"ما الذي يفسد إخلاص حزنه؟ الذي يصر على أنه ليس سوى قناع حزن؟ في مكان ما، في داخله ضيعت الحقيقة طريقها. كما لو أن متاهة في دماغه، بل أيضًا في متاهة جسده - أوردته وعظامه وأمعائه، طفل صغير يتجول يبحث عن ضوء يبحث عن مخرج. كيف له أن يجد الطفل الضائع في داخله؟ ويعطيه صوتًا ليغني أغنيته الحزينة."

"نحن نتكلم عن منشور يا فيودور ميخائيلوفيتش. من يهتم فعلًا لمن يكتب المنشور؟ الكلمات مثل الرياح، اليوم هنا، وغدًا تذهب. الكلمات ليس ملكًا لأحد."

"ما يخيفنا أكثر من الموت ليس الألم، إنه الخوف من أن نترك وراءنا أولئك الذي يحبوننا ونرحل وحدنا. لكن الأمر ليس كذلك، ببساطة ليس كذلك. عندما نموت نحمل أحباءنا في صدورنا. وهكذا بافل قد حملك معه عندما مات، وحملني، وحمل أمك، وهو لا يزال يحملنا جميعًا، بافل ليس وحده."

"من السهل قطع العهود، يا ماتريوشا، والأصعب بكثير حفظها لا سيما حين يتخلى عنك أصدقاؤك وتكونين وحدك. الحياة غالية، هي محقة في التمسك بها، يجب ألا تلوميها."

"ولكن في الوقت نفسه الذي يجلس فيه هنا، في غاية الهدوء، يكون رجلًا عالقًا في زوبعة، سيول من الورق، شظايا من حياة قديمة ممزقة بفعل دوامة تصاعدية، تجعل كل ما حوله يطير. محمولًا عاليًا فوق الأرض، تتقاذفه التيارات، قبل أن تخف قبضة الريح، وللحظة، قبل أن يبدأ السقوط، يتاح له الهدوء والوضوح التام، ينفتح العالم من تحته كخريطة بحد ذاتها."

A story about Dostoevsky trying to understand the reason for the death of his son Pavel. He hears so many versions leading to a lot more details being uncovered.

I found the story meandering and did not really get to know more about Dostoevsky.

The Master of Petersburg by the contemporary South African author J.M. Coetzee is a work of fiction. With its central protagonist being the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), it becomes a blend of fact and fiction.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, living in Dresden with his second wife and young daughter, travels to St. Petersburg to retrieve the belongings of his recently deceased stepson, Pavel. In Coetzee’s story the stepson dies at the age of twenty-one. The cause of Pavel’s death is clothed in uncertainty. Some claim the death was suicide. There is also a possibility of murder. Dostoyevsky stays in his stepson’s room, coming to know the landlady Anna Sergeyevna Kolenkina, a widow, and her young daughter, Matryona, very well. Not merely as close friends, Dostoyevsky and Anna become lovers. A police investigation is in process. Dostoyevsky soon finds himself to be under police surveillance. Pavel had been involved with Sergey Nechayev, a revolutionary, agitator and terrorist, a leading figure of the Russian nihilist movement of the 1860s. Dostoyevsky journeys in October 1869. He works through his own emotions toward his dead son and the cause of his death, completely unaware of the fact that he has been brought to the city for a purpose.

While reading, one is compelled to seek out what is fact and what is fiction. Dostoyevsky did live in Dresden, from 1869 to 1871. He did have a stepson, but he died after Dostoyevsky’s own death. Coetzee accurately portrays the stepson as a troubled young man, and as told in the story, Dostoyevsky did have two wives, did have epilepsy, did have a weakness for gambling! Sergey Nechayev is a real person and his nihilist conspirators did carry out a murder in1869. Dostoyevsky wrote about this crime in his novel The Possessed / Demons / Devils, three different titles for the same book. . I enjoyed plucking out true facts from the story’s fictional elements.

