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Ленинград
Игорь Вишневецкий-автор шести сборников стихов, новой большой биографии Сергея Прокофьева, книг и статей по истории музыки и литературы. Экспериментальная повесть Вишневецкого "Ленинград" вызвала горячие дискуссии и была удостоена премий журнала "Новый мир" и "НОС". Герои "Ленинграда" - осколки старой русской интеллигенции в момент окончательного превращения их мира в царство "нового советского человека", время действия - первые восемь месяцев финно-немецкой блокады Ленинграда в период Великой Отечественной войны. Исключительные обстоятельства обнажают механизм катастрофы, которая видится одним как искупительная жертва, другим - как приговор.
160 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
April 17, 2014
(This review was originally written for and posted at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography's site. I purchased this book with the intention of reviewing it.)
Igor Vishnevetsky's Leningrad combines poetry and prose, newspaper articles and personal journals, publicized tallies and top-secret communiques to paint a complete (and completely bleak) image of Leningrad Blockage-era Russia and the full scope of horrors that can rain down on a war-pummeled city while its residents try to hold their lives together throughout an increasingly turbulent period.
As history is reduced to numbers and outcomes and notable skirmishes with the ever-widening distance separating then from now, it's easy to forget that people did their best to live through times of far-reaching upheaval and misery that encroached most disastrously on their smaller worlds. Here, Vishnevetsky presents us with Gleb Alfani, a composer, and his lover, Vera, as the intimate connection between a ravaged city and its residents' desperate attempts to preserve the humanity that they need to survive in a brutal environment. Gleb distracts himself from both a hopeless world and the barrage of ammunition disfiguring his home by drowning out the cacophony of ceaseless fire with the opera he superstitiously believes will keep him and his beloved safe as long as he's composing it. Vera's safety becomes a paramount concern when she divulges her pregnancy, already a complication in turbulent times where death far outpaces births but an even more daunting hurdle since Vera's husband is both a naval officer in the war effort and very obviously not the child's father. She flees Leningrad in the hopes of finding refuge, instructing Gleb to follow her once he receives her next letter, but his emaciated body and weakened spirit soon fall victim to a flu that leaves him delirious and split from reality. Spring eventually returns to Leningrad and health finally returns to Gleb, but the world he is reborn to is nothing like the one he once knew.
Aside from their roles as the beating heart in the political history of war, Gleb and Vera, as well as their friends and family orbiting the periphery of the plot, are witnesses who provide their own personal narratives about struggling through another day, clinging to the things that gave their life meaning before, and how those things become frivolous necessities as the life rafts keeping their rapidly deflating morale afloat. The continuation and preservation of art is a recurring theme throughout this short book: A minor character retrieves rare books from bombed-out buildings; Vera's husband writes of how he feels that the time he once spent painting now seems "absolutely ludicrous in comparison with the immense, unifying cause propelling us all forward," though the painting to which he refers is the lone item in Vera's apartment that glimmers with hope when Gleb goes looking for her and finds only a long-empty residence; Gleb slips into poesy in some of his journal entries, finding dark beauty in a devastated world and imposing metered order on a time when chaos ruled, and later mourns the books he sacrificed to the fire that kept him warm throughout the unforgiving winter. The aesthetic value of artistic pursuits aside, holding tight to one's appreciation of art is how these characters preserved elements of pre-war life, fighting impending death and coping with persistent uncertainty by remembering the things that gave beauty to the world and brought them happiness.
The importance of bearing witness to the unenviable epoch in which they lived and to which they had front-row seats is among the primary functions Vishnevetsky's characters serve. One of Gleb's first journal entries talks of how a friend confessed that being confronted with death leaves him in a state of arousal; rather than being a deviant's admission, it highlights how the triumph of living when thousands die each month is an understandably muddled, confused thing. Some characters find themselves almost gloating to the corpses they've stepped over in the streets, so giddy they are with life--hard as it is--while others try not to take in too much (if any) of their squalid environment. But no judgement is imparted to make one reaction seem more honorable than the other: Vishnevetsky merely uses each character's response to meteoric body counts to color their personalities, demonstrating how the coping mechanisms of the living are as varied as their methods of survival. While some characters need to record the loss and desolation of the times, especially once discrepancies arise between what they've seen and what official documents claim, others merely want to survive, and looking too closely at the carnage surrounding them would only deliver the final blow of emotional defeat. Self-denial looks an awful lot like self-preservation in the right circumstances and, as accounts of cannibalism rise and Gleb's instructions to himself about what does and doesn't prove to be edible betray the desperate edges of madness, it is increasingly clear that each individual must decide for themselves what desperation looks like and how they must harness it to see another day.
