Languages

Driving to a prayer reading to commemorate the death of a relative, a man’s path takes an unexpected turn in this gripping short story by Alisa Ganieva.   The road climbed gradually up the mountain. After the excruciating evening traffic around Levashinsky, driving was fast and easy. The sorrel-scented night air rushed through the cracked window. Kebedov had already turned off the highway onto a crunching gravel road and kept glancing at the glowing face of his watch. About...

Questions of national and cultural belonging are at the heart of this poem by Danyil Zadorozhnyi.   Video: Danyil Zadorozhnyi reads "Letter to Ukraine" in the original Russian. well, what are you anyway—waves? or maybe particles— this ain’t atoms, baby, piercing the air like pins, freeing space from former contexts and discourses; it’s poplar fuzz somewhere near granny’s place outside of moscow, mosquito-bitten legs, genderless constellations like...

Translator’s note: This is the final chapter of a semi-autobiographical but speculative novella. The protagonist is the only subject of an extremely high-profile research project: a celebrity professor of the “experimental humanities” has apparently attempted to transform her into an Ubermensch by harnessing her traumatic experiences as an immigrant and émigré. The ninth and final chapter, which seems poised to take place a year later and in which I break...

Dinara Rasuleva questions received notions of home and national identity in this poem about her relationship to Russia.   Video: This video was created by the Russian-language, Berlin-based TV channel OstWest for a series called "Living Poets Society," which featured contemporary Russophone poets living in Germany. Used with permission from OstWest.   Words Without Borders · Dinara Rasuleva reads "Время...

A Russian pop star’s strange encounter with an airport cleaning lady, cars falling from the sky, and a world-ending fire––three very short stories from Alla Gorbunova find the fantastical in the everyday.   Video: Alla Gorbunova reads "Oy Oy Oy" in the original Russian.   Oy Oy Oy There’s a man lying down in a grave somewhere With the same tattoos as me. Coil In the bathroom of the Krasnoyarsk airport, pop starlet Amanda, passing through on her tour,...

Personal and interior worlds bleed into everyday experiences in these three short poems by Ksenia Zheludova.   Words Without Borders · Ksenia Zheludova reads "древняя бабья забава" ("an age-old female pastime") Listen to Ksenia Zheludova read "an age-old female pastime" in the original Russian.   an age-old female pastime: bringing home in one’s hem...

Translator’s note: As the Russian-Ukrainian war was launched in 2014, Xenia Emelyanova posted this recording of herself reciting this poem to the Facebook page of an antiwar activist. It was an act of great personal bravery.   Destined from birth. What’s destined from birth? That when they took you from your mother mucus-covered, dove-colored, somewhere up there, in the heavenly spheres, it’s already known where you’ll lay your head forever. And while the...

Poet and translator Galina Rymbu speaks with the editor Ilya Danishevsky about the place of poetry, mass media, and literary texts in today’s Russia.   Ilya Danishevsky, a writer whose work blurs the boundary between poetry and prose, is also one of the best-known (and youngest) literary editors in Russia. He had his own alternative publishing project, Anhedonia, at the leading publishing house AST from 2015 to 2019. In addition, he is the literary editor of the...

A queer love triangle revolves around the music of Schubert in this short story by Natalia Rubanova. Intermezzo Annette sneaks: got to be quiet, quiet as a mouse, a mouse! Careless, better to keep to the left, the left, no pillows there—c u r i o u s: is he really sleeping or just pretending, and if he is, God have mercy, again? Annette tries not to think—not to think about that. Annette knows—there, in the silver Honda, decorating the darkness with all...

In this essay, Kazakh writer Lilya Kalaus predicts what will happen when the COVID-19 quarantine comes to an end.   “Right, then, after the war, six in the evening!” Vodička shouted. "Maybe come at 6:30 instead, in case I’m running late,” answered Švejk. Vodička’s voice came again from far away. “You can’t make it at six?!” “Fine, I’ll be there at six!” came the response from Vodička’s...

Zira Naurzbayeva pays homage to an older generation of women struggling to make the transition from village communities to urban living in contemporary Kazakhstan. Listen to Zira Naurzbayeva reading an excerpt from "The Beskempir" in Russian.   The roar, filled with anger and a hot wrath, changed into a long, sad howl. My horror was quickly replaced by doubt, because that scream had sounded on a sunny summer day in Academgorodok, somewhere among the brand-new, pink...

The following pages are not intended to be representative of contemporary Russian poetry per se, but rather to introduce some of the most extraordinary poets working outside of the main cannon. If anything, the three poets collected here are “outliers,” who yet may be read as having points of commonality with developments in post-war American poetry. While each is singular and sui generis, collectively they are representative of a relatively new trend in Russian poetry...

The postwar ruins (Roofs ripped off, The charred walls.) do not resemble Skeletons, stripped by the predators— The gnawed-upon scraps of ribs, Crushed to dust cranial bones. Only that the same birds Flock to the remains As to scorched ground. 2003   To be struck in the forest by a flash of light, where there’s crunch And crackling, rustle and creaking underfoot, and the hush That brings to mind wheezes and groans, whispering and sighs, Where every measly bush is...

On the Death of Jean Vigo  The day was silent to distraction,  only the dog’s growl traveled beyond the window  undulating slightly, barely eschewing  the bellows of the echo. A person—  that’s something interior (therefore, incapable of habituating itself to Being).  To rise, get out of bed, handle a book, open a responsive door—  no more than trifles,  but these ministrations are mystical rites when  they are inspired...

Businessman from Mongolia. Irkutsk Like a raven on a stripped branch, sitting alone on the roof of    a highrise. Having lost everything, from the height of the thirteenth floor,    dangles his feet. The angels of death—the photographers, TV journalists—    have already turned on their cameras, The embassy, the other side of the sacred shore, has already been    notified. Enkh Etrech, dear one, what have you...

Andrei Krasniashikh at the intersecton of soccer and drink Video: Andrei Krasniashikh reads “Haunted Swing.” Tonight, I’ll roast up some sunflower seeds, a whole bowlful, and plop myself in front of the television to watch the soccer game. Spartak will be playing Dynamo and I’ll be glued to the screen, tossing shells next to the plate, and following the game with bated breath. I’ll be desperately rooting for Spartak, but Dynamo will win, and I’ll so...

An Unfinished Play In Andrei Platonov’s unfinished play from 1938, two young orphans seek out their promised land.   Characters DUSYA, an orphan TATYANA FILIPPOVNA, DUSYA’s aunt ARCHAPOV ARKADY, the aunt’s husband MITYA, an orphan MITYA’s UNCLE A YOUNG WOMAN, the uncle’s girlfriend   ACT 1 Scene 1 (A room in the small old house of a tradesman. A dresser. Above it are photographs of the owners’ relatives; on it stand aging souvenirs and...

The whole soldier doesn’t suffer— it’s just the legs, the arms, just blowing snow, just meager rain. The whole soldier shrugs off hurt— it’s just missile systems “Hail” and “Beech,” just bullets on the wing, just happiness ahead. Just meteorological pogroms, geo-Herostratos wannabes, just the girl with the pointer poking the map in the stomach. Just thunder, lightning, just dreadful losses, just the day with a dented helmet, just God,...

Crack! The night drained dry by sleeplessness. The din of plumbing in my head. A March morning, blue-gray tinged pink. Crack! All the soot of night is in me. Flowers, post office, bank, food. The day looms. She wanted to give me a picture of Father. Crack! What a nightmare. A mechanical rook on every street. Ice picks and spades scraping. Gravel wormholes in the snow. Granules grinding underfoot. My legs grow longer with every step. My body sprouts eyes. A heap of some kind drags into...

On October 30, 2012, a group of civil society activists in Moscow freed twelve slaves from the Produkty grocery store, owned by a Kazakhstani couple, Zhansulu Istanbekova and her husband, Saken Muzdybayev. Nearly all of those released were women from the city of Shymkent in Kazakhstan, which is also Istanbekova’s hometown. Istanbekova had at various times invited them to Moscow to work in her store. Once there, they had been robbed of their passports and forced to work without pay for...

Georgii Izmailov, a successful St. Petersburg businessman, attends the glitzy, high-profile presentation of his own latest project, the largest business center in the city, together with his business partners and colleagues. Igor Voevodin, a young male model working for the agency organizing the event, catches his eye, and events develop rapidly.    On the sixth floor they were met by stewards who gave them little pink tickets for the lottery and showed them through into the...

The screech of streetcars falls silent. Juice trickles from a windfall pomegranate branching— as though a monster had grown through the rails or lung tissue rotted and the bronchi and vessels of a woolly and leathery body were bared. Vladimir goes to Crimea. He is seduced by Alimeh. Alexey marries Venus. Saturn isn't eating. Deported adolescents become integrated into society. Pulpy prejudice follows, then yummy nebulae, translucent excesses, affinities bitten off. How is this...

