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Ilya Vinitsky – What the Cabiasses Sing About: Notes of a Free Commentator
Dive into a labyrinthine journey through Russian literature with Ilya Vinitsky’s What the Cabiasses Sing About: Notes of a Free Commentator. In this unconventional work, the author adopts the persona of Viktor Shcheben—a fictional, yet active and thinking alter ego—who retreats from a grim present into a virtual past. Shcheben begins commenting on enigmatic passages and puzzling phenomena found in classic texts: from Derzhavin’s ode to Felitsa and Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time, to Gogol’s letters and tales, the novels of Ilf and Petrov, and the neo-romantic poetry and prose of Gorky, Mayakovsky, Bagritsky, and Kazakov.
As the commentary unfolds, it slips beyond strict academic control, pulling in new materials and contexts, swelling and developing in an unpredictable but intriguing direction. What is this book about? Life, of course—how everything in it is connected, wondrous, eerie, illusory, and incomprehensible. It explores the spirits and demons of literature, cultural rhymes, politics, love (including carnal love), joys, imagination, folly (including poetic folly), and fears. It touches on kings and cabbages, on the patterns and blots of history, and a little bit about the author as a part of that history—a free, if somewhat tedious, somewhat short-sighted, and even somewhat mad commentator.