| Title | : | In Search of the Free Individual: The History of the Russian-Soviet Soul (Distinguished Speakers Series) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1501726900 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781501726903 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 42 |
| Publication | : | Published January 15, 2018 |
In Search of the Free Individual: The History of the Russian-Soviet Soul (Distinguished Speakers Series) Reviews
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"I am a historian of the soul. For me, feelings are also documents. I study missing history, the things that history usually overlooks. History is often arrogant, and dismissive of what is small and human."
From IN SEARCH OF THE FREE INDIVIDUAL: A History of the Russian-Soviet Soul, by Svetlana Alexievich, tr. from the Russian by Jamey Gambrell, 2016.
#ReadtheWorld21 📍 Belarus
justfinished Reading Alexievich's speech/essay with my coffee this morning.
Alexievich was a visiting fellow at the Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell University in New York in 2016-2017, and delivered this speech to the Center in Russian.
This essay (~25 pages) gives background on some of her oral history methods, her views on historical contexts, and more details on the compilation of her well-known books. She discusses the Soviet censorship and reinstatement during perestroika of The Unwomanly Face of War and Zinky Boys including legal battles to get both works published in full. She touches on the long shadow of Chernobyl, and the soul of the "Red Empire" that she writes so clearly in Secondhand Time, and makes connections with her own family and upbringing as a child of Communism.
Best enjoyed by readers who are familiar with Alexievich's Nobel Prize-winning work, but could also serve as a short introduction to her outstanding body of literature.
Her work has had such an impact on me, and reading her own words - rather than the stories of others that she so often focuses on - was a special treat.
[On Soviet education]
"We lived together in a country where we were taught to die beginning in childhood. We learned death and dying. We weren’t taught that humans are born for happiness, or love, it was drilled into us that humans exist in order to give of themselves, in order to burn, to sacrifice. We were taught to love people with weapons."
[On Chernobyl]
"People were used to the idea of atomic war, but not atomic peace. They didn’t yet realize that the atoms of war and peace are colleagues, they kill in exactly the same way."
Recommended short read for #WITmonth, this is available as a free ebook on several services and on Cornell's website. -
This book is an account of how the writer approaches getting her stories and writing them. As well as some background on the books she has published. I read "Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets" which was fantastic.
About her approach to creating her books, she writes....
"It’s important to catch words in flight, as they’re born. It’s important not to miss the conversational part of life, which we often neglect, dismiss as unimportant, leaving it to disappear in the bustle of life, in the darkness of time. It seems surprising that this could be literature. But I want to make every bit of our life into literature. Including ordinary, everyday words....I am a historian of the soul. For me, feelings are also documents."
"I was collecting the human. Dostoevsky asked the question: “How much of the human is there in a human being?” How can the human in this human being be protected? That’s the question I’m looking to answer... If I hadn’t read Dostoevsky, I would be in despair."
And what she gets from listening...
"In telling his own story, a person creates; he doesn’t copy reality, he creates. Memories are living creatures. People put their entire lives into their memories: what they read, what they thought about, whether they were happy or not. Documents evolve along with the human soul."
She went to some hard places to write her books, which often took years to create. This included the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the Chernobyl disaster. As well as the chaos of post-perestroika, which left many afraid who could even get enough food. This left an opening for the emergence of Putin as dictator. People were willing to trade their freedom for stability and material goods.
Her accounts can be heartbreaking, such as this pertaining to the war in Afghanistan in a book titled "The Boys in Zinc"...
Boys in Zinc began with one little girl. I couldn’t forget her. In the municipal cemetery in Minsk they were burying officers brought back from Afghanistan in zinc coffins. There were grandiose, combative speeches, wreaths…. A little girl tore away from the grownup’s hand like a bird and cried out: “Papa! Papa! I drew lots of boats for you, just like you asked. Where are you?”
"It is there, in the live human voice, in the live reflection of reality, that the mystery of our presence is hidden, and the insurmountable tragedy of life."
Now....
"Books pile up in the bookstores and markets by the hundreds. Everything has been published: Solzhenitsyn, Shalamov, Evgenia Ginzburg…. At one time, people were imprisoned for having these books, they were dismissed from universities. Nowadays people hurry past them."
They stand in line for makeup instead.
Her Noble Prize lecture (2015)...
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lit...
"Secondhand Time"....