Mingir, a village in the Hincesti region, was famous throughout Moldova for its residents, who habitually trafficked in kidneys. What’s more, the kidneys were their own. There were already thirty such people in the town. Once in a while a correspondent for the BBC, Radio Liberty, or Der Speigel would come to town, since every six months their bosses would demand a scandal. So they’d do a story on Mingir. For a bottle of cognac, reporters filled each other in on the town and its...

Back in the early 1990s, when Wild-West capitalism came to Russia, I was a chelnok, or shuttle trader. My wife and I (we weren’t married at that stage) traveled the whole world in search of cheap merchandise and markets to sell it at. Well, not exactly the whole world—but almost. The most common way of doing business was to buy merchandise in Russia, take it to Poland, sell it for ten or fifteen times as much, and get hold of dollars at a good rate; then you traveled to China,...

In the catalogue of sins in his Divine Comedy, which is as random as it is insanely detailed, Dante found room for the sin that “dared not speak its name” long before Oscar Wilde’s trial—one of which Dante’s beloved guardian and tutor Brunetto Latini was also guilty. (He placed such sinners in the Seventh Circle of Hell, near the suicides and usurers, but above thieves and bribe-takers.) I always wished that Dante had added another sin, one which probably...

I recently read something that amused me: one poet was suggesting that we name a steamship after every one of his contemporaries. In his imagination, all his friends from the literary world took the shape of a liner, a yacht, or a sailing ship, or even a cruiser. They sailed through the ocean and made a powerful fleet. How about some nuclear submarines with poets’ names on them, too? . . .  And then I read Uladzimir Niakliaeu’s new book. And what I found there was not a...

It is good to kill in winter. Especially if it has snowed overnight, and the ground is covered with a delicate blanket of white. You put the bound naked body on it. The blood from the wounds flows more freely in the cold frosty air, and the warmth of life departs with it. If you are lucky and she does not die too quickly, she will see the solid film of ice cover what was flowing through her veins so recently. Red on white, there is no more beautiful combination than that. They say...

“Vanya, why are you sitting in the dark?” “I’m looking at the picture,” came the imperturbable reply. “What picture?” What new fantasy had come into his mind? I walked up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. A picture frame he had brought in off the street was propped against our pot-bellied fridge. It had a picture in it. I flicked the switch and warm light flowed down from our tumblerlike lampshades. A naked blonde, her...

It was a winter morning when the Tangerine King rolled into my room. He was perfectly round and had a golden crown on his head. Otherwise I wouldn’t have recognized him. I didn’t know the reason for his visit; he had probably grown tired of his narrow plastic box, or fed up with his servants. I wasn’t expecting such an important guest, and as soon as I detected the scent of plantation—the sweat of thousands of hands colored with an orange hint of...

Her day was not going well. Her cap had fallen in the dirt, and there was a gaping hole in the sleeve of her T-shirt. She hadn’t even felt it snag on anything.  And there was an angry bruise just above her elbow. Where had that come from? Not noticing a torn sleeve was one thing, but to have hurt her arm and not even feel it? It gave you pause for thought. Maria sat in the grass and thought listlessly to herself. There was nothing else to do. Everyone had scattered in search of...

“One ought not to cause offense to people,” said Old Fazyl. “I try never to offend anyone. And one ought not to quarrel with people; it is dangerous to speak unkindly to them. Even if you are their master, you must not curse them, especially if they do not consider themselves guilty.”   “Because God will punish you?” asked little Hania. “God’s punishment comes through the hands of the insulted,” said Fazyl, sighing....

from  resurrection to sunday  we cross off dates on the calendar waiting for salvation   it comes in an appearance of mountain air in the gas chamber of a city   silvery ants drag stones up to the summit rub against steel sides   itching tracks left on the neck from a tight collar   under quilted clouds   © Aigerim Tazhi. By arrangement with the...

For a long time the fact that the Krivovs drank was something only their son knew. When it began, Yurka had just started first grade. In the beginning, the Krivovs were embarrassed by their disease and drank together in their smoked-up apartment.   Perched on the windowsill behind the curtain, Yurka would draw squiggles on his writing assignments, memorize the poem about "the forest, like a tower chamber painted" to the sound of his parents' droning, and glue colored paper...

Have you ever traveled in an overcrowded bus? Rammed up against the window with your cheek squashed against the glass and the handrail bruising your ribs? No need to answer. Of course you have. No, really, I’m not being rude. Why am I asking? Because I need somewhere to start and that was the setting of the incident which set off the thoughts which underlie this narrative.  All right? So I got on a bus. Well no, I didn’t just get on. I forced my way in like a digger biting...

