Moscow-Petushki, also published as Moscow to the End of the Line, Moscow Stations, and Moscow Circles, is a pseudo-autobiographical postmodernist prose poem by Russian writer and satirist Venedikt Yerofeyev. Written between 1969 and 1970 and passed around in samizdat, it was first published in 1973 in Israel and later, in 1977, in Paris. MOSCOW TO THE END OF THE LINE - Free download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt). Here you have the very famous Venedikt Erofeev.
Author | Venedict Yerofeyev |
---|---|
Original title | Москва - Петушки |
Country | Soviet Union |
Language | Russian |
Genre | Pseudo-autobiographic novel |
Publisher | Self-published (Samizdat) |
1970 (Samizdat) & 1973 (commercial release, in Israel) | |
OCLC | 6144525 |
Moscow-Petushki, also published as Moscow to the End of the Line, Moscow Stations, and Moscow Circles, is a pseudo-autobiographical postmodernistprose poem by Russian writer and satirist Venedikt Yerofeyev.
Written between 1969 and 1970 and passed around in samizdat, it was first published in 1973 in Israel and later, in 1977, in Paris.
It was published in the Soviet Union only in 1989, during the perestroika era of Soviet history, in the literary almanac Vest' (Весть) and in the magazine Abstinence and Culture (Трезвость и Культура, Trezvost i Kultura) in a slightly abridged form.
The story follows an alcoholic intellectual, Venya (or Venichka), as he travels by a suburban train on a 125 km (78 mi) journey from Moscow along the Gorkovsky suburban direction of Moscow Railway to visit his beautiful beloved and his child in Petushki, a town that is described by the narrator in almost utopian terms.
At the start of the story, he has just been fired from his job as foreman of a telephone cable-laying crew for drawing charts of the amount of alcohol he and his colleagues were consuming over time. These graphs showed a clear correlation with personal characters. For example, for a Komsomol member, the graph is like the Kremlin Wall, that of a 'shagged-out old creep' is like 'a breeze on the river Kama', and Venya's chart simply shows his inability to draw a straight line because of the amount he has drunk. Venichka spends the last of his money on liquor and food for the journey. While on the train, he engages in lengthy monologues about history, philosophy and politics. He also befriends many of his fellow travellers and discusses life in the Soviet Union with them over multiple bottles of alcohol. Eventually Venichka oversleeps his station and wakes up on the train headed back for Moscow. Still drunk, half-conscious and tormented by fantastic visions, he wanders aimlessly the night city streets, happens upon a gang of thugs, and is promptly chased and murdered by them.
- 3References
Monument[edit]
Monument in Moscow, right side
There is a monument for the novel in the Borby Square, Moscow, by the artists Valery Kuznetsov and Sergei Mantserev, consisting of two sculptures. One shows a man clinging to the train station sign Moscow and the sentence 'You cannot trust an opinion of a person who hasn't yet got some hair of the dog' written on the pedestal. The other one shows a young woman under the train station sign Petushki and the sentence 'In Petushki the jasmine never stops blooming and the birds always sing'.
Stage version[edit]
In 1994, Moscow Stations was adapted as a one-man play (from a translation by Stephen Mulrine) and presented at the Garrick Theatre, London, starring Tom Courtenay in the role of Venya. The production won Critics Circle and Evening Standard awards, and transferred to New York in 1995 where it played at the Union Square Theatre, receiving excellent reviews.[1]
References[edit]
Notes[edit]
Sources[edit]
- Tumanov, Vladimir. 'The End in V. Erofeev's Moskva-Petuski.' Russian Literature 39 1997: 95-114.
External links[edit]
- (in Russian)e-book at Москва—Петушки (Russian website dedicated to the work of Venedikt Yerofeyev)
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Moscow-Petushki&oldid=933104168'
(Redirected from Venedict Yerofeyev)
Native name | Венедикт Васильевич Ерофеев |
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Born | October 24, 1938 Niva-3settlement, suburb of Kandalaksha, Murmansk Oblast, Russian SFSR |
Died | May 11, 1990 (aged 51) Moscow, Russian SFSR |
Occupation | prose writer, novelist |
Subject | Satire |
Literary movement | Postmodernism |
Notable works | Moscow-Petushki |
Spouse | Valentina Vasilevna Zimakova, Galina Pavlovna Nosova |
Children | Venedikt Venediktovich Yerofeyev |
Venedikt Vasilyevich Yerofeyev, also Benedict Erofeev or Erofeyev (Russian: Венеди́кт Васи́льевич Ерофе́ев; 24 October 1938 in Niva-3settlement, suburb of Kandalaksha – 11 May 1990 in Moscow) was a Russian writer and Soviet dissident.[1]
Biography[edit]
Yerofeyev was born in the maternity hospital of Niva-3 by Kandalaksha, Murmansk Oblast, a settlement of 'special settlers' employed in the construction of a hydroelectric power station Niva GES-3 [ru] on the Niva River. The record made in his birth certificate declares his birthplace to be his parents' place of residence: Chupa railway station, Loukhsky District, Karelian ASSR.[2]
His father was imprisoned during Stalin's purges but survived 16 years in the gulags. Most of Yerofeyev's childhood was spent in Kirovsk, Murmansk Oblast. He managed to enter the philology department of the Moscow State University but was expelled from the university after a year and a half because he did not attend compulsory military training. Later he studied in several more institutes in different towns, including Kolomna and Vladimir, but he never managed to graduate from any, usually being expelled due to his 'amoral behaviour'.
