A School for Fools (S. Sokolov)

Source: Mss-117 Sokolov Collection, UCSB.

Title:
Shkola dlia durakov [A School for Fools]

Author: Saša Sokolov (1943- )

Years of editing: 1972-1973

Year of first publication in Russian: 1976

Publisher: Ardis

Place of publication: Ann Arbor, Michigan

Description:
A School for Fools (Shkola dlia durakov) is the first novel by Aleksandr Sokolov. The book was an international success and guaranteed its author access to the vibrant milieu of Russian literary circles of the second half of 20th century. Sokolov worked on this novel in the early 1970s in the countryside of the neighbourhoods of Tver’, by the Volga river, where he had found work as a gamekeeper on the hunting estate of Bezborodovo. The young Sokolov had fled Moscow’s public life and social engagements already displaying his lifelong resistance to becoming associated with poetic groups, such as SMOG. Sokolov spent a year and a half in Bezborodovo (May 1972 – November 1973), during which time he completed his novel which he decided to sign using his diminutive name Sasha Sokolov.
The author could hardly hope for A School for Fools to be published officially in the USSR. The book was devoid of any direct political, ideological or social criticism but objection would have been raised by its form, which was modernist or indeed pre-postmodernist (as argued by Mark Lipovetskii, Irina Skoropanova, Viacheslav Kuritsyn in their companions to Russian literature). The student protagonist of the novel is a young hero with a dual personality who engages in a continuous monologue/dialogue with his other Self. Avoiding direct comments on everyday Soviet life, which merely serves as a background, the boy’s perspective on his world is personal and subjective, creating an effect which makes reality strange and unfamiliar. The narrator dismantles the apparent logic of reality – first of all, the notion of linear time and the logic of cause and effect – and offers a different, “absurd” perspective on the world which is “real”, at least to him. The writer did not even try to publish the novel officially in the USSR. In the first months it had a limited samizdat circulation among his friends and acquaintances.
After a long and gruelling process and thanks to the help of Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, Sokolov managed to obtain an official permit to leave the country.  By the time he arrived in Vienna (October 8th 1975), a manuscript of the novel was already in the hands of the Ardis publishers, Carl and Ellendea Proffer, in Ann Arbor (Michigan). A School for Fools had reached the United States thanks to Johanna Steindl, a young Austrian teacher of German who Sokolov had met in Moscow and who later became his second wife: Steindl took the novel to Vienna and then mailed it to Ardis. As Ellendea Proffer affirmed in an interview, the manuscript somehow arrived through Alexandria, Egypt, and the copy was in very poor condition, the print so faded in quality that it was hard to read. Maria (Masha) Slonim, who at the time worked at the publishing house read the manuscript and found it praiseworthy. Even Vladimir Nabokov, uncharacteristically, celebrated the talent of the unknown writer and his description of the novel as – “oboiatel’naia, tragicheskaia i trogratel’neishaia kniga” (an enchanting, tragic, and touching book) – has accompanied A School for Fools since then.
The success of this young émigré’s first novel was confirmed by the positive reviews that immediately appeared in important Russian tamizdat journals of the time (such as “Russkaia mysl’” and “Posev”, respectively in Paris and Frankfurt am Main), as well as by the many different translations published – in those years, English (1976), German (1977) and Dutch (1978). In the 1980s and 1990s the novel was also translated into Polish, Swedish, Serbian, French, Portuguese, Danish, Spanish. In the archive preserved at UCSB (Sasha Sokolov Collection – Mss 117) there is proof of the Italian publisher Mondadori’s willingness to buy royalties (April 1976); however, the negotiations were unsuccessful, and an Italian version of the novel was only published by Salani in 2007 (translated by Margherita Crepax). In the USSR the first excerpt from the book was officially published by the magazine “Ogoniok” in August 1988, with a foreword by Tat’iana Tolstaia, while the year after “Oktiabr’” printed the unabridged version, with an afterword by Andrei Bitov.

Martina Napolitano
[30^th June 2021]

Russian editions

• Sokolov S., Rasskazy, napysannye na verande, “Russkaia zhizn’” (20/02/1976): 3; (21/02/1976): 3 [excerpt].
• Sokolov S., Shkola dlia durakov, Ann Arbor, Ardis 1976.
• Sokolov S., Shkola dlia durakov, “Ogoniok” 33 (1988): 20-23 [excerpt, with a foreword by Tat’iana Tolstaia].
• Sokolov S., Teper’, “Sel’skaia molodezh’” 3 (1989): 32-37 [excerpt].
• Sokolov S., Shkola dlia durakov, “Oktiabr’” 3 (1989): 75-156 [with an afterword by Andrei Bitov].
• Sokolov S., Shkola dlia durakov, in Id., Sobranie sochinenii v 2-kh tt., Simpozium, Sankt-Peterburg 1999, t. 1.
• Sokolov S., Shkola dlia durakov, OGI, Moskva 2013 [with illustrations by Galia Popova; 2nd edition in 2016].
• Sokolov S., Shkola dlia durakov, Mezhdu sobakoi i volkom, Palisandriia, Triptikh, Esse, Azbuka, Sankt-Peterburg 2021.

