, seeing that she was on the point of fainting – and when Fedya found her at last, he fell on his knees before her, there and then, on the platform in full view of everyone, as she buried her face in her hands so as not to be seen by strangers and because the nausea was rising into her throat – and he beat his fists against his chest, condemning himself for making her unhappy, but this did not scare her as it had done previously, because she had grown used to it – and she gave him the coin, although she knew that he would gamble it away, but in the meantime they sat in the meadow beside the Kurhaus and listened to an Austrian orchestra playing Egmont, and there was something in that music in harmony with the mountains towering in the distance and the violet storm-clouds hanging over them lit up by occasional flashes of lightning – and now the two of them clambered up a steep slope, she easily and quickly, following the capricious twists and turns of the path, which meandered through thickets, past high crags and the ruins of courtly castles, while he attacked the sheer and almost inaccessible rock face itself with its boulders and glaciers where no-one had yet set foot, slipping and falling and getting to his feet again, leaving, somewhere behind and beneath him, a sea of loudly laughing heads and dancing figures pointing up at him with their fingers – and occasionally the path she followed turned into a stair with stone or wooden steps, like the one which led to the Altes Schloss – and she ran up the steps, scarcely resting on the platforms, pausing only to look around at the majestic landscape which was opening out at her feet and then she would ascend the path again, twisting among the rocks and the alpine meadows filled with white flowers the names of which she did not know, while stones and large pieces of ice crashed down from beneath his feet, dislodging even more enormous rocks and ice-boulders as they did so, growing into a roaring, thundering mountain-avalanche which echoed and re-echoed its polyphonic reverberations through the foothills, drowning out the voices of the mocking crowd, that crowd of all too familiar faces, which continued to laugh, despite its dethronement, shouting out with dull, pig-headed incomprehension as it pointed up at him, with its enormous crude corporate finger smeared with dirt, bringing to mind the finger of one of the crowd in the painting of the ‘Deriding of Christ’ which he had seen in Dresden, though he could not remember the artist – Christ, wearing a crown of thorns which looked like barbed wire, sat on some steps, contemplative and detached, His elbow placed on His knee in such a way that His arm and long, slender hand hung lifelessly down, and one of the crowd, a strapping, coarse-looking fellow with sagging cheeks and a bulbous, red nose – a philistine’s face – pointed a stubby, hairy finger at Him – and sticks and stones were being flung towards the man on the steps, and someone had spat in His face, already marked by physical violence, but still infused with profound thought and detachment – and the mob surrounding Him roared and laughed, and their laughter merged with the laughter of the crowd of familiar faces and was drowned out by the thundering echo and re-echo of falling rocks and ice-boulders, and he climbed higher and higher, overcoming the terrifying steepness, towards the very peak of the mountain, where, in a violet storm-cloud torn by flashes of lightning, lay the hidden Palace of Crystal, the dream of humanity, his dream which he had cradled and nurtured deep within himself almost to the point of purposely mocking it – but now the avalanche drowning out the shouts and roars of those laughing faces, and the claps of thunder raining down from the violet cloud had inspired him with faith in the possibility of realizing that dream, and the vision of the painting by that unknown artist illuminated his path, and already he followed it, as he clambered up the steep face of the rock – and triumphant music – drums, horns, trumpets – poured down from the height where the orchestra played – and echoes of the avalanche occasionally reached Anna Grigor’yevna, but she continued as before along her free and easy way, following the well-trod path and ascending steps – and only in one place did her way cut across his – where the track followed a projection over the very rock-face where he struggled, as he clung to the fissures, slipping and falling, his clothes all torn, his arms scratched and bleeding – and she offered him her hand and helped him scramble up on to the path she was following, and now they walked on together, hand in hand – and although the melody being played by the French horns and flutes was still triumphant, you could already divine in it a kind of dragging, broken quality – and they sat side by side on the bench, listening to the music, he in his favourite pose, one leg crossed over the other, his arms hugging his knees, his eyes moist (or perhaps they had not yet dried from the tears), she sitting with her legs tucked a little behind her so as not to reveal her worn boots, feeling the cold and muffling herself in her shawl – and for a moment their eyes met and he took her hand and stroked it.

All around the little square with its central orchestra mound, benches were positioned for the public – and although it was still completely light, the lamps were lit, this double illumination giving rise to a wavering, somewhat spectral picture where things seemed either unfinished or not quite begun, and at night, when he came to her to say goodnight and they swam off, a counter-current began to force him sideways, and he felt he was drowning – she tried to help him, either by looking round at him, inviting him to follow her as she swam on ahead, or by swimming back quite close to him and staring straight into his eyes, holding out her arms and almost supporting him, or sometimes by plunging into the unknown depths of a green wave, trying to frighten him by disappearing – but he still continued to be dragged rapidly and inexorably away, scarcely struggling as the waves increasingly closed over him, the heaving green mass revealing those squashed features with the colourless, protruding eyes, the whole face swelling and inflating like a hot-air balloon, going crimson and turning into that all too familiar face with lynx eyes, and then arms belonging to scores, no, hundreds of those who the day before had been standing at the foot of the mountain, roaring with laughter and pointing in his direction, now stretched towards him, like the pincers of a gigantic scorpion – and although he made a few last despairing efforts, his body irresistibly wilted, and he sank rapidly and inexorably to the bottom.

And there he lay, his head settled feebly back into the pillow and his eyes closed, as she wiped the sweat from his brow, leaning on one elbow, and folds had formed where his head sank into the pillow, radiating out as in the painting by Kramskoy depicting him on his death-bed, but there was no trace of simplicity or tranquillity in his features now.





pages 44-60:

