Trail - R.E. Arbitman’s open response to V.D. Zvyagintsev’s letter.

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     R.E. ARBITTMAN'S OPEN REPLY TO V.D. ZVYAGINTSEV'S LETTER

   Dear Mr. Zvyagintsev!
   I apologize for the fact that I did not treat you in the most criminal way.
til due attention to the date of writing your novel "Odysseus
leaves Ithaca" (it turns out 1978-1983!) and thus un- 
I really doubted your civic courage. I was wrong about that
I repent. Only after the publication of your open letter in the journal
rnal "TWO HUNDRED-V" everything fell into place. Well, of course, priority
Tet is behind you! In those harsh times, when the frightened brothers Stru-
Gatsky in "The Doomed City" (as you elegantly noted) "about 
Stalinism were limited to only allegories", you have not yet 
the published manuscript slashed the truth straight into the eyes. Moreover,
It turns out that it was you who “long before Gorbachev came to the conclusion that
revolution from above in this country, the chances for the desired result are almost 
you don't have." And in general, while the author of these lines, a snotty nine- 
classmate, wrote an essay about “Little Land”, while your future
epigones one Solzhenitsyn in Vermont and one Nicholas Bettel
in London they blathered something unintelligible, it was you who “first remembered
or about terror against the Cossacks." And only the atrocities of the communist 
Russian censorship prevented your wonderful
coverings came to the people in terrible timesyears of stagnation...
   And now - seriously.
   It’s not my fault that someone kept your novel under wraps and
was born only when your journalistic insights
(I believe, suffered) have become a banality, a common place. I'm not the wine-
wat is that by the beginning of the nineties (by the time of publication
separate edition of "Odyssey...") Your novel, alas, really
already looked like “entertainment from other people’s cliches.” You did it yourself
The core of the novel is historical journalism, and not your fault, but yours
the trouble is that journalism is a perishable commodity, especially
“frontal” journalism, not burdened with such elements of artistic
femininity, like the “allegory” you despise. Perhaps the most
the right decision would be to abandon the modern publication of the novel-
on - because otherwise you have already entered your work yourself
introduction into the modern literary context and now you no longer have the right
seriously offended by a critic reviewing this book named
but in this context, which is by no means comfortable for your novel. For
a critic, by nature, is not a literary explorer and, excuse me, not
Your biographer. There is only what is. Everything else is alternative -
no story. A novel about what would have happened if Vasily Zvyagintsev
published his Odysseus Leaving Ithaca in 1984. Yes, this is
it would be interesting. But this didn’t happen!
   And one last thing. About Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, next to whom you are
depicted inStavropol edition of the novel. What do you think, Vasily
Liy Dmitrievich, it would harm “War and Peace” if this epic 
was published not in the sixties of the 19th century, but at least
in the mid-seventies of the same century?
   Take the risk of answering the last question honestly yourself.

                                                  Roman ARBITHMA