The author had recently lost his own son to death when he wrote this novel. In 1989, Coetzee’s son died in an accident at the age of twenty-three. The author, through this book, addresses father /son relationships and issues that could have been troubling him at the time.

An author’s distortion of fact for the purpose of creating an imaginative, compelling, thought provoking work of fiction is another theme. The process of writing and the legitimacy of altering facts is explored.

From the very first page I was drawn in. The prose style is right up my alley. However, the further one goes, the more dense and complicated the story becomes. The plotline is at times difficult to follow. The overall message is ambiguous. For these reasons, my rating landed at three stars.

Andrew Byron's narration of the audiobook is very good. I could hear every word. The speed need not be adjusted. Four stars for the narration.

The book weaves together elements of Dostoyevsky’s and the author’s own life with the background setting of Russia in the 1860s.

*******************

*Waiting for the Barbarians 5 stars
*Age of Iron 4 stars
*Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life 4 stars
*Disgrace 3 stars
*Life and Times of Michael K 3 stars
*The Master of Petersburg 3 stars

A psychologically tense study on generations/aging, art and parenthood. Dostoevsky travels home to Russia to wrap up the affairs of his murdered(?) stepson who had become involved with a group of young radicals. The young charismatic leader of the group is a young foil to the aging Dostoevsky. Oh yeah, he also has an affair with his stepson's landlady and becomes enmeshed with her and her daughter who also loved his stepson. Hanging over all is the mystery of who is culpable for his stepson's death. Good stuff from Coetzee, especially if you're intrigued by Russia and Dostoevsky.

Nors tai tik antras Coetzee's kūrinys, kurį skaičiau, o pirmasis dargi ir nepatiko, tikėjausi panašaus įspūdžio ir iš šios knygos. Vis dėlto nutiko priešingai. Gal išgelbėjo darganota, slogi atmosfera, gal Dostojevskis kaip veikėjas, gal vidinių prieštarų kova, o gal stipri pabaiga - nors, spėju, kitiems ji gali pasirodyti kaip tik ne stipri, o labai ramiai išvilnijanti iš visos istorijos. Tačiau kiekvienas žodis pasirodė parinktas labai apgalvotai ir taikliai, o jų visuma privertė užvertus knygą tarstelti "vau". Kaip bebūtų, kad ir kas lėmė šį įspūdį, knyga pasiliko atminty.

همین‌جا اعلام می‌کنم که باید نویسنده‌ی بزرگی باشی تا بتونی چنین شاهکاری رو خلق کنی و این آقای کوتسی حقا که چه نویسنده‌ی خوبیه. از هر طرف که به این کتاب نگاه می‌کنم با اثر محشر و معرکه‌ای طرفم که فوق‌العاده بی‌نقص هم هست. اصلا نمیشه به این کتاب ۵ نداد! انقدر که خوبه. این کتاب از اون کتاب‌هاست که به عمق جان و روان و تنتون نفوذ می‌کنه و درونتون کم‌کم ته‌نشین می‌شه، به هیجان درمیارتتون، ابروهاتون رو بالا می‌بره، می‌ترسونتتون، اشک‌هاتون رو جاری می‌کنه، لبخند به لباتون میاره و هر احساسی که دوست داشته باشید رو بهتون هدیه می‌کنه. توی خوندنش دریغ نکنید که در غیراین‌صورت ضرر می‌کنید! از ما گفتن!