She started to take walks around Baden-Baden and its environs, avoiding the smartly dressed Russian ladies – but all the same, one day she decided to walk down the Lichtenthaler Allee, setting off down the Lichtenthaler Strasse in order to do so, but found herself for some reason in the wrong place – at a Catholic monastery – and she entered the courtyard, wandered around it for a while and then turned back home – and on one occasion she set off on a long walk and after a couple of miles or so climbed up some steps and found herself in the Altes Schloss, where a tea-garden stood in one of the courtyards – Anna Grigor’yevna thought all this exceptionally beautiful, but she was a little worried at having walked quite so far, being afraid of slipping and falling over and thereby losing the future Sonechka or Misha – and besides, Fedya was probably already sitting on a bench in the avenue beneath the old chestnut-tree – she could tell without fail from a long way off by his simple appearance if he had lost or not – his black hat would be lying next to him on the bench, his face would be pale, his hands placed on his knees as if he were about to get to his feet, his face looking anxiously around, staring at the figures of people appearing in the distance in the depths of the avenue – and she sometimes found it extremely comical that he would not notice her walking right up to the bench, and still searched for her somewhere in the distance, occasionally tearing one hand away from his knee to use a handkerchief to mop away the beads of sweat appearing on his temples and forehead, that deep, receding hairline above the sincipital lobes so carefully and, on occasion, so exaggeratedly reproduced by painters and especially by sculptors – and he would be looking straight at her but, for some reason, through her and he would carry on peering into the far distance of the avenue while she already stood beside him, almost laughing – almost, because he might be insulted – ‘I lost the lot,’ he would say, hurriedly rising from the bench at the same time as she sat down to get her breath back and cool herself with her fan – ‘And where have you been?’ he would ask suspiciously, looking her up and down from head to toe as if she were a stranger – and a few minutes later they would already be walking home along the neatly paved streets, lined with neatly clipped trees, past neat German houses with their shutters closed to keep out the midday sun – and he would be walking slightly ahead, holding his black hat which he had bought in Berlin at the insistence of Anna Grigor’yevna and which looked more like a bowler, but now it was too hot to wear it, and besides, it reminded him of the hat depicted in a so-called friendly cartoon but, in fact, a caricature, printed in one of the issues of Illustrated Miscellany soon after his story ‘Mr Prokharchin’ had appeared in Krayevsky’s Notes of the Fatherland – the cartoon showing him bowing and scraping in front of Krayevsky and holding exactly the same kind of hat in his hand – or rather, no, I think that he was still wearing the hat and was only about to take it off – and the hat was drawn disproportionately large, like his head, so that his trunk and his foreshortened legs formed a kind of appendage to his head and hat, doubtless intended as an allusion to his exaggerated idea of his own intellectual capacities and talents – and a few years later, when his period of hard labour was over and he was in exile (and even that didn’t stop Panayev, that buffoon with his drooping and eternally damp-looking moustache, and his ilk), there appeared in The Contemporary, in a comic, even taunting style, a note to the effect that he, Dostoyevsky, was asking Nekrasov to print Poor Folk with a gold surround – but the most terrible thing, however, was that, in an argument with one of Panayev’s supporters, in the heat of the moment when he was nearly passing out with rage, he had actually shouted out something to the effect that, in comparison with the rubbish that was getting printed nowadays, they certainly should print his works with a golden surround to show the reader the difference between a real literary work and tawdry twaddle and that it wouldn’t hurt some writers and critics to realize this, either – he had been alluding to that suave Turgenev who had once listened to his ideas with an expression of cheerful amazement and even of innocent surprise, as if it was the first time he had ever come across so original an opinion – and that sincere expression of sympathy seemed to egg him on further and further – and he was desperate to astonish that rather naïve gentleman even more, to captivate him with his ideas and at the same time to warm himself with the pride of his own dreams – and on and on he went, ever deeper into himself, revealing all, because in his mind’s eye he could already see himself soaring somewhere high above with Turgenev, his bosom friend and someone he so admired, and could see the glory of that young but already famous writer becoming his glory, and his own prestige, Dostoyevsky’s – that of a writer just setting out but already well-known in his turn – reflecting on Turgenev, and the two of them, each lighting up the other with his glory, exchanging it, bathing in its mutual rays, would rise above everyone else who would be enraptured by so unusual a friendship, so extraordinary, so unheard-of an infusion of hearts – and then Turgenev suddenly began to trip him up, so innocently at first that you might have thought it accidental, unintentional or even by mistake – but gradually it became clearer to Dostoyevsky that he had simply blundered into a carefully constructed labyrinth or an invisible snare and he was helplessly flailing about within it, trying to get free – and he suddenly saw himself seated on a chair in front of that high-and-mighty gentleman, squirming about, trying to rise to his feet, his hands on his knees for support, but with his body refusing to obey him – and he continued to sit there, his face reddening and then draining of colour, and all around people laughed at him and his friendship! – and Turgenev, his idol, casually resting his elbow on the back of the chair and placing his coldly gleaming lorgnette to his eyes, also laughed with the rest, as he gently stroked his well-groomed beard – and the words he had uttered during his argument with one of Panayev’s supporters were also meant to apply to Nekrasov and Belinsky, who for some reason at a literary soirée had both sat down to play preference (such a dull pastime!) at a card-table somewhere to the side near an alcove, ignoring Dostoyevsky as if he did not exist – and he purposely went up to them several times during the evening, peering at their cards, realizing full well himself that it was becoming embarrassing, and although he gave a little cough from time to time, they did not even look up: it was as if he did not exist at all – and once, having been invited to Belinsky’s house, he thrust himself upon his host and Nekrasov as a partner, but as soon as he sat down, they got to their feet and withdrew to the other end of the drawing-room, where a lively conversation had begun about Princess Volkonskaya’s latest lover and a small circle had formed – and he continued to sit, pressing his palms together until his bones clicked and his fingers began to hurt – could that really have been the same Nekrasov who had appeared at his apartment in the early hours of the morning (it had been during the white nights, so it was light outside), who had appeared at his apartment puffing and panting as if he had run the whole way from his own flat to Grafsky Lane where Dostoyevsky lived, who had appeared at his apartment, holding the manuscript of White Nights behind his back, as if it were a present? – and could that really have been the same Belinsky who, having read the manuscript, received him at some unearthly hour in the study of this same house, sitting his guest down opposite him next to an enormous desk heaped high with papers and trying to maintain a pedagogic tone of voice but failing, and then jumping up from the desk and beginning to walk rapidly around the study, talking excitedly and waving his arms about, all this passion and enthusiasm fermenting into pure exultation being directed at him, Dostoyevsky, and his novel – and an hour later he stood on Nevsky beside the house where Belinsky lived, at the corner by the Fontanka River, looking at the deep-blue sky, the passers-by, the careering carriages, and everything that had taken place seemed unreal because he had not even dared to dream that it could happen to him – and a few days later the whole of literary Petersburg – and even non-literary Petersburg – began to talk about him – Belinsky introduced him to all his friends like some celebrity, serving him up as you might serve some piquant dish at the end of a banquet – and he caught fleeting glimpses of the distinguished grey heads of Petersburg personalities with side-whiskers and decorations in their button-holes bowing reverently towards him, and the eyes of women he dared not even dream about gazed at him with interest, coquettishly, flatteringly, and the hum of conversation in drawing-rooms would die down whenever he entered – and could this really have been the same Belinsky and Nekrasov who had now so indifferently got up from the card-table as he had sat down, trying to foist himself upon them as a partner just to remind them of his existence, hoping that by his presence, by his interruption, he could wrest from them a few complimentary words about The Double, at the very least some reference to it, it did not even have to be complimentary, let it be critical, anything but this cold silence! – and how absorbed they seemed to be now in their discussion at the other end of the drawing-room surrounded by the latest talentless mediocrities fashionable in the salons of Petersburg, how interested they semed to be in that society gossip about Princess Volkonskaya, those so-called progressive minds, those men of letters!

He sat by himself at the card-table, bending his head lower and lower and pressing his chest against the hard edge of the table, so that it became difficult for him to breathe and every beat of his heart thundered in his ears, drowning out the lively murmur of voices which now floated from the centre of the drawing-room where the whole circle had drifted – and he pressed the palms of his hands even tighter together between his knees, and, despite the candles burning brightly in the crystal chandeliers, the faces of all the people present at the soirée looked grey to him – then he got to his feet, but instead of walking to the entrance-hall, nonchalantly throwing on his overcoat and leaving this house on Nevsky Prospect, beside which – not so very long ago – he had stood not daring to believe in the realization of his dream – but instead of this, like a tiny fish, attracted by invisible chemical substances to the jaws of some marine monster, he headed towards this circle, pushing his way through the guests and looking avidly into the eyes of Belinsky and Nekrasov who had, of course, already become the focus and centre of attention, and he attempted to make some feeble witticism, begging to be noticed – and he began to argue with someone, shouting excitedly, at the same time knowing that he uttered absurdities – and then, abandoning all hope, he began to agree with everything said, but nobody listened – and the giant sea-monster swam on, not even deigning to swallow the tiny fish, ignoring such a small and unappetizing object.

The dwarfish midday shadow thrown by his bent and slightly stooping figure was following him to one side, gliding over the grey cobbles of the roadway – a stunted shadow because the sun was high, almost at its zenith, and it was the height of summer, so it was surprising anyway that a man’s shape and the trees and the houses should be casting any shadow at all – Anna Grigor’yevna was walking with him, but slightly behind, her shadow gliding along after his, as short as the other, though more elegant somehow, despite the fact that the future Misha or Sonechka had altered her figure – and occasionally his shadow would superimpose itself on hers if he slowed his pace down slightly, or they started to walk a little faster – and sometimes the shadows would even cross, though it may just have been an illusion, as this was a contradiction of the simplest laws of physics.

