#Varlam Shalamov

[exhaled-spirals]

I discovered that the world should be divided not into good and bad people but into cowards and non-cowards. Ninety-five percent of cowards are capable of the vilest things, lethal things, at the mildest threat.

― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

[rapid-apathy]

Friendship never arises in a state of deprivation or misery. The “difficult” conditions of life, which writers of fairy tales tell us are a precondition for friendship, are simply not difficult enough. If deprivation or misery ever gave people solidarity and friendship, then the deprivation was not extreme and the misery was not very great. Grief is not acute or deep enough if you can share it with friends.

Kolyma Stories - Varlam Shalamov 

[bormgans]

KOLYMA STORIES - Varlam Shalamov (1954-1965, transl. 2018) & TELLURIA - Vladimir Sorokin (2013, transl. 2022)

Two very different books this time, both translated from Russian, both published by New York Review Books, and both collections of short stories of sorts. Telluria is a work of speculative fiction, set in a future Russia. Kolyma Stories is not so fictional, as it is Shalamov’s personal account of his 15 years in the gulag – one of the very few that survived in the system for such a long time. I’m…

[pastrufazio]

Recensione non richiesta

Tra tanto parlare, tra altrettanto ricordare, rimemorare, molto si perde e ben poco si aggiunge alla cognizione che potremmo farci dell’infinito dolore che ha attraversato il Novecento europeo. Varlam Šalamov non permette inganni di sorta.

La descrizione di cosa è stato il Gulag, esteso per tutta la Siberia, fino all’estremità orientale della Kolyma, per i milioni di persone che l’hanno popolato con la loro sofferenza e morte, non si fa stemperare e addolcire da qualche giorno di lettura o da qualche fremito emozionale su schermo, come è stato fatto, purtroppo, con la Shoah. No. Non si può. Non lo permette la scrittura di Šalamov che il lettore italiano, attento, ma non sempre e non per tutto ciò per il quale val la pena essere attenti, dovrebbe conoscere per i libri pubblicati da Adelphi e da Einaudi. Due le versioni dei Racconti della Kolyma, nel 1995 quella della casa editrice di Calasso; nel 1999 quella einaudiana di ben 1300 pagine. Adelphi ha proseguito pubblicando altri suoi testi: La quarta Vologda e Višera, per arrivare a questa raccolta di testi scritti, tra gli anni Cinquanta e Sessanta, dal titolo Tra le bestie la più feroce è l’uomo. Libro che testimonia la grandezza letteraria di Šalamov, se ce ne fosse stato bisogno, e il suo incardinarsi nella grande, grandissima tradizione dei narratori/poeti russi, ma soprattutto a superarla, a percorrere una strada nuova.

Oltre l’appagante sortilegio di Adorno, quando afferma che dopo Auschwitz non è più possibile fare poesia, ci sono i racconti della Kolyma che dicono il contrario perché «Kolyma, Auschwitz e Hiroshima non si possono comprendere restando dentro la struttura psichica dell’auro secolo XIX», come scrive Irina P. Sirotinskaja curatrice del libro.

Šalamov non è un memorialista, o meglio, lo è nell’unico modo consentito da chi ha attraversato l’orrore. Il danno maggiore, e voluto dal sistema staliniano, del Gulag poteva essere stato quello di sottrarre alla cultura russa ed europea un poeta per consegnarci un testimone, al quale si può sempre rimproverare la sua inattendibilità, la sua immaginazione. Ma la radice poetica di questa testimonianza, e quindi la sua verità – perché la poesia è in rapporto essenziale con la verità – è riemersa, forse, con ancora più forza e determinazione. Basterebbe leggere le intense e straordinarie pagine dedicate a Boris Leonidovič Pasternak e ai suoi ultimi anni per accorgersi di cosa il terrore rivoluzionario ha comportato per la cultura russa, quali valori ha scardinato, quali potenzialità ha sopito e quali ha scatenato. È un ritratto commosso quello dell’autore del Dottor Zivago, ma privo di qualsiasi compiacimento. La stessa contiguità di molti intellettuali con il terrore è affrontata sine ira, come dato naturale dell’umano procedere nella Storia, a contrastare il quale non potrà essere l’astratta enunciazione di principi e programmi politici, sociali ma solo la consapevolezza che «il fondo dell’animo umano è sfondato, c’è sempre qualcosa di più brutto, un’abiezione ancora peggiore di quelle che già conoscevi, che avevi visto e compreso».

