The Snows of Yesteryear
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Review
One of those rare and lovely books . . . in the precision and quality of Rezzori's prose, in his passion for the perfect detail, and in his power to capture the reader's heart (Alan Furst )
[The series] sheds remarkable light on the literature, culture and politics of the region...anyone coming fresh to the field will be captivated by the richness, variety, humour and pathos of a classic literature that, through a shared historical experience, transcends national and linguistic boundaries. (Cj Schüler Independent on Sunday )
This [series] is a wonderful idea ... They are absurdist parables, by turns hilarious, unsettling and enigmatic. (Nicholas Lezard Guardian )
I urge you to go and read them. (Adam Thirlwell New Statesman )
This new series of Central European Classics is important well beyond simply providing 'good reads'. (Stephen Vizinczey Daily Telegraph )
[The series] sheds remarkable light on the literature, culture and politics of the region...anyone coming fresh to the field will be captivated by the richness, variety, humour and pathos of a classic literature that, through a shared historical experience, transcends national and linguistic boundaries. (Cj Schüler Independent on Sunday )
This [series] is a wonderful idea ... They are absurdist parables, by turns hilarious, unsettling and enigmatic. (Nicholas Lezard Guardian )
I urge you to go and read them. (Adam Thirlwell New Statesman )
This new series of Central European Classics is important well beyond simply providing 'good reads'. (Stephen Vizinczey Daily Telegraph )
Product Description
The Snows of Yesteryear (1989) is Gregor von Rezzori's haunting evocation of his childhood in Czernowitz, in present-day Ukraine. Growing up after the First World War, Rezzori portrays a twilit world suspended between the dying ways of an imperial past and the terrors of the twentieth century. He recalls his volatile, boar-hunting father, his earthy nursemaid, his fragile, aristocratic mother, his adored governess and the tragic death of his beloved sister, in a luminous story of war, unrest, eccentricity, folk tales, dark forests, night flights, and what it is like to lose your home.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a tour de force. The densely packed text tells of the influences on a life. The use of language and first person mental perambulation is spectacular and we are left on no doubt as to the writers ability to work and rework his own experiences until they creak with intense scrutiny and significance. The effects of the various members of the household on the writers understanding of the world are seen through a piercing intellect even early on in life.
And yet the book lacks a consistent honesty in that the stories told at the various ages of the writer do not always ring true. We are drowned in detail - detail that would not be available to a young boy, but which is intended to issue from his consciousness. It is hard to disentangle the self indulgence of the writer from the urge to inform an audience and for me, the book became difficult to pick up, rather than put down - the latter being the initial promise of this beautifully crafted personal wisdom.
And yet the book lacks a consistent honesty in that the stories told at the various ages of the writer do not always ring true. We are drowned in detail - detail that would not be available to a young boy, but which is intended to issue from his consciousness. It is hard to disentangle the self indulgence of the writer from the urge to inform an audience and for me, the book became difficult to pick up, rather than put down - the latter being the initial promise of this beautifully crafted personal wisdom.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
In brilliant, naturally flowing prose, Gregor von Rezzori brushes a sublime portrait of his parents, his sister, his nanny and a governess during the violent whirlwind of times, in which an age-old order was destroyed by war (the Double Monarchy).
Myth
The author grew up with the myth of that lost bygone `golden and miraculous' world of `property and learning', characterized by an unbridgeable gulf between the so-called educated classes and the so-called common people.
The author is still not capable to bridge this gap: `A species of man arose from that ghostly landscape of bomb craters and trenches whose bestiality was unconstrained. A free field was given to the Hitlers and Stalins.' He forgets to mention that the `landed aristocracy' itself was responsible for the outbreak of WW I and their own downfall.
Female archetypes, death
The author grew up among three archetype embodiments of the female: a nanny (`brood-warm, protectively enveloping motherliness'), his sister (`the airy, spiritual, nimbly evasive figure of the nymph') and his mother (`interplay of all arch female characteristics: sensual excitement, the fitful capriciousness of the potential mistress, vacillating between stormy tenderness and pretended indifference, between lovingly passionate empathy and cruelly punishing iciness.'
His nanny taught him the all important lesson that `we all have to die one day.' From then on, `I took up life as if it were but a succession of leave-takings in the course of a long journey.'
Parents
His mother's life was a long journey of disappointments. Her secretly entertained dream of becoming a pediatrician could not be realized by a girl of her class. After one too many waltzes during her first ball, she knew herself to have been cheated of life's happiness. All her life she had true obsessions and outbreaks of impotent rages. She kept all her energy for her son: `it was an amorous relationship, a love-affair.'
His father was `a solitary to the point of melancholia', `a leftover functionary of a liquidated empire.' His view of the world was that of `a medieval woodcut': the huntsmen and the others. Anything to do with soldiering was repugnant to him. Socially unacceptable were all those in trade, and totally despicable was anyone dealing in money.
With his sharply delineated psychological portraits, Gregor von Rezzori evocates the lost world of an enormous empire, dominated and ruled by the landed aristocracy.
It made this aristocracy (and his parents) `sleepwalkers in an alienated present', `members of a dying and largely already superannuated class.'
Not to be missed.
Myth
The author grew up with the myth of that lost bygone `golden and miraculous' world of `property and learning', characterized by an unbridgeable gulf between the so-called educated classes and the so-called common people.
The author is still not capable to bridge this gap: `A species of man arose from that ghostly landscape of bomb craters and trenches whose bestiality was unconstrained. A free field was given to the Hitlers and Stalins.' He forgets to mention that the `landed aristocracy' itself was responsible for the outbreak of WW I and their own downfall.
Female archetypes, death
The author grew up among three archetype embodiments of the female: a nanny (`brood-warm, protectively enveloping motherliness'), his sister (`the airy, spiritual, nimbly evasive figure of the nymph') and his mother (`interplay of all arch female characteristics: sensual excitement, the fitful capriciousness of the potential mistress, vacillating between stormy tenderness and pretended indifference, between lovingly passionate empathy and cruelly punishing iciness.'
His nanny taught him the all important lesson that `we all have to die one day.' From then on, `I took up life as if it were but a succession of leave-takings in the course of a long journey.'
Parents
His mother's life was a long journey of disappointments. Her secretly entertained dream of becoming a pediatrician could not be realized by a girl of her class. After one too many waltzes during her first ball, she knew herself to have been cheated of life's happiness. All her life she had true obsessions and outbreaks of impotent rages. She kept all her energy for her son: `it was an amorous relationship, a love-affair.'
His father was `a solitary to the point of melancholia', `a leftover functionary of a liquidated empire.' His view of the world was that of `a medieval woodcut': the huntsmen and the others. Anything to do with soldiering was repugnant to him. Socially unacceptable were all those in trade, and totally despicable was anyone dealing in money.
With his sharply delineated psychological portraits, Gregor von Rezzori evocates the lost world of an enormous empire, dominated and ruled by the landed aristocracy.
It made this aristocracy (and his parents) `sleepwalkers in an alienated present', `members of a dying and largely already superannuated class.'
Not to be missed.
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