{"id":4299,"date":"2021-04-05T07:32:09","date_gmt":"2021-04-05T07:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vocilibereurss.fupress.net\/la-scuola-degli-sciocchi\/"},"modified":"2021-12-30T17:20:02","modified_gmt":"2021-12-30T17:20:02","slug":"la-scuola-degli-sciocchi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vocilibereurss.fupress.net\/en\/la-scuola-degli-sciocchi\/","title":{"rendered":"A School for Fools (S. Sokolov)"},"content":{"rendered":"[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” overlay_strength=”0.3″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1\/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column_text]\n
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Source: Mss-117 Sokolov Collection, UCSB.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Title:
\n<\/em><\/strong>Shkola dlia durakov [A School for Fools]\n

Author:<\/strong><\/em> Sa\u0161a Sokolov (1943- )<\/p>\n

Years of editing:<\/strong> <\/em>1972-1973<\/p>\n

Year of first publication in Russian:<\/em> <\/strong>1976<\/p>\n

Publisher:<\/strong><\/em> Ardis<\/p>\n

Place of publication:<\/strong><\/em> Ann Arbor, Michigan<\/p>\n

Description:
\n<\/strong><\/em>A School for Fools<\/em> (Shkola dlia durakov<\/em>) 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<\/a>. Sokolov spent a year and a half in Bezborodovo (May 1972 \u2013 November 1973), during which time he completed his novel which he decided to sign using his diminutive name Sasha Sokolov.
\nThe author could hardly hope for A School for Fools<\/em> 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\u2019s 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 \u2013 first of all, the notion of linear time and the logic of cause and effect \u2013 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<\/em> circulation among his friends and acquaintances.
\nAfter 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.\u00a0 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<\/em> 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 \u2013 “oboiatel’naia, tragicheskaia i trogratel’neishaia kniga” (an enchanting, tragic, and touching book) \u2013 has accompanied A School for Fools<\/em> since then.
\nThe success of this young \u00e9migr\u00e9\u2019s first novel was confirmed by the positive reviews that immediately appeared in important Russian tamizdat<\/em> journals of the time (such as \u201cRusskaia mysl\u2019\u201d and \u201cPosev<\/a>\u201d, 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 \u2013 Mss 117) there is proof of the Italian publisher Mondadori<\/a>\u2019s 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 \u201cOgoniok\u201d in August 1988, with a foreword by Tat’iana Tolstaia, while the year after \u201cOktiabr\u2019\u201d printed the unabridged version, with an afterword by Andrei Bitov.<\/p>\n

Martina Napolitano
\n<\/em><\/strong>[30th<\/sup> June 2021]\n

 <\/p>\n

Russian editions<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n