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The Art of Andrei Siniavsky

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Deming Brown
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The imprisonment of Andrei Siniavsky in 1965 stilled, in mid-career, the most original and enigmatic voice in contemporary Soviet literature. At the time of his arrest he was known in the USSR solely as a gifted, liberal literary critic and scholar. Abroad he was known as Abram Tertz, a mysterious Russian author—possibly not even a resident of the Soviet Union—who had written a brilliant, devastating critique of socialist realism, two short novels (The Trial Begins and Liubimov), six short stories, and a small collection of aphorisms (Unguarded Thoughts).

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , December 1970 , pp. 663 - 681
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1970

References

1. Alfreda, Aucouturier, “Andrey Sinyavsky on the Eve of His Arrest,” in Labedz, Leopold and ward, Max Hay, eds., On Trial : The Case of Sinyavsky (Tertz) and Daniel (Arshak) (London : Collins and Harvill, 1967, p. 343.Google Scholar

2. Professor Assya Humesky has suggested to me that this passage may be a reference to a popular parody of the prologue to Pushkin's Ruslan i Liudmila which circulated in the Soviet Union in the 1920s as an ironic protest against the new regime's attacks on romanticism. In quoting from the works of Siniavsky I have used the following translations, altering them occasionally on the basis of my own interpretation of the original Russian : Abram Tertz, Fantastic Stories (“You and I” and “The Icicle,” trans. Max Hay ward, “Graphomaniacs, “ “At the Circus,” and “Tenants,” trans. Ronald Hingley) (New York : Pantheon Books, 1963); “Pkhentz,” trans. Jeremy Biddulph, in Peter Reddaway, ed., Soviet Short Stories, vol. 2 (Baltimore : Penguin Books, 1968), pp. 214-63; Abram Tertz, The Trial Begins, trans, by Max Hayward (New York : Pantheon Books, 1960); “Thought Unaware“ [Unguarded Thoughts], trans. Andrew Field and Robert Szulkin, The New Leader, July 19, 1965, pp. 16-26.

3. This may also be a reference to Lermontov, who uses the same term in A Hero of Our Times.

4. The author wishes to express his indebtedness to three of his seminar students, whose interpretations are reflected in this article : Ray J. Parrott, Jr. (“Pkhentz“), Susan Wobst (“At the Circus“), and the late Guy W. Carter (Liubimov).