Voice from the Choir

Abraham Terz is the literary pseudonym of Andrei Donatovich Sinyavsky (1925–1997), a philologist and prose writer, a member of the Institute of Literary Studies in Moscow and a professor at the Sorbonne in Paris, the author of the books “Walks with Pushkin,” “In the Shadow of Gogol,” “Ivan the Fool,” the story “Lyubimov,” and the novel “Good Night.” The book “Voice from the Choir” is composed of observations, thoughts, and scenes recorded by Sinyavsky in Mordovian camps, where he spent over five years. Reflections on Pushkin, Shakespeare, and Akhmatova, on faith, culture, and nature, are naturally combined with the “masterpieces” of camp folklore and portraits of local characters. The author’s voice is interspersed with the Choir — the multi-voiced noise of the camp. Art is a meeting place. The author with the object of love, spirit with matter, truth with fantasy, the pencil line with the contour of the body, one word with another, and so on. Meetings are rare, unexpected. From joy and surprise: "you? — you?" — both sides come into frenzy and wave their hands. Abraham Terz, pushing a wheelbarrow with sawdust or walking with a crowd of prisoners around the zone, thought about what he had always thought of when he was a well-known literary scholar. The images of the lightest glides of Pushkin's verse, the love game-creativity of a young poet — fluttering ladies' feet, corsets with their powdered contents — arose among torn overcoats and the rough turns of camp speech. Igor Golomstock