Memories of the Future

Posted on 21 July 2017 by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

Written in Soviet Moscow in the 1920s but considered too subversive even to show to a publisher the seven tales included here attest to Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky s boundless imagination, black humor, and breathtaking irony a man loses his way in the vast black waste of his own small room the Eiffel Tower runs amok a kind soul dreams of selling everything you need for suicide an absentminded passenger boards the wrong train, winding up in a place where night is day, nightmares are the reality, and the backs of all facts have been broken a man out looking for work comes across a line for logic but doesn t join it as there s no guarantee the logic will last a sociable corpse misses his own funeral an inventor gets a glimpse of the far from radiant communist future. Download Memories of the Future – kino-fada.fr First off, the author s name is pronounced Kurr zheh zhuh nov skee Now you, too, can dazzle and impress your friends This is a set of unpublished short stories written in 1920s Soviet Russia, and were never shown to a publisher, out of fear of being too subversive and dangerous to show These were also concurrent with the decline of the Soviet avant garde, and their gradual replacement with the institutional kitsch of Stalin s joyous peasant propaganda.These stories are very much a grab bag So First off, the author s name is pronounced Kurr zheh zhuh nov skee Now you, too, can dazzle and impress your friends This is a set of unpublished short stories written in 1920s Soviet Russia, and were never shown to a publisher, out of fear of being too subversive and dangerous to show These were also concurrent with the decline of the Soviet avant garde, and their gradual replacement with the institutional kitsch of Stalin s joyous peasant propaganda.These stories are very much a grab bag Some are like Kafka s parables, darkly humorous, ex Quadraturin , some are dreamy surreal narratives the Eiffel tower galloping along the streets of Paris and some are so boring as to be incomprehensible But even the worst stories still have fun ideas to play with, the fragm...A philosophy of life isterrible than syphilis and people you have to give them credit take every precaution not to become infected Especially by a philosophy of life.Obscure authors are only exhumed with praise, not sober reflections on potential inclusion in the canon No, hysterics and mashed analogies are required its as if ______ had a baby who grew addicted to mescaline and rewrote _____ Rebirth also requires nudges and casual mention I suppose that was Goodreads...If you read these stories while populating the shadows in the back of your mind with Kafka, Szerb, and Bulgakov, you will find yourself imagining a literal existence of the zeitgeist, expecting it at any minute to startle you with table rapping or producing manifestations of luminous text textured protoplasm How is it possible that Krzhizhanovsky and Kafka did not know each other unless the transmission was clairvoyant, the medium the ethereal zeitgeist Look There it is Oh, wait, that s just If you read these stories while populating the shadows in the back of your mind with Kafka, Szerb, and Bulgakov, you will find yourself imagining a literal existence of the zeitgeist, expecting it at any minute to startle you with table rapping or producing manifestations of luminous text textured protoplasm How is it possible that Krzhizhanovsky and Kafka did not know each other unless the transmission was clairvoyant, the medium the ethereal zeitgeist Look There it is Oh, wait, that ...You re sitting in a bar, of sorts, and a rather shabby fellow comes in, dirty scarf trailing, and he does not stop at the table of students, or to the officers in their greatcoats No He pauses, and heads for you A polite slight bow And then he says, I wonder, citizen, if you wouldn t like to acquire a philosophical system You are looking through old books And you find an old bookmark a flat body of faded silk and needlepoint designs trailing a swallowtail train. It was left in a book you You re sitting in a bar, of sorts, and a rather shabby fellow comes in, dirty scarf trailing, and he does not stop at the table of students, or to the officers in their greatcoats No He pauses, and heads for you A polite slight bow And then he says, I wonder, citizen, if you wouldn t like to acquire a philosophical system You are looking through old books And you find an old bookmark a flat body of faded silk and needlepoint designs trailing a swallowtail train. It was left in a book you didn t finish and, that, a long time ago Thus do long sea voyages part sailors from their wives.You visit,andoften, a