Translations

• Sokolov S., Nymphea, translated by Carl Proffer, in C. Proffer, E. Proffer (eds.), The Ardis Anthology of Recent Russian Literature, Ardis, Ann Arbor 1975: 391-420 [excerpt].
• Sokolov S., Savl, translated by Carl Proffer, “Chicago Review” XXVIII.1 (1976): 4-28 [excerpt].
• Sokolov S., A School for Fools, translated by Carl Proffer, Ardis, Ann Arbor 1977.
• Sokolov S., Die Schule der Dummen, übersetzt von Wolfgang Kasack, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt 1977.
• Sokolov S., School voor gekken, vertaling van Gerard Cruys, Bezige Bij, Amsterdam 1978.
• Sokolov S., Szkoła dla Głupków, przeł. Aleksander Bogusławski, Kontra, Londyn 1984.
• Sokolov S., Skola for dårar, till svenska av Annika Bäckström, AWE/Gebers, Stockholm 1984.
• Sokolov S., From “A School for Fools”, translated by Carl Proffer, in C. Brown (ed.), The Portable 20th Century Russian Reader, Viking Press, New York 1985: 586-595 [excerpt].
• Sokolov S., Škola za ludake, prevod Radmila Mečanin, Biblioteka Albatros – Filip Višnjić, Beograd 1988.
• Sokolov S., L’ecole des idiots, trad. du russe par Françoise Monat, Edition Zoé, Genève 1991.
• Sokolov S., Escola para bobos, tradução do russo por Konstantin Asryantz e Svetlana Kardash, Ars Poetica, Sao Paulo 1993.
• Sokolov S., Dåreskolen, oversat af Jan Hansen, Munksgaard-Rosinante, Copenhagen 1994.
• Sokolov S., Escuela para idiotas, trad. de Margarita Estapé, Circulo de lectores, Barcelona 1994.
• Sokolov S., Lollide kool, tõlkinud Rein Saluri, Eesti raamat, Tallinn 2005.
• Sokolov S., La scuola degli sciocchi, trad. di Margherita Crepax, Salani, Milano 2007.
• Sokolov S., A School for Fools, translated by Alexander Boguslawski, New York Review Books, New York 2015.

Bibliography

• VV., “Canadian-American Slavic Studies”, XXI.3-4 (1987) [monographic issue on Sokolov’s oeuvre].
• VV., “Canadian-American Slavic Studies”, XL.2-4 (2006) [monographic issue on Sokolov’s oeuvre].
• Boguslawski A., Translator’s Note; Notes, in S. Sokolov, A School for Fools, translated by A. Boguslawski, New York Review Books, New York 2015: VII-IX; 179-191.
• Caramitti M., Strategie autofinzionali in Sinjavskij, Sokolov e Venedikt Erofeev, tesi di dottorato, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, 2001.
• Freedman J., Memory, Imagination and the Liberating Force of Literature in Sasha Sokolov’s A School for Fools, “Canadian-American Slavic Studies” XXI.3-4 (1987): 265-278.
• Ingold F., Škola dlja durakov. Versuch über Saša Sokolov, “Wiener Slawistischer Almanach” 3 (1979): 93-124.
• Johnson D.B., A Structural Analysis of Sasha Sokolov’s School for Fools: A Paradigmatic Novel, in H. Birnbaum, T. Eekman (eds.), Fiction and Drama in Eastern and Southeastern Europe: Evolution and Experiment in the Postwar Period, Slavica, Columbus 1980: 207-237.
• Johnson D.B., Sasha Sokolov: A Literary Biography, “Canadian-American Slavic Studies” XXI.3-4 (1987): 203-230.
• Kravchenko E., The Prose of Sasha Sokolov: Reflection on/of the Real, The Modern Humanities Research Association, London 2013.
• Lipovetskii M., Mifologiia metamorfoz: Poetika Shkoly dlia durakov Sashi Sokolova, “Oktiabr’” 7 (1995): 183-192.
• Marchesini I., Il personaggio scontornato in Škola dlja durakov. Dal romanzo di Saša Sokolov agli adattamenti teatrali, “Between” II.4 (2012): 1-19.
• Matich O., Sasha Sokolov and His Literary Context, “Canadian-American Slavic Studies” XXI.3-4 (1987): 301-319.
• Suslov A., Te, kto prishli, “Posev”, 5 (1977): 59-60.
• Vail’ P., Genis A., Uroki Shkoly dlia durakov: O romane Sashi Sokolova, “Literaturnoe obozrenie”, 1 (1993): 13-16.
• Vavulina A., Sasha Sokolov: Osobennosti khronotopa v Shkole dlia durakov, “Canadian-American Slavic Studies”, XL.2-4 (2006): 251-278.
• Witte G., Text als Spiel – Saša Sokolovs Škola dlja durakov, in Id., Appell – Spiel – Ritual. Textpraktiken in der russischen Literatur der sechziger bis achtziger Jahre, Harassowitz, Wiesbaden 1989: 93-144.