1. From the essay “Sostoianie literatury na iskhode voiny,” Otdel’ rukopisei Rossiiskoi natsional'noi biblioteki (OR RNB) 1377, L. Ginzburg. Because the archive remains uncatalogued, I refer to manuscripts and materials with the general number of the Lidiia Ginzburg collection, 1377. A full, critical edition of Ginzburg's blockade-related writings (including previously unpublished notebooks, manuscripts, essays) will soon be available: Lidiia Ginzburg, Prokhodiashchie kharaktery (Zapiski blokadnogo cheloveka. Proza voennyhh let), ed., commentary, and introduction by Andrei Zorin and Emily Van Buskirk (Moscow, forthcoming).

2. From the essay published in Pretvorenie opyta (Riga, 1991) as “Leningradskaia situatsia“ and in Lidiia Ginzburg, Zapisnye knizhki. Vospominaniia. Esse. (St. Petersburg, 2002), 184–86.

3. Ginzburg, “Sostoianie literatury na iskhode voiny.“

4. This composition remains Ginzburg's most translated work. Some of these appear in Judson Rosengrant, “L. la. Ginzburg: An International Chronological Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Works,” Russian Review 54, no. 4 (October 1995): 587–600, but more have been published since 1995.

5. A full history of the text and Ginzburg's revisions will appear in Prokhodiashchie kharaktery. The text originally published in Neva, 1984, no. 1 as “Zapiski blokadnogo cheloveka“ was republished, with slight modifications, in Literatura vpoiskakh real'nosti (Leningrad, 1987) and Chelovek za pis'mennym stolom (Leningrad, 1989). In the latter book, Ginzburg added the section “Vokrug ‘Zapisok blokadnogo cheloveka.'” At die time of her death, she was working with the assistance of Nikolai Kononov to publish “Part 2” of Notes (and essays from the 1940s); this came out in 1991 in Pretvorenie opyta. All three parts appear together in Ginzburg, Zapisnye knizhki.

6. Ginzburg, Zapisnye knizhki, 627, 643.

7. Ibid., 611.

8. Ginzburg uses this phrase in relation to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's and Aleksandr Herzen's principles of omission. See, for example, Lidiia Ginzburg, 0 psikhologicheskoi proze, 2d ed. (Leningrad, 1977), 204. For the English, see On Psychological Prose, 163.

9. See Ibker, Leona, “Toward a Poetics of Documentary Prose—from the Perspective of Gulag Testimonies,” Poetics Today 18, no. 2 (Summer 1997): 187–222.Google Scholar Susan Suleiman treats issues of generic heterogeneity in memoirs of the Holocaust (which she defines as a collective historical trauma) in Crises of Memory and the Second World. War (Cambridge, Mass., 2006), esp. 160–61.

10. I found this text in spring 2006, in the portion of the Ginzburg archive then held by Kushner. The manuscript was lying in a folder behind a draft of “Delusion of the Will“; it had been misclassified as a variant of that work. The two texts may have been stored together by Ginzburg herself, or they may have been placed in the single folder by Al'bin Konechnyi (one of the first to organize the archive) or by Kushner. None of the friends of Ginzburg I interviewed knew of this text or the story contained in it.

11. Though Ginzburg did not write a title on her blockade-era drafts, the narrative we are calling “Den’ Ottera” was labeled in one place in her handwriting of the 1960s, indicating the change of hero, in the following way: “Den’ Ottera—N” (Otter's—N.'s Day). ORRNB1377.

12. Ginzburg, Zapisnye knizhki, 653. In the 1960s draft, there is an elusive continuation of this passage: “But I will yet return to die blockade story of O., a story of pity and of cruelty.” OR RNB 1377.

