Much
to wonder at in the case of Victor Serge. First and foremost, how a novelist of
this rank could remain almost completely unknown the half century since his
last book, particularly given that engrossing novel, The Case of Comrade Tulayev, set during the Stalinist mayhem in the
mid/late thirties, seems anything but written out.
Susan Sontag presents a characteristically brilliant case for Serge in her introduction to the NYRB edition of Tulayev, where the biographical details alone make for heady reading. Richard Greeman, the translator of Conquered City, written 15 years earlier, can’t be far from the mark when he opens his Foreword to this novel (1932): “V. S. led one of the most remarkable lives of the 20th century.”
Serge was a young man during the revolution. In the period after Lenin he came to know many of the leaders of the movement. (For a time his wife was a stenographer for Lenin.) The Stalinist scything of the ranks shortly before the WWII, its method and logic, gets vivid treatment in Tulayev.
The book is clearly the pinnacle achievement of a writing career, though Conquered City lacks little of brilliance too. Serge wrote Tulayev in his early fifties in the middle of the war. (It was published posthumously in 1947.) As Sontag stresses, although this is a political novel—surely one of the greatest ever penned—where the most acute insights and searching penetration is brought to bear, Tulayev is very much a work of high order art.
A powerful work of the imagination, Tulayev is captivating and highly compelling. That is the first thing. Within the first few pages one realizes a sorcerer is at work, immediately holding sway and making things appear. The momentum of his paragraphs, the breadth of political insight and judgment, the vividness and dynamism of his portraiture (of the natural world as well as the human actor) — the result is that almost narcotic command that only masterful work produces.
With Tulayev the matter is straightforward: the first pulsating chapter establishes the case from the outset. Immediately startling scenes of a life under siege, a desperate struggle of partitioned rooms, cardboard shoe insoles, meagre rations and bleak love-for-hire. The wry, painful comedy underscoring the action, the unequal, fumbling struggle in the predicament of dire entrapment, recalls other modern masters like Celine, Beckett and Bernhard, all of whom Serge preceded. What Serge also shares with these writers is an exceptional verve and narrative dictate that throws a reader headlong into his pages.
In the opening chapter Kostia starts by shopping for shoes and ends being gifted a glowing bluish-black gun that insists itself upon him. In between, his friend Romachkin on the other side of the partition of the room they share in an enormously over-crowded apartment strives to find an answer to the catastrophe that has descended on the city and the country at large. After a medical check, where the doctor suggests sex twice a month for health, Romachkin’s experience with a five-rouble prostitute primes him for the purchase of the gun at the Great Market. (A market now dealing in watches that run for seven minutes, worn and patched sweaters, &etc.) Finally—returning to Kostia—a blameless young woman’s suicide at his workplace impels action in order to protest injustice.
Weaving the fevered episodes with the greatest virtuosity, the author is one who understands desperation and all-encompassing paranoia, the betrayed faith and hopelessness with which his characters contend. (Serge’s parents before him were among an earlier generation of political refugees, like their son barely managing to escape the executioner.)
A political education is provided by Tulayev. The matter needs stating. Not only is this a novel of great panache and artistry, but forged as it is in the maelstrom of the greatest social upheaval of the last century, the illumination of the political sphere is highly revealing. Here are politics in action, personalities and ideas, visions and entrapment, great hopes, lust and intrigue, all given play in a tragic drama. The dazzle and flair is something to behold. A lesser work depicting this period of Soviet society would claim attention for what it offered of sheer curiosity value. What Serge has made of the material delivers far more.
Who or what to possibly compare? Orwell was a fan it seems. One hesitates to say…. Beside Tulayev, Animal Farm seems a work drawn in crayon; and 1984 an afternoon trifle really. The energy and verve of Serge is startling.
So far as political insight goes, at the very least Serge measures up, shall we say. The Spanish Civil War chapters of Tulayev make an interesting comparison and cross-reference with Homage to Catalonia. (There is a great deal in common.) Vasily Grossman is no doubt highly valuable for what he offers; judging on the basis of excerpts, however, the prose there has nothing like the force or compulsion of V. S.
Susan Sontag presents a characteristically brilliant case for Serge in her introduction to the NYRB edition of Tulayev, where the biographical details alone make for heady reading. Richard Greeman, the translator of Conquered City, written 15 years earlier, can’t be far from the mark when he opens his Foreword to this novel (1932): “V. S. led one of the most remarkable lives of the 20th century.”
