20. Solomon Volkov, Conversations with Joseph Brodsky, trans. Marian Schwartz (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), 71.
FROM THAT SIDE
1. See note 7 to the essay “The Last Hero.”
2. In 2006, a Russian translation of Austerlitz was published but went almost unnoticed. It was not until 2015 that the effort to bring Sebald’s work to Russian readers was renewed, with the publication of his book of essays On the Natural History of Destruction. In 2018, Sebald’s novels Vertigo and The Rings of Saturn came out in Russian translation for the first time, and Austerlitz was republished.
3. “Iosif” was Stalin’s first name, and it was given to Soviet children in his honor. The name “Vladlen” derives from “Vladimir Lenin,” and Oktyabrina honors October, the month when the Bolshevik revolution happened.
4. W. G. Sebald, A Place in the Country, trans. Jo Catling (New York: Random House, 2013), 142, 130.
5. W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz, trans. Anthea Bell (New York: Random House, 2001), 182–83.
6. A phrase from Maxim Gorky’s novel The Life of Klim Samgin that became proverbial.
7. Sebald, A Place in the Country, 136.
8. Final lines from Osip Mandelstam’s poem “I have not heard the tales of Ossian” (“Ia ne slykhal rasskazov Ossiana,” 1914).
9. W. G. Sebald, Campo Santo, trans. Anthea Bell (New York: Random House, 2005), 137, 157.
10. Sebald, Campo Santo, 160.
11. Sebald, A Place in the Country, 177.
12. W. G. Sebald, Vertigo, trans. Michael Hulse (New York: New Directions, 2000), 51.
13. The Emergence of Memory: Conversations with W. G. Sebald, ed. Lynne Sharon Schwartz (New York: Seven Stories, 2007), 67.
14. Sebald, Austerlitz, 180.
15. Osip Mandelstam, Selected Essays, trans. Sidney Monas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977), 181.
16. W. G. Sebald, The Emigrants, trans. Michael Hulse (New York: New Directions, 1996), 3.
17. Sebald, Austerlitz, 3.
18. Sebald, Austerlitz, 112.
19. Sebald uses this term in two of his conversations (with Eleanor Wachtel and with Joseph Cuomo): The Emergence of Memory, 40, 102–103.
20. Sebald, A Place in the Country, 130–31.
21. Sebald, A Place in the Country, 19.
22. Sebald, Campo Santo, 135.
23. Sebald, A Place in the Country, 154.
OVER VENERABLE GRAVES
The title of this essay comes from Pushkin’s poem “When lost in thought I wander beyond the town” (“Kogda za gorodom, zadumchiv, ia brozhu,” 1836). The translation is from Andrew Kahn’s Pushkin’s Lyric Intelligence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 321.
1. From Boris Pasternak’s poem “Star of the Nativity” (1947).
2. From Pushkin’s poem “When down the bustling streets I pass” (“Brozhu li ia vdol’ ulits shumnykh,” 1829). Alexander Pushkin, Selected Lyric Poetry, trans. James Falen (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2009), 149.
3. W. G. Sebald, Campo Santo, trans. Anthea Bell (New York: Modern Library, 2006), 32.
4. Anatoly Fomenko is notorious for his pseudohistorical theory of “New Chronology.”
5. Sebald, Campo Santo, 32.
6. In communal apartments, there would be signs telling visitors how many times to ring the doorbell for each resident so that the right person would answer the door.
Russian Library
Between Dog and Wolf by Sasha Sokolov, translated by Alexander Boguslawski
Strolls with Pushkin by Andrei Sinyavsky, translated by Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy and Slava I. Yastremski
Fourteen Little Red Huts and Other Plays by Andrei Platonov, translated by Robert Chandler, Jesse Irwin, and Susan Larsen
Rapture: A Novel by Iliazd, translated by Thomas J. Kitson
City Folk and Country Folk by Sofia Khvoshchinskaya, translated by Nora Seligman Favorov
Writings from the Golden Age of Russian Poetry by Konstantin Batyushkov, presented and translated by Peter France
Found Life: Poems, Stories, Comics, a Play, and an Interview by Linor Goralik, edited by Ainsley Morse, Maria Vassileva, and Maya Vinokur
Sisters of the Cross by Alexei Remizov, translated by Roger John Keys and Brian Murphy
Sentimental Tales by Mikhail Zoshchenko, translated by Boris Dralyuk
Redemption by Friedrich Gorenstein, translated by Andrew Bromfield
The Man Who Couldn’t Die: The Tale of an Authentic Human Being by Olga Slavnikova, translated by Marian Schwartz
Necropolis by Vladislav Khodasevich, translated by Sarah Vitali
Nikolai Nikolaevich and Camouflage: Two Novellas by Yuz Aleshkovsky, translated by Duffield White, edited by Susanne Fusso
New Russian Drama: An Anthology, edited by Maksim Hanukai and Susanna Weygandt
A Double Life by Karolina Pavlova, translated and with an introduction by Barbara Heldt
Klotsvog by Margarita Khemlin, translated by Lisa Hayden
Fandango and Other Stories by Alexander Grin, translated by Bryan Karetnyk
Woe from Wit: A Verse Comedy in Four Acts by Alexander Griboedov, translated by Betsy Hulick
The Nose and Other Stories by Nicolai Gogol, translated by Susanne Fusso
Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow by Alexander Radishchev, translated by Andrew Kahn and Irina Reyfman
The Little Devil and Other Stories by Alexei Remizov, translated by Antonina W. Bouis
The Death of Vazir-Muktar by Yury Tynyanov, translated by Anna Kurkina Rush and Christopher Rush
The Life Written by Himself by Archpriest Avvakum, translated by Kenneth N. Brostrom