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A Tomb for Boris Davidovich
Composed of seven dark tales, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich presents variations on the theme of political and social self-destruction throughout Eastern Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. The characters in these stories are caught in a world of political hypocrisy, which ultimately leads to death, their common fate. Although the stories Kis tells are based on historical events, the beauty and precision of his prose elevates these ostensibly true stories into works of literary art that transcend the politics of their time.
136 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
About the author
Danilo Kiš
79 books504 followersDanilo Kiš was born in Subotica, Danube Banovina, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the son of Eduard Kiš (Kis Ede), a Hungarian Jewish railway inspector, and Milica Kiš (born Dragićević) from Cetinje, Montenegro. During the Second World War, he lost his father and several other family members, who died in various Nazi camps. His mother took him and his older sister Danica to Hungary for the duration of the war. After the end of the war, the family moved to Cetinje, Montenegro, Yugoslavia, where Kiš graduated from high school in 1954.
Kiš studied literature at the University of Belgrade, and graduated in 1958 as the first student to complete a course in comparative literature. He was a prominent member of the Vidici magazine, where he worked until 1960. In 1962 he published his first two novels, Mansarda and Psalam 44. Kiš received the prestigious NIN Award for his Peščanik ("Hourglass") in 1973, which he returned a few years later, due to a political dispute.
During the following years, Kiš received a great number of national and international awards for his prose and poetry.
He spent most of his life in Paris and working as a lecturer elsewhere in France.
Kiš was married to Mirjana Miočinović from 1962 to 1981. After their separation, he lived with Pascale Delpech until his early death from lung cancer in Paris.
A film based on Peščanik (Fövenyóra) directed by the Hungarian Szabolcs Tolnai is currently in post-production.
Kiš was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature and was due to win it, were it not for his untimely death in 1989.
Kiš studied literature at the University of Belgrade, and graduated in 1958 as the first student to complete a course in comparative literature. He was a prominent member of the Vidici magazine, where he worked until 1960. In 1962 he published his first two novels, Mansarda and Psalam 44. Kiš received the prestigious NIN Award for his Peščanik ("Hourglass") in 1973, which he returned a few years later, due to a political dispute.
During the following years, Kiš received a great number of national and international awards for his prose and poetry.
He spent most of his life in Paris and working as a lecturer elsewhere in France.
Kiš was married to Mirjana Miočinović from 1962 to 1981. After their separation, he lived with Pascale Delpech until his early death from lung cancer in Paris.
A film based on Peščanik (Fövenyóra) directed by the Hungarian Szabolcs Tolnai is currently in post-production.
Kiš was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature and was due to win it, were it not for his untimely death in 1989.
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December 18, 2024
In Danilo Kiš’s style I’ve seen a perceptible influence of Isaac Babel and also his stories are spiced with some Varlam Shalamov’s overtones.
But thematically A Tomb for Boris Davidovich goes as a sequel to A Universal History of Iniquity by Jorge Luis Borges…
Those who play revolutionary games are villains by definition and even if they win sooner or later they’ll fall prey to the greater villains.
Under Danilo Kiš’s close scrutiny the personal tragedies of the revolutionaries turn into a bitter farce that knows no happy ends.
Revolution is ‘the sow that eats her farrow’.
But thematically A Tomb for Boris Davidovich goes as a sequel to A Universal History of Iniquity by Jorge Luis Borges…
Those who play revolutionary games are villains by definition and even if they win sooner or later they’ll fall prey to the greater villains.
Novsky was already a man of failing health; the dog years of hard labor and revolutionary zeal, which feeds on blood and glands, had weakened his lungs, kidneys, and joints. His body was now covered with boils, which would burst under the blows of rubber truncheons, oozing out his precious blood along with useless pus. Nevertheless, it seems that in contact with the stone of his living tomb, Novsky drew some metaphysical conclusions undoubtedly not much different from those suggesting the thought that man is only a speck of dust in the ocean of timelessness…
Under Danilo Kiš’s close scrutiny the personal tragedies of the revolutionaries turn into a bitter farce that knows no happy ends.
Revolution is ‘the sow that eats her farrow’.
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August 24, 2024
IL PENSIERO È IL PEGGIORE DEI DELITTI
Al Mittelfest 2014 (Teatro Ristori, Cividale del Friuli) Ivica Buljan e Masa Senicic hanno portato sul palcoscenico un adattamento teatrale del testo di Danilo Kiš. Questa e le seguenti tre immagini sono foto di scena dello spettacolo.
Qui solo i nomi sono fittizi. La storia, purtroppo, è assolutamente vera. Anche se vorremmo che non lo fosse.
Sette storie che parlano di Storia, sette narrazioni che usano la Storia per raccontare il Male: quel Terrore, che chissà perché si identifica con la Rivoluzione francese, mentre è il secolo breve (ma quanto si è dilungato in violenza!) che lo porta alle vette massime.
Nel caso specifico, in questi sette racconti si tratta del terrore sovietico, del regno di “doppiezza e paura”.
Sette vicende umane che si scontrano con repressione e oppressione, la violenza dell’uomo sull’uomo a fare da filo rosso unendo storie e territori anche molto distanti tra loro. Minimo (massimo) comune denominatore: dolore, odio, prevaricazione.
Si tratta di sette biografie ricostruite, ma forse anche inventate, con scrittura densa, che non dimentica l’ironia - col risultato di sembrare vere più della Storia stessa:
Si può dire che il libro consegue una comprensione estetica là dove l’etica fallisce. Forse l’unico servigio che un’autentica tragedia rende ai superstiti ammutoliti, esattamente come lo sono le sue vittime, sta nello stimolare il linguaggio dei commentatori. La letteratura è forse l’unico strumento che abbiamo a disposizione per conoscere quei fenomeni la cui portata altrimenti ottunderebbe i nostri sensi e sfuggirebbe alla nostra comprensione.
Aleksandra Jankovic
Danilo Kiš era jugoslavo ed è morto prima del violento smembramento del suo paese: nessuno dei personaggi del suo libro è jugoslavo, e di quella terra non si fa menzione.
Ma come dice il proverbio, qui si parla a nuora perché suocera intenda.
E infatti le reazioni in patria ci furono, eccome:
È un libro estremamente cupo, il cui unico lieto fine è la sua pubblicazione.
PS
Le citazioni sono dall'ottima introduzione all'edizione americana di Iosif Brodskij.
Al Mittelfest 2014 (Teatro Ristori, Cividale del Friuli) Ivica Buljan e Masa Senicic hanno portato sul palcoscenico un adattamento teatrale del testo di Danilo Kiš. Questa e le seguenti tre immagini sono foto di scena dello spettacolo.
Qui solo i nomi sono fittizi. La storia, purtroppo, è assolutamente vera. Anche se vorremmo che non lo fosse.
Sette storie che parlano di Storia, sette narrazioni che usano la Storia per raccontare il Male: quel Terrore, che chissà perché si identifica con la Rivoluzione francese, mentre è il secolo breve (ma quanto si è dilungato in violenza!) che lo porta alle vette massime.
Nel caso specifico, in questi sette racconti si tratta del terrore sovietico, del regno di “doppiezza e paura”.
Sette vicende umane che si scontrano con repressione e oppressione, la violenza dell’uomo sull’uomo a fare da filo rosso unendo storie e territori anche molto distanti tra loro. Minimo (massimo) comune denominatore: dolore, odio, prevaricazione.
Si tratta di sette biografie ricostruite, ma forse anche inventate, con scrittura densa, che non dimentica l’ironia - col risultato di sembrare vere più della Storia stessa:
Si può dire che il libro consegue una comprensione estetica là dove l’etica fallisce. Forse l’unico servigio che un’autentica tragedia rende ai superstiti ammutoliti, esattamente come lo sono le sue vittime, sta nello stimolare il linguaggio dei commentatori. La letteratura è forse l’unico strumento che abbiamo a disposizione per conoscere quei fenomeni la cui portata altrimenti ottunderebbe i nostri sensi e sfuggirebbe alla nostra comprensione.
Aleksandra Jankovic
Danilo Kiš era jugoslavo ed è morto prima del violento smembramento del suo paese: nessuno dei personaggi del suo libro è jugoslavo, e di quella terra non si fa menzione.
Ma come dice il proverbio, qui si parla a nuora perché suocera intenda.
E infatti le reazioni in patria ci furono, eccome:
È un libro estremamente cupo, il cui unico lieto fine è la sua pubblicazione.
PS
Le citazioni sono dall'ottima introduzione all'edizione americana di Iosif Brodskij.
July 10, 2011
Brilliant forward by Joseph Brodsky? Check.
Adequate afterword by William T. Vollman? Check.
Bookended in-between? I’ll quote Grace Zabriskie’s interloping madwoman from Inland Empire: ”Brutal fucking murder!”
A Tomb for Boris Davidovich is a book of brutal fucking murders. You begin to feel the creeping disquiet, the emerging horror, very early on, when Miksha, the tailor’s apprentice, solves the problem of a bothersome skunk that’s been snatching chickens from the chicken coop by trapping the polecat, and while still alive, running a rusty wire through its nostrils, hanging it in full display on the tailor’s front doorstep, making incisions along its neck and belly (“like a crimson necklace”), turning the living, screeching, spraying beast inside out, leaving a writhing pendulum of gore to awaken his boss. And for this, he is offered a better job! Things are not as they should be in this book. But then again, this is the mid-twentieth century in Eastern Europe. Things are not as they should be.
I’ve only read two books by Danilo Kiš, this and Garden, Ashes, which may have been the finest book I came across last year. But that well-under 500 pages combined of prose by Kiš sticks with me as vividly as works I have poured over again and again by familiar, cherished authors. Garden, Ashes is a touching, sad, and brilliant specimen of that genre of literature no one wishes had to exist, but in existing redeems so much of the 20th century’s disgusting legacy: childhood memoirs of the Holocaust and Communism’s terror. That book, though also horror-stricken, is touching in a sensorial way very particular to how an adolescent would naively see a world in the process of great destruction. A Tomb for Boris Davidovich is a punch in the face- seven dark short stories descending into the whirlpool of political violence, the revolutionary underworld, torture enacted by the state, lives described vigorously in miniature to set the reader up for barbarous conclusions. That this book was actually published in 1976 in Yugoslavia is a fact shocking unto itself- it portrays the eastern bloc as a murder factory where no one is safe, where thinking is a crime worthy of pummeling the body to a pulp, where labor camps are ubiquitous, and where virtue is calculated by one’s capacity for betrayal and violence.
In Kiš’ treatment, however, we are not just witnesses to merciless, senseless acts. He is too good a writer for that. The first few stories ease you in, brutal as they are, and then, almost quietly, the book begins to expand and reach forward and backward in time, and the violence of the Soviet regime begins a kind of timeless echoing, and Kiš achieves a sort of universalizing of terror- that fascistic, authoritarian horror is a sorry offspring of humanity simply being human- from religious persecution to anti-religious fervor, this is a part of who we are that we have not yet had the courage, willpower, or imagination to expunge.
The final three stories, “A Tomb for Boris Davidovich”, “Dogs and Books”, and “The Short Biography of A.A. Darmolotov”, enlarge Kiš’ lament into a hurricane-like sprawl. He subtly interweaves the tales, as characters from earlier instances reemerge offhandedly, in oblique appearances that are only suggestive of connections, but that begin to pose a haunting question of the interconnectedness of individual lives in history, of the cyclical nature of time, of the sadism that humanity can’t seem to shake out of our nature, even with centuries of lessons to ponder.