13. Ginzburg suggests that the Blokadnaia kniga encouraged her own pursuit of publication in 1984 and singles out Riabinkin's diary as a “very strong testimony.” Interview G. Silina, Literaturnaiagazeta, no. 3 (5069) (15January 1986). Fragments from Riabinkin's diarieswere published in Smenain 1970. See Adamovich, Ales’ and Granin, Daniil, Blokadnaia kniga (Moscow, 1979, 1982; Leningrad, 1984, 1989), 266.Google Scholar

14. Adamovich and Granin, Blokadnaia kniga, 378.

15. Ginzburg, Zapisnye knizhki, 614.

16. Zholkovsky, Alexander explicates the relationship of analysis to lyricism using one passage from Ginzburg's prose in “Between Genres,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 28, nos. 2–3 (Summer-Fall 1994): 147-60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17. Karin Grelz has written about how Ginzburg builds her observations into sentences that have the quality of formulae or axioms—and how this “closed system” mirrors the blockade. See Grel'ts, , “Osazhdennyi smysl,” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 49 (2001): 401-2.Google Scholar

18. Ginzburg, Zapisnye knizhki, 658.

19. Ginzburg writes about guilt and remorse as a source of art in “Zabluzhdenie voli,“ ibid., 584, and in “Zapiski blokadnogo cheloveka,” ibid., 623.

20. Paperno, Irina, “Sovetskii opyt, avtobiograficheskoe pis'mo i istoricheskoe soznanie: Ginzburg, Gertsen, Gegel',” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 68 (2004): 102-27, esp. 109–10.Google Scholar

21. Ginzburg, Lidiia, “Gertsen—sozdatel‘Pretvorenie opyta,’“ zwzda, 1944, no. 2:129-35.Google Scholar

22. Ginzburg defended her candidate's dissertation in 1940 on Mikhail Lermontov, and from 1944–1947 was a doctoral student at the Institute of Literature of the Academy of Sciences, working on Herzen. In the late 1940s through the 1950s, she helped compile the 30-volume edition of Herzen's Sobranie sochinenii as well as the 9-volume Sochineniia. For political and ideological reasons, defending and publishing her work on Herzen created difficulties for her; this situation was finally resolved in 1957 with the publication of her book: Byloe i dumy Certsena (Leningrad, 1957). About her relationship to this book, see Ginzburg, Zapisnye knizhki, 294.

23. Ginzburg, Zapisnye knizhki, 623. A scribbling from the 1960s on the back of one of the pages of “Otter's Day” includes three planned epigraphs: Herzen's saying and lines from both Nikolai Nekrasov and Nikolai Oleinikov. OR RNB 1377. For Herzen's saying in the original, see Gertsen, A. I., Sobranie sochinenii v tridsati tomakh (Moscow, 1956), 10:26.Google Scholar

24. Edward Acton underscores the relationship between remembering and writing for Herzen in Alexander Heizen and the Role of the Intellectual Revolutionary (Cambridge, Eng., 1979), 99.

25. For a thorough account of the long and complicated publication history of “A Story of a Family Drama” and its interpretations by Soviet scholars, see Irina Paperno, “Introduction: Intimacy and History. The Gercen Family Drama Reconsidered,” Russian Literature 6], nos. 1–2 (1 January-15 February 2007): 1–66. The six articles in this special issue devoted to the family drama show in different ways (as Paperno describes) how, “By way of literature, intimacy was converted into history: the history of the failed 1848 revolution, underwritten by socialist Romanticism, the proto-socialist adultery novel, and Romantic and Post-Romantic philosophy.” Ibid., 50.

26. Ginzburg, On Psychological Prose, 216. Rosengrant uses “delayed memory” for “pytka zamedlennym vospominaniem,” whereas “slow remembering” is more accurate. For the Russian, see Ginzburg, O psikhologicheskoi proze, 267. See also Ginzburg, Byloe i dumy Gertsena, 308–13.

27. Some have suggested that Ginzburg was generous to a fault in her reading of Herzen through the lens of lofty artistic explanations. See Acton, Alexander Herzen, 101–3, and also Ulrich Schmid, “The Family Drama as an Interpretive Pattern in Aleksandr Gercen's Byloe i dumy,” Russian Literature61, nos. 1–2 (ljanuary-l5 February 2007): 88.

