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The Noonday Cemetery and Other Stories
Selected by The Los Angeles Times Book Review as one of the Ten Best Fiction Books of 2003. The Noonday Cemetery & Other Stories , selected by Herling himself shortly before his death in 2000, is a collection of thirteen brilliant stories spanning the last twenty years of his life. His novel The Island was published to great acclaim in 1993, and his memoir, A World Apart , is among the most powerful accounts of life in the Soviet gulag. Volcano and Miracle , published in 1996, contains short fiction and prose writings from his Journal Written at Night . But nowhere before have Herling's best stories―and Herling was indeed a master of the short story―been compiled and published in English translation.
In "The Noonday Cemetery," an eerie graveyard on an Italian hillside overlooks the sea and hides the secrets of a murder (or suicide?). "Beata, Santa" describes the plight of a young Polish woman raped by Serbs, who is pressured by the Catholic Church to keep her child. In "A Madrigal of Mourning," a Russian woman musicologist becomes obsessed with Carlo Gesualdo (1560-1613), Prince of Venosa, a madrigalist and murderer.
These timeless stories, dealing with moral, often historical, subjects and written in passionate, deeply affecting prose, affirm without a doubt the assessment by The Boston Globe that Herling is "a writer of stylistic mastery and moral depth, who deserves to be placed among the best in any language."
In "The Noonday Cemetery," an eerie graveyard on an Italian hillside overlooks the sea and hides the secrets of a murder (or suicide?). "Beata, Santa" describes the plight of a young Polish woman raped by Serbs, who is pressured by the Catholic Church to keep her child. In "A Madrigal of Mourning," a Russian woman musicologist becomes obsessed with Carlo Gesualdo (1560-1613), Prince of Venosa, a madrigalist and murderer.
These timeless stories, dealing with moral, often historical, subjects and written in passionate, deeply affecting prose, affirm without a doubt the assessment by The Boston Globe that Herling is "a writer of stylistic mastery and moral depth, who deserves to be placed among the best in any language."
256 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2003
About the author
Gustaw Herling-Grudziński
94 books63 followersGustaw Herling-Grudziński (May 20, 1919 - July 4, 2000) was a Polish writer, journalist, essayist and soldier. He is best known for writing a personal account of life in the Soviet gulag - A World Apart.
He was born in Kielce. His studies of Polish literature at Warsaw University were interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War (German invasion of Poland). During the Fall of 1939 he co-founded an underground resistance organization "Polska Ludowa Akcja Niepodległościowa, PLAN". As the organization's courier he traveled to then Soviet occupied Lwów (Lviv), but was arrested in March 1940 by the NKVD and sentenced on fabricated espionage charges. Imprisoned in Vitsebsk and a gulag in Arkhangelsk region for 2 years, he was released in 1942 under the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement. He joined Gen. Władysław Anders' Army (Polish II Corps) and later fought in North Africa and in Italy, taking part in the battle of Monte Cassino. For his valor in combat he was decorated with the Virtuti Militari, Poland's highest military decoration.
In 1947 he co-founded and initially co-edited the political and cultural magazine Kultura, then published in Rome. When the magazine moved to Paris, he settled first in London and finally in Naples, Italy, where he married Lidia, a daughter of the philosopher Benedetto Croce. He also wrote for the Italian "Tempo presente" run by Nicola Chiaromonte and for various dailies and periodicals.
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Works
His most famous book, A World Apart, was translated into English by Andrzej Ciolkosz and published with an introduction by Bertrand Russell in 1951 (the 2005 edition would feature an introduction by Anne Applebaum). By describing life in the gulag in a harrowing personal account, it provides an in-depth, original analysis of the nature of the Soviet communist system. Written 10 years before Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, it brought him international acclaim but also criticism from Soviet sympathizers.
A selection from the Journal Written at Night, a journal that he wrote for 30 years, was translated by Ronald Strom and published as Volcano and Miracle (1997). A collection of his short stories, The Noonday Cemetery and Other Stories (2003), has been translated by Bill Johnston.
Awards
He was the winner of many literary prizes: Kultura (1958), Jurzykowski (1964), Kościelskis (1966), The News (1981), the Italian Premio Viareggio prize, the international Prix Gutenberg, and French Pen-Club. In 1998 he was awarded the Order of the White Eagle.
He was born in Kielce. His studies of Polish literature at Warsaw University were interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War (German invasion of Poland). During the Fall of 1939 he co-founded an underground resistance organization "Polska Ludowa Akcja Niepodległościowa, PLAN". As the organization's courier he traveled to then Soviet occupied Lwów (Lviv), but was arrested in March 1940 by the NKVD and sentenced on fabricated espionage charges. Imprisoned in Vitsebsk and a gulag in Arkhangelsk region for 2 years, he was released in 1942 under the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement. He joined Gen. Władysław Anders' Army (Polish II Corps) and later fought in North Africa and in Italy, taking part in the battle of Monte Cassino. For his valor in combat he was decorated with the Virtuti Militari, Poland's highest military decoration.