As a comment on the politically motivated slaughters of the 20th century, this book is important; as a work of art of dazzling prose and historical investigation (one of those books where fiction and fact are inseparable), this book is important; as a portrait of the cool cruelty to which lives are subjected and destroyed in the name of an ideology, this book is important; as a plaintive dirge to the necessity of free thought (and its near-impossibility when confronted by the stark power of enforced, militarized conformity), this book is important.
Also, Brodsky’s forward is full of great lines, such as “What usually slows the passage of time and by the same token causes an ideology to linger, however, is not so much that the murderers often outlive the murdered as that the living mistakenly regard the dead in the same way as a majority regards a minority.”
Adequate afterword by William T. Vollman? Check.
Bookended in-between? I’ll quote Grace Zabriskie’s interloping madwoman from Inland Empire: ”Brutal fucking murder!”
A Tomb for Boris Davidovich is a book of brutal fucking murders. You begin to feel the creeping disquiet, the emerging horror, very early on, when Miksha, the tailor’s apprentice, solves the problem of a bothersome skunk that’s been snatching chickens from the chicken coop by trapping the polecat, and while still alive, running a rusty wire through its nostrils, hanging it in full display on the tailor’s front doorstep, making incisions along its neck and belly (“like a crimson necklace”), turning the living, screeching, spraying beast inside out, leaving a writhing pendulum of gore to awaken his boss. And for this, he is offered a better job! Things are not as they should be in this book. But then again, this is the mid-twentieth century in Eastern Europe. Things are not as they should be.
I’ve only read two books by Danilo Kiš, this and Garden, Ashes, which may have been the finest book I came across last year. But that well-under 500 pages combined of prose by Kiš sticks with me as vividly as works I have poured over again and again by familiar, cherished authors. Garden, Ashes is a touching, sad, and brilliant specimen of that genre of literature no one wishes had to exist, but in existing redeems so much of the 20th century’s disgusting legacy: childhood memoirs of the Holocaust and Communism’s terror. That book, though also horror-stricken, is touching in a sensorial way very particular to how an adolescent would naively see a world in the process of great destruction. A Tomb for Boris Davidovich is a punch in the face- seven dark short stories descending into the whirlpool of political violence, the revolutionary underworld, torture enacted by the state, lives described vigorously in miniature to set the reader up for barbarous conclusions. That this book was actually published in 1976 in Yugoslavia is a fact shocking unto itself- it portrays the eastern bloc as a murder factory where no one is safe, where thinking is a crime worthy of pummeling the body to a pulp, where labor camps are ubiquitous, and where virtue is calculated by one’s capacity for betrayal and violence.
In Kiš’ treatment, however, we are not just witnesses to merciless, senseless acts. He is too good a writer for that. The first few stories ease you in, brutal as they are, and then, almost quietly, the book begins to expand and reach forward and backward in time, and the violence of the Soviet regime begins a kind of timeless echoing, and Kiš achieves a sort of universalizing of terror- that fascistic, authoritarian horror is a sorry offspring of humanity simply being human- from religious persecution to anti-religious fervor, this is a part of who we are that we have not yet had the courage, willpower, or imagination to expunge.
The final three stories, “A Tomb for Boris Davidovich”, “Dogs and Books”, and “The Short Biography of A.A. Darmolotov”, enlarge Kiš’ lament into a hurricane-like sprawl. He subtly interweaves the tales, as characters from earlier instances reemerge offhandedly, in oblique appearances that are only suggestive of connections, but that begin to pose a haunting question of the interconnectedness of individual lives in history, of the cyclical nature of time, of the sadism that humanity can’t seem to shake out of our nature, even with centuries of lessons to ponder.
As a comment on the politically motivated slaughters of the 20th century, this book is important; as a work of art of dazzling prose and historical investigation (one of those books where fiction and fact are inseparable), this book is important; as a portrait of the cool cruelty to which lives are subjected and destroyed in the name of an ideology, this book is important; as a plaintive dirge to the necessity of free thought (and its near-impossibility when confronted by the stark power of enforced, militarized conformity), this book is important.
Also, Brodsky’s forward is full of great lines, such as “What usually slows the passage of time and by the same token causes an ideology to linger, however, is not so much that the murderers often outlive the murdered as that the living mistakenly regard the dead in the same way as a majority regards a minority.”
Read
June 10, 2018Men are tortured. Made to confess to crimes they didn't commit. To implicate others. Thus, it never ends. And they will find your breaking point.
You want dark?
"Boris Davidovich," he said to Novsky, "I'm afraid that you must be out of your mind. You'll bury us all with your plea." Novsky answered him with a strange expression on his face, which seemed to be a shadow of a smile. "Isaac Ilich, you should know the Jewish funeral custom: at the moment when they are ready to take the corpse from the synagogue to the cemetery, one servant of Yahweh bends over the deceased, calls him by name, and says in a loud voice: 'Know that you are dead!'" He paused a moment, then added: "An excellent custom!"
The ancient Greeks also had an "admirable" custom, we are told: for anyone who perished by fire, was swallowed by a volcano, buried by lava, torn to pieces by beasts, devoured by sharks, or whose corpse was scattered by vultures in the desert, they built so-called cenotaphs, or empty tombs, in their homelands; for the body is only fire, water, or earth, whereas the soul is the Alpha and the Omega, to which a shrine should be erected.
I read this even though I will never be one of the cool kids. If I missed some larger message, I fully understood this:
The reading of many books brings wisdom, and reading of one brings ignorance armed with rage and hatred.
And as postscripts go, how about this one:
He remains a medical phenomenon in Russian literature: Darmolatov's case was entered in all the latest pathology textbooks. A photograph of his scrotum, the size of the biggest collective farm pumpkin, is also reprinted in foreign medical books, wherever elephantiasis (elephantiasis nostras) is mentioned, and as a moral for writers that to write one must have more than big balls.
You want dark?
"Boris Davidovich," he said to Novsky, "I'm afraid that you must be out of your mind. You'll bury us all with your plea." Novsky answered him with a strange expression on his face, which seemed to be a shadow of a smile. "Isaac Ilich, you should know the Jewish funeral custom: at the moment when they are ready to take the corpse from the synagogue to the cemetery, one servant of Yahweh bends over the deceased, calls him by name, and says in a loud voice: 'Know that you are dead!'" He paused a moment, then added: "An excellent custom!"
The ancient Greeks also had an "admirable" custom, we are told: for anyone who perished by fire, was swallowed by a volcano, buried by lava, torn to pieces by beasts, devoured by sharks, or whose corpse was scattered by vultures in the desert, they built so-called cenotaphs, or empty tombs, in their homelands; for the body is only fire, water, or earth, whereas the soul is the Alpha and the Omega, to which a shrine should be erected.
I read this even though I will never be one of the cool kids. If I missed some larger message, I fully understood this:
The reading of many books brings wisdom, and reading of one brings ignorance armed with rage and hatred.
And as postscripts go, how about this one:
He remains a medical phenomenon in Russian literature: Darmolatov's case was entered in all the latest pathology textbooks. A photograph of his scrotum, the size of the biggest collective farm pumpkin, is also reprinted in foreign medical books, wherever elephantiasis (elephantiasis nostras) is mentioned, and as a moral for writers that to write one must have more than big balls.
March 20, 2021
Siete cuentos sutilmente enlazados, algunos mas duros que otros, que desnudan la infame época de la Internacional Comunista al servicio de la purga rusa en la primer mitad del siglo XX. La crueldad y la traición como moneda corriente; las torturas para conseguir la declaración necesaria, el salvajismo del Gulag, la propaganda mentirosa para vender una realidad que no es, son algunos de los temas que abarcan estos cuentos.
El relato que da titulo al libro me pareció por lejos el mejor, porque mas allá de la violencia física, Kiš plantea un interesante juego mental entre torturador y torturado que los lleva a traspasar cualquier límite, sin ningún escrúpulo, en donde todo vale a fin de no ceder ante el adversario. El cuento que sigue, Los perros y los libros narra una historia sobre la persecución y conversión forzosa de judíos a manos de los cristianos en el 1300, trazando un paralelo con la represión estalinista y recordando las palabras de Marco Aurelio que le dan un marco totalizador al libro: “Quien haya visto el presente, lo habrá visto todo: todo aquello que ocurriera en el pasado mas lejano y también aquello que sucederá en el futuro”
Una prosa muy moderna la de Danilo Kiš, con claras influencias borgeanas, que me ha gustado muchísimo. Un libro muy recomendable.
El relato que da titulo al libro me pareció por lejos el mejor, porque mas allá de la violencia física, Kiš plantea un interesante juego mental entre torturador y torturado que los lleva a traspasar cualquier límite, sin ningún escrúpulo, en donde todo vale a fin de no ceder ante el adversario. El cuento que sigue, Los perros y los libros narra una historia sobre la persecución y conversión forzosa de judíos a manos de los cristianos en el 1300, trazando un paralelo con la represión estalinista y recordando las palabras de Marco Aurelio que le dan un marco totalizador al libro: “Quien haya visto el presente, lo habrá visto todo: todo aquello que ocurriera en el pasado mas lejano y también aquello que sucederá en el futuro”
Una prosa muy moderna la de Danilo Kiš, con claras influencias borgeanas, que me ha gustado muchísimo. Un libro muy recomendable.
February 2, 2014
He who has seen the present has seen everything, that which happened in the most distant past and that which will happen in the future.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, book VI, 37. (Quoted by Danilo Kiš)
If conventional short stories could be compared to films in which the story unfolds in a linear manner, then the stories in 'A Tomb for Boris Davidovich' could be compared to a series of still photos ( a little like Chris Marker's film 'La Jetée') each described in precise, almost austere detail. This episodic approach has the effect of leaving us with gaps in our knowledge because there may be a lengthy period of time between each 'photo'. The effect, far from being frustrating, is mesmerising, or so I found it to be, leaving me with the feeling that I needed to savour such details as we were given, with the result that I read many passages in the book two, and even three, times.
Austere though the writing is, and disturbing though much of what is recounted may be, there are some beautiful passages of descriptive writing. This can be the case even when he is at his gloomiest. This passage, for example, which is as dark as anything in the works of László Krasznahorkai struck me as having a peculiar kind of grace to it:
...the provincial bleakness of the Middle European towns at the turn of the century emerges clearly from the depths of time: the gray, one-story houses with back yards that the sun in its slow journey divides with a clear line of demarcation into quarters of murderous light and damp, mouldy shade resembling darkness; the rows of black locust trees which at the beginning of spring exude, like thick cough syrups and cough drops, the musky smell of childhood diseases; the cold, baroque gleam of the pharmacy where the Gothic of the white porcelain glitters; the gloomy high school with the paved yard (green, peeling benches, broken swings resembling gallows, and whitewashed wooden outhouses); the municipal building painted Maria-Theresa yellow, the color of the dead leaves and autumn roses from ballads played at dusk by the gypsy band in the open-air restaurant of the Grand Hotel.
It is impossible to stop anywhere in that passage because it is so complete, and so well translated by Duska Mikic-Mitchell. There is, however, no avoiding the mood of almost every moment, of almost every story, which a deep foreboding; an all pervasive, and entirely justified paranoia.
Many questions are asked here about conviction and ideology, because the stories are replete with characters - some taken from history, some invented - who believe absolutely in a political position or religious belief. Depth of conviction, however, is no guarantee that those who appear to share those opinions will treat you as a comrade. On the contrary it seems, in these stories and in the real situations to which they refer, that a shared belief is the first reason to suspect the other person of duplicity or treason. Those who believe in the betterment of all humankind find a multitude of reasons to murder great numbers of humans for the eventual betterment of all. Those who believe fervently in God can somehow find ambiguity in the commandment, 'Thou shall not kill'.
