Ismail Kadare - Twilight of the Eastern Gods

Despite all of that, I was still trying to find a pretext for leaving her.

Lida, I thought, you’ll not get a word of adieu out of me. It has to happen as it does in the ballad!

However much I thought about what I would say, I still could not take my eyes off her.

‘Lida, I once told you, in a station, that, whatever comes to pass…’

‘Yes?’ she said, lips pursed.

We were outside the Gorky Institute. In the twilight its railings and windows looked even gloomier. The only light was a dim glow from a ground-floor porthole in the porter’s lodge. I stood still, and as she waited for me to finish my sentence, I turned my head towards the Institute and said, ‘Lida, you go on now, I have something to do here.’

I didn’t say another word, I didn’t tell her to wait for me and I didn’t say adieu. Instead I opened the gate and went into the pitch-dark courtyard. I walked with my hands held out in front of me to avoid stumbling over the marble benches, pale blotches that, in the black of night, looked like tombstones. The gate at the other end of the garden that gave on to Malaya Bronnaya was locked but I had no trouble clambering over it.

I was on the other side, in the cold, dimly lit street, where a few pedestrians hurried past with their heads deep inside their fur collars.

As I walked on, I thought of her standing on Tverskoy Boulevard, facing the sombre railings around the Institute’s garden and waiting in vain for me to come back from that undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns.

Tirana, 1962–1976

MENTIONED IN THE NOVEL

Other named characters are not necessarily fictional

ABDULLAKHANOV, student at the Gorky Institute, 1958–60.

AKHMADULINA, Bella Akhatovna, Russian poet and translator, 1937–2010. Suspended from her course at the Gorky Institute for opposing the persecution of Boris Pasternak. Between 1954 and 1960 she was the wife of the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Now recognised as one of the greatest of modern Russian poets.

ARAGON, Louis, French poet, 1897–1982. Well-known in Russia because of his unwavering support of the Communist Party, Aragon was also a major figure in the surrealist movement and subsequently France’s national poet of the Resistance. Husband of Elsa Triolet.

ARBUZOV, Aleksei Nikolaevich, Soviet playwright, 1908–1986.

BÜRGER, Gottfried August, German writer, 1747–1794. His romantic ballad ‘Lenore’ is based on a widespread folk legend of a man who rises from the dead to take his betrothed on a ride to the other world; it may also have been a source for Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Leonore’.

CHUKOVSKY, Korney Ivanovich, Soviet translator and children’s writer, 1882–1969. Author of much-loved nonsense verse and the doyen of the Soviet school of literary translation. He is reputed to be the only Soviet writer to have officially congratulated Boris Pasternak on winning the Nobel Prize.

DE RADA, Jeronim, Italo-Albanian writer, 1814–1903. A romantic nationalist from the Albanian-speaking community of southern Italy (the Arbëresh), de Rada wrote verse and prose in both Italian and Albanian, and is among the founding fathers of modern Albanian literature.

DRUZIN, Valery, editor of the literary magazine Zvezda , (1947–1957), deputy editor of Literturnaya gazeta (1957–1960), and professor at the Gorky Institute.

FADEYEV, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich, Russian writer, 1901–1956. Author of The Young Guard (1945), a novel of the heroic actions of a Komsomol unit during the Second World War. A fervent Stalinist and an alcoholic, Fadeyev committed suicide not long after Stalin’s demise.

FEDIN, Konstantin Alexandrovich, Russian writer, 1892–1977, president of the Union of Soviet Writers from 1959.

GONCHAROV, Yuri, student at the Gorky Institute, 1958–1960.

KÁDÁR, János, Hungarian, politician, 1912–1989. Although a high-ranking official between 1945 and 1949, Kádár was arrested on trumped-up charges and brutally tortured by the secret police in 1950. Released from prison in 1954, after Stalin’s death, Kádár emerged as the leader of the nation from 1956 and remained at the helm until 1988. He made Hungary the most Western-oriented and prosperous country in the Soviet sphere of influence.

KHARABAROV, Vanya, a young poet, friend of Yuri Pankratov. Both were expelled from the Gorky Institute and sent to Kazakhstan for their support of Pasternak; rehabilitated in 1960.

KUZNETSOV, Anatoly Vassilievich, Soviet writer, Kiev, 1929– London, 1979. Student at the Gorky Institute, 1958–1960. His novella Continuation of a Legend was published in the review Yunost in 1957 in a heavily censored version incorporating additional episodes that he later said ‘were so outrageously cheerful that no reader would take them seriously’. He later published the momentous story of the wartime massacre of Jews at Babi Yar, and defected to Britain in 1968.

KYUZENGESH, Yu, student at the Gorky Institute, 1958–1960.

LADONSHCHIKOV, G.A., student at the Gorky Institute, 1958–1960.

MASKIAVICIUS, B.M., student at the Gorky Institute, 1958–1960.

MAYAKOVSKY, Vladimir Vladimirovich, Russian poet, 1893–1930. The greatest of all modernist poets in Russia and a man of wild passions, Mayakovsky was put under great pressure to conform once Stalin had consolidated his grip on power in 1929. By many accounts Mayakovsky killed himself to escape from such an intolerable prospect.

PANKRATOV, Yuri, see under KHARABAROV.

PASTERNAK, Boris Leonidovich, Russian poet, translator and novelist, 1890–1960. See introduction.

PAUSTOVSKY, Konstantin Georgevich, Russian novelist and playwright, 1892–1968.

PETROS, Antaeus, student at the Gorky Institute, 1958–1960.

POGOSIAN, A. A., student at the Gorky Institute, 1958–1960.

REUTSKY, Piotr I., student at the Gorky Institute, 1958–1960.

SERIOGIN, I. N., professor at the Gorky Institute.

SHAKENOV, Nutfulla, student at the Gorky Institute, 1958–1960.

SHOGENTSUKOV, A. O., student at the Gorky Institute, 1958–1960.

STULPANC, E. V., student at the Gorky Institute, 1958–1960.

TABUROKOV, P. I., student at the Gorky Institute, 1958–1960.

TRIOLET, Elsa Yurevna, 1896–1970. Sister of Lilya Brik, Mayakovsky’s muse, and wife of Louis Aragon, Elsa Triolet was also a writer in her own name, in Russian and in French, and though naturalised French remained a stalwart supporter of the USSR.

TVARDOVSKY, Aleksandr Trifonovich, Soviet writer, 1910–1971. Author of Vassily Tyorkin , a part-humorous epic of an ordinary soldier’s life through the Second World War. Tvardovsky was the editor of Novy Mir , the most prestigious literary journal of the time, from, 1950–1954 and again from 1958–1970. However, in 1954 Tvardovsky began working on a parodic sequel to his original Tyorkin tale, in which the hero visits Hell and finds there a distorted view of Soviet life. Tyorkin Na Tom Svete (‘Tyorkin in the Other World’) was not completed until 1963. It was published, but not viewed favourably by government and Party officials.

VUKMANOVIĆ-TEMPO, Svetozar, 1912–2000. Yugoslav partisan and Communist Party leader.

YERMILOV, Vladimir, 1904–1965, biographer of Chekhov, author of Literature and The New Man (1963).

YEVTUSHENKO, Yevgenyi Aleksandrovich, 1933–. Russian poet. Already famous for his poetry collection, Zima Station (1956), Yevtushenko was expelled from the Gorky Institute in 1957 for ‘individualism’ but was able to become a popular ‘public poet’ during the relatively liberal years of the Khrushchev era. Later on, his political position was seen as ambiguous, if not duplicitous. Now divides his time between the USA and Russia.