New unusual translated prose – Weekend – Kommersant
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“An amazing account of the life of Olauda Equiano, or Gustav Vasa, the African, written by himself”
publishing house common place
Translation Sergey Zukher
Olauda Equiano is the son of one of the elders of the Igbo tribe living in what is now Nigeria. In 1755, he was kidnapped by slave traders, after which he began his impressive odyssey through Africa, America, Europe and Asia. One of the many owners, an English officer, decided to give the slave a new name and named him Gustav Vasa – in honor of the Swedish king of the 16th century. In the course of his ordeals, Olauda-Gustav converted to Christianity, learned English, as well as maritime affairs – and in 1766 he was able to redeem himself from slavery, continuing his travels as a free man (and even reaching the Arctic). During his travels, Equiano met British abolitionists and, under their influence, decided to write an autobiography. His Amazing Narrative, published in 1789, became the most popular work of a black European written in the 18th century and remains the most important document in the history of black self-consciousness and the struggle against slavery, as well as a wonderful monument to the Enlightenment. In Russia, it was first published in 1794 – translated from a German translation, moreover, heavily cropped. Now the book has been published in a new full translation with a lot of comments and curious appendices.
James Hogg “Secret Confession and Memoirs of a Justified Sinner”
publishing house Rhinoceros
Translation Irina Borisova
James Hogg is a key figure in the Scottish culture of the romantic era, a shepherd from the town of Ettrick, who learned to read and write and by the mid-1910s became a famous writer, poet, novelist, ballad collector, sermon writer, editor of several magazines, biographer of Walter Scott. He published his most famous book, The Secret Confession and Memoirs of a Justified Sinner, in 1824 anonymously (but Hogg’s authorship was obvious to the first readers). This is the story of Robert Ringim, the illegitimate son of a Calvinist priest, and the wife of a wealthy landowner. From his father, young Robert perceives the doctrine of divine predestination – the chosenness of some for eternal bliss and the doom of others to death, regardless of their earthly deeds. One day, Robert meets a mysterious stranger on a walk. He captivates the young man with theological conversations and convinces him even more: if a person is saved, he is not afraid of any sins, moreover, he is obliged to kill the infidels, doing divine justice. Under the influence of his mentor, the hero commits one atrocity after another and gradually realizes that his comrade is not a powerful stranger (at first, Robert takes him for the Russian Tsar Peter, traveling incognito in Europe), not a messenger from heaven, but a guest from hell. At first glance, The Secret Confession is a typical gothic romance with old castles, sinister doubles, family rock. However, by the mid-1820s, it was already an exhausted genre, and Hogg openly parodies it. He uses the Gothic canvas as material for a political-religious pamphlet directed against Calvinism with its moral rigor that masks hypocrisy. However, for all the irony, this is really a disturbing novel about the temptations of power.
Walter Pater “Imaginary Portraits”
publishing house Ripol classic
Translation Pavel Muratov
Essayist, critic and prose writer, one of the founders of British aestheticism, senior comrade and partly intellectual mentor of the Pre-Raphaelites, Walter Pater is not exactly unknown in Russia, but he does not feel like a classic. The book of his selected prose was compiled and translated by another famous esthete – the author of “Images of Italy” Pavel Muratov. It came out at the height of the First World War and did not look very relevant then (but “Imaginary Portraits” became one of the favorite books of the young Konstantin Vaginov, and Pater’s influence is well felt in his early prose). Now this collection has been reprinted for the first time since 1915. Pater began writing prose in the late 1870s, already a well-known art critic. His novels and stories were a direct continuation of his research – the development of the method. Their attitude is an attempt to feel into a distant era. They are often written as historical excursions into what cannot be the property of a historian: the mental life of a French medieval monk or an eighteenth-century German duke. In The House of Childhood, perhaps his best text, the same distant era, requiring the efforts of a historian, appears the childhood of the author himself. Patera was worried about a number of things: conflicts and rapprochement between paganism and Christianity, the awakening of the soul to sensual joys, the mysterious attraction of death, the filling of the world with quiet grace. All this is the subject not so much of analysis as of subtle admiration. But unlike many younger aesthetes (first of all, Oscar Wilde, to whom Pater was not particularly enthusiastic), there is no decadent deliberateness here, instead – the dignity of a gentleman, looking at the passions as if from the window of his academic office.
Valerie Larbeau “Fermina Marquez”
publishing house libra_fr
Translation Alexey Voinov
Valerie Larbeau, a classic of French modernism, was discovered in Russia quite recently. Four years ago, in the translation of Alexei Voinov, a wonderful collection “Children’s” appeared. It was followed by Larbo’s most famous novel, Fermina Marquez, first published in 1910. A wealthy heir, avid traveler, bibliophile, dandy, Larbo did a little bit of everything – ancient philology, translations of English romantics, the theory of collecting tin soldiers, criticism (he was an active popularizer, for example, of Joyce and Borges). He also wrote novels and short stories, as it were, casually. Their key property is graceful carelessness, a fundamental indistinguishability of trifles and revelations. Fermina Marquez is just such a text. A Colombian boy arrives at a closed college in the suburbs of Paris – little Marquez. Every day he is visited by his aunt and two sisters – the youngest, Pilar, and the eldest, the pious beauty Fermina. The entire population of the school falls in love with her without memory, but especially the brilliant hooligan Santos and the vain honor student Joanni. Larbeau’s book is neither a romantic rivalry story nor a parenting novel. The smallest movements of the soul and body, the small feats and meanness that he describes, seem to be too weak to move the story. That is why, losing their plot functions, they reveal a piercing fragile beauty.
Philippe Jacote “Light of Our Lady”
publishing house Jaromir Hladik Press
Translation Petr Epifanov
Philippe Jacotet is probably the most significant Swiss poet of the second half of the 20th century. In Russia, he has been translated since the 1970s, five collections have been published, but his prose is less known. Jacote died in 2021 at the age of 95. In the same year, his little book-farewell was published. “The Light of the Mother of God” is a vanishingly subtle diary prose, the last effort of the report of a person who has lived a long concentrated life, absorbed many images and words, joys and pains, and now lets them go. Effort – in the most literal sense: after a stroke, it was hard for Jacota to move, but he basically continued to write only with a pen, putting his will into every word. Hence the special economy of style. Actually, the Light of Our Lady (Clarte Notre-Dame) is the name of the monastery, located near the poet’s house. Being an agnostic, he rarely enters churches, but the ringing of the bell becomes for him the signal for the last awakening. “Transparency is hardly comprehensible, hardly accessible to the aspirations of the heart – and, however, having enough strength and power to influence it without any reference to its origin (however, indisputable), as if from the name of the place itself, the Light of the Mother of God , only the word “light” remains … “
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