Домой с небес

Russian Library

by Борис Поплавский, Boris Poplavsky

Книга представляет собой сборник прозы одного из ярких представителей литературы "русского зарубежья" начала XX века, ставшего, по словам Д.Мережковского и Вл.Ходасевича, в конце 20-х - начале 30-х годов одним из самых значительных литературных талантов эмиграции. В книгу включены философско-автобиографические романы "Аполлон Безобразов" и "Домой с небес", воссоздающие атмосферу жизни и быта "русского" Парижа 20-х - 30-х годов. Романы публикуются впервые по рукописи автора.

Genres: Fiction, Russian Literature, Russia, France

349 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Бори́с Юлиа́нович Попла́вский (24 мая (7 июня) 1903, Москва — 9 октября 1935, Париж) — поэт и прозаик русского зарубежья (первая волна эмиграции).
Родился 24 мая (7 июня) в Москве. Его родители познакомились во время учёбы в консерватории. Отец, Юлиан Игнатьевич (скончался в 1958 г.), был полурусским, полулитовцем, закончил Московскую консерваторию (ученик П. И. Чайковского), но оставил музыку и занимался промышленной деятельностью. Мать, Софья Валентиновна Кохманская (скончалась в 1948 г.), принадлежала к прибалтийскому дворянскому роду, собиралась стать скрипачкой. После женитьбы отец оставил музыку и стал заниматься коммерческой деятельностью, чтобы обеспечивать семью. В семье Поплавских было четверо детей. Вместе с матерью дети часто выезжали за границу, жили в Италии и Швейцарии. У Поплавского рано умерла старшая сестра Наталья Поплавская (1900—1920-е), которая издала в 1917 году сборник стихов «Стихи зеленой дамы».

Наряду с русской Борис Юлианович знакомился и с французской литературой, читал её в оригинале. Французский для него был вторым родным языком.

В Москве Б. Ю. Поплавский начал учиться во французском лицее. Там он начал писать стихи — примером для него была сестра Наталья. Развитию увлечения способствовало и то, что в доме Поплавских собирался литературно-художественный кружок, выступали поэты и музыканты.

После революции отец с младшим сыном уезжают в Харьков, затем живут в Крыму. В январе 1919 года в Ялте в Чеховском литературном кружке состоялось первое выступление молодого поэта.

В июле, после наступления Добровольческой армии, вернулись в Россию и поселились в Ростове-на-Дону. Там Б. Ю. Поплавский посещал литературный кружок «Никитинские субботники».

Во время Гражданской войны Поплавский вместе с родителями отплыли в Константинополь. В это время Поплавский осознаёт литературу делом всей жизни. Вместе с В. А. Дукельским он создал местное отделение «Цеха поэтов», входил в парижские литературные группы «Гатарапак» (1921—1922 гг.), «Через» (1923—1924 гг.), Союз молодых поэтов и писателей (с 1925 г.), «Кочевье». Помимо творчества занимался религиозной философией, также его привлекала живопись, много времени он уделял искусству.

В конце мая 1921 года Поплавский вместе с отцом приехали в Париж. В 1922 году он несколько месяцев провёл в Берлине, там он работал в живописном ателье над портретами. В дальнейшем он не возвращался к искусству. Интерес к нему проявлялся только в художественной критике, которую он размещал в журналах «Воля России», «Числа» (многие его статьи посвящены художникам русского Парижа: Марку Шагалу, Михаилу Ларионову, Абраму Минчину и др.)

С 1921 года Б. Ю. Поплавский активно участвуют в литературной жизни русского Парижа. В начале 20-х годов он является членом авангардистских «левых» объединений. В то же время поэт продолжает образование, посещая занятия на историко-филологическом факультете Сорбонны. Вскоре эти занятия пришлось ему прекратить, и в дальнейшем университетом для него стала библиотека святой Женевьевы, где он изучал книги по истории, философии и теологии. Литературная жизнь в 20-е годы концентрировалась в кафе, где собирался весь «Русский Монпарнас». Там Поплавский выступал на литературно-философских диспутах, читал свои стихи.

Поплавский скончался в Париже 9 октября 1935 вместе со своим случайным знакомым — С. Ярхо от отравления наркотическим веществом (по одной из версий, это было самоубийство, по другой — с собой покончить решил приятель Поплавского, захотевший «прихватить» кого-нибудь на тот свет).

