ALEKSIEVIC SVETLANA – Globolibri.it

In Search of the Free Individual: The History of the Russian-Soviet Soul

Arnaldo Ageno — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 22:10:33 +0000

“I love life in its living form, life that’s found on the street, in human conversations, shouts, and moans.” So begins this speech delivered in Russian at Cornell University by Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature. In poetic language, Alexievich traces the origins of her deeply affecting blend of journalism, oral history, and creative writing. Cornell Global Perspectives is an imprint of Cornell University’s Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

The works examine critical global challenges, often from an interdisciplinary perspective, and are intended for a non-specialist audience. The Distinguished Speaker Series presents edited transcripts of talks delivered at Cornell, both in the original language and in translation.

Second-hand Time

Arnaldo Ageno — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 22:01:10 +0000

Second-hand Time is the latest work from Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature for inventing ‘a new kind of literary genre’. Here she brings together the voices of dozens of witnesses to the collapse of the USSR in a formidable attempt to chart the disappearance of a culture and to surmise what new kind of man may emerge from the rubble. Fashioning a singular, polyphonic literary form by combining extended individual monologues with a collage of voices, Alexievich creates a magnificent requiem to a civilization in ruins, a brilliant, poignant and unique portrait of post-Soviet society out of the stories of ordinary women and men.

The Unwomanly Face of War

Arnaldo Ageno — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 21:52:29 +0000

In the late 1970s, Svetlana Alexievich set out to write her first book, The Unwomanly Face of War, when she realized that she grew up surrounded by women who had fought in the Second World War but whose stories were absent from official narratives. Travelling thousands of miles, she spent years interviewing hundreds of Soviet women – captains, tank drivers, snipers, pilots, nurses and doctors – who had experienced the war on the front lines, on the home front and in occupied territories. As it brings to light their most harrowing memories, this symphony of voices reveals a different side of war, a new range of feelings, smells and colours.

After completing the manuscript in 1983, Alexievich was not allowed to publish it because it went against the state-sanctioned history of the war. With the dawn of Perestroika, a heavily censored edition came out in 1985 and it became a huge bestseller in the Soviet Union – the first in five books that have established her as the conscience of the twentieth century.

Chernobyl Prayer

Arnaldo Ageno — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 21:43:20 +0000

In April 1986 a series of explosions shook the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Flames lit up the sky and radiation escaped to contaminate the land and poison the people for years to come. While officials tried to hush up the accident, Svetlana Alexievich spent years collecting testimonies from survivors – clean-up workers, residents, firefighters, resettlers, widows, orphans – crafting their voices into a haunting oral history of fear, anger and uncertainty, but also dark humour and love.

A chronicle of the past and a warning for our nuclear future, Chernobyl Prayer shows what it is like to bear witness, and remember in a world that wants you to forget.

Last Witnesses : Unchildlike Stories

Arnaldo Ageno — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 21:36:18 +0000

What did it mean to grow up in the Soviet Union during the Second World War? In the late 1970s, Svetlana Alexievich started interviewing people who had experienced war as children, the generation that survived and had to live with the trauma that would forever change the course of the Russian nation. With remarkable care and empathy, Alexievich gives voice to those whose stories are lost in the official narratives, uncovering a powerful, hidden history of one of the most important events of the twentieth century.

Published to great acclaim in the USSR in 1985 and now available in English for the first time, this masterpiece offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of the human consequences of the war – and an extraordinary chronicle of the Russian soul.

Boys In Zinc

Arnaldo Ageno — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 21:26:20 +0000

From 1979 to 1989 Soviet troops engaged in a devastating war in Afghanistan that claimed thousands of casualties on both sides. While the Soviet Union talked about a ‘peace-keeping’ mission, the dead were shipped back in sealed zinc coffins. Boys in Zinc presents the honest testimonies of soldiers, doctors and nurses, mothers, wives and siblings who describe the lasting effects of war.

Weaving together their stories, Svetlana Alexievich shows us the truth of the Soviet-Afghan conflict: the killing and the beauty of small everyday moments, the shame of returned veterans, the worries of all those left behind. When it was first published in the USSR in 1991, Boys in Zinc sparked huge controversy for its unflinching, harrowing insight into the realities of war.