The way Danilo Kiš establishes that atmosphere of menace, through a true economy of means, is remarkable. A scene of laid out; characters speak or interact. Then we seen them at another time in circumstances that may have changed a little or changed utterly. The cruelest of ironies can come to the fore so, for example, in the story 'The Magic Card Dealing', Dr Taube - the man who is central to the story - is in a prison camp, but must operate on a man who once tortured him but who is now, himself, a prisoner. Everywhere versions of 'truth' are in conflict and the individual must always accept that their 'truth' is of no importance - may, in fact the basis for a death sentence - if it conflicts with the greater 'truth' of those with power. In one of the most shocking scenes a man confesses to everything he is accused of in the belief that this will prevent his daughter from being murdered only to discover years later, at a labor camp, that she was killed on the day he was interrogated.Yet, despite all the suffering we encounter in this book the author is still able to say that "despite everything, the temporary suffering of existence is worth more than the final void of nothingness". A remarkable, and marvellous, conclusion to arrive at.
It is because they emerge from the realisation of all that horrors that humans can visit in one another that the moments of lyrical beauty are so valuable and special in this book. My favorite display of unexpected wonder was in a list of the subject-matter of poems by the subject of 'The Short Biography of A. A. Darmolatov':
...the still life of a cup of tea, a silver spoon, and a drowned wasp; the violet eyes of a harnessed horse; the optimistic grinding of turbine engines...the bare trees in Lubyanka's yard; the hoarse howling of village dogs; the wondrous balance of cement piles; the stalking of a cat following the trail of a winter bird in the snow.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, book VI, 37. (Quoted by Danilo Kiš)
If conventional short stories could be compared to films in which the story unfolds in a linear manner, then the stories in 'A Tomb for Boris Davidovich' could be compared to a series of still photos ( a little like Chris Marker's film 'La Jetée') each described in precise, almost austere detail. This episodic approach has the effect of leaving us with gaps in our knowledge because there may be a lengthy period of time between each 'photo'. The effect, far from being frustrating, is mesmerising, or so I found it to be, leaving me with the feeling that I needed to savour such details as we were given, with the result that I read many passages in the book two, and even three, times.
Austere though the writing is, and disturbing though much of what is recounted may be, there are some beautiful passages of descriptive writing. This can be the case even when he is at his gloomiest. This passage, for example, which is as dark as anything in the works of László Krasznahorkai struck me as having a peculiar kind of grace to it:
...the provincial bleakness of the Middle European towns at the turn of the century emerges clearly from the depths of time: the gray, one-story houses with back yards that the sun in its slow journey divides with a clear line of demarcation into quarters of murderous light and damp, mouldy shade resembling darkness; the rows of black locust trees which at the beginning of spring exude, like thick cough syrups and cough drops, the musky smell of childhood diseases; the cold, baroque gleam of the pharmacy where the Gothic of the white porcelain glitters; the gloomy high school with the paved yard (green, peeling benches, broken swings resembling gallows, and whitewashed wooden outhouses); the municipal building painted Maria-Theresa yellow, the color of the dead leaves and autumn roses from ballads played at dusk by the gypsy band in the open-air restaurant of the Grand Hotel.
It is impossible to stop anywhere in that passage because it is so complete, and so well translated by Duska Mikic-Mitchell. There is, however, no avoiding the mood of almost every moment, of almost every story, which a deep foreboding; an all pervasive, and entirely justified paranoia.
Many questions are asked here about conviction and ideology, because the stories are replete with characters - some taken from history, some invented - who believe absolutely in a political position or religious belief. Depth of conviction, however, is no guarantee that those who appear to share those opinions will treat you as a comrade. On the contrary it seems, in these stories and in the real situations to which they refer, that a shared belief is the first reason to suspect the other person of duplicity or treason. Those who believe in the betterment of all humankind find a multitude of reasons to murder great numbers of humans for the eventual betterment of all. Those who believe fervently in God can somehow find ambiguity in the commandment, 'Thou shall not kill'.
The way Danilo Kiš establishes that atmosphere of menace, through a true economy of means, is remarkable. A scene of laid out; characters speak or interact. Then we seen them at another time in circumstances that may have changed a little or changed utterly. The cruelest of ironies can come to the fore so, for example, in the story 'The Magic Card Dealing', Dr Taube - the man who is central to the story - is in a prison camp, but must operate on a man who once tortured him but who is now, himself, a prisoner. Everywhere versions of 'truth' are in conflict and the individual must always accept that their 'truth' is of no importance - may, in fact the basis for a death sentence - if it conflicts with the greater 'truth' of those with power. In one of the most shocking scenes a man confesses to everything he is accused of in the belief that this will prevent his daughter from being murdered only to discover years later, at a labor camp, that she was killed on the day he was interrogated.Yet, despite all the suffering we encounter in this book the author is still able to say that "despite everything, the temporary suffering of existence is worth more than the final void of nothingness". A remarkable, and marvellous, conclusion to arrive at.
It is because they emerge from the realisation of all that horrors that humans can visit in one another that the moments of lyrical beauty are so valuable and special in this book. My favorite display of unexpected wonder was in a list of the subject-matter of poems by the subject of 'The Short Biography of A. A. Darmolatov':
...the still life of a cup of tea, a silver spoon, and a drowned wasp; the violet eyes of a harnessed horse; the optimistic grinding of turbine engines...the bare trees in Lubyanka's yard; the hoarse howling of village dogs; the wondrous balance of cement piles; the stalking of a cat following the trail of a winter bird in the snow.
December 8, 2024
Un buen libro con el que estuve peleado a causa de la traducción y errores tipográficos. Era una edición del año 1983 de Seix Barral. Sin ser desastrosa era una traducción a su vez del inglés, que a veces carecía de sentido y como digo a veces cambiaba género etc que te saca de la lectura.
Fuera de esto, la temática uniforme de estos buenos cuentos es la represión, principalmente de la antigua URSS frente a sus revolucionarios históricos, los cuales en su mayoría fueron objeto de purgas, así como el azote a sus países de influencia y satélites, así como la opresión histórica soportada por el pueblo judío. Estilo absolutamente personal y sensorial el de Kis, que sólo he podido disfrutar de forma fragmentada.
Siento que puntuo de forma inadecuada, porque como digo por momentos se puede intuir lo grande de la prosa de Kis. Tengo algún otro libro suyo por ahí anotado que buscaré en la edición de Acantilado.
Fuera de esto, la temática uniforme de estos buenos cuentos es la represión, principalmente de la antigua URSS frente a sus revolucionarios históricos, los cuales en su mayoría fueron objeto de purgas, así como el azote a sus países de influencia y satélites, así como la opresión histórica soportada por el pueblo judío. Estilo absolutamente personal y sensorial el de Kis, que sólo he podido disfrutar de forma fragmentada.
Siento que puntuo de forma inadecuada, porque como digo por momentos se puede intuir lo grande de la prosa de Kis. Tengo algún otro libro suyo por ahí anotado que buscaré en la edición de Acantilado.
January 14, 2021
Συγκλονιστικό! Επτά ιστορίες δεμένες η μία με την άλλη κι όχι τόσο λόγω των προσώπων κι ονομάτων που συναντάς ξανά στο πέρασμα των σελίδων σε μια επόμενη ιστορία αλλά λόγω ενός κοινού παρονομαστή: της υποκρισίας!
Βάζω 4 αστέρια διότι για εμένα πάντα τα ,,Πρώιμα βάσανα’’ θα είναι το καλύτερο βιβλίο του Κις!
Υ.Γ. Η μετάφραση της Μαρίας Κεσίνη χάνει κατά πολύ σε σχέση με εκείνη της Γκάγκα Ρόσιτς στον Ντανίλο Κις.
Ένα μέρος από το μεγαλείο αυτού του βιβλίου έχει κλαπεί στα ελληνικά λόγω της μέτριας (σε ορισμένα σημεία κακής) μετάφραση�� του. Κρίμα!
Βάζω 4 αστέρια διότι για εμένα πάντα τα ,,Πρώιμα βάσανα’’ θα είναι το καλύτερο βιβλίο του Κις!
Υ.Γ. Η μετάφραση της Μαρίας Κεσίνη χάνει κατά πολύ σε σχέση με εκείνη της Γκάγκα Ρόσιτς στον Ντανίλο Κις.
Ένα μέρος από το μεγαλείο αυτού του βιβλίου έχει κλαπεί στα ελληνικά λόγω της μέτριας (σε ορισμένα σημεία κακής) μετάφραση�� του. Κρίμα!
June 5, 2017
If you think this is merely the stuff of historical nightmare, try to put in mind the current realities of Guantanamo, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, et al.
According to the formidable Joseph Brodsky, (the author of the Introduction to this edition of Kis' A Tomb for Boris Davidovich (ATfBD)) the Yugoslav Union of Writers accused the author of plagiarizing Solzhenitsyn, Joyce, Nadezhda Mandelstam, Jorge Luis Borges, the Medvedev brothers, and others. I understand each (excepting, of course, Mandelstam and the Medvedevs because I haven't read them) but the charge has little to recommend it; it is nakedly political rather than seriously literary.
And despite its dubeity, I find at least one of the comparisons productive. Take Borges: Mr. Kis vehicularizes the academic, faux-monograph (C.f. Pierre Menard), but his concerns and themes are more in line with what time and circumstance, for English speakers, have come to label as Orwellian. So what happens when one applies a slim volume to totalitarian ideology? The result, in my estimation, is a memorable hermeneutic razor.
In the early going ATfBD reads like the most poetic textbook you can remember. The details are clinical, the images unforgettable and disturbing. The madness of megalomania pervades the psychopathy of politics. The wind blows west and liberation from oppression seems viable; the wind blows east and the truncheon breaks your teeth before the interrogation can begin, before the confession can be inked. These things happen[ed].
But this is more than a deposition of 20th century Eastern European/Western Asiatic violence or the epistemological problematic of parsing sources.
ATfBD also invites reflections on Ideology as a hearty species of belief, which often takes the lion's share of the communal human head space, starving its lesser cousins, Knowledge and Reason. It also asks us to consider why people are willing to kill and die for ideas and ideals. But that is not all, oh no, that is not all.
The metafictional awareness that awakens in the last dozen pages (where Kis transposes Boris Davidovich Novsky into Baruch David Neumann [written by a certain Darmolatov?]) does more than obviate the ham-handedness of an analogy which reduces politics to religion; it invites the vision of poetry to crystallize the chaos of violent contingencies into the coherence of historical narrative. If humans are to rid themselves of the disease of senseless violence there are sobering little volumes like this that must slit and drain the tumors of dogmatism.
Unfortunately, this is a necessary work, and in my estimation, another piece of required reading:
“Darmolatov's case was entered in all the latest pathology textbooks. A photograph of his scrotum, the size of the biggest collective farm pumpkin, is also reprinted in foreign medical books, wherever elephantiasis (elephantiasis nostras) is mentioned, and as a moral for writers that to write one must have more than big balls.”
According to the formidable Joseph Brodsky, (the author of the Introduction to this edition of Kis' A Tomb for Boris Davidovich (ATfBD)) the Yugoslav Union of Writers accused the author of plagiarizing Solzhenitsyn, Joyce, Nadezhda Mandelstam, Jorge Luis Borges, the Medvedev brothers, and others. I understand each (excepting, of course, Mandelstam and the Medvedevs because I haven't read them) but the charge has little to recommend it; it is nakedly political rather than seriously literary.
And despite its dubeity, I find at least one of the comparisons productive. Take Borges: Mr. Kis vehicularizes the academic, faux-monograph (C.f. Pierre Menard), but his concerns and themes are more in line with what time and circumstance, for English speakers, have come to label as Orwellian. So what happens when one applies a slim volume to totalitarian ideology? The result, in my estimation, is a memorable hermeneutic razor.