سوگ کوتسی و مرهمی به‌نام ادبیات
کوتسی نویسنده‌ی هلندی‌تبار و زاده‌ی آفریقای‌جنوبی برنده‌ی جایزه‌ی نوبل و من بوکر، در پی حادثه‌ی ناگواری که برای پسرش اتفاق افتاد و جوان‌مرگ شد، تجربه‌ی به‌شدت سختی رو پشت سر گذاشت که غم جان‌کاهش تحمل‌ناپذیر بود. کوتسی که زخمش رو علاج‌ناپذیر می‌دید برای مرهم این جریحه به ادبیات روی آورد؛ ارواح تاریخ و ادبیات رو از دل گذشته بیرون کشید تا تریاقی ‌باشه بر این زخم ناسور. کلمات مسکن کوتسی بود. کوتسی که دنبال تجربه‌ی مشابهی در ادبیات می‌گشت دست یاری به سمت استاد بزرگ پترزبورگ دراز کرد: یعنی فیودور میخایلوویچ داستایفسکی. روحش رو از دل گذشته احضار کرد و در اون دمید. زنده‌اش کرد تا هم از زندگی شخصی استادبزرگ براتون تعریف کنه و هم اینکه کتاب یادواره‌ای باشه برای سوگ پسرش. کتابی که واقعیت رو با تخیل و قصه‌ پیوند زده و معجون تلخ و درعین‌حال خوش‌گواری رو ساخته که زهرش به قلب می‌شینه.


داستان
داستان از این قراره که داستایفسکی که در پی متواری‌شدن از روسیه به علت بدهی‌های سنگین و طلبکار‌هاش به آلمان عزیمت کرده بود مجبور میشه بخاطر مرگ ناگهانی و مشکوک پسرخوانده‌اش، پاول، راهی پترزبورگ بشه. داستایفسکی در ادامه متوجه می‌شه که مرگ پسرش به همین سادگی‌ها نبوده و علت اون کاملا مشخص نیست، در پی اتفاقاتی، مرگ پسرش به باند خرابکارِ سرگی نچایف، شخصیت تبهکار داستان مربوط هم میشه و...
یکی از نکاتی که تقریبا از همون ابتدای کار توجه خواننده رو به خودش جلب می‌کنه وسعت کار کوتسی و پرداختن همه‌جانبه به مسائل مطرح شده‌ی درون کتابه. افزون بر مطرح‌کردن سوالاتی که در کارهای داستایفسکی هم پیدا میشن، پرداختن به زندگی شخصی استاد از نقاط قوت کتابه که خیلی جامع درنظر گرفته شده و در داستان بسیار پررنگ نمود پیدا کرده و با چاشنی کمی تخیل و قصه‌گویی در قالب داستان دراومده.
علاوه بر نمود این تجربه‌های شخصی، نویسنده به تاثیر متقابل این تجربه‌ها و داستان‌های داستایفسکی هم می‌پردازه، البته با همان چاشنی قصه‌گویی. برای مثال راسکولنیکفِ جنایت و مکافات آلت دست حملات کلامی و عقیدتی نچایف به داستایفسکی در داستان میشه. اما شاید مهم‌ترین نمود و تاثیر این باشه که اتفاقاتی که ��ر این کتاب تعریف میشه، بعدها دستمایه‌ی داستانی داستایفسکی برای نوشتن کتاب شیاطین یا جن‌زدگان قرار می‌گیره (که بازهم ریشه در تخیل نویسنده داره). دو شخصیت استاوروگین و ورخونسکیِ کتاب شیاطین مستقیما از گروه‌های خرابکار و بزهکاری ساخت و پرداخت شده‌اند که در سال‌های دهه‌ی ۷۰ قرن نوزدهم در روسیه فعالیت‌های زیرزمینی سیاسی و انقلابی علیه حکومت تزاری می‌کردند و به‌نوعی در این کتاب هم بهشون پرداخته شده. توصیه‌ام اینه که بهتره قبل از خواندن این کتاب، شیاطین داستایفسکی رو مطالعه کرده باشید چراکه اولا لذت خوانش این کتاب رو بالا می‌بره و ثانیا برای پی��ا‌کردن پاسخ سوالاتی که در شیاطین مطرح میشه آقای کوتسی در اینجا پاسخ‌های تخیلی و زیبایی داده و علت‌ها با تحریفات قصه‌گویی تغییر پیدا کرده.


