Sisters of the Cross by Alexander Remizov translated by Roger Keys and Brian Murphy

 Sisters of the Cross

by Alexander Remizov translated by Roger Keys and Brian Murphy published by Columbia University Press is a book of shocking beauty! 

It will be because the atmosphere is suspended in a sort of diluited time, where patriotism, God, the Holy Russia, religion, superstitions, legends, existences,human miseries, will play a big role in a fusion with myth, reality, dreams.

The book is set in Petersburg and as a male protagonist we see Piotr Alekseevich Marakulin, who, once accused of having stolen a large amount of money was fired by the trading company where he was working with success with. Alone, unemployed, he lost soon all the rest. He finds a new home in the Burkov House a microcosm populated by the most different, diversified, accentric people that you can think at. 

There is a general, a barrister, a merchant of different stalls called Gorbachov, and a lot of adorant girls in love for him but he can't see the sight of children. Burkov House is a place where everything can happens 

In the house of Lebedeva there is a missing fur winter coat but no one guessed who the stealer was; maybe just the stove? Then there are Sheveliov and Khabarov: they appeared as two innocent students, while they were two thieves, and simply one day they discovered that the flat completely empty; anyway they were arrested...

A girl was brought in a hotel without to know that that one was a hotel, with the promise to receive a regular job while she was abused, and continued to be abused by everyone.

Adoniia Ivailovna dreams...She dreams of her land where she was born and the rivers she knew so well, the Onega, the Davina, the Pinega: she dreams of the heavy brocade of the old Russian costumes, whales and seas, fairy stories, epic tales, the midnight sun. 

Akumovna differently every day tells fortune to whoever asks her to do that, but her dreams are not so tranquil like the ones of Adoniia, no. She dreams of destructions, robbers, reptiles, whatever you can imagine of negative, she dreams it.

The best dream is flying...Flying away.

There are clowns and circus artists in this microcosm.

Vera, once for Christmas sang this heroic poetry "on the seven wild oxen and their mother" telling "how seven oxen with their golden horns were going along by the blue sea, how they swam across the blue sea to come out on the famous island of Buian." In that place they encountered the great oax, the mother. The young told her "How they had chanced to go past Kiev, past God's Church of the Resurrection." The young described the miracle seen there: a maiden came out of the church carrying a golden book on her head, how she waded up to her waist in the River Neva. This lady laid the book on a burning white rock reading the book and started to weeping.  The mother ox explained that the Maiden was Saint Mary reading the Gospel "and while she was reading she wept, hearing the misfortune befalling Kiev and the whole of Holy-Russia." 

In the while Marakulin started to make friendship with several girls...One day  he was put in jail for a short time. There he dreamed that someone told him that the only chance was to cut his head: that man would have done it. But, although headless, Marakulin could hear and feel whatever he wanted. Then he became a bee, patriotic views,  terrorized, because people could kill him, at the same time the lucidity to see in the future.

An amazing work this one, wonderfully translated from Russian, Remizov, dear writer, was an expatriate. He lived most of his existence in Paris. During his life hasn't had a lot of luck and only once dead and after 15 years he has been published in Russia. As all the Russians expatriates, to me there is this dream, hallucination, clearity, ecstasy of a fantastic land where they won't return anymore. Dostoevskij wrote in The Idiot that Russians when in other lands are like fantasy.

Highly recommended book. 

I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy.

Anna Maria Polidori