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Русская красавица
"Русская красавица" - сокровенное произведение Виктора Ерофеева - одного из ведущих современных российских писателей "новой волны". Роман посвящен судьбе красоты, ее вечной мессианской роли.
В центре его трагическая судьба русской женщины - прекрасной и одаренной и, одновременно, беззащитной перед жестокостью жизни.
В центре его трагическая судьба русской женщины - прекрасной и одаренной и, одновременно, беззащитной перед жестокостью жизни.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1990
10 people are currently reading
233 people want to read
About the author
Victor Erofeyev
48 books43 followersВиктор Ерофеев (Russian)
Victor Erofeev (French, Italian, Romanian)
Viktor Erofeev (Italian)
Viktor Jerofejev (Dutch, Hungarian)
Viktor Jerofejew (German)
Viktor Yeroféiev (Spanish)
Viktors Jerofejevs (Latvian)
Wiktor Jerofiejew (Polish)
Βίκτωρ Γεροφέγεφ (Greek)
Віктор Єрофєєв (Ukranian)
Виктор Јерофејев (Serbian)
Viktor Yerofeyev (also transliterated as Erofeyev) was born in Moscow in 1947. The son of a high-ranking diplomat he spent some years of his childhood in Paris. This meant he had access early on to literature banned in the Soviet Union. He was greatly influenced by the works of Vladimir Nabokov and the Marquis de Sade. In the late 1960’s he studied Literature in Moscow. He then worked for the Institute of World Literature. In 1975, he completed his doctorate with a thesis on »Dostoevsky and French Existentialism«. As a literary critic he wrote some essays interpreting the Marquis de Sade’s writing and an article on the philosophy of Leo Shestov. The literary almanac »Metropol« (Eng. »Metropol«, 1982) first created a major scandal in 1979. It was a compilation of politically explosive texts, selected by Victor Erofeyev, Vassili Axionow, Andrei Bitov, Jevgeni Popov and Fasil Iskander, in which both officially established writers and renegade writers were included. The attempt to publish the almanac in the Soviet Union failed because it was judged to be »pornography of the mind«. The work was published in the West. During this period his father, Vladimir Erofeyev, Stalin's former interpreter, was forced to resign and end his diplomatic career. From this time Victor Erofeyev was considered a dissident, and his writings were banned. With the first signs of Glasnost and Perestroika, Victor Erofeyev was able to publish again. In 1990 his first novel appeared, »Russkaia Krasavitsa« (Eng. »Russian Beauty«, 1992). Through the story of the beautiful Irena, a high-class prostitute in Moscow, the reader is transported into the world of the dark, grotesque aesthetics of sex, violence and death. In two essays, »Pominki po sovyetskoi literatur« (1990; t: An epitaph of Soviet literature) and »Russkie tsvety zla« (1993; Eng. »Russia’s Fleurs du mal«, 1995) Victor Erofeyev announced the death of the literature of Socialist Realism. At the same time he set out a radical artistic manifesto for a new literature of evil. He was also the editor of the first Russian edition of Nabokov's work, together with other anthologies of Russian literature. His story »Zhizn s idiotom« (1991; Eng. »Life With an Idiot«, 1992) was adapted for the operatic stage by Alfred Schnittke. Victor Erofeyev writes regularly for »The New Yorker« and the »New York Review of Books«. After his well-received autobiographical novel »Khoroshii Stalin« (2004; t: The good Stalin), he recently published a collection of stories »De Profundis« (2006). Victor Erofeyev lives in Moscow.
