Rest, and some thoughts on Sinyavsky....

Today has been a day of rest, which, after the weekend's turmoil, was badly needed.

Today's only achievement was giving blood. It doesn't hurt much, it doesn't cost you anything, and it does a lot of good, so please do it if you can.

Today, I rested, and thought......

When I was a confused and rather pretentious teenager, I got into Russian authors.

One book I bought (remaindered) was 'A Voice from the Chorus' by the Soviet dissident writer, Andrei Sinyavsky.

I lost that copy many many years ago in one of my many moves.

I still remember the crystal clarity of his prose, though: the way a few seemingly disjointed sentences could wrap up a complex idea into a strong and lasting piece of imagery.

His description of a tree as a lung turned inside out, or how important it was not to swear at something as it was being made, (lest it should be offended and fall apart), the pet cat in his prison hut, and how the other prisoners treated it so gently and so well, apart from one, who was reviled for calling the cat 'a little whore'.....

The sheer humanity that existed in an environment designed specifically to erase every trace of it...........

'A Voice from the Chorus' has no narrative, and little in the way of accepted structure. It is a series of the most piercing vignettes, gentler than Soldyenitsen's 'One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich', yet none the less telling, or less angry.

It's fragmented structure is much like that of reading a blog........

If only I could write even half so tellingly, or so well.....



Sorry.