Yuri Druzhnikov's witty satire on Russians at home and abroad, Madonna From Russia, appeals to Tibor Fischer
Saturday July 29, 2006
The Guardian
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by Yuri Druzhnikov, translated by Thomas Moore
220pp, Peter Owen, £15.95
An American postman called Bob spends 27 years delivering mail and to pass the time he constructs rhymes. On retirement he resolves to take a course in creative writing and to go into poetry full time. "Unfortunately, according to his ID, his name was Robert Frost, and that was something of a trap, as you can appreciate," explains the narrator of Madonna From Russia. "Not long ago, he adds, "an Alexander Pushkin published some of his poems in the New York magazine Novy Zhurnal, but he was a real-life descendant, at least. At first he proudly signed himself Alexander A Pushkin, but then he came to the sensible conclusion that it was quieter to live life under a pseudonym, one that I have no right to divulge."
Blacklisted for some years in the Soviet Union, the story goes, Druzhnikov was refused publication in the 60s by the literary journal Novy Mir because the editor believed he had fufilled his "trouble quota" by including Solzhenitsyn. In the 70s Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky largely sated the western appetite for Soviet dissidence and samizdat writing.
By the time the authorities booted Druzhnikov out in 1987, there was a glut of Russian writers living in the west, and even the experience of the "Helsinki" émigrés finding their feet in exile had been masterfully portrayed by Edward Limonov and translated into English. (At least in the Soviet Union, Limonov lamented, his poetry had been read: by the KGB.)
Madonna From Russia is Druzhnikov's gutsy response to the challenge of his precursors. The narrator, a professor of Russian literature in California, is delighted to notice an elderly man at his lectures who is enraptured by his course on Silver Age Russian poets. It emerges that the 84-year old Californian, Ken Stemp, doesn't understand a single word of the lectures as he doesn't know Russian; but he badly wants a crash course in the language since he has met a beautiful Russian woman. The narrator wonders how old the object of Ken's affections is, musing that "in America you get put in gaol right away if you mess with a nymphet". But it turns out that the woman in question "is the most outstanding poet of the 20th century".
The original Russian title of Druzhnikov's novel was Superwoman; you can see why it was thought necessary to change it for English readers, but I'm not sure Madonna From Russia was the way to go. The heroine, Lily Bourbon, is an elderly woman of extremely easy virtue who has done nearly everyone of importance in the Soviet Union from Lenin onwards. Essentially, Druzhnikov's trick has been to turn Nabokov on his head and write Granny Lolita - the 96-year-old Lily still has the power to cause craziness in many men. Lily is the star of the novel and, since she is so monstrously selfish and manipulative, strangely admirable. Her meretricious qualities extend to having fraudulently created a reputation for herself as a major poet by publishing the work of her husband (talented but banned) under her own name.
The novel is a game of two halves. The first half is a naturalistic account of several of Lily's admirers, Russian émigrés and campus life which makes you think of Nabokov with added humanity. The second is very different in tone and focuses on Khariton Lapidar, former professor of scientific communism in Odessa, now a welfare bum in Texas, who hears of a sandbar that has appeared in the middle of the Rio Grande and plots to set up his own state in the gap between the United States and Mexico. The pièce de résistance is a plan to crown Lily Bourbon Queen Lily I of the Kingdom of Grande-Bravo. Lapidar's scheme is unsuccessful and his efforts to pull off his land-grab are farcical, but farcical in a rather strained fashion.
For those unfamiliar with Druzhnikov, his 2002 novel Angels on the Head of a Pin might be a better introduction to his work. Despite Druzhnikov being a proselytiser for the "micronovel", that novel is a massive 600-page dissection of Soviet society, carried out via the figure of a newspaper editor and candidate for the Central Committee who has a heart attack. The writing is at times reminiscent of Solzhenitsyn - indeed, he has a guest role - but Druzhnikov has a lot more humour (well, he missed the gulag) and even offers a whiff of magical realism.
· Tibor Fischer's latest novel is Voyage to the End of the Room (Vintage)