© international literature festival berlin
Victor Erofeev (French, Italian, Romanian)
Viktor Erofeev (Italian)
Viktor Jerofejev (Dutch, Hungarian)
Viktor Jerofejew (German)
Viktor Yeroféiev (Spanish)
Viktors Jerofejevs (Latvian)
Wiktor Jerofiejew (Polish)
Βίκτωρ Γεροφέγεφ (Greek)
Віктор Єрофєєв (Ukranian)
Виктор Јерофејев (Serbian)
Viktor Yerofeyev (also transliterated as Erofeyev) was born in Moscow in 1947. The son of a high-ranking diplomat he spent some years of his childhood in Paris. This meant he had access early on to literature banned in the Soviet Union. He was greatly influenced by the works of Vladimir Nabokov and the Marquis de Sade. In the late 1960’s he studied Literature in Moscow. He then worked for the Institute of World Literature. In 1975, he completed his doctorate with a thesis on »Dostoevsky and French Existentialism«. As a literary critic he wrote some essays interpreting the Marquis de Sade’s writing and an article on the philosophy of Leo Shestov. The literary almanac »Metropol« (Eng. »Metropol«, 1982) first created a major scandal in 1979. It was a compilation of politically explosive texts, selected by Victor Erofeyev, Vassili Axionow, Andrei Bitov, Jevgeni Popov and Fasil Iskander, in which both officially established writers and renegade writers were included. The attempt to publish the almanac in the Soviet Union failed because it was judged to be »pornography of the mind«. The work was published in the West. During this period his father, Vladimir Erofeyev, Stalin's former interpreter, was forced to resign and end his diplomatic career. From this time Victor Erofeyev was considered a dissident, and his writings were banned. With the first signs of Glasnost and Perestroika, Victor Erofeyev was able to publish again. In 1990 his first novel appeared, »Russkaia Krasavitsa« (Eng. »Russian Beauty«, 1992). Through the story of the beautiful Irena, a high-class prostitute in Moscow, the reader is transported into the world of the dark, grotesque aesthetics of sex, violence and death. In two essays, »Pominki po sovyetskoi literatur« (1990; t: An epitaph of Soviet literature) and »Russkie tsvety zla« (1993; Eng. »Russia’s Fleurs du mal«, 1995) Victor Erofeyev announced the death of the literature of Socialist Realism. At the same time he set out a radical artistic manifesto for a new literature of evil. He was also the editor of the first Russian edition of Nabokov's work, together with other anthologies of Russian literature. His story »Zhizn s idiotom« (1991; Eng. »Life With an Idiot«, 1992) was adapted for the operatic stage by Alfred Schnittke. Victor Erofeyev writes regularly for »The New Yorker« and the »New York Review of Books«. After his well-received autobiographical novel »Khoroshii Stalin« (2004; t: The good Stalin), he recently published a collection of stories »De Profundis« (2006). Victor Erofeyev lives in Moscow.
© international literature festival berlin
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
April 5, 2024
Finalmente l'ho finito!
La tentazione di abbandonare il libro era molta ma c'era sempre qualcosa che mi spingeva a continuare.
L'ho trovato faticoso e pesante da leggere :(
La tentazione di abbandonare il libro era molta ma c'era sempre qualcosa che mi spingeva a continuare.
L'ho trovato faticoso e pesante da leggere :(
February 21, 2022
Victor Erofeyev is the darling of the Russian culturati, a reviewer in his own right and a mover and shaker in the world of Russian media having had his own TV cultural programme on the Russian Tragic Lantern. He has also led a somewhat charmed life, the son of a high ranking Soviet diplomat and educated in Paris with a brother who is a curator at the Tretyakov. Not for him then the samizdat.
'Russian Beauty' was his first novel, published in 1990 just as the Soviet Union was on the verge of breaking up. This is the second time I have read this novel but the first I have attempted to write a review, having been somewhat overwhelmed previously. (Life with an Idiot (short stories published in 1980 is perhaps even more obtuse, untranslatable and unapproachable to anyone but a Russian). There is little doubt that Erofeyev was calling out the grand old men of Soviet literature with this piece - the Sholokhovs and Solzhenitsyns and Pasternaks - in favour of a new postmodern approach to Russian literature from the upcoming young writers. I think I can do little but put down my cadences and feelings I had with an attempt to pull together something here. Ostensibly it is the tale of Irina, the Russian Beauty, the provincial come to Moscow to find fame and fortune and fuck her way through the top notchers.