In the early going ATfBD reads like the most poetic textbook you can remember. The details are clinical, the images unforgettable and disturbing. The madness of megalomania pervades the psychopathy of politics. The wind blows west and liberation from oppression seems viable; the wind blows east and the truncheon breaks your teeth before the interrogation can begin, before the confession can be inked. These things happen[ed].
But this is more than a deposition of 20th century Eastern European/Western Asiatic violence or the epistemological problematic of parsing sources.
ATfBD also invites reflections on Ideology as a hearty species of belief, which often takes the lion's share of the communal human head space, starving its lesser cousins, Knowledge and Reason. It also asks us to consider why people are willing to kill and die for ideas and ideals. But that is not all, oh no, that is not all.
The metafictional awareness that awakens in the last dozen pages (where Kis transposes Boris Davidovich Novsky into Baruch David Neumann [written by a certain Darmolatov?]) does more than obviate the ham-handedness of an analogy which reduces politics to religion; it invites the vision of poetry to crystallize the chaos of violent contingencies into the coherence of historical narrative. If humans are to rid themselves of the disease of senseless violence there are sobering little volumes like this that must slit and drain the tumors of dogmatism.
Unfortunately, this is a necessary work, and in my estimation, another piece of required reading:
“Darmolatov's case was entered in all the latest pathology textbooks. A photograph of his scrotum, the size of the biggest collective farm pumpkin, is also reprinted in foreign medical books, wherever elephantiasis (elephantiasis nostras) is mentioned, and as a moral for writers that to write one must have more than big balls.”
August 25, 2021
Iskreno ja baš nikako ne podnosim postmodernizam previše mi je nekako sterilan i ima neki čudan ritam od koga me boli glava , jer imam osećaj kao da me neko lupa čekićem o glavu. Osim toga opet potpuno iskeno ja tu ništa ne razumem, niti mogu da zapamtim likove , kao da postoji izvesno odaustvo naracije i distanca nepremostiv jaz izmedju likova i mene koja to čitam . I tako sam ja čitala ovo misleći da ću mrzeti ovu knjigu , ali Kiš me je kupio pričom Psi i knjige , pa cu zanemariti činjenicu da nisam pola teksta razumela i daću knjizi koju zvezdicu više. Elem Kiš je previše talentoan čovek da mu ne oprostimo što se odao duhu vremena , pratio trendove pa se dao pasijim sinovima postmodernistima . Ovo mi je jako drag citat :" Bejah zauzet čitanjem i pisanjem, kada grunu u moju sobu veliki broj tih ljudi, neznanjem tupim kao batina i mržnjom oštrom poput noža. To ne bejahu moje svile od kojih im se zakrvaviše oči, no moje knjige poredjane po policama; svilu smotaše pod ogrtače , a knjige pobacaše na pod i stadoše ih gaziti nogama i cepati ih na moje oči. A te knjige bejahu u kožu povezane i obeležene brojevima i bejahu napisane od učenih ljudi , i u njima bejaše , da su ih hteli čitati , hiljade razloga da me smesta ubiju i bejaše u njima , da su ih hteli čitati, leka i melema za njihovu mržnju. I rekoh im da ih ne cepaju , jer mnoge knjige nisu opasne, opasna je samo jedna; i rekoh im da ih ne cepaju , jer čitanje mnogih knjiga dovodi do mudrosti , čitanje jedne jedine do neznanja naoružanog mahnitošću i mržnjom."
July 5, 2014
Goddamnit, that was genius-ly crafted bleakitude. I think I need a hug before I can stew on this text.
Brodsky's intro is tremendous - a fitting companion to such an important piece of lit.
Brodsky's intro is tremendous - a fitting companion to such an important piece of lit.
Read
January 20, 2014It’s not that I’m saying Danilo Kiš isn’t original or talented ; but what I’m saying is that we need more Borgeses of xyz. Kiš does this job wonderfully for Yugoslavia in his Boris book. And most cheerfully I now have the following string of literary=cards :: Borge --> Kiš --> Vollmann ; which pleases me greatly. Less cheerfully is the discovery of a juxtaposition of stories in this novel* which shows : not much has changed ;; and one could discover perhaps quickly a story written by a Muslim about Guantanamo and we’d really be depressed. And so too I really ask (and continue to answer in the negative) Is fiction more true because it describes This Really Happened.
* Is the tomb of Boris a novel? Yes. Is it less a novel because the connective tissue among the stories is so thin? No. Let me ask ; you know what this book is about -- how could the connective tissue be stronger without putting everyone at risk?
* Is the tomb of Boris a novel? Yes. Is it less a novel because the connective tissue among the stories is so thin? No. Let me ask ; you know what this book is about -- how could the connective tissue be stronger without putting everyone at risk?
May 17, 2018
Rompi o primeiro livro (Enciclopédia dos mortos) que li de Danilo Kis. Não por maldade, irritação ou desleixo mas porque a encadernação era deficiente e a prosa soporífera. Teria desistido deste escritor não fora Um Túmulo para Boris Davidovitch ter acompanhado William T. Vollmann durante os dez anos em que escreveu Central Europa (um dos livros da minha vida), o qual é dedicado à memória de Danilo Kis.
Um Túmulo para Boris Davidovitch é o título de um dos seis contos que narram as perseguições, pelo regime estalinista, a militantes comunistas (pessoas anónimas mas reais). O sétimo, passado na Idade Média, é sobre a perseguição a um judeu. No todo, efectuam uma analogia entre o terror do fanatismo político e o do religioso e demonstram que tudo se repete. "Quem viu o presente viu tudo: o que ocorreu num passado recente e o que irá ocorrer no futuro." (Marco Aurélio, "Meditações")
A narrativa é sintética, objectiva e sem sentimentalismos. Exige uma leitura concentrada no tema e desligada de expectativas "poéticas". Algumas vezes, tive a sensação de estar a ler uma enciclopédia, perdia-me e tinha de voltar atrás. Não sei se fiz bem, porque são histórias terríveis (principalmente a de Davidovich) que me abalam a confiança na humanidade...
Como aceito com agrado a minha inconstância (que me sujeita a uma mais que esporádica mutabilidade de ideias e me impossibilita a submissão a rígidas regras) decidi avaliar esta obra, não pelo comprazimento que me proporcionou a nível literário, mas pelo seu valor histórico e humano.
=================================
"uma grande quantidade de livros nunca é perigosa, enquanto um só livro sim, é perigoso; a leitura de uma grande quantidade de livros conduz à sabedoria, e a leitura de um único à ignorância armada de loucura e ódio."
— Danilo Kis (Um Túmulo para Boris Davidovitch)
Danilo Kis nasceu em Subotica, Sérvia, no dia 22 de Fevereiro de 1935 e morreu em Paris, França, no dia 15 de Outubro de 1989. Perdeu o pai e parte da família nos campos de concentração nazis.
Formou-se em literatura, e recebeu vários prémios literários. Foi nomeado para o Prémio Nobel em 1989, ano em que morreu com um cancro nos pulmões.
Um Túmulo para Boris Davidovitch é o título de um dos seis contos que narram as perseguições, pelo regime estalinista, a militantes comunistas (pessoas anónimas mas reais). O sétimo, passado na Idade Média, é sobre a perseguição a um judeu. No todo, efectuam uma analogia entre o terror do fanatismo político e o do religioso e demonstram que tudo se repete. "Quem viu o presente viu tudo: o que ocorreu num passado recente e o que irá ocorrer no futuro." (Marco Aurélio, "Meditações")
A narrativa é sintética, objectiva e sem sentimentalismos. Exige uma leitura concentrada no tema e desligada de expectativas "poéticas". Algumas vezes, tive a sensação de estar a ler uma enciclopédia, perdia-me e tinha de voltar atrás. Não sei se fiz bem, porque são histórias terríveis (principalmente a de Davidovich) que me abalam a confiança na humanidade...
Como aceito com agrado a minha inconstância (que me sujeita a uma mais que esporádica mutabilidade de ideias e me impossibilita a submissão a rígidas regras) decidi avaliar esta obra, não pelo comprazimento que me proporcionou a nível literário, mas pelo seu valor histórico e humano.
=================================
"uma grande quantidade de livros nunca é perigosa, enquanto um só livro sim, é perigoso; a leitura de uma grande quantidade de livros conduz à sabedoria, e a leitura de um único à ignorância armada de loucura e ódio."
— Danilo Kis (Um Túmulo para Boris Davidovitch)
Danilo Kis nasceu em Subotica, Sérvia, no dia 22 de Fevereiro de 1935 e morreu em Paris, França, no dia 15 de Outubro de 1989. Perdeu o pai e parte da família nos campos de concentração nazis.
Formou-se em literatura, e recebeu vários prémios literários. Foi nomeado para o Prémio Nobel em 1989, ano em que morreu com um cancro nos pulmões.
September 12, 2017
Citind povestirile lui Kis, portretele unor oameni striviţi, chiar anihilaţi, de propriile convingeri sau de sistemul la care au aderat, mi-a revenit obsedant în minte unul din tablourile lui Goya: Cronos devorându-şi copiii 
Căci exact asta s-a întâmplat în toată perioada revoluţiei bolşevice şi, ulterior, în regimul stalinist, cu cei mai fideli şi mai însufleţiţi susţinători ai noii orânduiri. Revoltător şi înspăimântător, dar adevărat.
Pe scurt: fragmente de istorie, admirabil puse pe hârtie. Recomand.
Căci exact asta s-a întâmplat în toată perioada revoluţiei bolşevice şi, ulterior, în regimul stalinist, cu cei mai fideli şi mai însufleţiţi susţinători ai noii orânduiri. Revoltător şi înspăimântător, dar adevărat.
Pe scurt: fragmente de istorie, admirabil puse pe hârtie. Recomand.
May 18, 2011
Jesus, that was my husk of a response after I finished this one on a rainy afternoon, still jet-lagged from a honeymoon of sorts in London and back in Indiana, one foaming with the necessity of quickly organizing most aspects of my life.
April 21, 2022
I don’t think I’ve ever read something so proficient yet so indebted to another author. Kis, it has been noted, is a Borges progeny. Check it out:
If, as Mario Vargas Llosa says (in “Borges’s Fiction”, from A Writer’s Reality), “Borges’s prose […] has wreaked havoc among countless admirers, in whose work the use of certain images or verbs or adjectives established by him turns into mere parody,” then Kis, at least, is one of the lucky ones. No, his stories do not descend into parody, but I can’t help thinking they are – inevitably, surely, since they adhere so closely in language and structure (the faux-essay, the fictional scholarly history) to the conception of another – limited by the unnatural shapes into which they’ve been contorted. Incredibly, Kis was 41 when he published this; to me, it reads like the work of a talented young acolyte soon (we hope) to outgrow his mentor. Just maybe, the translator (Duska Mikic-Mitchell) is to blame for exaggerating the influence with Borgesian keywords (“vertiginous”, “with horror”, “infernal”) and a certain tone or sentence structure – but even if so there is a deep strain of the copyist here, which I do not believe could help Kis in communicating what is his effectively.
Luckily, “what is his” still does come through. This is dark and truly horrifying in a way uniquely Kis’s – a black-humorous montage of the hidden costs of revolution, with bursts of passion, eloquence and insight unseen in Serge or Orwell, perhaps because Kis’s (in this sense) privileged position as Yugoslavian affords him an outsider’s view more inclined to be balanced. Nor is it all about Russia, or the 20th century. In “Dogs and Books”, a persectuted 14th century Jew says the following:
Kis’s heart, as they say, is in the right place. Yet I find his vision thwarted by his own too-insistent referencing of the one writer or book. Maybe Hourglass (which I have on my shelf, and had hoped was later than Davidovich, but which I now find was published in 1972, four years earlier) is more original. Maybe (it’s just possible) these were stories leftover from his twenties, unfinished or unpublishable at the time of their first composition. If not, then I fear I won’t last long with Kis. The greatest homage I’ve ever read, though – haunting but stunted, strange and scary.
