The Naked Year

I loved his stories but I just can’t finish this first, clearly experimental, novel (published in 1922). Pilnyak was heavily influenced by Bely but Bely was far better at this kind of Symbolist writing. Even so, Pilnyak was enormously popular in the 1920s and is considered a significant influence on Dubravka Ugrešić and Danilo Kiš, among others. It is certainly possible that part of the problem is the translation. Though it seems good to me, I can’t be certain. The novel has only been translated into English one other time to my knowledge. Fortunately, the translator (Alexander R. Tulloch) contributed an exceptionally helpful Afterword that discusses much of what Pilnyak did (or tried to do) and places him among other Russian show more modernists and Symbolists. As Tulloch explains:
“The very shape of this novel is anti-Western…. In order to depict the [Russian] Revolution in terms of an anti-Western rebellion, and at the same time portray its chaotic nature, it was necessary that the form of the novel should also bear as little resemblance as possible to anything in Western culture, and produce feelings of confusion and incomprehension in the reader. Thus at first sight, to the uninitiated reader, the novel resembles an unsystematic collection of random jottings, disjointed or unrelated camera shots of the violation and disorder which characterized the Revolution. And…characters do not develop in the ‘normal’ way—they are presented in an impressionistic manner. They have little or no psychology and appear only to portray different viewpoints of the Revolution, or as the various aspects of pre- and post-Revolutionary society….”​
Trying to present or recount the two-thirds I’ve read would be next to impossible. I do hope to return to this at some point, in part because from time to time I do feel like I have a sense of what Pilnyak is trying to do. But mostly it’s a slog and I don’t see it becoming easier. show less

La sperimentazione di Pil'njak si mette al servizio del moderno epos rivoluzionario e utilizza elementi prettamente poetici quali la ripetizione che dà al testo la musicalità ritmica dei poemi epici della letteratura popolare e l'interruzione del flusso delle frasi, l'esposizione volutamente enigmatica e la ricerca di una comprensibilità incompleta e il linguaggio figurativo impiegato.
-Arricchito da una (acida) (ma utile) postfazione di Solzhenitsyn (da cui ho attinto per il commento).

I wanted this book to be about someone spending a year naked. It wasn't, but it's still good.