Guest of the ilb 2001
Friedrich Gorenstein was born in 1932 in Kiev (then the Soviet Union). He was still only a child when his parents died. He grew up first in an orphanage, then with relatives in the Caucasus and Ukraine. As the son of an 'enemy of the people' – his father was a victim of Stalinist 'cleansings' and was arrested and shot in 1935 — Gorenstein had a struggle, working as a labourer before studying mining engineering in the 1950s and then beginning to write. With the exception of one short story published in 1964, he was not allowed to publish his prose. To make a living, Gorenstein specialized in writing film scripts after completing a correspondence course at the Moscow Film Academy. Censorship barred his way here, too, but some films were made based on his scripts, including Andrej Tarkowski's 'Solaris' in 1972.
Gorenstein ran into more difficulties with censorship in 1979 as a member of Vassilyi Aksyonov's 'Metropol' group. Although only 10 copies were actually published, their almanac of literature was banned. By that time, Gorenstein had decided to emigrate. In the same year, a DAAD scholarship enabled him to travel to West Germany. Since then, Gorenstein lived in Berlin, working as a freelance writer. In 1979, the first German translation of his work, the novel 'Die Sühne' (original title 'Iskuplenie'), was published. Yet it was not until the beginning of the 1990s that this author of several novels, short stories and dramas reached a wider readership in Germany. He has been 'discovered', too, in Russia, where his work appeared in a prestigious issue of three volumes. His plays are featured in theatres in Moscow.
While Gorenstein sees himself explicitly as a Russian, not Jewish, author, his work does appear to be preoccupied with Jewish identity. He once said in an interview: "Antisemitism is part of the air you breathe in Russia and the Ukraine". Biographical elements, such as being a double outcast as both a Jew and the son of a 'traitor', are most in evidence in Gorensteins 1200-page novel 'Mesto', written between 1969 and 1972. Critics were thus all the more amazed by the impossibility to identify with the main figure, Gosha. But, however "unpleasant or even repulsive" (Shamma Shahadat, NZZ) the figures portrayed as contemporaries of Nikita Krushchev were seen, their literary construct is unanimously hailed; indeed, some even likened it to Dostoyevsky.
In tracing Jewish-Russian biographies, Gorenstein focussed repeatedly on historic figures in the arts world. His novel 'Letit sebe aeroplan' evolved from an assignment to create a scenario for the life of Marc Chagall. Stylistic leftovers from his script-writing days are seen in Gorensteins novel about the Russian composer Alexander Skryabin (1872-1915). Like a series of film sequences, it depicts phases of the self-mystification of a genial and egomanic artiste who sees himself as creator and saviour of the world. Friedrich Gorenstein died in 2002, shortly before his 70th birthday.
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