We open with a woman on an examination table, parts vulnerable to the old goat of a doctor who is examining her. Against all odds she has managed to get pregnant and now wants an abortion. 'She' is a celebrated woman, famous in the media and a beauty. Banter between doctor and patient. He wants her to keep it. She vacillates. It's erotic as she describes her smell. Is she a call-girl, a whore; certainly bisexual. We are led by Erofeyev to know more about the old goat doctor, Stanislaw Albertovich than the woman on the table who it turns out is Irina.
She is the narrator and this narration swerves between insight and the mundane. And because it's 'postmodern' (maaannnn!!) then it swings between followable and drivel, swaps time spaces, introduces names and people out of the blue etc etc.The skipping and rejoining of one narrative strewn with another and who is exactly talking - oh yeaaahhhh - SOOOooooo postmodern - and at the same time so tedious. Despite all her charms, all her beauty, she is still SUCH an ingénue - and she knows it. Her charm is her ingénue provincial lack of knowledge, lack of actually BELONGING to this world of Moscow sybarites where she is coveted and desired for her beauty and the allure of possible uncluttered and unfettered wild unattached sex with a desirable beauty. And yet she is far more human than the riches and rich around her declaring her need to want to love and be loved beyond the power of acquisition that might come from a dalliance or an affair with the rich and famous and powerful. It's the smell of sex and power.
The arrogance of wealth
Being so pissed that anything and everything could happen - to be blootered yet not unconscious.
The Successful - just reminded me of the Stranglers lyrics to 'Ugly'
The arrogance of beauty and sexual attraction. The hegemony of good looks allowing for behaviour which might otherwise be considered outrageous and unacceptable. We accept it because we ultimately want possession.
And so it transpires that having by chance met Vladimir Sergeivich through his son, and begun a high fire though clandestine affair with him (VS) he has expired in flagrante delicto so to speak shooting his last load to impregnate her whilst arresting. The consequences of his death and the pregnancy are both scandal which needs to be hushed up (VS being such a major historical and cultural figure) and the dropping of Irina by the set of wealthy culturati and the denial to her of any sense of grieving for the lost dead lover whose child she now carries. So what does she do.... she does a porn shoot for a foreign magazine and receives support from the outside world of western porn power. The previous 'friends' of course all gang-up against her. She loses her work, her income, her chances to mingle with power and eventually her right to stay in Moscow.
Sometimes it really is a test of having to turn off your powers of rational understanding and just let it wash over you because what is going down is just Irina talking fairly bland talk because it is a narration in her mind which jumps around all over the place, boasting of her faux-powerful attempts to stand out from the other faux-powerful similars - a case of 'CHOOSE ME!!'
Or maybe its all an attempt at Symbolist nonsense? Erofeyev name checks and makes references too blatant to miss throughout the text. Is he suggesting that he should be included with these Greats?
In the end Irina seeks immolation. Strips, runs, runs for Russia. Loses herself. Can't lose herself. Returns to the fire. Complete breakdown? And the ghost of VS returns, takes her deeply, intensely, climatically over and over the top, begs her to come with him. But how can she marry the dead? He is gone, the faint hope of marriage lost with his last push and cardiac arrest. But now the ghost holds out the prospect of marriage and togetherness in death and the converstation between The Anxious against the Avoidant. Constant only in its changing-ness for both of them - for the ghost, the memory of VS, against the grief-stricken wretchedness of Irina. We have grief as both bereavement and termination of partnership, both constantly rotating through the cycle. Unwilling to commit. Not willing to pass over, to the potentialities and possibilities which are unspoken yet rest there beyond substantially being proven. This scene, which is crucial within the book, is followed by another long romp through sensuality, greed, drunkeness and avarice. Just when you thought he was beginning to get somewhere, to explore something beyond, to write something of importance with lasting meaning, he reverts to sham flattering through gluttony.
