The Sublimes – Yuri Mamleyev
Posted in Uncategorized on November 15th, 2024 by l k
The plot of the novel ‘The Sublimes‘ revolves around seemingly unmotivated murders committed by the main character, Fyodor Sonnov. However, Fyodor, while committing these senseless crimes, pursues a specific goal: to understand the eternal mystery of death through “empirical” means. He perceives the visible world as an illusion. Fyodor unexpectedly encounters a group of Moscow intellectuals and metaphysicians, whose existence awakens in him greater interest than the characters of his mundane life. This acquaintance shapes the plot of the novel.
The theme of ‘The Sublimes’ is murder for the sake of penetrating the mystery of the soul of the murdered, and thus into the otherworldly realm. The author reveals the depth of philosophical searches through a brutal, often painful prose that can be horrifying upon re-reading. At the same time, Mamleev’s aspirations have a positive foundation: by diving into darkness, he seeks to manifest the light of the human soul and foster its growth.
The first versions of the novel ‘The Sublimes’ appeared in samizdat in 1966. At that time, there could be no question of an official publication of the novel in the USSR, even though there was nothing “political” about it; the novel did not meet moral and ethical criteria. Later, when Yuri Mamleev presented this novel to a major New York publishing house, the response was harsh: “The world is not ready for this book.” The novel was officially published for the first time in Chicago in 1980 in a version shortened by a third, titled “The Sky Above Hell.” “The world is not ready to read this novel. And I would not want to live in a world that would be ready to read this novel,” a New York critic remarked about the abridged version of ‘The Sublimes’.
Yuri Vitalyevich Mamleev, also Mamleyev or Mamleiev (Russian: Юрий Витальевич Мамлеев, 11 December 1931 – 25 October 2015), was a prominent Russian novelist who began writing in the 1960s and won the Pushkin Prize in 2000. He is considered the founder of metaphysical realism as a literary genre. His best known work, The Sublimes (Russian: Шатуны), was a samizdat novel published in 1966 and translated into English in 2014 by Marian Schwartz.
Mamleev was also well known as the founder of the Yuzhinsky Circle, an occultist, underground literary salon based out of his shared apartment on Yuzhinsky Lane in central Moscow. The illegal literary salon attracted many non-conformist and anti-Soviet artists, writers, intellectuals, and poets, including the future philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, Yevgeny Golovin, and Geydar Dzhemal. He was deeply interested in Hindu and Buddhist doctrines and went on to lecture at Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales in Paris and Moscow State University. Following Mamleev’s immigration to the United States, Golovin took over leadership of the group.
In 1974, Mamleev left the USSR and emigrated to the United States where he taught at Cornell University until the fall of the Soviet Union. Post-dissolution, he returned to Moscow where he continued to live and write until his death in 2015.
This post is related the upcoming film screening of director Valentina Bek’s documentary, ‘News from another world,’ about Mamleev within the framework of the cinema club and Film Association K1NO1.
NEWS FROM THE OTHER WORLD
a film by Valentina Bek about the writer Yuri Mamleyev
Friday Nov 15, 7pm
Screening
+conversation with Valentina Bek
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