Day One (DDRD 1,091): October 27, 2020
From the first line of Amazon's description of this novel: "A book judged so dangerous in the Soviet Union that not only the manuscript but the ribbons on which it had been typed were confiscated by the state...."
I read the Introduction to Life and Fate early this morning, and was kind of surprised and a bit put-off by it. Mr. Chandler seemed downright disrespectful towards Vasily Grossman at times...referring to Grossman's "long-windedness" and the fact that he had to trim out "boring" and "repetitive" pieces of the novel when he translated it. He also makes a desultory comment or two about Stalingrad, which he definitely regards as an inferior work. It made the 16 page Introduction a bit of a slog for me.
But that was 1985, and this is now. -Ish. I just popped over to Amazon to see if they had a Look inside for Life and Fate, to see if the introduction had been updated...and although I haven't taken the time to read it in its entirety yet (planning to), clearly it had been completely rewritten, possibly even replaced. For one thing, the date is no longer March 1985, it's June 2006 (Revised November 2010). Which makes me wonder if the translation of the novel has also been updated / revised. It almost makes me want to get my hands on the newer version, but I think I'm going to stick with my First U.S. Edition. Maybe I'll have time to have another go at it before I die, and then I can look at the later publication. At any rate, I'm too anxious to get started on the novel itself to stop to read the "new" Introduction right now, but maybe this afternoon. News as it happens.
As it happens: I ended up reading the Introduction before I got to the novel proper after all. And? Well, I didn't do a line by line comparison, but it was clear that while some parts of the 1985 version were still there, it had been extensively rewritten and expanded. The tone of it was quite different, too. This version was much more respectful towards Grossman and his work.
Got back to the novel a little bit, but it's hard going for me, as these first chapters are set in a concentration camp, and there are some really awful things happening. Even more than the awfulness you would expect. Read to page 34.
Day Two (DDRD 1,092): October 28, 2020
Read to page 57.
Also started some ancillary "reading": the audiobook version of the one volume abridgment of The Stalingrad Trilogy came in to the library. And I was happy to see that it was in
Playaway format...aka digital non-volatile flash memory audio file. I love these things. They are so much more convenient than any other kind of audiobook, I think. Now the trick is to find time to listen to it. A total of 18 hours and 39 minutes, actually. That's hard to get your hands on when you're hanging out with two autistic adults pretty much all day every day, but I'll figure it out. On the whole I try to avoid abridgments, but in this case--
Which puts us at a grand total of 3,894 pages.
Well. That's a whole lotta love, isn't it?
Hence the one volume abridgment.
ANYway...whilst reading this morning--with the narrative turning to Stalingrad and The Battle Of--I couldn't help but notice something about Vasily Grossman's methodology.
On page 48, he follows up on a description of a skirmish with some comments on how Time functions in such a situation. He waxes philosophical about that for a moment, then shifts his commentary to how a girl who has been to a New Year's Ball feels about the passing of time. And then he shifts his commentary to how a convict feels about the passing of time during a long prison sentence. Then he brings it back to the soldier in battle's perceptions. There's a line in the Introduction to Burton Raffel's translation of Beowulf which says something like, "the story is ruminative rather than narrowly narrative." (I don't have it in me to look up the line, but I think that's pretty much spot on.) And clearly that is also true of Vasily Grossman. And I think it's clear that the writer hopes that by doing it this way, he makes the experience live in the reader's mind. It also risks taking the reader out of the story, of course. But it works for me.
Read a little bit more...to page 73. I got excited when my favorite character from Stalingrad...Viktor Pavlovich Shtrum...came onto the scene. But my excitement staggered a bit...because I thought that this novel picked up immediately after Stalingrad...and the action on the front lines seemed to confirm that...but with respect to Shtrum and his family, that isn't true. He's back home with his wife, living with his wife's mum, Alexandra Vladimirovna Shaposhnikova. I'd be interested to find out if the translator, Robert Chandler, has anything to say about that in the newer edition of Life and Fate.
I'm also surprised that I'm not really sinking into this book the way I did with Stalingrad. You'd think that since it is essentially just Part IV of that book that there'd be no adjustment period. I'm not sure what is up with that. Could it be that Chandler's translation isn't as smooth here--since he did the work on it fifteen years or so early on? I don't know. News as it happens.
