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Loading... A Tomb for Boris Davidovich (Eastern European Literature Series) (original 1976; edition 2001)by Danilo Kis
Work InformationA Tomb for Boris Davidovich by Danilo Kiš (1976)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This is a series of basically allegorical short stories, really cameos or vignettes, about people to whom Communism brought a swift or agonizingly long and difficult death. I was missing basically the whole layer of correspondences to Kiš's own Yugoslavia (the stories formally all take place elsewhere), but I thought this was wonderful--cold and unflinching about the horrors humans visit on humans but still somehow finding a way to keep you believing in our essential dignity and perhaps even decency as persons, and to pin the blame for making us monsters squarely on the ideology that values ideology over not making us monsters. I guess there's a "plagiarism controversy" and I didn't look into it, but I found this book strangely heartening as well as an artisanal wonder, and I recommend it. This thin volume is part of the Writers from the Other Europe series, edited by Philip Roth. It contains seven short works, including the titular story, with interwoven themes and some recurring characters. Although none of the characters are Serbo-Croatian and the stories are set in former Comintern countries, the depiction of ill treatment at the hands of Stalinists was enough to enrage Yugoslavs when the book was published in 1976. Critics also attacked the book as plagiarism, because of a technique Kiš used of including quotes directly lifted from other texts. Although he defended his use of textual transposition, the flap was enough to cause him to eventually flee to Paris where his marriage and his health deteriorated. His last work of note, [Encyclopedia of the Dead], partially rehabilitated him, and he finally won the [[Andric]] Prize. One story, "Dogs and Books", is set in 1330 and describes the persecution of Jews in France by the Inquisition. Baruch David Neumann is forcibly converted to Christianity and then fights to prove that conversion by force is not legal or morally binding. A mob disagrees with his learned argument: I was busy reading and writing when a great number of these men burst into my chamber, armed with ignorance blunt as a whip, and hatred sharp as a knife. I love that line. It wasn't my silks that brought blood to their eyes, but the books arranged on my shelves; they shoved the silks under their cloaks, but they threw the books on the floor, stamped on them, and ripped them to shreds before my eyes. The parallels between this attack by the Inquisition and later attacks on intellectuals by the NKVD (or the Gestapo, for that matter) are striking. On August 16, 1330, Baruch finally wavered, confessed, and affirmed that he had renounced the Jewish faith. Since they had read to him the record of the hearing, the said Neumann, when asked whether he had made his confession under torture or immediately thereafter, answered that he had made his confession immediately thereafter, about three o'clock in the morning, and on that same day in the evening hours he made the same confession without having been first brought into the torture chamber. And so is a man broken. No matter who is holding the whip. The collection ends with a pseudo-biography, "The Short Biography of A.A. Darmolatov", and the following postscript: He remains a medical phenomenon in Russian literature: Darmolatov's case was entered in all the latest pathology textbooks. A photography of his scrotum, the size of the biggest collective farm pumpkin, is also reprinted in foreign medical books, where elephantiasis (elephantiasis nostras) is mentioned, and as a moral for writers that to write one must have more than big balls. As Kiš discovered to his own detriment. no reviews | add a review
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Composed of seven dark tales, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich presents variations on the theme of political and social self-destruction throughout Eastern Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. The characters in these stories are caught in a world of political hypocrisy, which ultimately leads to death, their common fate. Although the stories Kis tells are based on historical events, the beauty and precision of his prose elevates these ostensibly true stories into works of literary art that transcend the politics of their time. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)891.82354Literature Literature of other languages Literature of east Indo-European and Celtic languages West and South Slavic languages (Bulgarian, Slovene, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Serbo-Croatian, and Macedonian) Serbo-Croatian Fiction 1900–1991 Late 20th century 1945–1991LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Danilo Kis serveert ons 'zeven hoofdstukken uit eenzelfde geschiedenis' en die geschiedenis is confronterend en meedogenloos.
De verwantschap tussen de 7 verhalen is het geweld en het redeloze dat ontstaat in een maatschappij waarin een grote waarheid geld. Of die nu van geloof, dictatuur of revolutie afstamt. De onwezenlijke logica die in mensen hun hoofd ontstaat eens er een vijandbeeld gecreëerd is. De onmogelijkheid om daaraan te ontsnappen.
"want niet het lezen van veel boeken is gevaarlijk, gevaarlijk is het lezen van één enkel boek"
De encyclopedische, biografische en afstandelijke wijze waarop Kis zijn verhalen opbouwt, maakt ze des te meer confronterend. Het zorgt ervoor dat je als lezer geen ridders op witte paarden verwacht, waardoor de situaties waarin de personages belanden uitzichtlozer en heftiger worden. Aangenaam leesvoer lijkt het dan niet, noodzakelijk des te meer.
Dat Kis je daarin als lezer ook nog eens uitdaagt, met een wrang soort humor, vond ik helemaal geniaal. Getuige daarvan het slotverhaal, maar ook onderstaande, uitdagende quote:
"en waarmee we de lezer niet lastig zullen vallen, om hem niet de aangename illusie te ontnemen dat het hier om een verhaal gaat dat, gelukkig voor de schrijver, aan zijn verbeeldingskracht kan worden toegeschreven"
Wie heeft nood aan de opluchting dat het 'maar om personages' gaat? De schrijver? De lezer? Beide? Kis wist duidelijk wat hij wilde bereiken met dit unieke boekje en daar ben je als lezer beter klaar voor. Of net niet. Laat maar binnenkomen. ( )