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Cargando... The Specter of Alexander Wolf ... Translated from the Russian by Nicholas Wreden (edición 1950)por Gaito Gazdanov
Información de la obraEl espectro de Aleksandr Wolf por Gaito Gazdanov
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. 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. ( ) The initial premise to this story is intriguing – during the Russian Civil War, a 16-year-old encounters an enemy soldier alone in the woods and shoots him, an event that changes him forever. It would be too simple to say he’s haunted by it, but as traumatic memories will do, it floats into his consciousness unprovoked years later, even after he’s settled in Paris as an émigré. The first line grabs you: “Of all my memories, of all life’s innumerable sensations, the most onerous was that of the single murder I had committed.” While no one was a witness, eerily enough he comes across a description of the encounter in a book, and seeks out the author, Alexander Wolf. While Gazdanov meanders in the plot from there in ways that may be dissatisfying to the reader, there is an ephemeral, dream-like quality to his writing, and as in one of his other books, ‘The Buddha’s Return’, this one is highly philosophical. The narrator has a sense of detachment, a little cynicism, and a heightened awareness of the transience of life and the “constant, icy proximity to death”, even as he’s going through his ‘normal life’, reporting on boxing matches, sitting in cafes, and having a love affair. We wonder about the mystery behind Alexander Wolf, and whether he is a split personality, an actual ghost, or some symbol of life ending at pivotal moments and starting again anew. Meanwhile, the actual point of the book seems to be in dualities: randomness and coincidence, life and death, isolation and interconnectedness, chance and fate, passion and intellect, and of course, the narrator and Alexander Wolf. One gets the sense that Gazdanov himself didn’t know where to take his initial premise, but the book succeeds for me because of the intelligence of his ruminations. Quotes: On chance, and unforgettable moments: “Right then, I was struck by the thought that if I wanted to explain fully why this had happened, how it had been possible and how I now came to find myself in the forest on a summer’s night, in the rain, with a woman of whose existence I had known nothing only a few months before (and yet without whom I was now unable to imagine my life), I would have to spend years labouring and taxing my memory. I would probably be able to write a few volumes on it into the bargain. How was it all possible, the steady rhythm of the rain, the feeling of this head resting in my lap – my muscles already begun to get used to the imprint made by this round, tender weight on them – this face I was looking at in the darkness, as if leaning over my own fate, and this unforgettable feeling of blissful plenitude?” On the cycle of a day: “When I wake up every morning, I think to myself, Today my life will begin in earnest. I’ll feel as though I’m not much older than sixteen again, and that man who has known so much tragedy and sadness, he who fell asleep in my bed the previous night, will seem alien and distant, and I’ll comprehend neither his inner weariness nor his frustration. Then, as I go to sleep every night, I feel as though I’ve lived a long life, and yet all I’ve taken from it is the loathing and burden of lingering years. And so the day passes. On happiness: “If we’re possessed of that tragic, ferocious courage that forces man to live with his eyes open, can we really ever be happy? It’s impossible even to imagine that the world’s most extraordinary people were happy. Shakespeare couldn’t have been happy. Nor could Michelangelo.” On interconnectedness: “Every human life is connected to other human lives, those in turn are connected with others, and when we reach the logical end of this sequence of interrelations, we approach the sum total of people inhabiting the vast surface of the terrestrial globe. The constant threat of death in all its endless diversity hangs over every man, every life: catastrophe, train crash, earthquake, tempest, war, illness, accident, all manifestations of a blind and merciless power, a peculiarity of which consists in our inability ever to predict the moment when it – this instantaneous break in the history of the world – will happen.” On love: “’Every love affair is an attempt to thwart fate; it’s a naïve illusion of brief immortality,’ he once said. ‘Nevertheless, it’s probably the best thing that we’re ever given to know.’” On passion: “She was lying supine, her arms behind her head, without the slightest hint of modesty, gazing at my face with her impossibly serene eyes – it seemed almost incredible. Even when I felt (and not for the first time in my life) that inexplicable synthesis of pure emotion and physical sensation filling not only my entire consciousness, but everything, everything without exception, even the farthest muscles of my body; even then, when she said, ‘You’re hurting me,’ with so languorous an intonation that it seemed entirely misplaced, betraying neither complaint nor protest; and even then, when she gave a spasmodic shudder – her eyes remained just the same: deathly still.”
Another masterpiece from someone I'd never heard of before published by Pushkin Press; how many more do they have up their sleeve? This time it is by Gaito Gazdanov, a Russian émigré novelist whose work was not published in his native country until the collapse of the communist regime. As he fought in the Russian civil war on the side of the White army, you can understand why. Listas de sobresalientes
En Rusia, un hombre mata a un jinete desconocido. Años más tarde, ya en París, lee un cuento donde se describe con total precisión ese asesinato desde el punto de vista de la víctima. Es una historia que no debiera existir y cuyo autor solo puede ser el hombre que hasta entonces imaginaba muerto. Así comienza la extraña búsqueda del huidizo escritor Alexander Wolf. Lo que sigue no es una coartada ni una justificación de este misterio sino un desarrollo novelesco digno de la mejor literatura rusa. La soltura con que Gaito Gazdanov se desplaza tiene que ver con una concepción estética y una madurez técnica hoy en apariencia extinguidas. En una buena ficción, la confianza en lo que se cuenta no es un alarde sino un arco de inspiración que alcanza al lector y no lo abandona. Gazdanov demuestra que una orfebrería inocente y genial puede disimularse el tiempo necesario, aun, o sobre todo, bajo una superficie brillante. Obra maestra olvidada, "El espectro de Alexander Wolf" es un thriller psicológico, una indagación existencial de la culpa y la redención, la coincidencia del destino, el amor y la muerte. (Descripción del editor). No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)891.734Literature Literature of other languages Literature of east Indo-European and Celtic languages Russian and East Slavic languages Russian fiction USSR 1917–1991Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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