In the Footsetps of Pushkin & Gogol
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SPRING 2020 A PETITE LITERARY JOURNAL VOLUME 5 ISSUE 1 in Comparative Literature was based on the Overcoat”, “Nevsky Prospect”) have often been In The Footsetps Of Russian novel, A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail the inspiration for my own fantastic fictions. Lermontov and a chapter from my novel, The Pushkin & Gogol Posthumous Memoirs of Blase Kubash, was totally It is also not surprising that I would invite influenced by Nabokov’s Pale Fire. Russian and Ukrainian writers to participate in By Mark Axelrod the 23rd Annual Fowles Literary series. Along That said, it is not surprising I would with some excerpts of “classic” Russian fiction, ver since I was an undergraduate at Indiana incorporate Pushkin and Gogol into a new the works of these contemporary writers are EUniversity, I have been enamored of Russian novel/memoir I’m writing titled, Ukrainian examples of some of the finest writing being writers, especially the work of Chekhov, Odyssey, based partly on the life of my mother written in Russia and Ukraine, which the Pushkin, Nabokov, Turgenev and Gogol, the who was born in Kiev, but also as a kind of excerpts from their work would attest. I hope latter with whom I share a birthday as well as a homage to Pushkin and Gogol, whose rather you enjoy them as much as I and hope you can Ukrainian heritage. My Master’s Degree thesis fantastic fictions (e.g. “The Nose”, “Viy”, “The attend their readings. 1 John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, Chapman University Contents Introduction FICTION BIOGRAPHIES Mark Axelrod ................................................1 Oksana Zabuzhko ......................................03 About the Writers .....................................18 In The Footsetps Of Pushkin & Gogol Your Ad Could Go Here Mikhail Shishkin .........................................04 More than Joyce Andrey Kurkov ............................................10 Grey Bees Yuri Andrukhovych ....................................12 LVIV, Always ZSÓFIA BÁN ...................................................14 Gustave and Maxime in Egypt Nikolai Gogol .............................................16 Memoirs of a Madman Acknowledgments I would like to acknowledge those who have helped make the publication of MANTISSA possible: President Daniele Struppa, Dean Jennifer Keene, Dr. Joanna Levin, and Dr. Eric Chimenti. This Issue was created by Chapman University’s Ideation Lab. Special thanks to Alice Premeau. Look for Volume 6, Issue 1 in the Spring of 2021 2 Mantissa Journal Volume V Issue I FICTION Your Ad Could Everything in that glove shop was out to Siberia in cattle cars, and some, but rejected other garments singular, not one pair resembled their absence from the universe in without any apparent logic, but Go Here another, each more fantastic which I grew up was still evident— irrevocably and at once. In the than the next, but these—these as visible as silhouettes cut out of fall of 2004 they suddenly fell in By Oksana Zabuzhko caught my eye the second I walked group pictures, with the names love with a flamboyant fiery scarf through the door, like the glance written underneath. It warms my which I then wore throughout the Translated By Halyna Hryn of a dear fellow creature in a heart every time I see what became entire Orange Revolution—never crowd. And they were exactly my of them in other, less chaotic lands. mind that the scarf did not come They were the most splendid size: I told the gentle old man in To spend fifty years sculpting such from a fashion designer and cost leather gloves I had seen in my life: a knitted vest who sat behind the gloves, from tanning and cutting a third of what the gloves had. finished to the gossamer weight counter I wore a size six, but he to the finishing stitches around They were perfect together, and of a rose petal, with a dazzling, just shook his head. No, he said the eyelet holes that would adorn press photographers all to the man luminous bay hue that instantly in his slightly raspy Viennese imaginary hands—does this wanted my picture in that orange brought to mind the Imperial English, you’re not a six but a not mean becoming the Lord of scarf and my sunshine gloves—no, horses and their silky croups five-and-a-half, here, try these. Gloves, the one and only, not just no, don’t take them off, just leave at the Hofreitschule, delicately But I always buy sixes! You’ll be in Vienna, but in the whole wide everything as is! laced with a finely cut design at telling me, Miss, he laughed, I’ve world? the wrist (all of it handmade, my been making these gloves for fifty Here one rather expects a goodness!), they immediately years. Oh, you make these? And certain