Autobiography of a Corpse Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

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.SIGIZMUND KRZHIZHANOVSKY (1887–1950), the Ukrainian-born son of Polish emigrants, studied law and classical philology at Kiev University.After graduation and two summers spent exploring Europe, he was obliged to clerk for an attorney.A sinecure, the job allowed him to devote most of his time to literature and his own writing.In 1920, he began lecturing in Kiev on theater and music.The lectures continued in Moscow, where he moved in 1922, by then well known in literary circles.Lodged in a cell-like room on the Arbat, Krzhizhanovsky wrote steadily for close to two decades.His philosophical and phantasmagorical fictions ignored injunctions to portray the Soviet state in a positive light.Three separate efforts to print collections were quashed by the censors, a fourth by World War II.Not until 1989 could his work begin to be published.Like Poe, Krzhizhanovsky takes us to the edge of the abyss and forces us to look into it.“I am interested,” he said, “not in the arithmetic, but in the algebra of life.”JOANNE TURNBULL’s translations from Russian in collaboration with Nikolai Formozov include Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s Memories of the Future and The Letter Killers Club (both NYRB Classics).ADAM THIRLWELL is the author of two novels, Politics and The Escape; a novella, Kapow!; an essay-book, The Delighted States, winner of a Somerset Maugham Award; and a compendium of translations edited for McSweeney’s.He has twice been selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists.AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A CORPSESIGIZMUND KRZHIZHANOVSKYIntroduction byADAM THIRLWELLTranslated from the Russian byJOANNE TURNBULLwith NIKOLAI FORMOZOVNEW YORK REVIEW BOOKSNew YorkTHIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKPUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014www.nyrb.comStories copyright © by Éditions VerdierTranslation copyright © 2013 by Joanne Turnbull and Nikolai FormozovIntroduction copyright © by Adam ThirlwellAll rights reserved.Cover image: Wassily Kandinsky, Mouvement I, 1935; © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York /ADAGP, ParisCover design: Katy HomansPublished by arrangement with Éditions Verdier, which publishes these stories under the following titles: “Autobiographie d’un cadavre,” “Dans la pupille,” “Les Coutures,” “Le Collectionneur des fentes,” “Le Pays des nons,” “Les Doigts fuyards,” “La Métaphysique articulaire,” “La Houille jaune,” “Le Pont sur le Styx,” “Les Trente deniers,” and “Estampillé Moscou.”Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataKrzhizhanovskii, Sigizmund, 1887–1950, author.[Short stories.Selections.English.2013]Autobiography of a corpse / by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky ; introduction byAdam Thirlwell ; translated by Joanne Turnbull.pages cm.— (New York Review Books classics)Includes bibliographical references.ISBN 978-1-59017-670-2 (alk.paper)I.Thirlwell, Adam, 1978– writer of added commentary.II.Turnbull, Joanne, translator.III.Title.IV.Series: New York Review Books classics.PG3476.K782a2 2013891.73'42—dc232013019761eISBN 978-1-59017-696-2v1.1For a complete list of books in the NYRB Classics series, visit www.nyrb.com or write to: Catalog Requests, NYRB, 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014CONTENTSBiographical NotesTitle pageCopyright and More InformationIntroductionAutobiography of a CorpseIn the PupilSeamsThe Collector of CracksThe Land of NotsThe Runaway FingersThe Unbitten ElbowYellow CoalBridge over the StyxThirty Pieces of SilverPostmark: MoscowNotesINTRODUCTION1ACCORDING to the usual theory of the real, these are the important facts about the life of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky.He was born in Kiev to a Polish-speaking family on February 11, 1887.At university, he studied law.In 1912, aged twenty-five, he traveled through Europe, visiting Paris, Heidelberg, and Milan—for the young Krzhizhanovsky was the pure apprentice intellectual.After the First World War and the 1917 Russian Revolution, he returned to Kiev, where he taught at the Conservatory and the Theater Institute.In 1922, aged thirty-five, he left for Moscow, where he lived for the rest of his life.In Moscow, Krzhizhanovsky wrote articles and gave lectures, in particular at Alexander Tairov’s Drama Studio.He also worked as a consultant to Tairov’s Chamber Theater.Meanwhile, he wrote novellas and stories, which were never published—either due to economic problems (bankrupt publishers) or political problems (Soviet censors).Twenty years passed in this way until, in 1941, with Krzhizhanovsky now fifty-four, a collection of stories was finally scheduled for publication—but then the Second World War intervened, preventing even that collection from appearing.In May 1950 he suffered a stroke and lost the ability to read.He died at the end of the year.(His works—almost all of them unpublished—were stored by his lifelong companion, Anna Bovshek, in her apartment: in her clothes chest, under some brocade.)But of course, the real is a mobile category—this is one truth that the totalitarian twentieth century has proved—and one way of altering the real is to erase various facts from history.Krzhizhanovsky’s life, it might have seemed, would be one more element in history’s sequence of deletions.Almost no one, after all, knew that he was writing fiction, since the state never allowed its publication.They knew him in other guises—as a lecturer on theater, or an essayist, or an occasional playwright.In 1939 Krzhizhanovsky, despite his restricted publication history, was nevertheless elected to the Writers’ Union—which meant that posthumously he was eligible for the process of “immortalization.” In 1953 Stalin died, and three years later Khrushchev’s secret speech to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party instituted a revisionist anti-Stalinist thaw [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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