Ispovest gresnog stegonose

by Andreï Makine

Confessions of a Fallen Standard-Bearer is the moving tale of two families, those of Yakov Zinger and Pyotr Yevdokimov, fathers of the young pioneers. Inseparable, both men have survived the devastating war against the Germans, with all its horror and senseless carnage. Yakov - or Yasha, as he was known - emerged physically intact but scarred forever from the moment he had been lifted out of a mountain of frozen bodies at a camp in liberated Poland. Pyotr, a skilled sniper who operated behind the German lines, lost both his legs, not at the hands of the Germans but as an "unfortunate artillery mistake" by his own forces." "During these postwar years of hardship and repression, the two families try to piece together their shattered lives. Arkady and Alyosha grow up and go their separate ways, Arkady to Leningrad and mathematics school, Alyosha the narrator to the Savorov military academy, later to become an army officer who takes part in the grisly Afghanistan war. Eventually both emigrate to the West, Arkady to the States, Alyosha to Paris. It is to Arkady that, in the opening pages of this masterful novel, Alyosha addresses these remembrances of their parents' ordinary heroism and their gradual awakening from the counterfeit glories of the Soviet dream.

Genres: Fiction, Russia, Historical Fiction, World War II, Russian Literature, Literary Fiction, France

First published September 1, 1992

About the author

Andreï Makine was born in Krasnoyarsk, Soviet Union on 10 September 1957 and grew up in city of Penza, a provincial town about 440 miles south-east of Moscow. As a boy, having acquired familiarity with France and its language from his French-born grandmother (it is not certain whether Makine had a French grandmother; in later interviews he claimed to have learnt French from a friend), he wrote poems in both French and his native Russian.

In 1987, he went to France as member of teacher's exchange program and decided to stay. He was granted political asylum and was determined to make a living as a writer in French. However, Makine had to present his first manuscripts as translations from Russian to overcome publishers' skepticism that a newly arrived exile could write so fluently in a second language. After disappointing reactions to his first two novels, it took eight months to find a publisher for his fourth, Le testament français. Finally published in 1995 in France, the novel became the first in history to win both the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Medicis plus the Goncourt des Lycéens.

Reviews

[Armin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starker Anfang, ganz große Enttäuschung

Andrei Makines Opus zwei weckt große Erwartungen, aber die Plottsubstanz reicht nicht mal für die paar Seiten, voll ausgeschrieben auf 300 Seiten wäre vielleicht ein ganz brauchbarer Roman daraus geworden, aber so viel Andeutung von interessanter Vorgeschichte, die nie eingelöst wird. Höhe- und Wendepunkt in der Freundschaftshandlung unter den beiden Jungs Aljoscha (Erzähler) und Arkadi ist die musikalische Rebellion vor versammelter Bonzenmannschaft, der Ausbruch der beiden jungen Musiker aus der Disziplin ihrer Einheit ist zugleich persönlicher Ausdruck der Trauer für die beiden kurz zuvor gestorbenen Väter, die durch die gemeinsame Bewältigung ihrer Überlebensgeschichte im Krieg zu einem engen Freundespaar geworden sind.
Die Wege der Söhne trennen sich nach dem Akt des gemeinsamen Aufbegehrens für immer.
Für Freunde subtiler Homoerotik findet sich im Schlusskapitel noch ein Leckerli mit viel Spielraum für die eigene Phantasie, aber vielleicht ist auch meine mit mir durchgegangen, ich hatte schon bei den Naturbildern das Gefühl, dass so etwas eigentlich jetzt kommen müsste.
Im Folgeroman Das französische Testament hat AM ja mit Erfolg ein breiteres sowjetisches Panorama entwickelt, vielleicht gebe ich dem Erfolgsbuch mal eine Chance, die Bekenntnisse wirken nur auf den ersten Bissen lecker, enthalten aber, trotz der Kürze zu viel unbefriedigende Erzählmasse.
Die familiären Tabus der Post-Stalin-Ära lassen den Eltern nur wenig Spielraum zur Übermittlung eigener Lebenserfahrung/Vorgeschichte. Kurz angerissen werden folgende Ereignisse: Große Säuberung bis Ende 1930er (Mutter des Erzählers), Scharfschützenkarriere von Vater Piotr, der sein anschließendes Invalidendasein in einer Art Symbiose mit dem Nachbarn und Mathelehrer Jascha bewältigt. Dessen Frau hat die Belagerung von Leningrad dank der HIlfe einer kannibalischen Nachbarin überlebt. Vermutlich sind die paar Fragmente Familiengeheimnis sogar realistischer als ein Doktor Schiwago oder irgend eine Tolstoj-Nachfolge, aber in der Gesamtwirkung gleicht der Roman einem Büfett, bei dem man von jedem leckeren Gericht vielleicht ein Gäbelchen oder eine Löffelstpitze probieren darf und ansonsten mit ziemlich festem Kartoffelbrei abgespeist wird.

[Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Once upon a time there were two boys who lived in an apartment block on the edge of town. They were firm friends, their families were close too, even if their fathers were damaged and taciturn about their experiences in the recent war. The friends join the local pioneer group and enjoy the activities, trips and parades - particularly playing in the band.