Between 1958 and 1975, Yerofeyev lived without propiska in various towns in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania, also spending some time in Uzbekistan and Tadjikistan, doing different low-level and underpaid jobs; for a time he lived and worked in the Muromtsev Dacha in Moscow. He started writing at the age of 17; in the 1960s he unsuccessfully submitted several articles on Ibsen and Hamsun to literary magazines.
Literary legacy[edit]
Yerofeyev is best known for his 1969 'poem in prose' (ironical assignment of the genre) Moscow-Petushki (several English translations exist, including Moscow to the End of the Line and Moscow Stations). It is an account of a journey from Moscow to Petushki (Vladimir Oblast) by electric train, one of many futile attempts to visit his small son: each time such a journey becomes soaked in alcohol and fails. During the trip, the hero becomes involved in philosophical discussions about drinking, recounts some of the fantastic escapades he participated in, including declaring war on Norway, charting the drinking statistics of his colleagues when leader of a cable-laying crew, and obsessing about the woman he loves.
Referred to by David Remnick as 'the comic high-water mark of the Brezhnev era',[3] the poem was published for the first time in 1973 in a Russian-language magazine in Jerusalem. It was not published in the Soviet Union until 1989.
Of note is his smaller 1988 work My Little Leniniana (Моя маленькая лениниана, Moya malenkaya Leniniana), which is a collection of quotations from Lenin's works and letters, which shows the unpleasant parts of the character of the 'leader of the proletariat'. Alexander Bondarev tells the story of its origin.[4]
Yerofeyev also claimed to have written in 1972 a novel Shostakovich about the famous Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, but the manuscript was allegedly stolen in a train. The novel has never been found. Before his death of throat cancer Yerofeyev finished a play called Walpurgisnacht, or the Steps of the Commander ('Вальпургиева ночь или Шаги командора') and was working on another play about Fanny Kaplan.
Personal life and death[edit]
Venedikt Yerofeyev was married twice, to Valentina Vasilevna Zimakova and Galina Pavlovna Nosova. In 1966 Yerofeyev's wife, Valentina Zimakova gave birth to a son - Venedikt Venediktovich Yerofeyev.[5] Galina Nosova died three years after Yerofeyev - having thrown herself off the balcony of her 13th floor apartment in Moscow.[5]
In 1985 Yerofeyev was diagnosed with throat cancer. Doctors operated on him, after which he could only speak using an electro-larynx. A film was made about Moskva-Petushki in the last years of Yerofeyev's life and he can be seen speaking with the help of this apparatus.[6] Yerofeyev died five years after he was first diagnosed with the disease, on 11 May 1990, at the Russian Oncological Centre in Moscow.[7] He is buried in Kuntsevsky cemetery.[8]
References[edit]
- ^'Писатели-диссиденты: биобиблиографические статьи (начало)' [Dissident writers: bibliographic articles (beginning)]. Новое литературное обозрение [New Literary Review] (in Russian) (66). 2004.
- ^'Khibiny-Moscow-Petushki. Vevedikt Terofeyev (1938-1990)', a special issue of Live Arctics ('Живая Арктика') No.1, 2005
- ^'Susan Orlean, David Remnick, Ethan Hawke, and Others Pick Their Favorite Obscure Books'. Village Voice. 2008-12-02.
- ^Alexander Bondarev,'И немедленно выпил', Booknik, 24 октября 2013
- ^ ab'ЖИВАЯ АРКТИКА №1 2005г'. arctic.org.ru. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2016-01-12.
- ^Pawel Pawlikowski: From Moscow to Pietushki - 1990 on Vimeo (eg. at 7:00)
- ^'Хибины — Москва — Петушки'. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04.
- ^'Ерофеев Венедикт | Театр на Юго-Западе'. teatr-uz.ru. Retrieved 2016-01-12.
External links[edit]
- Москва—Петушки, Russian website dedicated to the work of Venedikt Yerofeyev
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Venedikt_Yerofeyev&oldid=927895247'