Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Content
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 “I Needed a Woman”
- Chapter 2 It Could Have Been Worse
- Chapter 3 “The Thug Copped It”
- Chapter 4 “This foul regime—a curse upon it!”
- Chapter 5 Travels from Language to Language
- Chapter 6 The Tongues
- Chapter 7 “All Potatoes Look Alike”
- Chapter 8 Religion
- Chapter 9 “Dinky Little Cunt” and the Young Communist League Secretary
- Chapter 10 Madonnas
- Chapter 11 The Sea of Youth
- Chapter 12 Never Out of Reach
- Chapter 13 Speaking Freely
- Chapter 14 Visiting Firemen
- Chapter 15 And the Word Was Made Flesh
- Chapter 16 Redemption (All Were Saved)
- Chapter 17 Betrayal
- Chapter 18 Light Beyond the Window
- Chapter 19 Early Farewell
- Chapter 20 Parents
- Chapter 21 Chicken Soup
- Chapter 22 Marina
- Chapter 23 The Spring of '71
- Chapter 24 Envoi
Chapter 17 - Betrayal
- Frontmatter
- Content
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 “I Needed a Woman”
- Chapter 2 It Could Have Been Worse
- Chapter 3 “The Thug Copped It”
- Chapter 4 “This foul regime—a curse upon it!”
- Chapter 5 Travels from Language to Language
- Chapter 6 The Tongues
- Chapter 7 “All Potatoes Look Alike”
- Chapter 8 Religion
- Chapter 9 “Dinky Little Cunt” and the Young Communist League Secretary
- Chapter 10 Madonnas
- Chapter 11 The Sea of Youth
- Chapter 12 Never Out of Reach
- Chapter 13 Speaking Freely
- Chapter 14 Visiting Firemen
- Chapter 15 And the Word Was Made Flesh
- Chapter 16 Redemption (All Were Saved)
- Chapter 17 Betrayal
- Chapter 18 Light Beyond the Window
- Chapter 19 Early Farewell
- Chapter 20 Parents
- Chapter 21 Chicken Soup
- Chapter 22 Marina
- Chapter 23 The Spring of '71
- Chapter 24 Envoi
Summary
Just as with the Literary Gazette, nothing concrete came of Yunost. Likewise a prestigious periodical—although a monthly magazine rather than a daily newspaper—it was addressed, as its name (Youth) suggested, to young people. So when I came into the waiting hall and saw about a half dozen men there looking like my grandfather, I assumed they were staff, editors and deputy editors, especially as some of them were speaking to one another in low tones. I was told by the secretary to wait there for the poetry editor. Then a youngish man, perhaps in his early thirties, walked in briskly from the street and asked: “All of you boys to see me? Who's first?”—“Let the lad go in! Let him be first!”—said two or three old men all at once, good–naturedly enough but also, I felt, tongue in cheek.
“Don't give me everything,” said the young fellow when I shoved more than half my oeuvre to date at him. “Choose three you think best.”
“You are not untalented,” he said after looking quickly at the three pieces. “But tell me this. Here you write about being betrayed by a friend. Have you ever been betrayed by a friend?”
“No I haven't,” I answered honestly.
“Well, when you are, you'll write about it differently,” he said. “Then come again with new poems.”
There was a postscript to this. Esther Vilensky, my distant relative in Moscow and a student in my department two years my senior, was friends with one of the poetry editor's deputies at Yunost, a young woman in her mid– to late twenties. She showed her my poems and the girl liked them. She was single, and she agreed to meet me—not in the offices in the morning but in town in the evening! This sounded more like a date than a business meeting and raised my hopes both for a publication and a romance. But, as usual, I was late for the date and missed her. She wouldn't agree to give me another chance, no matter how much I begged Esther to intercede on my behalf.
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- Information
- Never Out of ReachGrowing up in Tallinn, Riga, and Moscow, pp. 147 - 156Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2015