City Walking and Narratives of Destiny

摘要

In this essay, I will look at two narratives by former Soviet writers, written about New Yorkand London and thematizing walks through the two cities. The first is a novel by EdwardLimonov, written in 1976, and the second is a short story by Zinovy Zinik, written in 1994.Both writers belong to the immigrant generation of the so-called Third Wave, whichspanned the period between the seventies and eighties. This group of immigrants containeda relatively large percentage of professional and amateur writers and journalists who couldnot realize their talents in the Soviet Union and were induced or sometimes forced to leave.Many of these people opened newspapers, journals, and publishing houses. Others becameactive literary contributors. This became a vibrant and dynamic period of unprecedentedliterary activity. In retrospect, its literary output was probably more important for Russianliterary history than the corresponding production of metropolitan literature in the sameyears. Those whose work was censored under the Soviet regime became published authorsfor the first time, among them the two authors I will present. Not only did they becomeknown among fellow immigrants, but their books were smuggled back to the Soviet Union,where they achieved an underground cult status. They could not have dreamed of greaterinfluence and popularity. Since the breakdown of the former Soviet Union, the vibrantémigré literary scene has all but ended its existence. As Zinovy Zinik expressed this, themetropolitan literature has reasserted itself and has since engulfed the periphery. But in theperiod between early 1970s and late 1990s, Third Wave writers enjoyed fame among theirformer compatriots and occupied a position of literary centrality, with Paris, Berlin, London,and especially New York acting as surrogates for the Russian literary centers of Moscowand Leningrad.