An uncoincidence, a noncoincidence. Oh, how broad are the earth’s estates, oh, how unthinkable is grace here. How unobtrusive is God's care, how many reasons to sob inconsolably. You thirst for communication—the time is mute. You thirst for flight—unflyable weather. You thirst for an answer—a blind wall, stagnant water, swampy duckweed and someone’s cold...

the last name of the player on the german team translates into russian as pig crawling up a blond graceful creature the polish boys got lost at the equator with nothing to breathe amidst the qualifying south american auschwitz the polish boys will asphyxiate doubly poplar down a million white fluffy unofficial balls and none of them counts eleven glasses of islam drown in mexican tequila they say that in the daniel defoe novel the round island of tobago there was...

Soul, you are a street, leading into rain from the outskirts full of dry leaves: it is more humid closer to the central plaza—        I am a paving block and slipperiness.   Between the tight boulders the water weakly beats, like the rataplan of an injured regiment—the grass and leaves of past warm years hide there.   The quieted footsteps will not disturb us: the nervous race has all but fully spilled and hidden in the suburbs—now...

Just gone to bed Oh well, not turning the light on Barefoot Jerking the shin back from the cold rim And nothing Something gripes inside and However I strain doesn’t come Remembered in horror M.P. telling how adenoma they reach it with a cutter through the urethra good gracious to the bathroom not feeling the pain hit the toes against the door jamb okay okay here’s a toothbrush with aero- dynamic handle squatting push it furiously into the rear up and down...

Babel loved plump women. Where there’s lots of flesh there’s lots of sweetness. Lots of warmth, heat, tenderness, there’s a caress of sunshine and a velvety splash of the sea. In the damp, spongy folds of skin and in the large soft breasts, whether at rest or swaying gently in motion, there’s the comfort of a gently rocking cradle. French women—take your pick—were thin and wiry, coquettish and agile like monkeys.Hard to keep your eye on them. They...

That night, under the muffled, machine-like sound of the rain, the professor dreamed that this woman had come to him. Naked and very skinny, she was as perfect as a Latin letter, a sample of a special human typeface. Tucking up her angular elbow, she lay on her back, and her belly was as white as a mug of milk. There was nothing special in the lizard-narrow creature, but all the beauty on the banks of the corundum river had been a preface to this body, to the maddening shadow under her...

"Hey young fellow, it's your stop . . ." Sluzhkin was being prodded by the old guy on the opposite bench. He unglued his eyes, sprang onto his knees still in his sleeping bag, and shot a look through the upper window pane, because the lower one was thickly overgrown with a dense cover of icy ferns. The lopsided, gray little houses of Valyozhnaya were undulating past the electric train, across the hillside. "Code red, gang!" Sluzhkin roared. "We nearly missed Valyozhnaya!" The...

He walked, a flame before him, It seemed to have appeared behind one shoulder, then the other, There were not many people, there was no sun, before the demolition Of the house they stood the day before Pokrov, Sent circles out And came forth from the Earth Before the face of those left without a roof. Last time they crossed by paths made up of smoke From house to house, to sit in attic windows Knee deep in shit, around the corners inaccessible by Earth, With one's own...

1 A woman tells the Dollmaker. —What happens in your shop Why do you spend all night and day in there It can't be for the sake of money You wouldn't have time to spend it anyway So why the work all day? Look there, the bootmaker Returning from the fair He sways under the wind like a young oak You know, he's got a knife in his coat pocket Can't bring himself to part with it you see And look, The baker closed up early To get a taste of that new wine He was...

. . . of sitting around the table and talking of voyages to faraway lands and strange events,—of how it all is, and how it may be, and how it always is, and, then again, infrequently; of secret plots and signs, of flights and shots and lines, of lovely ladies and sailing laddies, of snails and demons, of deaths and endeavors, of mermaids and cats, of weather and dread, of comical people, of cannons a little, of miracle prizes and map exercises. 1 Voyages are always precipitated...

My brother ran away from me at Kursky. The depot then was an ordinary railroad station, not the modern monstrosity of cement and colored tile that it is today. It housed a crowd of people in its lobby and had all the warmth of a truly human space. Benches filled the middle, with people sitting shoulder to shoulder. That's where they slept, yawned, ate—and kept a hand on their suitcases and eyes on the Gypsies. The Gypsies themselves were actually headed somewhere by train, just...

An era can be judged by street conversations. "Look, there's a line." "What're they giving out?" "Just get on it, then we'll find out." "How much should I get?" "As much as they'll give you." This touching dialogue from the Brezhnev era should be etched on the stern granite of Lenin's mausoleum—in memory of the great era of socialist paradise. And if anyone were to think seriously about a monument to that period, I would suggest that the empty...

