Yevgeny Zamyatin was a Russian literary heretic and master storyteller of the interwar avant-garde. Best-known for his 1921 prototype of dystopian sci-fi We, foreseeing the likes of Orwell and Huxley, Zamyatin's strongest works may nonetheless be his concentrated, rigorously crafted short stories, joining gorgeously surreal half-glimpsed imagery to original realist mythologies of Russian life, pre- and post-revolution, in the cities and as far from them as imaginable. Besides his extremely skillful manipulations of language, it's the sharp, bitter warmth of both his satires and tragedies that sets these out, at turns funny, sad, and vicious. Wise and timelessly affecting. My favorites are "The North" (see below), "the Cave", "X", and "A Story about the Most Important Thing", each a lively conceptual and formal marvel.

Though originally a Bolshevik and supporter of revolution, Zamyatin was too much a born rebel and possessed too sharp a social conscience to make it under Stalinism. After spending much of the 20s warning of the dangers of restricting cultural development, calling for unending revolution in the arts, and decrying the dead-end Socialist Realism, he found himself entirely banned from working. After requesting the right to a self-imposed exile in a letter Stalin in 1931, Zamyatin was somehow allowed to emigrate to France with his wife, where he found himself further shunned by the the other Russian emigrees, most of who had left Russia much earlier because they did not support the revolution at all. He wrote a couple more stories and screenplay for Jean Renoir, then died in 1937.

This guy is an incredible discovery for me. I think I'm now committed to obsession, trying to find all his translated stories, etc. This collection is arranged chronologically and the earliest stuff is less notable to I'd suggest reading forward from "The North" then going back once you're already in love. Seriously, it's so worth it.

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Previous thoughts:

And here, the first truly great story of this collection: "The North", a fable of a fierce, passionate Lapp* girl and of man blinded by the artificial sun he seeks to build against the endless northern winter night. Like its rougher predecessor, "A Provincial Tale" (written six years earlier in 1912), this is full of the rhythms and rich details of rural Russian life, but bleak and cruel and populated with harsh portraits. Unlike the earlier story, this is nonetheless filled with pathos: life is mainly vicious but brightly burning, like the brief flare of Marey's homemade sun. And the imagery is much richer and more memorable here, full of a lyrical vision partway between folklore and proto-surrealism. (And naturally it speaks to my own winter-sense).

And it opens like this:

This is how it happens: the sun flies slower and slower until it hangs suspended, motionless. And everything is locked, imbedded for eternity in greenish glass. On a black stone near the shore, a seagull has spread its wings and poised for flight--and it will sit forever on that black stone. Over the chimney of the fat-rendering works a puff of smoke hangs, petrified. The quick, tow-headed urchin in the boat leans over the side to splash his hand in the water, and is caught, immobile, still. For a long moment, everything is made of glass. This moment is night. (p.89)

*Apparently this is now considered something of a slur, but people are probably much less familiar with the term "Sami".