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3... -
Discurso curtinho da Svetlana que está disponível gratuitamente no Kindle. Aqui, ela basicamente resume o seu fazer literário, suas técnicas, estratégias e a abordagem que utiliza com seus sujeitos, além de explicar um pouco de seu pensamento sobre a formação da "alma soviética". Alguns trechos daqui já estavam presentes em alguns textos de apoio das edições brasileiras dos livros. Como sempre, Svetlana dando aula sobre como a história é composta dos "sujeitos pequenos" tanto quanto de grandes eventos.
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An exceptional writer
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“The story of one person is fate; the story of hundreds of people is history.”
“Chernobyl changed our understanding of time—many radioactive particles will live for a hundred, two hundred, a thousand years, thereby altering space. A few days after the accident, radioactive clouds were detected over Africa. Concepts like ‘our own’ and ‘foreign’ were obliterated. Borders don’t exist for radiation.”
"I am a historian of the soul. For me, feelings are also documents. I study missing history, the things that history usually overlooks. History is often arrogant, and dismissive of what is small and human."
“I collect the human spirit. You may say: it’s an ephemeral thing, too elusive. But art attempts to capture it. And every era has its own answers.”
“In telling his own story, a person creates; he doesn’t copy reality, he creates. Memories are living creatures.”“We lived together in a country where we were taught to die beginning in childhood. We learned death and dying. We weren’t taught that humans are born for happiness, or love, it was drilled into us that humans exist in order to give of themselves, in order to burn, to sacrifice. We were taught to love people with weapons.”
“Everything has been published…. At one time, people were imprisoned for having these books, they were dismissed from universities. Nowadays people hurry past them.”
Title: In Search of the Free Individual: The History of the Russian-Soviet Soul
Author: Svetlana Alexievich
Year 2018
Genre: Nonfiction - Russian history & culture
Page count: 42 pages
Date(s) read: 1/20/23
Reading journal entry #25 in 2023
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Cuanto más leo a Svetlana más me gusta. Tiene una forma única de capturar historias y, como dice ella, de escuchar. Admiro su análisis humano.
En estas apenas 23 páginas sacadas de un discurso que hizo hace un repaso sobre las historias de las que ha escrito para hacerse eco de la raíz central: el alma soviética, su construcción y su poco a poco destrucción. Intenta cuestionarse dónde queda la libertad sin tener una respuesta muy concreta... Sin duda una maestra de las palabras.
"It's important to count words in flight, as they're born. It's important not to miss the conversational part of life, which we often neglect, dismiss as unimportant, leaving it to disappear in the bustle of life, in the darkness of time. It seems surprising that this could be literature. But I want to make every bit of our life into literature. Including ordinary, everyday words".
✍🏼IRATXE -
Most Interesting Public Lecture by Nobel Literature Prize Winner, 2005. Svetlana Alexievich's public lecture in 2017 was at Cornell University delivered in Russian and translated. As an investigative journalist, she searched for the truth of the Soviet individual and post Soviet individual recording human voices for 30 years. She quotes Dostoevsky, author and psychologist, How much of the human is there in a human being? And goes on to say, How can the human in this human being be protected? That's the question I'm looking to answer. I collect the human spirit. The book The History of the Russian-Soviet Soul is included and is written in Russian.
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This is not a book, as much as it is an explanation of why she writes the book she writes. That being said, I gave it three stars because I was disappointed in the content, but my interest was piqued. It does serve as a good introduction to her reasons for writing. It does make me want to read her other works.
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"Conversational language isn’t burdened, it isn’t preconceived. It goes its own way and celebrates: with syntax, intonation, accent. Feeling is resurrected accurately. I follow feelings, I am an historian of things that leave no trace."
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A resume
A whistle stop tour of her work concluding with the question what is freedom? An important writer who is not as well known as she should be. -
A reflection by the author on her previous work
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Beautiful, makes one want to pick her books
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Black hole era concerns everybody. “Shouts and sobs can’t be polished, or the main thing will be neither the tears nor shouts, but the polish.”
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”It’s important to catch words in flight, as they’re born.”
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"I discover my books on the street, I hear them outdoors... It is important to catch words in flight, as they are born" (5).
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Not really sure what this was supposed to be. Seemed to be an intro in English, about 20 pages of Russian (????) and that was it.
