Sasha Sokolov's Trevozhnaia Kukolka

[Benjamin Sher]

Dear Colleagues:

May I kindly invite you to read Sasha Sokolov's electrifying prose
poem of death and resurrection, Persona Non Grata (original title:
Trevozhnaia Kukolka). It was first published in Kontinent in 1986
(#49), later printed in its entirety in Literaturnaya Gazeta in 1990,
just before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Here is the opening:

"What a pitiful blunder! Instead of being born and raised in
incomparable Buenos Aires, where people greet each other not with
'Como està Usted?' but with the neighborly 'How is the air?' to which
a man replies: 'Gracias, gracias, muy bueno,' and where the paper
boy, hands free, zooms on his bicycle through the streets,
ostentatiously reading the latest issue of Hoy without so much as a
dictionary, and where the street car conductor, an ordinary, everyday
conductor, declaims passages from Octavio Paz to his passengers;
instead of making your earthly debut among these refined, well-read
people, a citizen in the name of Jorge Borges, but hold on--- . . ."

This is a thoroughly revised edition of the text originally published
in Columbia University's TRANSLATION: A Journal of Literary
Translation (Fall, 1989, vol. 22).

You will find the rest on my web site at:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/1212

You'll also find there an adaptation of Akhmatova's Requiem,
Dostoevsky's Whirlwind by Pereverzev, Chapter One and Translator's
Afterword from Vaginov's The Tower (original title: Kozlinaia
Pesn'), four contemporary Russian plays, including Balashov's A
Woman of St. Petersburg, a monodrama spanning 6 decades, and
Krasnogoroff's The Dog, a tragic allegory on genocide, plus a link
to Chertkov's The Last Days of Leo Tolstoy (text and an album of
rare photographs).

Finally, you'll also find an essay on "Russian Aspectual
Decision-Making," a philosophical and practical guide for the
understanding of what is at once an exceedingly complex yet at the
same time profoundly simple phenomenon in Russian verbal usage. Those
who wish to pursue the matter further may consult N. Thelin's Verbal
Aspect in Discourse, a monumental anthology on Russian (and
non-Russian) aspectual usage and encompassing a variety of empirical,
literary and philosophical approaches of every kind.

I welcome your comments.

Yours,

Benjamin Sher