A Guardian excerpt of Alexievich from her
Chernobyl book from last year after her win rather disappointing. The reader
landing on that would wonder what all the fuss was about. Plain, mildly
touching personal testimony from a few "polyphonic" voices in brief
fragments without any grip. It was nothing like the soaring other excerpted by
the NYRB earlier this year.
Gone 7pm. Unavoidable little 20 minute snooze a couple of hours ago after writing and reading.
— Bome platit cu ja to!...
Her voice returning with the characteristic phrase. By the Lord I'll be paying for that.
A wave of her undemonstrative, deep love radiating from it.
Nearly ten years after her death Bab's legendary holding herself to account suggested her great capacities and dimensions.
A snooze in the middle of the day would certainly be paid for in the night. Sometimes a night could be longer than a gladna godina, a year of famine.
There had never been such an expression as Volim te, I love you.
It had been strange on the first visit to Boka hearing all the love songs on the radios and cassette players in the houses of the younger generation.
Volim te duso draga, I love you my soul.... Jedina moja, My one and only….
Once Bab had complained rather startlingly, only once, — Nikad me i njesi voleo. You never did love me.
Of course in the last years if not before, if ever there was any doubt, the falsity of that charge was made abundantly clear to her.
All thanks here to our dear neighbour Dragica too. Without Drage's example one might never have kissed mother’s hands, the snowy top of her head, perhaps not even her cheeks. Drage was the great teacher. In childhood we had an old spinster neighbour we called Teta zlato moje, behind her back. Auntie my gold—in the sense of fortune. The old widow had adult children of her own, but when a child came within her orbit they were blessed with her fine, expressive loving and given one of her cookies. That dear lady’s way was not our own. At home in the last years we secretly mock-cherished Dragica's magnificent tenderness too.
Along with dozens of other emigrants, mostly from our own community, Bab had minded Drage's two young children, Nada and Sasha. Drage might have been the first of the newer immigrants to call Bab “mother”. The strange occasion registered of course most particularly. Most of the others respectfully called Bab Tete, Auntie, the standard.
Pitying Dragica in her financial struggles, Bab would wrap her child-minding fees in little Sasha's nappies for Dragica to later discover at home.
Drage from a village in Southern Serbia in the vicinity of Vranje, where they taught her beautiful ways of affection. (Like Babi too, Drage was a terrible scold—a lazy-bones husband, children careless with school-work, relatives slipping in proper conduct all fell victim. But that for another episode.)
Gone 7pm. Unavoidable little 20 minute snooze a couple of hours ago after writing and reading.
— Bome platit cu ja to!...
Her voice returning with the characteristic phrase. By the Lord I'll be paying for that.
A wave of her undemonstrative, deep love radiating from it.
Nearly ten years after her death Bab's legendary holding herself to account suggested her great capacities and dimensions.
A snooze in the middle of the day would certainly be paid for in the night. Sometimes a night could be longer than a gladna godina, a year of famine.
There had never been such an expression as Volim te, I love you.
It had been strange on the first visit to Boka hearing all the love songs on the radios and cassette players in the houses of the younger generation.
Volim te duso draga, I love you my soul.... Jedina moja, My one and only….
Once Bab had complained rather startlingly, only once, — Nikad me i njesi voleo. You never did love me.
Of course in the last years if not before, if ever there was any doubt, the falsity of that charge was made abundantly clear to her.
All thanks here to our dear neighbour Dragica too. Without Drage's example one might never have kissed mother’s hands, the snowy top of her head, perhaps not even her cheeks. Drage was the great teacher. In childhood we had an old spinster neighbour we called Teta zlato moje, behind her back. Auntie my gold—in the sense of fortune. The old widow had adult children of her own, but when a child came within her orbit they were blessed with her fine, expressive loving and given one of her cookies. That dear lady’s way was not our own. At home in the last years we secretly mock-cherished Dragica's magnificent tenderness too.
Along with dozens of other emigrants, mostly from our own community, Bab had minded Drage's two young children, Nada and Sasha. Drage might have been the first of the newer immigrants to call Bab “mother”. The strange occasion registered of course most particularly. Most of the others respectfully called Bab Tete, Auntie, the standard.
Pitying Dragica in her financial struggles, Bab would wrap her child-minding fees in little Sasha's nappies for Dragica to later discover at home.
Drage from a village in Southern Serbia in the vicinity of Vranje, where they taught her beautiful ways of affection. (Like Babi too, Drage was a terrible scold—a lazy-bones husband, children careless with school-work, relatives slipping in proper conduct all fell victim. But that for another episode.)
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