What do you think?
Rate this book
Алексей Ремизов #11
Том 11. Зга
Книга "Зга" (Одиннадцатый том Собрания сочинений А. М. Ремизова) включает повести "Неуемный бубен", "Странница", "По карнизам", циклы рассказов "Зга", "Шумы города", произведения экспериментальных жанров "О судьбе огненной", "Электрон" и др. Мифология, фантастика и эсхатология сочетаются в них с изображением роковых катаклизмов русской истории и с историософскими размышлениями о судьбе России. Большинство текстов научно издается впервые после первой публикации в начале ХХ в.
790 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1922
About the author
Aleksei Remizov
148 books18 followersAleksei Mikhailovich Remizov (Russian: Алексей Михайлович Ремизов; 6 July 1877, Moscow — November 26, 1957, Paris) was a Russian modernist writer whose creative imagination veered to the fantastic and bizarre. Apart from literary works, Remizov was an expert calligrapher who sought to revive this medieval art in Russia.
Remizov was reared in the merchant milieu of Moscow. As a student of the Moscow University, he was involved in the radical politics and spent eight years in prison and Siberian exile. At that time, he developed a keen interest in Russian folklore and married a student of ancient Russian art, who brought him in contact with the Roerichs.
In 1905, he settled in Saint Petersburg and started to imitate medieval folk tales. His self-professed ambition was to catch "the bitterness and absurdity of folklore imagination". Remizov's whimsical stylizations of the saints' lives were ignored at first, partly due to their florid and turgid language, but his more traditional prose works set in the underworld of Russian cities gained him a great deal of publicity.
In his satirical novel The Indefatigable Cymbal (1910) Remizov depicted the eccentricities and superstitions of rural sectarians. Another striking work of this period is The Sacrifice, a Gothic horror story in which "a ghostly double of a father comes to kill his innocent daughter in the mistaken belief that she is a chicken".
By the time of the Russian Revolution, Remizov had concentrated on imitating more or less obscure works of medieval Russian literature. He responded to the revolution by the Lay of the Ruin of the Russian Land, a paraphrase of the 13th-century work bemoaning the Mongol invasion of Russia. In 1921 he moved to Berlin and then in 1923 - to Paris, where he published an account of his attitudes towards the revolution under the title Whirlwind Russia (1927).
During his years in exile, Remizov brought out a number of bizarre works, featuring demons and nightmare creatures. The writer also developed a keen interest in dreams and wrote a few works on the subject that involved prominent figures of Russian literature (Gogol, Dostoyevsky and others). Although he was so prolific that many of his works failed to find a publisher (in fact, from 1931 to 1952 there was not a single book published), Remizov was also the first Russian modernist author to attract the attention of the luminaries of the Parisian literary world, such as James Joyce. His reputation suffered a decline when, following World War II, he announced his interest in returning to the Soviet Union and even obtained a Soviet passport (which he did not have a chance to use). After that, Remizov was abhorred by the émigré litterateurs, the most famous of whom, Vladimir Nabokov, used to say that the only nice thing about Remizov was that he really lived in the world of literature. 1952-1957 saw a number of Remizov's books published, though only a very limited number of copies was printed.
Remizov was reared in the merchant milieu of Moscow. As a student of the Moscow University, he was involved in the radical politics and spent eight years in prison and Siberian exile. At that time, he developed a keen interest in Russian folklore and married a student of ancient Russian art, who brought him in contact with the Roerichs.
In 1905, he settled in Saint Petersburg and started to imitate medieval folk tales. His self-professed ambition was to catch "the bitterness and absurdity of folklore imagination". Remizov's whimsical stylizations of the saints' lives were ignored at first, partly due to their florid and turgid language, but his more traditional prose works set in the underworld of Russian cities gained him a great deal of publicity.
In his satirical novel The Indefatigable Cymbal (1910) Remizov depicted the eccentricities and superstitions of rural sectarians. Another striking work of this period is The Sacrifice, a Gothic horror story in which "a ghostly double of a father comes to kill his innocent daughter in the mistaken belief that she is a chicken".
By the time of the Russian Revolution, Remizov had concentrated on imitating more or less obscure works of medieval Russian literature. He responded to the revolution by the Lay of the Ruin of the Russian Land, a paraphrase of the 13th-century work bemoaning the Mongol invasion of Russia. In 1921 he moved to Berlin and then in 1923 - to Paris, where he published an account of his attitudes towards the revolution under the title Whirlwind Russia (1927).
During his years in exile, Remizov brought out a number of bizarre works, featuring demons and nightmare creatures. The writer also developed a keen interest in dreams and wrote a few works on the subject that involved prominent figures of Russian literature (Gogol, Dostoyevsky and others). Although he was so prolific that many of his works failed to find a publisher (in fact, from 1931 to 1952 there was not a single book published), Remizov was also the first Russian modernist author to attract the attention of the luminaries of the Parisian literary world, such as James Joyce. His reputation suffered a decline when, following World War II, he announced his interest in returning to the Soviet Union and even obtained a Soviet passport (which he did not have a chance to use). After that, Remizov was abhorred by the émigré litterateurs, the most famous of whom, Vladimir Nabokov, used to say that the only nice thing about Remizov was that he really lived in the world of literature. 1952-1957 saw a number of Remizov's books published, though only a very limited number of copies was printed.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 23, 2019
“Aleksey Remizov had never been one of the guests. I loved his early novels, The Pond and The Fifth Pestilence, when I met him in Berlin. His Russia in Vortex is an immortal book, and if not all thirty of his volumes, then half of them will live and some time return to Russia… Remizov loved people who loved him, helped him, fenced him off from life caring for him, those who listened with veneration to his gibberish about imps, apes, goblins, all his fantasies (artificially sublimated but almost always sexual): among such people he lived…” Nina Berberova – The Italics Are Mine.
The cycle of stories Murk has a subtitle Magical Tales and almost all the short stories and novelettes in this book are mistily Gothic somewhere between Nikolai Gogol and E.T.A. Hoffmann filled with imps, fiends, petty demons, evil spirits and devils. But Aleksey Remizov writes in his own unique language full of rare miraculous words.
The cycle ends with an apocalyptic tale Conflagration…
The novelettes are about tragic fates of little men and unhappy women – the little man’s sorrows and miseries are the biggest.
There are many trials in the world and the last trial is by fire…
The cycle of stories Murk has a subtitle Magical Tales and almost all the short stories and novelettes in this book are mistily Gothic somewhere between Nikolai Gogol and E.T.A. Hoffmann filled with imps, fiends, petty demons, evil spirits and devils. But Aleksey Remizov writes in his own unique language full of rare miraculous words.
The cycle ends with an apocalyptic tale Conflagration…
And the schismatic soldier yupped: “The Archfiend has occupied the temple and throne of God. The devil defiles a monstrance and spits into a chalice. And people take communion not of Christ’s blood but of Satan’s spittle and they ingest not Christ’s body but Satan’s crap.”
The novelettes are about tragic fates of little men and unhappy women – the little man’s sorrows and miseries are the biggest.
There are many trials in the world and the last trial is by fire…
Displaying 1 of 1 review