Gaito Gazdanov
Gaito Gazdanov (Russian: Гайто́ (Гео́ргий) Ива́нович Газда́нов, Gaito [Georgii] Ivanovich Gazdanov; Ossetian: Гæздæнты Бæппийы фырт Гайто) (6 December [O.S. 23 November] 1903–5 December 1971) was a Russian émigré writer of Ossetian extraction.
Biography
Gazdanov was born in Saint Petersburg but was brought up in Siberia and Ukraine, where his father worked as a forester. He took part in the Russian Civil War on the side of Wrangel's White Army. In 1920 he left Russia and settled in Paris, where he was employed in the Renault factories. Later, he earned his living as a taxicab driver. Gazdanov can be regarded as a White émigré. He died in Munich in 1971.
Gazdanov's first novel — An Evening with Claire (1930) — won accolades from Maxim Gorky and Vladislav Khodasevich, who noted his indebtedness to Marcel Proust. In Black Swans, a 1930 short story, the protagonist commits suicide because he has no opportunity of moving to Australia, which he imagines to be an idealised paradise of graceful black swans. On the strength of his first short stories, Gazdanov was described by critics as one of the most gifted writers to begin his career in emigration.
Gazdanov's mature work was produced after World War II. His mastery of criminal plots and understanding of psychological detail are in full evidence in his two most popular novels, The Specter of Alexander Wolf and The Return of the Buddha, whose English translations appeared in 1950 and 1951. The writer "excels in creating characters and plots in which cynicism and despair remain in precarious yet convincing balance with a courageous acceptance of life and even a certain joie de vivre."[1]
In 1953, Gazdanov joined Radio Liberty, where he hosted a program about Russian literature (under the name of Georgi Cherkasov) until his death in 1971 of lung cancer.
Gazdanov's works were never published in the Soviet Union. After several decades of oblivion, starting from the 1990s more than fifty editions of his works, including a three-volume collection (1998) followed by a 5-volume collection (2009, ed. by T.N. Krasavchenko) were finally published in post-Soviet Russia. The Ossetian artistic community, led by Valery Gergiev, had a new tombstone placed at his grave in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois. The annual Gazdanov Readings are held to discuss his literary heritage.
Works
- Vecher u Kler (An Evening with Claire) (1929)
- Istoriya odnogo puteshestviya (The history of a journey) (1938)
- Polyot (The flight) (1939; first complete ed. 1992)
- Nochnaya doroga (Night road) (1939–40); book pub. as Nochnye dorogi (Night roads) (1952)
- Prizrak Aleksandra Vol'fa (The Spectre of Alexander Wolf) (1947–48)
- Vozvrashchenie Buddy (Buddha's Return) (1949–50)
- Piligrimy (Pilgrims) (1953–54)
- Probuzhdenie (The awakening) (1965–66)
- Evelina i eyo druzya (Evelina and her friends) (1968–71)
References
- ↑ The Cambridge History of Russian Literature (ed. by Charles Moser). Cambridge University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-521-42567-0. Page 518.
Further reading
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External links
- Pages with broken file links
- Articles containing Russian-language text
- Articles containing Ossetic-language text
- Ossetian people
- Russian novelists
- Russian male novelists
- Burials at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery
- 1903 births
- 1971 deaths
- Russian people of Ossetian descent
- Russian short story writers
- Writers from Saint Petersburg
- Deaths from lung cancer
- Russian emigrants to France
- 20th-century novelists
- Russian male short story writers