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Title: A Voice from the Chorus by Abram Terts, Kyril Fitzlyon, Max Hayward ISBN: 0-300-06119-6 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.00

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Summary: Prison Views
Comment: This is a collection of one person's prison writings and it is marvelous. The book is based upon letters to his wife, Maria, fron 1966 to 1971. Andrey Sinyavesky took the pseudonym Abram Tertz. He revered Boris Pasternak as a person and then as a writer. The author had been an idealistic Communist until confronted with the arbitrary nature of Stalin's rule. Prior to his arrest in 1965 he wrote about Isaac Babel and Anna Akhmatova. After Stalin's death the figure with genuine authority was Pasternak. Sinyavsky read DR. ZHIVAGO in manuscript. There was no prudence in Pasternak. The pen name Abram Tertz was based upon an underworld ballad. A VOICE FROM THE CHORUS is not a descriptive narrative. The chorus serves as a confused demotic counterpoint. The author was arrested in 1965 and sent to a forced labor camp. (The above is derived from Max Hayward's introduction to the work.)

A sampling of Tertz's observations are as follows--
As in a train where passengers do not do useful work, the life of the inmates of a camp is filled with no productive activity. It is hard to live at the expense of the future. Art does nothing but convert matter into spirit. Art is the meeting place of the author with the subject of his love. What is erotic is exotic. How good it is that all people sleep. The text of the gospel explodes with meaning. Russian misers do not hoard money so much as weave fantasies around the money. Esenin was the last poet of the century. Mandelstam was the last poet of the intelligentsia. The art of telling a story depends upon spinning it out. A gambling man will have no compunction telling the vilest things about himself. Typical characters in typical circumstances nearly all appear there by chance. The vast amount of timber for building in the olden days corresponds to the wooden character of the Russian people. HAMLET is a variant of OEDIPUS. Coming out of prison is like making a posthumous appearance. The author emigrated with his wife and son to Paris in 1973.