Le feste di Billancourt

by Nina Berberova, Maurizia Calusio (Translator)

Billancourt è un sobborgo parigino dominato dalle officine Renault. All’epoca di questi racconti (gli anni Venti e Trenta) vi erano confluiti in massa emigrati della Russia Sovietica che l’industria francese reclutava con buoni risultati. Così Billancourt divenne una specie di enclave russa, luogo di tutte le desolazioni e di tutte le nostalgie, campo di una perenne battaglia fra incongrue euforie e tenace squallore – e dunque sfondo ideale per l’arte della Berberova, per la sua sapienza ironica. C’è una vena di bizzarria, talvolta di tenera follia in molti di questi mai rassegnati déracinés, una comicità che nasce da invalicabili discordanze, un’amarezza cechoviana, sul fondo. Tutti elementi che la Berberova sa mettere in gioco con sovrana sicurezza, fugando ogni patetismo e lasciando vibrare la realtà senza orpelli. Per certi versi queste cronache di periferia (di Parigi, della Russia, della felicità) condensano il talento narrativo della Berberova nella sua chimica purezza. I racconti che compongono Le feste di Billancourt, scritti fra il 1928 e il 1934, furono pubblicati su «Poslednie Novosti», il giornale dell’emigrazione russa a Parigi.

Genres: Short Stories, Russian Literature, Russia

218 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1928

About the author

Nina Nikolayevna Berberova was a Russian writer who chronicled the lives of Russian exiles in Paris in her short stories and novels. She visited post-Soviet Russia and died in Philadelphia.

Born in 1901 to an Armenian father and a Russian mother, Nina Berberova was brought up in St Petersburg.[1] She left Russia in 1922 with poet Vladislav Khodasevich (who died in 1939). The couple lived in several European cities before settling in Paris in 1925. There Berberova began publishing short stories for the Russian emigre publications Poslednie Novosti ("The Latest News") and Russkaia Mysl’ ("Russian Thought"). The stories collected in Oblegchenie Uchasti ("The Easing of Fate") and Biiankurskie Prazdniki ("Billancourt Fiestas") were written during this period. She also wrote the first book length biography of composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1936, which was controversial for its openness about his homosexuality. In Paris she was part of a circle of poor but distinguished visiting literary Russian exiles which included Anna Akhmatova, Vladimir Nabokov, Boris Pasternak, Tsvetaeva and Mayakovsky.

After living in Paris for 25 years, Berberova emigrated to the United States in 1950 and became an American citizen in 1959. She began her academic career in 1958 when she was hired to teach Russian at Yale. She continued to write while she was teaching, publishing several povesti (long short stories), critical articles and some poetry. She left Yale in 1963 for Princeton, where she taught until her retirement in 1971. In 1991 Berberova moved from Princeton, New Jersey to Philadelphia.

Berberova’s autobiography, which details her early life and years in France, was written in Russian but published first in English as The Italics are Mine (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969). The Russian edition, Kursiv Moi, was not published until 1983.

Reviews

[Olesya Gilmore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting tales about every day life in Paris for emigre Russians displaced by the Revolution in the 1920s and 30s.

[Eliza Whalen]

“because his thoughts ran constantly upon her, because in his poor imagination he kept composing future conversations with her, tiresome conversations, he had never actually been truly alone.”

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5
Intéressant d'un point de vue historique, se lit bien, mais j'aurais aimé moins d'ambiguïté et de suggestivité dans les intrigues

[Jeanne Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Je me suis régalée de ces courts récits, écrits dans un style très vif et avec un mélange d'humour et d'empathie extrêmement séduisant.
Ça me donne envie d'explorer l'œuvre de cette autrice, dont je crois comprendre qu'elle n'a été publiée que très tardivement !

[Natalie Petchnikow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tout commence dans les années vingt à Billancourt. Nina Berberova, arrivée de fraîche date à Paris, rencontre le petit peuple russe de l'immigration, aggloméré autour des usines Renault. Avec ces personnages pathétiques ou dérisoires, dépaysés par l'exil, elle découvre les thèmes que paraissait attendre son tempérament de narratrice. Elle entreprend alors, entre 1928 et 1940, de composer des récits où l'on retrouve l'acuité du regard, l'ellipse du temps, la saveur du trait, la drôlerie de la situation, l'allusion tragique et l'économie narrative qui feront son succès de romancière.

Traduit du russe par Alexandra Pletnioff-Boutin

[Jean-Pascal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Suite de nouvelles reliées par le lieu et les personnages. Se lit bien, assez anecdotique.