development of the plot: wrapped my hand in the firm sell them? So you are the owner? Julio Cortázar, for instance, or loving grasp of a second skin, and Yes, he confirmed, with the quiet even Peter Haigh would have one was compelled henceforth to pride of a master craftsman who definitely written a story (and stroke the hand thusly gloved with knows his worth. The tiny store Taras Prokhasko would have the same reverence as an Imperial on Mariahilferstrasse which I told one in a pub, being too lazy steed. One wanted to stroke and entered on a whim (with a purely I named them my sunshine to write it!) in which the gloves admire the hand, spreading one’s touristy “I wonder what’s here?”), gloves—they glowed. I could see quietly move on from approving fingers against the light, making transformed into a fairy-tale forest their aura in the paper bag into garments to approving—or a fist and letting it go—Ah!—and hut—the one to which the fleeing which the Lord of Gloves packed disapproving—people and begin never take such beauty off. In a heroine stumbles at nightfall and them for me—with his name to rule the heroine’s life, guiding word, walking away from those where she meets the Master of imprinted, and the address— her to the authentic and away gloves was beyond my power. the underground kingdom who Mariahilferstrasse, 35—and the from the fake, sweeping out from chops his own wood, carries his telephone numbers (land lines— her life’s wardrobe false friends, They existed—as befits any work own water, and makes his own everything about him was so unnecessary obligations, and of art—as a singular artifact. supper. I dearly wished I spoke old-worldly, solid, with a distant ultimately her own masques, better German—and the old man, nineteenth-century breeze of stripping her down like a cabbage, better English—we could hardly faith in an ordered world, a world to her bare core, and then we might talk about anything important in which things are made to last discover that there is no core, that with our tourist-minimum forever because the makers know the heroine herself does not pass vocabularies. I adore such dapper that things outlast people and will the test of the magical gloves, so gentlemen in vests—in my own one day serve for our descendants in the end she has to perish in a country they were exterminated as the only tangible proof of our dramatic fashion, to disappear, be as a species fifty years ago, shipped existence). Even through the paper disposed of, and the gloves, fine as bag, I could feel the silky softness a rose petal, will remain gloving in of the rose-petal leather. I kept their silky-chestnut splendor on a touching it and smiling. I had been desk, waiting for their new owner. entrusted with a treasure, in the Something along those lines. fairy-tale forest hut—a talisman from a different age. Who today What actually happened was would labor over such gloves— different. What happens is always every pair unique, every pair a different from what we read about single copy—to sell them for those later. In May of 2005 I did what same fifty euros they charge for I had never, in my recollection, the thick chunks of mitts in the which begins more-or-less at the mall across the street? age of three, done: I lost a glove. Later I got myself a special designer Maybe I lost it getting out of a cab. sweater to go with the gloves. A At least, it was not anywhere on special jacket. A special pair of fine the sidewalk—I retraced my steps suede pants. I had the persistent along the entire length of my route, feeling that my sunshine gloves where I could have, theoretically, stood out no matter what I wore, dropped it, looking hungrily into no matter how carefully I selected every single trash can. All in vain: it, and they most certainly did: the glove was gone. Evaporated. they demanded different lines— Vanished. Rose up to the sky and designed by someone in love with flew away. Took off and flew into their model. With the gloves, I the wide blue sky. Burned to a could tell the mood with which crisp like the Frog Princess’s skin. another item of clothing was My sunshine glove from my left conceived and made: they accepted hand. The hand was left naked. 3 John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, Chapman University FICTION One step into a side street off Lucia fell in love with the young the busy shopping thoroughfare, More than Joyce Irish writer to whom he had push the right door—and I will dictated Finnegans Wake, but be again in that cozy, draping By Mikhail Shishkin Samuel Beckett had explained to silence, green-colored, as if tinged her that his only interest in her with the virgin forest outside the Translated from the Russian was that she was the daughter windows but in fact because of by Marian Schwartz.