Once or twice, here in Baden-Baden, he had bumped into Turgenev and Goncharov in passing – Goncharov used also to visit the Panayevs, but in those days they had not made each other’s acquaintances – in fact not meeting until after his exile – Goncharov, just as sluggish and bloated a gentleman as his creation, Oblomov, used to receive 400 roubles per printer’s sheet, whereas he, Dostoyevsky – for all his poverty – used to be paid only 100 – and the man’s eyes looked putrefied somehow, like those of a boiled fish, and he exuded the smell of bureaucracy, although with his income he had no need to work, and it was probably through miserliness – not that this prevented him staying at the Hotel Europe, however, the best establishment in Baden-Baden – the place where Turgenev had stayed as well as Litvinov from Smoke, that bloodless hero of a bloodless novel which also contained the venomous windbag Potugin, working hard to revile Russia while bowing low before the humblest German burgher – Potugin who visited Litvinov in this very hotel, so exclusive that Anna Grigor’yevna and himself would not even have been admitted to the lobby, as they were so poorly dressed – and at this same hotel Litvinov was secretly visited by Madame Rotmirova, the beautiful Irina, the general’s wife, who, lowering her veil, would walk silently in, and at other times Litvinov would make his way just as secretly to her room in another fashionable hotel with carpeted staircases where he and Anna Grigor’yevna would also not have gained admittance – and all this accompanied by Potugin’s orations declaiming that Russia should long ago have sunk down into Tartarus and that, if it should indeed happen, nobody would even notice.

He had seen Turgenev for the first time not very far from the Kurhaus, promenading down the avenue with some lady or other, his large head bent slightly forward, now and again nonchalantly fingering his lorgnette on its golden chain as he listened – and people out for a walk slowed down as they passed by and then turned to have another look at the famous writer – and Dostoyevsky also slowed his pace, mechanically somehow, without even realizing it, and then suddenly he felt the urge to dart off sideways, but it was already too late – Turgenev had noticed him, his features feigning an air of joyful astonishment, as if the encounter with Dostoyevsky was an extremely pleasant surprise for him, as if he had never expected to see him – with his ideas – amid the overdressed throng roaming idly around this European spa-town, although Turgenev knew perfectly well that he was there – his gambling was a secret to nobody – and Turgenev was dressed in a light-weight grey suit, and his companion was also decked out in something fashionable and expensive.

‘Fancy meeting you here, old fellow!’ he said in that high falsetto of his, so out of keeping with his imposing figure – and stopping for a moment, he raised his light, white hat a little, revealing the whole of that celebrated lion’s mane, now beginning to go white and for that very reason, as his admirers, and particularly his female admirers, used to maintain, particularly noble.

‘Permettez-moi de vous présenter Monsieur, er. . .,’ he said, hesitating for a moment, as if he were searching for the name, ‘Monsieur Dostoyevsky, a former engineer and now a man of letters in Petersburg’ – and a slender hand in a dainty glove was carelessly proffered in his direction – and when he went to take the hand and make some genteel remark, about the weather, I think, or possibly something else, the hand, fragrant with some special daytime perfume, was no longer there, and Turgenev and his companion were already lost to sight – and he was still standing there in the same place, wearing his black, out-of-season suit and with a black hat in his hands, like Trusotsky in The Eternal Husband.

Turgenev never lost the opportunity of calling him an engineer or, in the last resort, a former engineer, emphasizing the apparent artificiality of Dostoyevsky’s involvement with the literary world where he, Turgenev, was rightful king and Dostoyevsky was nothing but an upstart, a parvenu – and they had met again a number of times after his return from exile and had even, as it seemed, become friends once more, taking part in one or two charitable functions together and exchanging letters as Dostoyevsky attempted to enlist the services of Turgenev in his journal Time, which he edited together with his brother, several of which he sent to Turgenev abroad, asking him to dispatch the story ‘Phantoms’ for the journal as quickly as possible, but it somehow turned out not to be asking but begging and in a frenzied kind of way – and in the same letter he wrote that he wanted to see him and that their last meeting had left some unexplained matters between them and that they should meet again in order to sort things out – and all this he wrote several times in the same letter, but once again it came out in a frenzied kind of way, as if he were trying to thrust his friendship upon him and, because he realized that, he became even worse – after the resumption of their friendship Turgenev had at first treated him with a certain care, perhaps feeling sorry for him, but then this solicitude began to give way to the old feigned amazement inviting the other to reveal everything, and although the traps and snares were not as evident as they had been in the Panayev period, he had to be on his guard the whole time and even so occasionally stumbled, feeling like a tightrope-walker who could slip at any moment and hurtle down below – and the rope along which he crept felt less and less steady every time, and on occasion he could scarcely keep his balance, only managing it by holding his arms outstretched to both sides – and those eyes, full of spurious interest and feigned sympathy, egged him on to perform all his ‘steps’ – faster and faster – until he slipped and fell into the abyss – and just to hear that false laughter, to try and earn the least bit of reciprocal candour, he would have been willing to dance the cancan, even if he had already slipped and was hurtling downwards, pirouetting in the air as he did so.

Placing the coldly gleaming lorgnette to his eyes, Turgenev watched him with condescending grace, as he sat opposite in his spacious hotel room with its white, gold-inlaid furniture, its ornamental ceiling and its enormous windows, draped in crimson velvet, the visitor having succeeded in avoiding the manager who had unceremoniously barred his way the day before, announcing that the gentleman was not at home – but this time, however, walking past the glass door to the hotel as if by chance, he had chosen a moment when the manager had left the foyer to go somewhere, and quickly went in through the door – and from there, without looking round, as if someone might shoot him in the back, he practically ran up the carpeted marble staircase and onward, as if he were being chased by a pack of hounds – and then he slowed down a little, trying to recover the necessary dignity as he proceeded down the corridor, passing a large number of white doors with golden monograms.

‘Ah! It’s you!’ said Turgenev in his woman’s falsetto, greeting his guest with that ingenuous smile of his, full of joy and amazement, clad in a long dressing-gown which made him look even taller than he was, with his dark, copious, slightly greying beard, his celebrated mane of hair and an interested, inviting expression in those dark-grey eyes of his, slightly flecked with green.

‘I have heard so much about you and your novel, although I haven’t yet had the good fortune to read it myself,’ he said, escorting the guest into his spacious study containing a large desk strewn with books and manuscripts and a copious couch, covered with a carelessly folded plaid blanket and some cushions.

‘Now, let me have a proper look at you,’ said Turgenev, moving back a few steps from his guest, like a painter appraising his picture, and he raised the lorgnette to his eyes for a moment. ‘Well, you really do look like a genuine writer now, especially with that shirt-front!’ – and the greenish sparks smouldering in the depths of his eyes flashed briefly into life and then faded again, his face resuming its earlier expression of pleasure and interest – ‘But do make yourself comfortable,’ he said, moving a hard chair towards his guest while settling himself in an armchair, placing one leg over the other, the long, narrow slipper, decorated in the same way as his Turkish dressing-gown, shaking slightly.

He and Anna Grigor’yevna had chosen that shirt-front in Dresden where it had caught his eye because it seemed quite unusual, the corners of the collar being slightly rounded, and they had decided that it was very fashionable – and yesterday Anna Grigor’yevna had spent a long time ironing the thing – so there he was, sitting down, looking uneasily from side to side, not knowing where to place his hat – and had he really come here to listen to all this? – was that why he had humiliated himself in front of the hotel manager so as to sit here feeling like some wretched dropper-in or, to be more accurate, beggar, although he wasn’t begging for anything? – and at any moment he would probably begin to dance his cancan, standing as he was on the edge of a precipice – only one step more and he would slip and go hurtling into the abyss – and he still sat looking around himself helplessly.

‘I am sorry about the slight mess,’ said Turgenev, catching his eye, ‘or, as the Germans say: Unordnung.’

‘Well, in my opinion, you became a German a long time ago, so you’ve nothing to be sorry for,’ he blurted out somewhat illogically, as always happened when he wanted to throw out a barbed remark, but only making himself more angry – and the step over the edge of the precipice was taken – ‘And your novel is German through and through . . .’ – and now he hurtled down and there could be no returning – and Turgenev’s face gave a strange wince as he leant back in the armchair and put the lorgnette in front of his eyes like a shield – but his visitor, placing his hat on the white and gold-inlaid card-table standing between them, thrust forward with his whole body, like a fencer removing his sword from its scabbard.

