Russian and Soviet writer, playwright, philosopher, and historian (1887–1950)
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(1887-02-11)11 February 1887 Kiev, Russian Empire (now Ukraine)
Died
December 28, 1950(1950-12-28) (aged 63) Moscow,
Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Sigizmund Dominikovich Krzhizhanovsky (Russian: Сигизму́нд Домини́кович Кржижано́вский, IPA:[sʲɪɡʲɪzˈmuntdəmʲɪˈnʲikəvʲɪtɕkʐɨʐɨˈnofskʲɪj],[1]Polish: Zygmunt Krzyżanowski; 11 February [
O.S. 30 January] 1887 – 28 December 1950) was a|Russian and Soviet writer, playwright, philosopher, and historian, who described himself as "known for being unknown".[2] He published only a few stories and essays in his lifetime; the majority of his writings were published posthumously.[3]
Life
Krzhizhanovsky was born in
Kiev (now in
Ukraine) to a
Polish family on 11 February 1887.[4]
In 1929 he penned a screenplay for
Yakov Protazanov's acclaimed film The Feast of St Jorgen, yet his name did not appear in the credits. He also wrote the screenplay for the 1935 stop-motion animated feature film The New Gulliver, but, again, was left uncredited.[7] One of his last short stories, "Дымчатый бокал" ("The Smoke-Colored Goblet," 1939), tells the story of a goblet miraculously never running out of wine, which is sometimes interpreted as a wry allusion to the author's fondness for alcohol.
Krzhizhanovsky died in Moscow, but his burial place is not known.
In 1976, scholar Vadim Perelmuter discovered Krzhizhanovsky's archive and in 1989 published one of his short stories. As the five volumes of his collected works followed, Krzhizhanovsky emerged from obscurity as a remarkable Soviet writer, who polished his prose to the verge of poetry. His short
parables, written with an abundance of poetic detail and wonderful fertility of invention – though occasionally bordering on the whimsical – are sometimes compared to the ficciones of
Jorge Luis Borges. "Quadraturin" (1926), the best known of such phantasmagoric stories, is a
Kafkaesque tale in which allegory meets existentialism.
Bibliography
Novellas
Странствующее «Странно» (1924), Stravaging “Strange”. Included in the collection translated by Joanne Turnbull (Columbia University Press, 2023)
ISBN978-0-23119-947-6
Клуб убийц букв (1926), The Letter Killers Club, trans. Joanne Turnbull (New York Review Books, 2011)
ISBN978-1-59017-450-0
Возвращение Мюнхгаузена (1927-1928), The Return of Munchausen, trans. Joanne Turnbull (New York Review Books, 2016)
ISBN978-1-68137-028-6
Материалы к биографии Горгиса Катафалаки (1929), Material for a Life of Gorgis Katafalaki. In Stravaging “Strange”, trans. Joanne Turnbull (Columbia University Press, 2023)
ISBN978-0-23119-947-6
Воспоминания о будущем (written 1929; published 1989), Memories of the Future. Included in the collection translated by Joanne Turnbull (New York Review Books, 2009)
ISBN978-1-59017-319-0
Short story collections
Сказки для вундеркиндов (1919-1927), Fairy-tales for Wunderkinder[3]
Чужая тема (1927-1931), Someone Else's Theme
Чем люди мертвы (1932-1933), What Men Die By
Неукушенный локоть (Рассказы о Западе) (1940), Unbitten Elbow
Мал мала меньше (1937-1940), One Smaller Than the Other
Сборник рассказов 1920-1940-х годов (1940), Collected Stories: 1920s-1940s
Plays
That Third Guy: A Comedy from the Stalinist 1930s with Essays on Theater, trans. Alisa Ballard Lin (The University of Wisconsin Press, 2018)
ISBN978-0-29931-710-2
Штемпель: Москва (1925), Postmark: Moscow. In Autobiography of a Corpse, trans. Joanne Turnbull (New York Review Books, 2013)
ISBN978-1-59017-670-2
Поэтика заглавий (1931), "The Poetics of Titles", trans. Anne O. Fisher, in Countries That Don't Exist: Selected Nonfiction, edited by Jacob Emery and Alexander Spektor (Columbia University Press, 2022)
ISBN978-0-23120-237-4
Translated stories and collections
"Quadraturin", trans. Joanne Turnbull, in Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida (Penguin, 2005)
ISBN978-0-140-44846-7
^
abLeiderman, N. L. (2012). "The Intellectual Worlds of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky". The Slavic and East European Journal. 56 (4): 507–535.
ISSN0037-6752.
JSTOR24392613.
^Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. The Complete Works in 5 Volumes. Volume 1. ed. by Vadim Perelmuter. Saint Petersburg: Symposium, 2001, 688 pages.
ISBN5-89091-132-5