cemetery You walk in first past a chaos of crosses, then past the inner wall to the new crossless cemetery You meet the old gravedigger there You offer h...Coming up, Knig o lass will teach us how to pronounce this writer s cumbersome surname In the meantime, here s seven fantastical stories Quadraturin is a slice of Russian absurdism qua Gogol The Bookmark is an early, essentially metafictional story about storytellers losing control of their characters and other opaque meanderings Someone Else s Theme continues the literary satire, spliced with a fantastical layer that makes the story impossible to pin to one thinghalfway into ce Coming up, Knig o lass will teach us how to pronounce this writer s cumbersome surname In the meantime, here s seven fantastical stories Quadraturin is a slice of Russian absurdism qua Gogol The Bookmark is an early, essentially metafictional story about storytellers losing control of their characters and other opaque meanderings Someone Else s ...So I can t decide what sshocking that this guy is this good, or that these stories sat for decades in a Soviet basement Sigizmund I ll call him by his first name as I don t want to repeatedly type his Scrabble masters wet dream of a last name is one of those writers whose life was in a way the finest distillation of his artistic themes For Sigizmund this was alienation, victimization, and endless imagination in the face of institutionalized ignorance He reminds me of Nabokov, Borges, So I can t decide what sshocking that this guy is this good, or that these stories sat for decades in a Soviet basement Sigizmund I ll call him by his first name as I don t want to repeatedly type his Scrabble masters wet dream of a last name is one of those writers whose life was in a way the finest distillation of his artistic themes For Sigizmund this was alienation, victimization, and endless imagination in the face of institutionalized ignorance He reminds me of Nabokov, Borges, Kafka the metaphysical greats he wields a perfect blend of philosophy and fiction with stor...June 2011 As for the human brain s affinity for pillows, it s entirely natural they re related, after all, the pillow and the brain For what do you have under the crown of your head A grayish white, porous plumose pulp wrapped in three pillowcases Your scientists call them membranes Yes, and I maintain that in the head of any sleeper, there is always one pillowthan he thinks No point pretending to have less No, sirree Off you go From The Branch Line , p 96 Well, I can t sp June 2011 As for the human brain s affinity for pillows, it s entirely natural they re related, after all, the pillow and the brain For what do you have under the crown of your head A grayish white, porous plumose pulp wrapped in three pillowcases Your scientists call them membranes Yes, and I maintain that in the head of any sleeper, there is always one pillowthan he thinks No point pretending to have less No, sirree Off you go From The Branch Line , p 96 Well, I can t speak for anyone else, but...Really an amazing read It s getting harder these days to experience something that is really inventive but this author accomplishes that task, at the least, with ease and grace If you re familiar with the sort of fantastic reality of writers like Schulz, the younger Karinthy Metropole , Kosztolanyi Kornel Esti , Bely s Silver Dove and Yuri Olesha Envy you will find it a bit easier to dig...Krzhizhanovsky s The Bookmark is the best short story I ve read in years It brings to mind The Approach to Al Mu tasim by Borges, who reviews the work of a fictional author and summarizes some of the author s works, except that in The Bookmark you actually get to hear the complete or nearly complete stories of the fictional creator, which are every bit as engrossing as they are depicted as being Walking the streets of Moscow, the narrator chances to sit on a bench by a man spinning a tale of Krzhizhanovsky s The Bookmark is the best short story I ve read in years It brings to mind The Approach to Al Mu tasim by Borges, who reviews the work of a fictional author and summarizes some of the author s works, except that in The Bookmark you actually get to hear the complete or nearly complete stories of the fictional creator, which are every bit as engrossing as they are depicted as being Walking the streets of Moscow, th...Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Memories of the Future tr from the Russian by Joanne Turnbull This book written in the 1920s in Russia by a man who couldn t publish because what he wrote couldn t satisfy the realist taste of the Communist authorities is not an easy read, but it has some extraordinary pages Some...

English
21 July 2017

Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky