Narrative
Жили-были
Not translated into English
Viktor Shklovsky · 1966
Synopsis
The author recounts his childhood in Petersburg and his first readings, his years at school and university, the artistic circles of the capital before the revolution, then the birth of the society that studied poetic language, the war and the revolutions of 1917. The book gives a large place to portraits of the writers and artists he knew, among them Blok and Mayakovsky, and continues with accounts of Soviet cinema and of the period that followed, up to 1964.
Context
The book, subtitled memoirs, notes and stories on the period from the end of the nineteenth century to 1964, appeared in Moscow in 1966 from the publisher Sovetski pissatel, running to more than five hundred pages. Its French publisher describes it as a book about friendship, written in the years of the Thaw to pass on to younger generations the spirit of its author's youth. The French translation by Macha Zonina and Jean-Christophe Bailly, with a preface by Alexandre Stroev, was published by Christian Bourgois in 2005.
Who it is for
A book of memories made up of brief chapters, which reads like a gallery of portraits of the Russian avant-garde.
Prizes and reception
A first-hand account of the writers and artists of Russia in the first quarter of the twentieth century.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.