BOOKS
487
anthropological reconstruction (the Nazi-Stalinist chimera of the "new
man"). After their romance with Marxism, they acquired the awareness
that the world is not a laboratory for social engineering and that ignorance
of this elemental truth is the premise for countless disasters. Their voices
often sound depressing, but this is not their fault. When one has had to
live for so long in the company of the devil, it is hard to maintain an an–
gelic silence.
VLADIMIR n5MANEANU
The
Way They Lived
THE TATTERED CLOAK AND OTHER NOVELS. By Nina
Berberova.
Alfred A. Knopf. $21.00.
LOVE
AND GARBAGE. By Ivan Klima.
Alfred A. Knopf. $20.00.
A
FEAST IN THE GARDEN. By George Konrad.
Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich. $23.95.
THE
MIRACLE GAME. By JosefSkvorecky.
Alfred A. Knopf. $22.95.
Why was it that horror, cruelty, and affiiction made themselves felt so
easily, became concrete and weighed all the more heavily, whereas
everything sublime, gentle, unexpected, and full of charm cast a frail
shadow across the heart and thoughts, so one couldn't touch it or look
at it closely or feel its shape and weight?
Such is the question a woman asks in the first of Nina Berberova's six
novellas, "The Resurrection of Mozart." Like a keystone in the archway
leading to this century's sorrow, it's a question that could be asked by any
of these writers, for all of the novels under review here concern them–
selves with the long history of suffering and repression prior to
1989
that
has been the trademark of East European and Russian letters.
On the other hand, what happens when atrocity is replaced by con–
fusion? What is the effect on literature's role when moral outrage is sup–
plemented by political chaos or ennui? How does a writer continue to
document the sorrows of the past in order to preserve their human mem–
ory,
amid both the freedom and political struggles of the present? In the
last couple of years this has certainly been a growing question for East
European writers and intellectuals, and though most of the later work re-
