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From Sovlit:
The Forty-First by Boris Lavrenyov (1924). A female sniper with Red partisans misses her 41st vicitim (a White officer), then winds up stranded with him on a desert island, where they fall in love. However, the White's essentially selfish, bourgeois nature becomes apparent and she shoots him, fulfilling her mission and her class destiny ....
A page on Soviet children's books from a collection at the the Rare Books and Special Collections Division of McGill University Libraries:
Among the many radical changes in the Soviet Union after the 1917 Revolution, the transformation of children's books offers one of the most vivid reminders of the vast ambitions of the new social order. Building simultaneously upon the progressive legacy of the 19th century Russian literature and upon the dazzling tradition of Russian Futurism, a linguistic, literary and artistic movement that galvanized Russian intellectuals in the early decades of this century, post-Revolutionary publishing for children introduced a vast array of new measures that transmogrified this previously undistinguished genre. In addition to the powerful visual impact of the boldly designed books, there were marked increases in the number of titles published annually, a skyrocketing in the size of individual editions and the creation of an entire branch of the publishing industry dedicated solely to children's literature.
[Spaceeba, Amos!]
"We were drinking and what doesn't happen when you're drunk?"
[Spaceeba, Dana!]
I'm marrying one of these clams on Saturday. Actually, I'm marrying the most beautiful dancing clam there ever was. See you in 2 weeks--and some of you sooner!
Construction begins!
Don't laugh, don't even breathe!
Doors from Twos, porches, Threes...
Stop! It fell--so build it again.
The doorman's cot goes in the corner--
He'll sleep on a Seven.
Great job, wonderful... Don't fall!
Jacks are in the first room--
My…and so well dressed!
Hats tilted upward and hats tilted down
Along the walls--the eaves
Are made from Fours and Fives.
Don't shake! I'm warning you!
Further along--behind that screen of Sixes--
There's a bathroom for the Queens.
Let the Kings sleep in the dining room.
There's no space anywhere else.
The Queen of Spades and Ace of Diamonds
Are drinking coffee on the veranda.
Children? They don't have any children,
Neither children, nor birds, nor cats...
These holes here are for windows
And that's a guest room.
Post and beam--It's a new home!
The house is almost done.
The chimneys just need to be taller.
Don't tremble, be careful, friend!
For God's sake, don't shake...
No, no, no! There's still more...
Oh no!
The sides begin to wobble,
They bend and stagger
Then tumble and spill onto the table cloth--
And there goes the house...
1921, a children's poem by Sasha Chernyi, translated from Russian by me.
Thanks, everyone for coming out to Polish-occupied Greenpoint last night! It was fun to gather in a basement to talk about the dead...
Darn. I would really love to see Walking with Brodsky, Russian Muse of the French Resistance, and Shalamov: Several of my Lives (especially Sahalamov!), but it would mean missing my wedding and then my honeymoon, and then finding a new place to live...
The Russian Documentary Film Festival--a joint venture presented by the New Review Magazine (New York), the Library Fund for Russians Abroad (Moscow) and the Russian Cultural Foundation (Moscow)--will take place in New York, April 11-13th, 2008.The festival features documentary films produced in Russia over the last 15 years.
I'm reading from my translation of Osip Mandelshtam's Tristia with Anya Ulinich at Word bookstore in Greenpoint tonight at 7:30pm. Anya will be signing her terrific novel Petropolis, which is being reissued in paperback.
Word
126 Franklin Street
Greenpoint, Brooklyn
718-383-0096
