A Voice from the Chorus

by Andrei Sinyavsky, Abram Tertz (Pseudonym)

Voice From the Chorus (Quartet Encounters)

Genres: Russia, Russian Literature, Nonfiction, Autobiography

Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Andrei Donatovich Sinyavsky was a Russian writer and a literary critic. He was a Soviet dissident known as a defendant in the Sinyavsky–Daniel trial of 1965.

Russian: Андрей Донатович Синявский
Pen name: Абрам Терц
Pen name in English: Abram Tertz

Reviews

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Art is not the representation, but the transfiguration of life. An image arises in response to the need for impelling it towards change in another, transfiguring, direction. We notice an "image" only in so far as it displaces what it is supposed to depict. "Table" or "Forest" is not an image. "Golden table" is, "Green Forest" is not an image: we need "green murmur". ["green murmur" is a famous image for the forest with its rustling leaves in a poem by Nekrasov.-Author's note]

This is a rewarding compilation of extracts from the letters and notes that Sinyavsky wrote during his six years in a work camp after his writings on Pasternak in the early 1960s proved too much for the shallow Soviet thaw. It is not an exposé of harsh conditions or descriptions of his grief and loneliness. Instead, Sinyavsky reflects on daily life, nature, the weather, sex, clothing, sleep, and much else. He passes along songs and strange, sad or amusing quotes from his fellow prisoners, many of whom are there for actual crimes:

"He served only one year for every two."
"?!"
"In his imagination: every year that went by he counted as two. To make it easier to bear."

Interspersed are reflections on literature. Sinyavsky was a highly regarded literary critic who wrote works critical of Soviet Russian government that were published abroad under a pseudonym (Abram Tertz). He was convicted in a show trial in 1965 and sent to various work camps. Released in 1971, he emigrated to France in 1973 and continued to write there.

His power as a critic is evident here. There is a terrific commentary on Hamlet, just two pages, that is a compact explanation of Shakespeare's remarkable portrayal of a new challenge to man: after the loss of the imperative of traditional medieval rules for behavior in his situation, he must 'rediscover for himself the path he was to follow and at the same time to give it new meaning by investing moral precepts with all the maturity of judgment gained in the course of his lone quest.'

But while he does not moan about his situation in these letters home to his wife (in order to get them through the censors), six years in the Gulag clearly had their impact. The final comments, on the isolation and estrangement he feels on returning to 'normal' life, are poignant.

There at least you understand that everything has an end - not for nothing is it the house of hte dead. and I have been there. Only for a while, but even so . . . The fact is, however, that people are bored by the dead.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

a great book which came out of the author's incarceration in the Soviet prison system during the 60s-70s for satirical writing he released to the West. It is full of great little chunks of essays, thoughts, aphorisms, comments on life. e.g. 'When you suddenly realize there is nothing to eat you can't help laughing'. What I love though are the voices from the chorus themselves whch are overheard comments from his fellow prisoners, interwoven throughout the book, eg: 'He's so brainy it's enough to scare you'; 'I take a pretty dim view of cats'.
A bit like The Book of Disquiet.
My copy is a cheap pb, read so long ago, yellow now and tattered so I'll have to buy a new one.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

The good angel to the Gombrowicz Diaries' bad one; in it, Tertz actually shows you how to adapt to the limitations of life. The world of the soviet prison system becomes a gigantic machine, whose entire purpose is to provide him with the vision of a sparrow washing itself in a pool of water, or the recognition of how strange and beautiful the word "Kangaroo" is. Diary as how to manual.

[Chiara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many interesting reflections

[Buck · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know what you're thinking. 'Another gulag memoir, dude? Really?' But this isn't that kind of book at all. True, the author just happened to spend some time in a Soviet detention facility and just happened to write a book about it, but there the similarities end. This is way, way different from all those other prison memoirs. You can't even call it a prison memoir, really. A more accurate genre designation might be: recollections of a not-happy time in a very not-good place. See, totally different.

Yep. I've got some things to sort out. Personal-type things.

[l · Rating 5 out of 5]

“…I like dashes too. But colons are more significant: they indicate the direction of a sentence as it leads into the depths of the text: they introduce an idea perhaps as yet insufficiently clarified, too verbose or diffuse: but roaming in search of its final, definitive expression. And then parentheses I love too - or rather, I constantly feel the need to take refuge in them, going to earth in them at intervals between phrases. Sometimes, apart from parentheses, I am also tempted to enclose things in square brackets and oblique strokes - not to lose the way as I retreat into my labyrinthine burrow.”

this memoir - not really an account of his time in the gulag so much as an account of his reflections and snippets of overheard conversation - broke my heart. this book really makes clear that he's a writer's writer. he's just incredibly intelligent, and analytical, and i can't understand how such a person could be sent to a labour camp for writing during the 60s.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every country deserves a Sinyavsky/Tertz or two. Brave, creative, produce, and supremely erudite: he’s my culture hero.

[Paul Helliwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

'when anything of interest happens within or around me I make a mental note to tell you about it' - sinyavsky in a letter to his wife from prison, 1965.

'we do not wrote a phrase - it writes itself, and all we do is to clarify, as far as we are able, the accumulated meaning concealed within it.' - - sinyavsky in a letter to his wife from prison, 1966.

I have been reading 'a voice from the chorus' by abram tertz/ andrei sinyavsky in preparation for the anniversary of sinyavsky's birth on october 8th (next year 2025 is his centenary). this book is compiled from the letters he sent to his wife while he was in prison.

he was allowed two letters a month for the 6 years of his sentence.

after his release on 9th june 1971 he collected them into a book.

'because of the strict censorship control over what sinyavsky could and could not write in these letters, his references to camp life and to conditions there are of necessity subtly oblique. more open is the revelation of the inner world of the author's thoughts and reflections...' - from the quartet encounters description of the book.

it is a very rich source this book. I find I am reading less and less and the sinyavsky suits this (in this regard it is perhaps even better than rousseau's reveries of a solitary walker or carlo levi's christ stopped at eboli, my other favourite books).

hail sinyavsky!

[Noah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Das Werk besteht aus -teil sehr kryptischen, teils belanglosen- Zitaten und Aphorismen, die der Autor aus seiner Gefangenschaft in einem politischen Gefängnis in der Sowjetunion an seine Frau geschrieben hat. Ich kann verstehen, warum das viele anspricht, deswegen habe ich mir dieses vielgelobte Werk auch vorgenommen. Allein ich habe keinen richtigen Zugang gefunden.

[Ted Krever]

An amazing work of reportage and philosophy.
Abram Tertz was the pen name of Andrei Sinyavsky, who was sent by Nikita Kruschev to prison camp in Siberia as a dissident writer in the late 50's or early 60's. The book are excerpts from his letters to his wife from the camp. They include details of camp life, the privations the prisoners suffered and the occasional humor that leavened those hardships, as well as the philosophy that grew out of the experience. One line I'll always remember: 'Never listen to anyone say he was given more than he could bear. A man is always given just as much as he can bear.'

[Ak Hauck · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those books that causes me to read and re-read almost every page. I didn't walk through this book, I crawled as I tried to share the space Tertz occupies as he makes profundities out of the banal.