The Keeper’s letters. From Yury Dombrovsky’s correspondence with friends and colleagues about The Keeper of Antiquities [Khranitel drevnostey] and other matters

Abstract

It appears that existing collected works and editions have been misleading as to when exactly Yury Dombrovsky started writing his novel The Keeper of Antiquities [Khranitel drevnostey]. This hitherto unpublished collection of annotated correspondence between Dombrovsky and his friends and fellow writers not only reveals the year when he began writing his book, but also provides an invaluable source of biographical knowledge that sheds light on the later Moscow-based period of his life (1955–1978) and, specifically, on the favourable period during the Khrushchev Thaw, when Dombrovsky’s books finally appeared in print. Among his correspondents and people mentioned in the letters are N. Anov, I. Ehrenburg, N. Mandelstam, S. Markov, Y. Kazakov, and others. Interestingly, the collection contains a letter where, without naming the author and paraphrasing the book’s title, Dombrovsky offers his view of the recently published Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich [Odin den Ivana Denisovicha].