Volume 10, Number 6 · March 28, 1968
Stories of Intrigue and Love
By Helen Muchnic
The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon and Other Stories
by Boris Pilnyak, translated by Beatrice Scott
Washington Square Press (The Russian Library), 266 pp., $4.95
Love and Other Stories
by Yuri Olyesha, translated by Robert Payne
Washington Square Press (The Russian Library), 230 pp., $4.95
Envy and Other Works
by Yuri Olesha, translated by Andrew R. MacAndrew
Doubleday, 288 pp., $1.45 (paper)
Pilnyak and Olesha had in common the misfortune of having been born with a writer's gift in Russia at the turn of the century, Pilnyak (whose real name was Boris Vogau) in 1894, Olesha in 1899. Both achieved sudden fame, Pilnyak in 1922 with the publication of his novel, The Naked Year, Olesha in 1927 with his novella, Envy. Both were very popular in Russia in the late Twenties and early Thirties, and both fell from grace. Olesha vanished for some years about 1938, but then returned, and died in Moscow of a heart attack in 1960 (while correcting proofs, it is said, of an article on Hemingway, who was one of his great enthusiasms). Pilnyak was hounded to death; he disappeared in 1937 and is presumed to have been shot. The theme of both, or rather their understandable obsession, was the Revolution; both 'accepted' it, though not slavishly, and, in spite of persecution, remained loyal citizens of the USSR. Here the similarities end. Their common theme served different ends. Their modes of writing were antithetical. The temperaments that showed through their work could not be more diverse.
Review, 2346 words
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