پدران و پسران، از تورگنیف و داستایفسکی تا کوتسی
همونطور که گفتم موضوعاتی که در این کتاب مطرح میشه تا حدود زیادی با آثار داستایفسکی هم‌خوانی داره و همین به جذابیت کتاب افزوده؛ ولی اصلی ترین موضوع، تقابل، دشمنی و تفاوت نسل بین پدران و پسرانه. همونطور که می‌دونید این موضوع اصلا تازه و جدید نیست و به قدمت خود تاریخه ولی یکی از موضوعاتی که قبلا در ادبیات روسیه مطرح‌شده هم هست: پدران و پسران اثر ایوان تورگنیف یکی از اون آثاری‌ است که کاملا به این موضوع پرداخته. در اون کتاب شخصیت پسر داستان (آرکادی) همراه همکلاسی تحصیل‌کرده‌ی دانشگاهی‌اش (بازارف) به ییلاق پدرش میره. بازارف در دوران تحصیل تحت تاثیر مکتب نیهیلیسم قرار گرفته بوده و از نظریاتش طرفداری می‌کنه. پدر آرکادی در ییلاق با نظریات افراطی و پوچ‌گرای همکلاسی پسرش رو‌به‌رو میشه و تفاوت نسل‌ها و دشمنی‌ها و پرسش‌ها آغاز میشه. چنین داستانی بی‌شباهت به بحث و تبادل‌نظر داستایفسکی با نچایف، شخصیت رادیکال، نیهیلیست، شورشی و عجیب‌غریب این کتاب نیست. اتفاقی که در شیاطین هم رخ میده و ورخونسکی، جوان نیهیلیست و شورشی کتاب، با عقاید و طرز تفکر پدرش اختلافات اساسی‌ای داره.
کوتسی اما تمامی پرسش‌های منطقی و غیرمنطقی، با پاسخ و بی پاسخ، قطعی و احتمالی و واقعی یا تخیلی در این باب رو جلوی چشم خواننده ردیف می‌کنه و مخاطب هارو در خلال داستان به فکر فرو می‌بره. چنین اتفاقی در راستای رابطه‌ی داستایفسکی و پاول در گذشته، خاطرات به‌جا مونده از او و همینطور در ارتباط با ساکنین آپارتمان اجاره‌ای‌ش مطرح می‌شه. افکار مغشوش و درهم و پریشان داستایفسکی در کتاب و ظهور پرسش‌های گاه‌‌وبیگاه تکون‌دهنده‌اش بین سطور نقش اصلی و پررنگی رو در پیش‌بردن‌ داستان، جذابیت و کشش و زیبایی این کتاب ایفا می‌کنه.



اولین کاری بود که از این نویسنده می‌خوندم و بسیار پسندیدم. بقیه‌ی آثارش در راس امور قرار خواهند گرفت. ترجمه‌ی کتاب از دیگر نقاط قوت کتاب بود و فوق‌العاده تحسین‌برانگیز و درخشان. ظاهرا مترجم محترم بابت این ترجمه جایزه‌ی ابوالحسن نجفی در سال ۹۹ رو هم برده.

Amazingly good. I like Coetzee but this must be about my favourite of the ten or so of his books I've read. This is similar in approach to Foe in that both novels concern a famous personage (Daniel Dafoe and Dostoyevsky) but whereas I found Foe empty and dull, this I found enchanting. If you like Russian literature (or literature about Russia), then you will certainly appreciate this. And at 250 pages it is far more slight than all but a handful of the great Russian novels.

CRITIQUE:

Imaginary Memoirs

The first person narrator of "The Master of Petersburg" is Coetzee's imagining of Fyodor Dostoyevsky as he might have been in October, 1869, immediately before he started writing his third novel, "Demons".

The Master is living in Dresden, when he is summoned back to St. Petersburg after the sudden death of his stepson, Pavel Isaev, on 12 October.

He soon begins to inhabit Pavel's lodgings, haunts and psyche in an attempt to comprehend their shared life and fate and to solve the mystery of his cause of death (suicide or murder, and if the latter, by whom? The police or his insurrectionary acquaintances?).