«Quand’è che si perde l’ultima parvenza umana? Come si scrive tutto questo?». Šalamov si è domandato a più riprese. Ed è per tentare di rispondere a questa domanda che ha scritto: «la differenza fra il carcere e il lager» è che il primo «rinforza il carattere», il secondo «fa marcire l’animo umano». La bellezza di Šalamov sta in una scrittura che non rivela soltanto la natura tremenda del lager ma riesce a trascenderla senza per questo rendere la scrittura una sorta di blasfema sublimazione. Il peggio sarebbe comprendere il tremendo del lager, nazista o staliniano poco importa, per restituircelo come un concetto astratto, un semplice dettaglio nella e della Storia. In fondo l’insensatezza senza requie e confini, senza tregua, da cui è nato e prodotto è stata anch’essa un’astrazione, un programma, un’idea.

«Una volta chiesi a Varlam Tichonovič Šalamov: “Come vivere?”. Mi rispose: “Con i dieci comandamenti. Lì è detto tutto”».

Varlam Šalamov, Tra le bestie la più feroce è l’uomo, Adelphi, pp. 468, € 24,00

[nudeartpluspoetry]

"Tools," by Varlam Shalamov

[theshatterednotes]

Russian author Varlam Shalamov

[artisthomes]

Birthplace of Varlam Shalamov in Vologda, Russia

[leopardette]

Tagged by my darling @supersonic1994 to catch uppp <3

LAST SONG: heart full of love by the invincibles .... the harmonies truly scratch an itch in my brain it's marvelous

LAST BOOK: I've been on a terribly embarrassing reading slump tbh but I'm literally always rereading East of Eden so there is that. Also partway thru Varlam Shalamov's Kolyma Tales which is beautifully written and absolutely horrific

LAST MOVIE: The Ice Pirates (1984) which is awesome if you're into schlocky fun no plot coherence and Anjelica Houston in outfits. And also little burros in space like I cannot emphasize this enough they put little burros on that spaceship

LAST SHOW: Not much of a television girl tbh but The Terror .... I love you The Terror and I love the beautiful mutuals who spread their spore to me

LAST THING LOOKED UP: "palm reading right hand" because the line that goes across the middle of mine traverses my entire hand and is very deep. Still don't know what that means btw

SWEET/SAVORY/SPICY: I've got a horrific sweet tooth so I'm always leaning in that direction but there's a Chinese restaurant near my place that is a perfect blend of all three and that sounds so lovely rn.... I think that counts as savory though so savory

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: shingle ... me when I'm roof

LOOKING FORWARD TO: it's supposed to snow more tonight so I'm hoping the temperature drops enough that it actually sticks! Would really love to wake up to even just a liiiittle bit of snow on the ground

CURRENT OBSESSIONS: The Terror, because I'm fond of the scruffiness and festering of Victorian types. Adirectional spirals and the idea of moving inwards as a form of moving outwards/inwards being a form of expansion as opposed to a compression. Any sort of good dog/bad dog/kicked dog dynamic (see: The Terror tbh!). Echoic monolithism. Natural fibers ... no polyester type bullshit. Chalk pastels. Tubi's recommended section because seeing like Buffalo '66 next to My Little Pony makes me laugh. Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill by Grouper has been on repeat for the last week-ish... also really been loving dark shades of muted blue lately. Okay that's all <3

Idk who's already been tagged so ignore this if u have but I'm tagging @hauntedwoman @brigittefitzgerald @failgirls @agoraphobe @evebabitzgf @spiderden @bornintheusa1984 and anyone else who wants to <3 mwah

[yurucamp]

i'm still having this issue where half of the asks i get disappear mysteriously so copying the ask content from emails will have to do!

@hernharmony asked: there's smth uniquely melancholic and isolating about your works that I am strangely drawn to. It's the likes of which I've mostly seen in certain literature, perhaps Dostoevsky. But I'd really love to know if you've any book recs? If it's not a bother, I'd really like to get a glimpse of what it is that fuels you.

hi! thank you very much for your kind words, my heart swells at your description - i'm really happy that i'm able to convey something like that.

i don't read as much as i'd like to, because of university i'm usually reading for class and in my free time i like reading nonfiction (right now, i'm reading yuri slezkine's arctic mirrors).

