Другая жизнь

by Yury Trifonov, Юрий Трифонов

"Другая жизнь" - повесть о преодолении личного горя, о победе человеческой души над одиночеством. Не делятся на "хороших и плохих" и главные герои повести - историк Сергей Троицкий и его жена Ольга, взаимопониманию которых мешает душевная глухота. Понимание внутренней жизни мужа, его несостоявшихся надежд и разочарований (например, в парапсихологии, в которой он пытался найти панацею от житейских невзгод) приходит к Ольге только после его смерти - и приходит как дар, а не в результате логического осмысления.

Genres: Russia, Russian Literature, Fiction

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Yury Valentinovich Trifonov was a Soviet writer. He was a leading figure of the Soviet "Urban Prose".

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

She is forty two… She is a widow… She keeps memories…

Long ago he used to come home from the museum on payday slightly drunk, usually from the Sevan, a bar next door to the museum, or else Fyodorov would take him back to his place, where they would stay up drinking much too late. Then when he came home he would go straight to bed and fall asleep immediately. He invariably woke up in the middle of the night, however, at three or four o’clock, just as she was doing now. He would keep her from sleep by shuffling into the kitchen for a glass of water or some food out of the refrigerator, while she would curse him angrily, half asleep. When he woke her up at those times she hated him: “What a selfish child you are!”

But once everything was different… They were young… There was love…

There was no talk – no promises, no vows; she simply entrusted herself to him forever. 
Later there were many, countless other nights, in Moscow and in the country, in the summer, in wet weather, in the chill of the fall when the heat was not yet on and the room was warmed by a portable electric heater; they made love almost every night.

The wedding… A family life begins… A daughter’s birth… A day-to-day existence… Hardships… Petty and serious failures… And the husband remains an incorrigible dreamer…

Year after year of disappointments gradually wore him down, drained his strength; he began to stoop and to weaken; yet some central core remained untouched, like a thin steel rod that bent but did not break. And that was the root of the trouble: he refused to change his innermost nature. This meant that although he suffered agonies as a result of his many failures, lost faith in himself, frittered away his energies in enthusiasms so absurd they made people think he had taken leave of his senses, although he strained his poor heart with the fury of his despair and self-reproach, he still refused to break that invisible, steely core within himself. And despite it all she loved him, forgave him, and never demanded anything of him.

Happiness is hard to find but unhappiness comes by itself without asking.

[Kalliope · Rating 4 out of 5]

Regrettably, the name Trifonov only evoked in me the young but already legendary pianist Daniil Trifonov. And yet, I have had this book for a long time. I purchased it in one of the bookshops in Telegraph Avenue, for a small price even though it is a nice hardback.

Rescuing it from storage, I finally immerged myself in it.

Yuri Trifonov (1925-1981) belonged to the group of Soviet writers known as the “Urban Prose”. It was Heinrich Böll who proposed him for the Nobel Prize in 1981, but Trifonov died a few months before the jury issued the award. His father had been a militant Bolshevik but under Stalin he was a victim of the purges and was killed in 1938. When the name of his father was “restored”, in the 1950s, Yuri could leave sports journalism and engage in writing literature. This work was published in 1975.

Although this novel would belong to the literature that engaged on urbanscapes, urban life, it engages in the workings of the mind of Olga Vasilievna, who has become a widow. Her life, and that of her family is certainly urban, very urban, even if they look forward to the weekends to do their échapées to a rented country Dacha. Once Olga answers to her daughter Irinka when the girl asks her what happiness is: An evening like this in the forest, the three of us on skis --that's happiness. Do you see? That's what it is. But what we read is how Olga is coming to terms with her loss and her new, widowed life – Another Life. Her former life was not completely rosy. She and her husband Sergei argued often. They had different interests and professions, she was a biologist, a scientist, while Sergei was a historian. Olga observes: All the exact sciences were concerned with advance, with moving forward, with constructing something new, creating what had never existed before, while history was devoted to restructuring what was old, recreating the past. And yet, Olga, in her mourning, keeps recreating her past, their past, because she sees no future.

And as we visit their story, we witness how Sergei’s professional career begins to stall and his mind begins to drift. He elaborates a theory of the individual and of history – which I guess would present some discrepancies with a Soviet Materialistic view of history and the irrelevant role of the individual. For Sergei: the individual is the thread stretching through time, the supersensitive nerve of history that can be teased out and separated--and from which one can then learn a great deal. Man is never reconciled with death, because immediately planted in him is a sense that the thread of which he forms a part is endless. Sergei’s mind also begins to suffer from the pressure – political – that he endures from his colleagues at the Institute he works (and in this the reader may see parallels to what Yuri’s father probably had experienced). It is known that for his PhD Sergei is investigating the czarist spies prior to the revolution and that he had a list with names. It was the list of names of the secret informers working for the Moscow division of the czarist police during the period from 1910 right up to the February Revolution of 1917. The material was, of course, priceless, because all the records of the czarist secret police had been destroyed. Eventually Sergei’s frustration leads him to investigate paranormality and by then there is concern that his health is suffering.

Even if the reader is exposed mostly to Olga’s mind, Trifonov keeps a distance between her and the reader. There is no stream-of-consciousness even if we follow how the intricate minds of the characters work. Olga’s jealousy and obsessions prevent her from becoming a heroine although we do feel for her as she strives for a “Better Life”, but eventually realizes that it is not “Another” but “Their Life” that she cherishes.

