Fazil Iskander
The Goatibex Constellation
The Firebird in Russian folklore is a fiery, illuminated bird; magical, iconic, coveted. Its feathers continue to glow when removed, and a single feather, it is said, can light up a room. Some who claim to have seen the Firebird say it even has glowing eyes. The Firebird is often the object of a quest. In one famous tale, the Firebird needs to be captured to prevent it from stealing the king’s golden apples, a fruit bestowing youth and strength on those who partake of the fruit. But in other stories, the Firebird has another mission: it is always flying over the earth providing hope to any who may need it. In modern times and in the West, the Firebird has become part of world culture. In Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Firebird, it is a creature half-woman and half-bird, and the ballerina’s role is considered by many to be the most demanding in the history of ballet.
The Overlook Press in the U.S. and Gerald Duckworth in the UK, in adopting the Firebird as the logo for its expanding Ardis publishing program, consider that this magical, glowing creature — in legend come to Russia from a faraway land — will play a role in bringing Russia and its literature closer to readers everywhere.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
A certain Moscow publishing house once asked me to write an introduction for the Persian language edition of my short stories. I got to work on it, and what emerged was a story equal in length to those it was supposed to preface.
I don’t know how this happened, though I may have been somewhat influenced by the fact that the introduction was to be paid for in the usual fashion — that is, according to the number of pages.
“A strange introduction,” said the editorial assistant despondently as he took the manuscript in hand and began counting the pages. “Why, this is as much as a tenth of the whole book.”
“There’s a way to get around that,” I suggested.
“How?” he asked, brightening.
“What’s to prevent your increasing the overall size of the book, thus cutting down on the relative size of the introduction?”
“No,” he replied, for some reason offended by my proposal, “our Persian readers would never forgive us for that.”
“Well, suit yourself,” I said, and without further delay set off for the accounting office to collect my fee for the introduction.
Not long ago I learned that the same publishing house was planning to bring out another foreign-language edition of my book. When I went to volunteer my services as author of the introduction, however, I was told that the rumors regarding the publication of my book were premature — from which I can only conclude that there must also be such a thing as mature rumors. I have since been informed by certain other sources that the book is actually going to be published, but for the time being the whole business remains a tightly guarded editorial secret.
I hope that the introduction to the American edition of The Goatibex Constellation will be considerably shorter than the Persian one, all the more so since it’s length has not, as far as I know, been stipulated by the publisher.
And so, without further ado, what is a goatibex?
In one of our Abkhazian newspapers I once happened to read an article about a man who had crossed a female goat with a male ibex and produced a new animal which he called a goatibex. (Abkhazia, by the way, is my native land; it is situated on the Black Sea coast and is one of the most charming of our Soviet autonomous republics.)
According to the article, the goatibex was in good health and apparently was quite eager to overtake and even surpass the population figures of the more traditional breeds of livestock. Taking into account this and certain other unique characteristics of the hybrid (its high meat and wool yield, for example), the author of the article predicted an unprecedented leap in livestock production, all the more so since there could be no doubt as to the goatibex’s jumping ability — the latter having been inherited from his male parent, the mountain-dwelling ibex.
Along with certain other digressions from the main theme, my story contains several reminiscences of my grandfather’s house and an account of one of my childhood adventures. Why have I included these? Because in the course of writing about the mannequins of goatibexation I began to feel the need for a breath of fresh air. This need was a purely subjective one, but I decided to justify it artistically by letting these childhood memories intrude upon the main theme and overwhelm it with their poetic freshness and vigor.
The creative process is, of course, an unexplained phenomenon, and although we are able to separate some of the individual strands entering into the web of causality, these strands, taken by themselves, represent only a fraction of the whole.
On the subject of humor I also have a number of observations which I am ready to pass on free of charge. I have, to be sure, already shared these observations with my Persian readers, but after all, is it not the author’s right and even obligation to seek out the widest possible audience for his views?
In order to attain a genuine sense of humor I believe one has to descend to the depths of pessimism. And only when one has peered into the murky abyss and convinced oneself that here too there is nothing, can one make one’s way haltingly back from the abyss. The traces of this return trip will be humor— genuine humor.
Humor possesses one modest but undisputed virtue: it is always truthful. In fact, one can even go so far as to say that all humor is humorous precisely because it is truthful. Not every truth is humorous, of course, but all humor is truthful.
It is with this dubious aphorism that I should like to conclude my introduction to the American edition of The Goatibex Constellation.
I
One fine day I was fired from the editorial staff of a youth newspaper in Central Russia where I had been working for less than a year. I had been assigned to the paper directly after graduation from the Institute.
By some freakish coincidence it turned out that the paper’s editor-in-chief wrote poetry, and what was worse, published his verse under a pseudonym. He had taken the pseudonym out of respect for the local authorities, although as it turned out he could have spared himself the trouble since the local authorities already knew about his verse. They kept this knowledge to themselves, however, having apparently decided that a weakness for poetry was quite forgivable in the editor of a youth newspaper.
The local authorities knew about his verse, but I did not. Thus it happened that at my very first staff meeting I began criticizing a certain poem which had recently appeared in our paper. Although I criticized the poem without in any way making fun of it, my voice may have betrayed a hint of condescension — the sort of Muscovite snobbishness which is perhaps understandable in a young man fresh out of a Moscow institute.
As I was speaking, I noticed a strange look pass over the faces of my colleagues. I attached no great importance to this, however, merely assuming that they were impressed by the smooth logic of my presentation.
Perhaps I might even have gotten away with my indiscretion, had it not been for one small detail. Passing himself off as a village Komsomol, the poet had spoken of the advantages of the potato digger over the manual harvesting of potatoes. In my spiritual and even literary naiveté I concluded that this was but another one of those poems that are always finding their way into editorial offices all over the world. And not wishing to be overly harsh on the aspiring young poet, I concluded my speech with the comment that for a village Komsomol it was a fairly literate attempt.