Imagen del autor

Gaito Gazdanov (1903–1971)

Autor de El espectro de Aleksandr Wolf

28+ Obras 772 Miembros 24 Reseñas 3 Preferidas

Sobre El Autor

Obras de Gaito Gazdanov

Obras relacionadas

Russian Émigré Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky (2017) — Contribuidor — 45 copias
Der Irrtum. Russische Erzählungen. (1999) — Contribuidor — 6 copias

Etiquetado

Conocimiento común

Nombre legal
Gazdanov, Georgi Ivanovich
Fecha de nacimiento
1903-12-06
Fecha de fallecimiento
1971-12-05
Lugar de sepultura
Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery, France
Género
male
Nacionalidad
Russia (birth)
France (residence)
País (para mapa)
Russie
Lugar de nacimiento
St. Petersburg, Russian Empire
Lugar de fallecimiento
Munich, Germany
Lugares de residencia
Paris, France
Siberia, Russian Empire
Ukraine, Russia
Ocupaciones
automobile factory worker
cab driver
author
Organizaciones
Radio Liberty

Miembros

Reseñas

“But Claire is French,” I suddenly recalled, “and if this is so, then what was all that constant, intense sorrow about snow and green plains for, all that sorrow for those many lives I had lived in a country now hidden from me behind a fiery curtain?” I began to dream of meeting Claire in Paris, where she had been born, and where she would undoubtedly return. Before my eyes I saw France, Claire’s native land, and Paris, and the place de la Concorde; and the square seemed different to me than the one I had seen depicted on postcards.

Born in Saint Petersburg, Gaito Gazdanov (1903 - 1971) left Russia for Paris in 1920, where he started working for Renault. At the time he also wrote short stories about the immigrant experience. This first phase of his authorial career culminated in his first novel or, rather, novella, An Evening with Claire, a work from 1929 which is still considered one of the classics of Russian emigré literature.

It feels natural to consider this an autobiographical work. Its narrator, Kolya, a Russian based in Paris, spends his evenings with Claire, an old flame with whom he was besotted as a young man ten years before. His meetings with Claire, who is now married, set off a train of memories of his childhood and youth, of his family, friends and schoolmates.

Kolya’s (and Gazdanov’s) sense of displacement as an immigrant is mirrored in the style of writing which seems to hover on the cusp of modernism, unsure whether to abandon itself to the lush Romanticism of a past age, or to embrace a more contemporary stream-of-consciousness approach. Kolya’s lyrical voice is well captured in the translation prepared by the indefatigable Bryan Karetnyk, who is doing so much to bring lesser-known classics of Russian literature to the English-speaking public.

If I am disappointed with the novel it is only because it was not the love story which I was expecting after reading the blurbs (and which I was in the mood for). The eponymous Claire is, ultimately, not a character we ever come to know intimately. She remains primarily, if not exclusively, a symbol of the emigré experience, her unattainability seemingly inseparable from her Frenchness:

I could distinguish between simple unknowns and strangers par excellence, a type that existed in my imagination like that of a foreigner - which is to say, a person not only of different nationality, but who belonged to a different world, one that was inaccessible to me. Perhaps my feelings were in part because she was French and a foreigner. Although she spoke Russian with perfect fluency and accuracy and understood everything down to the meaning of folk sayings, there remained in her a certain charm that a Russian girl would never have had...

Like the music of Stravinsky’s French years, or the 1920s Parisian streetscapes of Konstantin Korovin, Gazdanov’s An Evening with Claire is not only a fine work in its own right, but is also an important expression of a particular community at an important juncture in 20th Century history.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2021/07/gaito-gazdanov-evening-with-claire.ht...
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JosephCamilleri | 3 reseñas más. | Feb 21, 2023 |
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Honisoitquimalypense | otra reseña | Nov 1, 2022 |
Un adolescent durant la guerra mata un home que després se'l troba en el seu entorn. Explica també la seva vida sentimental ja en l'edat adulta.
 
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Martapagessala | 12 reseñas más. | Feb 21, 2022 |
“But Claire is French,” I suddenly recalled, “and if this is so, then what was all that constant, intense sorrow about snow and green plains for, all that sorrow for those many lives I had lived in a country now hidden from me behind a fiery curtain?” I began to dream of meeting Claire in Paris, where she had been born, and where she would undoubtedly return. Before my eyes I saw France, Claire’s native land, and Paris, and the place de la Concorde; and the square seemed different to me than the one I had seen depicted on postcards.

Born in Saint Petersburg, Gaito Gazdanov (1903 - 1971) left Russia for Paris in 1920, where he started working for Renault. At the time he also wrote short stories about the immigrant experience. This first phase of his authorial career culminated in his first novel or, rather, novella, An Evening with Claire, a work from 1929 which is still considered one of the classics of Russian emigré literature.

It feels natural to consider this an autobiographical work. Its narrator, Kolya, a Russian based in Paris, spends his evenings with Claire, an old flame with whom he was besotted as a young man ten years before. His meetings with Claire, who is now married, set off a train of memories of his childhood and youth, of his family, friends and schoolmates.

Kolya’s (and Gazdanov’s) sense of displacement as an immigrant is mirrored in the style of writing which seems to hover on the cusp of modernism, unsure whether to abandon itself to the lush Romanticism of a past age, or to embrace a more contemporary stream-of-consciousness approach. Kolya’s lyrical voice is well captured in the translation prepared by the indefatigable Bryan Karetnyk, who is doing so much to bring lesser-known classics of Russian literature to the English-speaking public.

If I am disappointed with the novel it is only because it was not the love story which I was expecting after reading the blurbs (and which I was in the mood for). The eponymous Claire is, ultimately, not a character we ever come to know intimately. She remains primarily, if not exclusively, a symbol of the emigré experience, her unattainability seemingly inseparable from her Frenchness:

I could distinguish between simple unknowns and strangers par excellence, a type that existed in my imagination like that of a foreigner - which is to say, a person not only of different nationality, but who belonged to a different world, one that was inaccessible to me. Perhaps my feelings were in part because she was French and a foreigner. Although she spoke Russian with perfect fluency and accuracy and understood everything down to the meaning of folk sayings, there remained in her a certain charm that a Russian girl would never have had...

Like the music of Stravinsky’s French years, or the 1920s Parisian streetscapes of Konstantin Korovin, Gazdanov’s An Evening with Claire is not only a fine work in its own right, but is also an important expression of a particular community at an important juncture in 20th Century history.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2021/07/gaito-gazdanov-evening-with-claire.ht...
… (más)
 
Denunciada
JosephCamilleri | 3 reseñas más. | Jan 1, 2022 |

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Estadísticas

Obras
28
También por
2
Miembros
772
Popularidad
#32,960
Valoración
½ 3.7
Reseñas
24
ISBNs
93
Idiomas
12
Favorito
3

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