Time of Gratitude

by Gennady Aygi, Gennady Aygi

A collection of extraordinary essays by one of the seminal Russian poets of the twentieth century Gennady Aygi’s longtime translator and friend Peter France has compiled this moving collection of tributes dedicated to some of the writers and artists who sustained him while living in the Moscow “underground.” Written in a quiet intensely expressive poetic style, Aygi’s inventive essays blend autobiography with literary criticism, social commentary, nature writing, and enlightening homage. He addresses such literary masters as Pasternak, Kafka, Mayakovsky, Celan, and Tomas Tranströmer, along with other writers from the Russian avant-garde and his native Chuvashia. Related poems by Aygi are also threaded between the essays. Reminiscent of Mandelstam’s elliptical travel musings and Kafka’s intensely spiritual jottings in his notebooks, Time of Gratitude glows with the love and humanity of a sacred vocation. “These leaves of paper," Aygi says, 'are swept up by the whirlwind of festivity; everything whirls―from Earth to Heaven―and perhaps the Universe too begins to swirl. Everything flows together in the rainbow colors and lights of the infinite world of Poetry.'

Genres: Essays, Poetry, Nonfiction

124 pages, Paperback

Published December 12, 2017

About the author

Gennady Nikolaevich Aygi (Russian: Геннадий Николаевич Айги, Chuvash: Геннадий Николаевич Айхи; 21 August 1934 - 21 February 2006, Moscow) was a Chuvash poet and a translator. His poetry is written both in Chuvash and in Russian. Aygi is widely considered to be one of the great avant-garde poets from the former Soviet Union. He was born in Chuvashia, then a Soviet Republic, and moved to Moscow in 1953 to study at the Literary Institute. Though Aygi's poetry was not published in the Soviet Union until the 1980s, his work was widely translated and he received numerous honors, including multiple nominations for the Nobel Prize.

Reviews

[Robert Reinhard · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gem small collection of essays and curated poems by a writer who inherits the passion and soul of Russian literature. His clear appreciations and admiration for fellow artists [Pasternak, Mayakovsky, Shalamov, Kafka and others] written in all modesty and to honor. If the people of the world could choose a collective of Platonic philosopher kings to rule on what creative works to preserve and promote, Aygi should be one of those arbiters.

[Kevin S · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved this collection of essays by the poet. They are beautiful and thoughtful and deeply felt. It is a collection of memories of other poets and his relationships with them and the affect they had on him. But the writing itself is exquisite.

[Tatyana · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I have lost the purity of solitude and the chastity of being unknown (even so, I knew something of this chastity). I wanted to be “necessary,” but what quiet happiness and honesty there is in being unnecessary ! These are the “lessons of Kafka”... " (“O Yes: Light of Kafka”)