The Encylopedia of the Dead (European Classics)
Danilo Kis
Language: English
Pages: 216
ISBN: 2:00223729
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This collection of short stories depicts human relationships, encounters, landscapes and the multitude of details that make up human life.
From Publishers Weekly
Kis ( Garden, Ashes ) attempts to dazzle with his showmanship as he restlessly dons one stylistic mantle after another in this richly inventive collection of stories. The result is erratic. Some of these short narrativeswhich take death, literature and love as their themesare perfunctory academic exercises; others are brilliant as the author's heavy, opulent language produces a seductive, dreamlike atmosphere. In the surreal title story, a Yugoslav woman stumbles upon a massive encyclopedia compiled by a mysterious religious sect whose sole purpose is to record the lives of the dead in preparation for Judgment Day. In it, she finds her father's biography and her own antecedents. "To Die for One's Country Is Glorious" describes the last few hours of a nobleman sentenced to death for his involvement in a bloody uprising against the Austro-Hungarian empire. In "The Legend of the Sleepers" (inspired by a sura in the Koran), a Christian martyr awakens from the dead several centuries later and finds himself in a trancelike meditation about the past, present and future. Kis's philosophical musings should delight readers who enjoyed his countryman Milorad Pavic's Dictionary of the Khazars.
T R A N S L A T E D BY MICHAEL HENRY HEIM What makes T h e Encyclopedia of the Dead u n iqu e is the way it depicts hum an relation ships, encounters, landscapes— the m ulti tude o f details that make up a hum an life. It records everything. After all, noth ing in the history of m ankind is ever repeated, things that at first glance seem the same are scarcely even sim ilar; each in d ividu al is a star unto him self, everything happens always and never, a ll th in g s repeat th em selves ad
o f fam ous people. (I received im m ediate confir m ation as I turn ed the pages with m y frozen fingers, looking fo r my fath er’s nam e.) T h e Encyclopedia did not include * 43 ' separate listings fo r M azuranic or M eyerhold or M alm berg or M aretic, who w rote the gram m ar my fath er used in school, or M estrovic, w hom my father had once seen in the street, or D ragoslav M aksim ovic, a lathe op erator and Socialist dep u ty w hom my g ran d fath er had known, or T a sa Milojevic,
will and determ ination; he steeled his m anhood by recourse to fam ily legend. T h u s it was that when, in accordance with com pas sionate protocol, he was vouchsafed a last request, he did not ask fo r a glass o f water, though his insides w ere on fire; he asked fo r a cigarette, like an ancestor who had once, long befo re, requested a pinch o f tobacco, which he had then chew ed and spit in the face o f his executioner. T h e officer clicked his heels and offered him his silver cigarette
distance, his sw ord across the left shou lder in what was m ore an honor g u a rd ’s salute to the aristocrat (whose nobility was as ancient as that o f the E m p ero r him self) than a precaution o r threat to the proud w om an visiting the Im p erial prison. “ I shall throw m yself at his feet,” she w hispered. “ I am read y to die, M other,” he said. She cut him o ff with a stern, perhaps too stern, “M on fils, reprenez courage/” T h e n fo r the first time she turned her head slightly in
forth on that Feb ru ary day in 18 7 9 w hen he accepted the prosecu tor’s proposition. “ T h is was his first fo rg e ry, this im itation o f the prosecutor, this incredible sham .” T h e w ay stations now speed past as i f fram ed by a train window. Less than fo u r years after his arrest (and one stint in prison by mistake), Rachkovsky becom es assistant to the P etersburg D irector o f State Security, and the very next year he is nam ed C h ie f o f A ll Secret Services, with headquarters •