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Description edit
The writer whom Vasily Grossman loved most of all was Anton Chekhov. Grossman’s own short stories are no less accomplished than his novels, and they are remarkably varied. “The Dog” is about the first living creature to be sent into space and then returned to Earth. “The Road,” an account of... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Summary edit
In The town of Berdichev
Cuento del estilo de Chekhov, que presenta una escena del día a día, el embarazo de una. Mujer, como algo que no podía haber sucedido en la Vavilova, por sus actitudes hombrunas y su poca femineidad.
Maneja con humor y excelentes descripciones la... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)
Characters/People edit
- Yekaterina Korotkova: Hija de Grossman, nacida en 1930
- Semyon Osipovich: Padre de Grossman, fue activo en la revolución e hizo parte de los Mensheviks.
- Yekaterina Savelievna: Madre de Grossman
- Anna Matsuk: Esposa de Grossman, casados en 1928.
- Vavilova ( in The town of Berdichev): Oficial del ejercito ruso, que por su tarea, tamaño y actitud no parecía una mujer, ni mucho menos que estuviera embarazada;
- Lev Sergeyevich Orlov ( A Small Life): Protagonista
- Vera Ignatyevna: Esposa de Orlov
- Semyon Mikheich: (The Old Man) El viejo, personaje personal de la historia. Calmado y pacifico que llega a la desesperación y la violencia por causa del maltrato de los nazis
- ( The old teacher) Boris Isaakovich Rosenthal: Personaje principal. .
- Heinrich Himmler: (The hell of Treblinka) el creador de ls campos de exterminio de los nazis y que tuvieron su origen en el de Treblinka.
- Raphael: Pintor de la Madonna de la Sistima, base de la histpria del mismo nombre
- Aleksandra Kollontai: The Elk Esposa de Dmitry Petrovich, los dos personajes del cuento. La soledad, es un tema recurrente en sus historias, y en esta en particular se vive la dura realidad delabandono por parte de amigos y familiares del enfermo, cuamdo ya no se ve esperanza en su curacion. La dependencia de una sola persona que lo contempla, su esposa, es la dura realidad de muchas parejas que envejecen y se quedan solas en la vida
- Petrovich: Ingeniero, anciano y enfermo, dependiente en todo de su mujer y abamdonado por la sociedad, como ocurre con frecuencia, cuando se enferma de gravedad
- Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (Mama): Comisario General para la seguridad del estado, principal figura en la 'epoca del Gran terror y padre adoptivo de Nadya"Between late September 1936 and April 1938, he was responsible for about half of the Soviet political, military, and intellectual elite being imprisoned or shot. He was also responsible for the deaths of approximately 380,000 kulaks and 250,000 members of various national minorities.""Five feet tall, Yezhov was known as “the bloody dwarf.”"From early 1938, Stalin made it increasingly obvious that Yezhov had fallen into disfavor."
- Yelena Petrovna: (In Kislovodsk) Bella esposa de Nikolai y directora del salon cultural mas famoso de Moscu. Se suicidio cuando cayo en desgracia."Among the members of the Soviet elite who visited Yevgenia Yezhova’s salon were the Yiddish actor Solomon Mikhoels; the jazz-band leader Leonid Utyosov; the film director Sergey Eisenstein; the journalist and editor Mikhail Koltsov; the poet and translator Samuel Marshak; the Arctic explorer Otto Shmidt; and the writers Isaak Babel and Mikhail Sholokhov, with both of whom Yezhova had affairs. Babel, whose affair with Yevgenia began in Berlin in 1927, is reported to have said of her, “Just think, our girl from Odessa has become the first lady of the kingdom!”“I had to sacrifice her to save myself.” (Yezhov)
- Marfa Domityevna: Aya de Nadya
- Isaac Babel: (Mama) Amigo de Nikolai Yezhov y visitante asiduo de su casa. Tambien tuvo un idilio con la esposa de Yezhov
- Joseph Stalin: (Mama) Visitante de la casa de Yezhov
- Natalya Khayutina: (Mama) Hija adoptiva de los Yezhov
- Anna Borisovna Lomova: Principal personaje del cuento
- Aleksey Georgievich: (The Dog) Cientifico que analizo y quiso a Petrushka
- Petrushka: (The Dog) "Peckles" Perra que prepararon para volar al espacio y figura principal del cuento. Personaje que el autor pone con capacidad de desarrollar pensamientos filosoficos complejos.
- Nikolai Viktorovich: (In Kislovodsk) Medico jefe dle centro de salud
- Grossman: Add a description of this character.
- Goryacheva
- Nikolay Viktorovich
- Voronenko
- Weintraub
- Gagareva
- Aleksandra Andreyevna
- Lipkin
- Magazanik
- Dasha
- Olga Mikhailovna
- Platonov
- Wachmanner
- Nikolay Ivanovich
- Kozyrev
- Madonna
- Hitler
- Nadya
- Niccolo
- Yashka
- Werner
- Koryako
- Rosalia Samoilovna
- Gladetsky
- Vasily
- Guber
- Alyosha
- Kotova
- Fadeyev
- Nikolay Yezhov
- Bella
- Becker
- Semidolenko
- Katya
Quotes edit
-
“A blind beggar with the white beard of a wizard was stretching out his hand and weeping trsgically and imploringly, but no one was touched by his terrible grief.”
Grossman -
“There were also policemen in white gloves, patrolling the highway with the unhurried calm of men aware of their power.”
Grossman -
“( The Old Man) One night he said to her, " You know, Filippovna, a wild beast will devour what it needs. IT may slaughter a cow or destroy a hive-and that's life. But these...these ones ave been spitting ON my soul- and beasts don't do that. I used to think that these ones aré not people. But nos I can see they're not ven beasts. They're worse than beasts. "”
Semyon Mikheich -
“(The Old Man) For the First time in his life he was in the grip of a terrible rage, a rage that was burning away the humiliations of the previous months, a rage that he felt both on his behalf and on behalf of thousands and thousands of old men, children, young girls, and women, a rage on behalf of the earth herself, abused as she had been by the enemy.”
Semyon Mikheich -
“(The Old Teacher) His God was Life. And he learned about this God- a living, earthly, sinful God- by reading historuans and pilosophers, by reading the works of both greater and lesser writers. All of them, as best they could, celebrated, justified, blamed, and cursed Man on this splendid earth.”
( The old teacher) Boris Isaakovich Rosenthal -
“(The Old Teacher) Once again he felt the urge to understand a wonder that never ceased to amaze him: human kindness”
( The old teacher) Boris Isaakovich Rosenthal -
“(The Old Teacher) But it's still a better way out - if I have to die anyway, I'd rather die with dignity on the dirty floor of a dirty freight wagon. I'd rather die in a country where I'm seen as a human being.”
( The old teacher) Boris Isaakovich Rosenthal -
“(The Old Teacher) How can a cultured European people, a people that has built such fine clinics, a people that has engendered such luminaries of advanced medicine -how can such a people now be spreading medievalndarkness and the philosophy of the Black Hundreds? where has this infection of the soul come from? what is it? A mass psychosis? mass insanity? some evil spell? or could things really be a little bit different? have the colors all been piled a bit thick?”
( The old teacher) Boris Isaakovich Rosenthal -
“(The Old Teacher) Everything about him looked transparent, lght, weightless. Only in his eyes was there something not subject to time: the power of thought.”
( The old teacher) Boris Isaakovich Rosenthal -
“(The Old Teacher) The Nazis were a great falsehood, life's greatest falsehood. Wherever they passed, up from the depths rose cowardice, trwachery, murderousness, and violence against the weak.”
Grossman -
“(The Old Teacher) thoughts of revenge- for some chance word of for some marketplace quarrel-were being conceived. Hearts were being infected by callousness, pride, and indifference. Cowards, fearing for their own lives, were thinking how to save themselves by denouncing a neighbor.”
Grossman -
“(The Old Teacher) Behind what they're doing lies a cold, mathematical calculation. They awake what is dark. They incite hatred. They resurrect prejudices. Inthis lies their power. Divide, persecute, an rule! The resurrection of darkness!”
Grossman -
“(The Old Teacher) she was an ignoran old woman-except that, instead of book learning, she had learned to observe, and she had acquire a wordly wisdom that could penetrate to the heart of many things.”
Grossman -
“(The Old Teacher) The sky grew deeper and deeper crimson, more and more incandescent, and it seemed tonthe people standing outside in their yards that the dark smoky flames were burning away everything bad, everything impure and evil with wich the Germans had tried to poison the human soul.”
Grossman -
“(The Hell of Treblinka) this miserable wilderness was the place chosen by some official, and approved by SS Reicsfuhrer Himmler, for the construction of a vast executioner's block-an executioner's block such as the human race has never seen, from the time of primitive barbarism to our cruel days.”
Grossman -
“(The Hell of Treblinka) Really, only one thing was missing during these last terrible moments by the doors of the chambers: the pope himself, and Mr. nrailsford and other such humane defenders of Hitlerism should have put in appearance, in the capacity, it goes without saying, of spectators.”
Grossman -
“(The Hell of Treblinka) It is painful to read this. The reader must believe me when I say thst itis equally hardto write it " Why write about it then?" someone may well ak. "Why recall such things?" It is the writer's duty to tellthe terrible truth, and it isa reader's civic duty to learn this truth.”
Grossman -
“The Elk At the syart of his illness, his colleagues had brought him presents of sweets and flowers, but it had not been long before they gave up coming.”
Grossman -
“The day came when all of them-daughter, friends, and colleagues alike- ceased to believe in Dmitry Pertovich recovery and therefore ceased to be interested in Dmitry Petrovicj. If a man cannot get better, he must die. It iscruel.”
Grossman -
“Death is of interest to healthy people, but the life od someone terminally ill holds no interest for anyone. the interests of the terminally ill can never coincide with the interests ot those who are healthy.”
Grossman -
“( Living Space) During her long years in the Gulag, after beimg transferred so many times from camp to camp, she had evidently lost contact with all her friends and family.”
Grossman -
“(The Road) Giu was bing attacked y somehing vast and indifferen. An indifferen, enormous world had calmly brought allits weiht o bear on im.”
Grossman -
“(The Road) His eyes ached from the whiteness of the snow, but he felt no happier in twiliht or darkness; he neither wanted them nor welcomed them.”
Grossman -
“(The Road) It was impossible now o tell im apart from he old mule walkin beside him, and the indifference each felt toward the other was equaled only by the indifference each felt toward himself. This indifference toward imself was his last rebellion. To be or not to be - to Giu was a matter of indifference”
Grossman -
“(The Road) In the blank wall of the world's indifference there has appeared a tiny snakelike fissure”
Grossman -
“(The Dog) This clever, nameless mongrel knew that the foundation stone of her life was vagrancy-perpetual change”
Grossman -
“(The Dog) Only here, inthos cage with warm bedding, with tasty food in a clean bowl, did sje first truly value the happiness of her days of freedom.”
Grossman -
“(The Dog) In some strange and incomprehensible way this man who had become the master of her life and fate was mixed up with her sense of that green mist, with the sensation of freedom.”
Grossman -
“(The Dog) Living eyes would see for the first time the airless abyss, the space of Kant, the space of Einstein, the space of phiñosophers, astronomers and mathe,aticians; they would see this space not through speculation, not in the guise of a formula, but as it truly is-without mountains or trees, without skyscrapers or village huts.”
Grossman -
“(In Kislovodsk)No, it never entered their heads that he had no special love for his work as a doctor and that what he really enjoyed was dining in good restaurants, traveling first class when he went on holiday to Moscow, being seen with his dear Yelena Petrovna—who was as tall, graceful, and handsome as he himself—in the most expensive seats of a theater and intercepting admiring glances, glances that said, “What a handsome couple!””
Nikolai Viktorovich -
“(In Kislovodsk) During the storm and romance of the Revolution he had lived far from romantically—although he had, admittedly, sometimes come back from the countryside not only with fatback and honey but also with supplies of home-distilled vodka, and then, during evenings lit only by small oil lamps, there had been parties; they had danced, played charades, and exchanged kisses in frosty kitchens and dark corridors while from outside, from the other side of windows hung with blankets, came the sounds of shots and the tramping of heavy boots.”
Nikolai Viktorovich -
“(In Kislovodsk) The country had lived out its fate, but Nikolay Viktorovich’s own fate had been free of storms, calamities, hard labor, or war. And there had been times of great Socialist victories, on battlefields or construction sites, when he had been overwhelmed by despair—because a woman had rejected him...Or when what had been a harsh and terrible year for the Russian people had for him been a year of light and love...”
Nikolai Viktorovich -
“(In Kislovodsk) At first, the company’s only production was Schiller’s Intrigue and Love, but then they began putting on Ibsen, Hauptmann, and Chekhov—all in all, it was possible to have quite a tolerable evening there.”
Nikolai Viktorovich -
“(In Kislovodsk) and, just as before the war, Nikolay Viktorovich’s house was often full of people who understood the exquisite design of Persian carpets, people who could appreciate the supple lines of antique furniture and the charm of fine porcelain and crystal; and it turned out that these people preferred to keep their distance from the commandant and the town authorities, from the colonels and generals of Army Group B headquarters, and that they were happy rather than disappointed if they failed to receive an invitation to a reception presided over by General List, the master of the Caucasus.”
Nikolai Viktorovich -
“(In Kislovodsk) All in all, then, life was not really so very different from the life they had known before. Once again, Nikolay Viktorovich found himself delighting in the comfort of his house and the beauty and charm of his wife; once again, he was confident he had been right to prefer Yelena Petrovna Ksenofontova’s name-day party to the meeting of the revolutionary circle.==========”
Nikolai Viktorovich -
“(In Kislovodsk) And the German, hearing the voice of the gray-haired aristocrat and quickly appraising him through almost divinely omniscient eyes—the eyes of a being who existed on some exalted height, decreeing who should live and who should die—immediately understood what kind of man he was talking to.”
Grossman -
“(In Kislovodsk) There were thousands of human spirits that he had had to break—to cleave or shatter, to bend or fragment: there were Catholics and Orthodox, there were fighter pilots, princes who were passionate monarchists, Party functionaries, inspired poets who had trampled over every convention, nuns whose spiritual frenzy had led them to renounce the world. When life is under threat, everything cracks and splits apart, everything turns upside down, sometimes slowly, sometimes resisting obstinately, sometimes yielding with an ease that makes you want to laugh. But the result is always the same, and the exceptions only proved the rule. Like children in front of a Christmas tree, people had pushed and shoved as they reached out to grab the simple, crude little toy that a Gestapo Grandfather Frost now offered, now snatched away...Yes, everyone wants to live—Schmulik from the ghetto no less than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.”
Grossman -
“(In Kislovodsk) Nikolay Viktorovich listened, nodding quickly and obediently, and the look in his eyes was that of an attentive pupil, a pupil determined to memorize as accurately and conscientiously as possible everything that his teacher says. Or perhaps it could better be described as a look of servility, of servile devotion to power.”
Grossman -
“(In Kislovodsk) Examining this sanatorium doctor, this well-groomed aristocrat, the Gestapo bureaucrat thought good-naturedly that he did not really have the right to laugh at him after all. This man had been exposed to overwhelming temptation; he had been enslaved by his many years of sweet living in the wonderful climate of a spa town, surrounded by flower beds and bubbling, purling, health-giving Russian water. No doubt, he had many well-tailored Russian suits and an apartment full of expensive antique furniture. And no doubt this apartment was well stocked with delicacies; no doubt he regularly ate Russian caviar that he had stolen from the sanatorium stores. No doubt he collected fine crystal, or amber cigarette holders, or walking sticks with ivory handles...And there was no doubt at all that he would have a beautiful wife.”
Grossman -
“(In Kislovodsk) They behaved very vulgarly. They put on the clothes she had got ready for their evening at the theater and she doused herself with French perfume. Then they had supper. They ate pressed caviar and drank wine; he clinked glasses with her and kissed her fingers as if they were young lovers in a restaurant. Then they wound up the gramophone, danced to vulgar songs by Vertinsky, and wept because they worshipped Vertinsky. Then they said goodbye to their dear children—and this was more vulgar still. They kissed their porcelain cups goodbye; they kissed their paintings goodbye. They stroked their carpets and their mahogany furniture. He opened her wardrobe and kissed her underwear and her slippers.”
Grossman -
“(Eternal Rest) Suddenly there are peals of laughter. Do they then remember with a shock where they are? Do they look around in shame at the grave? No, they do not. But the deceased is not going to take offense—he is, after all, very pleased with the painting job they have done.”
-
“(Eternal Rest) A husband who used to come home from work feeling bored and depressed has now learned to enjoy the company of his wife; going to the cemetery on a day off has become his greatest joy.”
-
“(Eternal Rest) He talks about his wife; he thinks about his wife. Remembering her, thinking about her, now feels anything but boring and depressing. Their relationship has been renewed.”
-
“(Eternal Rest) What is important is that both categories of inscriptions—those that speak of the status of the deceased and those that speak of how much he is loved by those near and dear to him—have only one purpose: to inform outsiders.”
-
“(Eternal Rest) The inscription is there in order to be read. It is addressed to those who pass by.”
-
“(Eternal Rest) But the widow knows very well why she howls. She needs to be heard by the passersby.”
-
“(Eternal Rest) Those who go to the cemetery to make statements believe that the most important thing in life is to prove their own superiority, the superiority of their feelings, the unusual depth of their hearts. Yes, there are many reasons, many reasons indeed, why people go to a cemetery.”
-
“(Eternal Rest) But this little gray cross, so similar to the gray cross put there one hundred and fifty years ago, seems to symbolize the futility of great revolutions, of great scientific and technical changes that have proved unable to change the deeper aspects of life. The more immutable life’s depths, the sharper, the more abrupt are the changes on the ocean’s surface. Storms come and go, but the ocean depths remain. The Revolution and its storms have left traces.”
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It is the writer’s duty to tell the terrible truth, and it is a reader’s civic duty to learn this truth.
Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers -
The Nazis were a great falsehood, life’s greatest falsehood. Wherever they passed, up from the depths rose cowardice, treachery, murderousness, and violence against the weak.
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Like Babel, Grossman wrote a great deal about violence. Unlike Babel, he was in no way fascinated by it; he wrote about violence simply because he was thrown up against a number of the most terrible acts of violence of the last century.
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Under the tsars, even in the absence of pogroms, Jews had been the object of discrimination; in the early Soviet Union, by contrast, they constituted a disproportionately large part of the political, professional, and intellectual elite.
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Up to twenty thousand people passed through Treblinka every day. Days when only six or seven thousand people passed through the station building were considered quiet.
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To me you represent all that is human, and your terrible fate is the fate of humanity in an inhuman time.
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Thrift, precision, calculation, and pedantic cleanliness are qualities common to many Germans, and they are not bad qualities in themselves.
Highlighted by 5 Kindle customers -
Few writers have written more subtly about so many forms of personal and political betrayal, and it is possible that no one has articulated more clearly how hard it is for an individual to withstand the pressure of a totalitarian State.
Highlighted by 4 Kindle customers -
Thoughts of revenge—for some chance word or for some marketplace quarrel—were being conceived. Hearts were being infected by callousness, pride, and indifference. Cowards, fearing for their own lives, were thinking how to save themselves by denouncing a neighbor. And so it was in every town large and small, in every country large and small where the Nazis set foot. Murk rose from the beds of lakes and rivers; toads swam to the surface; thistles sprang up where wheat had been planted.
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It is the Red Army that stopped Himmler from keeping the secret of Treblinka.
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Setting & Locations edit
- Black Sea (Koktebel): Foto con amigos, Sept. 1935
- Berdichev, Ukrania: Lugar de nacimiento de Grossman el 12 de Dic de 1905. Pueblo con una de las comunidades mas grandes de judíos en Europa.
- Moskau: Lugar donde transcurre la historia de A Small Life y varias mas
- Crimea: Lugar de verano donde transcurre el cuento "A Young woman and an Old woman"
- Kharkov Province: Lugar donde transcurre el sitio y la historia del hombre viejo en 1942
- Treblinka Polonia: Campo de concentracion en el que los nazis desarrollaron todas sus crueldades y todas sus capacidades para exterminar los judios con frialdad, crueldad maxina y alta eficiencia en el logro de esta maldad.
- Kremlin: Emblema del poder politico en Rusia, en particular en epoca de Stalin (Mama, Living Space)
- Kislovodsk: Ciudad intermedia con un centro medico que atendia especialmente a los grandes jerarcas en sus enfermedades. Lugar de desarrollo del cuneto In Kislovodsk
- Moscow
- Warsaw
- Germany
- Stalingrad
- Ukraine
- Vagankovo
- Poland
- Ksenya
- Berlin
- Pestrushka
- Yevgenia
- Soviet Union
- London
- Russia
- Europe
- Zabolotskaya
- Sobibor
- Belzec
- Bialystok
- Beila
- Pravda
- Far East
- Kiev
Organizations edit
- Mensheviks: Grupo añ queertenecio eñ padre de Grossman
- Bolsheviks: En guerra contra los polacos enel poblado de Berdichev
- NKVD: Servicio de inteligencia y oroteccion del estado en epoca de Stalin
First Sentence edit
Vavilova's face was dark and weather-baten, and it was odd to see It blusa ( in The ton pf Berdichev)
Table of Contents edit
Part One : The 1930s
In the town of Berdichev
A Small Life
A Young Woman and an Old Woman
Part Two: The war, the Shoah
The Old Man
The Old Teacher
The Hell of Treblinka
The Sistine Madonna
Part Three
The Elk
Mama
Living Space
The Road
The Dog
In Kislovodsk
Part Four: Three Letters
Part Five: Eternal rest
Appendixes
1. Grossman and " The Hell of Treblinka"
2. Natalya Khayutina and the Yezhovs
Afterword by Fyodor Guber
Chronology
Notes
Further Reading
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Themes & Symbolism edit
Authors & Contributors edit
- Vasily Grossman (Author)
- Robert Chandler (Author)
Other Contributors:
- Robert Chandler (Translator)
- Elizabeth Chandler (Translator)
- Olga Mukovnikova (Translator)
- Robert Chandler (Editor)
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 891.7342
Subjects edit
Popular Tags
More Books Like This edit
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