recently i finished minor detail (by adania shibli) and i recommend everyone to read it. i like andrei platonov's writing (though most of all his short stories) and varlam shalamov's writing (though it's appropriately and exquisitely painful so only in small doses). i adore elizabeth bishop's poetry and that's the most immediate comparison to my art i can make, i would like to paint something that captures an ounce of the same feeling as the moose or at the fishhouses, i feel like my heart lives in those poems

a lot of this is repeated here: https://yurucamp.tumblr.com/post/727765369602850816/do-you-have-any-moviebook-recommendations-your

[panorama2024aaaa]

كيف يتحول الإنسان إلى وحش

‏«خذ شخصًا صالحًا ��صادقًا ومحبًا وجرّده من الضروريات الأساسية وستحصل قريبًا على وحش لا يمكن التعرف عليه؛ سيفعل أي شيء للبقاء على قيد الحياة في ظل الضغوط الشديدة—يصبح الإنسان وحشًا في ثلاثة أسابيع من الضغط»

‏فارلام شالاموف Varlam Shalamov

‏(حكايات كوليما)

[exhaled-spirals]

I remember the old northern legend of how God created the taiga while he was still a child. There were few colors, but they were childishly fresh and vivid, and their subjects were simple. Later, when God grew up and became an adult, he learned to cut out complicated patters from his pages and created many bright birds. God grew bored with his former child's world and he threw snow on his forest creation and went south forever.

— Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales

[grandhotelabyss]

I'm rooting for ChatGPT now. I kid, I joke, I jest...and yet, when Freud replaced the "Image of the Lord" with childhood trauma as definitive of the human, the human may have suffered a diminution in status beneath even the serenely untraumatized animals, to say nothing of the serenely untraumatized machines, neither of which embarrasses us with essentially charitable appeals to our attention based on their weakness and fragility, rather than, in the case of writers, their ability to instruct and to delight.

Without sharing his Maoist politics, such politics plus his Platonic love of mathematics being why I've probably never cited him before, I still think Alain Badiou had a point when he argued against contemporary liberalism's habit of defining humanity by its weakness, a superficially humane politics concealing its own brutalist will-to-power insofar as it falls to liberal empire (to include, in the case of the professional class, the liberal empire of therapists) to oversee and administrate this inherent frailty:

...because the status of victim, of suffering beast, of emaciated, dying body, equates man with his animal substructure, it reduces him to the level of a living organism pure and simple (life being, as Bichat says, nothing other than 'the set of functions that resist death'). To be sure, humanity is an animal species. It is mortal and predatory. But neither of these attributes can distinguish humanity within the world of the living. In his role as executioner, man is an animal abjection, but we must have the courage to add that in his role as victim, he is generally worth little more. The stories told by survivors of torture forcefully underline the point: if the torturers and bureaucrats of the dungeons and the camps are able to treat their victims like animals destined for the slaughterhouse, with whom they themselves, the well-nourished criminals, have nothing in common, it is because the victims have indeed become such animals. What had to be done for this to happen has indeed been done. That some nevertheless remain human beings, and testify to that effect, is a confirmed fact. But this is always achieved precisely through enormous effort, an effort acknowledged by witnesses (in whom it excites a radiant recognition) as an almost incomprehensible resistance on the part of that which, in them, does not coincide with the identity of victim. This is where we are to find Man, if we are determined to think him [Ie penser]: in what ensures, as Varlam Shalamov puts in his Stories of Life in the Camps, that we are dealing with an animal whose resistance, unlike that of a horse, lies not in his fragile body but in his stubborn determination to remain what he is—that is to say, precisely something other than a victim, other than a being-for-death, and thus: something other than a mortal being.

An immortal: this is what the worst situations that can be inflicted upon Man show him to be, in so far as he distinguishes himself within the varied and rapacious flux of life. In order to think any aspect of Man, we must begin from this principle. So if ‘rights of man' exist, they are surely not rights of life against death, or rights of survival against misery. They are the rights of the Immortal, affirmed in their own right, or the rights of the Infinite, exercised over the contingency of suffering and death. The fact that in the end we all die, that only dust remains, in no way alters Man's identity as immortal at the instant in which he affirms himself as someone who runs counter to the temptation of wanting-to-be-an-animal to which circumstances may expose him. And we know that every human being is capable of being this immortal—unpredictably, be it in circumstances great or small, for truths important or secondary. In each case, subjectivation is immortal, and makes Man. Beyond this there is only a biological species, a ‘biped without feathers', whose charms are not obvious. If we do not set out from this point (which can be summarized, very simply, as the assertion that Man thinks, that Man is a tissue of truths), if we equate Man with the simple reality of his living being, we are inevitably pushed to a conclusion quite opposite to the one that the principle of life seems to imply. For this ‘living being' is in reality contemptible, and he will indeed be held in contempt. Who can fail to see that in our humanitarian expeditions, interventions, embarkations of charitable legionnaires, the Subject presumed to be universal is split? On the side of the victims the haggard animal exposed on television screens. On the side of the benefactors, conscience and the imperative to intervene. And why does this splitting always assign the same roles to the same sides? Who cannot see that this ethics which rests on the misery of the world hides, behind its victim-Man, the good-Man, the white-Man?

—Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil (trans. Peter Hallward)

And if you want to take the above passage as an oblique comment on the spectacle's other rigged debate of the hour, the one about what the urban bourgeoisie should do about "the unhoused" (engineered euphemism in its pragmatic frivolity compounds the offense, but never mind...), with conservatives arguing that they should be cleansed from the streets like subhuman scum and liberals arguing conversely that they ought to be mutely appreciated for the way their ornamentation of city space invites effusions of progressive sentiment, then so much the better.

[texasdreamer01]

People you'd like to get to know better tag game

I was tagged by @thejediandthemandalorian for this one. Cheers!

Last Song: Theory of a Deadman's "Strangers"

Currently watching: Just finished re-watching Stargate Atlantis <3

Currently reading: Lots of fanfiction, but eventually I'll finish Kolyma Stories by Varlam Shalamov

Current Obsession: I'm still digesting a lot of SGA, but I'll probably bounce to another thing soon enough.

Tagging @spurious, @pandora15, and @treetart if any of you would like to do it!

[chuckredman]

"Chilling" Insight

I think George Orwell would have appreciated this excerpt from the anthology I’m reading. It’s a collection of Russian writing from the Soviet era. Most of the writers were imprisoned, exiled, or killed by the Soviets: “In 1937 Shalamov [Varlam Shalamov, short story writer] was informed on by someone who heard him express the opinion that Ivan Bunin [exiled Nobel Prize winner] was a classical…

[uncleweed]

ARUNDHATI ROY

When I was growing up in Kerala, to nourish the English part of my brain—there was a Malayalam part, too—there was a lot of Shakespeare and a lot of Kipling, a combination of the most beautiful, lyrical language and some very unlyrical politics, although I didn’t see it that way then . . . I was definitely influenced by them, as I have been later by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, John Berger, Joyce, Nabokov. What an impossible task it is to list the writers one loves and admires. I’m grateful for the lessons one learns from great writers, but also from imperialists, sexists, friends, lovers, oppressors, revolutionaries—everybody. Everybody has something to teach a writer. My reading can switch rather oddly from Mrs. Dalloway to a report about the National Register of Citizens and the two million people in Assam who have been struck off it and have suddenly ceased to be Indian citizens. Ceased to have any rights whatsoever.

A novel that overwhelmed me recently is Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman. Just incredible—the audacity, the range of characters and situations. It begins with a surreal description of the Volga burning—the gasoline floating on the surface of the water catching fire, giving the illusion of a burning river—as the battle for Stalingrad rages. The manuscript was arrested by the Soviet authorities, as though it were a person. Another recent read was The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, by Giorgio Bassani. It’s about the time just before World War II, when many Jews in Italy were members of the Fascist Party. The Finzi-Continis are an elite Jewish family who live in a mansion with huge grounds and tennis courts. The book is centered around a love affair between the daughter of the Finzi-Continis and a person who is an outsider to that world as the Holocaust closes in. There is something about the unchanging stillness of that compound, the refusal to acknowledge what is happening, even while the darkness deepens around it. It is chilling and so eerily contemporary. All of the entitled Finzi-Continis end up dead. Considering what happened in Stalinist Russia, what happened in Europe during World War II—one is reading, searching for ways to understand the present. What fascinates me is how some of the people who were shot by Stalin’s firing squads died shouting “Long live Stalin!” People who labored in the gulag camps wept when he died. Ordinary Germans never rose up against Hitler, even as he persisted with a war that turned their cities into rubble. I look for clues to human psychology in Ian Kershaw’s biography of Hitler, in the memoirs of Nadezhda Mandelstam, wife of the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, whom Stalin basically killed, in the poems of Anna Akhmatova and Kolyma Tales by Varlam Shalamov.

[mattdenuzzo]

What I Saw and Learned in the Kolyma Camps // Varlam Shalamov