While reading this I kept my attention awake to any signal that portrayed life as it was in Moscow during the 1970s in a Soviet regime. For example that water had to be brought to the apartment; that to move to another apartment one would have to engage in an “exchange mechanism”; that few of these apartments had bathrooms; that there existed shops with exclusive items but for which one had to try obscure methods of acquisition; that some specific medications—foreign—were difficulty to find; that possibilities of traveling were as improbable as playing in the lottery; and that high education was highly regarded and relatively broadly available. I was also marking any references to specific streets or geographical locations, looking them up in Google maps, so as to get a more definite sense of this specimen of “Urban Prose”.

I have another of his books, The House on the Embankment, that I hope to read soon, and would also like to read his The Impatient Ones – it deals with the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881. This novel has left me with a curiosity to know more about Trifonov’s work. Reading just one novel is not sufficient to give me a clear idea of this writer, who I hope becomes better known.

[Sergey Tomson · Rating 5 out of 5]

«ОБМЕН», «ДОЛГОЕ ПРОЩАНИЕ», «ДРУГАЯ ЖИЗНЬ»
Если бы не одна чудесная девушка-филолог, так и помер бы невежей. А так познакомился с новым жанром. Может, конечно, как обычно что-то путаю, но… городская проза. Про каждую писать отдельно – удавиться. Поэтому в общих чертах.

С резко возросшим дефицитом бытовухи такие книжки, ей Богу, как глоток душного, пыльного воздуха, а то глоток выхлопа из трубы «жигулёнка» (то без чего мы жить не можем и по всей видимости не должны). Да время не то сейчас, многое поменялось в жизненном укладе, прости Господи, страны Советов. Но люди-то, люди те же. И проблемы те же. Межличностные, не знаю, как ещё охарактеризовать. С тёщей там, со свекровью, с бывшим (с мёртвым) мужем, с квартирой, завещанием, институтом и соседями.

Написано примечательно. Есть язык и особое построение. Непрерывное повествование, бесконечный мыслительный процесс о самом пришибленном и земном. Даже не знаю, как точнее выразиться – не повествование, а чревовещание какое-то. Сейчас объясню. Вот берёте вы, к примеру, ничем не примечательную, среднестатистическую тётеньку и внедряете ей, по-хамски так, непосредственно в мозг, диктофон размером с игольное ушко. И понеслась! Вот так примерно написано. Не без авторских оценок, естественно. Вроде: «Олимпиада Афанасьевна, патентованная семейная дура» и тому подобного. Местами смешно, но чаще удушливо. Открываешь книжку, а тебе удавку на горло: «Ннна!», и давай мотать из стороны в сторону. Лилечка там, Ольга Петровна, Серёжа, Ляля, Нинель и прочие персонажи, имена – «барбариски». Есть телесериалы вроде «Богатые тоже плачут» или «Санта-Барбара», а это эволюционно продвинутая, психологически углубленная их версия, причём под нас писанная.

Вы, возможно, зададитесь вопросом, зачем же такое читать? А я вам вот что скажу… Читать в принципе нужно. А что читать - это уже другой вопрос, на который я лично правильного ответа не знаю.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cute little book about people in the brezhnev era ussr who have a lot of the same problems that people do to this very day. the way he moves back and forth in time through the narrative is really impressive and reminds me of another similarly skilled soviet writer, chingiz aitmatov, so i wonder if something about soviet writing education emphasised the use of time in novels.

[Sergey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Книгу можно было назвать одним словом "Жизнь", ибо она здесь и другая, и старая, и параллельная, и несбывшаяся, и единственнонеповторимая, и прочая, прочая, прочая - какой может быть только жизнь.

[Tatyana Naumova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Безысходность и тлен

[Elnur Mirzəzadə · Rating 5 out of 5]

Впервые я услышал о Юрии Трифонове во время интервью Юрия Дудя с Александром Архангельским. На вопрос о том, какие книги он бы посоветовал инопланетянам прочитать в первую очередь, в его десятке оказались именно «Московские повести».

Трифонов — не «линейный» советский писатель. Его стиль — городская проза.

В каждой повести материальная суета рядового советского человека — будь то расширение жилплощади, добыча дефицита или попытка устроиться на лучшую работу — в итоге приводит к философскому выводу: ничто не вечно, и всё когда-то заканчивается.

Что любопытно: у него практически нет по-настоящему позитивных героев. В начале каждой истории читатель склонен воспринимать главного персонажа как положительного, но по ходу повествования автор постепенно обнажает тёмные стороны характера, слабости и тщательно скрываемые секреты.

И в этом нет ничего противоестественного. Без прикрытого романтизма, Трифонов предельно честен с читателем: он описывает реальную жизнь — повседневный быт, мелкие компромиссы, слепую преданность, горькое предательство и личные трагедии своих героев.

Из шести повестей больше всего мне понравились «Дом на набережной» и «Другая жизнь».

Если бы меня спросили, в каком порядке лучше читать «Московские повести», я бы рекомендовал следующую последовательность:

1. Обмен
2. Предварительные итоги
3. Долгое прощание
4. Старик
5. Другая жизнь
6. Дом на набережной

Изучая творчество Трифонова, я также наткнулся на отличную статью в «Коммерсанте». На мой взгляд, её автор очень точно и ёмко охарактеризовал и самого Трифонова, и его книги. https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6084245

[amnepsiac · Rating 4 out of 5]

У Трифонова самое интересное обычно между точками A и B (хотя и начинает он, чаще всего, с места в карьер). На примере этой повести интересно, как некоторые вещи, написанные с одинаковой страстью, оборачиваются недолговечным реликтом эпохи, а другие мутируют в тот самый универсализм бытовой хтони, за которую автора многие и любят.

[Sergei · Rating 5 out of 5]

Всю историю автор называет героиню, не старую еще, по имени отчеству. Ее ровесники просто по именам. Что то значит?