Iurii Trifonov: Unity through Time

260 Pages·1993·4.68 MB·English

by  David Gillespie

Iurii Trifonov (1925—81) is known primarily as a writer of
Soviet urban life. This study, however, takes as its starting-
point Trifonov's interest in history and the passage of time,
and attempts to show how this interest informs all his
writing, from his earliest, Stalin Prize-winning period to
the self-consciously modernist later works. The theme of
time is expressed in several ways in the course of Trifonov's
creative evolution. In his early works he merely reflects the
abiding ethos of his age, that of Stalinism and then the
thaw. In his works of the 1960s and 1970s he integrates a
sense of history into his exploration of the cynicism and
opportunism characteristic of the Brezhnev period. Tri-
fonov's use of flashback, memory and multiple narrative
viewpoints is crucial here, as is his interest in decisive
events of Russian history, such as the assassination of Tsar
Aleksandr II, and the Russian Civil War. In his later
works, Trifonov emphasizes the interconnectedness of
human life and history, with the individual as ' the nerve of
history', linking epochs, places, civilizations. Trifonov
discerns patterns and analogies in history, and develops a
language of hints and allusions with which to combat the
repressive censorship of his time. He upheld the concepts of
truth and justice when glasnosf was unknown, and where
'historical expediency' was all-determining.

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE
IURII TRIFONOV
CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE
General editor: MALGOLM JONES
Editorial Board: ANTHONY GROSS, GARYL EMERSON,
HENRY GIFFORD, G. S. SMITH, VICTOR TERRAS
Recent titles in this series include:
Dostoyevsky and the process of literary creation
JACQUES CATTEAU
translated by Audrey Littlewood
The poetic imagination of Vyacheslav Ivanov
PAMELA DAVIDSON
Joseph Brodsky
VALENTINA POLUKHINA
Petrushka: the Russian carnival puppet theatre
CATRIONA KELLY
Turgenev
FRANK FRIEDEBERG SEELEY
From the idyll to the novel: KaramzirCs sentimentalist prose
GITTA HAMMARBERG
' The Brothers Karamazov' and the poetics of memory
DIANE OENNING THOMPSON
Andrei Platonov
THOMAS SEIFRID
Nabokov's Early Fiction
JULIAN W. CONNOLLY
A complete list of books in this series
is given at the end of the volume.
Iurii Trifonov:
unity through time
DAVID GILLESPIE
Senior Lecturer in Russian
School of Modern Languages and International Studies
University of Bath
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www. Cambridge. org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521419475
© Cambridge University Press 1992
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1992
This digitally printed first paperback version 2006
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Gillespie, David C.
Iurii Trifonov: unity through time / David Gillespie.
p. cm. - (Cambridge Studies in Russian literature)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0 521 41947 6 (hardback)
1. Trifonov, Iurii Valentinovich, 1925-81 - Criticism and
interpretation. 2. Time in literature. I. Title. II. Series.
PG3489.R5Z67 1992
891.73'44-dc20 92-7312 CIP
ISBN-13 978-0-521-41947-5 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-41947-6 hardback
ISBN-13 978-0-521-02571-3 paperback
ISBN-10 0-521-02571-0 paperback
Contents
Preface page ix
Introduction 1
1 From Moscow students to the Turkmenian desert
(Studenty ; Utolenie zhazhdy) 14
2 Moscow life, 1966-1975 (Obmen; PredvariteVnye
itogi; Beskonechnye igry; Dolgoe proshchanie; Drugaia
zhizrC) 47
3 The house on the embankment {Dom na
naberezhnoi) 99
4 Terrorism, Civil War and the present (Neterpenie;
Otblesk kostra; Starik) 123
5 Time and place (Vremia i mesto; Ischeznovenie) 160
Conclusion: unity through dislocation (Oprokinutyi
dom) 194
Notes 208
Bibliography 225
Index 245
Vll

Preface
This book has come about as the result of several years' work on
Trifonov's texts which began as I was completing my doctoral
thesis in 1984—5. The thesis concentrated on the work of the
'village writers' Valentin Rasputin and Vasilii Belov, but as
work on it drew to an end in the summer of 1984 I became
equally interested in the ' urban prose' of Iurii Trifonov. I was
struck by the fact that most critics wrote only about the writer's
depiction of urban life and mores, whereas I became in-
creasingly interested in the historical and temporal dimensions
of his world. This book attempts to fill what I perceive to be a
large gap in Trifonov criticism, although worthy full-length
studies have appeared in the last few years both in the USSR
and the West.
Consequently, much preliminary work, in particular in
compiling the bibliography, was carried out in the Lenin State
Library and the Academy of Sciences' Library, both in Moscow,
and in the Academy of Sciences' Library in Leningrad, in the
Spring of 1982 and the whole of the academic year 1984-5.
Further work was done in the library of Khar'kov State
University in the Ukraine in August 1990 and March 1991.
Part of this study has already appeared in article form: ' Time,
History and the Individual in the Works of Yury Trifonov',
Modern Language Review, 83, 2 (April 1988), 375-95; 'Unity
through Disparity: Trifonov's The Overturned House', Australian
Slavonic and East European Studies, 5, 1 (1991), pp. 45-58.
In the notes and bibliography I have chosen to use the
abbreviations M and L for publications in Moscow and
Leningrad respectively. The bibliography alone contains full
ix
x Preface
publication details of Trifonov's works and criticism; details of
references in the notes have been kept to a minimum. Unless
otherwise stated, all quotations from Trifonov's works are taken
from his four-volume collected works, Iurii Trifonov, Sobranie
sochinenii v chetyrekh tomakh, published in Moscow by Khudozhest-
vennaia literatura in 1985-7, with volume and page number
incorporated into the main text (full bibliographical details are
in the bibliography). All translations are my own. The Library
of Congress system of transliteration has been used throughout.
Words and phrases in square brackets indicate my own
insertions in quotations, usually for reasons of elucidation.
I would like to thank friends and colleagues of the British
Association for Soviet, Slavonic and East European Studies,
and the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic
Studies, for their interest, advice and encouragement, in
particular Bob Porter, Frank Ellis, Kathleen Parthe and Gerald
Mikkelson. I would also like to thank the staff of the School of
Modern Languages and International Studies at Bath Uni-
versity, especially Bill Brooks and Roberta Tozer, for their help
in tracking down background information relating to Trifonov's
interest in French and Italian history. Special thanks are
reserved for Chris Williams, for his invaluable assistance in
transferring texts to computer disk, and to Louise Roberts, for
her immense patience and fortitude in deciphering what was
often an almost illegible manuscript.
The book is dedicated to Anna, in the hope that one day she
may read it.