And so to the last chapter. Bernhardian in appearance but failing to follow through, it begins to read like the frantic scribblings of a hysteric. Is it grief that makes her so frantic? How unhinged is this woman. She commits suicide in an attempt to join with VS in an afterlife that none of us can or ever could believe in. In a sense she gives in and gives up to the hope that there may be an afterlife more powerful, more fulfilling, more redemptive where she will be re-united with VS, than what she has now to look forward to in her everyday future.
'Russian Beauty' was his first novel, published in 1990 just as the Soviet Union was on the verge of breaking up. This is the second time I have read this novel but the first I have attempted to write a review, having been somewhat overwhelmed previously. (Life with an Idiot (short stories published in 1980 is perhaps even more obtuse, untranslatable and unapproachable to anyone but a Russian). There is little doubt that Erofeyev was calling out the grand old men of Soviet literature with this piece - the Sholokhovs and Solzhenitsyns and Pasternaks - in favour of a new postmodern approach to Russian literature from the upcoming young writers. I think I can do little but put down my cadences and feelings I had with an attempt to pull together something here. Ostensibly it is the tale of Irina, the Russian Beauty, the provincial come to Moscow to find fame and fortune and fuck her way through the top notchers.
We open with a woman on an examination table, parts vulnerable to the old goat of a doctor who is examining her. Against all odds she has managed to get pregnant and now wants an abortion. 'She' is a celebrated woman, famous in the media and a beauty. Banter between doctor and patient. He wants her to keep it. She vacillates. It's erotic as she describes her smell. Is she a call-girl, a whore; certainly bisexual. We are led by Erofeyev to know more about the old goat doctor, Stanislaw Albertovich than the woman on the table who it turns out is Irina.
She is the narrator and this narration swerves between insight and the mundane. And because it's 'postmodern' (maaannnn!!) then it swings between followable and drivel, swaps time spaces, introduces names and people out of the blue etc etc.The skipping and rejoining of one narrative strewn with another and who is exactly talking - oh yeaaahhhh - SOOOooooo postmodern - and at the same time so tedious. Despite all her charms, all her beauty, she is still SUCH an ingénue - and she knows it. Her charm is her ingénue provincial lack of knowledge, lack of actually BELONGING to this world of Moscow sybarites where she is coveted and desired for her beauty and the allure of possible uncluttered and unfettered wild unattached sex with a desirable beauty. And yet she is far more human than the riches and rich around her declaring her need to want to love and be loved beyond the power of acquisition that might come from a dalliance or an affair with the rich and famous and powerful. It's the smell of sex and power.
The arrogance of wealth
She, yawning, said that it wasn't difficult to get used to good things, Sunny, but as soon as one had got used to them they stopped being good, and everything begins from zero again and one starts counting the losses.
Being so pissed that anything and everything could happen - to be blootered yet not unconscious.
The Successful - just reminded me of the Stranglers lyrics to 'Ugly'
It's only the children of the fucking wealthyIt's an allegory to modern Russia. The old ones that remember don't understand what is happening or give a flying. Those that are old and already successful and are survivors with a future care only about success onwards; whilst the upcoming usual suspects are only concerned about owning a black BMW with tinted glass or better still a BIG fuck off sized Range Rover - the sky's the limit and anything goes.... "Any Private Property". Meanwhile the old dispossessed are too far gone to even care what they are all up to and couldn't do a thing to stop it anyway.
Who turn out to be good looking
An ugly fart
Attracts a good looking chick
If he's got money
An ugly fart
Attracts a good looking chick
If he's got money
The arrogance of beauty and sexual attraction. The hegemony of good looks allowing for behaviour which might otherwise be considered outrageous and unacceptable. We accept it because we ultimately want possession.