You will have had no difficulty recognizing the German crib tacked onto Daniil Kharms's neologism in the title of my remarks. It is Nietzsche's essay "On the Use and Abuse of History for Life," written in 1874 and published in the collection Untimely Meditations. In the essay, Nietzsche warns of the dangers that arise when a self-sufficient sense of history turns excessive. This historical sense tends to degenerate into an uncritical, antiquarian attitude, which undermines...

I wake up at eight a.m. On the sixteenth floor every day at eight a.m. Sorokin sneezes. After that, on the fifteenth floor, Aunt Masha falls out of bed. I wake up because I live on the fourteenth floor and hear both Sorokin sneezing and Aunt Masha falling. I hear them distinctly, sometimes even wake anticipating the sounds, nervous if they are late. And so, I finally hear a loud sneeze that resembles the blast of an antipersonnel shell, followed by the dull thud of Aunt Masha's...

A girl is sewing herself a dress for the first time. She bought three meters of cheap fabric (just over a ruble a meter), but the fabric turns out to be surprisingly pretty, black with bright bursts of dots, like a nighttime carnival. The girl is in college and has no money—that's first of all. Second, she's just broken out of her schoolgirl shell. Literally—she tried to turn the ruins of her school uniform into a kind of skirt, and it came out hopelessly crooked and...

We could hear the dry coughing of our landlord, Khuta Kursua, through the partition wall, and Mother's eyes were wide with fear. I was ten, my own lesions had barely healed, and now we were neighbors of tuberculosis again. Our landlord was a handsome, thin man, all smiles with his paying guests but ferocious with his wife, although, actually, I was not too interested in the people around me. I had seen the sea for the first time that year and spent the rest of the month savoring the...

The main characters: Sergei Ilyich Tatarnikov: a dissolute and disaffected sixty-year-old historian. Roza Crantz: a middle-aged academic, an art historian and culturologist, enthusiastic about the fall of Soviet Communism, ambitious, and keenly attuned to Western intellectual currents. German Basmanov: a seasoned Party functionary who has adroitly exploited the transition to post-Soviet politics and business life. He has recently been named the director of the Russian branch of...

The first hour says to the second,   I am a hermit. The second hour says to the third,   I am an abyss. The third hour says to the fourth,   put on the morning. The fourth hour says to the fifth,   stars rush down. The fifth hour says to the sixth,   we are late. The sixth hour says to the seventh,   and animals too are clocks. The seventh hour says to the eighth,   you are friends...

I dreamed of Prague at night. It looked the way each of us to whom the words "Old City" speak at least a little would imagine. I knew the Golem had returned, and I ran through the streets hoping to find it. The rain had just passed and "the wet eaves glimmered like sabers," I thought to myself in my sleep. Ahead of me flickered a yellow body, obviously soft, like something made of dough. I was surprised how quickly it moved, and I dashed down a narrow alley to cut off its path. The Golem...

I'm almost like that dark hallway with a few framed photos and lamps on the walls. So many visitors have walked through me, dark and light, depending on the illumination. Copyright Regina Derieva. Translation copyright 2007 by Valzhyna Mort. All rights reserved. Read Regina Derieva's "Unity of Form"

I've always received kingly presents. I got worn-out pans and rusted teapots, patched up bedsheets and unstitched shirts, books, missing pages ripped out for rollies and a piano with knocked-out teeth on the keyboard, chairs without legs and burnt out light bulbs, writing paper from the times of the Chinese cultural revolution, whatever you write on it-- bloodstains appear through its tissue. People zealously granted me headless nails and spools without thread, clocks without hands,...

Bring to me all that's of no use to others: My fire must burn it all! I lure life, and I lure death As weightless gifts to my fire. Fire loves light-weighted things: Last year's brushwood, wreathes, words. Fire blazes from this kind of food. You will rise from it purer than ash! I am the Phoenix; only in the fire I sing. Provide for my miraculous life! I burn high--and I burn to the ground. From now on let your nights be light-filled. The icy fire--the...

Neither with paint, nor with a brush. Light is his kingdom: his hair is gray. The red leaves tell lies. Here light tramples color. Color is trampled by light. The heel of light crushes the chest of color. Isn't it in this, in this-- The secret, the strength, the purpose Of the autumn woods? As if a curtain Over a quiet backwater of days Has been torn--and, following it, sternly . . . As if one envisions one's son Through the chasubles of partings . . ....