‘I take your words to be praise,’ replied Turgenev, parrying the blow – ‘A literature which has given us Goethe and Schiller . . .’ – and his guest made another lunge forward: ‘You have never known or understood Russia, and as for Potugin, that pitiful seminarist of yours . . .’ – ‘And, of course, Russia seems to use such extremely effective means for instilling obdurate patriotism,’ returned Turgenev, referring, of course, to penal servitude, and hitting below the belt – ‘So why don’t you go to Paris and buy a telescope so you can examine Russia from there,’ he blurted out in one breath, having read somewhere recently about some telescope set up in Paris.

Turgenev sat back in his armchair once again, hiding his eyes with his lorgnette-shield – and they fought with swords, as they sat there on either side of that round, inlaid card-table, inflicting pin-pricks on each other – and this duel has gone down in the history of Russian literature as the quarrel between Dostoyevsky and Turgenev based on ideological disagreements concerning the relations between Russia and the West.

Slightly more than a hundred years later arguments between Slavophiles and Westernizers, which had been extinguished apparently for ever by the coming to power of the workers and peasants, have resumed with renewed energy – through the man with the hard and penetrating gaze and two melancholy creases furrowing his forehead, conveyed under escort to the airport at Frankfurt-on-Main, a city whose streets the Dostoyevskys wandered up and down en route to Baden-Baden – this man who arrived in a foreign country as an eternal visitor and settled beyond the ocean in one of America’s northern states, whose landscape so distantly reminded him of the snows and forests of his native land and made those relinquished realms seem much more beautiful to him than they were or could have been in reality – this man who picked up, as a runner takes the baton in a relay-race, the hilt of the sword used in battle more than a century before by Turgenev’s visitor and now, swinging it bitterly around, began to hack at the air, annihilating to left and right – and he stood on a high mound of snow next to the parcel of land containing his country house, surrounded by barbed wire – standing there hatless for some reason, as if he were in a graveyard, and the wind blew his smooth, straight hair, grey by now and thinning, and his beard, also grey, was covered with hoar-frost and icicles hung down from it – and it did only seem to be the air he hacked at, for his fellow-countrymen would be peacefully sleeping or watching an international hockey match on television, supporting their home team and fortifying their patriotism with the appropriate beverages, shouting: ‘Get in there, Sasha! Slay the buggers!’, slapping the obdurately angry or exulting palms of their hands against their own or their neighbours’ knees, and then going drunkenly on to watch the evening news, which would show, amongst other things, film of a piece of traitorous scum, as the newsreader called him, standing on a mound of snow, and waving a sword – and digging a neighbour with an elbow, they would shout: ‘Oi, Kolya! Why didn’t they shoot the bastard, eh?’ – and every morning, after swigging a mugful of kiosk beer, they would buy their beloved copies of The Star or Komsomol Pravda and, without hurrying, would tenderly smooth them out on their knees on the bus or tram as they travelled to work at their building-site or factory, eager to discuss the highs and lows of yesterday’s hockey and, during their lunch break, or perhaps without even bothering to wait, have another drink – and the man who had taken the sword from Dostoyevsky’s hands hacked bitterly at the air, accusing the West of not understanding Russia and the paths of its future development which should be founded entirely on its national spirit – and he, together with those who shared his thoughts, crossed swords with those who held a different view of Russia and her future, including one particularly prominent man with thinning grey hair, unassuming grey eyes and gentle features, his uncertain expression more than made up for by the determined face of his wife, a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman with a stubborn chin and confident bearing – and she was the one who had placed the sword in his hand, and when it slipped, she was the one who would give it back to him and would close her hand round his so that the sword would not slip again, guiding his hand, as though teaching a child to write – and the two of them stood on the rampart of an ancient Russian city where they had been compelled to live, with the golden cupolas and the whitewashed walls of recently-restored church-towers and cathedrals with their apses and arched gables shining behind them, but their gaze was turned towards the West – and the man standing on the mound of snow on the other side of the earth looked towards the East, towards his homeland – one of history’s paradoxes which turns out to be no paradox at all, but a predetermined plan.

The man and woman standing on the rampart in fact held on to a flag-staff rather than a sword, and the giant white sail-cloth drooping down to the very ground rippled in the wind, revealing in turn various inscriptions, now black, now red, now yellow, exhorting, cautioning or commanding people – and there they stood, arms thrust forward and upward, gripping the flag-staff, vaguely resembling the sculptured figures in front of the entrance to the Exhibition of Economic Achievements in Moscow symbolizing the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry (as well as productions of the ‘Mosfilm’ studio!) – the bronze worker with bulging muscles, like an anatomy textbook illustration, and the collective-farm woman in her kerchief, both stretching their hands forward and upward together to grasp the mighty hammer and sickle – and someone’s invisible but formidable and relentless hands were attempting to drag down from the rampart the man with uncertain features and his dark, determined wife, but they carried on waving their flag with its inscriptions, the different colours appearing in turn, like an illuminated sign – and the man’s arm was pale with swollen veins in the elbow, as his heart-beat was irregular and he had to be given frequent injections – and his fellow-countrymen hated him even more than the one who had now entrenched himself on the other side of the world, and regarded him as a Jew – and before his enforced exile to the ancient Russian city he travelled the entire country, making demands, forcing his way through police cordons, urged on by his wife who helped him unfurl, in the most improbable places and at the most unexpected moments, that enormous white flag with its constantly changing instructions, collecting around him small groups of incomprehensible, suspicious-sounding foreigners festooned with film and cine-cameras which probably contained photographs of all the locks on the Moscow-Volga Canal as well as of all the Moscow railway termini and the queues for oranges or meat which they would later use for military purposes or the spread of make-believe reports about our country – ‘Hands off!’ our fellow-countrymen wanted to shout as they stood in their queues or killed time beside ticket-offices waiting for them to open – but they did not know if they were allowed to, because no instructions had been issued, so they said nothing, and this hostile, resentful silence of theirs was declared by the man who waved his flag and broke through the cordons, to be the silence of slaves, and a score or so of others cried out the same thing – and they also waved flags, only smaller ones, and they also appeared unexpectedly in the most improbable places to unfurl these pathetic little pennants and gather their little collection of foreigners, in order to pass on state secrets and sell their motherland – and no doubt they all have long hair and long noses, so let them go to their own country and wave their flags about there with that leader of theirs, whose wife has that foreign-sounding name, and who is tarred with the same brush anyway – exile the lot of them, to the back of beyond, or better still: shoot the buggers, the whole long-nosed, worthless lot, and do away with the rest of their crew at the same time, and then that fellow holed out on the other side of the world will see he’s going to all this bother, waving his sword around, to no purpose – that his country has been developing in the necessary direction without his help and advice – on the basis of its national spirit.

The shadows of the two Dostoyevskys glided over the cobblestones and were lengthening as they approached their apartment, because it had been a fair walk from the avenue of chestnuts where Fedya had sat on a bench waiting for Anna Grigor’yevna – and the sun roasted his back through the black frock-coat which he had bought in Berlin.

The morning after he had visited the hotel, when they were just on the point of drinking their tea, Marie brought them a thick, glossy visiting-card announcing in flawless copperplate all too familiar a surname – the early hour having been chosen by Turgenev on purpose, of course, as a polite insult – whoever calls on people at that time? – and was it for this he had danced the cancan at his hotel? – and for a moment he pictured Turgenev’s face to himself with its characteristic expression of feigned astonishment – no! – the face had not worn its customary expression that last time! – Turgenev’s eyes had followed him through the lorgnette extremely intently, as if the lorgnette’s owner were afraid he would be bitten by a mad dog at any moment – and this thought pleased him so much he even smiled – and in their rooms it was cool and dark, even peaceful, the workmen in the smithy probably being at their lunch, and the children having spent all night and morning emitting piercing shrieks, now asleep – and he wanted to take off his heavy frock-coat briefly and lie down for a while, but Anna Grigor’yevna had opened the windows and shutters, which she was always so careful to lock whenever they went out, being afraid of burglars, fire and thunderstorms, and together with the fragrance of acacia blossom and bright sun, sounds from the street entered the room – the clattering of horses’ hooves on the cobblestones, the occasional loud remark exchanged by women in the courtyard, the rumbling of carts delivering water or beer – no, he could not permit himself to do that now – he had to go – and Anna Grigor’yevna, compelled by his imperative look, took her bag with a sigh and extracted a few gold coins from it which he stuffed with a trembling hand into his waistcoat pocket, although he did have a purse – it was quicker that way, and much more convenient for him when gambling, as he could bet more easily when he did not know how much he had left, undistracted by thoughts of how much remained and the game undisturbed by having to engage in unnecessary calculations.