The next night, that of January 29-30, the scene was repeated: the guards led Novsky down the vertiginous spiral stairs into the deep cellars of the prison. Novsky realised with horror that this repetition was not accidental, but part of an infernal plan: each day of his life would be paid for with the life of another man; the perfection of his biography would be destroyed, his life’s work (his life) deformed by these final pages.
If, as Mario Vargas Llosa says (in “Borges’s Fiction”, from A Writer’s Reality), “Borges’s prose […] has wreaked havoc among countless admirers, in whose work the use of certain images or verbs or adjectives established by him turns into mere parody,” then Kis, at least, is one of the lucky ones. No, his stories do not descend into parody, but I can’t help thinking they are – inevitably, surely, since they adhere so closely in language and structure (the faux-essay, the fictional scholarly history) to the conception of another – limited by the unnatural shapes into which they’ve been contorted. Incredibly, Kis was 41 when he published this; to me, it reads like the work of a talented young acolyte soon (we hope) to outgrow his mentor. Just maybe, the translator (Duska Mikic-Mitchell) is to blame for exaggerating the influence with Borgesian keywords (“vertiginous”, “with horror”, “infernal”) and a certain tone or sentence structure – but even if so there is a deep strain of the copyist here, which I do not believe could help Kis in communicating what is his effectively.
Luckily, “what is his” still does come through. This is dark and truly horrifying in a way uniquely Kis’s – a black-humorous montage of the hidden costs of revolution, with bursts of passion, eloquence and insight unseen in Serge or Orwell, perhaps because Kis’s (in this sense) privileged position as Yugoslavian affords him an outsider’s view more inclined to be balanced. Nor is it all about Russia, or the 20th century. In “Dogs and Books”, a persectuted 14th century Jew says the following:
It wasn’t the silks that brought blood to their eyes, but the books arranged on my shelves; they shoved the silks under their cloaks, but they threw the books on the floor, stamped on them, and ripped them to threads before my eyes. Those books were bound in leather, marked with numbers, and written by learned men; in them, had they wanted to read them, they could have found thousands of reasons why they should have killed me at once, and in them, had they wanted to read them, they could have also found the balm and cure for their hatred.
I told them not to rip them apart, for many books are not dangerous, only one is dangerous; I told them not to tear them apart, for the reading of many books brings wisdom, and the reading of one brings ignorance armed with rage and hatred.
Kis’s heart, as they say, is in the right place. Yet I find his vision thwarted by his own too-insistent referencing of the one writer or book. Maybe Hourglass (which I have on my shelf, and had hoped was later than Davidovich, but which I now find was published in 1972, four years earlier) is more original. Maybe (it’s just possible) these were stories leftover from his twenties, unfinished or unpublishable at the time of their first composition. If not, then I fear I won’t last long with Kis. The greatest homage I’ve ever read, though – haunting but stunted, strange and scary.
July 10, 2021
Saying a book about a veritable vortex of faith-based death is beautiful feels strange, but this book is beautiful—elegant even. Despite what is said in Brodsky and Vollmann's respective introduction and afterword, this book isn't so much actually about historical communism or its failings as it is about a structural understanding of power and the ossification of the human into institutional vehemence.
As Charles Olson so sagely reminds us in his famous poem of searching: "What does not change / is the will to change"—yet the seeming surround of the world is its unchanging institutions, its flexible perseverance of failed states (count the USA among them this hallowed 4th day in July). The Ones who want to change and be changed are the Ones who face its opposite, who face capital-D Death in the marble cenotaphs built to justice, those endless receding halls full of judges in the tattered robes of specters. Kiš, in different country, in different century (as he is so fond of finding the echoes and rhymes across time as in the story "Dogs and Books") may well have wrote of Nat Turner, of John Brown, then later in development, of Kuwasi Balagoon, of those who rose against intolerable conditions in the 1970s in the Tombs of New York City, the Queens House of Detention, or Attica prison, of Assata Shakur's railroad trial, and her eventual dramatic escape. He may have wrote of the fate of Fred Hampton, or the sown discontent of COINTELPRO, of the deathcult of democracy whose maintenance its proponents claim is the ultimate and unquestionable good, beyond all else, beyond even its nominal principles.
Which is all to say, Kiš's book transcends its particulars, its characters are new archetypes hewn from the stone of life. It offers no way out but it glimmers with occasional and particular dignity. It is a world, and all of us still in it.
As Charles Olson so sagely reminds us in his famous poem of searching: "What does not change / is the will to change"—yet the seeming surround of the world is its unchanging institutions, its flexible perseverance of failed states (count the USA among them this hallowed 4th day in July). The Ones who want to change and be changed are the Ones who face its opposite, who face capital-D Death in the marble cenotaphs built to justice, those endless receding halls full of judges in the tattered robes of specters. Kiš, in different country, in different century (as he is so fond of finding the echoes and rhymes across time as in the story "Dogs and Books") may well have wrote of Nat Turner, of John Brown, then later in development, of Kuwasi Balagoon, of those who rose against intolerable conditions in the 1970s in the Tombs of New York City, the Queens House of Detention, or Attica prison, of Assata Shakur's railroad trial, and her eventual dramatic escape. He may have wrote of the fate of Fred Hampton, or the sown discontent of COINTELPRO, of the deathcult of democracy whose maintenance its proponents claim is the ultimate and unquestionable good, beyond all else, beyond even its nominal principles.
Which is all to say, Kiš's book transcends its particulars, its characters are new archetypes hewn from the stone of life. It offers no way out but it glimmers with occasional and particular dignity. It is a world, and all of us still in it.
February 26, 2023
Θα ξεκινούσα διαφορετικά αυτήν την κριτική, αλλά τελικά θα αρκεστω σε αυτήν την εισαγωγική πρόταση: ο Ντανίλο Κις είναι ένας εξαιρετικός συγγραφέας που θέλει όμως τον χρόνο του και την απαραίτητη και αδιάβλητη προσοχή του αναγνώστη.
Γιατί το λέω αυτό όμως; Γιατί η συλλογή του με τίτλο 'Ενας Τάφος για τον Μπόρις Νταβιντοβιτς' ίσως να με βρήκε σε διαφορετική φάση απ'ότι όταν διάβασα την 'Εγκυκλοπαιδεια των Νεκρών ', την οποία βρήκα φανταστική. Σε αντίθεση με την τελευταία συλλογή, ο 'Ταφος' έχει μια μεγαλύτερη συνοχή μεταξύ των ιστοριών του και αυτό γιατί ο Κις έχει δέσει περισσότερο τα σχοινιά της ιστορικής πραγματικότητας με την μυθοπλασία, και δημιούργησε αφηγήσεις που είναι αδύνατο να ξεχωρίσεις το μεν από το δε. Τα φανταστικά στοιχεία της 'Εγκυκλοπαιδειας' είναι σχεδόν ανύπαρκτα εδώ, καθώς ο Κις με αυτήν την συλλογή φαίνεται να αποτελεί προπομπό του Χαβιέ Θερκας στο πως μπορούμε να αφηγηθούμε την πραγματική ιστορία μέσω της μυθοπλασίας. Σε αυτό φυσικά δεν υπάρχει τίποτα μεμπτό και εννοείται πως μου άρεσε πάρα πολύ, απλά σε μερικά σημεία στάθηκε αδύνατο να ακολουθήσω όλα αυτά τα νήματα που ενώνουν τους πρωταγωνιστές των ιστοριών του.
Έλα όμως που πιστεύω πως τα φανταστικά στοιχεία της 'Εγκυκλοπαιδειας' είναι εκεί που πραγματικά μεγαλουργεί ο Κις. Ίσως για αυτό να με 'απογοητευσε' και ο 'Ταφος'. Αδιαμφισβήτητα όμως, ο Κις είναι συγγραφέας που γυρνάς ξανά και ξανά σε αυτόν και είμαι σίγουρος πως στο συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο θα επιστρέψω σε κάποια ίσως πιο διαυγή φάση.
Γιατί το λέω αυτό όμως; Γιατί η συλλογή του με τίτλο 'Ενας Τάφος για τον Μπόρις Νταβιντοβιτς' ίσως να με βρήκε σε διαφορετική φάση απ'ότι όταν διάβασα την 'Εγκυκλοπαιδεια των Νεκρών ', την οποία βρήκα φανταστική. Σε αντίθεση με την τελευταία συλλογή, ο 'Ταφος' έχει μια μεγαλύτερη συνοχή μεταξύ των ιστοριών του και αυτό γιατί ο Κις έχει δέσει περισσότερο τα σχοινιά της ιστορικής πραγματικότητας με την μυθοπλασία, και δημιούργησε αφηγήσεις που είναι αδύνατο να ξεχωρίσεις το μεν από το δε. Τα φανταστικά στοιχεία της 'Εγκυκλοπαιδειας' είναι σχεδόν ανύπαρκτα εδώ, καθώς ο Κις με αυτήν την συλλογή φαίνεται να αποτελεί προπομπό του Χαβιέ Θερκας στο πως μπορούμε να αφηγηθούμε την πραγματική ιστορία μέσω της μυθοπλασίας. Σε αυτό φυσικά δεν υπάρχει τίποτα μεμπτό και εννοείται πως μου άρεσε πάρα πολύ, απλά σε μερικά σημεία στάθηκε αδύνατο να ακολουθήσω όλα αυτά τα νήματα που ενώνουν τους πρωταγωνιστές των ιστοριών του.
Έλα όμως που πιστεύω πως τα φανταστικά στοιχεία της 'Εγκυκλοπαιδειας' είναι εκεί που πραγματικά μεγαλουργεί ο Κις. Ίσως για αυτό να με 'απογοητευσε' και ο 'Ταφος'. Αδιαμφισβήτητα όμως, ο Κις είναι συγγραφέας που γυρνάς ξανά και ξανά σε αυτόν και είμαι σίγουρος πως στο συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο θα επιστρέψω σε κάποια ίσως πιο διαυγή φάση.
April 20, 2016
Este libro aparentemente pequeño me costó más trabajo del que pensé, y más tiempo también. Genera sentimientos muy densos todo el rato, y tenía que dejar espacio para digerirlos.
A lo largo de 7 cuentos, D kis habla de situaciones límite, el huir de la muerte, o de la captura, de la prisión, o de el trabajo forzado, a la vez que encuentra espacio para meter toques de ironía en tanto drama de ese submundo, un submundo que vive siempre cercano a la muerte y a la amenaza, hecho de idealistas, revolucionarios, espias, oficiales corruptos, de persecución, torturas, confesiones, de vivir siempre perseguido por sus propios ideales, o por quienes piensan, o viven distinto. Los ideales, siempre plantados como el más grande valor que tiene la vida, por encima de la vida misma.
Habla de las diferencias insalvables, de las que se pueden ocultar, pero que siempre acaban cobrando la cuota. Del honor, de la historia, de biografías. Quizás sea yo una pacifista o excesivamente sensible, pero algunos cuentos me costaron trabajo, en especial el primero, La navaja con la empuñadira del palo de rosa, de plano me tuve que esperar un poco para recuperarme de él, por eso de las diferencias insalvables, es medio doloroso saber que quizás sea medio ficción, pero retrata eso de la incomprensión y la violencia que vienen implícitos en la naturaleza humana con una veracidad punzante.
De esos libros que duelen por lo que te cuentan de ti mismo, aunque parezcan estar contando algo que es lejano y ajeno.
Y excelentemente bien escrito además.
