{"id":8770,"date":"2022-07-07T16:46:51","date_gmt":"2022-07-07T14:46:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/?p=8770"},"modified":"2022-07-31T23:14:27","modified_gmt":"2022-07-31T21:14:27","slug":"die-geschichte-einer-reise-gaito-gasdanow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/2022\/07\/die-geschichte-einer-reise-gaito-gasdanow\/","title":{"rendered":"Die Geschichte einer Reise \u2022 Gaito Gasdanow"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Attentive readers of this blog already know that I love the books of Gaito Gasdanov and that I read each of his works the moment it appears. In 2012, Hanser set things in motion with a new translation of The Spectre of Alexander Wolf<\/em>. Four more of his books followed over the years, but some of his stories were never translated into German and were therefore unfortunately inaccessible to me. Two years ago I came across The Pilgrims<\/a>, which, surprisingly, did not appear from Hanser but from a Book on Demand publisher. As it turned out, the book was translated by J\u00fcrgen Barck, a translator who has been rendering Gasdanov\u2019s forgotten works on his own initiative. I\u2019ve already written on Lesestunden about The Pilgrims<\/a> and Awakening<\/a>, both books belonging to Gasdanov\u2019s later work. Now J\u00fcrgen Barck has newly and for the first time translated The Story of a Journey<\/em> into German. And because I\u2019ve devoured and loved all of Gasdanov\u2019s books, I don\u2019t want to withhold this one from you either\u2014once again, readers can expect a special pleasure.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

At the center of the tale is Wolodja, a young man from Russia who travels via Constantinople to Paris. His brother lives there, takes him in, and Wolodja spends a brief stretch of his life in Paris in the 1920s. Unlike Gasdanov\u2019s other books, however, the perspective shifts for several passages to Arthur, an Englishman, and we learn something about his love story.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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I find this book genuinely hard to review because it lacks a clear line. The red thread is, of course, Wolodja\u2014beginning with his departure from Constantinople by ship\u2014and even in Paris it\u2019s Wolodja\u2019s thoughts that guide the reader through the story. Yet the narrator often digresses and, in episodic fashion, recounts the stories of various people. Readers encounter numerous secondary figures, such as the protagonist\u2019s teacher, a Russian-born architect, or Odette, a carefree, wealthy woman. That\u2019s simply Gasdanov\u2019s style: not to tell one continuous plot, but to report, in fragments, episodes, and brief anecdotes, on the individuals who all form part of his protagonist\u2019s journey. This was very pronounced already in Night Roads<\/a>, and the narrative method is very similar here again.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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I\u2019ve always loved Gasdanov\u2019s language\u2014his sentences of great depth that so often only suggest, and with a wonderful, carefully chosen, flowing musicality draw the reader in and let one immerse in the unusual thought-world of his figures. That\u2019s true here as well. While The Pilgrims<\/em> and Awakening<\/em> belong to Gasdanov\u2019s later literary work, The Story of a Journey<\/em> is, by contrast, his second novel, and you can clearly feel the difference. In Awakening<\/em>, Gasdanov focused his figures on living together and their mutual relations; in his early work, however, it\u2019s abandonment, homelessness, and disorientation that the reader strongly senses\u2014central expressions of these stories. That\u2019s evident again here: Wolodja is dreamy, seems to drift through Paris, meets people to observe them, and remembers his travels and past. In this, readers find Gasdanov himself, who, after the civil war, also fled Russia via Constantinople to Paris like Wolodja. Only, his own start in the city was not as gentle as in the novel but marked by privation and hard work. That this is Gasdanov\u2019s own temperament, his thoughts that one finds in the book\u2014his sense of having lost his moorings\u2014one feels as a reader. The reflections are too genuine, too subjective, filled with experiences, feelings, and characteristic traits for them to be merely invented, even if they are now woven into fiction.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

So what does the reader find in this novel? A highly subjective portrait of numerous figures scattered along Wolodja\u2019s path\u2014described from his vantage point and, in their totality, forming a complex picture of the protagonist. And a delicate picture of love and of women, fulfilled and unfulfilled, suffused with a longing that is mostly felt only faintly between the lines.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Victoria\u2019s blooming youth reminded Wolodja at once of his grammar-school years, of Lady Hamilton, Dina, and long romantic dreams, of an entire world\u2014of music, of women, of the slowly spreading blue waves of a distant imaginary sea. (p. 122)<\/p><\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The book left me with a diffuse feeling. Opening a Gasdanov always means gazing into a sublimated world of thought. The way he brings in all the senses\u2014smells, sounds, the impressions people make by their appearance\u2014together with the flowing language, creates a pull to which readers yield; in the end you don\u2019t come away with one essence or single story, but with numerous impressions that echo diffusely.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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The edition itself is, once again, very successful. It\u2019s simply impressive what J\u00fcrgen Barck accomplishes single-handedly here. The translation reads very well; one immediately recognizes Gasdanov\u2019s style, and the sentences have the familiar intonation\u2014the distinctive idiom and effect that cling to all of Gasdanov\u2019s books. The appendix includes notes, which are excellent, and, like the afterword, provide background information. With its ribbon bookmark, the title printed directly on the cover, and, in particular, the wonderfully chosen typography, the book is at a high publishing standard. I can only thank J\u00fcrgen Barck for translating these books\u2014works I might otherwise never have been able to read\u2014which have given me so many pleasant reading hours that I would hate to be without.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Conclusion:<\/strong> With the first German translation of The Story of a Journey<\/em>, J\u00fcrgen Barck has once again made a book by Gaito Gasdanov accessible to German readers. What awaits is a narrative quintessentially Gasdanov: deep reflection, a sense of being lost, of homelessness, and of an indeterminate search that characterizes all his figures. The wonderfully subtle prose and a sensitive gaze at numerous people\u2014assembled episodically from many fragments\u2014offer a picture of the protagonist\u2019s (and the author\u2019s) inner world. That is what makes this book so very worth reading as well. The translation reads smoothly and conveys Gasdanov\u2019s typical style, and the production is excellent. A thoroughly successful book that I raced through and can only recommend.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Book information: <\/strong>Die Geschichte einer Reise<\/em> \u2022 Gaito Gasdanov \u2022 BoD \u2022 188 pages \u2022 ISBN 9783754354131<\/p>\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Attentive readers of this blog already know that I love the books of Gaito Gasdanov and that I read each of his works the moment it appears. In 2012, Hanser set things in motion with a new translation of The Spectre of Alexander Wolf. Four more of his books followed over the years, but some … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Die Geschichte einer Reise \u2022 Gaito Gasdanow”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"slim_seo":{"title":"Die Geschichte einer Reise \u2022 Gaito Gasdanow - lesestunden","description":"Aufmerksame Leser dieses Blogs wissen bereits, dass ich die B\u00fccher des Autoren Gaito Gasdanow liebe und dass ich jedes seiner Werke sofort lese. Der Hanser Verl"},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-classics","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/die_geschichte_einer_reise_1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}