In 1947 he co-founded and initially co-edited the political and cultural magazine Kultura, then published in Rome. When the magazine moved to Paris, he settled first in London and finally in Naples, Italy, where he married Lidia, a daughter of the philosopher Benedetto Croce. He also wrote for the Italian "Tempo presente" run by Nicola Chiaromonte and for various dailies and periodicals.
-----------------------------------------
Works
His most famous book, A World Apart, was translated into English by Andrzej Ciolkosz and published with an introduction by Bertrand Russell in 1951 (the 2005 edition would feature an introduction by Anne Applebaum). By describing life in the gulag in a harrowing personal account, it provides an in-depth, original analysis of the nature of the Soviet communist system. Written 10 years before Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, it brought him international acclaim but also criticism from Soviet sympathizers.
A selection from the Journal Written at Night, a journal that he wrote for 30 years, was translated by Ronald Strom and published as Volcano and Miracle (1997). A collection of his short stories, The Noonday Cemetery and Other Stories (2003), has been translated by Bill Johnston.
Awards
He was the winner of many literary prizes: Kultura (1958), Jurzykowski (1964), Kościelskis (1966), The News (1981), the Italian Premio Viareggio prize, the international Prix Gutenberg, and French Pen-Club. In 1998 he was awarded the Order of the White Eagle.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 10, 2011
Gustaw Herling was a Polish journalist, essayist and literary diarist who became known for his disturbing memoir of the Soviet gulags, published in English under the title “A World Apart” in 1951. He was also a soldier, and, shortly after the Second World War, he lived in London for a time before moving to southern Italy, where he made his home for the last fifty years of his life.
Herling was a man painfully aware of the ideological forces of the twentieth century, and he has rightfully earned his place in world literature as a witness to the great social and political upheavals of that century. Having read all of Herling’s works in English, I would add that he was a writer who was driven by ethical imperatives, and who set out to describe our capacity for cruelty, as well as our freedom to rise above the horrors of our modern world.
The thirteen stories that comprise “The Noonday Cemetery” read like nonfiction pieces; almost like journalistic reports of astounding and mysterious events. Indeed, the first two times I read these stories I made the mistake of reading them as factual reports with, perhaps, a pinch of fiction. It was only on my third reading of this magnificent book that I realised that these were works of fiction, and that Herling had created the illusion of realism by writing himself into the stories. To be more precise, these are not ‘short stories’ in the typical sense of the word, but are more akin to the Latin American genre of the chronicle (Spanish: crónica). In fact, the chronicle seems to be the appropriate narrative form for the writer who wants to emphasize: ‘I was there, I saw it with my very eyes, and I was profoundly moved.’
I can think of two other elements to these stories that grant the illusion of nonfiction. The first is the relentless presentation of details: names, dates, and chronologies; snatches of conversations, legal reports, and scientific analyses; journal entries, rumours and legends. But also: memories, dreams, and reflections. The second is the manner of starting and stopping the narrative; a narrative strategy that mimics the passage of real time. It conveys, also, the feeling that one is watching a mystery as it unravels; except, of course, that Herling doesn’t always resolve the mystery, but often prefers to leave us stranded with the awesome ambiguities of our existence. All of these innovative narrative techniques are welded together by Gustaw Herling in a masterly classical style that grows more beautiful with each successive reading.
Herling was a man painfully aware of the ideological forces of the twentieth century, and he has rightfully earned his place in world literature as a witness to the great social and political upheavals of that century. Having read all of Herling’s works in English, I would add that he was a writer who was driven by ethical imperatives, and who set out to describe our capacity for cruelty, as well as our freedom to rise above the horrors of our modern world.
The thirteen stories that comprise “The Noonday Cemetery” read like nonfiction pieces; almost like journalistic reports of astounding and mysterious events. Indeed, the first two times I read these stories I made the mistake of reading them as factual reports with, perhaps, a pinch of fiction. It was only on my third reading of this magnificent book that I realised that these were works of fiction, and that Herling had created the illusion of realism by writing himself into the stories. To be more precise, these are not ‘short stories’ in the typical sense of the word, but are more akin to the Latin American genre of the chronicle (Spanish: crónica). In fact, the chronicle seems to be the appropriate narrative form for the writer who wants to emphasize: ‘I was there, I saw it with my very eyes, and I was profoundly moved.’
I can think of two other elements to these stories that grant the illusion of nonfiction. The first is the relentless presentation of details: names, dates, and chronologies; snatches of conversations, legal reports, and scientific analyses; journal entries, rumours and legends. But also: memories, dreams, and reflections. The second is the manner of starting and stopping the narrative; a narrative strategy that mimics the passage of real time. It conveys, also, the feeling that one is watching a mystery as it unravels; except, of course, that Herling doesn’t always resolve the mystery, but often prefers to leave us stranded with the awesome ambiguities of our existence. All of these innovative narrative techniques are welded together by Gustaw Herling in a masterly classical style that grows more beautiful with each successive reading.
October 27, 2008
Well-written stories of Polish ex-pats in Italy, of murders and disappearances, of tenuous sanity and decaying environments, and of the fantastic in everyday life.
June 11, 2009
Most of the stories collected here are frame stories that blur the line between fiction and reality. Reminded me of an Eastern European Borges.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews