A Change of Language

Abstract

The idea for this article arose out of a practical need to make sense of my own experience. The publishing house Raduga asked me to prepare a new version of my book The Prose of Iurii Trifonov [Proza Iuriia Trifonova] for a substantially abridged English translation. And thus it was that in 1989, after cutting the text, I undertook to make certain concepts clearer so that the book would be more accessible to those who are not as immersed in this country's literature as we are. As I carefully reread the text I had written in 1981 and 1982 with a slightly detached, "fresh" eye, I discovered that much of it was expressed in a cryptic manner. In the "era of stagnation" the principle of a code was sapienti sat, i.e., "a word to the wise is sufficient." It was as though an unwritten agreement had been made between me and my readers: in order to express one's ideas and avoid restrictions on the part of the censors, it was necessary to develop one's own language, one's own system of signs. This was the path I con...