28. Ginzburg, Byloe i dumy Gertsena, 294–303 and also Ginzburg, On Psychological Prose, 209–17.

29. Ginzburg, On. Psychological Prose, 211.

30. Ginzburg writes, “those impulses which led Herzen to My Past and Thoughts were reworked and disappeared [pererabotalis’ i ischezli] in the poetic and philosophical unity of a great epic.” Ginzburg, Byloe i dumy Gertsena, 312–13.

31. Ibid., 311.

32. Herzen, Alexander, My Past and Thoughts, trans. Constance Garnett, rev. Humphrey Higgens (New York, 1968), 2:857.Google Scholar

33. Ginzburg, On Psychological Prose, 217; Ginzburg, O psikhologicheskoi proze, 267–68. See a similar passage in Ginzburg, Byloe i dumy Certsena, 312–13.

34. The triple dates, added for publication in Neva, remained unchanged in subsequent publications.

35. Interview with G. Silina, Literaturnaia gazeta, no. 3 (5069) (15 January 1986).

36. Ginzburg, “Rasskaz o zhalosti i o zhestokosti,” OR RNB 1377.

37. Post-traumatic psychotherapy was initiated by Pierre Janet near the beginning of the twentieth century. See Kolk, Bessel A. van der and Hart, Onno van der, “The Intrusive Past: The Flexibility of Memory and the Engraving of Trauma” in Caruth, Cathy, ed., Trauma:Explorations in Memory (Baltimore, 1995), 158-82.Google Scholar

38. In the manuscripts, Otter helps to connect several fragmentary narratives— evidence that they may have been envisioned as a kind of a novel or a cycle. See Buskirk, Emily Van [Emili Van Baskirk], “‘Samootstranenie’ kak eticheskii i esteticheskii printsip v proze L. la. Ginzburg,” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 81 (2006): 273.Google Scholar

39. For Ginzburg's statements on ethics and the “exit from self” in love and art, see, for example, Ginzburg, Zapisnyeknizhki, 251–59, 569.1 discuss Ginzburg's ethics in “'Samootstranenie' kak eticheskii i esteticheskii printsip” and at greater length in my dissertation, “Reality in Search of Literature,” 56–170.

40. For an exploration of Ginzburg's concept of sotsial'nost’ (the opposite of asotsial'nost’) partially in the context of Notes of a Blockade Person, see Sarah Pratt, “Lidiia Ginzburg, a Russian Democrat at the Rendezvous,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 28, nos. 2 -3 (Summer-Fall 1994): 183–203.

41. The phrase “working egoism” (rabochii egoizm) appears within Ginzburg's description of the creative type of person in a 1970s essay. Ginzburg, Zapisnye knizhki, 364.

42. Ginzburg writes: “Maybe, to love and save this pitiful life, closely related by blood, it was worth paying the price of his cruel creativity. This is something he does not know and can never verify. There was no love, and nowhere to get it from.” “Rasskaz o zhalosti i o zhestokosti,” OR RNB 1377.

43. Natal'ia Sokolova, “Lidiia Ginzburg, rodnia, znakomye: Materialy k biographii,“ Russkii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstvo (RGALI), f. 3270 (Sokolova, N. V), op. l,ed. khr. 27.

44. Tetka exclaims in exasperation, “all this is cursed motherhood” ﹛vse materinstvo prokliatoe); and in Otter's view, she pretends to be a victim and selfless mother ﹛ei nuzhno izobrazhat'zherlvu i samootverzhennuiu mat’) in order to torture him more effectively. “Rasskaz o zhalosti i o zhestokosti,” OR RNB 1377.

45. “A Story of Pity and Cruelty” suggests that Tetka was alive in late summer, leaving the date of death unspecified. An entry with the month and year of death for Ginzburg (Gol'denberg) Raisa (Rakhil’) Davydovna (1867–1942) can be found in Blokada, 1941- 1944. Leningrad. Kniga pamiati, vol. 6 (St. Petersburg, 1999). In Ginzburg's archives, there is a slip for money transfer from 22 December 1942. Natal'ia (Ata) Viktorovna Sokolova, sending her aunt 800 rubles from evacuation in Chistopol', wrote the following message: “Liusia, my dearest friend, we found out about the old woman's death, and it is very sad. Her final months were immensely difficult. We hope you are in good health. You should write us about yourself, even just a few words. My mother sends her regards. Ata.” OR RNB 1377.