And so it transpires that having by chance met Vladimir Sergeivich through his son, and begun a high fire though clandestine affair with him (VS) he has expired in flagrante delicto so to speak shooting his last load to impregnate her whilst arresting. The consequences of his death and the pregnancy are both scandal which needs to be hushed up (VS being such a major historical and cultural figure) and the dropping of Irina by the set of wealthy culturati and the denial to her of any sense of grieving for the lost dead lover whose child she now carries. So what does she do.... she does a porn shoot for a foreign magazine and receives support from the outside world of western porn power. The previous 'friends' of course all gang-up against her. She loses her work, her income, her chances to mingle with power and eventually her right to stay in Moscow.
Sometimes it really is a test of having to turn off your powers of rational understanding and just let it wash over you because what is going down is just Irina talking fairly bland talk because it is a narration in her mind which jumps around all over the place, boasting of her faux-powerful attempts to stand out from the other faux-powerful similars - a case of 'CHOOSE ME!!'
"The only person who has the right to judge me is a woman more beautiful than I, and men have no right at all to judge, but only to admire, and as far as beauty is concerned, I've never met anyone more beautiful than myself. "What IS Beauty>? What is this arrogance of surface beauty? To move from the status of 'Golden Fish' to 'Cheap Trade' in a simple action. It's not the action itself, it is the RESULT of the action in the mind of the decider. But still it is that behavioural difference between Love and Hate - both passions to the same degree. I Love you. I Hate you.
".... and it's not that I was missing him - I was just weary from carrying my dreams to full term and was amazed that he had wriggled out of it, repaid my humble supplication, my unique art, with a petty rescue."In places it becomes a paean to grief and jealousy and the pain of rejection, and the shame of realisation of that rejection, that the fault lies within herself, that you were being judged, and that the prospect of redemption through conjoining renewal which both Irina and VS seek is forever beyond their reach due to forces which were powerful and utterly outside of their control. The trapped soul in a trapped body seeking an exegesis through touch and sensuality which never fully comes, never fulfils its temptation towards tranquility and release, but when the hint of the semblance of it arrives, it explodes in a shower of release.
A lover isn't someone you sleep with but is someone you like waking up with in the morning.DESPITE the above quote of real insight, some of the erotic allusive prose just strays into the word of hack wank-mag fodder but perhaps Erofeyev wanted to show-but-not-tell the demise of Irina as she takes the porn shoot as an escape from the troubles that beset her. The development and exploitation of Russian Beauty. They already have the power and influence and no morality. They just used their position and exploited those that wanted to be exploited to become like them. And we are back to Russia as allegory. Phallocrats! Her face (or whatever!) is THEIR fortune. She is paid like an overpriced football star whose skill is short-lived based on age and fitness only to be dropped and dumped when they can no longer perform. This isn't Art, it's just the slick veneer of impermanent frisson.
Or maybe its all an attempt at Symbolist nonsense? Erofeyev name checks and makes references too blatant to miss throughout the text. Is he suggesting that he should be included with these Greats?
In the end Irina seeks immolation. Strips, runs, runs for Russia. Loses herself. Can't lose herself. Returns to the fire. Complete breakdown? And the ghost of VS returns, takes her deeply, intensely, climatically over and over the top, begs her to come with him. But how can she marry the dead? He is gone, the faint hope of marriage lost with his last push and cardiac arrest. But now the ghost holds out the prospect of marriage and togetherness in death and the converstation between The Anxious against the Avoidant. Constant only in its changing-ness for both of them - for the ghost, the memory of VS, against the grief-stricken wretchedness of Irina. We have grief as both bereavement and termination of partnership, both constantly rotating through the cycle. Unwilling to commit. Not willing to pass over, to the potentialities and possibilities which are unspoken yet rest there beyond substantially being proven. This scene, which is crucial within the book, is followed by another long romp through sensuality, greed, drunkeness and avarice. Just when you thought he was beginning to get somewhere, to explore something beyond, to write something of importance with lasting meaning, he reverts to sham flattering through gluttony.