He walked with his body bent slightly forward, his shadow gliding along behind him as the sun was now shining from the front – and he would ply between their lodgings and the Kurhaus several times a day, deviating from his route only to look in at the post-office (but money from the publisher Katkov never arrived), or a shop, or the market to buy fruit and flowers for Anna Grigor’yevna on his way back from the casino, whenever he had won – and in general, he would be on an upward climb, despite the smell of perfume wafting from some of the ladies, chance visitors staking one coin at a time, and also despite Jews and Poles who would block his view – on an upward climb, even if he sometimes stumbled or, against all expectation, began suddenly to fall, thinking each time that it was all over, but it would turn out to be only a foothill on the route to the summit which would slowly but surely draw closer, sometimes even visible through breaks in the cloud, covered in virgin snow, gleaming silver in the rays of the sun or even reflecting gold – and for the others – Turgenev, Goncharov, Panayev, Nekrasov – they all remained below at the foot of the mountain, hand in hand in some kind of round-dance, enveloped in the fetid mists of the lowlands, prancing about, full of empty vanity, and craning their necks to look enviously up at him as he climbed towards the unattainable peak, unconscious of the all-consuming sense of liberation which he felt, just as they were ignorant of the passion which compelled him to go on – he had to, he was obliged to cross the threshold.

As he approached the casino, he began to take smaller steps so that the number of paces from their lodgings should add up to exactly 1457 as, according to earlier calculations, that number was his most successful, and it always led to his winning – not that there was anything strange about that, the last figure being a seven and all the figures together adding up to seventeen (yet another seven) – and there was something special about seven, an unremittingly odd number, divisible by nothing except itself and one, and this was true of it not only in its pure form, but as a unit of two-figure numbers as well – 17, 37, 47, 67 etc. – it was a very special number – and now he had almost reached the bottom of the steps leading into the building and had to make his steps really tiny – almost mincing steps, managing all the same to make them finally add up to his figure of 1457!




pages 113-17:

The light from the old-fashioned table-lamp with its green shade which had belonged to Mozya and stood permanently on his desk, was falling on to the pages of the book I was reading – the circle of light trembled as a tram passed by outside, and the house shook and vibrated very slightly, even though it was old and firmly built – and in the room next door you could just hear the sound of Gilya gulping down her sleeping-pill and then switching off the light over her bed – ‘Are you still as keen on Dostoyevsky?’ she would always ask me and, without waiting for an answer, would immediately add: ‘Only don’t talk about it at the Brodskys’ – Brodsky was her former boss and, although she had given up work a long time ago, she continued to have friendly relations with him and all his family, but especially with his wife Dora Abramovna, a lean, energetic woman in charge not only of her whole numerous family but also of the administrative and research activities of the section which Brodsky headed – and the Brodskys would observe all the Jewish festivals, ate nothing that was not kosher and had been intending to emigrate to Israel for many years, but Brodsky’s sons were engaged in some kind of secret work and he himself as an academician was afraid of any unnecessary stir which might be connected with his name – and that evening, as I lay on the short, broken sofa, listening to the lulling creak of nocturnal trams turning the corner next to Gilya’s flat and then careering off down the snow-covered street, swaying from side to side as always happens with empty carriages when they speed along, heading somewhere into the distance where the lines of street-lamps merged in the gloom of the frosty night, I leafed through, in the slightly wavering circle of light cast by the bulb from beneath the green lamp-shade, the penultimate volume of Dostoyevsky’s works, containing the Diary of a Writer for 1877 or 1878 – and finally I stumbled on an article especially devoted to the Jews – ‘The Jewish Question’ it was called – and I should not have been surprised to discover it because he was bound after all somewhere or other to have gathered together in one place all those ‘Jews, Jewesses, Jew-boys and Yids’ with which he so liberally besprinkled the pages of his novels – now as the poseur Lyamshin squealing with terror in The Possessed, now as the arrogant and at the same time cowardly Isaiah Fomich in Memoirs from the House of the Dead who did not scruple to lend money at enormous interest to his fellow-convicts, now as the fireman in Crime and Punishment with that ‘everlasting sullen grief, so sourly imprinted on all members of the tribe of Judah without exception’, and with his laughable way of pronouncing Russian which is reproduced in the novel with such particular and fastidious pleasure, now as the Jew who crucified the Christian child and then cut off its finger, relishing the child’s agony (Liza Khokhlakova’s story in The Brothers Karamazov) – but most often he would depict them as nameless money-lenders, tight-fisted tradesmen or petty thieves who are not even fully portrayed but simply mentioned as little Jews or some other term implying the lowest and basest qualities of the human character – no, there was nothing surprising about the fact that the author of these novels should somewhere or other have finally expressed his views on this subject, have finally displayed his theory – although in fact there was no special theory – only fairly hackneyed arguments and myths (which have not lost their currency to this very day, incidentally): about the way Jews send gold and jewels to Palestine, about world Jewry which has ensnared practically the whole globe in its greedy tentacles, about the way Jews have mercilessly exploited and made drunkards of the Russian nation which makes it impossible to grant them equal rights, or else they would completely consume the Russian people etc. – and I read all this with a pounding heart, hoping to discover in these arguments, which you might have expected to hear from some member of the Black Hundreds, at least some ray of hope, at least some movement in the other direction, at least some effort to view the whole problem from a new angle – and not just that Jews should be allowed to profess only their religion and nothing else – and it struck me as being strange to the point of implausibility that a man so sensitive in his novels to the sufferings of others, this jealous defender of the insulted and the injured who fervently and even frenetically preached the right to exist of every earthly creature and sang a passionate hymn to each little leaf and every blade of grass – that this man should not have come up with even a single word in the defence or justification of a people persecuted over several thousands of years – could he have been so blind? – or was he perhaps blinded by hatred? – and he did not even refer to the Jews as a people, but as a tribe as though they were a group of natives from the Polynesian islands or somewhere – and to this tribe I belonged and the many friends and acquaintances of mine with whom I had discussed the subtlest problems of Russian literature, and to this tribe also belonged Leonid Grossman and Dolinin, Zil’bershtein and Rozenblyum, Kirpotin and Kogan, Fridlender and Bregova, Borshchevsky and Gosenpud, Mil’kina and Hus, Zundelovich and Shklovsky, Belkin, Bergman and Dvosya L’vovna Sorkina and the many other Jewish literary critics who have gained what amounts almost to a monopoly in the study of Dostoyevsky’s literary heritage – and there was something unnatural and at first glance even enigmatic in the passionate and almost reverential way in which they dissected and to this day continue to analyse the diaries, notebooks, rough drafts, letters and even pettiest biographical details of this man who despised and hated their race – perhaps it was a kind of cannibalistic act performed on the leader of an enemy tribe – but it is possible, however, that this special attraction which Dostoyevsky seems to possess for Jews reveals something else: the desire to hide behind his back, as if using him as a safe-conduct – something like adopting Christianity or daubing a cross on your door during a pogrom – although one cannot exclude the simple fervour of Jews here which has always been particularly strong in questions concerning Russian culture and the preservation of the Russian national spirit and which, in any case, completely accords with the preceding supposition.

Outside, the noise of the trams had already ceased, and I had long since turned out the light, placing Mozya’s lamp carefully down on the dining-table – and in the next room Gilya’s delicate snoring could be heard – ten breaths followed by a tiny snore – so tiny it was as if she was not snoring at all but sobbing in her sleep – and my feet just hung there over the edge of the sofa, and outside the window was the impenetrable, Petersburg, winter’s night, and although it was very late, there was still a whole eternity to go until dawn – and you could lie there peacefully and not worry about having to get to sleep because it might soon be first light.


pages 10-15:

A while back he had noticed a particular chair in the gallery where the ‘Sistine Madonna’ hung, a soft chair with a curved back which seemed to be set apart from the others which were placed there for visitors to rest or to sit on and admire one of the pictures – and nobody seemed to sit on this one chair – perhaps meant for the attendant or possessing some historical value – and the first time the thought became tangible, a shiver ran down his spine, it seemed so audacious, so inconceivable – preparing himself for action, he passed the chair and once almost placed his foot on it, but a lot of people were in the room, and the bored-looking attendant dressed in his uniform jacket was leaning against the wall – and perhaps he should have done exactly that in front of everyone, the attendant in particular, as preventing this kind of thing was precisely an attendant’s job – approaching the chair, his heart would stop, and after a second of hesitation, as if pondering which way to walk round the chair, he would pass by, peering at the Madonna with exaggerated interest – but that night, as Anya swam away so distantly and he floundered somewhere near the shore, unable to reach the bottom – that night he made a solemn vow to do exactly that – and so, entering the gallery as usual next morning, he headed immediately for the room where the ‘Sistine Madonna’ hung, the beat of his heart echoing in his ears, a crowd jostling in front of the painting – some standing or sitting a slight distance away with opera-glasses (easier to look with them as your eyes were concentrated on the painting and did not wander) – and at first not seeing the chair and, from the way his heart stopped jumping and fluttering, realizing he was inwardly glad – but the chair was simply hidden by people – and there was the attendant, in full livery with gilded buttons – a purposeful walk towards the chair, even pushing his way through the visitors – Anna Grigor’yevna, who had entered the room with him, standing somewhere to one side, apparently having taken a pair of opera-glasses – and he stepped on to the chair with one foot, eyes closed – or perhaps for that moment he was simply sightless – and then he placed his other foot on it: shoes sinking deep into the soft seat – and above the heads of the crowd, the painting could be seen to particular advantage, the Madonna floating in the clouds with the child in her arms, the apostle looking piously up at her from below, and the angels above – and this was the reason, all things considered, for standing up on the chair, because he did have to think of some explanation for the lackey who would try to drag him off – ‘Fedya, are you mad!’ – Anna Grigor’yevna stood beside him, looking up at him with startled eyes from below – even giving a discreet tug at his sleeve – and he was raised above all others – they were all pygmies, and one of the pygmies was rushing towards him – the attendant – and in place of the painting there appeared the face of the commandant with his bull-neck and Gargantuan chin, held in by the tightly fitting collar of his dress-uniform – smiling in a meek and even pleading sort of way, and not just the face, but there was his whole figure, strangely frail and cringing – and where the visitors had been, in place of their heads was a sea, and he and his wife swam into the deep-bluish distance, thrusting their arms up rhythmically, gulping in the air, moving further and further from the shore – and the prison commandant had nearly faded, his pitiful, bent figure scarcely visible somewhere in the distance, the figure of a beggar, asking for alms – ‘Standing on chairs is forbidden in this gallery, sir,’ – staring reprovingly at the well-dressed person standing on a chair, was the attendant, who then moved forward and lifted his arm as though offering support to the person on the chair, who stepped down, almost jumping, pushing aside the attendant’s hand, and saw Anna Grigor’yevna standing in the corner of the room, having had time to move away and who was now pretending to be minutely examining a picture through her opera-glasses, but her hands, as she held the glasses, trembled – ‘For heaven’s sake, let’s get away from here,’ she said when he came up to her, her voice hoarse with agitation – visitors were looking round at them and whispering together about something – and taking him by the arm, she led him towards the door leading into the next room.

He should have remained standing on the chair to the bitter end, in spite of the lackey’s reprimand, but he had given in and stepped down – appearing now in the wide window of the room, the commandant’s face smiled contemptuously, and his fat, fleshy hand rakishly smoothed his moustache in a gesture of victory – and people stared through the guard-room windows, friends of the prisoner and women, too, their eyes full of pity and concern, and he lay across the table with his trousers down, and the guard methodically lashed him – Anna Grigor’yevna’s arm was brusquely shaken away and, with lowered head, she resolutely walked into the next room – the chair should not have been left empty – it was unnatural, an empty chair – heading quickly for the centre of the room, his feet sinking again into something soft and springy – to stand as long as he liked now – to overcome in himself that humiliation in the face of a servant – could he never cross that boundary? – the crowd had fallen silent, as they do before the curtain rises – and the commandant’s face, once again in the place of the painting, winked at him arrogantly – swinging his arm, he slapped his cheek, and the face disappeared, slumping probably with the rest of the commandant’s body, which lay on the floor next to the polished table – the prisoner he had tried to punish standing in a triumphant pose, leg placed firmly on the commandant’s stomach, and the audience staring in through the windows clapped him loudly, and the women, especially the intimate ones, looked at him with delight and blew him kisses – unhurriedly stepping from the chair – not jumping but carefully stepping – he headed deliberately towards the next room – in the doorway bumping into the attendant who it seemed had been out of the room somewhere, and the lackey politely let him pass.

That night, when he went to kiss Anya, they swam away again together, rhythmically thrusting out their arms from the water and raising their heads to take in gulps of air – and the current did not sweep him away – they swam towards the receding horizon, into the unknown, deep-blue distance, and then he began to kiss her again – a dark triangle appeared, upturned – its apex, its peak, pointing downwards, forever inaccessible, like the inverted peak of a very high mountain disappearing somewhere into the clouds – or rather the core of a volcano – and this peak, this unattainable core, contained the answer both terrible and exquisite to something nameless and unimaginable and, throughout his life, even in his letters to her, he maintained the incessant struggle to reach it, but this peak, this core, remained forever inaccessible – and had he really stood on that chair for as long as he actually wanted to? – the attendant, after all, had been absent when he stood on it for the second time, so it could not be said he had been standing there in defiance of the attendant’s will, even though he had resolved to remain in that position until he was led away – and if they had led him away, the attendant and maybe even a policeman – they would have dragged him across the whole room in full view of everyone including Anya, and everything would have thundered down as if from a high mountain – quickly, very quickly, and no longer could he have raised himself up from the polished table on which they had beaten him, and the commandant’s face would have hung over him like a flushed red ball, like the gorged abdomen of a blood-sated mosquito, and his whole life would have become exquisite torment, because such humiliation was literally breathtaking – but neither thing had happened – he had stepped down – voluntarily, without waiting for the attendant to return – and he had not, in fact, brought the business to a scandalous conclusion – the triangle’s forbidden peak, both hidden in the clouds and disappearing into the depths of the earth, perhaps to the very centre of the earth where the molten rock was constantly boiling, this peak had remained inaccessible.

Although Anya was gently stroking his face, he, without even saying his usual ‘Goodnight,’ went off to his own room, and half an hour later she was woken by a strange sound – one moment wheezing, the next gurgling – lighting the candle with trembling hands, she flew to her husband’s bed – and he lay on the very edge, twisting his body as though he wanted to sit up but was prevented by an invisible rope which tethered him to the bed, face turning blue, mouth foaming – all her strength was used to drag him towards the middle of the bed so he would not fall and, kneeling down and taking a towel, she began wiping the foam from his lips and the sweat which poured from his forehead – and now he lay there peacefully, face as pale as a corpse – the invisible rope had won – he had failed to sit up – but was this really her husband? – this blue-faced man, trying to sit up in bed, fighting someone’s invisible resistance, foam bubbling on his lips, dishevelled straggly beard somehow slipping to one side – was he really the person she had climbed up that narrow, steep, dark staircase to see, little more than half a year ago, adjusting her veil, her heart pounding in agitation, drowning the click of her heels, gasping with excitement and checking in her bag for the hundredth time, where she had placed the new pencils and the packet of writing paper (surely she hadn’t lost them?) which she had just bought in Gostiny Dvor – cunningly arriving an hour earlier than her fellow student (also good at shorthand) because, from the moment she had discovered he needed a stenographer, her world had begun to sway and swirl – on a ship in the middle of a storm, a gigantic wave had swept all the rigging and even the handrails away, leaving only the mast – and all those on deck struggled to reach this mast and cling to it, so as not to be washed overboard into the sea, but only one person could manage it, and this one person had to be her.