46. There are letters in the archive between Lidiia Ginzburg and her brother Viktor Tipot concerning money for Raisa Ginzburg. See, for example, RGALI, f. 2897 (Tipot Viktor Iakovlevich), op. 1, d. 88,1. 3 (1936) and f. 3270, op. 1, ed. khr. 82,1. 1.

47. Sokolova relates a joke about the contrasting characters in her biography: “One of Liusia's friends said this about Raisa Davidovna and Liusia: a hen laid an eagle's egg.“ RGALI, f. 3270, op. 1, ed. khr. 27,1. 6. One of Ginzburg's notes, published posthumously, confirms this light-spirited character: “Khardzhiev told me: ‘Your mother has such an easy character that it must be very hard to live with her.'” Ginzburg, Zapisnye knizliki, 395.

48. Natal'ia Viktorovna had a son Aleksei with her first husband, Konstantin Simonov, in the 1930s. She then married Pavel Illarionovich Sokolov, who died at the front. Natal'ia Viktorovna's second child, Pavel Pavlovich Sokolov, was born during the war while she was in evacuation in Chistopol’ (this information comes from the introduction to the Sokolova archive in RGALI.)

49. In 1928, Ginzburg was officially registered in a top-floor apartment at 24 Griboedov Canal, Apartment 5 (right behind Kazan Cathedral), where the Gukovskiis lived and where she at first had one large room. A letter from Ginzburg to Tipot dated 21 October 1928 confirms this move. RGALI, f. 2897, op. 1, d. 36,1. 1. In 1931, she helped move her mother and uncle from Odessa. She erected a dividing wall, creating a small room for her mother. Meanwhile, she helped set up an apartment in a Leningrad suburb, Detskoe selo (formerly Tsarskoe selo) for her uncle, who resided there until his death in 1934. See Sokolova, “Lidiia Ginzburg, rodnia, znakomye,” 22. Also, see letter from Ginzburg to Tipot dated 23 March 1931. RGALI, f. 2897, op. 1, d. 36,1. 4.

50. Other biographical correspondences in “A Story of Pity and Cruelty” include the description of Raisa's sister. According to Sokolova, Raisa's sister Liuba, who lived through the war, was unattractive and never married (in “A Story of Pity and Cruelty” Tetka sees her unmarriageable sister as inferior). Tetka's idea that she sacrificed everything for her “nephews” corresponds to an argument between Lidiia Ginzburg and her mother, which Sokolova quotes. Finally, Sokolova's description of Mark Ginzburg as gentle and meek corresponds to the old man (“starik” in “Delusion of the Will“) and “A Story of Pity and Cruelty,” where he is “a person with a weak life force” (chelovek slabogo napora).

51. The biographical information about Ginzburg's uncle/stepfather's death in Detskoe selo comes from one of Lidiia Ginzburg's “autobiographies,” written for official purposes, in the archives. OR RNB 1377.

52. RGALI, f. 3270, op. 1, ed. khr. 27,11. 23–25.

53. Ginzburg wrote in drafts related to “Zametki o proze,” circa 1934: “Invented [vydumannye] people and situations […] fill me with a certain disgust.” OR RNB 1377.

54. Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, 2:858. Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, 10:238. The literal translation would be “psychic pathology.“

55. See Ginzburg, On Psychological Prose, 212–16.

56. Ginzburg, Byloe i dumy Gertsena, 305.

57. I found the following resemblances between the texts. The Herzen passages are all taken from My Past and Thoughts. Ginzburg's passages are from “Rasskaz o zhalosti i o zhestokosti,” OR RNB 1377.

Herzen: “If I had tended her sick soul with half the care I gave afterwards to her sick body, I should never have let this rankling sorrow send out roots in all directions.“ (2:845).

Ginzburg: “Care came too late, and for a body that was already unfeeling, things were done that the body needed while still alive.“

Herzen: “This life was my whole fortune [dostoianie].” (2:748).

Ginzburg: “Tetka's life seemed to be his composition [proizvedenie].”

