FOREWORD
Everyone likes to feel young. If at my age is something that I can hardly flatter myself, I'm still in the skin of a young writer. My first book was published in 1993, was a collection of short stories, The Poor parents, and the first edition of this work of a Russian author was beginning the French edition. In this story, everything was too good to be true: the writer beginning was fifty years, the book was not released in Russian and Gallimard, for the first time in their history, edited an unknown who had never published anything in his country, except a few texts in journals. I clearly remember having gone to find my neighbor and friend Irina Ehrenburg to show him the contract that I received from France, to make sure the name that was listed was indeed mine.
This was only the beginning of a fairy tale. Here's how things happened then: after having published My first book, Gallimard published a second, my novel Sonechka . And my heroine, a librarian in some sort of physical and soul of extreme purity, a love of literature and a reading fanatic, has won the heart of the French and earned me the Prix Medicis. That was in 1996.
In Russia, nobody had heard of me, and my first books were not sold, to the chagrin of my editor. Personally, I had not reckoned on a success: it seemed then (and in my heart, it's an idea that I am not yet totally cleared) I wrote only for my friends, at worst, for the friends of my friends, and they are not so than that.
French readers have given me the lie: they liked my novel Sonechka and heroin. The drawings have succeeded, and I was simply dumbfounded: why? How was it that the French have to breathe the breath I had Russian warmed my breath?
If one starts from the idea that each copy sold is read by at least one person, it means that two million people read one of my books. I can hardly believe it. But such is the overall figure of the drawing of my books.
I had yet another chance: Sophie Benech, my French translator. Fine connoisseur of Russian literature, endowed with qualities of heart as well as intellectual qualities, it soon became a close friend and collaborator in the fullest sense of the word.
I do not know enough about any language except Russian, to assess the quality of a text. But I have a small secret key that helps me to judge the quality of my translations into foreign languages. These are the questions I my translators. My three favorite translators (my books are translated into over thirty languages, so that my translators are enough!), Sophie the French, German and Japanese Kioko Hanna, I have many questions over their translations . Issues that sometimes make me correct my text Russian.
If one considers that it is the publication of his first book which is the birth of a writer, so I must consider my birth place is France. This country has really blessed, and the two decorations awarded to me gives me great joy. Although I'm not particularly vain, I enjoy imagining my grandchildren out of a green and beautiful decorations of their dead grandmother ...
I am also pleased for another reason ;: it as a continuation of a beautiful thread that connects my ancestors to my descendants. Formerly, when I was little, I played myself with the cross of St. George of my great-great-grandfather. In general, the wire that connects the generations seems extremely important in the life of a human being, and I talk to my French readers of my family, who have instilled in me a love of reading .
The oldest family photo that I have was taken in mid-nineteenth century. It represents an old Jew with a skullcap. Isaac is Guinzburg. Nobody remembers who his father was, it got lost in the mists of the past. But here's what we know about Isaac, destined from childhood to soldiering, he served twenty-five years in the Russian army and reached the rank of sergeant. During the war against Turkey, he participated in the capture of Plevna by Skobelev's army and received the Cross of St. George. This cross was stored in the work-box of my grandmother, and son among the needles. We also know that after having served for many years, it had received a privilege: the right to live outside the area of residence of Jews. But he lived in Smolensk. He was married. And it was not twelve children, as befits a true patriarch, but seventeen. It is true that we do not know exactly how many children had the patriarch Jacob, since we did not count the girls, and the story only mentions Dina ...
But Isaac Guinsburg lost most of his young age. One of those who survived was my great-grandfather Chaim, officially Efim Isaakovich. Born in 1861. When he died, I seven years, he and more than ninety. In my memories, I always remember a book in his hands. A single book, the Bible. The smell of leather bindings and the old paper for me is one of the most shocking of all. The stories told me my great-grandfather were learned from this book. Many years later, when I started reading the Bible, I had the vague feeling that all that was familiar.
My great-grandfather had a beautiful death in a large room which was later divided into several small rooms for a family of increasingly large, he was lying unconscious on a wide mahogany bed, surrounded by his two son, his stepdaughter, his grandchildren and the home. My mother (his granddaughter) went out to get me that I make my farewells. I was brought into the room, wearing my leather coat brand new cat, and my great-grandfather opened his eyes.
"Lucia is here!" Said my grandmother.
Her eyes got fluctuating found.
"My dear Lucia ... What a big girl! he said. Everything will be fine. "
And he died. I received his blessing, so he must hear. And this is understandable: there was still no boy in my generation. My cousins are born after his death.
My great-grandfather was a watchmaker. Apparently, this was not a great teacher in its field. He preferred to read the Torah rather than make money. And I remember him with this big book on his lap. He was sitting in an armchair, with his cancer of the stomach and the Torah ... It is more crowded, it does more agitated, if not to go quietly to the shoemaker to wear the shoes of my grandmother soles. (Ah, what we could fix and tinker, in those days! My mother possessed elegant shoes that he had done at the end of high school. Well, when I finished high school, she still wrapped in newspaper for Take the theater ...)