However nothing lasts forever, the boys become teenagers and an innocent and idyllic world becomes one with a disturbing history and many jagged edges. An unxexploded bomb is found, together with a mass grave, and a past featuring famine, cannibalism and murder are uncovered.

Interesting novella, well worth a read.

[Joni · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a selection for The Great Conversations 6 series of The Great Books Foundations. It is a short book, only 132 pages, and I had no idea of what to expect--I was blown away by the powerful way Andrei Makine puts together the descriptive phrases of remembering family, friends and growing up in the Cold War era of Russia. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good read!

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had to read this for a russian history class and it is one of the few books i had to read in college that struck me deeply. Absouluty loved it, very emonthional. Also very insightful about normal life in the Soviet Union without it being just a tale of how bad it was, it showed the up and downs of just normal living and how the daily lives of poeple and how it was like growing up in the USSR.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

For my Goodreads goal this year, I nominated 20 books. By yesterday I had reached 19 and needing a quick read to finish on, I chose Andrei Makine’s ‘Confessions of a Lapsed Standard Bearer’.

This year has been one of the saddest of my life, equalled only by 2016 when dad died. Before mum died (this year) we drove out to Roma to find a place to spread their ashes and she agreed that Gammie’s Plain – a wide flat, almost treeless floodplain north of Roma – was the perfect place. Dad had spent a lot of time out there, as had mum, riding their bikes, exploring the nearby creek bed, fossicking for ancient axes. After mum died, I also found this comment in her journal: ‘’When I am gone, perhaps I will come back as a dragonfly, flitting about.’’

How is this connected to Makine’s book? I just read this paragraph: ‘’…we began to charge across the tall grass of the meadow. The silence of the sleeping plain was so intense that our shouts froze close to our lips and gave rise to no resounding echoes. Only the dragonflies, woken by our running, striped the air with their frenzied flights.’’

Thank you Andrei Makine ...

[Ricky · Rating 4 out of 5]

C’est difficile de décrire exactement le génie de l’auteur. Confessions d’un porte-drapeau déchu n’est pas un livre palpitant, tout comme le testament français, mais Andreï Makine décrit la vie avec une telle prouesse qu’on est obligés d’admirer l’œuvre, autant qu’on apprécie la beauté des histoires.

[Matthieu Naginski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Petit chef d’oeuvre regorgeant de sensibilité.

Le motif de désillusion et de perte de naïveté se fait en deux instances: d’abord, en tant qu’enfant, Kim se rend compte peu à peu des traumatismes de ses parents ayant connu la Grande Terreur et la guerre. Puis, lorsqu’il veut se rappeler de son amitié d’enfance, la chaleur de la vie communale, la fierté d’avoir appartenu aux pionniers, l’adulte doit revivre, malgré lui, ces traumatismes, la douleur survenue de la fin brusque de cette « belle époque ». Makine arrive à éviter les clichés: dès très jeunes, Kim et Arkadi savent que l’horizon glorieux de l’Union Soviétique n’est autre qu’un mirage, et le deuil éprouvé par Kim adulte n’est pas envers sa patrie, mais envers sa communauté. C’est particulièrement sur ce point que l’oeuvre de Makine fait preuve de toute sa nuance.

Ce qu’on retient pendant des jours et des jours après avoir fini ce bouquin est les trois dernières pages. Jusqu’à ce moment dans le roman, Arkadi n’était autre qu’un compagnon, un témoin à ce qu’à vecu Kim. Dans un moment absolument génial, les deux personnages s’adressent la parole pour la première fois: leur relation n’est plus qu’une simple mémoire lointaine, on la vit, on sent la tension qui survient du fait qu’Arkadi ait prit conscience de la douleur qui existe en son père, de la mortalité de ce dernier. Passage inoubliable, un vrai tour de force de la part de l’auteur.

J’ai hâte de lire plus de ce Monsieur.

[Colleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The translator is Geoffrey Strachan; the author is Andre Makine. When Alyosha grows up and becomes a soldier he visits his village outside Leningrad and finally hears the stories about WWII his mother and his best friend's mother never told them growing up. They heard all about how Alyosha's father fought the war and lost his legs and why Arkady's dad carries him now. His own mother tells him about how her parents were taken to a gulag and the children of Stalin's traitors were sent to a boarding institution. Arkady's mother tells him what it was like in the village during the siege of nearby Leningrad and ends with a warning about retelling the horrific tale: 'It's like that Tibetan legend. The past is a dragon kept in the depths of a cave. You can't think about the dragon all the time. Otherwise you couldn't live your life . . . But from time to time you need to make sure the lock on the cage is in good repair. If it rusts away the dragon could break it and reappear more cruel and insatiable than ever.' Why people 'forget' their history. 136 pages that takes you from childhood patriotism to eyes wide open.

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hauntingly vivid and sometimes poetic novella capturing the realities of a childhood in the post-war Soviet Union - a mixture of nostalgia, comic detail and horror, tracing the narrator's journey from a conformist childhood through adolescent disillusion to a present as an emigre writer.

