Voices from Stalingrad is an illustrated ebook by Ferdinanda Cremascoli.
From December 8th it is also a podcast
Six episodes from Vasily Grossman’s masterpiece. Each episode is an investigation into the range of tones in Vasily Grossman’s dilogy, also preserved in translation, thanks to the work of great translators.
Episode 1. Landscapes. Know what kind of rhythm governs men.
The Volga river is a majestic landscape. The war shatters the deep silence of the river, revealing its alien nature to the natural rhythm that alternates life and death in an ever-living cycle. War generates violent death. However, it cannot disrupt the rhythm of life. The river is the intangible metronome that sets the rhythm
Episode 2: The Ordinary Epic of War
In this chapter, the protagonists face extraordinary circumstances during the bombing of Stalingrad and the fall of the resistance at the station, moments that evoke heroism and grandeur. The artist reinterprets the epic through his unique perspective, often focusing on ordinary people accomplishing extraordinary feats. His approach is shaped by the tone of Mikola Mefodievich Mulyarchuk, a stove maker—never overstated, always measured and precise.
Episode 3. Dictators.
The two dictators resemble each other in their profound estrangement from European political and legal culture. Hitler and Stalin believe that what is granted to their own people is not recognized for others. The two dictators are crude men, devoid of any moral scruples, indifferent to the human costs of their actions. And yet they are not the same.
Episode 4. Scenes From a Marriage.
In Grossman’s work there is a whole people. To tell such a varied world, here is the variety of tones. The two Stalingrad novels know the gravitas, but also the amused and amusing lightness of comedy. Witty observations, hilarious jokes in the dialogue between the characters, especially when talking about the hassles of everyday life and the intolerance towards those closest to us.
Episode 5. A Parcel at the Station.
A Parcel at the Station is the melancholy and gentle story of Lena, a very young nurse on the bloodiest front. In the fierce fight for the station there is also the sad story of Lena’s love for Kovalyov, a young and brave officer of the XIII Guards Division. A sentimental tone in the ugliness of war.
Episode 6. Living at House 6/1.
House 6/1 represents in Grossman’s story all the places in Stalingrad, in which there was fierce fighting. But death and destruction and tragedy are on another register. Here the tone is light-hearted. It’s the tone of ordinary people: scared, and mocking!
Many worlds, Many Tones
Voices. In the Stalingrad dilogy, Vasily Grossman recounts the lives of an entire people: farmers, workers, miners, scientists, mothers, women working in factories and in the countryside, girls and boys, orphans… everyone. To capture such a varied world, a variety of tones is employed. The two Stalingrad novels encompass gravitas and solemnity, as well as the entertaining lightness of comedy and the melancholy of love stories. No sentimentality, though! Vasily Grossman’s style is never emphatic, but dry and rigorous.
Why “Dilogy”? Because the story develops over two novels: Life and Fate and its “prequel,” a novel written immediately after the war and published in the USSR under the title For a Just Cause in the early fifties, after a strenuous tug of war with censorship. Life and Fate was less fortunate. The KGB’s seizure of the manuscript in 1962 forced the writer to hide his novel, which had a complex history of emigration and publication abroad. In Russia, it was published only after the end of the USSR.
Trials of Translation
Voices. There is, however, a paradox. In the West, the second novel, Life and Fate, was highly appreciated in the 1980s and 1990s, while the first novel was either not taken into consideration or was judged to be a “Soviet” novel. Only in recent years has the first novel, For a Just Cause, been read with attention, and its greatness has been discovered. The English translation is from 2019, and the Italian one is from 2022. The first to recognize the importance of the first novel were the French: a translation into that language dates back to 2000.
Yet the Stalingrad Dilogy is a true masterpiece. Perhaps it was read at the wrong time, but its greatness is such that time will eventually give it the recognition it deserves