And so to the last chapter. Bernhardian in appearance but failing to follow through, it begins to read like the frantic scribblings of a hysteric. Is it grief that makes her so frantic? How unhinged is this woman. She commits suicide in an attempt to join with VS in an afterlife that none of us can or ever could believe in. In a sense she gives in and gives up to the hope that there may be an afterlife more powerful, more fulfilling, more redemptive where she will be re-united with VS, than what she has now to look forward to in her everyday future.
Read
June 4, 2025Had to skim the last quarter, desu. I think I just reject pomo standards in most forms; there's way too much perspective switching and general unparseability in this, though. Fair's fair; I'm willing to concede that some of this may be due to the translation. Nonetheless, it made me long for that good, clean, postwar American prose. I understand that this explosion of style represented in rus lit a new freedom of glasnostian expression that was afforded by the Soviet death throes. This reads like Erofeyev is trying to makeup for the many grey years of politburo-approved manufacturing lit all in one hit and it still leaves me cold. I'm team America on this one
didntfinish-yet
November 8, 2011long-ago Strand purchase. Why has no one else read or even heard of this book? And what's going on with that weird-ass cover photo? Do I srsly have to take a picture of my own book and upload it?
Um, anyway. I don't have an "abandoned" shelf, because life is long and you never know what you'll go back to. But I doubt I'll go back to this book; I've false-started it a half-dozen times and I finally gave up and brought it to a book swap, exchanging it for the absurdly titled I Love Yous Are for White People . I always make good choices, obvs.
Um, anyway. I don't have an "abandoned" shelf, because life is long and you never know what you'll go back to. But I doubt I'll go back to this book; I've false-started it a half-dozen times and I finally gave up and brought it to a book swap, exchanging it for the absurdly titled I Love Yous Are for White People . I always make good choices, obvs.
November 5, 2012
I read this over 10 years ago, and so can't write a reasonable review. I do remember thinking it was somehow erotically bleak, or maybe sexual in a Nan Goldin sexy-naked-junkies kind of way.
June 21, 2020
I enjoyed this book and will likely read it again. It's a thoughtful book and a descendant of an old school of writing and maybe an old school of being that I do like to visit from time to time.
June 9, 2021
Очень хреновая концовка, которая лишний раз подчеркивает, что весь роман катился на колёсах буйного языка, коий, по слову поэта, «шкворчит меж зубами». Ну, этот чиж на моторе достойно пробрыкался свои двести страниц, до наступления развязки с дурацким появлением «тени отца гамлета», она же «каменный гость». Дальше стал отдыхат�� и увядать. В терминах романа — «опадать».
По большей же части я прибалдел от текста такой забористости 82-го года выпуска. Основные кульбиты: невиданное число набоковских случайных анапестов, замечательная композиция недосказанностей и зажеванной пленки, интересная шизореалистическая сцена горячечного ангинного бреда, ну и вот это трудолюбивое переизобретение на русском языке двенадцатиперстных предложений в километровых абзацах. Что касается содержания, окромя духовидческих прозрений, дама натурально обладает колоссальным портретным сходством.
Я помню откуда-то из глубин телевизионного детства глядящее на меня из передачи «Апокриф» очкастое нетолстощёкое лицо, мистически невнятный и нескончаемый пиздёжь. Не в последнюю очередь и оно привило мне тягу к таинственной культуре от-кутюр. (Впрочем, как видим на примере Саши Соколова, ребёнок может высечь себе святость из всякого говна.)
Ерофеев мне самый патентованый Другой. Меня его мастерство настораживает, как бы не притаился тут говнюк, за своего сходить умеючи. Совершенно я не чувствую иного хлеба, какой мог бы разделить с Ерофеевым, кроме языка. А ведь и в один день календаря родились.
Ну и ещё для меня он избавился от стрёмного флёра однофамильства с Венедиктом.