See Boris Poplavsky.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boris Poplavsky: émigré, poet, surrealist, visionary, cocainist, a man of the tragic fate…
Oleg – the author’s alter ego – is a hero of the novel… But Apollon Bezobrazoff – Apollo the Ugly – is also back…

Serenely and tranquilly the sun took charge of the street, for, despite the chaos and neurasthenia of the cosmos, summer was once again returning, serene and blinding. Many-winged time has swept over our group of melodeclaimers, familiar from the previous act. Each of them has changed, all except Apollon Bezobrazoff, who, not alive, ergo, not aging, not suffering, ergo, not partaking in anything, archaic and aloof, has continued to journey from one end of the city to another, like a serpent, slithering his way unhurriedly across the railway tracks.

Happy Oleg goes to Saint-Tropez to spend the summer by the sea… The world is a mystical place… There is an aura of mystique around everything…

“The world cannot only have been thought up by God, for thought lacks duration, its essence consisting in the ecstasy of revelation. Yet nor can the world only be God’s imagining, for the imagined must be subordinate to the imaginer, and in that case, there would be no sin, no freedom, no redemption… No, the world must be God’s dream, one that burgeoned and blossomed precisely at that moment when His imagination ceased to obey Him. He must have fallen asleep and dreamed it, losing His dominion, renouncing it.”

Homeward from Heaven is a surreal love story… He is in love… She is not…

What a vulpine, canine scent she trails, though her tail sweeps away the tracks she leaves behind… The fat fairytale fox with her Tartar eyes… All the better to see me with… How quickly in her presence, how instantaneously Oleg forswore his autonomy, his dignity, his courage, his humor.

Summer is gone… He returns from heaven… He is twirled by the whirlwind of time… Days follow days… Moments of bliss… Finding and losing… Corrosion…

The sun has scorched the earth with flames, everything has crumbled into dreams without joy, and a lone voice above the deathly embers sings in ancient harmony… Life gallops past, and there’s no time to live. Well, let us take a guitar and pray. We’ll drink, we’ll wait, we’ll sing a song of happiness, of a happiness going for a song…

Life goes on… The end is always near…

[Terese · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ra-ra-ah-ah-ah…
Roma Roma-ma…
…Want your bad romance…

Or:
“That morning, Lucifer bared his horns. They quarreled the whole day, proud like barbarians, doubting the body and its simple deep attraction. In diabolical fury, amid plumes of smoke, they cursed each other cruelly in that cramped hotel room. Proud and playing at abandonment, they suddenly turned on each other, like foes, all the while inwardly, at their own peril, refusing to believe that any of this could possibly spell the end…” (p.175)

This book was both what I had expected and not what I had expected. There was a lot more love chaos and drama than I had anticipated, I was expecting more pretentious vagabonds (there was that too) and not so much real and relatable feelings. I wasn’t expecting the grittiness of Oleg’s internal life and struggles.

“Life had denied him everything, and so he had created everything for himself…” (p.269)

About halfway through this book I was starting to feel ridiculous because I had made so many bookmarks (at least 30), I couldn’t possibly mention it all, but there were so many phrases and long passages that stood out to me as exquisitely written.

When I read the intro I feel a shiver of fear at the mention that Poplavsky was actually a poet… but lo and behold, that paid off well in terms of writing. Not so much in terms of story.

I would give five stars to the writing, because I feel like I could just lose myself and re-read passages simply for the joy of reading them. But the story was a bit of a slog to me, it didn’t appeal to me even though I found Oleg’s turmoil interesting at certain times, it was mostly the narrative descriptions that tickled my interest. The story is a 3 or 2 star book for me, but as the text that carries it is pure joy, it all evens out.

I seriously can’t stress the writing enough. This was one of my first bookmarks:

“Serenely and tranquilly the sun took charge of the street, for, despite the chaos and neurasthenia of the cosmos, summer was once again returning, serene and blinding. Many-winged time has swept over our group of melodeclaimers, familiar from the previous act. Each of them has changed, all except Apollon Bezobrazoff who, not alive, ergo, not changing, not suffering, ergo, not partaking in anything, archaic and aloof, has continued to journey from one end of the city to another, like a serpent, slithering his way unhurriedly across the railwaytracks.” (p.28)

I think this is a good indicator whether or not one might like this book. The style is bit idiosyncratic and both choppy and longwinded. A lot of sentences run on for some time, but most descriptions are strikingly beautiful and poetic.

The narrative style also shifts and you, as the reader, are invited into the emotional and spiritual upheavals and trials of the characters, sometimes as they are directly addressed. There is also some French, but it’s all translated in footnotes on the same page.

I’m in agony right now because I really do want to cite all the bookmarks I’ve made, because I think they’re really special, but I’ll settle for just a few more. This is already quite long.

