Skip to main content

Memories of the Future

By


I currently find myself reading Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky.  Don't ask me how to pronounce his name.   Joanne Turnbull notes in her introduction to the collection of short stories, Memories of the Future, that Krzhizhanovsky originally came from Kiev, mastered a number of languages and traveled around Europe, and eventually settled in Moscow in 1922 in a small dark flat rented to him by a former Countess in exchange for English lessons.  Thanks to an undemanding job he was able to devote the next 20 years to his dark, otherworldly prose that evoked Gogol in such stories as "The Runaway Fingers," in which a concert pianist's hand literally runs away from him in a major recital.  Unfortunately, these stories languished for decades in the State Archives, only to be retrieved in recent years and find their way into print.  Vadim Perelmuter has since compiled and edited a five-volume collection of Krzhizhanovsky's work, and in Memories of the Future Turnbull translates seven of his short stories, including the title story.

The first was "Quadraturin," a magic tube of paste that when applied to walls and ceilings can make even the most cramp Soviet apartment grow and metamorphosize into a spacious room.  The protagonist, Sutulin, is given a tube, which doesn't look much unlike a tube of artist's paint, by a mysterious man, and applies to his room, which measures a little less than 9 square meters.  Unfortunately, he drops the tube before he can apply any of the quick drying paste to the ceiling.

The next morning he awakes to find that has room has indeed grown outward in all directions, but it has taken on more polygonal proportions.  This unnerves him but for the first time he finds he can actually pace in his room and this pleases him.  He rearranges the furniture to better suit his new space.  But, fear again grows as he hears a knock at the door and worries that the landlady will see his greatly enlarged room and call the authorities.  He manages to keep his apartment secret for several days, but now grows more and more perplexed by the proportions his room has taken, growing ever deeper in lengths to the point his single light can no longer illuminate all of it.  The window appears as a distant portal into another dimension.  I won't give away the ending, as it has a wonderful Gogolian twist.

Here is a review of the book from The Nation.

Comments

  1. James FergusonJanuary 8, 2011 at 3:11 AM

    It really makes you wonder what other great stories have languished in the State Archives all these years.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ward No. 6

By
Ward No. 6 is a short story written by Chekhov in 1892.  It has appeared in various collections of Chekhov short stories, including The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories translated by Constance Garnett in 1921.  In this story, Chekhov explores the inner working of a run-down lunatic asylum in a provincial town.  He  introduces the readers to a coarse porter who speaks mostly with his fists, various patients, a doctor who presides over this ward, and expresses his thoughts with a local postmaster.  It was recently made into a movie , featuring Vladimir Ilyin.  Here's a clip . There's also this very recent short film (30 min.) by Suzana Purkovic, with English subtitles.
18 comments
Read more

Myshkin's dilemna

By
Wrapped up Part II the other night and have to say that Dostoevsky certainly has a comic's eye, although one senses the potentially tragic undertones.  For Dostoevsky the aristocracy seems to be one largely made up of capricious souls more obsessed with good manners than any profound sense of their being.  This is particularly true for the Epanchins, who comically wrestle with their emotions in one scene after another as he places them in very odd and unnerving situations that test the limits of poor Lizaveta Prokofyevna's endurance. Of her daughters, Aglaya, is the most interesting.  A real beauty much along the same lines as Nastasya Filippovna Barashkov, who likewise seems to have a hold on Prince Myshkin's emotional strings.  Part II ended with Lizaveta demanding to know the extent of the Prince's interests in her youngest daughter.  The Prince insisted his feelings were Platonic, but one senses there is more to be said on the matter in later chapters. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Roadside Picnic: Life inside the Zone

By
If you're like me and wondered what the hell Stalker was all about, I would suggest reading Roadside Picnic , the book on which it was nominally based.  Tarkovsky took his idea from the character, Redrick Schuhart, a laboratory assistant and Harmont Branch of the International Institute of Extraterrestrial Cultures, leaving the rest up to the imagination.  The names were changed to protect the innocent. While Tarkovsky chose to shroud the story in mystery, the Strugatsky Brothers lay it out pretty clearly in their science fiction classic.  Redrick, the Stalker, has gone into the zone countless times but each time represents a new set of challenges, especially with the Harmont Branch cracking down on the plundering of alien objects left behind by a visitation to a small rural town in Canada. I suppose setting the story in a place outside Russia, allowed the Strugatsky brothers more room to explore new ideas and avoid heavy censhorship, but according to Boris in t...
Post a Comment
Read more