Herzen (after Natalie's death): “A home I had no longer. With the departure of the children the last trace of family life vanished. Everything had assumed the appearance of bachelorhood.” (2:920).

Ginzburg's Otter (after Tetka's death): “With this death he lost the last trace of youth. He lost the stable foundation of daily life, a small element of family belonging, which oppressed him, irritated him, but nevertheless was solid and enduring; surviving affairs and breakups, it had given form to daily existence. […] Yes, he had lost the remnants of youth and of humanity, day-to-day existence and home.”

A detail in My Past and Thoughts where Herzen tries to feed the dying Natalie orange juice (which Ginzburg quotes in Byloe i dumy Gertsena, 309) partially resembles a scene in Ginzburg's “Delusion of the Will,” Zapisnye knizhki, 602.

58. Ginzburg, Byloe i dumy Gertsena, 308.

59. Ginzburg, “Rasskaz o zhalosti i o zhestokosti,” OR RNB 1377. Emphasis in the original.

60. The unfinished sketches are part of “Dom i mir,” OR RNB 1377. For a short discussion of drafts and outlines belonging to this unfinished work, see Lidiia Ginzburg, “'Nikto ne plachet nad tem, chto ego ne kasaetsia': Chetvertyi ‘Razgovor o liubvi’ Lidii Ginzburg (podgotovka teksta, publikatsia i vstupitel'naia stat'ia Emili Van Baskirk. Perevod E. Kanishchevoi),” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 88 (2007): 154–68.

61. Ginzburg, “Rasskaz o zhalosti i o zhestokosti,” OR RNB 1377.

62. Ibid.

63. Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, 10:274. Garnett's translation is different: “the happenings that can never be obliterated from the memory.” Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, 2:893. Quoted in Ginzburg, On Psychological Prose, 217

64. Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, 2:911. Emphasis in the original.

65. Ginzburg, On Psychological Prose, 216.

66. From the draft “Theoretical Section” to “Otter's Day,” OR RNB 1377.

67. Ginzburg's notion of the fate of biography in the twentieth century was not unlike Osip Mandel'shtam's, in “Konets romana,” Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh (Moscow, 1990), 2:201–5. On Ginzburg's fragmentary notion of character, see Van Buskirk, “Reality in Search of Literature,” chap. 1.

68. When Ginzburg renewed work on her blockade manuscripts in 1962, she drafted a preamble that included mention of Tolstoi and Solzhenitsyn: “During the quarter century, during which these drafts/draft variants/preparations of this day [Ginzburg's variants] lay in my desk drawer, another immediate predecessor appeared: ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.’ I cannot accept this composition; I cannot accept this implausible, grimacing, opposed-to-reason imaginary direct speech, in which the whole thing is written. But I know that the social significance of this composition is tremendous; it is very important for its details, its patient exposition. Of course there is an analog)’ between the circle of the labor camp and the circle of the blockade. But my composition is about something else.” OR RNB 1377.

69. One-half of the city's inhabitants who had remained in Leningrad perished during this unusually cold winter. See Richard Bidlack, “Foreword: Historical Background to the Siege of Leningrad,” in Cynthia Simmons and Nina Peiiina, eds., Writing the Siege of Leningrad: Women's Diaries, Memoirs, and Documentary Prose (Pittsburgh, 2002), xv.

70. Ginzburg, “Den’ Ottera,” OR RNB 1377. Ginzburg also describes the circle this way: “waking up, house chores, breakfast, trip to work, lunch, trip home with Tetka's lunch, return to work, return home, supper, sleep, waking up, house chores, breakfast…“

71. Ginzburg, Zapisnye knizhki, 652.

72. Ibid., 741.

73. Ginzburg, “Den’ Ottera,” OR RNB 1377.

74. Interview with G. Silina, Literaturnaia gazeta, no. 3 (5069) (15 January 1986).

75. Ginzburg, Zapisnye knizhki, 622.

76. Ibid., 653. This passage builds on the synopsis of Otter and Tetka's relationship from “Otter's Day” and comes at the same place in the narrative.

77. Ibid., 658. For further textual comparison between Notes and “A Story of Pity and Cruelty,” see die chart in Van Buskirk, “'Samootstranenie’ kak eticheskii i esteticheskii printsip,” 281.

78. Ginzburg, “Rasskaz o zhalosti i o zhestokosti,” OR RNB 1377.

79. Ginzburg, “Den’ Ottera,” OR RNB 1377.

80. Ginzburg, Zapisnye knizhki, 649.

81. Ginzburg, “Rasskaz o zhalosti i o zhestokosti,” OR RNB 1377.

82. Ginzubrg, “Den’ Ottera,” OR RNB 1377.

83. Ginzburg, Zapisnye knizhki, 660.

84. Ibid., 659.

85. In drafts for “Paralysis” (OR RNB 1377), one of the first texts Ginzburg wrote about the blockade, there is another scene with containers, where the hero's will is so traumatized that he can barely bring himself to wash them. He also has trouble organizing his bag and coupons (this latter part is in the published version too, see Ginzburg, Zapisnye knizhki, 737). The different experience may be one reason she decided to keep this narrative separate, with a different hero.

86. One exception to this rule is Boris Gasparov, who terms Mites an essay, which combines “characteristics of a diary, of a literary-philosophical essay and of analytic psychological prose.” Gasparov, “On ‘Notes from the Leningrad Blockade,'” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 28, nos. 2 -3 (Summer-Fall 1994): 216.

87. See, in particular, Cynthia Simmons, “Leningrad Culture under Siege (1941- 1944),” in Goscilo, Helena and Norris, Stephen M., eds., Preserving Petersburg: History, Memory, Nostalgia (Bloomington, 2008), 164-81.Google Scholar

88. Cynthia Simmons uses Ginzburg as a central text in “Leningrad Culture under Siege.” Simmons and Perlina identify Ginzburg's work as a central and definitive example of women's representations of the siege in their coedited book, Writing the Siege of Leningrad, xxxi. Lisa Kirschenbaum, The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995: Myths, Memories, and Monuments (Cambridge, Eng., 2006), shows how Ginzburg's account aligns with others on several elements of blockade experience, for example bodily changes (182), the impulse to document food preparation (27), the vivid memory of Viacheslav Molotov's voice over the loudspeaker (42–43), the importance of War and Peace (29), and the wartime press (46).

89. Interview with LiudmilaTitova in Smena, no. 262 (19/12) (13 November 1988): 2.

90. Ginzburg writes, “E. S. Ventsel’ is among those who noticed my prose and rated it highly, but even she published a review of Notes of a Blockade Person under the title ‘Prose by a Scholar.’ Kaverin wrote to me about the striking physiological exactitude ‘which, strangely enough, (italics mine -LG) does not hinder the artistic quality of perception.'

“Especially insistent have been the attempts to classify this work as a memoir, despite the obvious fact that the leading character is not memoiristic. Just a few days ago at a meeting of the Critics’ Section, Ninov called Notes memoir-documentary prose. To call it simply prose would apparently contradict the social status of the author.” This note is dated 2 October 1985. OR RNB 1377.

91. A page with two draft versions of this note (one of them is crossed out, I am providing the other, clearly a revision) was lying loose in a miscellaneous folder of manuscripts. Its place in the 1960s drafts of “Blokada” (as the piece was called then) would have been after the “Preamble” (which resembles what was later published as “Zapiski v dni blokady” in “Vokrug ‘Zapisok blokadnogo cheloveka'“), and immediately preceding the fragment “Otsepenenie” (Paralysis), the shorter story that served as an “interlude” before the longer narrative of N.'s day (later to become part 1). OR RNB 1377.

92. Ginzburg, Zapisnye knizhki, 734.

93. Ibid.

94. For one take on Ginzburg's notion of authorship and literary character, see William Mills Todd III, “Between Marxism and Semiotics: Lidiia Ginzburg and Soviet Literary Sociology,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 19, no. 2 (1985): 159–66.

95. Ginzburg, Zapisnye knizhki, 400.

96. Ibid.

97. Ginzburg, draft theoretical section to “Den’ Ottera,” OR RNB 1377.