“Now the memory of the day, which had been too long, too tortuous, awash with a thousand desperate outbursts of excitement and dejection, fire and fear, overflowed, spilled and floated downstream, breaking away from him […] His soul had died and risen again, so that, were it not for the tremendous fatigue that he felt, it might have seemed as though he had read it all in a book – as after a full day of sweaty, stifling summer reading, when, with head disheveled, he would suddenly rouse himself from one of Dostoevsky’s novels, and for a few seconds he would be unable to tell wht time it really was, whether he had eaten, and what yet remained for him to do.” (p.258)

“Thus do memories, clumping together in groups, worlds, départements, divisions, thus do they cast off together from the shore.” (p.258)

Again, one can see how the sentences run on, in a truncated manner, and they flow through whole passages in a way that makes it difficult to cut them down as the reader really needs the whole flow of the page. It is very much the work of a poet. Sometimes the Russian realism novels have been said to prefer portraiture over plot (pretty accurate) and in this case there is a preference for style over plot.

I would recommend this to anyone who likes the style. But I think people with more fiery passions, vagabond tendencies, and who are spiritually seeking, may also really love the story and following (mainly) Oleg through this journey. It felt like a early to late twenties type of book. I never liked On the Road, but I can imagine there’s a crossover in readership here, but I could be wrong, it’s been a while since I read Kerouac.

Oh, and the poetry lovers out there will surely fall in love with Poplavsky’s writing.

“Slash and scrape, O aquiline nights, at the glow and radiance of fallen lights. The icy drowse, the dream of slumber’s gauge. Learn not to live, but to revive, to thrive, to glow alive to life, to deprive the silent of the clarion’s rays.” (p.261)

I don’t even like poetry, but this is beautiful.

Ok, a final one.
“She loved Tolstoy and Chekov, had grown sick of Dostoevsky, which, as far as Oleg was concerned, was always the mark of a good head.” (p.143)

And I took that personally.
No, kidding of course. This felt very much of its time and I think this comment is a good indicator of that, Dostoevsky wasn’t much for nature-descriptions, and for the spiritually struggling émigrés he was probably both too nationalistic, too moralizing, and too Orthodox.


All in all, this is a striking book and I feel very grateful to Columbia University Press and NetGalley for this ARC. All opinions are my own.

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel like, objectively, this book is probably good? But I couldn't really enjoy it because reading Oleg's inner monologue was so tedious. I'm not really a fan of this style of prose, lovely as it is, because it was so frustrating to read.

Many parts of this novel made me laugh (he talks about his dick so so much) but also i found myself fighting NOT to skim because I would miss too much. It was so hard to focus.

I find the author's backstory very interesting. Actually, I have read very little Russian or French literature, but according to other reviews, Homeward from Heaven is very unlike typical Russian Literature. I probably will not read other works by Boris Poplavsky, but I DO want to reads more from the Russian Library (publisher).

[Theediscerning]

I always come to these books in this series of twentieth century Russian works with the eye to see if they might be suitable for the general reader, knowing full well they're destined for a couple of academic sales and not a single appearance on high street shelves. There's a trepidation each time, and a hope that something beyond my simple outlook might engage. Sadly, this time it didn't – the novel is a rambling splodge, concentrating on two Russian men living it up as best they can on the south coast of France. One is quite boringly having an unrequited crush on a woman, while the other, more assured one, is involved in yacking of a religious bent from a narrator using the second person, and writing in his diary. Promises of Henry Miller-esque sexuality given by the (excellent and spoiler-free) introduction may compel people to read on, but my patience was not that forgiving.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written and set in Montparnasse between the wars when Boris Poplavsky was one of many expats who fled Russia after the October Revolution, Homeward from Heaven concerns the eccentric spiritual growth of Oleg, a young man of about 29 years of age when the book begins, who freeloads / hobnobs with the scions of wealthy Russian expats. Taking place from 1932-1934, and written soon after, the book is startlingly sexually explicit in describing its characters’ fantasies and exploits, be it alone or coupled.

Oleg hangs out with a group of young Russians enjoying sex with each other and breaking hearts over indecisions regarding who will be whose fuck buddy. Oleg’s acceptance into the group is ambivalent: Despite having such assets as extroversion, physical fitness and agility, and rugged good looks Oleg is naïve, foolish about and frightened by sex, and socially inept, talking boorishly at length when drunk.

Naïve idealist Oleg is initiated into a belated frustrated-summer-of-love ritual by falling head-over-heels for the wealthy and jaded Tania, an icy-hot young woman who lacks the empathy to tell him she does not return his feelings but continues to flirt with him. He writhes in frustrated sexual agony, incapable of believing his pure angel capable of lewd desires.

