Grani

Cover n. 100, 1976. Source: “Vtoraia Literatura”.

Title of the journal:
“Grani”

Dates: 1946 – ongoing

Places of publication: Mönchehof (1946, the first three issues), Limburg (1947-1951), Frankfurt am Mein (1951-1991); Moscow 1991-today

Editors: Evgenii Romanov (pseudonym of Ostrovskii), Sergei Maksimov (pseudonym of Pashin), Boris Serafimov, Evgenii Romanov, Leonid Rzhevskii, Evgenii Romanov, N.V. Tarasova (1962-1982), Roman Redlikh, Nikolai Rutych, Georgii Vladimov, Ekaterina Samsonova-Breitbart, Tat’iana Zhilkina

Description:
“Grani” was founded by Evgenii Romanov (pseudonym of Ostrovskii) in 1946 in Monchehof (near Kassel, Germany) in a political refugee camp (where the first three issues were printed). The journal was published by the Posev publishing house on a quarterly basis, although from 1947 regular publication times were disrupted due to the dismantlement of the Monchehof camp. Over the years “Grani” had several subtitles: “Zhurnal literatury, iskusstva i obschestvennoi mysli” (Literature, art, and social theory journal, 1946-1949), “Zhurnal literatury, iskusstva nauki i obshchestvennoi mysli” (Literature, art, science and social thinking journal, 1949-1955),  “Zhurnal literatury, iskusstva, nauki i obschestvenno-politicheskoi mysli” (Literature, art, science, and social thinking, from n. 26 of 1955) and ultimately “Russkii literaturnyi zhurnal” (Russian literary journal, from 1991).
The layout of “Grani” was organised in columns: Proza i stikhi (Prose writing and poetry); Ocherki zarubezh’ia (Essays about emigration), Dokumental’naia proza (Documentary prose writing), Kritika i publitsistika (Criticism and journalism), Knizhnoe obozrenie (Book observatory).  It published authors who were excluded from the official press such as Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandel’shtam, Andrei Platanov, Mikhail Bulgakov, Ivan Bunin, Nikolai Zabolotskii, Boris Zaitsev, Evgenii Zamiatin, Aleksandr Solzhenytsin, Iurii Terapiano, Marina Tsvetaeva, Valerii Tarsis, Aleksei Remizov, Vladimir Voinovich, Aleksandr Galich, and Evgenii Evtushenko. Considerable space was dedicated to Iurii Dombrovskii, a writer of the Gulag experience, whose poems were published in “Grani” in 1972 and 1980; I. Shenfeld honoured him with the article Krugi zhizni i tvorchestva Iuriia Dombrovskogo (Turns in the life and work of Iurii Dombrovskii, Shenfel’d 1979) in issues 111-112 in 1979.
During the period of migration, about 3.000 copies of “Grani” were printed; in 1992 the print-run was about 10.000 copies, settling at around 3,000 copies in 1993. In 1996 Posev ceased publishing the journal and editorship was transferred to Tat’iana Zhilkina. In n.58 of 1965, “Grani” released three issues of the samizdat journal “Sintaksis” edited by Aleksandr Ginzburg.
In 1980 “Grani” organized a round-table conference in New York on the MetrOpol’ case, to which emigrant authors such as Iu. Aleshkovskii, D. Bobyshev, N. Koravin, and literary critic Ekaterina Breibart-Samsonova were invited. Except for Aleshkovskii, all were opposed to the release of the almanac, questioning its literary value and claiming that the project was almost exclusively motivated by political objectives (cf. Zalambani 2009).

Giuseppina Larocca
[30th June 2021]

Translation by Diletta Bacci

Bibliography

• Breitbart E., Sapov V., Grani, in A. Nikoliukin (ed.), Literaturnaia Ėnciklopediia russkogo zarubež’ia: 1918-1940, ROSSPĖN, t. 2, Periodika i literaturnye tsentry, Moskva 2000: 532-534.
• Guagnelli S., “Grani”, http://www.maldura.unipd.it/samizdat/tamizdat/russia/riviste/grani.htm, online (last accessed: 30/06/2021).
• Shenfel’d I., Krugi zhizni i tvorchestva Iuriia Dombrovskogo, “Grani”, 111-112 (1979): 351-377, https://vtoraya-literatura.com/pdf/grani_111-112_1979_text.pdf, online (last accessed: 30/06/2021).
• Zalambani M., Il caso Metropol’. Stenogramma della riunione allargata della segreteria dell’Unione degli Scrittori di Mosca del 22 gennaio 1979 (dall’archivio privato di Evgenij Popov), “Russica Romana”, XI (2004): 223-252.