Paris and Return To Russia
However, by 1925 Parnokh had become disillusioned with life in the Soviet Union, where publishing houses were refusing to publish his poetry and his translations of the French poet Gérard de Nerval. In October 1925 Parnokh returned to Paris, where he published many articles on theater and dance in Russian immigrant newspapers and in the French press and translated Spanish literature.
The main character of Osip Mandelshtam's 1928 novella Egyptian Stamp is named "Parnok" and was perceived by Parnakh as a derogatory caricature.
Parnokh returned to the Soviet Union at the end of 1931 and served as a translator at the Foreign Board of the Writers Union. He continued his translations of Spanish writers such as Federico García Lorca.
In 1934 Parnokh published a Russian translation of a collection of Spanish and Portuguese poets (mostly Marrano Jews) who had been executed by the Inquisition (Parnakh had previously translated the poems into French as well, but the manuscript of this translation had been lost).
Read more about this topic: Valentin Parnakh
Famous quotes containing the words paris and, paris, return and/or russia:
“Consider the China pride and stagnant self-complacency of mankind. This generation inclines a little to congratulate itself on being the last of an illustrious line; and in Boston and London and Paris and Rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks of its progress in art and science and literature with satisfaction.... It is the good Adam contemplating his own virtue.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Paradoxically, the freedom of Paris is associated with a persistent belief that nothing ever changes. Paris, they say, is the city that changes least. After an absence of twenty or thirty years, one still recognizes it.”
—Marguerite Duras (b. 1914)
“Compassion is frequently a sense of our own misfortunes, in those of other men; it is an ingenious foresight of the disasters that may fall upon us hereafter. We relieve others, that they may return the like when our occasions call for it; and the good offices we do them are, in strict speaking, so many kindnesses done to ourselves beforehand.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“A fool may be a dangerous customer, but the fact of his having such a vulnerable top-end turns danger into a first-rate sport; and whatever defects the old administration in Russia had, it must be conceded that it possessed one outstanding virtue—a lack of brains.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)