Guest of the ilb 2004
Victor Erofeev
was born in Moscow in 1947. The son of a high-ranking diplomat he spent
some years of his childhood in Paris. This meant he had access early on
to literature banned in the Soviet Union. He was greatly influenced by
the works of Vladimir Nabokov and the Marquis de Sade. In the late
1960’s he studied Literature in Moscow. He then worked for the
Institute of World Literature. In 1975, he completed his doctorate with
a thesis on »Dostoevsky and French Existentialism«. As a literary
critic he wrote some essays interpreting the Marquis de Sade’s writing
and an article on the philosophy of Leo Shestov. The literary almanac
»Metropol« (Eng. »Metropol«, 1982) first created a major scandal in
1979. It was a compilation of politically explosive texts, selected by
Victor Erofeev, Vassili Axionow, Andrei Bitov, Jevgeni Popov and Fasil
Iskander, in which both officially established writers and renegade
writers were included. The attempt to publish the almanac in the Soviet
Union failed because it was judged to be »pornography of the mind«. The
work was published in the West. During this period his father, Vladimir
Erofeev, Stalin's former interpreter, was forced to resign and end his
diplomatic career. From this time Viktor Erofeev was considered a
dissident, and his writings were banned. With the first signs of
Glasnost and Perestroika, Viktor Erofeev was able to publish again. In
1990 his first novel appeared, »Russkaia Krasavitsa« (Eng. »Russian
Beauty«, 1992). Through the story of the beautiful Irena, a high-class
prostitute in Moscow, the reader is transported into the world of the
dark, grotesque aesthetics of sex, violence and death. In two essays,
»Pominki po sovyetskoi literatur« (1990; t: An epitaph of Soviet
literature) and »Russkie tsvety zla« (1993; Eng. »Russia’s Fleurs du
mal«, 1995) Erofeev announced the death of the literature of Socialist
Realism. At the same time he set out a radical artistic manifesto for a
new literature of evil. He was also the editor of the first Russian
edition of Nabokov's work, together with other anthologies of Russian
literature. His story »Zhizn s idiotom« (1991; Eng. »Life With an
Idiot«, 1992) was adapted for the operatic stage by Alfred Schnittke.
Erofeev writes regularly for »The New Yorker« and the »New York Review
of Books«. After his well-received autobiographical novel »Khoroshii
Stalin« (2004; t: The good Stalin), he recently published a collection
of stories »De Profundis« (2006). Erofeev lives in Moscow.
© international literature festival berlin
Bibliography
Russian Beauty
Hamish Hamilton
London, 1992
[translated by Andrew Reynolds]
Life with an Idiot [music by Alfred Schnittke]
English National Opera, 1995
Russia's Fleur du Mal
Harmondsworth
Penguin, 1995 | 
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