Resistance

by Victor Serge, James Brook (Translator), Richard Greeman (Introduction)

Victor Serge, an authentic witness of the political and cultural struggles of the 20th century, wrote these poems of Resistance in Orenburg in Central Asia, where he was sent into exile by Stalin in 1933. He eulogizes close friends and comrades and movingly records and shares the lives of the people he lived among on the steppe, far from the centers of power, intrigue and history. Richard Greeman writes in his introduction that Serge "spoke the truth aloud and perpetuated the spiritual tradition of the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia at the very moment when the voices of his colleagues were forced into silence (so that) this collection of poems, written in deportation on the Ural, represents a unique strand of continuity between a lost generation and what one hopes will be a new beginning, 'with no blank pages,' in Soviet literature." "Victor Serge's Memoirs contain the fiber and metaphor of his novels are replete with the same pulse and rhythm. Even his titles— Birth of Our Power —have a ringing quality. Now, with Resistance , we are given the poems that described and survived the midnight of our century, written with a balanced passion and sobriety—optimism of the will—from the other shore."—Christopher Hitchens, author of Hitch-22 "The poems in this slender volume vividly record his years spent fighting in the Russian Revolution before Serge was exiled in 1933 to central Asia. . . . Serge's biting irony, unlike that found in his Russian contemporaries, conceals an unfailing hope and sensitivity--he does not simply mourn the death of a friend, but records the look and feel of the unbreathing body with a lover's gentleness."— Publishers Weekly Victor Serge (1890-1947), born in Brussels, Belgium, was a Russian revolutionist, writer, translator and journalist. He published his first article in 1908 for Lé Revolté and L'Anarchie , where he later became editor. During his early life, he spent most of his time joining various parties such as the anarchists, communists and Bolsheviks. However, in 1928, he was expelled from the Communist Party and most of his writings began from this point forward. He wrote fiction and non-fiction novels and poems. His most famous and revolutionary book is the non-fiction Memoirs of a Revolutionary

Genres: Poetry, Russia

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Victor Lvovich Kibalchich (В.Л. Кибальчич) was born in exile in 1890 and died in exile in 1947. He is better known as Victor Serge, a Russian revolutionary and Francophone writer. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919, and later worked for the newly founded Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator. He was openly critical of the Soviet regime, but remained loyal to the ideals of socialism until his death.

After time spent in France, Belgium, Russia and Spain, Serge was forced to live out the rest of his life in Mexico, with no country he could call home. Serge's health had been badly damaged by his periods of imprisonment in France and Russia, but he continued to write until he died of heart attack, in Mexico city on 17 November 1947. Having no nationality, no Mexican cemetery could legally take his body, so he was buried as a 'Spanish Republican.'

Reviews

[AC]

If we roused the peoples and made the continents quake,
...began to make everything anew with these dirty old stones,
these tired hands, and the meager souls that were left us,
it was not in order to haggle with you now,
sad revolution, our mother, our child, our flesh,
our decapitated dawn, our night with its stars askew...
(1938)

(Since I don't read poetry, and this WAS in translation, there no point in trying to rank this. If anyone has a link
to the French, I'd love to compare them. At any rate, some good writing here)

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poems about being in a gulag by Stalin in 1933. Interesting insights.

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

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