Matryona's Place
Matryona's Place, ("Матрёнин двор"), sometimes translated as Matryona's Home (or House), is a novella written in 1959 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. First published by Aleksandr Tvardovsky in the Russian literary journal Novy Mir in 1963, it is Solzhenitsyn's most read short story.[1]
The narrator, a former prisoner of the gulag and a teacher of mathematics,[2] has a longing to return to live in the Russian provinces and takes a job at a school on a collective farm. Matryona offers him a place to live in her tiny, run-down home, but he is told not to expect any "fancy cooking".[3] They share a single room where they eat and sleep; the narrator sleeps on a camp-bed and Matryona near the stove. The narrator finds the farm workers' lives little different from those of the pre-revolutionary landlords and their serfs. Matryona works on the farm for little or no pay. She is forced to give a small annex of her home to a relative who wants to use the wood from it to build a house elsewhere in the village. A group of drunken farmers, with a tractor borrowed without permission, decide to move the wood at night. Matryona, typically, offers to help. During the chaos that follows she is killed by a train. Her character has been described as "the only true Christian (and) the only true Communist" and her death symbolic of Russia's martyrdom.[4]
Set in 1956, five years after the events portrayed in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,[5] the novella is considered to be one of the author's finest literary achievements.[1] It is accessible to non-native speakers who have learnt Russian to an intermediate level.[6]
References
- Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ As was Solzhenitsyn at the time: Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Matryona's House p. 14
- ↑ Jackson R.L., "Matryona's Home: The Making of a Russian Icon", in Feuer K. "Solzhenitisyn A collection of critical essays" p. 69
- ↑ Moody p. 39
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Bibliography
- Björkegren, Hans, and Kaarina Eneberg Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: A Biography, Henley-on-Thames: Aiden Ellis, 1973. ISBN 0-85628-005-4
- Feuer, Kathryn (ed.), Solzhenitsyn: A Collection of Critical Essays, 1976, Prentice-Hall, ISBN 013822627X
- Moody, Christopher. Solzhenitsyn. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1973. ISBN 0-05-002600-3
- Scammell, Michael Solzhenitsyn: A Biography. London: Paladin, 1986. ISBN 0-586-08538-6
- Solzhentsyn A. Matryona's House, translated by Michael Glenny, The Bodley Head, 1970, ISBN 0-370-01451-0
- Solzhentsyn A. We Never Make Mistakes, translated by Paul Blackstock, Sphere Book, 1972, ISBN 0-7221-8028-4 Includes translations of An Incident at Krechetovka Station and Matryona's House
