“He always has the good face of one who is at peace with his own conscience.”
Street stalls where used books are sold should always be blessed. Small sarcophagi of knowing where, if you have the passion to search like modern archaeologists, you will discover unique treasures, capable of making our eyes shine, and broaden our horizon of knowledge. So it was for us with this book and, in particular, for the edition we found.
Two stories, apparently divided between them, but linked by the perfect representation of the intrinsic incongruities of the logic-non-logic on which the USSR was based. A world that would have been unknown if brave authors, such as Solzhenitsyn, had not set their pen and narrative talent in motion.
Distant pages of history, which returned to be cyclically current, to be read to appreciate the boring everyday life of our lives, against those forced to live in times or places where living in a country at war is normal.
The first story, eponymous with the title of the book, has one of the most beautiful endings we’ve ever read in recent years. Matrjona is a good and honest woman, considered foolish by her friends for her lack of malice, and who exploit her goodness of heart. We have read more than twice the sublime description of a funeral dinner, where Russian tradition is mixed with the traditional meanness of mankind.
“At Kocetovka Station” she bares the clay feet of that giant that was the Soviet Union. When bureaucracy takes the place of common sense, and even wanting to act for the common good becomes an impossible mission. Superstructures of stamped paper to which having to justify every breath, losing sight of the larger picture.
Boys who became men in the turn of a night, with the horror of war in the background, in which every small choice, even the most apparently insignificant, can mean the difference between life and death for thousands of people.
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Matryona’s Place , Matryona’s Place, Einaudi, Torino, 1970
Original edition: Матрёнин двор, Москва, 1963
