The Russian title of this short novel is SOGLYADATAY (traditional transliteration), which is pronounced "Sugly-dart-eye", with the stress on the penultimate syllable.It's an ancient military term meaning "spy" or "spy," neither of which has the flexible meaning of the Russian word.After toying with "emissary" and "gladiator", I gave up trying to balance sound and meaning, and followed the "eye" at the end of this long stem.The story was serialized for three issues in "Playboy" in the early months of 1965 with this title, and it came out smoothly.

The original work was written in Berlin in 1930—my wife and I rented two rooms of a German family on the quiet Luppold Street—it was published in Paris at the end of that year in the Russian-language exile review magazine "SOVREMENNYYA ZAPISKI" (Modern Chronicle).The people in the book are all my favorite characters in my literary youth: Russian exiles living in Berlin, Paris or London.In fact, they could also be Norwegians living in Naples or Ambracians in Ambridge: I have always been indifferent to social issues, purely using the material at hand, like a chattering eater drawing a picture on a tablecloth. like a street sketch or a crumb of bread and two olives in a formation between a menu and a salt shaker.An interesting consequence of this indifference to communal life, to historical intrusion, is that the social group that is inadvertently drawn into the focus of art assumes a false fixity; The writer and his exiled readers take it for granted.The Ivan Ivanovich and Lev Osipovich of 1930 have long since been replaced by non-Russian-speaking readers who today have to imagine a society of which they know nothing, and are thus confused and Annoyed; for I do not object to repeating again and again that since Soviet propaganda misleading foreign opinion nearly half a century ago has caused ignorance or derogation of the importance of Russian immigration (a historical event that still awaits its own chroniclers), The Destroyer of Liberty has torn a great deal out of history.

The time of this story is from 1924 to 1925.Four years have passed since the end of the Russian Civil War.Lenin had just died, but his dictatorship continued to be strong.Twenty Deutschmarks are not worth five dollars.In the book, the people living in Berlin range from poor to rich businessmen.Examples of wealthy merchants are Matilda's nightmarish husband Kashmarin (apparently fleeing Russia via Constantinople on the southern front), Eugenia and Vanya's father, an elderly Gentleman (he had a vision, headed the London branch of a German company, and kept a dancing girl).Cashmarin may be what the British call "middle class", but the two ladies at No. 5 Peacock Street obviously belong to the Russian aristocrats, whether they have titles or not, but this status does not hinder their mediocre reading taste.Eugenia's fat-faced husband, whose name sounds ridiculous today, works in a Berlin bank.Colonel Mukhin, prim and repulsive, fought under Denikin in 1919 and under Wrangel's command in 1920, spoke four languages ​​and assumed a calm, worldly air , likely to excel in the light work his future father-in-law steered him into.The good Roman Bogodanovich was a Baltic with German rather than Russian culture.The surly Jew Weinstock, the pacifist doctor Mariana Nikolaevna, and the classless narrator himself are all representatives of the motley Russian intelligentsia.For readers (like myself) who shudder at novels such as those translated from Magyar or Chinese about imaginary characters in unfamiliar settings, these pointers should make reading easier.

It is well known (to use a famous Russian idiom) that my books benefit not only from the absence of social meaning, but also from the eradication of myth: Freud's disciples flocked to them, excitedly, scratching Come, come near, stop, sniff, and cringe again.On the other hand, a no-nonsense psychologist could discern through my raindrop-clear ciphertext a soul-melting world where poor Smurov's existence depends only on his reflection in other people's minds, And their minds were then placed in the same grotesque mirror-like dilemma as his.The structure of the story parodies that of a detective novel, but in truth the author denies any intention to trick, confuse, fool, or deceive the reader.In fact, only readers who understand it immediately will get real satisfaction from it.It will not take long for even the most gullible reader to understand who Smurov is from this slick tale.I experimented with an old English lady, two graduate students, a hockey coach, a doctor, and a neighbor's twelve-year-old boy.The child is the fastest, the neighbor the slowest.

The main theme of the book is to carry out a research study, which leads the protagonist through many mirrors, and finally ends with the coincidence of a pair of images.Thirty-five years ago I integrated the different stages of the narrator's quest in some mystical pattern, and I do not know whether the intense pleasure I derived from this would be shared by modern readers, however, in any case, the emphasis is not on the mystery but on the pattern .I believe that, despite the passage of time, the sea of ​​books, and the mirage of one language becoming the oasis of another, tracking Smurov is still a wonderful activity.The plot is not in the reader's head—if I've read that head right—reduced to a bitter love story in which a writhing heart is not only rejected but humiliated and punished.The forces of the imagination, after all, the forces of good, remain firmly on Smurov's side, and the bitterness of tortured love proves as intoxicating and intoxicating as its most ecstatic rewards. rise up.