Bessarabian Stamps: Stories

by Oleg Woolf, Boris Dralyuk (Translation)

Reminiscent of Bruno Schulz’s Street of Crocodiles , Oleg Woolf’s Bessarabian Stamps — a cycle of sixteen stories set mostly in the village of Sănduleni — is a vivid, surreal evocation of a liminal world. Sănduleni’s denizens are in permanent flux, forever shifting languages, cultures, and states, in every sense of the word. With a warm, Bessarabian irony recalling one of Eastern Europe’s long-forgotten regions, the Stamps explore what it means to live on the edges of empires, which rise and fall while Sănduleni abides.

Genres: Short Stories, 21st Century, Fiction

92 pages, Paperback

First published February 16, 2015

About the author

Oleg Woolf was born in 1954 in Moldova. A physicist by training, he traveled with geophysical expeditions of the Moscow Institute of Physics of The Earth to the Ural Mountains, Pamir, Altai, and the Caucasus. In 1989, he emigrated to the United States where he lived until his death in 2011. Oleg Woolf authored two books: Bessarabian Stamps (Stosvet Press, 2009 ) and We Will See Sosnov in Spring (Stosvet Press, 2010) . His short stories, essays, and poetry have been regularly featured in the leading literary periodicals and anthologies both in Russia and abroad, most recently in World Literature Today and Joyland . In 2005, Oleg Woolf founded the Stosvet literary project, which ultimately featured under one umbrella such journals, as Cardinal Points and Стороны света, as well as the Compass Translation Award , Union “I” portal , and StoSvet press .

Quoted from: http://www.pushkinhouse.org/events-ar...

Reviews

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 4.5* of five, rounded down

My review is live today at Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud. 4-1/2 stars makes it seem as though I had reservations, but those are mostly to do with the brevity of the collection. Phoneme Media published this Moldovan Magical Realist gem on a list of excellent books that all, by virtue of bringing us voices from the greater world, fuel the sane person's RESISTANCE to the borning know-nothing celebrators of ignorance and venality.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5) Oleg Woolf transmits Moldovan village life through tiny interconnected prose pieces, mostly focused on character rather than setting. Many of these pieces are simply conversations between two people, and at times the characters almost blur together in a vaguely realized environment. There is a subtlety at play here that demands a close reading in order to earn possibly deeper rewards.

I did find the translator’s comparison to Bruno Schulz's masterpiece The Street of Crocodiles to be rather thin. While there is a superficial resemblance in structure and atmosphere, I often find the invoking of Schulz’s name in a book’s description to be nearly as problematic as that of name-checking Kafka. Though this book was published by Phoneme Media (a press previously unknown to me), similar works by several of Woolf's Eastern European contemporaries in the Twisted Spoon Press catalogue would be more apt reference points. Ewald Murrer's The Diary of Mr. Pinke and Andrzej Stasiuk's Tales of Galicia come immediately to mind.

As Eastern European surreal and absurd fiction goes, Woolf's 'stamps' are pretty tame, in spite of translator Boris Dralyuk's further comparisons of his work to that of the edgier Romanians Urmuz and Gellu Naum, as well as to the zany Russians of OBERIU. Dralyuk makes note of Woolf's 'gentle humor'⁠—this is accurate, though I found it almost too subtle and would have preferred more bite and/or more lunacy. But this is just my own taste, and I’m sure other readers would find Woolf’s approach more to their liking.

[Antonomasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

[4.5] Tiny short stories: 'stamps' = stories ; read because* they've been compared to Bruno Schulz. (I absolutely love what I've read of Schulz, but that, so far, isn't much.) There is the same feeling of being burrowed deep into the life of a small place not far from a Russian border: here, the villlage of Sănduleni; and sentences nearly as rich in startling imagery.
I also found it reminiscent of Irish literature. (Albeit the religious references are Orthodox not Catholic.) Oleg Woolf's writing has an absurdity which made me smile frequently, and laugh aloud several times; unlike the only other Moldovan book I've read, The Good Life Elsewhere, which often felt as if it was missing punchlines, the humour in this translation is whittled sharp. A particular strain of bleakness recalled Murphy: Beckett before his silences dwarfed his sentences. And the whole volume is peppered with ironic, Wildean oppositions, perhaps more reverent than Oscar's archness: she was well over a hundred, and remained a person of such openness, kindness, and strength that she was impossible to bear; or There’s such a glut of people on this earth that tossing each other aside is an absolute crime.
There is a rare quality here of seeking the profound and simultaneously undermining it, finding it beautiful whilst laughing at its ridiculousness and potential pseudishness (an attitude I'd love to be able to convey as a matter of course, but it requires great skill, and is something I prize greatly in other people):
e.g. All Ileana had to do was delve into her thoughts, and they would take the shape of sunspots at the very bottom of the ephedra growing on the outskirts of the village. Then they would form into viscid, unfamiliar, meaningful words, or lengthen into resonant, thin-walled music, which sends the soul straight to heaven. And then tears would well up all by themselves. Such were Ileana’s thoughts. This is why she decided she couldn’t think properly at all.

Some stories are relatively focused, like one of my favourites, 'Ionesco and Brăndulescu', in which two old men talk about death and the fleeting nature of life: obviously a Beckettian scenario, but it's also warm and sepia-tinged, and to me at least, very comforting. In many of the others (there are sixteen stories in all), sentences and ideas could go almost anywhere, they make one's head spin, like a conjuror swiftly moving cups around and round on a table until you've no idea which one originally had the object under it; or a prism turning in space, each side only visible briefly before you can see all of it. (In other words, it's pretty experimental at times, and whilst this little gem has great reviews so far, I imagine there are readers for whom such paragraphs may approach Chomsky's proverbial 'colorless green ideas sleep furiously'. These are not simply your Bashevis Singer style village stories - which I was kind of expecting - though they have something of that too. I had some moments of doubt whilst reading, that I wasn't quite the right audience for some of the more freewheeling experimentalism, but the volume as a whole leaves one with a wonderful feeling of warmth, something evident in the tone of every other review I've seen so far. Although it contains a few too many generalisations of the type that plague Victorian novels; and although there are ideas and events in it which aren't lovely, I find myself wanting to call it 'adorable'.)

This is an interesting review which draws parallels between some of the imagery and the author's work as a physicist (the ontology of Oleg Woolf's more abstract descriptions falls into place when linked to physics) as well as the archaeology of the region. And here is one of the stories from the collection. [Irishness again: that brought me echoes of Father Ted and Dougal's lesson in 'small/ far away', but turned weirder and more philosophical.] In these days of often poorly edited new books, it's great to see how much work has gone into honing these translations: a 2011 version of another story, via the same translator, Boris Dralyuk, is here, but the final version in Bessarabian Stamps is noticeably more polished.


* Also, what with all this Virginia Woolf-reading going on just now on Goodreads and the blogosphere, and me not being desperately keen...

[Vilis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sapņaini sāpīgas miniatūras par nāvi (un reizēm dzīvi) Moldovas dziļumos. Brīžiem aiziet pārāk abstrakti, bet biežāk ir rindkopas, kuras tā vien gribas citēt un tulkot. (lasīju krieviski)

[Mahak · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a particular quirk of mine whereupon reading a particular "life truth" I hasten to pen it down lest absentmindedness kicks in and just recently I came upon these old notes of mine in which there lay a plethora of such quotes from this book.
Of course every novel has a few, embedded deep within should one find the intellectual acuity to sink into the world stretched out before them but I ask, when reading, how often do we percolate and consider '"what are his (the author's) thoughts to me"'?

One of the many to my liking was (which I sensed) regarding time's habitual cycle of keeping things in check: "-something's always ending. If it's not one thing, it's another...then it's gone...already growing dark...as if it had never been." Then on how it makes one move on through "separation: that has its own internal righteousness...when you change the composition of your blood-and if you don't...then you become displaced." Rather consequently, this made me realise and agree all too well that "there's such a glut of people on this earth that tossing each other aside is an absolute crime."