Someone's heading for a fatal victory. Trees gesture like tragedies. Sacrificial dance of Judea! Trees flutter like sacramentals. This--a conspiracy against the era: Against weight, number, fraction, and time. This--a veil torn apart: Trees kneel like tombstones . . . Someone's arriving: Heaven is the entrance. Trees salute like festivals. May 7, 1923

What revelations, What truths What do you rustle of, The floods of green? With sacraments Of what raving sibyl, What do you rustle of, What do you rave about? What's in your fluttering? But I know--you cure With the cool of eternity The offense of time. Rising as a youthful Genius, you disparage With the finger of absence The falsehood of sight. So that, as before Earth only seemed to us. So that plans were enacted Only under closed eyelids. And...

It is not fated that, in this world, The strong join the strong. Thus, Siegfried parted from Brunhild, A sword stroke instead of a marriage.In the allied brotherly hatred --Like buffalos!--rock challenging rock. Unknown, he left the marriage bed, And, unknown, she slept. Apart; even in a marriage bed, Apart; even with joined fists, Apart; in the two-pronged language Too late and apart; this--our marriage! But there's a more ancient offense than That: lionlike,...

"La vie," Edith Piaf sings, "La vie, la vie," seize the moment . . . And this voice is eternally right and there's no threat of it being buried in oblivion. "La vie," she sings, where "La" is the article and the word itself is so short--the world has never heard a shorter call. "La vie," she sings, and it breaks into a scream, a throaty scream. Catch, catch this moment given to us for something, by someone. But if it's given, what for? We possess it only in dreams,...

Fate's little pictures drawn by a most slender pen, will hang in the damp air on a little spider's web. The rains draw with their own flying handwriting, and the wind shuffles light strokes like smoke. They draw, as if on the run, almost carefreely. I shall treasure that drawing where you are looking tenderly. I live obediently and quietly. Pianissimo the wind shakes two strokes and a little spider's web.

The wind revels in the quiet night . . . The Lord has marked the coming day in a black draft, so as to recreate it on a clean white copy, and the sky will be bright in a moment and will flare in a crimson strip . . . Is it possible to live without an ideal, without an absolute, without that unarguable beginning-- one for all the universe, without faith, as though in this world-- crazy, sorrowful, arrant, everything one bright day must as in childhood coincide with an answer,...

All this moves and rustles, plays and waves, dances blindly to someone's pipe and crowns someone's thought.It plays and sings and beckons with an apple branch and at times sweetly wounds the soul, at times pours balsam on the soul. Oh, these young worlds, the low canopy of June leaves and the happiness of remaining on the list of the living participants of the game.

"Well, let's fly . . ." "Where to and why?" "Just fly to nowhere after that cloud . . ." Just let's rush off nowhere, nowhere, let's listen to the wires humming and the wind will whistle and the wing, the wing, and from above we'll see how quiet, how white and clean and snowy it is in that long winter in that world which we abandoned.

Knee deep in mud. For centuries, we have stood where the bog waters suck. In the grasp of the inanimate, there are no straight lines. A sack race is good for a laugh. And like the Lord's own trumpets, funnels multiply in the muck. Once again, darling, yours is a resinous, intimate whisper. Once again, I'll bring you pelts and sprigs of heather. But it's all a whim of the estuary, spidering thin borders. By dawn, it looks like a golden wand. At night, a...

My family has always had complicated relations with cars. Our first car was a beige Zaporozhets made in the USSR, which had a Beetle-like design. I was eligible for a model with manual controls because I had a problem with my leg. Getting the car was rather simple: tests on a treadmill, proof that my leg acted weirdly, a certificate proving that I had good eyesight and a stable psyche, and, above all, coming to terms with the woman in charge. To this person, who dealt out these cheap...

Greetings, noble stranger! Your appearance is unfamiliar, as if you were not from these parts. Are you perhaps newly arrived from the distant lands of the North? My name is Akiko. What glorious name do you bear? Type it and press "enter" and Akiko will unlock her door. We are delighted, QWERTY, that you have called into our site, forgotten here amid the mountains of ancient Japan. We are Akiko and the little monkey Mao. If you look down at the lower left corner of the screen, you will...

Translator's Note: Like much of Mikhail Shishkin's writing, "Calligraphy Lesson" is highly allusive and attentive to the formal qualities of a story both inventively told and steeped in Russian atmospherics. The reader will want to be aware of two issues in particular. First, what the English reader may not realize—but the Russian will pick up instantly—is that the various women's names refer to characters from Russian classics: Sofia Pavlovna from...

