What do You think about The White Guard (2015)?
More than anything, I see this novel as a love letter to the city of Kiev. Frankly, it's easier for me to see it this way. From cover to cover Mr. Bulgakov takes pains to present us with the beauty and charm of his beloved city. In late 1917, early 1918 chaos reigned. During the coldest winter in memory, in the frigid snow, with blood-drenched ice, Kiev managed to be beautiful. Civil war would be an understatement. I read in Wiki that Mr. Bulgakov personally witnessed ten political coups in his lifetime. The novel is about the Turbin family and their immediate friends. Ukrainians, they are monarchists, loyal to Tsar Nicholas and his family who have already been assassinated by Bolsheviks. They love the Ukraine but are Russians at heart. National distinctions are difficult in this book. When are the characters speaking Russian and when Ukrainian? Fights break out among characters over the appropriate language to use. "Speak Russian you Prick." "Fuck you, you Bolshevik yid!"The Turbin family and friends are fighters, members of the White Guard, a small anemic army who are in denial over the death of their beloved Tsar. They seek to defend Kiev from a huge socialist army of one hundred thousand (or was it eight hundred thousand?); an army of Ukrainians (as far as I could ascertain). Meanwhile the Muskovite Bolsheviks wait like wolves (with guns and mortars from WW1 squireled away, buried everywhere until their time arrives).This particular battle for Kiev is quick and one-sided. It is the Russian Civil War or it is the War of Ukrainian Independence. All parties on both sides drink vodka for breakfast (and lunch and dinner). It is brutally violent, often pathetic and sometimes funny.I would recommend a copy of this book that has a prologue with a bit of historical clarification. It would have helped me. But of course it's a novel. It is what it is. The Turbin family and surviving members of the White Guard hide like rats in their own homes, waiting for history to unfold, waiting to die, quaffing vodka during card games, screaming at one another over shitty whist-play.Now, nearly a century later, there is a chaotic mess in that region; which is why I take the easy way out and see Bulgakov's novel as a love letter to Kiev.Mikhail Bulgakov gives us both barrels in his final paragraph. No longer a Ukrainian or a Russian...... listen:Everything passes away-- suffering, pain, blood, hunger and pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes toward the stars? Why?
—Kenneth P.
A truthful and frightening recount of an ordinary pre-revolution family transformed by successive events in Ukrainian history.This isn't a horror story, and it doesn't have any gore, but the functioning and the breakdown of society; life of a family in such a society with its hopes and fears in absence of clear outcome is a fearsome sight to behold. This is especially true when we look back to contemplate the uneasy history of UkrSSR that followed and hundreds of thousands of people's lives destroyed in successive expropriation and forced industrialisation. I acknowledge that for a native anglophone the multitude of names can be confusing, and back in soviet times this book, while certainly banned could really be comprehended by select few, as most individuals have never known a productive life outside of the system, nor envisaged a possibility of its existence. I would recommend this book to those who have Russian ancestry (first wave emigration) and want to understand what pushed them to leave and how uneasy this decision was in a WWI Europe; it is also somewhat representative of my great-grand uncle family story.
—Ivan
"Tutto passerà. Le sofferenze, i tormenti, il sangue, la fame e la pestilenza. La spada sparirà, ma le stelle resteranno anche quando le ombre dei nostri corpi e delle nostre opere non saranno più sulla terra. Non c'è uomo che non lo sappia. Perché dunque non vogliamo rivolgere lo sguardo alle stelle? Perché?"Fino alle due e mezza di stanotte, angosciatissima per Aleksej Vasil'evič Turbin, sconvolto dal tifo. Rimanere indifferenti a questo romanzo è impossibile. La famiglia Turbin, la Città (Kiev), il pigolare dei telefoni, il sonnambulismo dei soldati e il tiranno invisibile Petljura. Tutti questi elementi concorrono a creare un racconto melanconico sulla dissipazione di un'epoca (tanto da riportarmi alle atmosfere create da Roth ne "La cripta dei cappuccini") eppure intessuto di diavolerie stilistiche. Visionario e all'avanguardia il genio di Bulgakov, sferzante e impietoso. Per quanto il romanzo sia vivacizzato dall'estro dello scrittore, il lettore non viene risparmiato da quella vertigine terribile che si prova leggendo i severi romanzi di tradizione russa. La Guardia bianca è un romanzo fatto di occhi: "occhi a doppio fondo, occhi luttuosi, occhi folli e torbidi come quelli di un avvelenato, occhi dolenti, occhi inquieti e stralunati, occhi incassati". I destini miserabili dei protagonisti appartengono ai vinti, non ai vincitori. E la nobiltà d'animo di Nikolka, l'astro di Aleksej, la gentilezza e il coraggio di Elena, serviranno solo a resistere, non a rivalersi. "Come un alveare a più piani, fumigava e rumoreggiava e viveva la Città", la Città presa, la Città perduta. P.S. Alla luce dei tremendi avvenimenti che tempestano oggi l'Ucraina, questo romanzo si dimostra ancora di più portentoso.
—Ilenia Zodiaco