So there. My great-grandfather, that the land lightly on him, as our ancestors said, had written his will. On the back of an accounting document. On the one hand, the debits and credits, and the other, thanks to his children for having provided a happier old age. And apologies for leaving them nothing. Then I quote: "It's even worse. The five hundred rubles I have on my savings account, you send in Leningrad, as there, Ida and its small daughter Genia are in misery. "
Nobody had ever seen this nor his daughter Ida Genia. She was the daughter or granddaughter of a deceased niece of my great-grandfather. And since the end of the war, he sent him his pension. At home, he was fed and milled, it did not need the money ... This is just the beginning of the story. We sent the money, obviously. And then, my grandmother, in memory of his stepfather, has sent money to this family until early Genia has completed its studies. For years, every month, she went to the post and she was lining up to send one hundred and fifty rubles. I can not imagine how it could be possible in those years. It was a sum equivalent to the tiny pension that had affected my great-grandfather ...
Our family was a family well - almost intellectuals: my grandfather had been graduated the Law Faculty of Moscow University, but he had erred, he had not stepped its last year under the Soviet regime because he believed that "the misunderstanding" (the Soviet regime) could not last long. He was severely mistaken, misunderstanding lasted throughout his life. My grandmother also had almost had a degree she had followed the Higher Courses for young girls and intended to become a teacher ... She too, life has put a spoke in the wheels, not revolution, but the birth my mother in 1918. My grandmother was a very gifted, she finished high school with awards, she had learned German and French, and had not completely forgotten.
The order reigned in the house. The teaching of domestic science was excellent, high school, sewing, embroidery, making clothes, cooking, laundering clothes and go to blue ... My grandmother did all this to perfection. And never oilcloth: a white tablecloth, silverware, soup served in a tureen ... Children, go wash your hands ... Would you pass me the salt, please ... Thanks ... It was delicious ... Goodbye ...
was me who was saying goodbye, because I lived with my parents in a neighboring building. We lived in a communal apartment, and the white cloth, as well as the tub on his feet and cast the sink covered with chrysanthemums cracked, but forever in bloom, I saw them with my grandmother in her apartment once suitable. With us, everything was much more primitive.
My family was a very close family, where we got on well: the oldest met the younger and the young respect their elders. I do not remember having witnessed arguments between adults. My grandmother has never raised his voice in his life. She knew how to respect others, she had an innate sense of dignity. The correctness and honesty were his religion.
My grandfather was the breed of businessmen, but he could give free rein to his talents. He said, not without wit: "It pleases me when I see several ways out of a situation, only this power does not give one." He disliked the Soviet regime, and he does not like him either. He knew, however make money, but he treated casually, he was generous, he willingly helped his entourage, and even with pleasure. He and his brother had their heads well done - a brilliant mathematical brain and memory. When the two old men playing cards, one reminded the other game he had last year and even two years earlier. When the elder went to jail, the younger has kept the two families, and when the cadet is on the frontline, the elder took care of the family of his brother. Their wives loved each other like sisters. They were also relatives, not sisters, but aunt and niece. They had married two brothers. It is true that the niece was two years younger than her aunt. Her name was Sonia. Sonechka.
At that Sonia is my hero physique, his humility, his candor, the low opinion she has of itself, and this love for his family that goes to selflessness. She had no passion for reading, I admit. This passion It was I who had: Cervantes and O. Henry, Maupassant and Ibsen, I read everything in a row, it was enough that I can reach the shelf. From the age of five, I swallowed books that were not at all for children. It was not monitoring my readings: these were the hard years of post-war, my parents were scientists, they wrote their theses. I was a child comfortable, I let them alone. I immersed myself so deeply in the reading that happened to me, coming out of my book, look around and wonder: "But where am I?".
This family friendly universe was well protected from the outside world. Privacy is more important than social life - it does not say so out loud, but it was a principle. My grandmother, a woman of honesty organic humble Sonechka, my grandfather deadpan laugh at the thought pragmatic, his brother, a gentle and forgiving, each defending its right to live the way according to rules that were his own and not those set by the state. Each found its way all his own to protect themselves against the harsh lifestyle of that state: women caring for children and home, my parents were busy with their scientific work, my grandfather made money It kept the family and did not care about the building of communism. My great-grandfather was reading the Book of Books and I devoured everything without distinction that came to hand.
Growing up, I realized that there is a whole army of people who escape from reality just in the reading. Was relied on them as the myth that Russia was the country of the world where one could read the most, I understand now. And there was a literature that can substitute for this life steeped in falsehood, cruelty and squalor of an ideology: it was the great Russian literature. It proposed the sublime ideals - the genius of Pushkin-loving freedom, the great champions of the truth is that Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, each in its kind, but both extremely sensitive to the suffering, the brilliant Gogol (a surrealist Russian), Chekhov, the intellectual irony and a whole host of writers 'second tier' who could occupy the first if there had been other, larger ...
