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Laddar... Det vita gardet (1925)av Mikhail Bulgakov
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Gå med i LibraryThing för att få reda på om du skulle tycka om den här boken. Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken. I had been considering this book for a long time. I had so loved The Master and Margarita that when Melville House published a set of Bulgakov translations, I got all excited. I loved Heart of a Dog, but this seemed like a lot of military history I didn't know anything about. Well, I still know hardly anything about Ukranian military history, and I'm sure there was a lot that I missed, or was bewildered by, because I didn't understand the context, but to some level, some of that seemed appropriate. In much of this book, what is going on around the City (Kiev) is unknown, rumor, conjecture, made up on the spot. Even when the fighting is in the city itself, so much of what is going on is guesswork, as each person has to feel out for themselves when the right time is to show up for duty, to rip off one's badges, to retreat, to comply, to hide. Which power to align oneself to and to what cost. Much more realist than both Master and Dog, it is the bewilderment of war itself that is compelling here. Also, now I want to visit Kiev. Though perhaps now is not the time. Entroncado en la gran tradición narrativa rusa y heredero natural de Gógol, Bulgákov narra la trágica disgregación de la familia Turbín en la guerra civil. Los hermanos Turbín, intelectuales monárquicos de Kiev, asisten incrédulos a las consecuencias de la caída del zar. La guardia blanca, novela de trazos autobiográficos, tiene un carácter casi documental. Fue concebida como parte de una trilogía inacabada que daba constancia de la ferocidad de la revolución y la guerra, y que fue prohibida por el régimen estalinista. There is a sense in which – like Tolstoy’s happy families – all Russian novels are alike. A blizzard of polysyllabic names potentially confusingly embellished with the corresponding patronymics not to mention the seemingly obligatory diminutives, with always a sense of foreboding in the background, if not the foreground. You certainly don’t turn to them for sweetness and light. Then again, love, sex and death are the wider novel’s perennial preoccupations. To be sure there isn’t much focus on love in The White Guard, no sex at all, and I can recall only three actual deaths described in the text; but the prospect of death hangs over everything. Here there can be, too, as I also noticed when reading War and Peace, a sudden lurching through time from a particular chapter to the next. One surprising thing I discovered from it is that a Ukrainian clock seems to make the sounds tonk-tank rather than tick-tock. The novel is set in Ukraine, in “the city” (only once identified as Kiev,) amid the turmoil that followed the 1917 revolution and centres round the affairs of the Turbin family and those who live in the same building. During the novel the city starts out under the rule of the Hetman - in whose army the male Turbins serve as officers - but is threatened by Ukrainian Nationalist forces led by Simon Petlyura; and beyond that, the Bolsheviks. The disorganisation and unpreparedness of the defending forces is well portrayed – a bit like Dad’s Army but without the laughs – and the mist of rumour and counter-rumour accompanying the situation when the city falls to Petlyura conveys the commensurate sense of febrility. Bulgakov’s first novel and the only one to be published in the USSR in his lifetime, The White Guard is an insight into an all-but forgotten moment in an interregnum of upheaval and change and is worth reading for that alone. But a marker of the futility of it all is the thought that, “Blood is red on those deep fields and no one would redeem it. No one.” While it has touches of the fantastic, including several dream sequences, The White Guard does not (cannot) touch the heights of the same author’s The Master and Margarita but it is well worth reading on its own terms. Entroncado en la gran tradición narrativa rusa y heredero natural de Gógol, Bulgákov narra la trágica disgregación de la familia Turbín en la guerra civil. Los hermanos Turbín, intelectuales monárquicos de Kiev, asisten incrédulos a las consecuencias de la caída del zar. En uno de los inviernos más crudos del conflicto, iniciado con una revolución que aborrecen, y bajo la despiadada ocupación alemana, Alexéi, Elena y Nikolái tratan de sublimar su desesperación creando un fresco épico. La guardia blanca, novela de trazos autobiográficos, tiene un carácter casi documental. Fue concebida como parte de una trilogía inacabada que daba constancia de la ferocidad de la revolución y la guerra, y que fue prohibida por el régimen estalinista inga recensioner | lägg till en recension
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»Storslaget och skrämmande var året 1918 efter Kristi födelse, andra året efter revolutionen.« Det vita gardet (1924) utspelas i Kiev år 1918, ett Kiev belägrat av bolsjevikerna. Det är romanen om revolutionens motståndare, om den borgerliga spillra som i det längsta söker undfly revolutionens segrande arméer. Bulgakov ställer frågan: Vad ska de vita kämpa för? Vad gäller deras kamp? Klart visar han att de befinner sig i en politiskt hopplös situation. Men samtidigt skildrar han deras värld, deras etik och livsstil med djupaste sympati. I deras värld finns värmen och ljuset. [Publit] Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas. |
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Google Books — Laddar... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)891.7342Literature Literature of other languages Literature of east Indo-European and Celtic languages Russian and East Slavic languages Russian fiction USSR 1917–1991 Early 20th century 1917–1945Klassifikation enligt LCBetygMedelbetyg:
Är det här du?Yale University Press2 utgåvor av den här boken publicerades av Yale University Press. Utgåvor: 030012242X, 0300151454 |
That's not to say that The White Guard is just a book about Ukrainian politics. It's about honor and betrayal, dreams and nightmares, and the importance of always having a place to go and being with people who care about you. While it lacks the signature otherworldly characteristics of Mikhail Bulgakov's other works, it's definitely his most human work.
That's also not to say it's his best. The White Guard should either be 50 pages longer or shorter than it is, with characters and ideas that aren't fully fleshed out all over the place. But I do think the quality of the Turbin family and their friends more than makes up for a questionable supporting cast.
Everything I've read from Bulgakov, regardless of its quality, involves one individual in a way that I haven't seen from any other writer of the Soviet era, whether they were party members or dissidents. That individual is a present, active God. I know nothing at all about Bulgakov's personal religious beliefs, so I have no idea whether his use of God was for literary or political purposes, but in 20th century European literature, the most shocking possible ending to a novel is for a prayer to actually be answered, so at the very least The White Guard is significant for that.
This was worth the read, but again, brush up on your Ukrainian history before diving in. You want to figure out which of the multitude of armies you should be rooting for, and take your time with it, because they all suck.
P.S. The metaphor with the clocks and faces blows. I don't know why anyone thinks otherwise. ( )