Stravaging “Strange” is a wonderful collection of two novellas, a short story and notebook excerpts by one of the giants of twentieth-century Russian literature, Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. Each work deserves its own review. Thus, I'll focus on the title novella, a very, very strange, unforgettable story where the narrator, a chap I'll call Ivan, embarks on an adventure where he's reduced to the size of a speck of dust.
Caryl Emerson is a leading scholar of Russian literature. As she outlines in her incisive introduction, Krzhizhanovsky had an abiding curiosity of foreign countries and cities, but, alas, living in the oppressive Soviet Union, he was barred from leaving the country. What to do when one has a passion for travel and authors such as Jonathan Swift, H. G. Wells and Jules Verne? Ah, embark on a journey via one's imagination! After all, we can always view our otherwise everyday world from a new, fresh perspective. This is exactly what we're given in Stravaging “Strange”. Here a number of snappy snapshots from this provocative tale:
TOTAL TRANSFORMATION
Honoring his request for travel to different dimensions, Ivan's old teacher hands him a phial containing the necessary solution. Walking back to his flat, Ivan mentally prepares to embark on his stravaging strange adventure where he will say goodbye to his familiar sense of space. Moments after arriving, he drinks every drop. “My body abruptly began to contract and collapse, like a burst bubble” and Ivan finds himself the size of a dust mote.
Ivan is in for a series of surprises, beginning with a dramatic change in his vision. “The tincture that had shrunk my six-foot body to the size of a dust mote had also reduced the radius of my vision: my eyes could not longer see as far as Sirius and the North Star, while ordinary street lamps had replaced, as best they could, their constellations.” Such is the way of our all too human mind: we project what we think we will see when we take certain potions (or drugs) but our actual experience turns out to be much different than what we imagined.
LOVE BECKONS
Now that he's invisible to the human eye, where does Ivan wish to journey forth? Why, to the apartment above, the abode of a certain young lady who lives with an old professor. After many days traveling via an assenting vine, Ivan finally alights at her window. But there's a problem: the window is closed shut. “Vexed and angry, I roamed for an entire day along a carefully caulked crack: nowhere was there a breach, or even a gap. I could either: go back, down the wining ivy, or with inexhaustible patience wait for my onward. This time I chose the later.” Patience pays off. The window is finally opened by none other than that certain young lady.
52 PICK-UP
How strange is this Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky tale? Once in the apartment, Ivan encounters the King of Hearts among a deck of cards (echoes of the Russian author's beloved Lewis Carroll) where the King bemoans his plight. “My kingdom and my power were long ago disheartened: our venerable family became a silly suit, and I, who with my ministers once played people, I, now an ordinary card, must allow them, people, to play us, cards.” Oh, Sigizmund, you are such a card! And SK peppers this episode of Ivan's adventure, comrades, with references to a Bolshevik slogan and other political and historic happenings within the not-so-perfect Union Soviet.
TINY FOLKLORE FOLKS
Further along in his odd outing, down on the floor, Ivan comes upon “a regular conclave of ordinary house Imps”. Such irony! I suppose when you are the size of a dust mote, Imps can be both regular and ordinary. Anyway, Ivan listens in as the head Imp calls a meeting of his fellow Imps to order. “According to recent reports, our master has begun to smell like a corpse. A sure sign he'll soon be under the sod. So then, what should we do about his widow?” Oh, my, the love of his life is soon to be available for the loving. Ivan's minuscule heart begins to thump a Katyusha.
BLAST OFFS AND LANDINGS
Ivan's outlandish, exorbitant orbit continues and he actually ventures forth on a second stravaging shrinking. You will read about the truly unbelievable. “I began to distinguish strange, utterly transparent creatures streaming past and through me, like water through a filter.” And it goes on: time bacilli with stingers, Ivan's feeling of timelessness, Ivan entering the essence of a word, the past and future trading places, Ivan zooming through a human brain, Ivan's developing relationship with his love.
Only one thing is for sure: You definitely should read this Russian tale to find out if and how it all comes together, Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky-style.
Russian author Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, 1887-1950
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