A lo largo de 7 cuentos, D kis habla de situaciones límite, el huir de la muerte, o de la captura, de la prisión, o de el trabajo forzado, a la vez que encuentra espacio para meter toques de ironía en tanto drama de ese submundo, un submundo que vive siempre cercano a la muerte y a la amenaza, hecho de idealistas, revolucionarios, espias, oficiales corruptos, de persecución, torturas, confesiones, de vivir siempre perseguido por sus propios ideales, o por quienes piensan, o viven distinto. Los ideales, siempre plantados como el más grande valor que tiene la vida, por encima de la vida misma.
Habla de las diferencias insalvables, de las que se pueden ocultar, pero que siempre acaban cobrando la cuota. Del honor, de la historia, de biografías. Quizás sea yo una pacifista o excesivamente sensible, pero algunos cuentos me costaron trabajo, en especial el primero, La navaja con la empuñadira del palo de rosa, de plano me tuve que esperar un poco para recuperarme de él, por eso de las diferencias insalvables, es medio doloroso saber que quizás sea medio ficción, pero retrata eso de la incomprensión y la violencia que vienen implícitos en la naturaleza humana con una veracidad punzante.
De esos libros que duelen por lo que te cuentan de ti mismo, aunque parezcan estar contando algo que es lejano y ajeno.
Y excelentemente bien escrito además.
February 4, 2016
This is the sort of book that only pretentious lit majors can love. Kis writes in an infuriating nonlinear style full of oblique references that only Kis and his immediate friends are likely to know, for the sole purpose of showing how incredibly well-read and generally awesome they are compared, arbitrarily, to anyone else who doesn't happen to have that exact same literary education. He's basically the Eastern European equivalent of James Joyce-meets-Borges. Everything in this book is carefully calculated to have some sort of hidden meaning that only the author knows, encouraging fellow pretentious jackasses to search for all of the clues so that he can delight in their inevitable failures. This is literature at its most inaccessible and most insufferable, plain and simple, which to me defeats the entire purpose of literature. The only reason it gets two stars instead of one was that I enjoyed the one bit about the guy with false teeth dying and leaving behind nothing but a toothbrush. That was an irony I could appreciate. The rest of this book is stylized nonsense.
October 10, 2020
Un grido d’orrore contro tutte le dittature.
Sette capitoli di una stessa storia (sette vittime, sette martiri), sette variazioni di uno stesso tema (la repressione, l’oppressione, le nefandezze totalitariste), tra gulag, lager, corti zariste e reti spionistiche e propagandistiche sovietiche.
La prosa di Kis è densa, complessa, divagante, frammentaria, faticosa (esige molta attenzione, vietato distrarsi) e incisiva, poetica, potente. Come afferma Josif Brodskij nell’introduzione: È un libro estremamente cupo, il cui unico lieto fine è la sua pubblicazione.
Un libro meraviglioso, da leggere e rileggere: commoventi le storie, ma soprattutto la prosa di Kis.
Sette capitoli di una stessa storia (sette vittime, sette martiri), sette variazioni di uno stesso tema (la repressione, l’oppressione, le nefandezze totalitariste), tra gulag, lager, corti zariste e reti spionistiche e propagandistiche sovietiche.
La prosa di Kis è densa, complessa, divagante, frammentaria, faticosa (esige molta attenzione, vietato distrarsi) e incisiva, poetica, potente. Come afferma Josif Brodskij nell’introduzione: È un libro estremamente cupo, il cui unico lieto fine è la sua pubblicazione.
Un libro meraviglioso, da leggere e rileggere: commoventi le storie, ma soprattutto la prosa di Kis.
May 12, 2017
"Those books were bound in leather, marked with numbers, and written by learned men; in them, had they wanted to read them, they could have found thousands of reasons why they should have killed me at once, and in them, had they wanted to read them, they could also have found the balm and cure for their hatred. I told them not to rip them apart, for many books are not dangerous, only one is dangerous; I told them not to tear them apart, for the reading of many books brings wisdom, and the reading of one brings ignorance armed with rage and hatred. (113-114)After beginning on a somewhat troubling and troublesome note (I cannot stand depictions of animal cruelty, no matter what kind of higher moral-aesthetic purpose it may serve—it elicits an immediate and visceral no response), the stories that make up A Tomb for Boris Davidovich turned out to be hauntingly memorable. Kiš could write; his words are very carefully selected and his prose is close to poetry but never overdone. I particularly appreciated his use of biography to tell his tales, which are brutal and reminiscent of Shalamov, Koestler, Solzhenitsyn, and other great portrayers of dark times—yet remain unique.
January 26, 2020
Izgleda da imam problem sa čitanjem svaki put kada se susretem sa nekim oblikom postmodernizma. Tako je bilo i sa Kišom. Jedino mi se dopala priča "Psi i knjige", jer sam je čitao sa lakoćom, razumevanjem i lepom koncetracijom. Ostatak knjige mi nije nudio tu mogućnost i često sam ispadao iz čitalačkog fokusa, što zbog samog stila, što zbog obilja likova. Donekle sam shvatio "šta je pisac hteo reći", a želim i da pročitam kritiku koju je dobio na račun ove knjige, kao i njegov odgovor na tu kritiku koju je sročio u knjizi "Čas anatomije".
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September 30, 2015
A Basement in Yekaterinburg
On the 17th of July 1918, the Russian Imperial Romanov family, including Tsar Nicholas II [nicknamed Nicholas the Bloody], were murdered in a basement in Yekaterinburg. There are numerous rumours surrounding the deaths, with perhaps the most lurid being that the princesses had to be finished off with bayonets, as the bullets intended for their flesh had been deflected away by the jewels hidden in their blouses. Although the Russian empire had collapsed with Nicholas’ forced abdication, the deaths of the family put something of a seal upon it, as there was always the threat of an attempt to reinstate the Tsar.
I often ask myself why I am drawn to books about the Russian Revolution and what followed it [specifically Stalinism]. These two subjects make up a considerable proportion of my reading, and I supplement that reading with just as many documentaries. There is, of course, something quixotic about revolution, certainly a socialist revolution, something attractive about the idea of people fighting for a better and more just world [as they see it]. And so it seems extraordinarily tragic that the Russian Communist revolution, which promised great things, and claimed to oppose tyranny, could succeed, yet ultimately only to lead to the reign of one of the most brutal dictators in history, Joseph Stalin.* It’s like the plot of a particularly bleak Thomas Hardy novel; it is life caning the back of your knees and telling you, ‘don’t ever hope to improve the world, or fight the established order.’
The Liquidation of B.D. Novsky
While I wouldn’t want to speculate as to the reasons behind Danilo Kiš’ interests and inspirations, it is nevertheless the case that his short story collection, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich, could have been written with me in mind, in that almost every entry is concerned with revolutionaries, dreamers, murderers, exile, torture, tyranny, Eastern Europe [mostly Russia], Communism, and so on. I do not intend to to write about each story individually, for what I would end up with would be either a review so long that no one would read it in its entirety or a summary review that would not be worth reading at all, and so I will focus on the two most significant [and enjoyable] stories instead.
The longest in the collection is the title story. It is concerned with the mysterious B.D. Novsky, which is only one of many aliases used by Boris Davidovich. Boris was the son of a soldier, David Abramovich, who was one day flogged by his colleagues, either for not taking part in their drinking or for being a Jew or both, and a young girl who nursed the soldier’s wounds. All of the stories in A Tomb for Boris Davidovich are presented as a kind of summarised biography, almost like a wikipedia entry, focussing on an important period or periods of each subject’s life. However, in this instance, Kiš charts Boris’ progress from childhood to death, giving it a breadth and depth that some of the others perhaps lack.
It is not necessary to follow in Kiš’ footsteps and give all the [available] details of Boris’ life, except to say that he becomes a career revolutionary and bomb maker [he was, we’re told, obsessed with the idea of making a wallnut sized bomb]. All that is engrossing stuff, but the real meat of the story is in his arrest and interrogation. If you know anything about Russia under Stalin, you will know that it wasn’t exactly a rare occurrence for old revolutionaries to be denounced, arrested, tortured, made to confess to crimes they had not committed, before being murdered. The idea behind this was to eliminate dangerous people; these men [and women] had already proved that they were capable of working to remove a sovereign, and so it makes sense that Stalin would fear or mistrust them.
In his story, Kiš pitches Novsky against Fedukin; it is a battle between two highly capable [one might say great] and strong-willed [there’s an almost amusing scene in which they fight over the wording of the confession] men, one a revolutionary and one an interrogator. Yet despite Fedukin’s best efforts, and most brutal treatment, Novsky will not confess. The reason for this is that he does not fear death so much as he fears that the integrity of his biography will be compromised. Novsky wants his life to have meant something, and so it is paramount that his story not be sullied by lies, or be re-imagined or reframed; as a revolutionary, a patriotic Russian, he does not want to become [for in confessing he would become] an enemy of the State. The problem that Fedukin faces now is, ‘how do you get someone who is more concerned with how they are remembered, than they are scared of pain or death, to confess to a terrible crime?’ It is, for the philosophically minded among us, certainly something to chew on.
Fedukin’s solution is to take Novsky into a room containing a young man, who, he states, will be instantly shot if Novsky does not confess. What is clever about this is that while a man might be reconciled to his own suffering it is perhaps not the case that he is reconciled to the suffering of others. Moreover, it forces Novsky to weigh up whether allowing people to die for him will ruin his reputation, will taint his biography, more than confessing would. For the reader, it is worth considering in a different light, in terms of two questions. Firstly, is preserving the integrity of one’s life, the truth of who you are/were and what you did, more important than someone’s actual existence? We would automatically want to say no, and yet one would have to bear in mind that these people would, in all likelihood, be killed anyway. Secondly, if someone kills in your name, how responsible are you? You do not, of course, pull the trigger yourself, but equally we do not want to accept that it is a morally neutral action to stand by and do nothing to attempt to save someone.
I mentioned in an earlier paragraph that each story in this collection is presented as a biography. What elevates A Tomb for Boris Davidovich above most of the others is that biography plays such an important part in it, for what we have is a fictional biography about a man for whom the details of his life, the truth of his existence, was so important. For me, it is this kind of thing that distinguishes great short story writers from ordinary or average ones. Furthermore, I think the title story is the best example here of something that Kiš does frequently throughout the book: which is to present characters and situations that are entirely believable, so that one [or certainly I, anyway] will be putting the names into google in order to check that they were not in fact real people. In this way, his work reminds me of the marvellous German writer W.G Sebald.
Up to the Elbows in Blood
Another notable story is the opener, The Knife with the Rosewood Handle. It is set primarily in the Czech Republic and features Miksha, who is described as a man with potential, someone who could be a kind of master craftsman. In the early stages of the story he is working for Reb Mendel, a Jew, whose chickens are being stolen. In the book’s most memorable, and terrible, scene Miksha captures the culprit, a skunk, and expertly skins it alive. There is, Kiš suggests, a kind of anti-semitism in the act, or certainly an eagerness to make a mockery of Mendel’s faith and belief in ‘the Talmudic prattle about the equality of all God’s creatures.’ The longer we spend with Miksha the more we come to realise that violence defines his existence. For example, once Mendel dismisses him he gets a job slaughtering lambs and is said to spend his time up to his elbows in blood.
However, killing animals is obviously not Kiš’ real focus. He uses it as a way of foreshadowing Miksha’s later behaviour, and as a way of making a point about the brutality of Stalin’s Communism. While working for a rich landowner Miksha becomes involved in revolutionary activity, which results in him murdering an innocent young woman, Hanna Krzyzewska, who had been denounced as a traitor. As previously noted, denunciations were not rare in Communist states, and the result was often the same as it is for Hanna i.e. death. So what we see here is a mirroring of Miksha’s professional life with the political, whereby Hanna is another one of his sacrificial lambs. Moreover, one of the aspects of tyrannical Communistic thinking is the belief in the unimportance of the individual, in the idea that there is nothing sacred about a single life, that it can and will be taken in order to serve the greater good, and this is also Miksha’s attitude, both, one could argue, in terms of Hanna and the animals.