По большей же части я прибалдел от текста такой забористости 82-го года выпуска. Основные кульбиты: невиданное число набоковских случайных анапестов, замечательная композиция недосказанностей и зажеванной пленки, интересная шизореалистическая сцена горячечного ангинного бреда, ну и вот это трудолюбивое переизобретение на русском языке двенадцатиперстных предложений в километровых абзацах. Что касается содержания, окромя духовидческих прозрений, дама натурально обладает колоссальным портретным сходством.
Я помню откуда-то из глубин телевизионного детства глядящее на меня из передачи «Апокриф» очкастое нетолстощёкое лицо, мистически невнятный и нескончаемый пиздёжь. Не в последнюю очередь и оно привило мне тягу к таинственной культуре от-кутюр. (Впрочем, как видим на примере Саши Соколова, ребёнок может высечь себе святость из всякого говна.)
Ерофеев мне самый патентованый Другой. Меня его мастерство настораживает, как бы не притаился тут говнюк, за своего сходить умеючи. Совершенно я не чувствую иного хлеба, какой мог бы разделить с Ерофеевым, кроме языка. А ведь и в один день календаря родились.
Ну и ещё для меня он избавился от стрёмного флёра однофамильства с Венедиктом.
September 19, 2018
Viktor Erofeyev , on his birthday September 19
Combining the qualities of his idols who are also the subjects of his brilliant scholarship, the layered philosophical depth of Dostoyevsky and de Sades's satirical eroticism of power brought to life with the lyricism and hallucinatory nightmares of French Surrealism, Viktor Erofeyev spins myths of postmodern decadence.
His novel Russian Beauty, a negotiation with the whole history and character of Russia in an allegory of redemption and rebirth, redefined his nation after the fall of Soviet communism, and his collection of short stories, Life With An Idiot, enshrines grotesque and wonderful fables of chthonic forces which move below the surface of our awareness, ancient powers which claim us though we may not claim them.
Just as Irina Tarakanova is a figure of Russia, his stories are filled with archetypal characters, images, and symbols which unify Baba Yaga and Mary Theotikos, pagan and Christian systems of thought with political ideology as its outward reflection and form. Yet his bizarre and gloriously deviant narratives are more than salvage operations to reclaim our lost humanity from the rubble of a shattered civilization; Viktor Erofeyev's mission and vision as an artist balances this conservativism with the revolutionary struggle to free us to become human as we choose, to free us from the tyranny of other people.
Combining the qualities of his idols who are also the subjects of his brilliant scholarship, the layered philosophical depth of Dostoyevsky and de Sades's satirical eroticism of power brought to life with the lyricism and hallucinatory nightmares of French Surrealism, Viktor Erofeyev spins myths of postmodern decadence.
His novel Russian Beauty, a negotiation with the whole history and character of Russia in an allegory of redemption and rebirth, redefined his nation after the fall of Soviet communism, and his collection of short stories, Life With An Idiot, enshrines grotesque and wonderful fables of chthonic forces which move below the surface of our awareness, ancient powers which claim us though we may not claim them.
Just as Irina Tarakanova is a figure of Russia, his stories are filled with archetypal characters, images, and symbols which unify Baba Yaga and Mary Theotikos, pagan and Christian systems of thought with political ideology as its outward reflection and form. Yet his bizarre and gloriously deviant narratives are more than salvage operations to reclaim our lost humanity from the rubble of a shattered civilization; Viktor Erofeyev's mission and vision as an artist balances this conservativism with the revolutionary struggle to free us to become human as we choose, to free us from the tyranny of other people.
December 12, 2025
(probably) notes of Irina's scent: bergamot, cognac, cedar, tobacco.
erotica received lacking meaningful sensuality but enjoyably relatable as far as her shaky regard of God and opinion of perfect lovers.
complaint: to proclaim her taste in men as high caliber when dissonantly she was so cock hungry - affairs were impending on each of her relationships.
forgiveness: to have her every waking thought be about a woman that confused and used her. to be thinking not only of her intelligence but too of her body which came with flaw.
erotica received lacking meaningful sensuality but enjoyably relatable as far as her shaky regard of God and opinion of perfect lovers.
complaint: to proclaim her taste in men as high caliber when dissonantly she was so cock hungry - affairs were impending on each of her relationships.
forgiveness: to have her every waking thought be about a woman that confused and used her. to be thinking not only of her intelligence but too of her body which came with flaw.