Day Three (DDRD 1,093): October 29, 2020
Read to page 110. My disorientation continues as some story details have shifted again, but I'm also finally beginning to sink into the story, so that helps. At one point one of the characters refers to a play, Truth Is Good, But Love Is Better. I heard that. There are times when telling The Truth is just selfish and cruel. Love IS better.
Day Four (DDRD 1,094): October 30, 2020
Read to page 140. Which was a bit less than I wanted to read, but it was a busy day. For one thing, not only did Joe want me to watch a James Bond film (the execrable Licence to Kill), but Fatima arrived from Amazon and I actually wanted to watch that one, so I sat down with Jacqueline to do that. And there was other stuff as well. I'm thinking about taking the book to bed with me tonight to read a bit more, but I've also been nibbling at a Greenland Noir novel (I shit thee not), and I may have to do that for my bedtime / middle of the night reading this time around.
ANYway...it was a good 30 page read today. Grossman had a couple of flashes of humor, which kind of caught me by surprise. I don't remember having seen that before. For example, this:
"In the end he talked and argued himself into another journey at government expense to Tashkent."
What happened was the character had been indiscreet and said some things that didn't play well to the Soviet government, so he was sent to some kind of detention camp. So not Ha Ha funny, but funny, right?
Also, probably funnier to my twice-divorced and many more times jilted self...is a bit on love. A character named Limonov compares love to a vitamin deficiency--"a spiritual vitamin deficiency! you know, the same terrible hunger that drives cows, bulls and deer when they need salt. What I myself lack, what those close to me lack, what my wife lacks, I search for in the object of my love. A man's wife is the cause of his vitamin deficiency! And a man craves in his beloved what for years, for decades, he has been unable to find in his wife. Do you understand?"
All I can say is...yep.
I also interluded with a few pages from Bratsk Station and Other New Poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko...a book I was inspired / required to pick off of my shelf because of the Stalgres Power Station and its director, Stepan Spiridonov (Marusya's husband), in Stalingrad...and yes, he continues into Life and Fate. I've enjoyed the Beaten Station poems I've read so far, though it's been slow going. (I'm still only halfway through, and it's only about a 200 page book.) And I'd have to say that much of the poetry seemed at least a little awkward...maybe due to a less than wonderful translator, but I suspect some of the awkwardness is just part of Yevtushenko's mode. For instance, in one poem the Power Station talks to an Egyptian Pyramid. Hmmm. But today I read a longer poem entitled "Nushka," and I thought it was just brilliant. I poked around on the internet to see if I could find a different translation...just to see...but no dice. Although I did find some interesting paintings by one Fanny Nushka Moreaux, so you might want to have a look at that.
As for the poem, though...here's a sample:
Day Five (DDRD 1,095): October 31, 2020
Read to page 180. The reading is starting to feel smoother now, so maybe it wasn't anything about the text itself which was putting me off. Maybe it had more to do with getting used to the fact that the storyline coming in from Stalingrad had been fractured a bit...plus the fact that the focus was on different characters, even some I hadn't known well (if at all) from the first novel. At any rate...it is starting to click.
I also found a Life and Fate mini-series on Amazon Prime Video...a twelve episode, 7 hours + (I didn't have it in me to count, so it might be longer, but it's at least 7 hours long) adaptation of the novel. So I watched the first episode (49 minutes). I'm sorry to say that I didn't recognize too many of the characters, but I thought it was very well done. (And speaking of...if you have Amazon Prime, this series is available for the Watch Party option. I'm ready anytime you are.) The scene between Tolya and his mother (no spoilers) was really powerful stuff.
I also listened to a bit of my Stalingrad (on Playaway) and found it to be quite interesting. One of the things it talked about was how the Russians were so short of men that when they had a lot of battlefield losses, they would have to call up men who had not even finished their training. Then, because they were only partially trained and completely inexperienced, those soldiers would be killed off pretty quickly, and they would have to call up new soldiers who had even less training, and how the cycle just kept making things worse for the Russians. How on earth they managed to survive...much less triumph...against the Nazi war machine is pretty incredible. That's one of the reasons this battle fascinates me so much: it just seems like one of those It's Impossible To Win, But You Just Keep Fighting stories which I love so much. You know, like Rocky. (The first one. Not those shitty sequels.)