He had met her in the entrance-hall, his head tilted slightly to one side as if examining some strange insect, and at another door appeared an untidy, petulant-looking young man – his stepson – who gave a haughty, arrogant smile which he repeated as she entered, with a scarcely perceptible nod – and he conducted her into a tiny room containing a desk, a small round table, a few chairs with faded upholstery and, sitting her down at the round table, began to dictate to her – not looking at her again that day, but spending the whole time walking up and down the room dictating in an unpleasant, muffled voice, and she was afraid to ask him to repeat anything, because she thought he would send her away immediately, and she had to hold out, to grasp the mast before anyone else – and, teetering and falling, she slowly but surely made headway.

After working for three or four days, she caught him staring at her with bright, searching eyes, and she had the fleeting thought that he wanted to come to her to say something or ask her something, but she firmly lowered her gaze, staring with exaggerated interest at her shorthand notes – almost grasping the mast, but she mustn’t rush, she mustn’t lose her balance at the last moment – closer and closer he came to her each time – no longer walking from one corner of the room to the other as at first, but around her, the circles narrowing each time, a spider closing in on a fly – and there was something exquisite and forbidden for both of them about these inexorably narrowing circles, something that took her breath away – but she would still rigorously, and even piously now, shut her eyes to avoid his gaze – she, who had spun this spider’s web or, perhaps, they had spun it together – and the threads of the web began to bend and looked as if they might break at any moment – but this ‘any moment’ turned into the opening of the study door and the poking in of the stepson’s head with his arrogant, haughty and accusing smile, so that the circles changed back to diagonals – from corner to corner – and the orator made an effort, quite beyond his strength, not to peer at the stenographer, and she would greet the stepson’s appearance at the door with a glowering stare from under the brows – maybe the first appearance of that look to be seen in the photograph on the first page of her Diary.


pages 33-8:

Anna Grigor’yevna and Fedya had changed trains several times – sometimes during the day, sometimes at night – and Fedya would accompany Anna Grigor’yevna to the ladies’ room because she felt nauseated, and in one place was even sick – Leipzig, Naumburg, Erfurt, Eisenach, Frankfurt – in Frankfurt they booked in at a hotel a couple of steps from the station, ordered themselves veal cutlets and soup and then went to inspect the city – and walked into Lange Strasse, a big avenue with trees bearing white blossom – and a German told them that it was white acacia – and Anna Grigor’yevna liked the trees very much – she had never seen them in flower before – then they found themselves in a big street not unlike Nevsky Prospect with a large number of shops – and they bought a very expensive copy of Herzen’s Bell – fifty-four kreutzers – and then Fedya chose a cravat – a pink one with a pattern of little rings which cost three florins fifteen kreutzers – but the shop had no suitable scarf for Anna Grigor’yevna, because they were either too narrow or too wide or were just not particularly nice-looking – and in one shop they had a look at some very nice hats because Fedya kept repeating that Anna Grigor’yevna needed a new one – then they entered some long, hot street almost deserted at this hour with windows nearly all shuttered, making the city look dead – down some side-streets to emerge on the banks of the Main which looked so astonishingly like the picture of it hanging in the drawing-room of Anna Grigor’yevna’s house – and then returning to the street resembling Nevsky, they entered yet another shop, Anna Grigor’yevna buying herself a lilac-coloured scarf for two florins twelve kreutzers and trying on a straw hat with lilac-coloured velvet, very pretty, which had taken her fancy as they walked down the street past this shop for the first time, but she dared not ask Fedya to go in then because he was so impatient to rush here, there and everywhere – and the price turned out to be twenty florins – simply scandalous, compared to Dresden – but in spite of this Fedya, with a bow, indicated to the French woman showing them the hat that they would buy it, suggesting she must be taking them for simpletons, for savages – and she replied in an extremely condescending way that, of course, they were obviously not savages and kept on repeating in broken Russian, kho-ro-sho (‘good’), which finally made Fedya lose his temper completely and snap out a sharp rejoinder – and they left the shop without buying the hat after all and started walking along the streets once again – and then into a flower shop, spending a long time choosing roses because none of them was particularly nice – in the end buying a couple of roses after all, paying eighteen kreutzers for each of them.

Outside the carriage, through the morning mist which had yet to disperse, appeared the environs of Baden-Baden – Anna Grigor’yevna was dozing, her head on her husband’s shoulder, as he glanced sideways at her face, examining it carefully and suspiciously – did this woman really love him? – that first time he had seen her at his house it had seemed unbelievable that this young woman, scarcely old enough to have left school, with fresh, innocent face slightly glowing from the street, would stay in his house forever, becoming his wife, and that he would have the right, at any time, to go up to her and kiss the back of her neck in the place where her hair was pinned up – but that very thought, that she might become his wife, had for some reason entered his head the very first time she sat in his study at a little round table, diligently taking down in shorthand the words he dictated in his muffled voice – and he had been purposely dry and sharp with her that day, so she would not feel the power she had already gained over him, but when, as he dictated to her, he imagined himself kneeling before her beneath the flickering light of a nearly spent candle and kissing her feet, with her unable to leave because she was his wife, and about to blow out the candle so they could plunge into the passionate, exquisite swim, then his voice became hoarse and he shut his eyes to blot out the sight of this little girl, as he purposely tried to picture her to help restrain his imagination, girl students being as untouchable as postulants – and did she really love him? – sometimes he thought she was simply pretending (hadn’t just his name really attracted her?) – once, as he took aim in a Dresden shooting-gallery with her at his side, half-smiling, thinking he would not hit the target, she said to him: ‘You’ll miss’ – and beforehand some German had hit the bull’s-eye every time, making the iron figure of a Turk pop up from the floor – and she had been full of admiration, watching this German shoot, and the German had been flashing her significant looks – but all she said to him was: ‘You’ll miss’ – and, just to show her, he hit the bull the very first time, and the iron Turk in his painted fez popped up off the floor just as he had done for the German – and turning round towards her in triumph, he said loudly, almost shouting: ‘Well? Did I get the bull’s-eye or not?’ – and after each successful shot he turned round again to shout: ‘Well?!’ – so that people began to look round – and the expression on her face after each bull’s-eye and each triumphant exclamation became more and more fearful and somehow pathetic, and this egged him on even more, and he bawled out his ‘Well?’ even louder with people beginning to cluster around them, and her face – each time he turned to fling his triumphant ‘Well?’ at her – was becoming more unlovely, and her forehead began to take on a kind of sallow tone – and at these moments he longed for her to grow old quickly and become plain and ugly like that, so that men like that German would stop casting looks at her and she would lose her power over him – in the letters she wrote to her relations she probably made fun of him, even ridiculing their swimming together – and sometimes she would pretend that she had not been sleeping, but he knew she had been asleep: he could tell by the sound of her voice – why couldn’t she spend that half hour, when thoughts came to him so easily, sitting beside him at his desk? – but she would always disappear into the other room, and he knew for certain that she was asleep, but when he went in and shook her by the shoulder to rouse her, she immediately tried to assure him that she had been awake, although her eyes could not keep open – and this obvious lie infuriated him more than anything else – and this woman who simply did not want to sit with him, could engage in lively conversation with that garrulous and empty-headed German, Mme Zimmermann, about this and that kind of lace and other such trivialities – and once, after she was caught out sleeping yet again, pretending as always to have been awake, she came to his study after all and sat next to his desk – and he could feel, although he did not look, that her eyes could hardly stay open and that she was having to make a real effort – but he did not need her favours! – and the hooves of a cab-horse could be heard outside clattering by over the cobblestones, and somewhere over the sharp-gabled roofs of the red-brick buildings the sun was setting – and his train of thought kept shifting to something else, and he thought that this something else must be her, as she sat there not of her own accord, but compelled to – and then, jumping out of his chair, he began to shout that she was sitting there out of revenge, on purpose, to annoy him, and the more he realized the absurdity of this, the more angrily he shouted – let everyone hear what he had to say, especially that wonderful Mme Zimmermann, her intimate, her friend! – kicking the chair abruptly away he started to look for his papirosas – his hands trembled – and covering her face with her hands, Anna Grigor’yevna ran from the room, as he furiously flung about the books and papers on his desk and banged open all the drawers – and there was no sign of papirosa tubes although he remembered placing them near the right-hand edge of the desk so they would always be to hand – and running after her, knowing that the papirosas were a pretext, he found her sitting on the edge of the bed, her hands still covering her face, her shoulders trembling – and he knelt down in front of her and forced her hands away – tears were flowing down her face – and he started to kiss her hands and feet – she drew his head towards her and suddenly burst out laughing – and disentangling his head from her hands, he gazed questioningly into her eyes which were laughing and still moist with tears – and she said that she was laughing because people asleep were not accountable for their actions, but that was exactly what he demanded of her.

