“My writing is no more about camps that St-Exupéry's is about the sky or Melville's, about the sea. My stories are basically advice to an individual on how to act in a crowd... [To be] not just further to the left than the left, but also more real than reality itself. For blood to be true and nameless.”.
Varlam Shalamov
Read about the goals of our project here.The first meeting with Shalamov:
- Varlam Shalamov “What I’ve seen and learned at Kolyma camps”
- Varlam Shalamov “The best praise”
- Irina Sirotinskaya “The Years We Talked”
- Valery Esipov “Varlam Shalamov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn”
A panel entitled “Shalamov as a Revolutionary” has been accepted for the ASEEES 45th Annual Convention, which will be held in Boston in November 2013 (6 april 2013)
The following scholars will participate in the panel: Elena Mikhailik (University of New South Wales, Australia), Olga Cooke (Texas A&M University, USA), Josefina Lundblad (University of California at Berkeley, USA), Michael Nicholson (Oxford University, UK), and Reed Johnson (University of Virginia, USA). The conference will take place November 21-24 in Boston, MA“Shalamov”, Valery Esipov's new book, is now available in stores nationwide (14 august 2012)
First chapters are presented online at russ.ru.The “Duck”, translated by Robert Chandler & Nathan Wilkinson (5 june 2012)
“It had been very difficult for the man to take a decision himself, to act independently, to do something his daily life had not prepared him for. He had not been taught to hunt ducks. That was why his movements had been helpless, clumsy. He hadn’t been taught to think about the possibility of such a hunt — his brain couldn’t come up with correct answers to the unexpected questions life posed. He had been taught to live differently, without needing to take decisions of his own, with another will — someone else’s will — in charge of events. It is uncommonly difficult to meddle in one’s own fate, to ‘refract’ fate. And maybe that’s all for the best — a duck dies on a patch of water, a man in a barrack.”Robert Chandler's & Nathan Wilkinson's translations of three short stories by Shalamov (9 may 2012)
In the late 70s, Robert Chandler has published translations of several short stories by Shalamov (including “Sherry Brandy”, “Berries” and “Duck”) in magazines “Index on Censorship” and “Bananas”. In the anthology “Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida” (Penguin Classics, 2006) he has included the following new translations on which he collaborated with Nathan Wilkinson: “Through the Snow”, “Berries”, “The Snake Charmer”, “Duck”.
Josefina Lundblad's article about The 2011 Shalamov Conference: “Life and work, world literature and Soviet history. Exploring the moral necessity of Varlam Shalamov” in Baltic Worlds (15 october 2011)
During two scorching hot days in the middle of June, a diverse assembly of scholars from Russia and beyond converged in Moscow in search of answers to two questions: What is Varlam Shalamov? And why do we need him?.Robert Chandler, “Varlam Shalamov and Andrey Fedorovich Platonov” (13 july 2011)
“Shalamov and Platonov portray worlds in which an extraordinary degree of cruelty is seen as commonplace. In other respects, however, these two great writers are antithetical to one another. While Platonov takes us deep inside both the bodies and the souls of his characters, Shalamov portrays his characters from the outside” (in Russian).Review of the recent Shalamov Conference: (9 july 2011)
The Culture Channel, the website pedsovet.org, and the Yaroslavl regional newspaper “The Golden Ring” review the recent conference: “The Life and Works of Varlam Shalamov in the Context of World Literature and Soviet History” (in Russian).The fourth issue of The Shalamov Papers has been published (28 june 2011)
The newest issue of The Shalamov Papers (No. 4) features new research by new voices in the field as well as well-known international scholars from Russia, Germany, Switzerland, USA, Australia, and Sweden. The issue also includes new material from the Varlam Shalamov archive and little-known memoirs about him. This edition is dedicated to the memory of Irina Pavlovna Sirotinskaya, Shalamov’s friend, publisher, and heir to his literary archive (in Russian).Review by Ilya Smirnov of the recent international conference “The Life and Works of Varlam Shalamov in the Context of World Literature and Soviet History” and of the 4th edition of The Shalamov Papers, published by the editorial board of shalamov.ru (25 june 2011)
“Shalamov ranks Che Guevara along with Gagarin, guided by the same principles that made him a staunch opponent of the Stalinist regime. Shalamov himself stated that he ‘participated in the great yet ultimately unsuccessful battle for a genuine renewal of life’” (in Russian).Reread Shalamov! (21 june 2011)
Why is Varlam Shalamov studied more by people abroad than in Russia? Why is this writer so important for an understanding of our past and present? What is the basis of the conflict between Shalamov and Solzhenitsyn? Commentary by Sergey Solovyov, editor-in-chief of Skepsis magazine and head of the website shalamov.ru (in Russian).News archive: 2013, 2012, 2011, 2009
The copyright to the contents of this site is held either by shalamov.ru or by the individual authors, and none of the material may be used elsewhere without written permission. The copyright to Shalamov’s work is held by Alexander Rigosik. For all enquiries, please contact ed@shlamov.ru.