He just loved that little gizmo. Actually, he didn't like it much at first, because he was hot all over and was running a temperature, while that thing was cool, and he shuddered when it got pressed against him. He turned away and made a face. His head was all wet. But he didn't complain, because by then it was already hard for him to cry. He could only groan hoarsely and shut his eyes. But then he began to reach for it, anyway. Because it was shiny. "You want me to listen to...

It had been Marina's idea. Keep Alexei Afanasievich from finding out about the changes in the outside world. Keep him in the same sunlit but frozen time when the unexpected stroke had cut him down. "Mama, his heart!" Marina had pleaded, having grasped instantly that, no matter how burdensome this recumbent body might be, it consumed much less than it yielded. At the very first, clear-eyed Marina may have been moved by more than this primitive practicality. There had been a period...

susan sarandon from the family felidae doesn't like to cry and never cries we aren't let into the movies but they write, that it'll be fun in the same green chairs like it was 40 years ago the church on the bank: din-dong din-dong susan saran-din-dong somewhere london-din-dong and the same rain if the rain was a wall like the berlin one for instance the one that cut the world in half and the world would divide like a macerated polymer blah...

well hell then what what hell what then wax with one hand leaning with the cheek rubbing with a leg she's a dyed in the wool pioneer perfect pallor, not a drop of tan not a gram of conscience in a shirt, sleeves rolled up a tie white as her with a book without letters, like a living as if dead asking: "kiss me, moscow girl, kiss lenin, he lives between my legs this time didn't go anywhere life swung on the swing more has happened here trust me lenin lives,...

"I'm very happy," said Personov as he left the house for work. "I'm very happy," he reminded himself as he performed the process in reverse that evening. "I'm very happy," he repeated as he rode the carousel with his kids. There were two: a six-year-old boy and a girl of four. The boy was full of curiosity and used to construct fleets of ships out of cardboard; the girl was cute and round-faced and already demonstrated a talent for housekeeping. "I'm very happy,"...

Translator's Note: Three great waves of political cataclysm surged over a city already accustomed to periodic inundation by the black waters of the river Neva: the October Revolution, the purges of the 1930s, and the Nazi blockade decimated the population of St. Petersburg. Vera Nikolaevna was born in their wake, a few years after the Second World War, in its Soviet incarnation: Leningrad. Although her family lived in a communal apartment, the building on Vasilyevsky Island had in...

"Is there anything on earth that has significance, and that could alter the run of events not only on earth but also in other worlds?" I asked my teacher. "There is," he answered. "What is it then?" I asked. "It's..." started my teacher. Suddenly he fell silent. I stood and anxiously awaited his answer. But he said nothing. I stood and said nothing. He said nothing. I stood and said nothing. He said nothing. Both of us are standing there, saying nothing. Ho-la-la! Both of...

If he hadn't been who he was, I never would have married again. I had everything: a child, a job, my freedom. And suddenly there he was . . . clumsy, practically blind, wheezing. Letting someone into your world with so much baggage—twelve years in Stalinist camps, they took him as a boy, sixteen years old. . . . With the burden of that knowledge . . . the differences. That's not what I'd call freedom. What is it? What's the point? Admit that I only pitied him? No. It...

Kelena threw back the sleeve of her kerker and bared one stringy, dried-out breast, which drooped like an empty leather bag. She ordered an extra pair of braziers, so that there was enough light. The men obeyed her without question, spreading out a well-scrubbed leather rug, while Orvo sharpened the shaman-woman's knives with great concentration. Kelena went up to the patient. Her face was long and thin. Tattoo lines disappeared into deep wrinkles like footpaths in the tundra...

To kiss a forehead is to erase worry. I kiss your forehead. To kiss the eyes is to lift sleeplessness. I kiss your eyes. To kiss the lips is to drink water. I kiss your lips. To kiss a forehead is to erase memory. I kiss your forehead.

Grandfather was very strong. When he was working in the kitchen garden or whittling spade handles (for relaxation, he would always whittle handles-there were enough of them piled in a corner of the barn to last us for decades), dressed in his faded shirt with the sleeves rolled up high, Anton would say to himself something like "The rounded bulges of his muscles rolled up and down his arm under the skin" (Anton was fond of expressing things in bookish style). But even now, when Grandfather...

Snoopy Goes to Kasimov I used to torture myself over the question, I was baffled by it: to what could I attribute the incontrovertible fact of my total lack of literary talent? A fluke of nature? Blind chance? Genetic aberration? And this in a family tree, mind you, that's produced five writers minimum, two of which, in the opinion of their contemporaries, made a sizable contribution to the treasurehouse of Russian belles-lettres. My grandfather, who during his lifetime was honored...