Since the world has a cruel way of moving on despite the sufferings of its inhabitants, the first spring of the siege finally comes and is wholly incongruent with the winter that still clutches at the hearts of those who have lost and suffered through so much. But it is proof that all things will pass and that time always shuffles onward, and the most we can do is learn from the past and remember its harsh imperatives. While time does not heal all wounds, hindsight is a stern teacher that is keen to remind its students that life goes on for those who are strong enough to forge ahead with it. It is in this truth that the crux of Leningrad's lesson dwells, the affirmation of life's ability to take root in the most hard-scrabble, inconceivably hostile elements as long as there is something to live for.
Igor Vishnevetsky's Leningrad combines poetry and prose, newspaper articles and personal journals, publicized tallies and top-secret communiques to paint a complete (and completely bleak) image of Leningrad Blockage-era Russia and the full scope of horrors that can rain down on a war-pummeled city while its residents try to hold their lives together throughout an increasingly turbulent period.
As history is reduced to numbers and outcomes and notable skirmishes with the ever-widening distance separating then from now, it's easy to forget that people did their best to live through times of far-reaching upheaval and misery that encroached most disastrously on their smaller worlds. Here, Vishnevetsky presents us with Gleb Alfani, a composer, and his lover, Vera, as the intimate connection between a ravaged city and its residents' desperate attempts to preserve the humanity that they need to survive in a brutal environment. Gleb distracts himself from both a hopeless world and the barrage of ammunition disfiguring his home by drowning out the cacophony of ceaseless fire with the opera he superstitiously believes will keep him and his beloved safe as long as he's composing it. Vera's safety becomes a paramount concern when she divulges her pregnancy, already a complication in turbulent times where death far outpaces births but an even more daunting hurdle since Vera's husband is both a naval officer in the war effort and very obviously not the child's father. She flees Leningrad in the hopes of finding refuge, instructing Gleb to follow her once he receives her next letter, but his emaciated body and weakened spirit soon fall victim to a flu that leaves him delirious and split from reality. Spring eventually returns to Leningrad and health finally returns to Gleb, but the world he is reborn to is nothing like the one he once knew.
Aside from their roles as the beating heart in the political history of war, Gleb and Vera, as well as their friends and family orbiting the periphery of the plot, are witnesses who provide their own personal narratives about struggling through another day, clinging to the things that gave their life meaning before, and how those things become frivolous necessities as the life rafts keeping their rapidly deflating morale afloat. The continuation and preservation of art is a recurring theme throughout this short book: A minor character retrieves rare books from bombed-out buildings; Vera's husband writes of how he feels that the time he once spent painting now seems "absolutely ludicrous in comparison with the immense, unifying cause propelling us all forward," though the painting to which he refers is the lone item in Vera's apartment that glimmers with hope when Gleb goes looking for her and finds only a long-empty residence; Gleb slips into poesy in some of his journal entries, finding dark beauty in a devastated world and imposing metered order on a time when chaos ruled, and later mourns the books he sacrificed to the fire that kept him warm throughout the unforgiving winter. The aesthetic value of artistic pursuits aside, holding tight to one's appreciation of art is how these characters preserved elements of pre-war life, fighting impending death and coping with persistent uncertainty by remembering the things that gave beauty to the world and brought them happiness.
The importance of bearing witness to the unenviable epoch in which they lived and to which they had front-row seats is among the primary functions Vishnevetsky's characters serve. One of Gleb's first journal entries talks of how a friend confessed that being confronted with death leaves him in a state of arousal; rather than being a deviant's admission, it highlights how the triumph of living when thousands die each month is an understandably muddled, confused thing. Some characters find themselves almost gloating to the corpses they've stepped over in the streets, so giddy they are with life--hard as it is--while others try not to take in too much (if any) of their squalid environment. But no judgement is imparted to make one reaction seem more honorable than the other: Vishnevetsky merely uses each character's response to meteoric body counts to color their personalities, demonstrating how the coping mechanisms of the living are as varied as their methods of survival. While some characters need to record the loss and desolation of the times, especially once discrepancies arise between what they've seen and what official documents claim, others merely want to survive, and looking too closely at the carnage surrounding them would only deliver the final blow of emotional defeat. Self-denial looks an awful lot like self-preservation in the right circumstances and, as accounts of cannibalism rise and Gleb's instructions to himself about what does and doesn't prove to be edible betray the desperate edges of madness, it is increasingly clear that each individual must decide for themselves what desperation looks like and how they must harness it to see another day.
