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The Time: Night
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Wikipedia article
'The Time: Night' is a novella by Russian author Lyudmila Petrushevskaya. It was originally published in Russian in the literary journal 'Novy Mir' in 1992 and translated into English by Sally Laird in 1994. In 1992 it was shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize.
Plot Summary
'The Time: Night' follows the struggles of the matriarchal Anna Andrianovna as she holds together an emotionally unstable and financially decrepit family in early post soviet Russia. Writing in first-person, Petrushevskaya presents the novella as a manuscript Anna's family finds after her death, and into which she poured the frustration and sheer power of her parenthood. Anna's struggles throughout to reconcile her intense love for her family with their parasitic lifestyles. The opening pages introduce Anna's daughter, Alyona, through a brief stolen segment of her diary, unveiling her chronic promiscuity and destructive incompetence. Alyona's rambunctious toddler, Tima, for whom Anna shows riveting affection aion, accompanies his grandmother during his mother's escapades. Anna's ex-convict son Andrei makes intermittent appearances at her communal apartment, looking for food and booze money. As the manuscript progresses, Petrushevskaya reveals the pitiful and terminal condition of Anna's mother in a mental hospital, and another illegitimate child of Alyona's. The narrative concludes with Alyona fleeing from the apartment with her children in the night.
Characters
;Anna Andrianovna: Unsuccessful poet and narrator of the novella. Clinging to the Russian literary tradition of the self-sacrificing matriarch or babushka,Doak, Connor. "Babushka Writes Back: Grandmothers and Grandchildren in Liudmila Petrushevskaia's Time: Night." 'Forum For Modern Language Studies' 47.2 (2011): 171. Web. Anna views her life as a grand epic. Her self-centered delusions strain her relationship with her family, especially her daughter, Alyona.
;Alyona: Anna's daughter. With multiple children by multiple fathers, she is derided by her mother for her every action. However, this very criticism belies just how similar Alyona and Anna truly are.Olga Slavnikova, "Petrushevskaia and Emptiness." 'Russian Studies in Literature' 37.2 (2001):64.
;Andrei: Anna's son. A troublemaker who often uses Anna for shelter and money.
;Tima: Alyona's young son. Throughout most of the novella, is cared for by Anna, who dotes on him in an alarming and at times sexual manner.Goscilo, Helen. "Mother as Mothra: Totalizing Narrative and Nurture in Petrushevskaia." 'A Plot of Her Own: The Female Protagonist in Russian Literature.' Ed. Sona S. Hoisington. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1995, 111. Print.
;Sima: Anna's mother. Lives in a state home, but flashbacks highlight her uneasy relationship with her daughter.
Major Themes
'Story Telling-'The protagonist, Anna Andrianovna, takes great pride in identifying herself as a storyteller and poet. Anna presents her tale as the story of her daughter, Alyona, and to some extent her son and grandchildren. She even sometimes goes so far as to write in her own version of Alyona's voice. Though she presents her tale as the story of her children's lives, as the novel progresses, it becomes apparent that the story is not about Anna's children, but about Anna herself and the way she relates them.
'Motherhood-' Three generations of motherhood are present in the novel. The relationship most thoroughly explored is the one between Anna and her daughter Alyona. This relationship as depicted by Anna seems tumultuous and fraught with drama. However, as the novel progresses, the reader sees that Anna's portrayal of her relationship with her daughter is accurate only in so far as it is a reflection of her relationship with her own mother. The novel ends on a redemptive note in which Anna shows that she is willing to forfeit everything- perhaps even her sanity- for her aging mother, and Alyona finds the strength to break away from the domineering Anna in order to be a better mother to her own children.Johnson, Maya. "Women and Children First: Domestic Chaos and the Maternal Bond in the Drama of Liudmila Petrushevskaia," Canadian Slavonic Papers, Vol. 34, No. 1/2 (March/June 1992), pp. 97-112.
'Gender/ Sexuality-' All of the major characters in the novel are female. The male characters that do exist are often portrayed as untrustworthy, or are using the female characters for money, sex, or some other object. Additionally, both Anna and Alyona are unrelentingly chastised by their mothers for their choices in partners. This creates a tension between the male and female characters, and often drives the male characters from the apartment, the main space of the novel.
'Unreliability of the Narrative-' From very early in the novel, Anna's grandiose voice leads the reader to question the way she presents her reality. Later, as she recounts her interactions with minor characters by whom she has been duped, it becomes clear that Anna's interpretation of events is not entirely trustworthy. In addition to feeling this distrust, the reader is further alienated and begins to outright dislike Anna when she harshly criticizes Alyona's diary, and even goes so far as to write in Alyona's voice. However, because Anna is not fully emotionally present, especially with regards to her relationship with her daughter, the reader is forced to supply the emotions that Anna cannot bring to her narrative, therefore making the experience of reading the novel all the more powerful.
'Space-' Many scenes from the novel take place within Anna and her family's dwelling. The chaotic voice of the narrative is reflected in the chaotic way in which the space (in addition to other symbols of familial community, such as food) is shared.Woll, Josephine. "The Minotaur in the Maze: Remarks on Lyudmila Petrushevskaya," World Literature Today 67.1 (Winter 1993): 125-130. Print.
'Time-' The novel is not chronological, but rather a series of anecdotes told by Anna. For example, stories of Alyona as a child, teenager, and mother are intermixed and often told without time markers. This makes it difficult for the reader to follow the action of the story or the plot, and adds to the growing sense of disorder as the novel progresses.Keeling, Tatiana V., and Arizona State University. "Chapter 3." Surviving in Post-Soviet Russia: Magical Realism in the Works of Viktor Pelevin, Ludmila Petrushevskaya, and Ludmila Ulitskaya. ProQuest, 2008. 121-77. Print.
Literary Significance
Originally published in the dissident journal 'Novy Mir', 'The Time: Night' entered the scene on the border between mainstream and dissident literature just after the demise of the Soviet Union. Critics have acclaimed it as both Petrushevskaya's strongest work and the standard mold for her distinctive voice.Dalton-Brown, Sally. 'Voices from the Void: The Genres of Liudmila Petrushevskaia.' New York: Berghahn, 2000, 64. 'The Time: Night' does typify Petrushevskaya's dark sense of humor and candid portrayal of gritty urban life in post-Soviet Moscow; "unforgiving verbal authenticity" is a defining quality of all Petrushevskaya's work.Ziolkowski, Margaret. Rev. of 'The Time: Night', by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya. 'World Literature Today' 69.2 (Spring 1995): 394. Print. Petrushevskaya's narrative style being "fueled by rumor, gossip, and polemic," her work suffered harsh criticism during Perestroika, when cynicism began to lose its appeal among the literary elite.Sutcliffe, Benjamin M. 'The Prose of Life: Russian Women Writers From Khrushchev to Putin'. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999 Similarly, the author's evenhanded portrayal of physiology in 'The Time: Night' starkly contrasted traditional treatment of the issue in the early 1990s. Helen Goscilo frames Petrushevskaya's "presumably unmotivated frankness" concerning the body as a break from a "feminine" mode of expression particular to only a few modern Russian women writers.Goscilo, Helen. "Speaking Bodies: Erotic Zones Rhetoricized." 'Fruits of Her Plume: Essays on Contemporary Russian Women's Culture'. Ed. Helena Goscilo. London: M.E. Sharpe, 1993. 135-164. Print. Petrushevskaya's 'chef d'oeuvre' has since earned a reputation as a pillar of New Women's Prose, a genre of "bracing irreverence" and "complete lack of 'ladylike' squeamishness."Goscilo, Helen. "Perestroika and Post-Soviet Prose: From Dazzle to Dispersal." 'A History of Women's Writing in Russia.' Ed. Adele Marie Barker and Jehanne M. Gheith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 297-311. Print. Notably, however, Petrushevskaya does not take a particularly militant feminist stance, given the groundbreaking implications of 'The Time: Night'. When prompted by an editor (before the publication of the novella) as to whether she sided with men or women, Petrushevskaya responded with "I'm on the side of the children.".Zonina, M. Interview with Lyudmila Petrushevskaya. "Bessmertnaia liubov'," 'Literatunraia gazeta' 23 (November 1983): 6. Though her characters complain bitterly of Soviet and post-Soviet women's conditions, Petrushevskaya, nor New Women's Prose as a genre sprung from her work, minimizes "women's collusion in their own victimization."Smith, Melissa T. "Waiting in the Wings: Russian Women Playwrights in the Twentieth Century." 'Women Writers in Russian Literature'. Ed. Toby W. Clyman and Diana Greene. London: Greenwood Press, 1994. 189-203. Print. It might be concluded, then, that while Petrushevskaya introduced a blunt portrayal of contemporary Russian women's life in 'The Time: Night', her frankness is less a political tool than an empathetic gesture, though it took scholars years to identify that purpose.
Explanation of Title
In the beginning of the novel, 'The Time: Night', sometimes translated simply as 'Night Time,' signifies the time of silence while Anna is surrounded by her sleeping family. By the end of the novel, however, the title comes to symbolize the loneliness and alienation Anna experiences at night after her family, no longer able to stand her forceful presence, leaves her.Dalton-Brown, Sally. 'Voices from the Void: The Genres of Liudmila Petrushevskaia.' New York: Berghahn Books, 2000, 65.
Development history
There is some conjecture that the inspiration for the relationships and feelings presented in 'The Time: Night' came from Petrushevskaya's childhood experience living with her family in Kuybyshev. When Petrushevskaya was five, her mother returned to Moscow while she remained in Kuybyshev with other family members to suffer the hardships of poverty and famine.Aiken, Susan Hardy. Dialogues. Duke University Press, 1994. Print.
Publication history
Originally published in Russian in 'Novy Mir', No. 2, 1992. Copyright 1992 by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya. First published in English in 1994 by Pantheon Books, New York, and Virago Press Limited, London. English translation copyright 1994 by Sally Laird. Reprinted 2000 by arrangement with Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
English Editions:
1994, United States of America, Pantheon Books, , Pub Date 23 August 1994
1994, United Kingdom, Virago Press, Limited, , Pub Date 1994
2000, United States of America, Northwestern University Press, , Pub Date 11 October 2000
Adaptations
No notable efforts have yet been made toward a film adaptation of 'The Time: Night'. However, Petrushevskaya scholar Helena Goscilo has noted a thematic similarity between Petrushevskaya's work and the films of Russian director Kira Muratova.Goscilo, "Perestroika and Post-Soviet Prose: From Dazzle to Dispersal," 302
References
Further reading
Parts, Lyudmila. "Down the Intertextual Lane: Petrushevskaia, Chekhov, Tolstoy," Russian Review, Vol. 64, No. 1 (Jan., 2005), 7789. Print.
Vladiv-Glover, Slobodanka. "The New Mode of Discourse in Post-Soviet Russian Fiction: Liudmila Petrushevskaia and Tatiana Tolstaia." Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture. Berghahn, 1999. 22798, 492. Print.
Cornwell, Neil. The Routledge Companion to Russian Literature. Psychology Press, 2001. Print.
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