Death, Lyudmila Ulitzkaja said in an interview, is the last test that every human being has to pass.
In contrast, the modern existence trimmed for success seems like a lie.
Only death gives meaning to our existence.
Life is nothing but preparation for this end.
Ulitzkaja sees an important task of literature in taking away people's fear of death, making it a subject and not making it taboo.
The Russian writer, born in Bashkiria during the evacuation from Moscow in 1943, often met death, friends and family members died, and a few years ago she herself had to fight a serious illness.
All of these experiences flow into the anthology that has now been published with stories by this probably best-known contemporary author in Russia.
Death becomes the force that drives life.
Its immense force turns every life upside down, opens souls, pacifies or changes people, the dying and even more so those who are left behind.
Death is not only the final test, sometimes more painful, sometimes easier, it also has many surprises in store.
It is not fair, just like life.
Such moments are the subject of these masterful stories and miniatures, a late work rich in heart, mind and language, brilliantly translated into German by Ganna-Maria Braungardt.
There is the successful lawyer Sarifa, an Azerbaijani woman from Karabakh who, cursed by her own family, lives in a same-sex marriage with her Armenian partner and, on her deathbed in a hospital in Cyprus, asks a friend who had rushed from Moscow the completely unexpected question, what actually mean.
The grandfather's old carpet, dragged from Karabakh by his brother, over the coffin suddenly releases strength, the brother and wife of the deceased lie in each other's arms, crying.
Human Death in Russian Literature
In the title story, the single, courageous Alissa, who is sixty-four years old, wants to make provisions for the end.
When her life was finally set up perfectly perfectly, old age came.
There are no relatives who could care for her, so she turns to a doctor she trusts so that she can decide for herself when and how she wants to end her life, should the worst come to the worst.
The whole thing takes an unexpected turn, which brings the two a belated love until a tragic incident and a new life finally banish Alissa's suicidal thoughts.
Almost all stories have a dedication, they are homages to girlfriends, to "these extremely clever and incredibly stupid women from whom the angels in heaven could still learn"!
In Russian literature, human death is a central theme that is often underpinned by religion.
Tolstoy's classic about the death of Ivan Ilyich is considered a masterpiece.
It is told from the point of view of the dying man who, after hope for recovery, physical torment, after quarrels and self-pity, after anger at relatives and desperation, accepts and overcomes death in an emerging light.
Lyudmila Ulitzkaja draws on this theological spirituality with her stories in the cycle “On the Body of the Soul” from a hypermodern world.
When a young man with two unexplained injuries lies on the autopsy table in front of the pathologist Kogan, he decides that this should be his last autopsy.
Kogan, who dies soon after, has no idea who this boy was, and even the young man himself, a talented musician from a poor background, knows nothing about his destiny until the hour of his death, which he, like so many before him, does not fulfill could.
The life of a librarian who is as clever as she is obsessed with duty, who was open to the new computer wisdom even in old age, takes a break when she can no longer remember the word "serpentines", and Sascha, an engineer, after reading the "Weltrose" wants to of the Russian visionary Daniil Andreyev suddenly rediscovered in the two different eyes of her son the beady eyes of a plush dog that her mother had received from an American aid package in 1944.
The toy had accompanied the children of the family for three generations.
Risks and joys of life
In the three cycles collected in the volume, "Girlfriends", "From the Body of the Soul" and "Six Times Seven Miniatures", the author revolves around the subject of dying in different formats, in prose and poetry and from different perspectives, which is nothing but that of life is.
Her miniatures are variations on the risks and joys of life, on indissoluble partnerships, on fears as everyone knows them: birth, siblings, marriage, death, illness and, yes, the fear of the end of the world.
In these frightening days and weeks for so many, reading the volume takes on another dimension.
In the Moscow online newspaper "Novaya Gazeta" on February 25, Lyudmila Ulitzkaja spoke of "pain, fear and shame" in view of the war in Ukraine.
This post is no longer available.
Like the entire civil society, the newspaper, which is run by Muratov, came under enormous pressure from the Russian government.
War must not be called war in the media or in public. Journalists, authors, human rights activists who use this word can be sentenced and imprisoned for up to fifteen years.
Lyudmila Ulitskaya wrote that she was not afraid.
Will the death that this war brings also no longer be allowed to be called death?
Lyudmila Ulitzkaja: "Alissa buys her death". Stories. Translated from the Russian by Ganna-Maria Braungardt. Hanser Verlag, Munich 2022. 300 pages, hardcover, 25 euros.