Since the world has a cruel way of moving on despite the sufferings of its inhabitants, the first spring of the siege finally comes and is wholly incongruent with the winter that still clutches at the hearts of those who have lost and suffered through so much. But it is proof that all things will pass and that time always shuffles onward, and the most we can do is learn from the past and remember its harsh imperatives. While time does not heal all wounds, hindsight is a stern teacher that is keen to remind its students that life goes on for those who are strong enough to forge ahead with it. It is in this truth that the crux of Leningrad's lesson dwells, the affirmation of life's ability to take root in the most hard-scrabble, inconceivably hostile elements as long as there is something to live for.
December 26, 2014
Beautiful impressionistic novel of the Leningrad siege, told through a number of perspectives in both verse and prose: diaries, 3rd person narrative, letters... as deeply into Russia as I am now, I felt this was compelling and incredibly well done and absorbing, though slighter than than I'd hoped. The varieties of form suggested it would be a difficult read, but it was quite straightforward. Anyone who liked The Madonnas of Leningrad will love this-- a Russian artist's take on living inside that city during its horrendous siege. I just wished it was longer... I did find myself hearing Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7, 'Leningrad', in my head as I read it. The amount of focus on the religious seemed an interesting (and contemporary) choice.
The WWII backdrop and the Shostokovich theme that continuously insinuated itself in my head kept recalling a much heftier, prosier book (which I adored) -- William Vollman's National Book Award winner "Europe Central", especially the love story between Elena and Shostokovich, also the small but intensely satisfying novel "Liquidation" by the Hungarian Nobelist Imre Kertesz, not to mention the brilliant avant garde 'memoir' of the Russian Formalist Viktor Shklovsky, "A Sentimental Journey. "
Hear they're making a movie of it, that Vishnevetsky, a poet, has written and directed.
The WWII backdrop and the Shostokovich theme that continuously insinuated itself in my head kept recalling a much heftier, prosier book (which I adored) -- William Vollman's National Book Award winner "Europe Central", especially the love story between Elena and Shostokovich, also the small but intensely satisfying novel "Liquidation" by the Hungarian Nobelist Imre Kertesz, not to mention the brilliant avant garde 'memoir' of the Russian Formalist Viktor Shklovsky, "A Sentimental Journey. "
Hear they're making a movie of it, that Vishnevetsky, a poet, has written and directed.
January 5, 2021
И тут мы узнали, что русская интеллигенция знала матерные слова?
November 4, 2024
Not my favorite book but it was energetic and original and, well, I appreciate anything about my favorite city, Leningrad/ St. Petersburg. (Okay, I’ve only visited twice but i visit often in my imagination).
March 9, 2018
Оставим в стороне “Новую словесность”. Сия премия зарождалась в муках, иначе не объяснить выбираемых для её получения лауреатов. Допустим, Игорь Вишневецкий написал короткое произведение о блокаде Ленинграда, где не сообщил дополнительных подробностей, оставшись в рамках прежде бывшего известным. Читателю было предложено познакомиться с цитатами, расставленными в требуемом порядке. Со страниц вещают советские граждане и немецкая пропаганда. Каждая сторона уверена в правильности именно ею занимаемой позиции. Избежать блокады не получилось, поэтому потомкам ещё долгое время предстоит разбираться с особенностями жизни людей в осаждённых городах. Вишневецкий сообщил собственное представление о былом – читатель может с ним ознакомиться.
(c) Trounin
(c) Trounin
January 30, 2023
Opera che presenta sia elementi in prosa che di poesia. Anche alcune parti in prosa sono molto poetiche, quindi richiedono parecchia attenzione per la loro comprensione.
Vi sono presenti anche molti riferimenti legati alla "blokada" che scandiscono temporalmente gli avvenimenti e contestualizzano le vicende raccontate.
Non aspettatevi però un libro storico che parli esclusivamente degli eventi dell'assedio di Leningrado, piuttosto un'opera dove i protagonisti cercano di vivere una "normalità" durante questo avvenimento storico.
Vi sono presenti anche molti riferimenti legati alla "blokada" che scandiscono temporalmente gli avvenimenti e contestualizzano le vicende raccontate.
Non aspettatevi però un libro storico che parli esclusivamente degli eventi dell'assedio di Leningrado, piuttosto un'opera dove i protagonisti cercano di vivere una "normalità" durante questo avvenimento storico.
August 19, 2025
Twas' a bit undercooked as far as experimentation is concerned. The scholar philologist was the most interesting piece of the puzzle though. I wouldn't mind reading about the entire timeline of the siege from his perspective.
October 8, 2014
Short novel set in the horrors of the siege of Leningrad, with a group of Russian intellectuals struggling to survive whilst also keeping their tiresome love affairs going. It may be the fault of the translator, but I couldn't find their lives as interesting as the background detail coldly conveyed in monthly statistics about population and food rationing.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews