Boris Filippov / Correspondence 25
Many thanks for your proposal to publish the novella by L. Chukovskaia under the brand of our publishing house. I haven't received the second half of the novella yet since I don't yet have the 84th volume of Novyi Zhurnal. As soon as I receive it (this will be any day now)...
About Chukovskaia: my publishing budget is not impersonal but distributed between individual authors and books. I, alas, cannot, for example, replace one book with another, and even publish a book by scrimping on printing costs for other books. Chukovskaia's novella would...
About Bulgakov’s works: there is no play “Ivan Vasil’evich” in his 1962 collection published by Iskusstvo. But Bulgakov’s Collected Works in several volumes were being prepared for publication in Moscow. I do not know if it was published – or if it is still being prepared for publication...
I am not a fan of Akhmatova’s Requiem: I think, with the exception of a few lines, it is forced, and more importantly, too declamatory: you don’t really believe it. For me, Akhmatova exists mainly thanks to her “New Year’s Ballad,” “Northern Elegy” and “Poem Without a Hero...
Basically, there is more of my editorial work in the edition of N<adezhda> Ya<kovlevna> M<andelshtam>’s memoirs than there is Hayward’s. But… for my work, they have only given me a few copies of the edition and some trivial things...
Now, about the book “This Is Moscow Speaking”. The copyright for it is held by the Polish “Institut Literatski” in Paris, and I will write down the institute’s address and the name of its director on a Latin typewriter for you below. He is a very sweet man and will be able to inform you about the terms...
Let me start with the broadcast of the proposed reenactment of Sinyavsky’s and Daniel’s trial for Hamburg television: I would be happy if such a play appeared in German. It has been broadcast in English on American television several times already...
I have also received some information about Akhmatova, but with the strictest order to not tell anyone for the time being. Unlike the author of the letter about Mandelshtam, A.A. is mortally afraid of any communications with émigrés and foreigners...
I have something else. I recently received from the Soviet Union some of Bulgakov’s unpublished manuscripts (including “Moliere,” published last year). Bulgakov’s two manuscripts: the play “Ivan Vasilyevich,” which was not allowed to be staged in 1936...
I have also received some information about Akhmatova, but with the strictest order to not tell anyone for the time being. Unlike the author of the letter about Mandelshtam, A.A. is mortally afraid of any communications with émigrés and foreigners...
Thank you very much for Arzhak’s books! I managed to read only one of the stories – “Hands.” What a horror! But how much sincere humanity in the portrayal of the former Cheka officer. There is the image of the entire offended Russian people in him...
I have read the article in “Literaturnaia Gazeta.” I am surprised that it can actually produce an impression on anyone here, since it contains a ludicrous phrase suggesting that our publishing house “pursues the goal” of printing works “that due to reasons of ideological and artistic immaturity” (highlighted by me - G...
I have failed to arrive at any agreement with your French friends, as their terms for the publication of “This Is Moscow Speaking” are quite high. This book is, I repeat, very interesting, yet the brevity of the narrative brings difficulties to any publishing house...
I have a special request for you: I told a friend of mine, who is the head of the drama department at Hamburg Radio, about the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial and showed him your invaluable report of it. My friend had a marvelous idea: based on your book, he is thinking of putting together and broadcasting a radio-play version of this important trial...
I kept the typeset of the novella by L. Chukovskaia and will release it as a separate book. But then I thought that perhaps your publishing house would be interested in publishing this novella? Then I would give you a ready-made typeset. We would save a few hundred dollars...
Why is your publishing house so slow to answer about the publication of the novella by Lydia Chukovskaia? I believe this to be a very straightforward matter.