To return to the idea of mirroring, it is also interesting to note that Miksha doesn’t merely kill the skunk, he tortures it, and that he too comes to be tortured towards the end of the story. This is a reminder of another aspect of Stalinism, which was people being brutalised by the very regime they believed in, and worked to bring about. Tellingly, when Miksha moves to Russia he doesn’t find empathy, understanding, and community, he finds cruelty. He was exploited by the bourgeoisie, and made to kill their lambs, and exploited by the Communists, and made to kill Hanna. As with almost every story in the collection, Kiš concludes The Knife with the Rosewood Handle matter-of-factly, with a brief paragraph full of unpleasantness.
You Cannot Hide from History
[Boris Nikolayevich Rozenfeld: Russian Jew; born 1908 in St. Petersburg; higher education; no party affiliation; engineer of the Mosenergo company; lived in Moscow. Arrested on January 31, 1935. Sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. Prisoner of Byelomoro-Baltisky complex of camps in Karelia. Transported from the camp to Moscow on April 12, 1937. Sentenced to death and executed on July 13, 1937. Rehabilitated in 1990.]
As one begins each story in A Tomb for Boris Davidovich one knows how it will end – with suffering, with torture, with death – because not even fiction can hide from history. There may never have been a Boris Davidovich, but there were, all the same, thousands upon thousands of Boris Davidovich’s. With that in mind, I want to end with a quote from a man called Victor Serge, a real man, a real revolutionary, whose life seems as fabled and extraordinary as anyone in this book, and whose fate, by some accounts, was to be another Boris Davidovich.**
---
* During the peak period of Stalin’s purges his secret police were estimated to have killed 1000 people per day.
** It is suggested by some that Serge was poisoned on Stalin’s orders on 17 November 1947.
On the 17th of July 1918, the Russian Imperial Romanov family, including Tsar Nicholas II [nicknamed Nicholas the Bloody], were murdered in a basement in Yekaterinburg. There are numerous rumours surrounding the deaths, with perhaps the most lurid being that the princesses had to be finished off with bayonets, as the bullets intended for their flesh had been deflected away by the jewels hidden in their blouses. Although the Russian empire had collapsed with Nicholas’ forced abdication, the deaths of the family put something of a seal upon it, as there was always the threat of an attempt to reinstate the Tsar.
“In light of the approach of counterrevolutionary bands toward the Red capital of the Urals and the possibility of the crowned executioner escaping trial by the people (a plot among the White Guards to try to abduct him and his family was exposed and the compromising documents will be published), the Presidium of the Ural Regional Soviet, fulfilling the will of the Revolution, resolved to shoot the former Tsar, Nikolai Romanov, who is guilty of countless, bloody, violent acts against the Russian people.” – An announcement from the Presidium of the Ural Regional Soviet of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government.
I often ask myself why I am drawn to books about the Russian Revolution and what followed it [specifically Stalinism]. These two subjects make up a considerable proportion of my reading, and I supplement that reading with just as many documentaries. There is, of course, something quixotic about revolution, certainly a socialist revolution, something attractive about the idea of people fighting for a better and more just world [as they see it]. And so it seems extraordinarily tragic that the Russian Communist revolution, which promised great things, and claimed to oppose tyranny, could succeed, yet ultimately only to lead to the reign of one of the most brutal dictators in history, Joseph Stalin.* It’s like the plot of a particularly bleak Thomas Hardy novel; it is life caning the back of your knees and telling you, ‘don’t ever hope to improve the world, or fight the established order.’
The Liquidation of B.D. Novsky
While I wouldn’t want to speculate as to the reasons behind Danilo Kiš’ interests and inspirations, it is nevertheless the case that his short story collection, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich, could have been written with me in mind, in that almost every entry is concerned with revolutionaries, dreamers, murderers, exile, torture, tyranny, Eastern Europe [mostly Russia], Communism, and so on. I do not intend to to write about each story individually, for what I would end up with would be either a review so long that no one would read it in its entirety or a summary review that would not be worth reading at all, and so I will focus on the two most significant [and enjoyable] stories instead.
The longest in the collection is the title story. It is concerned with the mysterious B.D. Novsky, which is only one of many aliases used by Boris Davidovich. Boris was the son of a soldier, David Abramovich, who was one day flogged by his colleagues, either for not taking part in their drinking or for being a Jew or both, and a young girl who nursed the soldier’s wounds. All of the stories in A Tomb for Boris Davidovich are presented as a kind of summarised biography, almost like a wikipedia entry, focussing on an important period or periods of each subject’s life. However, in this instance, Kiš charts Boris’ progress from childhood to death, giving it a breadth and depth that some of the others perhaps lack.
It is not necessary to follow in Kiš’ footsteps and give all the [available] details of Boris’ life, except to say that he becomes a career revolutionary and bomb maker [he was, we’re told, obsessed with the idea of making a wallnut sized bomb]. All that is engrossing stuff, but the real meat of the story is in his arrest and interrogation. If you know anything about Russia under Stalin, you will know that it wasn’t exactly a rare occurrence for old revolutionaries to be denounced, arrested, tortured, made to confess to crimes they had not committed, before being murdered. The idea behind this was to eliminate dangerous people; these men [and women] had already proved that they were capable of working to remove a sovereign, and so it makes sense that Stalin would fear or mistrust them.
In his story, Kiš pitches Novsky against Fedukin; it is a battle between two highly capable [one might say great] and strong-willed [there’s an almost amusing scene in which they fight over the wording of the confession] men, one a revolutionary and one an interrogator. Yet despite Fedukin’s best efforts, and most brutal treatment, Novsky will not confess. The reason for this is that he does not fear death so much as he fears that the integrity of his biography will be compromised. Novsky wants his life to have meant something, and so it is paramount that his story not be sullied by lies, or be re-imagined or reframed; as a revolutionary, a patriotic Russian, he does not want to become [for in confessing he would become] an enemy of the State. The problem that Fedukin faces now is, ‘how do you get someone who is more concerned with how they are remembered, than they are scared of pain or death, to confess to a terrible crime?’ It is, for the philosophically minded among us, certainly something to chew on.
Fedukin’s solution is to take Novsky into a room containing a young man, who, he states, will be instantly shot if Novsky does not confess. What is clever about this is that while a man might be reconciled to his own suffering it is perhaps not the case that he is reconciled to the suffering of others. Moreover, it forces Novsky to weigh up whether allowing people to die for him will ruin his reputation, will taint his biography, more than confessing would. For the reader, it is worth considering in a different light, in terms of two questions. Firstly, is preserving the integrity of one’s life, the truth of who you are/were and what you did, more important than someone’s actual existence? We would automatically want to say no, and yet one would have to bear in mind that these people would, in all likelihood, be killed anyway. Secondly, if someone kills in your name, how responsible are you? You do not, of course, pull the trigger yourself, but equally we do not want to accept that it is a morally neutral action to stand by and do nothing to attempt to save someone.
“I wish to live in peace with myself and not with the world.”
I mentioned in an earlier paragraph that each story in this collection is presented as a biography. What elevates A Tomb for Boris Davidovich above most of the others is that biography plays such an important part in it, for what we have is a fictional biography about a man for whom the details of his life, the truth of his existence, was so important. For me, it is this kind of thing that distinguishes great short story writers from ordinary or average ones. Furthermore, I think the title story is the best example here of something that Kiš does frequently throughout the book: which is to present characters and situations that are entirely believable, so that one [or certainly I, anyway] will be putting the names into google in order to check that they were not in fact real people. In this way, his work reminds me of the marvellous German writer W.G Sebald.
Up to the Elbows in Blood
Another notable story is the opener, The Knife with the Rosewood Handle. It is set primarily in the Czech Republic and features Miksha, who is described as a man with potential, someone who could be a kind of master craftsman. In the early stages of the story he is working for Reb Mendel, a Jew, whose chickens are being stolen. In the book’s most memorable, and terrible, scene Miksha captures the culprit, a skunk, and expertly skins it alive. There is, Kiš suggests, a kind of anti-semitism in the act, or certainly an eagerness to make a mockery of Mendel’s faith and belief in ‘the Talmudic prattle about the equality of all God’s creatures.’ The longer we spend with Miksha the more we come to realise that violence defines his existence. For example, once Mendel dismisses him he gets a job slaughtering lambs and is said to spend his time up to his elbows in blood.
However, killing animals is obviously not Kiš’ real focus. He uses it as a way of foreshadowing Miksha’s later behaviour, and as a way of making a point about the brutality of Stalin’s Communism. While working for a rich landowner Miksha becomes involved in revolutionary activity, which results in him murdering an innocent young woman, Hanna Krzyzewska, who had been denounced as a traitor. As previously noted, denunciations were not rare in Communist states, and the result was often the same as it is for Hanna i.e. death. So what we see here is a mirroring of Miksha’s professional life with the political, whereby Hanna is another one of his sacrificial lambs. Moreover, one of the aspects of tyrannical Communistic thinking is the belief in the unimportance of the individual, in the idea that there is nothing sacred about a single life, that it can and will be taken in order to serve the greater good, and this is also Miksha’s attitude, both, one could argue, in terms of Hanna and the animals.
To return to the idea of mirroring, it is also interesting to note that Miksha doesn’t merely kill the skunk, he tortures it, and that he too comes to be tortured towards the end of the story. This is a reminder of another aspect of Stalinism, which was people being brutalised by the very regime they believed in, and worked to bring about. Tellingly, when Miksha moves to Russia he doesn’t find empathy, understanding, and community, he finds cruelty. He was exploited by the bourgeoisie, and made to kill their lambs, and exploited by the Communists, and made to kill Hanna. As with almost every story in the collection, Kiš concludes The Knife with the Rosewood Handle matter-of-factly, with a brief paragraph full of unpleasantness.
You Cannot Hide from History
[Boris Nikolayevich Rozenfeld: Russian Jew; born 1908 in St. Petersburg; higher education; no party affiliation; engineer of the Mosenergo company; lived in Moscow. Arrested on January 31, 1935. Sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. Prisoner of Byelomoro-Baltisky complex of camps in Karelia. Transported from the camp to Moscow on April 12, 1937. Sentenced to death and executed on July 13, 1937. Rehabilitated in 1990.]
As one begins each story in A Tomb for Boris Davidovich one knows how it will end – with suffering, with torture, with death – because not even fiction can hide from history. There may never have been a Boris Davidovich, but there were, all the same, thousands upon thousands of Boris Davidovich’s. With that in mind, I want to end with a quote from a man called Victor Serge, a real man, a real revolutionary, whose life seems as fabled and extraordinary as anyone in this book, and whose fate, by some accounts, was to be another Boris Davidovich.**
“I have outlived three generations of brave men, mistaken as they may have been, to whom I was deeply attached, and whose memory remains dear to me. And here again, I have discovered that it is nearly impossible to live a life devoted wholly to a cause which one believes to be just; a life, that is, where one refuses to separate thought from daily action. The young French and Belgian rebels of my twenties have all perished; my syndicalist comrades of Barcelona in 1917 were nearly all massacred; my comrades and friends of the Russian Revolution are probably all dead — any exceptions are only by a miracle. All were brave, all sought a principle of life nobler and juster than that of surrender to the bourgeois order; except perhaps for certain young men, disillusioned and crushed before their consciousness had crystallized, all were engaged in movements for progress. I must confess that the feeling of having so many dead men at my back, many of them my betters in energy, talent, and historical character, has often overwhelmed me; and that this feeling has been for me also the source of a certain courage, if that is the right word for it.”