Day Six (DDRD 1,096): November 1, 2020
I happened upon yet another World War II video series with an episode on the Battle of Stalingrad--Soviet Storm: World War II in the East (2010), Season 1 (of 2), Episode 4--free in you have Amazon Prime. It seemed to be a seriously low budget production, with some pretty bad CGI and reenactment footage supplementing a small amount of actual footage...but it was pretty interesting nonetheless, and did a very good job of giving an overview of the battle. It would have been useful to have seen this before reading Stalingrad, actually, as the novel sticks pretty close to the ground's eye view, and it's hard to get an idea of the big picture sometimes. Two startling facts from this video: on the first day of the battle, when the Nazis sent thousands of planes on bombing missions, 80% of the buildings were destroyed and 40,000 people were killed. Can you imagine? This video also gave you a pretty good idea of just how desperately ill-equipped for this battle the Russians were, and makes you wonder how on earth they could have survived this onslaught. There was also some cool information about how the Russians dug underground tunnels to connect buildings so that troops could be moved in without the Nazis seeing them. Oh, there was also a bit about how when the bombers hit the city it started so many fires that burning oil ran down into the Volga River and set the river and boats on it afire.
Read to page 210.
Day Seven (DDRD 1,097): November 2, 2020
Read to page 240.
"The soil of hope – a hope that was senseless and sometimes dishonest and despicable – gave birth to a pathetic obedience that was often equally despicable."
Yep.
BTW, in today's reading there was a scene which I saw in part 1 of the tv series a couple of days ago. (The one where the guy tells the general that Tolstoy wasn't even born when the Napoleonic Wars were going on.) Which surprised me. I'm more than 1/4th of the way through the book now...how can part 1 of 12 be here? I read that they had cut out all of the concentration camp material, but even so...well. We'll see how that goes.
Day Eight (DDRD 1,098): November 3, 2020
Well...it's ☆Election☆Day☆ So I'm about as nervous as the proverbial cat on a hot tin roof, so it's a little hard to concentrate on a Russian novel about World War II. Nevertheless...I persisted.
Read to page 270.
"Past sorrow is to me like wine,
stronger with every passing year."
Pushkin
Day Nine (DDRD 1,099): November 4, 2020
Read to page 300. The Election Nightmare continues. I did read 30 pages, but I have been paying way too much attention to the news, I'm sorry to say. I feel like the mosquito who has burrowed into a person's arm and his wingman is shouting, "Pull out! You hit an artery!" But I can't pull out.
Anyway. Looks like I found a typo...which might be the second one in Life and Fate. (Did I record the other one? Must check. Someday.) Anyway, on the bottom of page 287, a character says, "It's a good stuff." And he's not Italian.
I also found this line, which I thought works on a couple of levels for me:
"What power and clarity lies in the word! In the unfettered, carefree word! The word that is still spoken in spite of all one's fears!" (299)
Thassall for now.
Day Ten (DDRD 1,100): November 5, 2020
Read to page 332. And hey...aNOTHer typo on page 311: "He say's our block's being split up." Guess it's time for another email. Unfortunately different publisher, so I'm not betting on how that will go.
Day Eleven (DDRD 1,101): November 6, 2020
Read to page 352. A bit less than I usually read, and even a bit less than I wanted to read, but between checking the election results and reading my second Greenland Noir novel, Christoffer Petersen's Blood Floe (with the unwieldy subtitle Conspiracy, Intrigue, and Multiple Homicide in the Arctic)...which is quite compelling stuff, really...well, you know. Something had to give. One bit that I wanted to note...mostly because I want to send it to my big sister, who really IS a rocket scientist (with a Ph.D. in something something Mathematics):
"It was not mathematics that reflected the world; the world itself was a projection of differential equations, a reflection of mathematics." (348)
Pretty sure that Sis will find that groovy.
Day Twelve (DDRD 1,102): November 7, 2020
Read to page 380...and might read some more.