The relationship between the Master and Pavel hasn't always been amicable. The Master's journey is designed not just to learn more about Pavel, but to reconcile the two of them, albeit too late to make any difference during his lifetime. His immediate goal is to recover Pavel’s private papers, which have been confiscated by the police. Just as the Master learns things about his stepson, he learns what Pavel thought of him, as well as learning more about himself by way of introspection.

I haven't read any of the biographies of Dostoyevsky, but there appear to be some parallels with actual events in Dostoyevsky's life in the lead up to 1869. However, this is not the point of the novel - to record actual events with historical veracity. Instead, it's a vehicle with which Coetzee can speculate on the writing process used by Dostoyevsky, as well as which Coetzee can utilise to kickstart and structure his own creative process.

Towards the end of the novel, the Master sits down at his writing desk and starts to compose chapters about his experiences in the style of "Demons". In a way, Coetzee returns to and taps the spring that gave life to Dostoyevsky's novel. The aim is to see Dostoyevsky's world with his eyes, if this is at all possible. These are "imaginary memoirs, memories of the imagination."

Fathers and Sons: Foes to the Death

For Coetzee, the Master is symbolic of Russia itself. If we can understand one, we can understand the other. Pavel represents the legacy of both. A student, he had joined a group of anarchists led by the demonic Sergei Nechaev, who urges him to overthrow the government in the name of justice. When the police examine Pavel's personal papers, they find a list of targets for assassination. The Master questions whether the police actually killed his son or whether Nechaev arranged his murder, because they might have fallen out over the composition of the list.

When the Master meets Nechaev, they retroactively become rivals for Pavel's soul; father figures and foes in the quest to determine his future.

This is not the only rivalry: the Master and Pavel are rivals with each other.

Each just wants to be loved and respected by the other ("Father, why have you left me in the dark forest? Father, when will you come to save me?"), but they lock horns in a perpetual power struggle.

In the Master’s parallel world, he starts to see himself with Pavel’s eyes. If the Master can find out what Pavel really thought of him, perhaps he will understand himself better.

He recognises that this journey of self-recognition might entail even more pain and hurt than the loss of his son that initiated it.

A Russian Life

The Master reveals no apprehension:

"I am not here in Russia in this time of ours to live a time free of pain. I am required to live - what shall I call it? - a Russian life: a life inside Russia, or with Russia inside me, and whatever Russia means. It is not a fate I can evade."

Nechaev senses the Master’s opposition to his radical political agenda:

"How can you abandon Russia and return to a contemptible bourgeois existence?"

The Master starts to understand the psychology of Pavel’s motivation for revolution: "Not the People's Vengeance but the Vengeance of the Sons: is that what underlies revolution - fathers envying their sons their women, sons scheming to rob their fathers' cashboxes?"

Nechaev describes it to the Master:

"Your day is over. Only, instead of passing quietly from the scene, you want to drag the whole world down with you. You resent it that the reins are passing into the hands of younger and stronger men who are going to make a better world..."

"Revolution is the end of everything old, including fathers and sons. It is the end of successions and dynasties. And it keeps renewing itself, if it is true revolution."

Idealist Fathers, Nihilist Sons

In Konstantin Mochulsky's biography of Dostoyevsky, he explains that "nihilist sons are immediately linked...with idealist fathers."

Here, the policeman Maximov asks: “Why are dreamers, poets, intelligent young men like your stepson, drawn to bandits like Nechaev?”

The Master responds “I do not know. Perhaps because in young people there is something that has not yet gone to sleep, to which the spirit in Nechaev calls. Perhaps it is in all of us: something we think has been dead for centuries but has only been sleeping.”

The Master experiences both anger and grief:

"He can no longer deny it: a gap is opening between himself and the dead boy. He is angry with Pavel, angry at being betrayed. It does not surprise him that Pavel should have been drawn into radical circles, or that he should have breathed no word of it in his letters. But Nechaev is a different matter. Nechaev is no student hothead, no youthful nihilist. He is the Mongol left behind in the Russian soul after the greatest nihilist of all has withdrawn into the wastes of Asia."

