פרידה משום מקום

by Vladimir Maksimov, ולאדימיר מקסימוב (Author's Hebrew name), צבי ארד (Translator)

פרשת גלגוליו ותלאותיו של נער עזוב, על רקע שנות הטרור והמלחמה בברית-המועצות, מסופרת בכנות נוגעת-ללב ובריאליזם מפוכח ובוטה. תנאי-החיים האכזריים במלונות-הגנבים, בבתי-הסוהר ובמחנות הכפייה אינם מערערים את אמונתו של המסַפר בטוב שבאדם וביעודו של העם הרוסי. ורמן אוטו-ביוגרפי, שמחברו רואה בו "ביוגרפיה של דור שלם".

Genres: Fiction

381 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Born Lev Samsonov, he started writing poetry under the name of Vladimir Maximov. As a dissident, Maximov was twice forcibly admitted to psychiatric hospitals by the KGB. His case attracted international attention and in February 1974 Maximov was forced into political exile and stripped of his Soviet citizenship by Leonid Brezhnev's literary authorities, creating an international scandal.

Maximov lived in Paris from then until his death in 1995.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some people just sit on the same spot for a lifetime and others spend their entire lives restlessly looking for something…

“Samsonov!”
That was his Sign, branded upon him by fate, the nonnegotiable bearer – bond with which he was to spend a lifetime in search of his mysterious Lord and Master, his Creditor. Many times in later life, as he changed his biography to suit the occasion, he would come to wear the label of a borrowed alias, but that first name, like a blade of grass under asphalt, would force its way through him to the surface again and again, bringing him inexorably back to his original state, his primal identity.

The author belongs among seekers… They are searching for everything: for happiness and adventures, for truth and justice, for love and warmth, for quintessence of being, for ideals, for God…

“…this earth is probably just a station in our life where we change for somewhere else. We still have to fly on and on until we reach our destination. Each stopping place for us is a new life in a new guise. Here, for instance, you’re a human being, but on another planet you may be a plant or even a stone. Our death is simply a farewell to one of many stopping places, no more than that. A farewell from nowhere, so to speak. It’s just a pity that this time we happen to have been allotted such an uncomfortable waiting room.”

They are searching everywhere: in cities and hamlets, amidst hot sands of deserts and permafrost of tundra, in reality and books, in drunkenness and sobriety, in prisons and beyond the seven seas…

He had as yet seen no vision of his Galilee, but without knowing it he was already moving toward it in his peregrinations along the labyrinthine roads of Russia, from one tramps’ hideout to another, to the sound of police whistles and shouts of prison guards, of prisoners’ songs and the barking of tracker dogs. Onward he went, through cities and through the years of his life, along a trail of reformatories and juvenile detention centers, fingerprinting and expulsion orders, encounters, insults and disappointments. He does not regret the episodes which went to make up his past, for each one of us has his cross to bear…

Many find nothing… And blessed are those who manage to find anything.