Serge was a young man during the revolution. In the period after Lenin he came to know many of the leaders of the movement. (For a time his wife was a stenographer for Lenin.) The Stalinist scything of the ranks shortly before the WWII, its method and logic, gets vivid treatment in Tulayev.
The book is clearly the pinnacle achievement of a writing career, though Conquered City lacks little of brilliance too. Serge wrote Tulayev in his early fifties in the middle of the war. (It was published posthumously in 1947.) As Sontag stresses, although this is a political novel—surely one of the greatest ever penned—where the most acute insights and searching penetration is brought to bear, Tulayev is very much a work of high order art.
A powerful work of the imagination, Tulayev is captivating and highly compelling. That is the first thing. Within the first few pages one realizes a sorcerer is at work, immediately holding sway and making things appear. The momentum of his paragraphs, the breadth of political insight and judgment, the vividness and dynamism of his portraiture (of the natural world as well as the human actor) — the result is that almost narcotic command that only masterful work produces.
With Tulayev the matter is straightforward: the first pulsating chapter establishes the case from the outset. Immediately startling scenes of a life under siege, a desperate struggle of partitioned rooms, cardboard shoe insoles, meagre rations and bleak love-for-hire. The wry, painful comedy underscoring the action, the unequal, fumbling struggle in the predicament of dire entrapment, recalls other modern masters like Celine, Beckett and Bernhard, all of whom Serge preceded. What Serge also shares with these writers is an exceptional verve and narrative dictate that throws a reader headlong into his pages.
In the opening chapter Kostia starts by shopping for shoes and ends being gifted a glowing bluish-black gun that insists itself upon him. In between, his friend Romachkin on the other side of the partition of the room they share in an enormously over-crowded apartment strives to find an answer to the catastrophe that has descended on the city and the country at large. After a medical check, where the doctor suggests sex twice a month for health, Romachkin’s experience with a five-rouble prostitute primes him for the purchase of the gun at the Great Market. (A market now dealing in watches that run for seven minutes, worn and patched sweaters, &etc.) Finally—returning to Kostia—a blameless young woman’s suicide at his workplace impels action in order to protest injustice.
Weaving the fevered episodes with the greatest virtuosity, the author is one who understands desperation and all-encompassing paranoia, the betrayed faith and hopelessness with which his characters contend. (Serge’s parents before him were among an earlier generation of political refugees, like their son barely managing to escape the executioner.)
A political education is provided by Tulayev. The matter needs stating. Not only is this a novel of great panache and artistry, but forged as it is in the maelstrom of the greatest social upheaval of the last century, the illumination of the political sphere is highly revealing. Here are politics in action, personalities and ideas, visions and entrapment, great hopes, lust and intrigue, all given play in a tragic drama. The dazzle and flair is something to behold. A lesser work depicting this period of Soviet society would claim attention for what it offered of sheer curiosity value. What Serge has made of the material delivers far more.
Who or what to possibly compare? Orwell was a fan it seems. One hesitates to say…. Beside Tulayev, Animal Farm seems a work drawn in crayon; and 1984 an afternoon trifle really. The energy and verve of Serge is startling.
So far as political insight goes, at the very least Serge measures up, shall we say. The Spanish Civil War chapters of Tulayev make an interesting comparison and cross-reference with Homage to Catalonia. (There is a great deal in common.) Vasily Grossman is no doubt highly valuable for what he offers; judging on the basis of excerpts, however, the prose there has nothing like the force or compulsion of V. S.
Having read Serge, it is clear how
large a hole there has been in our political survey of the epoch—of politics in
the large one should add.
A buried and neglected novel of brilliance dealing with such central preoccupations—a work in Indonesian or Arabic perhaps—one could comprehend. But an author writing in French on such a subject poses questions.
Sontag is always illuminating. Something she does not mention as a possible factor in the neglect is the firm residual hope and passion that animates Serge despite all the horror, the suffering and destruction unleashed by the revolution. For despite all, Serge finally does not relinquish his faith in the eventual transformation of man and the society that awaits. A difficult sell in any circumstances and understandably unpalatable on our side.
A buried and neglected novel of brilliance dealing with such central preoccupations—a work in Indonesian or Arabic perhaps—one could comprehend. But an author writing in French on such a subject poses questions.
Sontag is always illuminating. Something she does not mention as a possible factor in the neglect is the firm residual hope and passion that animates Serge despite all the horror, the suffering and destruction unleashed by the revolution. For despite all, Serge finally does not relinquish his faith in the eventual transformation of man and the society that awaits. A difficult sell in any circumstances and understandably unpalatable on our side.
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