I've also been listening to the Stalingrad Playaway...sneaking it in here and there...and I have to say that ✋ I find it interesting, but ✋ more than a little bit tedious. I don't know if I'll continue with it. But I do know that I am grateful to the LFPL for saving me a whole lotta spending money, because Vasily Grossman has me so hopped up about Stalingrad that I was quite ready to throw some money down to buy at least the first book of this five book trilogy. BTW, I earlier made reference to poorly trained Russian troops being sent to the front, and have since realized (had to go back and re-listen to the chapter) that this was actually a reference to the German troops. So there's that. Funny, sometimes you wonder how on earth the Russians managed to turn this German war machine aside, and other times you wonder how the Germans were even able to mount a credible offense.
Day Thirteen (DDRD 1,103): November 8, 2020
Read to page 410.
Mostovskoy thinks, "Yes, old age is here to stay...."
Sooner or later, it just hits you.
Day Fourteen (DDRD 1,104): November 9, 2020
Read to page 451. Which means I'm past the halfway point, by the way. And averaging about 32 pages per day, which isn't quite as good at with Stalingrad, but is still 3 times my original goal, so I'm okay with that.
Meanwhile...
"I've heard people say that under communism everyone will receive according to his needs. But won't everyone just end up getting drunk? Especially if they receive according to their needs from the moment they get up."
I think this guy is on to something.
"The Russian and German trenches were so close together that part of the bombardment fell on the German assault-troops waiting in the front line."
I assume that that is true...and if so...wow. Just wow.
Day Fifteen (DDRD 1,105): November 10, 2020
Read to page 482.
Another typo: page 459 second and third line "...but he he stopped himself – it really wasn't something to discuss on the phone."
And a line that tickled my fancy:
"There are times when everyone behaves pathetically."
Made me think of the many MANY times I've behaved pathetically...mostly something having to do with a woman.
Day Sixteen (DDRD 1,106): November 11, 2020
Read to page 500. Which is probably the thinnest bunch of pages I've read since Day 1000...and I may, indeed, read some more...but (1) it was a bad day and (2) I've really been getting into Christoffer Petersen’s Greenland Crime series...in fact, I've put down the first three (of five) in twelve days, and I am kind of anxious to start book four. So we'll see. Also, Grossman keeps interrupting the story...sometimes for long stretches...to comment on this and that, and it's kind of throwing off my grove. It's like trying to watch a movie while somebody sitting at the other end of the couch says things like, "Oh, man, that guy has a 70s porn mustache!" (Which just happens to be something one of my former girlfriends had to say about two minutes into Jesus Christ Superstar. There was no way in hell that THAT relationship was going to work out.)
Day Seventeen (DDRD 1,107): November 12, 2020
Read to page 538.
On page 533, Grossman says of a character whose job is to clean out the gas chamber after it's been used, "He had already experienced the benefits of Hitler's policies; life had improved immeasurably for him and his family." I thought that pretty much summed up many of Trump's supporters.
Day Eighteen (DDRD 1,108): November 13, 2020
Read to page 568.
My #1🌞 asked a question about music on his Facebook page, and I responded with this quote from my reading today:
"People in camps, people in prisons, people who have escaped from prison, people going to their death, know the extraordinary power of music. No one else can experience music in quite the same way. What music resurrects in the soul of a man about to die is neither hope nor thought, but simply the blind, heart-breaking miracle of life itself."
I added that Vasily Grossman also refers to music as the key that unlocks a person's innermost core... reminiscent of "Kafka's ax."
A bit later (page 543), he says of a character, "Sofya Levinton had no future, only a past."
It's literally true in Sofya's case. I can't help but feel that it's pretty close to literally true for me, too. But I guess time will tell.
And I found yet another typo: on page 545 five lines from the bottom: "machine - gunes."
Definitely time for another email...but I think I'm going to get my hands on the more recent printing to check...just to see if, per chance, these typos were caught. The library only has one copy of Life and Fate, though, and it's out right now, so I don't want to request it and pull it out of someone's hands. More news as it happens.
Day Nineteen (DDRD 1,109): November 14, 2020
Read to page 587...but I'm pretty sure that I'm going back for more.