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* During the peak period of Stalin’s purges his secret police were estimated to have killed 1000 people per day.
** It is suggested by some that Serge was poisoned on Stalin’s orders on 17 November 1947.
December 22, 2021
When A Tomb for Boris Davidovich was published for the first time in former Yugoslavia of 1976, it was rebuked by both the communist dinosaurs still loyal to Stalin’s specter and the Serbo-Croatian nationalists, who were, as Joseph Brodsky says in his Introduction, “traditionally pro-Russian and traditionally anti-Semitic”, for the characters, mostly Jews, even though they originated from Romania, Poland, Ireland or Hungary, somehow ended in the Soviet prisons of the first half of the 20th century where they died.
Furthermore, continues Brodsky, the accusations of the chairman of the Yugoslav Union of Writers that the author had only plagiarized Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, James Joyce, Nadezhda Mandelstam, Jorge Luis Borges, the Medvedev brothers, and others sent Danilo Kis into “nervous shock”.
Of course, you can speak about influences, but never of plagiarism. And yes, the seven “dark tales” have indeed a little bit of Solzhenitsyn, of Joyce, of Borges, even of Kafka, but they are more, much more than that. The Knife With the Rosewood Handle, for example, is the story of Miksha Hantesku, a Romanian who enters an anarchist organization and knifes a girl to death because his boss said she was a traitor:
Just stop and listen a little to that “Babylonian confusion of languages” and you will maybe begin to understand what it meant to force communism on all that Eastern Europe people. And why their tombs are to be found.
Actually, just read the book. it is worth it.
Furthermore, continues Brodsky, the accusations of the chairman of the Yugoslav Union of Writers that the author had only plagiarized Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, James Joyce, Nadezhda Mandelstam, Jorge Luis Borges, the Medvedev brothers, and others sent Danilo Kis into “nervous shock”.
Of course, you can speak about influences, but never of plagiarism. And yes, the seven “dark tales” have indeed a little bit of Solzhenitsyn, of Joyce, of Borges, even of Kafka, but they are more, much more than that. The Knife With the Rosewood Handle, for example, is the story of Miksha Hantesku, a Romanian who enters an anarchist organization and knifes a girl to death because his boss said she was a traitor:
As he plunged his short Bukovina knife with the rosewood handle into her breast, Miksha, sweaty and gasping, could barely make out a word or two from the quivering, muffled, choking onrush of syllables that reached him through the slush, blood, and screams. His stabs were quick now, inflicted with a self-righteous hate which gave his arm impetus. Through the clacking of the train wheels and the muffled thunder of the iron trestle, the girl began, before the death rattle, to speak-in Romanian, in Polish, in Ukrainian, in Yiddish, as if her death were only the consequence of some great and fatal misunderstanding rooted in the Babylonian confusion of languages.
Just stop and listen a little to that “Babylonian confusion of languages” and you will maybe begin to understand what it meant to force communism on all that Eastern Europe people. And why their tombs are to be found.
Actually, just read the book. it is worth it.
August 24, 2012
what a wonderful little treasure of a book, a blend of darkness at noon and borges' ficciones that succinctly points out the issues with totalitarian govt. the ways in which it destroys a part of itself and the destroys the parts that first did the destroying: a sorta self-replicating, inbent idea of destruction, where pursuit and paranoia are the two default options and you may not always know which side you are on. a place where narrative is important, where ending a man's life is not enough, you need to end his story, his heroic narrative. this is a world authored by cruelty where with the seeming insouciance of an editor deleting a passage, a man's life is ended, and his story completely and viciously controlled by the state.
another things i'll say about this book is that black writers in america can learn alot from kis. while kis is a jew born in yugoslavia (and there was outrage when his book was released there) almost all of ther characters are NOT jewish or yugoslavian. meaning that kis is illuminating his personal and group struggles through the larger lens of communist bloc evils. this is a formula that really only ralph ellison attempted in invisible man. using the absurdity of racisim to highlight the overall absurdity of man and his mortality, his feeling of insignificance in the face of a larger and crushing time. and yet i've seen few other authors take this route. actually it is not just black american authors who could learn from this, but really all authors who write specifically about their race/nationality/gender, etc. the real challenge is to tie together something much larger with something more personal. as readers we always see a specific story capture the universal, but the more rare butterfly is the larger entity that somehow reflects the smaller. and that is the genius of danilo kis.
another things i'll say about this book is that black writers in america can learn alot from kis. while kis is a jew born in yugoslavia (and there was outrage when his book was released there) almost all of ther characters are NOT jewish or yugoslavian. meaning that kis is illuminating his personal and group struggles through the larger lens of communist bloc evils. this is a formula that really only ralph ellison attempted in invisible man. using the absurdity of racisim to highlight the overall absurdity of man and his mortality, his feeling of insignificance in the face of a larger and crushing time. and yet i've seen few other authors take this route. actually it is not just black american authors who could learn from this, but really all authors who write specifically about their race/nationality/gender, etc. the real challenge is to tie together something much larger with something more personal. as readers we always see a specific story capture the universal, but the more rare butterfly is the larger entity that somehow reflects the smaller. and that is the genius of danilo kis.
October 31, 2018
Dobar je ovaj Kiš :)
November 2, 2022
Prvi put “svesno” čitam Kiša i jako mi se dopao njegov stil. Kroz različite priče skupljene u jednu celinu upoznala sam se sa neverovatnim umom i jednim istinskim gospodarom reči. Preporuke.
Read
October 21, 2015In this excellent novel, author Danilo Kiš takes the reader on a tour of an early 20th Century European Hell. This Europe is akin to a bubbling, simmering cauldron in which institutional ideology and cynicism are blended in equal measure. What's cooking? An all you can eat buffet of atrocity. Who are the guests? Idealists and pragmatists alike. You too; you're invited.
The collection of stories that constitute this novel don't intersect much, except thematically. Characters that make a cameo in one story may take center stage in another. But we get all sorts, and so we can sympathize with and/or revile each in turn.
There is certainly variety among the characters and tales. Bravery and cowardice both show their face, though brave suffering tends to get more attention. One odd thing in my reaction to the stories, for me, is that the title story "A Tomb for Boris Davidovich" was perhaps the story that least affected me, perhaps because it has more of a grand mythical "hero" (those are ironic quotes) at its center. It's still very good, but somehow, taken alone, I didn't feel so much for this one as the other stories around it. More impactful for me, in fact, was the companion story that followed it, which the author claims to be a translation of a historical account from the 14th century, though I haven't confirmed whether that's actually the case. Anyway, those two stories together are more profound for their parallelism.
This book can and probably should be enjoyed as a companion piece to Vollmann's Europe Central. There are so many similarities between them that it would be a challenge to catalogue them all... I won't bother with the details now. But where Vollmann is verbose, Kiš is laconic. Vollmann's work gets much of its power by cumulative effect. Kiš's gets it from vignettes punctuated by the occasional knife-thrust. But really, I could almost imagine that some of these chapters were a parallel narrative that could have been inserted between chapters in Vollmann's work, and they'd mesh pretty damn well.
Another good option would be to make a tetralogy out of A Tomb for Boris Davidovich, Europe Central, Darkness at Noon, and This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. Then you'll have a quite bleak outlook on the world. What brings these books together is that they're not histrionic. They have some real horror in them, but they don't emote for the reader. They present. The emotional reaction is up to you, if you're inclined to have one. They all can be opaque with regards to authorial intent. They also each employ some form of ironic distancing, yet seem to profit from it in terms of overall impact. The books are insidious. They get into you.
They don't blend quite so smoothly with Céline's works, which are more madcap, harried, and bluntly traumatizing, but Celine's got a whole lot of books to give you that other perspective on madness and horror, if you're in the mood. That's a recommendation, by the way.
The collection of stories that constitute this novel don't intersect much, except thematically. Characters that make a cameo in one story may take center stage in another. But we get all sorts, and so we can sympathize with and/or revile each in turn.
There is certainly variety among the characters and tales. Bravery and cowardice both show their face, though brave suffering tends to get more attention. One odd thing in my reaction to the stories, for me, is that the title story "A Tomb for Boris Davidovich" was perhaps the story that least affected me, perhaps because it has more of a grand mythical "hero" (those are ironic quotes) at its center. It's still very good, but somehow, taken alone, I didn't feel so much for this one as the other stories around it. More impactful for me, in fact, was the companion story that followed it, which the author claims to be a translation of a historical account from the 14th century, though I haven't confirmed whether that's actually the case. Anyway, those two stories together are more profound for their parallelism.
This book can and probably should be enjoyed as a companion piece to Vollmann's Europe Central. There are so many similarities between them that it would be a challenge to catalogue them all... I won't bother with the details now. But where Vollmann is verbose, Kiš is laconic. Vollmann's work gets much of its power by cumulative effect. Kiš's gets it from vignettes punctuated by the occasional knife-thrust. But really, I could almost imagine that some of these chapters were a parallel narrative that could have been inserted between chapters in Vollmann's work, and they'd mesh pretty damn well.
Another good option would be to make a tetralogy out of A Tomb for Boris Davidovich, Europe Central, Darkness at Noon, and This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. Then you'll have a quite bleak outlook on the world. What brings these books together is that they're not histrionic. They have some real horror in them, but they don't emote for the reader. They present. The emotional reaction is up to you, if you're inclined to have one. They all can be opaque with regards to authorial intent. They also each employ some form of ironic distancing, yet seem to profit from it in terms of overall impact. The books are insidious. They get into you.
They don't blend quite so smoothly with Céline's works, which are more madcap, harried, and bluntly traumatizing, but Celine's got a whole lot of books to give you that other perspective on madness and horror, if you're in the mood. That's a recommendation, by the way.
July 14, 2017
Una obra breve e impresionante. De lo mejor que he leído este año, y mi primera lectura de Kis.
Además de las referencias que se suelen hacer con esta obra, he entrevisto en los distintos relatos, aunque sea fugazmente a Orwell y a Koestler.
La prosa es muy fluida, pero a la vez cargada de un significado profundo. Los destinos de los protagonistas son trágicos, fruto, la mayor parte de las veces, de circunstancias políticas.
El totalitarismo, la persecución del diferente, como estrategia de exterminio, de dominación o de cohesión, son herramientas bien conocidas.
Kis elabora biografías que dibujan tipos idrales weberianos, presentados a modo de ensayos (recuerdo a Vila-Matas especialmente), que tratan de mostrar las consecuencias de las distintas formas de intransigencia.
Aunque abraza la idea del eterno retorno, muy nietzcheana, abomina del papel de los poderosos, que son meras herramientas opresoras. El débil, a veces, es más fuerte que el poderoso, pero para ello hay que ser un revolucionario como Novski.
Además de las referencias que se suelen hacer con esta obra, he entrevisto en los distintos relatos, aunque sea fugazmente a Orwell y a Koestler.
La prosa es muy fluida, pero a la vez cargada de un significado profundo. Los destinos de los protagonistas son trágicos, fruto, la mayor parte de las veces, de circunstancias políticas.
El totalitarismo, la persecución del diferente, como estrategia de exterminio, de dominación o de cohesión, son herramientas bien conocidas.
Kis elabora biografías que dibujan tipos idrales weberianos, presentados a modo de ensayos (recuerdo a Vila-Matas especialmente), que tratan de mostrar las consecuencias de las distintas formas de intransigencia.
Aunque abraza la idea del eterno retorno, muy nietzcheana, abomina del papel de los poderosos, que son meras herramientas opresoras. El débil, a veces, es más fuerte que el poderoso, pero para ello hay que ser un revolucionario como Novski.
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