That evening, as always, he came to kiss her goodnight, and they swam so far that the coast disappeared from view as though it had never existed – on they swam, breathing rhythmically, plunging into the water, now thrusting themselves slightly out again to gulp air into their lungs – and when it seemed that the swimming would never end and that they would break free at any moment, no longer swimming but soaring lightly and easily over the water like seagulls, he suddenly remembered her laughing face – of course she had been laughing at him, and a counter-current pulled him to one side, and next to her face appeared the bloated features of the commandant, with his chin hanging down like a balloon, and this balloon seemed to bulge with blood like a mosquito’s abdomen – and around these arrogantly grinning features appeared more faces – his friends and acquaintances, particularly women, including the one who had shared his cabin and whom he had dared not touch, and also the very first woman he had seen at the Vielgorskys’ salon, where writers would gather in his younger days, before his arrest – so beautiful, so impossibly unattainable in her long dress with its silent train gliding after her as if she were a queen, so impossibly unattainable with her blond ringlets framing her face and the subtle fragrance of her perfume, that when she gave him her hand and held it fleetingly in his so that he would realize he must kiss this hand showing white through the slit of her glove, he staggered oddly and nearly fell – probably having briefly blacked out – the first harbinger of his illness? – and then everyone had laughed at him, and someone even wrote an offensive quatrain about him – but she remained just as serious and attentive towards him, simply taking her hand away – but now she, too, was beginning to laugh at him, and the others in the drawing-room were now really roaring with laughter, those self-satisfied mediocrities, glowing and engorged, those he had bared his soul to at that time – and they spread the tale all over Petersburg with little jokes and witty rhymes – and to think that he had imagined they drank in his every thought and worshipped him! – and now they were simply convulsed, and here he was already floundering near the shore, and Anya was swimming far away, almost at the horizon itself where the deep-blue of the sea merged with the identical blue of the sky – all of them, including her, laughed at him – and leaving her still swimming beyond the horizon, he threw on his dressing-gown, went into the other room, lit a candle and sat at his desk, burying his head in his hands – yes, she was his natural enemy, there was no doubt about it, and the next day, when she carelessly moved the table with their morning coffee, hurting him with its leg, he accused her of doing it on purpose – and then in the days which followed he told her several times that she was spiteful and unpleasant to him on purpose – and her face on these occasions would take on that pathetic, fearful expression it had worn in the shooting-gallery, and she no longer dared laugh but simply lowered her head further and further, as if trying to hide her face from him, and he would go down on his knees in front of her, kissing her feet and begging her to forgive him but, above all, not to laugh at him – and then, annoyed by this self-inflicted humiliation, he would jump to his feet and walk quickly up and down the room, diagonally from corner to corner, kicking away any chairs in his path and shouting out that he was still worthy of respect, even if he didn’t have any money – and she would bow her head even lower, pressing her hands against it, as if she had migraine, and stand there motionless with a stony expression replacing the look of fear.



pages xv-xvi, xvii, xx-xxi (Introduction by Susan Sontag):

The account of the Dostoyevsky’s travels—for they will be mostly abroad in Tsypkin’s novel, and not only in Baden-Baden—has been scrupulously researched. The passages where the narrator—Tsypkin—describes his own doings are autobiographical. Since imagination and fact are easily contrasted, we tend to draw genre lessons from this, and segregate invented stories (fiction) from real-life narratives (chronicle and autobiography). That’s one convention—ours. In Japanese literature, the so-called “I-novel” (shishōsetsu), a narrative that is essentially autobiographical but contains elements of invention, is one of the dominant novel forms.


. . . The framing action of this short book is the trip the narrator is making to the sites of Dostoyevsky’s life and novels, part of the preparation (as we come to realize) for the book we hold in our hands. Summer in Baden-Baden belongs to a rare and exquisitely ambitious subgenre of the novel: a retelling of the life of a real person of accomplishment from another era, it interweaves this story with a story in the present, of the novelist mulling over, trying to gain deeper entry into, the inner life of someone whose destiny it was to have become not only historical but monumental. (Another example, and one of the glories of twentieth-century Italian literature, is Artemisia by Anna Banti.)


. . . Tsypkin’s sentences call to mind José Saramago’s run-on sentences, which fold dialogue into description and description into dialogue, spiked by verbs that refuse to stay consistently either in the past or the present tense. In their incessantness, Tsypkin’s sentences have something of the same force and hectic authority as those of Thomas Bernhard. Obviously, Tsypkin could not have known the books of Saramago and Bernhard. He had other models of ecstatic prose in twentieth-century literature. He loved the early (not the late) prose of Pasternak—Safe Conduct, not Doctor Zhivago. He loved Tsvetaeva. He loved Rilke, in part because Tsvetaeva and Pasternak had loved Rilke; he read very little foreign literature, and only in translation. Of what he had read, his greatest passion was Kafka, whom he discovered by way of a volume of stories published in the Soviet Union in the early 1960s. The amazing Tsypkin sentence was entirely his own invention.

Reminiscing about his father, Tsypkin’s son describes him as obsessed by detail and compulsively neat. His daughter-in-law, commenting on his choice of medical specialty—pathology—and his decision never to practice as a clinical physician, recalls that “he was very interested in death.” Perhaps only an obsessive, death-haunted hypochondriac, such as Tsypkin seems to have been, could have devised a sentence-form that is free in so original a way. His prose is an ideal vehicle for the emotional intensity and abundance of his subject. In a relatively short book, the long sentence bespeaks inclusiveness and associativeness, the passionate agility of a temperament steeped, in most respects, in adamancy.

Besides the account of the incomparable Dostoyevsky, what can one not find in this extraordinary mental adventure that is Tsypkin’s novel? Taken for granted, if that is not too odd a way of putting it, are the sufferings of the Soviet era, from the Great Terror of 1934-37 to the present of the narrator’s quest: the book pulses with them. Summer in Baden-Baden is also a spirited and plangent account of Russian literature—the whole arc of Russian literature. Pushkin, Turgenev (there is a scene of fierce confrontation between Dostoyevsky and Turgenev), and the great figures of twentieth-century Russian literature and ethical struggle—Tsvetaeva, Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov and Bonner—also enter, are poured into the narration.

If you want from one book an experience of the depth and authority of Russian literature, read this book. If you want a novel that can fortify your soul and give you a larger idea of feeling, and of breathing, read this book.