Опубликовано в журнале Дружба Народов, номер 11, 2010
YOURIJ DOMBROVSKIJ. The Birth of a Mouse.
30 years after the death of its author and 50 years after having been written the last unpublished book by Yourij Dombrovskij — a novel in novellas “The Birth of a Mouse” — comes to the reader. In his afterword to this publication Dmitrij Bickov rightly says: “Impossible to tear oneself from its reading”. And then: “Frankly to say: from all books by Dombrovskij this one is the only would-be-bestseller for the mass reader, who loves to read about love, secret agents and fatal passions around an indescribable beauty”. But one shouldn’t regard this “light” text light-headedly. As usually, Dombrovskij sets himself a serious task: to portray the world after the war and global catastrophe as he imagined the whole history of the XX century.
Along with the poems of our regular authors — ALYONA KARIMOVA from Kazan and VADIM MURATKHANOV from Moscow — we present lyrical poems of our debutant, young Ukrainian poet writing in Russian NATALYA BELCHENKO, poems highly attractive with their intonation and figurativeness.
SULTAN YASHURKAEV. Scratches on Splinters
As have promised we continue and will finish in the next issue publication of fragments from the book by wonderful Chechen writer Sultan Yashurkayev, in which he tells how were doing, what were feeling, what were thinking about and recollecting ordinary people of different nationalities, social circles and convictions who had noting at all to do with the war when it came down on them like the roof of one’s own house suddenly collapsed. Wisely suppressing the anguish the author is trying calmly to think: how and why the tragedy turned out possible and how we all should live on.
As far as Tolstoy’s leaving Yasnaya Polyana is concerned people are divided in two as Pavel Basinskij, the author of the book “Lev Tolstoy: escape from Paradise”, asserts: “Those who consider it to be purely family drama and those who understand it as some “gesture” on Tolstoy’s part — ideological, artistic, social or some else. And is there any common consent of the family, that is of today’s descendants of Tolstoy, on this problem?” This is the question opening the interview of the author with the director of “Yasnaya Polyana” memorial estate VLADIMIR TOLSTOY, timed to the centenary of the great writer’s death.