After recovering from the lover-who-wasn’t over the next nine months, come the next summer, Oleg discovers the charms of Katia, who—after much confusion on Oleg’s part lasting months—he loses his virginity to. Now, the novel’s spiritual dithering gives way to sexual imagery that is either exaggerated for effect (“Gosh, he’s virile!”) or describes somebody who just missed a career in the circus. We learn that his penis is longer than the palm of his hand and big enough to hurt Katia and Tania. Based on his penis size, we can also infer the relative heights of each woman, since for Katia it extends from vagina to just below the heart, whereas for Tania it extends to her midriff. Thus, Tania is taller than Katia. Before Oleg begins freely spreading his seed, we’re told that his discipline of mind and body prevents him from masturbating, so that when he does ejaculate, Tania and Katia suddenly look like Santa Claus.

According to the introduction by Bryan Karetnyk, the novel’s excellent translator, Poplavsky’s friends saw Oleg as the author’s semi-autobiographical stand-in, which accounts for the novel’s unplotted toward spiritual enlightenment. Despite his emotional and psychological intensity, Oleg’s drive toward betterment is undisciplined: Although he spends hours reading in the library many days a week, he dropped out of college first semester, he leaves jobs within hours of starting them, and he changes from intellectual enthusiasm to enthusiasm almost daily, so that he never accumulates knowledge, except bodily. (Apparently, Poplavsky’s behavior wavered oddly, too.)

In keeping with his irresolute nature, Oleg decides to dispense with both Tania, Katia, and the erotic life in general, chooses to renounce work (first item on his list, pre-checked), take up asceticism, and strive toward some spiritual betterment after the debauchery. It’s hard to take him seriously. And yet, at the novel’s end, when Oleg lights out for the territory to focus on furthering his spiritual growth, a reader can only take him at his word, as delusional as it might be. Perhaps his outcome would be better than Poplavsky’s, who overdosed on heroin before this book could be published.

For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...

[Mandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’d never heard of Boris Poplavsky so was delighted to read this recent translation of one of his novels. Unfortunately I didn’t enjoy it, but I found the author and his life extremely interesting, and I’m pretty sure that if I had the chance to study the text more deeply, or perhaps discuss it with other readers, I would gain more from it than I actually did. Boris Poplavsky (1903-1935) was born in Moscow but emigrated with his family to Paris after the Revolution. He began publishing in émigré journals in 1928 and then published a poetry collection in 1931. He always seemed to have been a troubled character, finding it difficult to hold down regular employment and he took drugs from an early age, finally dying from a heroin overdose. He hung out with other émigrés in Montparnasse and was part of avant-garde circles, often being described as an “enfant terrible” and surviving mainly on handouts. His work was largely forgotten for many decades, but he is now experiencing some sort of (probably deserved) resurgence. His semi-autobiographical novel opens with two friends, Apollon Bezobrazoff and Oleg going to a Russian camp in the countryside. Apollon doesn’t feature much after that and the focus turns to Oleg, whose escapades with women take up much of his time. For most of the novel we are party to Oleg’s thoughts and meditations, his musings on relationships, religion, women and sex. He’s much given to self-pity and his solipsism becomes tedious after a while. I couldn’t relate to him and found myself skimming many passages. So, for me, an exciting discovery but not a great reading experience.

[André · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had never before read Poplavsky or his russian emigrant contemporaries, but I skimmed through the description on netgalley and it seemed quite interesting, so I decided to give it a go. I'm quite happy I did and the publisher obliged my request.
Homeward from Heaven is hard to describe. In a superficial sense, it's the story of a young Russian living in Paris, dealing with life in a peculiar way, quite hedonistic but very carpe diem when considering work or money, extremely overwrought and analytic when dealing with romance. The experience of reading it is further from a contemporary romantic book than this description might point to. Poplavsky wrote one of the best depictions of an anguished inner monologue I have ever read.
If this is as autobiographical as we are led to believe, we are offered a way to empathize with the weird life of someone who can't stop being a young man, an artist and an outsider while his Russian existentialist mind constantly works on him.
The prose is often quite beautiful, sometimes almost overdone, but never bothersome. The pace is all over the place and the plot is mostly non-existent (beyond the sequence of romantic or sexual affairs) as expected from an author of his surrealist time and a work that wasn't even published before he died.
I wouldn't recommend this book blindly, but for people with particular interest in the European 1920s, on the Russian emigrant experience at the time of the revolution and on the origins of existentialist or counter-culture, this is a good bet.