Well, in any case quite an enchanting book especially for those who appreciate such veracities in short, well-timed moments stretched in dear relevance.

[World Literature Today]

"The poetic proclivity of Moldovan-born Oleg Woolf is everywhere present in his Bessarabian Stamps, a prose work written in a lyrical style, unrestrained in its use of alliteration and allegory. . . . There is an uninhibited joy in Woolf’s writing, and translator Boris Dralyuk impresses with his ability to capture this quality in translation. . . . Woolf’s alchemy with words compels rereading to better appreciate his intentional nuances, and I succumbed to it by reading the book straight through a second time as soon as I finished it." - Lori Feathers, Dallas, Texas

This book was reviewed in the November 2015 issue of World Literature Today. Read the full review by visiting our website: http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2...

[Qonita · Rating 3 out of 5]

Peaceful narrative in beautiful writing. The plot's just okay but falls pretty flat for me who's not currently spared enough of a peaceful headspace in life. It's too sheer and flimsy for my restless mode, but might fit some who can sit down and mull every word to their best effect, maybe. This is my first Moldovan lit tho, it would at least be memorable that way.

[Jethro Rubin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most wonderfully weird and obscure little collection of stories I might have red yet in my life. Well worth checking out, short, strange, obtuse at times; like looking at a foreign object through a fogged-up window.

[paul holzman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Upon delving into Bessarabian Stamps, I immediately experienced what translator Boris Dralyuk had communicated in his preface that, "So much is born of so little." Immediately– I confirmed both the shortness and depth found in the book. Consequently it made for a challenging read while I struggled to maintain a coherent and linear reading of the 16 mini narratives due to characters with interchangeable names and seemingly ambiguous daily occurrences. However, I managed to advance in the reading and began to feel Oleg Woolf's mundane rhythm and the harmonious predicament of a community in limbo with no desire and no energy to be emancipated.
Woolf's descriptions of the town sustain each story and healthily compliment the interpersonal treatment between the characters and their town. They embellish each individual’s temperament and simultaneously, these temperaments become the crux of the book and its flow. In many instances Woolf intertwines Sănduleni into the DNA of each character, while each character weaves their own self reciprocally back into the town, thus showing that a place refuses to exist without those who inhabit it. Sănduleni has been precariously governed and manipulated by numerous regimes of rule throughout its history. It has seen it's borders morphed and moved numerous times deeming lines on a map as superfluous to its denizens that were either included or omitted by the busy boundaries. In Woolf's Sănduleni the trains sigh and the lakes need no inspiration. The town's profile is ostentatiously ordinary. Its people are mysterious and their language creates a tone and mood that is so unique that at times it seems unbearable to the reader. Yes, their language and dialogues are unconventional and may dizzy the reader, but they are the cogent themes of a people and region that have been dizzied by their own history. This consequently tends to lead the reader to believe that neither the region nor its people seem to fret over the ambiguity of their nationality or borders. But as the characters interact throughout each stamp, their ho-hum and somber tone latently screams, “that is not so!”
To be repetitive, the characters' discourse is a reflection of their setting– and Woolf pinpoints that with his wit and pithy narrative. Many stories can help a reader visualize another world. Bessarabian Stamps unleashes years and depths of a town in only a few pages. The setting and its dwellers effortlessly compete for the role of protagonist. The reader does not see another world, rather experiences and becomes familiar with the idiosyncrasies of an unusual normalcy found in the interaction of the habitants in their town. The people and the place will leave any curious reader profoundly satisfied and enlightened in a shadow of repetitive uncertainty. Does the post physically arrive to Sănduleni? Are these Stamps of any veracity? This book is a door to a plethora of other doors, each providing a glimpse into a community and its people where both refuse to reveal anything definitive about their shared predicament, leaving the reader's imagination to excavate its own depths. We must applaud Boris Dralyuk for a vigorous translation that the English reading community can faithfully read and discover. my link text

[Jan Moens · Rating 5 out of 5]

8,5/10