I should declare in a steady and powerful voice that the world itself is just a prolonged "mew," which has been fried and served to us instead of a noble "moo." -V. Khlebnikov You ask me what America looks like? America looks like the Aegean Sea. In the West it is inhabited by tribes of bellicose Hollywood people. In the East there are trade cities of Phoenicians and New Yorkers. In the middle, there is a large archipelago of universities and colleges, and boats of cunningly smart...

what is watching always comes to an end: and the day! and the world! . . it is the unique the unceasing - is it over its features that the soul glides: like dust! - and light is not revealed of the always watching! - and dust...

to N. A. in your presence even the toes are as if they remembered! and the mind more strongly pierces our head in your presence! and together perhaps you are that whence separating they drew out: of one kind - in one mystery: deposit of genius in flowers and...

(after the "Grasshoppers" of Velimir Khlebnikov and e.e. cummings) to my son Andrey grasshopper-sign flickers over field under heaven! - (sign to Reason - be on guard! be yourself) - sign of punctuation from the colouring of two: something of Field and something - of...

in dust is no vowel. . . death is a sound: a shout - to God? he - in the surface of dust: is what then - a gleam? oh not treasures of sacrifice: nor representation! . . nor sounds and singing: but - go blind and accept: and open yourself - if it is is revealed: oh...

to W. Woroczylski behind my back - it seemed - were islands: of the terror-idea! - as if a certain chill was spread - for a year of this life: were they places - I wondered - in pure form: of mind and genius - of a certain illness? - what did they mean? Expectation of...

oh clearly with gathered force everywhere it shows itself: skyglow of the year like features of the land: drawing: from everywhere: any: fire: for incandescence! - and this is no shout! but wide all-illuminating long-lasting: through something scaly moistly...

to V. S. but you are not the surrounding of such a one but a stair in yourself where poverty is like skyglow: oh ice-holes of illness! as if by someone they were always directed: with meaning! - oh in everyone their distribution! - and they are led in - to tear to...

whole - with a whisper of ordering of the firmament and as out of the shining face in a time of sorrow - mine - I create it< and by fire concealing images of the race it is lit 1965 The poems here date from the extremely fruitful first decade of his activity as a Russian poet. They were written in Moscow, where he was...

"Well, let's fly . . ." "Why, a geologist of course, no question about it," said the rector with a scowl. "A spy wouldn't throw himself under a train because of a broken heart." "Bravo, correct! And Winnie-the-Pooh? That's a tough one." "Hmm, Winnie-the-Pooh, well, I would say a spy," said the rector thoughtfully. "The geologist is probably Piglet." "You see?" said Lednev cheerily. "You can already classify the examples correctly. But your one mistake is that you...

Me and Perestroika Now I will tell you how perestroika collapsed. To be more precise, it hasn't collapsed yet, but it definitely will due to the archaic institutions of the family and marriage, which dominate in times of real socialism. To be fair, one must add that history recalls a few cases when trivia stood in the way of great achievements. Such was the case with the emperor Peter Fedorovich, who didn't succeed in carrying out his reformist program only because, several...

The eighties began with the Olympics in Moscow. In spite of the boycott by many western countries, Leonid Brezhnev, who was General Secretary at the time, was determined to prevent the whole thing from turning into a pure propaganda show. The Olympic Games were going to be turned into a giant cultural and political event. Moscow was to be cleansed of parasites of all kinds, and new electronic billboards bought from the Americans through Pakistani middlemen would be put up in the stadiums....

Now I will tell you how perestroika collapsed. To be more precise, it hasn't collapsed yet, but it definitely will due to the archaic institutions of the family and marriage, which dominate in times of real socialism. To be fair, one must add that history recalls a few cases when trivia stood in the way of great achievements. Such was the case with the emperor Peter Fedorovich, who didn't succeed in carrying out his reformist program only because, several times, in public, he...

Nancy was this woman. From America. A woman general. And not just a general, but an advisor to the president. Rumor even had it she could do the same amount of push-ups as any other American general and advisor to the president. And here she was coming all the way to the great Russian North to pay us a visit. Back then our country was in the throes of perestroika, and she was visiting us just to see whether we were doing as bad a job of it as the rest of the world was inclined to think....

Boris Fishman interviewed Wladimir Kaminer September 3, 2003. Boris Fishman: Did you start writing before emigrating to Germany? What did you do in the Soviet Union? Wladimir Kaminer: In the Soviet Union, I graduated from music school, with a concentration in music for theatre and television. I worked for a year, then went into the army, got out in 1989. By then, perestroika was in full swing, and many of my colleagues were rushing to take advantage of the increased freedom of movement by...