Representation of the Past and Reconstruction of Identity Through the Body and Dreams in Ludmila Ulitskaya’S Kukotsky Case [Kazus Kukotskogo]1

Transcultural Studies, 6-7 (2010-2011), 143-160.

ELVIRA CALLEGHER

REPRESENTATION OF THE PAST AND RECONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY THROUGH THE BODY AND DREAMS IN LUDMILA ULITSKAYA’S KUKOTSKY CASE [KAZUS KUKOTSKOGO]1

Introduction: Ludmila Ulitskaya’s Life and Works Ludmila Ulitskaya is one of the most popular contemporary writers in Rus- sia. She was born on the 21st of February in 1943 in the small town of Davlekanovo, in Bashkiria, to which her parents had been evacuated from Moscow during World War II.2 After the war her family came back to Mos- cow, where Ludmila finished her school and then worked for two years at the Institute of Podiatry. Two years later she entered Moscow State University and graduated in 1968. She worked at the Institute of Genetics as a scientist for two years. In 1970 she was dismissed for illegal printing and distributing of Samiz- dat literature.3 She did not work for ten years as she confessed in her interview to Maria Sedikh so that she could focus on bringing up her two boys and de- vote her leisure time to reading.4 Since her early childhood Ludmila was an avid. Her grandmother, Maria Petrovna, was a bohemian intelligent woman with high moral values, who influenced her granddaughter’s literary prefer- ences. Among her favourites were: Sigmund Freud, Adrei Bely, and Leonid Andreev.5 As a student, Ulitskaya discovered Andrei Platonov, Ivan Bunin, Boris Pasternak, and Vladimir Nabokov; among the contemporary authors, she enjoyed reading Alexander Sokolov and Venedikt Erofeev.6

Ulitskaya found a new post as an assistant to the Jewish Chamber Theatre and became a Repertory Director of Hebrew Theatre of Moscow for which she wrote plays, programmes and synopses. Two years later she left the Theatre to become a freelance writer, authoring theatrical works and screenplays.

1. This essay is an edited version of my Slavic MA thesis, awarded in 2013. I am grateful to my supervisor, Associate Professor Millicent Vladiv-Glover (Slavic Studies, Monash Univ.) for guidance and editorial comments during the production of this essay. 2. Ludmila Ulitskaya perhaps employed her childhood memories of the grey and wretched remote little town in Bashkiria in depicting the scene of Robert Viktorovich’s exile in her novella Sonechka. 3. Samizdat from Russian sam, “self,” and izdatelstvo, “publishing,” literature secretly written, copied, and circulated in the former Soviet Union and usually critical of practices of the So- viet government, available at: www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/520512/samizdat, accessed 22/06/2009 4. Maria Sedikh, “Mladshaya semidisiatnitsia,” Obshchaya gazeta, no. 20 (2002): 8. 5. Elena Sheglova, “A Great Master of Nuances,” Style, superstyle.ru/19feb2008/ulitskay 6. Margarita Riurikova, “Mne interesna zhizn (serikh ludei),” Literaturnaia gazeta, no. 38 (1995): 3. 144 Transcultural Studies

As a Russian writer who emerged on the literary scene before perestroika, Ulitskaya, so to speak, went through a semi-dissident experience. Although she did not go through political purges, she was dismissed from her post at the In- stitute for reading and distributing secretly written and unpublished literature. Ulitskaya’s pose was inspired by the history of her family. Her grandfather was detained several times and spent seventeen years in exile, where he died in 1955.7 The experience of her family history has found embodiment in her literary works which deal with particular empathy for the repressed and forgotten people of Soviet-Russian history and post–Soviet Russian history. Ludmila Ulitskaya is married and has two sons who left Russia for New York in the early nineties, at the time of perestroika; now they also reside in Moscow. Her frequent trips to New York for the last decade supplied Ulitskaya with numer- ous stories about Russian émigrés and their life.

Ulitskaya is a writer with an international profile. She has been translated into more than twenty languages. Her literary works were rejected by the Sovi- et literary journals before perestroika so she was first published in the late 1980s in France. Her first book Bednye rodstvenniki was published in 1989 in France and a few months later in Russia - unnoticeably.8 In 1992, Ulitskaya was short- listed for the Russian Booker Prize with the publication, in Noviy mir, of her novella Sonechka.9 The book was translated into French, German, Italian and English in 1995 and published the same year by “Gallimard” in France, “E/O” in Italy, “Volk und Welt” in Germany. Her Cinderella’s story was started in 1996 when she won the French Medici Prize for Sonechka, which was also awarded the Penne Prize in Italy.10 This novella brought the author world-wide fame. In Germany her novels have been added to bestseller lists thanks to a feature on her works in a television program "Lesen! Mit Elke Heidenreich" hosted by literary critic Elke Heidenreich. The novel Funeral Party was published in England in 1999 and listed by The Guardian as a national treasure from book shelves around the world. In the USA, Funeral Party was published by Schoken Books and in Canada by Random in 2000; it was included in the list of foreign books of contemporary writers worth reading. Her success in Europe, USA and Canada led her to be recognized in her own country. She won the prestigious Russian literary award - Russian Booker Prize - in 2002, for her novel The Kukotsky Case. In 2004 Ulitskaya was awarded a prize for the Novel of the Year for Sincerely yours, Shurik, published in Russia and the next year in China. In 2006 Ulitskaya was awarded Novel Penne Literary Prize in Italy and in 2007 the National Olympia Prize of the Russian Academy of Business. The Best Stage Play Award 2006 was con- ferred by the Moscow Culture Committee for her piece The White Elephant Year in 2007, and the same year she was granted the National Literary Prize

7. Anastasia Gosteva, “Prinimayu vse, chto dayetsia,” Voprosi literaturi, no. 1 (2000): 215- 237. 8. Bedniye rodsvtenniki [Poor Relations]. English. Interview with Ulitskaya and Anastasia Gosteva, “Prinimaiu vse, chto daetsia,” Voprosi literaturi, no. 1 (2000): 217. 9. New World, the most prestigious contemporary Russian literary journal. 10. Yuri Zubtsov, “Ludmila Ulitskaya: pro genetikov i bomzhei,” Domovoi, no. 3 (2002): 20.