July 17: Lydia Ginzburg, author of "Notes of a Man from the Siege," died.
On July 17, 1990, Lidia Ginzburg, a literary scholar, philologist, and writer whose “Notes of a Man from the Siege” became one of the main testimonies about the siege of Leningrad, died in Leningrad at the age of 89.
Beware, by defending yourself with indifference you can quietly kill yourself.
Odessa and the Mole
Lydia Ginzburg was born in 1902 in Odessa, the daughter of a chemical engineer and a housewife. In the early 1920s, she performed in comic plays at the Odessa theater studio "Krot" alongside Rina Zelena. In 1926, she graduated from the literature department of the Institute of Art History in Leningrad and entered graduate school.
Ginzburg was acquainted with Akhmatova, Mayakovsky, Zabolotsky, and Nadezhda Mandelstam—she would later write memoirs about them. Her views were close to the avant-garde and formalist writers, who considered literature valuable in itself, unlike the Marxist-Leninists ("they, thank God, are not modern, but temporary").
The Pinkerton Agency and Censorship
In the early 1930s, after several bans on publishing articles on contemporary poetry, Ginzburg accepted a government commission. She was commissioned to write an exposé novel about American detectives popular with Soviet children, including the famous detective and "founder of American labor espionage" Nat Pinkerton (based on the real-life detective Alan Pinkerton).
I'm not lying. I'm just choosing from what's offered.
In 1932, she wrote a piece on "Pinkertonism" for a comic strip in the magazine "Hedgehog." The full-length novel, "The Pinkerton Agency," was published only in 1933, with extensive censorship edits, reflecting the author's close ties to the disgraced formalists. Over the course of two years, the book was banned several times, and once even "pulled from the printing press."
I've lost all the joyful feelings: the feeling of accomplishment, the feeling of success, the feeling of opening up opportunities. I'm just... disgusted that untrustworthy people are rummaging through the words I've written like they own the place.
Until perestroika, Ginzburg wrote mostly for her desk drawer.
Workers' faculty and bullying
After the destruction of the formalist school and the closure of the Institute of Art History in 1932, Ginzburg taught at the workers' faculty, preparing workers and peasants for admission to universities.
At the workers' faculty, my incognito was revealed by a new colleague.
— Tell me... are you Lydia Ginzburg?
- Yes.
— I know. I’ve read your work.
A pause. Leaning towards my ear, he says:
— Between you and me, a formalistic method.
- Naturally. I'm Eikhenbaum's student.
He (in a quiet and sad voice):
— We need to get rid of this, we need to get rid of this.
In 1933, Ginzburg survived a two-week arrest. At the turn of the 1940s and 50s, she was again listed as "unreliable." In 1953, Stalin's death saved her from charges in a fabricated case of "Jewish sabotage in literature."
I might have chosen a pseudonym if I weren't Jewish. Jewish pseudonyms always have a bad taste: they inevitably have something of a false residence permit about them.
Blockade and war
By the start of the Great Patriotic War, Ginzburg had defended her PhD dissertation, a monograph entitled "Lermontov's Creative Path." She survived the siege of Leningrad, working as a staff editor for the city's radio committee.
Winter is radiant beauty, light breath and cheerful fire, gentle snow, soft fur... But undefeated winter is darkness, buckets, frozen and heavy as stone; it is cold, always cold, from which the heart aches.
In 1942, Ginzburg lost her mother; she died of malnutrition.
A man cannot begin to write without having accumulated a certain reserve of bitterness.
Late glory
After the war, Ginzburg defended her doctoral dissertation, based on a monograph on Herzen's "My Past and Thoughts." During the Thaw, for the first time in 30 years, she published books: "On Lyrics," "On Psychological Prose," and "On the Old and the New."
Talking for an hour with a happy person is more important to me than with a smart one. A happy person is always a revelation, a materialized solution to life's fundamental problem.
In 1984, at 82, Ginzburg achieved fame beyond literary scholars with the publication of the first part of "Notes of a Man from the Siege." The second and third parts were published in 1987–1989, shortly before her death.
I wanted to eat until I felt sick, until I felt disgusted with food, until I vomited, just to end this shame, just to free my head.
When a person reaches despair and loses it, he has nothing left. After the ultimate despair comes the ultimate indifference.
The feeling of lost time is the beginning of recovery. The beginning of recovery is when it first seems like standing in line is too long.
