“Iván,” I replied.
“Iván what?”
“Iván, the Russian boy.”
Intuitively, I feel that my intimate relationship with Russia goes back to that distant source. Of course, Billy did not believe me, but he didn’t let on. I was a rather odd, very lonely, very capricious boy, I think. My problems with mythomania lasted a few years longer, as a defense against the world. Sometimes, later, after a few drinks, they would reemerge, which angered and depressed me to a disproportionate degree. The only exception was my identification with Iván, the Russian boy, which at times still seems to me to be the real truth.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
AITMATOV, CHINGIZ. Trans. Mirra Ginsburg. The White Ship. Crown Publishers, 1972.
BENJAMIN, WALTER. Trans. R. Sieburth. Moscow Diary. Harvard University Press, 1986.
BERBEROVA, NINA. Trans. Philippe Radley. The Italics Are Mine. Vintage, 1993.
CANETTI, ELIAS. Trans. John Hargraves. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.
CHEKHOV, ANTON. Trans. Constance Garnett. “In the Ravine.” The Portable Chekhov. Penguin Books, 1977.
CIORAN, E.M. Trans. Richard Howard. History and Utopia. University of Chicago Press, 1998.
FERNÁNDEZ DE LIZARDI, JOSÉ JOAQUÍN. Trans. David L. Frye. The Mangy Parrot: The Life and Times of Periquillo Sarniento. Hackett Publishing Co., 2005.
KARLINKSY, SIMON. Marina Tsvetaeva: The Woman, Her World, and Her Poetry. Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Letters: Summer 1926: Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetayeva, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Trans. Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, and Jamey Gambrell. Yevgeny Pasternak, Yelena Pasternak, and Konstantin M. Azadovsky, eds. New York Review Books, 2001.
MANDELSTAM, NADEZHDA. Trans. Max Hayward. Hope Against Hope: A Memoir. Modern Library, 1999.
MEYERHOLD, VSEVOLOD. Trans. John Crowfoot. Arrested Voices: Resurrecting the Disappeared Writers of the Soviet Regime. Martin Kessler Books, 1996.
NABOKOV, VLADIMIR. The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. New Directions Publishers, 1992.
PASTERNAK, BORIS. Trans. Manya Harari. An Essay in Autobiography. Collins and Harvill Press, 1959.
PILNYAK, BORIS. Trans. Vera T. Reck and Michael Green. Mahogany and Other Stories. Ardis Publishers, 1993.
TSVETAEVA, MARINA. Trans. J. Marin King. A Captive Spirit. The Overlook Press, 2009.
RILKE, RAINER MARIA. Trans. Edward Snow. The Poetry of Rilke. North Point Press, 2011.
SERGIO PITOL DEMENEGHI is one of Mexico’s most acclaimed writers, born in the city of Puebla in 1933. He studied law and philosophy in Mexico City. He is renowned for his intellectual career in both the field of literary creation and translation, and is renowned for his work in the promotion of Mexican culture abroad, which he achieved during his long service as a cultural attaché in Mexican embassies and consulates across the globe. He has lived perpetually on the run: he was a student in Rome, a translator in Beijing and Barcelona, a university professor in Xalapa and Bristol, and a diplomat in Warsaw, Budapest, Paris, Moscow and Prague. In recognition of the importance of his entire canon of work, Pitol was awarded the two most important prizes in the Spanish language world: the Juan Rulfo Prize in 1999 (now known as the FIL Literary Award in Romance Languages), and in 2005 he won the Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious literary prize in the Spanish language world, often called the “Spanish language Nobel.” Deep Vellum will publish Pitol’s “Trilogy of Memory” in full in 2015-2016 (The Art of Flight; The Journey; The Magician of Vienna, all translated by George Henson), marking the first appearance of any of Pitol’s books in English.
GEORGE HENSON’S literary translations include The Art of Flight by Cervantes Prize laureate Sergio Pitol and The Heart of the Artichoke by fellow Cervantes recipient Elena Poniatowska. His translations of essays, poetry, and short fiction, including works by Andrés Neuman, Leonardo Padura, Juan Villoro, Miguel Barnet, and Alberto Chimal have appeared in The Literary Review, BOMB, The Buenos Aires Review, Flash Fiction International, and World Literature Today, where he is a contributing editor. George holds a BA in Spanish from Oklahoma University, an MA, also in Spanish, from Middlebury College, and a PhD in literary and translation studies from the University of Texas at Dallas.
ALVARO ENRIGUE was born in Mexico in 1969. He is the award-winning author of five novels and two books of short stories. In 2007, the Hay Festival’s BogotÁ39 project named him one of the most promising Latin American writers of his generation. His linked story collection Hypothermia, was published by Dalkey Archive in 2014, and his Herralde Prize-winning novel Sudden Death will be published by Riverhead in 2016. He lives in New York.
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Table of Contents
SERGIO PITOL, RUSSIAN BOY An introduction by Álvaro Enrigue
· INTRODUCTION
· 19 MAY
· 20 MAY
· 21 MAY
· MEYERHOLD’S LETTER
· 22 MAY
· FAMILY PORTRAIT I
· 23 MAY
· 24 MAY
· 25 MAY
· GOLDFISH
· 26 MAY
· 27 MAY
· FAMILY PORTRAIT II
· 28 MAY
· 29 MAY
· 30 MAY
· 31 MAY
· WHEN THE SOUL IS DELIRIOUS
· 2 JUNE
· FEATS OF MEMORY
· 3 JUNE
· IVÁN, THE RUSSIAN BOY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIOGRAPHY