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Sasha Sokolov's Twilight Cosmos: Themes and Motifs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

D. Barton Johnson
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Extract

Sasha Sokolov is the author of three remarkably different novels. The first, A School for Fools (1976), tells of a schizophrenic adolescent and his attempts to come to terms with the elemental experiences of sex and death in the small world of his special school, his family, and the dacha community where they summer. The second, Between Dog and Wolf (1980), is a complex tale of vengeance and violence. The hero, an elderly, one-legged, itinerant grinder named Il'ia, beats off a supposed wolf with his crutches. The dog, for such it is, belongs to Iakov, a game warden, who in revenge steals Il'ia's crutches. Their feud escalates. The grinder kills two of the gamekeeper's dogs and is eventually drowned by their owner who, unbeknownst to either, may be his son. Sokolov's newest novel, The Epic of Palisandr (1985), relates the adventures of its hero, Palisandr Dal'berg, “Son of the Kremlin.“

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , Winter 1986 , pp. 639 - 649
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1986

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References

1. Sokolov, born Aleksandr Vsevolodovich Sokolov in 1943, writes under the name Sasha Sokolov. The future writer was born in Ottawa, Canada, where his father was deputy military attacheat the Soviet Embassy during and after World War II. The family returned to Moscow in 1948 whenthe father was expelled for his role in the Gouzenko spy ring that relayed United States atomicsecrets to the USSR. Sokolov returned to claim his Canadian citizenship in 1977 following a turbulentdeparture from the USSR in the preceding year.

2. Shkola dlia durakov (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1976); in English as A School for Fools, trans.Carl Proffer. (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1977). Critical literature includes Alexander, Boguslawski, “Sokolov's A School for Fools: An Escape from Socialist Realism,” Slavic and East European Journal 27 (Spring 1983): 91–97 Google Scholar; Ingold, Felix Phillip, “Zeit und Freiheit: Zu Sascha Sokolows Schule der Dummen ,” Schweitzer Monatshefte 59 (January 1979): 52–58 Google Scholar; Barton Johnson, D., “A Structural Analysis of Sasha Sokolov's School for Fools ” in Fiction and Drama in Eastern and Southeastern Europe: Evolution and Experiment in the Postwar Period, ed. Birnbaum, Henrik and Eekman, Thomas (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1980), pp. 207–237)Google Scholar; Alexandra, Karriker, “Double Vision: Sasha Sokolov's School for Fools ” World Literature Today 53 (Autumn 1979): 610–614 Google Scholar; Fred, Moody, “Madness and the Pattern of Freedomin Sasha Sokolov's A School for Fools ” Russian Literature Triquarterly 16 (1979): 7–22 Google Scholar; Cynthia, Simmons, “Incarnations of the Hero Archetype in School for Fools” forthcoming in a festschrift for Terras, Victor (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica)Google Scholar.

3. Mezhdu sobakoi i volkom (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1980). Critical comment includes VasiliiAksenov, “Nenuzhnoe zacherknut',” Russkaia mysl’ (Paris), 16 June 1983, p. 2; D. Barton Johnson, “Sasha Sokolov's Between Dog and fVolfand the Modernist Tradition,” in Russian Literature in Emigration: The Third Wave, ed. Olga Matich with Michael Heim (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1984), pp.208–217; Vadim, Kreid, “Zaitil'shchina,” Dvadtsaf dva (Israel) 19 (May-June 1981): 213–218 Google Scholar; Vel'berg, Boris, “Mezhdu sobakoi i volkom” Novyiamerikanets, 2 February 1984, pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

4. Palisandriia (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1985) forthcoming in English as Astrophobia, trans.Michael Heim (New York: Grove, 1987). Critical comment: Alexander Boguslawski, “Time and Chronology in Sokolov's Palisandria,” paper read at the Sasha Sokolov and the Avant-Garde sessionof the AATSEEL Convention, Washington, D.C., 29 December 1984; D. Barton Johnson, “SashaSokolov's Palisandrija” Slavic and East European Journal 30 (Fall 1986); Anatolii, Kopeikin, “Bezotchetnyisoldat istorii: (o novom romane Sashi Sokolova), ” Russkaia mysl’ (Paris), 27 September 1985, p. 15 Google Scholar; Matich, Olga, “Sasha Sokolov's Palisandria: History and Myth,” forthcoming in Russian Review 45, No. 3 Google Scholar. Sokolov-Nabokov parallels in Palisandria are discussed in D. Barton Johnson, “Sasha Sokolov and Vladimir Nabokov,” forthcoming in Russian Language Journal, no. 138. Referencesto this, and the other two works, will be indicated by page numbers in parentheses in the text.

5. The image of Palisandr's train-cortège bearing home the generations of exiled dead echoes adream Nina Berberova records in her autobiography Kursiv moi, 2nd ed. (New York: Russica, 1983), p. 339.

6. Deviant aspects of the hero's language are examined by Cynthia Simmons in “Cohesion andCoherence in Pathological Discourse and Its Literary Representation in Sasha Sokolov's Škola dlja durakov” forthcoming in International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics.

7. See Alexei Tsvetkov, “Between Dog and Wolf: The Language of Parody,” paper read at theSasha Sokolov and the Avant-Garde session of the annual AATSEEL convention, Washington, D.C., 29 December 1984. This paper is also forthcoming in a special issue.of Canadian-American Slavic Studies devoted entirely to Sokolov.

8. Palisandriia has a plot but it is patently absurd—merely a pretext for weaving scenes of gorgeous verbal texture. Sokolov discusses his distaste for plot in his lecture “Palisandr: c'est moi? given at the University of Southern California conference “Russian Writers in Exile: Joseph Brodskyand Sasha Sokolov,” 13 April 1985, Los Angeles.

9. Such possibilities are explored by Friedman, Alan in his novel Hermaphrodeity: The Autobiography of a Poet (New York: Bard, 1974 Google Scholar.

10. Sokolov touches upon his treatment of these new themes in two recent interviews. The first, conducted by A. and N. Voronel', “la khochu podniat’ russkuiu prozu do urovnia poezii …,” appeared in Dvadtsaf dva (Israel), no. 35 (1984): 179–186; the second, by Olga Matich, “Nuzhnozabyt’ vse staroe i vspomnit’ vse novoe … “ in Russkaia mysl’ (Paris), 31 May 1985, p. 12.