In the sixties, a new reading wave swept my generation were the beginnings of samizdat. A few years ago, I saw an exhibition in Berlin in samizdat. The selection of banned books showed the harshness of a regime that was in an article in its penal code provides for a sentence of five to seven years' detention and distributing banned literature. "On the list of books to the index included works on philosophy and history, works of authors" who lacked loyalty to the Soviet power "(read: killed or exiled by the government), not to mention this particular genre being "anti-Soviet literature", which contained unpublished works of contemporaries, from Joseph Brodsky to Solzhenitsyn, and that a huge stratum of Russian literature, that of emigration - of authors like Nabokov, Boris Zaitsev, Khodassevitch Boris Poplavski and many others.
But the most dangerous books were deliberately directed against the Soviet regime, such as Milovan Djilas, or to Avtorkhanov Mikhailov. For years I kept my house photocopies of political satire of Orwell Animal Farm and 1984 , hidden in the base of an old table, with poems Brodsky typed. And the novel Exodus , Leon Uris, I told someone else to copy it, changed the course of my life when it was discovered that the typewriter used as the copy of the book belonged to me, I was fired from my scientific institute. Thus began the inglorious end my career as a biologist.
I think no country has experienced this phenomenon wonder what was "reading night" when we were given a book to read in one night and whole family watched until dawn to make it in the morning, passing from hand to hand fliers thin as cigarette paper and barely legible, or bad photocopies.
Then, for nine years, I have not worked. I read. I did not do that. During these years of intensive reading were born both my son, who gave me my first creative impulse. In the early eighties I wrote children's stories that were published twenty years later, when I was already become author of books for adults.
I can not close the theme of reading in my life without talking about my paternal grandmother, Maroussia Halperin. She also was a Sonechka. In his small personal collection, there were books that were not found in library: several works of Freud, Kotik Letaïev of Bely, poems of Mandelstam, Akhmatova, of Tsvetayeva, the beautiful texts of philosophers and Mikhail Guerchenson Shestov Leon, Images of Italy of Muratov. Such was the cultural imprint that I received in my teens.
The father of my grandmother Maroussia, my great-grandfather was a watchmaker, too. I on the wall at home, two very rare photographs. One is his workshop. In Kiev, in 1906, after a pogrom. Of broken furniture, tables overturned, books torn. These books belonged to Mikhail Halperin, the brother of my grandmother Maroussia. He was then a student in philology at the University of Kiev. When Korolenko the writer has learned that the books of a Jewish student had been destroyed during a pogrom, he offered two hundred items from his personal library. These are the books that formed the foundation of the library Mikhail. In my childhood, I do not see that the leather bindings and gilt, because those books did not come out of the house. This collection, as far as I know, is now preserved by the state. On the second photograph, dated 1903 and drawn from one of the glass plates kept in the family, my great-grandfather is sitting in an armchair inside this same shop not yet ravaged by pogroms. He faces a senator or professor, in short, an intellectual. According to family tradition, he was extremely upset when her daughter Maroussia embarked on the revolutionary movement. It is true that this has not prevented from entering the cast of a provincial theater, and his stage pictures are always in the family. Then she takes craze Isadora Duncan and her methods, she ran herself a troupe of dancers, barefoot and in the late twenties, she taught at the conservatory of dance rhythm Kiev. It has never been a member of any party because she was deeply bohemian by nature, but the rest of her life, she is described as "no Bolshevik party card." She despised all that was bourgeois, it was very poor, elegant and witty, but unfortunately, she suffered a deep trauma. If she has always supported his poverty and easily even with a certain chic, she lived very poorly the arrest of her husband and years of persecution which it underwent as a "woman of an enemy the people. " It was a terrible stigma, it has closed the doors of the theater and art. Of all his talents, there is only one fully realized it is his talent reader. She was extremely sensitive to what she read, and although our tastes were different, it was she who introduced me to Hamson, Bunin, Prishvin. I think that's her I want my passion for reading. She lived to a ripe old age. In recent years, she lost sight, and his only fear was to become completely blind, not being able to read. She died a book in his hands.
Finally, a few words about the man to whom I owe my name, my grandfather Jacob Samuilovitch Oulitski. I only saw him once, in 1954. He was arrested for the first time in 1933, and spent his life in the camps until Stalin's death, with some interludes. When he was released (at the time, it was not yet fully reinstated), he had no right to live in big cities. When he went to where he had Kalinin been held, he spent an evening at home, in transit. I was eleven. I vaguely remember him.
I knew it was a man of great culture, very interesting, and who was no stranger to the world of writing. There is relatively little time, a friend of mine, a famous biographer and researcher, has found some of his books. Just three: one on the demographics in Russia, published before the revolution, the second on music theory, and the third on the rational organization of production. My eldest son, who graduated from business school at Columbia University, was delighted to find a colleague in the person of his great-grandfather.
This big reader what was my grandmother believed in communism Maroussia and genetics. She died before I finished my studies of genetics at the University of Moscow. And long before I was hunting at the Institute of General Genetics because of my love for literature prohibited. For the freedom to read. But it was the air we breathed. "A stolen air," as Mandelstam.
Much has changed since the days of my youth. The mirage of communism haunting Europe has dissipated, as is often the case mirages, and genetics, having undergone a period of persecution in our country is now rehabilitated.
But reading as before, is a treasure that no power can take away. All who wish may, as Sonechka, dive head first "into the depths exquisite, dark alleys and spring water ..."
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