[Keith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Finished HOMEWARD FROM HEAVEN (1935) by Boris Poplavsky (1903-1935), who finished writing the novel a few weeks before dying of a heroin overdose. The protagonist, Oleg, is a conceited Russian emigre living in France off a meager government stipend, the reluctant largesse of his fellow exiles, and occasional thievery. The plot, such as there is one, begins with Oleg living (bumming) on the coast of France, overwrought with religious angst and infatuation over Tania, and alternating between obsession with his physique and drunken debauchery. Tania tells him that though he's interesting, she could never love a man who cries as much. The next section of the novel moves to a bohemian neighborhood of Paris, where he has torrid affairs with Katia (who resents his refusal to work) and later Tania (who at last loves the less-crying version of Oleg), between trips to the library, gym, and bars. Eventually, he isolates himself from his fellow Russian expatriates, finding such neurotic alienation necessary to inspire his poetic muse (he's afraid of dying from a heroine overdose). The novel reminds me of early modern writers such as D. H. Lawrence (obsessed with sex) and Hemingway (wandering aimlessly from cafe to cafe). The difference, however, is the Russian writer's exile from his homeland that torments him with unrequited longing. There is no going home (be it Russia or relationships with women) from heaven (his romantic ideals). The translator notes numerous autographical elements in the novel, though Poplavsky wrote that the characters and plot (a lot of existential and erotic musings) were original. Neither Poplovsky or his main character were very likeable, but there's much that reminds one of many twenty/early thirty something males.

[Pop Bop · Rating 4 out of 5]

Existential Malaise, Russian Style.........

Unrelievedly dark and hopeless, this novel really puts the "lost" in lost generation. It establishes, beyond argument, the Russian mastery of gloom, doom, and melancholy. None of that is a criticism. There are lines of piercing insight and honesty here, and many scenes that cut to the very heart of the tortured soul. Poplavsky was perhaps the greatest of the Russian emigre writers of the Paris School, and this book is widely considered to be his masterpiece. It can be hard going to the extent that it is confessional, in large measure autobiographical, and essentially plotless, but when read as something akin to the intimate journal of an aware and awakened, but still lost, soul there is much here to savor and appreciate.

The book is prefaced by a remarkably clear and compelling treatment of Poplavsky's life, as well as a crisp summary of the historical and social milieu in which Poplavsky worked. The discussion of "Homeward from Heaven" is especially insightful and valuable, and puts the reader in an excellent position to appreciate the overall structure and the subtleties of the work.

(Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written shortly before his fatal heroin overdose at the age of 32, Poplavsky’s torrid, impressionistic roman à clef reveals the inner and outer life of one of the most striking and outlandish figures among the Russian emigre community in 1920s Paris. Poplavsky reads like a less upbeat Jack Kerouac, not only in the pseudonymous depiction his bohemian set, but in the fervid flood tide of his prose, a headlong rush of impressions, passions, moods and existential musings, swirling around a core of anguished self-loathing. A perpetual outsider and tortured “thirty-year-old adolescent” at odds with his own bodily desires, Poplavsky’s alter-ego Oleg is serially obsessed with Tania, majestic and sun warmed in Saint-Tropez, and moneyed Katia, who initiates him into the nightlife of Montmartre, and then some. Translator Bryan Karetnyk keeps Poplavsky’s heady and hyperbolic “dazzlingly sublime tempest of the spirit” rowing steadily through a sea of adjectives, with many arresting lyrical flights along the way. Part of Columbia University Press’s laudable resurrection of lost Russian voices, Poplavsky’s fiery human document impetuously shoulders its way alongside the works of Rimbaud, Fante, and Bukowski in the cult fiction pantheon.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received a digital ARC via NetGalley.

This is a genuinely strange book in some ways, following the activities of a Russian emigre in France in the 1930s. He is not a happy man, and it is not a happy book--though it can be quite engaging and entertaining at points. I'm not sure it would have a great deal of appeal to a general reader, but someone who likes this style and this type of character likely will enjoy it.

As for the translation, it does a very good job of rendering a text I don't think would be easy to translate. And as with most of these Columbia University Press Russian Library editions, the introduction is a fascinating look at the context in which Poplavsky wrote the novel and the equally fascinating context of Poplavsky himself.

[Olga Zilberbourg]

As much as I love gushing about books, Boris Poplavsky's Homeward from Heaven, in Bryan Karetnyk's excellent translation, wasn't an easy read for me, but thinking and researching around it has been worthwhile. Thanks to Ron Slate and Nancy Naomi Carlson for publishing my essay on gender and sexuality in this novel:

https://www.ronslate.com/on-homeward-...