[Kathryn Price · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author is Andrei Makine!

I don't quite know where to start! One of the most beautifully, sensitively written books I've ever read. I like the way the shift of the 'story' happens half way through, emerging from its 'loss of innocence' that actually wasnt' there to begin with.

It feels as if you have been trusted enough to share in the stories of people, of the past, to laugh, cry and 'live' with them in the sad, beautiful, scary, loving histories of them all. Such a beautiful and delicate way of sharing the stories, all interwoven and unfolded in the right order, at the right pace, in the right time for the reader to be 'ready' for them, and to understand how they weave together. Stories are not always best told from beginning to end, and this book is a perfect example of this.

There were moments I simply broke down and cried - in the moments of the kindness, love, firendship that for me are at the heart of the book admist the sadness, and almost incomprehensible unfolding of history. These are the stories, the real lives lived in such a world that almost reads like a 'fairy tale' of disbelief.

I am sad I did know of Andrei Makine until now, and I hope one day, when visiting Paris, I see him in a cafe and I can take a coffee with him.

[Kirke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Roman de la désillusion. L'auteur revient sur son enfance et les leitmotivs qui l'ont rythmée.

Les enfants découvrent peu à peu que l'univers construit par les chants et la propagande soviétique est en décalage avec la réalité. Aussi sont ils déçu que les récits de combat de Piotr n'incluent pas de corps a corps héroïques ou de grand cheval.
L'indoctrination est mise en place dès le plus jeune age des enfants et se repose alors sur l'elan de bonté des enfants, combler la planète entière d'un paradis socialiste, un paradis illusoire construit de toute pièce mais dont l'idée est plus facile a accepter que "la dérangeante invraisemblance du réel".

Les parents s'enferment dans un mutisme par rapport à leur passé, leur jeunesse du temps de Staline, "conscients que dans ce pays, savoir est une chose pénible et souvent dangereuse" et maintiennent, eux, une lucidité à l'égard du régime. En effet, chaque adulte a sa propre histoire, une histoire tragique. Chaque adulte échappe de près ou de loin à la mort institutionnalisée.

Livre passionnant, qui m'a semblé quelques fois un peu décousu.

[notgettingenough · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe 2023 for me is the year of new authors. I'd never heard of Makine. If you read him as I did, he's a Russian, writing in French, translated into English. For me, that intermediate step of French didn't spoil it, it remained the Russian novel I love so much in the translation I'm used to.

It deals with a period and place that, at least in my Russian reading, are neglected: small town in the mid-twentieth century. It is about the nature of Soviet nationalism and the impact of the war from a viewpoint not normally encountered. It's very moving. I don't understand comparing this to Chekhov, but I have a couple more Makines on my to-read-shelf, so perhaps I will change my mind on that. But this book is not about Chekhovian characters or circumstances; if anything, it's about the people who would have been behind his stories if he'd written later.


Definitely one for your to-read shelves!

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. A novella mainly about life as a child growing up in a village commune outside Leningrad in the 1960s. Alyosha narrates the story, addressing his childhood friend Arkadi, from Alyosha’s exile in Paris. Arkadi now lives in the USA. Alyosha recalls how their parents survived the war against the Germans. Arkadi’s father Yakov was lifted out of a mountain of frozen bodies at a camp in liberated Poland. Alyosha’s father Pyotr, a skilled sniper during the war, lost both his legs through an unfortunate artillery mistake by his own forces. During the postwar years of hardship and repression the two families survive. Alyosha recounts a number of eventful incidents such as the band he was in continuing to play in front of dignitaries when they should have stopped. Alyosha also recalls incidents of atrocities he was involved in when an army officer in the Afghanistan war.

A concisely and vividly written novella.

This book was first published in French in 1992.

[Cindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short story/novella rather than a full length book or novel. Powerful though. Russia is a place and Russians a people that fascinate me, and this little book was a slice of the every day life of ordinary people, and guess what? They are people the same as me expect I've never had to live with a war going on in the town center, I've never been starved, and it's only the last two years that mild feelings of not being safe in my own country have coalesced into something a little more substantial and frightening but still no where near the level of fear Russians lived with since the end of WWII. This story feels true if only because life is hard and Russians experience the same feelings I do when we're confronted with that basic fact of life on this green earth.

[Marcela · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tato kniha je pre mna taky priemer. Ani neviem, ako by som ju opisala, pretoze sa tie dejove linie dost prelinali, ze som niekedy nevedela, ci citam sucastnost alebo minulost.

[Eileen · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is by Andrei Makine. GS is translator.

[Nathalie Proulx]

Lecture aseez penible, d'abord livre redige a la deuxieme personne, tres agacant, beaucoup de non dit et de sous entendus.

[Ruth Glen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A snapshot of 2 14 year old boys in Russia.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read, thought-provoking.

[Ingrid · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gorgeous novella full of a bitter sort of nostalgia. The translation by Geoffrey Strachan is positively lyrical.

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best fiction books I've read in a long time.

[Alan Fricker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bought in lovely hardback for 10p from Essex Libraries despite being clearly a donation of a book they have no copies of by a fairly significant author of recent years. Not his best for all that