Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924–) [EN, DE, CZ, FR, ES, YU, SK, RU, CR, TR, GR]

“Shortly after the nascent Soviet government consolidated its power and launched a program of rapid industrialization, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel We (written 1920-21) scandalously questioned the validity of techno-scientific instrumentality, a central principle of societal transformation in Soviet Russia. The first major work of fiction to be censored by the new regime, the novel was smuggled to the West, translated into English, and became an ur-text of twentieth-century science fiction, in particular standing, alongside Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984, as progenitor of a new anti-utopian subgenre warning of the mass cultural homogenization of humanity in the name of progress. Set in a future totalitarian OneState, the novel records the internal conflict and gradual self-awakening of the initially robotlike rocket engineer D-503, torn between his faith in state orthodoxy and yearning for perfect order, on the one hand, and, on the other, his growing awareness of his own disorderly, irrepressible, idiosyncratic subjectivity. The catalyst of this subversive development is the act of writing—paradoxical insofar as this act functions, in the totalitarian system envisioned by the novel, as one of the instruments of the state’s all-pervasive control. […]

Zamyatin’s anti-utopian novel establishes a counterpoint to the purely instrumental technologies conceived by technophiles and tech-nophobes alike insofar as the author consistently deprives technology of its defining characteristic in Industrial Age culture, namely, its functionality. In its place, We imbues technology with various human traits, transforming machines into great vehicles for reflection. As opposed to the aspirations of Soviet ‘new men’ to become machines, Zamyatin’s text features ‘reflexive technologies’ in which pure instrumentality is marred by human idiosyncrasies. In this effort to aesthetically reassess technological potential, to view technology as a medium for contemplation rather than societal change, Zamyatin’s We takes its place within a canon of artistic works that responded to technological advancement with an urge not to exploit but to explore.” (from an essay by Julia Vaingurt, 2012)

The first unabridged Russian edition was published by Chekhov Publishing House in New York, 1952.

English edition
Translated and with a Foreword by Gregory Zilboorg
Introduction by Peter Rudy
Preface by Marc Slonim
Publisher E. P. Dutton, New York, 1924
Reprint, 1952
SBN 0525470395
218 pages

Wikipedia (EN)

We (English, trans. Gregory Zilboorg, 1924/1952)
Wir (German, trans. Gisela Drohla, 1958, EPUB)
My (Czech, trans. Vlasta and Jaroslav Tafels, 6th ed., 1969/2006)
Nous autres (French, trans. B. Cauvet-Duhamel, 1971)
We (English, trans. Mirra Ginsburg, 1972, 21 MB, no OCR)
Nosotros (Spanish, trans. Juan Benusiglio, 1972, unpag., Archive.org)
Mi (Serbo-Croatian, trans. Mira Lalić, 1978)
My (Slovak, trans. Naďa Szabová, 1990)
We (English, trans. Clarence Brown, 1993, MOBI), Audio book (torrent)
Мы (Russian, 2003, pp 211-368, DJVU)
Mi (Croatian, trans. Rafaela Božić Šejić, 2003)
We (English, 2006, trans. Natasha Randall, forew. Bruce Sterling, EPUB, added on 2019-1-16)
Biz (Turkish, trans. Algan Sezgintüredi, 2009)
Εμείς (Greek, trans. Ειρήνη Κουσκουμβεκάκη, 2011), HTML

Rainer Maria Rilke: Letters to a Young Poet (1929–) [DE, EN, FR, GR]

Letters to a Young Poet is a collection of ten letters written by Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) to Franz Xaver Kappus (1883–1966), a 19-year old officer cadet at the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt. Rilke, the son of an Austrian army officer, had studied at the academy’s lower school at Sankt Pölten in the 1890s. Kappus corresponded with the popular poet and author from 1902 to 1908 seeking his advice as to the quality of his poetry, and in deciding between a literary career or a career as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army. Kappus compiled and published the letters in 1929—three years after Rilke’s death from leukemia.

In the first letter, Rilke respectfully declines to review or criticize Kappus’ poetry, advising the younger Kappus that “Nobody can advise you and help you, nobody. There is only one way. Go into yourself.” Rilke, over the course of the ten letters proceeds to advise Kappus on how a poet should feel, love, and seek truth in trying to understand and experience the world around him and engage the world of art. These letters offer insight into the ideas and themes that appear in Rilke’s poetry and his working process. Further, these letters were written during a key period of Rilke’s early artistic development after his reputation as a poet began to be established with the publication of parts of Das Stunden-Buch and Das Buch der Bilder. (from Wikipedia)

Publisher Insel Bücherei, Leipzig, 1929
54 pages

English edition
Translated by M.D. Herter Norton
Publisher W.W. Norton, 1934
Revised edition, 1962
ISBN 039300158X
123 pages

Briefe an einen jungen Dichter (German, 1929, no OCR), HTML
Letters to a Young Poet (English, trans. M.D. Herter Norton, 1934/1962)
Lettres à un jeune poète (French, trans. Claude Mouchard and Hans Hartje, 1989)
Γράμματα σ’ ένα νέο ποιητή (Greek, trans. Μάριος Πλωρίτης, 1995)

Cabinet, 36: Friendship (2010)

“The nature of friendship has been a subject of inquiry from the beginnings of the western philosophical tradition. Socrates considers the question of philia in one of Plato’s earliest dialogues, declaring that his “passion for friends” causes him to value them above even gold. Subsequent thinkers have continued the inquiry, yet friendship remains a phenomenon that “may well be reckoned,” as Emerson wrote, “the masterpiece of nature.”

Issue 36 of Cabinet, with its special section on friendship, features Svetlana Boym on Hannah Arendt’s definition of friendship as freedom from “totalitarianism for two”; Ruben Gallo on Freud’s school friend with whom he communicated mainly in Spanish; and Regine Basha on Sol Lewitt’s exchange of gifts with other artists. Elsewhere in the issue: Paul La Farge on the color black; Kevin McCann on the life and work of schizophrenic author Louis Wolfson, the object of fascination for a generation of French intellectuals; Helen Polson on the fate of lost teeth; Bertell Ollman on his infamous board game Class Struggle; and an artist project by Zoe Bellof.”

Edited by Sina Najafi
Publisher Immaterial Incorporated, New York, Winter 2009/10

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