The Master contrasts Nechaev with the generation before himself:

“The [Decembrists and the men of 1849] were idealists. They failed because, to their credit, they were not schemers enough, and certainly not men of blood. Petrashevsky...from the outset denounced the kind of Jesuitism that excuses the means in the name of the end. Nechaev is a Jesuit, a secular Jesuit who quite openly embraces the doctrine of ends to justify the most cynical abuse of his followers’ energies.”

In an earlier pamphlet quoted by the Master, Nechaev explains the psychology of an insurrectionist (in the vein of Bakunin):

"The revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no interests, no feelings, no attachments, not even a name. Everything in him is absorbed in a single and total passion: revolution. In the depths of his being he has cut all links with the civil order, with law and morality. He continues to exist in society only in order to destroy it...He does not expect the least mercy. Every day he is ready to die."

The Master adds, "Extremists all of them, sensualists hungering for the ecstasy of death - killing, dying, no matter which. And Pavel among them!"

Dostoyevsky subsequently explored these views in greater detail in “Demons”.



The Writer as Chess-Player

Coetzee is equally interested in the writing process. The following description applies to the Master’s relationship with Pavel’s landlady (Anna) just as much as it does to the relationship between writer and reader:

“He feels like a chess-player offering a pawn which, whether accepted or refused, must lead into deeper complications. Are affairs between men and women always like this, the one plotting, the other plotted against? Is plotting an element of the pleasure: to be the object of another’s intrigue, to be shepherded into a corner and softly pressed to capitulate? As she walks by his side, is she too, in her way, plotting against him?”

Coetzee’s novel is intricately plotted and word-perfect. There is a sense that, sentence by sentence, we’re being transported through a maelstrom of emotion toward a more profound appreciation of both Dostoyevsky and revolutionary Russia.

Date of Review: March 5, 2016

Dostoevsky as the protagonist of this book is not a person you would like to meet.
I feel the repetition of a theme that Coetzee addressed elsewhere - the damnation of being a Writer. The weight of talent, which is too much for a human being to bear. Excellent recreation of the atmosphere of (mostly fictional) St Petersburg

نویسنده‌ی این کتاب یه کار جالبی کرده و یک زندگی خیالی برای داستایفسکی تصور کرده و داستانش رو در اون قالب گفته‌. محتوای کتاب هم شبیه به کتاب شیاطین هست و بد نیست که خواننده قبلش اون رو خونده باشه.

اگر به داستایوسکی یا داستانی‌کردن زندگی نویسنده‌ها علاقه دارید، پیشنهاد می‌شود.

The Master of Petersburg is a dark phantasmagoria in the style of Franz Kafka… And at the same time J.M. Coetzee manages to recreate the unique atmosphere of Devils and of Crime and Punishment…

He thinks of Orpheus walking backwards step by step, whispering the dead woman's name, coaxing her out of the entrails of hell; of the wife in graveclothes with the blind, dead eyes following him, holding out limp hands before her like a sleepwalker. No flute, no lyre, just the word, the one word, over and over. When death cuts all other links, there remains still the name. Baptism: the union of a soul with a name, the name it will carry into eternity. Barely breathing, he forms the syllables again: Pavel.

After the death of his stepson Fyodor Dostoevsky goes to St Petersburg and arriving there, he feels as if he descended into the underworld… He meets many people but he can’t shed the sensation of irreality and so he remains under the impression that he is wandering among shadows…

Visions that come and go, swift, ephemeral. He is not in control of himself. Carefully he pushes paper and pen to the far end of the table and lays his head on his hands. If I am going to faint, he thinks, let me faint at my post…
Why this plodding chase across empty country after the rumour of a ghost, the ghost of a rumour?

Shadows surround him and some shadows he encounters are possessed by demons of revolt and destruction…
In this world, the possessed often succeed in winning but they always end up badly.