At the point where I stopped, Viktor Shtrum had just cut loose on his boss at the Institute, even going so far as to threaten to resign over several issues. He then goes home, and within a few minutes he is wishing that he could take back everything he had said. That rang very true in my ears. How many times righteous indignation has led me to say things which, while true, were so much better left unsaid? But alas, there's no way to recall that email...much less that spoken word.
In other news, I appear to have found yet another proofreading error. Viktor is naming a bunch of famous scientists, and at one point (on page 581) makes reference to "Heinsenberg." I don't think that there is any doubt that this should be "Heisenberg"...though I am checking around just to be sure.
And...yep. Read to page 600. Which leaves less than 280 pages (since I've already read through the list of characters which occupies the last half-dozen or so pages). Oddly enough, I'm not feeling very compelled by this reading. In fact were I not approaching it via the X pages per day approach, I fear that I would be focusing more on the Greenland Noir books I've been reading. It's not that I don't like the book, because I do. And I really like several of the characters. But the story seems a bit fragmented. For one thing, we have characters on the front lines in Stalingrad, characters in a prison camp, characters in a concentration camp, and characters in...um, I think Moscow. That's a lot to keep track of. Maybe too much for me. Stalingrad seemed much more focused. Also, Grossman is a much more intrusive narrator in Life and Fate, and while that occasional produces some really interesting and enlightening commentary, it also pulls you out of the story...and, to be honest, at times he is downright preachy. I guess my opinion could change in the last 1/3rd of the novel, but right now I think that Stalingrad was the superior work, actually. Come to think of it, that's what translator Robert Chandler came 'round to thinking...after initially being a bit dismissive of Stalingrad. I'm also wondering (again) if Chandler had another go at the translation of Life and Fate when it was re-released. I know that the translator has a huge impact on the quality of the work, and if he did a mulligan, I'd be tempted to read it again. But you know...right now I'm not too excited about that prospect. Which is a shame, since I have been pretty hot for Vasily Grossman for the past couple of months.
Well...time will tell. And so will I. But I'm probably not going to push myself too hard to get to the end of this novel unless something changes.
Day Twenty (DDRD 1,110): November 15, 2020
Read to page 631.
Day Twenty-One (DDRD 1,111): November 16, 2020
Read to page 671. Which means 200 pages to go. Time to start thinking about what that next book is going to be, I suppose.
Oh, and there was this:
"...no one ever sincerely believes his own failings to be equal to those of other people." (668)
Day Twenty-Two (DDRD 1,112): November 17, 2020
Read to page 710.
Day Twenty-Three (DDRD 1,113): November 18, 2020
Read to page 750.
I don't know that this is true:
"The torments of fear and hunger, the awareness of impending disaster slowly and gradually humanized men, liberating their core of freedom." (731)
It seems to me that fear, hunger, and the awareness of impending disaster are precisely the things which dehumanize men and make it possible for them to commit all kinds of atrocities. Something along the lines of this:
"...he had broken the fragile dyke that had protected the purity of his soul from the seething darkness around him." (736)
Finally, last night I was quoting Robert Burns' "To a Mouse" to a friend...
"This soft, white snow settling over the carnage of the city was time itself; the present was turning into the past, and there was no future."(743)
Day Twenty-Four (DDRD 1,114): November 19, 2020
Read to page 801. Not quite sure how that happend, actually, but there it is. It means I only have 70 pages to go now, so I would anticipate finishing up sometime on Saturday. I have to say that while I have enjoyed / benefitted from the reading, I don't think I'll be sad to see it go. This novel was just not the equal of Stalingrad. Chandler said something like, "Life and Fate is more theme-driven than Stalingrad," which is why he ended up concluding that the latter was the superior work (despite his earlier denigration of it), but I don't really think that's it. I think the difference is that in Life and Fate, Grossman is constantly pulling us out of the story so that he can comment on the action and the larger context (among other things), and so the reading is just kind of jagged. Just as you start to fall into the story, you're pulled back out of it.
There are some great moments, though. In today's bit, for instance, there's a moment when a guy who is being interrogated starts to see his questioner in a surrealistic / Picasso-ish way:
"But how evil he looked now. His very ordinary face...suddenly lost its ordinariness. He seemed to be made up of distinct cubes that had yet to be gathered into the unity of a human being. His eyes were on one cube, his slow hands on another; his mouth that kept opening to ask questions was on a third. Sometimes the cubes got mixed up and out of proportion. His mouth became vast, his eyes were set in his wrinkled forehead and his forehead was in the place that should have been occupied by his chin."
That is my kind of fucked-up shit, for sure. But those excellent moments are kind of few and far between. I don't know if I need to read any more Vasily Grossman after this. And that's a shame, because I think Stalingrad is one of my favorite novels ever, and Life and Fate is supposed to be his Master Work. But I guess sometimes it just be like that.
Day Twenty-Five (DDRD 1,115): November 20, 2020
Read a couple of things in Yevgeny Yevtushenko's Bratsk Station and Other New Poems which I thought were noteworthy:
"...hate is always powerless
if love, instead of contemplating, fights."
from "The Night of Poetry"...which is pretty darned hopeful and maybe even uplifting, especially during these days of neo-Fascism and pandemic...and this
"...if a hundred are beating somebody up,
howling in a frenzy, even if for a good cause--
I will never make one hundred and one!"
which is, in a way, pretty much a low bar kind of statement, but in these days still smells like courage. I'm about 60 pages shy of the end of Bratsk Station now, and I'd like to finish it before I exit Life and Fate, but I would have to push it tonight to do that, as I read to page 840 today, which leaves me with a mere 31 more pages, and I'm pretty sure that I'll finish that off tomorrow morning. And then? Well, I haven't actually decided yet....
Day Twenty-Six (DDRD 1,116): November 21, 2020
Well, that (↑) didn't happen, but I did wake up at 3:30 am this morning, so I had a cup of coffee, watched the third episode of the tv series Life and Fate...which I've decided is excellent, by the way, and I intend to finish watching the series, even though I'll be finished with the book and moving on, moving on tomorrow...and then finished reading Bratsk Station and Other New Poems. It was an interesting collection of poems. There's something awkward and naive about Yevgeny Yevtushenko's poetry, both in subject matter and diction. Vis-Ã -vis subject matter, he writes from the perspective of a pyramid, a power station, a jukebox...which just seems kind of odd and stilted. There are moments when it works, though. (Also moments when it doesn't work--at least not for me.) Vis-Ã -vis diction, that could must be the translator's hand, of course, but he just seems to choose very clunky words and phrases at times. He seems like a very rough-hewn poet...kind of a Samson Shillitoe, but without the verbal grace. I might read some more of his poetry in the collection I got from the library...even though my original reason for getting it--to see if a different translation made the Bratsk Station poems a bit more resonant...turned out to be a bust, as so few of those poems were included in the new collection, and the ones that were included were pretty much identical. So there's that.
Oh, yeah, I have to confess that the Life and Fate tv series has another attractive quality beyond the compelling story, interesting characters, and realistic scenes of The Battle of Stalingrad: the countenance of one Polina Agureeva, with whom I am currently smitten.
She reminds me a bit of Sara Gilbert...and in some ways is a kind of normal looking (as opposed to glamorous) person...but I find her extremely attractive. Especially in a hat. Maybe it's just me.
P.S. I just found out that there was a BBC dramatization of Life and Fate which starred Kenneth Branagh! (Life and Fate: The Complete Series). And another BBC dramatization of Stalingrad, also starring KB! (Hmm...I wonder what his middle name is. I'm hoping it's Gilbert or George.) That might be worth signing up for a free trial of Audible sometime...though I haven't been doing so well with recorded books lately. I don't have enough solo walking time to go that way, and when I listen at night in bed, I never make it to the end of the 15 minute SLEEP timer I set. Which is why I returned the Playaway of the David M. Glantz Stalingrad to the library. I got halfway through, but realized that I was getting very little from it, at least in part due to the fragmented listening approach I had been taking. (Although I have to say that the detail was a bit much for me...and keep in mind that this was a conDENSEd version of the five book "trilogy." I think the library just saved me a couple of hundred dollars there, because I was getting pretty hot for that "trilogy" at one point.
Anyway...onward.
DDR Day 1000 to Day 2000:
(1) Leviathan 63 days, 729 pages
(2) Stalingrad 27 days, 982 pages