Poslednie svideteli. Solo dlja detskogo golosa Последние свидетели. Соло для детского голоса

Arnaldo Ageno — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 20:51:25 +0000

Воспоминания о Великой Отечественной тех, кому в войну было 6—12 лет — самых беспристрастных и самых несчастных ее свидетелей. Война, увиденная детскими глазами, еще страшнее, чем запечатленная женским взглядом. К той литературе, когда “писатель пописывает, а читатель почитывает”, книги Алексиевич не имеют отношения. Но именно по отношению к ее книгам чаще всего возникает вопрос: а нужна ли нам такая страшная правда? На этот вопрос отвечает сама писательница: “Человек беспамятный способен породить только зло и ничего другого, кроме зла”.
Последние свидетели — это подвиг детской памяти.

Cernobyl’skaja molitva. Chronika buduscego Чернобыльская молитва. Хроника будущего Preghiera per Cernobyl’

Arnaldo Ageno — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 20:42:24 +0000

Главной техногенной катастрофе XX века посвящена четвертая книга знаменитого художественно-документального цикла “Голоса Утопии” Светланы Алексиевич, лауреата Нобелевской премии по литературе 2015 года “за многоголосное творчество — памятник страданию и мужеству в наше время”.
“Совпали две катастрофы: космическая — Чернобыль, и социальная — ушел под воду огромный социалистический материк. И это, второе крушение, затмило космическое, потому что оно нам ближе и понятнее. То, что случилось в Чернобыле, — впервые на земле, и мы — первые люди, пережившие это”.
Чернобыльская молитва публикуется в новой авторской редакции — книга увеличилась на треть из-за восстановленных фрагментов, исключенных из прежних изданий по цензурным соображениям.
«Questo libro non parla di Cernobyl’ in quanto tale, ma del suo mondo. Proprio di ciò che conosciamo meno. O quasi per niente. A interessarmi non era l’avvenimento in sé, vale a dire cosa era successo e per colpa di chi, bensì le impressioni, i sentimenti delle persone che hanno toccato con mano l’ignoto. Il mistero. Cernobyl’ è un mistero che dobbiamo ancora risolvere… Questa è la ricostruzione non degli avvenimenti, ma dei sentimenti. Per tre anni ho viaggiato e fatto domande a persone di professioni, destini, generazioni e temperamenti diversi. Credenti e atei. Contadini e intellettuali. Cernobyl’ è il principale contenuto del loro mondo. Esso ha avvelenato ogni cosa che hanno dentro, e anche attorno, e non solo l’acqua e la terra. Tutto il loro tempo. Questi uomini e queste donne sono stati i primi a vedere ciò che noi possiamo soltanto supporre… Più di una volta ho avuto l’impressione che in realtà io stessi annotando il futuro». (Svetlana Aleksievic)

Cinkovye mal’ciki Цинковые мальчики Ragazzi di zinco

Arnaldo Ageno — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 05:06:48 +0000

Dopo averci fatto ascoltare in Preghiera per Černobyl’ le voci delle vittime del disastro nucleare, Svetlana Aleksievič fa parlare qui i protagonisti di un’altra grande tragedia della storia sovietica: la guerra in Afghanistan tra il 1979 e il 1989. Un milione di ragazzi e ragazze partiti per sostenere la “grande causa internazionalista e patriottica”; almeno quattordicimila di loro rimpatriati chiusi nelle casse di zinco e sepolti di nascosto, nottetempo; cinquantamila feriti; mezzo milione di vittime afgane; torture, droga, atrocità, malattie, vergogna, disperazione… Gli afgancy, i ragazzi che la guerra ha trasformato in assassini, raccontano ciò che si è voluto nascondere. Accanto a loro, un’altra guerra. Quella delle infermiere e delle impiegate che partirono per avventura e patriottismo. E soprattutto le madri. Dolenti, impietose, stanche, coraggiose.
Цинковые мальчики — третья книга цикла “Голоса Утопии” от автора, получившего в 2015 году Нобелевскую премию по литературе “за многоголосное творчество — памятник страданию и мужеству в наше время”. Без этой книги, давно ставшей мировым бестселлером, уже невозможно представить себе ни историю афганской войны, ненужной и неправедной, ни историю последних лет советской власти, окончательно подорванной этой войной. Неизбывно горе матерей “цинковых мальчиков”, понятно их желание знать правду о том, как и за что воевали и погибали в Афганистане их сыновья. Но узнав эту правду, многие из них ужаснулись и отказались от нее. Книгу Светланы Алексиевич судили “за клевету” — самым настоящим судом, с прокурором, общественными обвинителями и “группами поддержки” во власти и в прессе. Материалы этого позорного процесса также включены в новую редакцию Цинковых мальчиков