March 5, 2019
Посмотрев под определенным углом, можно сказать, что книга о том, как красота спасает мир. Угол необычный, как и сам роман, о чем читателя предупреждают в предисловии: "Ерофееву удалось необыкновенное - взяв за основу соцреализм и пустив в ход постмодернистские краски, роман не получился "новым романом" как того требовала формула, а скорее "новой классикой"". Некоторые ругают книгу за "пошлятину", но у кого, что болит. Ерофеев прекрасно использует русский язык для описания вещей и событий в таком тоне, о котором я бы и не додумался. Ну а крепкие выражения вписывается в текст очень органично, в некоторых местах даже неожиданно (в хорошем смысле) и смешно.
January 14, 2023
ostatnie 100 stron to akurat fajne, a reszta to nie wiem… czasem takie mieszane odczucia…
July 1, 2025
Reminded me of Myra Breckinridge in the best possible way!
August 21, 2023
3.5
Mi puntuación no es del todo definitiva, porque creo que necesito explorar con más profundidad las referencias al folclore ruso y la a sociedad post-soviética para poder acabar de disfrutar el texto. De todas formas, seguro que volveré varias veces a la obra para encontrar y contextualizar nuevos detalles.
Mi puntuación no es del todo definitiva, porque creo que necesito explorar con más profundidad las referencias al folclore ruso y la a sociedad post-soviética para poder acabar de disfrutar el texto. De todas formas, seguro que volveré varias veces a la obra para encontrar y contextualizar nuevos detalles.
November 18, 2013
Este es uno de mis personales favoritos. Lo encontré por casualidad en una librería del viejo y, aunque fue un poco caro para mi bolsillo, no he podido estar más agradecida por esa pequeña coincidencia. La historia habla sobre una mujer de Moscú que es amante de un señor importante y de mucho dinero. Tiene y tuvo además otros amantes pero se enamoró de este último. Cuando él muere, ella realiza que está embarazada, un milagro si consideramos que ella estaba diagnosticada como infértil. El tiempo en el que la historia se desarrolla influye mucho en los personajes aquí al mismo tiempo pareciera que Irina, la heroína, pasa de él. Simplemente uno de mis personajes femeninos más queridos,
February 2, 2016
All that and I could not finish-the Russians may love this but I found it too boring
Beautiful and utterly insightful, heroine Irina Tarakanova relates the story of the sexual odyssey that takes her from passionate flings with the father of her unborn child to caring lesbian affairs with her best friend.
Beautiful and utterly insightful, heroine Irina Tarakanova relates the story of the sexual odyssey that takes her from passionate flings with the father of her unborn child to caring lesbian affairs with her best friend.
May 5, 2013
Alegoría de la Unión Soviética, que es comparada a una prostituta fascinada por occidente, pero aferrada a sus tradiciones. Se dirige hacia el desastre (el suicidio) por no haberse adaptar a su nueva realidad (Perestroika) en un mar de vodka (Yeltsin?).
March 19, 2015
Wat een vreselijk boek om te lezen. Zinnen die meer dan 1 bladzijde beslaan niet normaal. Ik heb het uitgelezen omdat ik de gewoonte heb alle boeken uit lezen waar ik in begin.
April 10, 2014
Don't understand the fuzz about this book... Reminds me of Dorotha Maslowska, but her 'Snow White and Russian Red' is energetic, fero cious and powerful!
October 22, 2016
Зрозуміти російську душу. Зрозуміти жінку
Сильно, тонко, точно
Сильно, тонко, точно
December 7, 2016
Самый фееричный бессмысленный бред, который я читала.
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