Grin, Alexander
Entry updated 9 January 2023. Tagged: Author.
Working name of Russian writer Alexander Grinevski (1880-1932), some of whose work in English translation was signed as by Alexander Green; active from around 1907. Though his range was wide (much of his work is only in the twenty-first century in the process of translation), there is a central stream of tales clearly shaped by story forms out of Fantastika, though sf elements tend to be submerged. In his first work to come to prominence, Alye parusa (1922; trans Thomas P Whitney as Scarlet Sails 1967; new trans anon as Crimson Sails 1978), which like much of his work is at least partially set at sea (see also Under the Sea), a union between two young lovers is enacted in terms that evoke a chthonic fatedness. Blistayushchiy mir (1924; trans Maria K as The Glittering World 2013) features a man with the gift of flight, whose abhorrence at the thought of this power being used to conquer the world seems to cause his death. In Begushtaya po volnam ["She Who Runs on Waves"] (1928; trans anon as Running on Waves 2010) the hero meets a mysterious woman, half "real" half spirit, whose incursion into what seems a nonfantastic text again generates a sense that true reality resides in and is underpinned by a chthonic understory; she will save his life at sea at least once, leading to his founding of a City on a vast Island that Grin's readers, following a 1934 suggestion by the critic Korneliy Zelinsky, soon dubbed Greenland or Grinlandia, a quasi-magical location that has come to seem deeply evocative of his world.
At least some of Grin's shorter fiction, which is voluminous, benignly bears comparison with the work of Stefan Grabiński; new translations of this material have begun to appear in collections like Terra Phantasticum (coll trans Maria K from various sources 2016) and Fandango and Other Stories (coll trans Bryan Karetnyk from various sources 2020). [JC]
Alexander Grinevski
born Slobodskoy, Kazan Governorate, Russia: 23 August 1880
died Staryi Krim, Crimea, USSR: 8 July 1932
works (highly selected)
- Alye parusa (Moscow, USSR: publisher not identified, 1922) [binding unknown/]
- Scarlet Sails (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1967) [trans by Thomas P Whitney of the above: hb/Esta Nesbitt]
- Scarlet Sails (London: Angus and Robertson, 1969) [trans above by Thomas P Whitney possibly revised: illus/hb/Annette Macarthur Onslow]
- Crimson Sails (Moscow, USSR: Progress Publishers, 1978) [coll: title novel plus short stories: trans not identified of the above and other sources: illus/Mikhail Dorokhov]
- Scarlet Sails (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1967) [trans by Thomas P Whitney of the above: hb/Esta Nesbitt]
- Zolotaya tsep (Kharkov, USSR: pulisher not identified, 1923) [binding unknown/]
- The Golden Chain (Scotts Valley, California: CreateSpace/TSK Group, 2012) [trans by Maria Igorevna Kuroshchepova as Maria K of the above: pb/Maria K]
- Blistayushchiy mir (Moscow, USSR: Gosizdat/Zemlya i Fabrika, 1924) [first published 1923 Krasnaya Niva: binding unknown/]
- The Glittering World (Scotts Valley, California: CreateSpace/TSK Group, 2013) [trans by Maria Igorevna Kuroshchepova as Maria K of the above: pb/Maria K]
- Begushtaya po volnam ["She Who Runs on Waves"] (Moscow, USSR: publisher not identified, 1928) [binding unknown/]
- Running on Waves (Scotts Valley, California: CreateSpace/Yulia Moldavsky, 2010) [trans anon of the above: pb/]
collections and stories
- The Seeker of Adventure: Selected Stories (Moscow, USSR: Progress Publishers, 1978) [coll: trans by various hands from various sources: hb/Grigori Filippovski]
- Selected Short Stories (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Ardis, 1987) [coll: trans by Nicholas Luker from various sources: hb/]
- Terra Phantasticum (Scotts Valley, California: CreateSpace/TSK Group, 2016) [coll: trans by Maria Igorevna Kuroshchepova as Maria K from various sources: hb/Maria K]
- Fandango and Other Stories (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020) [coll: trans by Bryan Karetnyk from various sources: in the publisher's Russian Library series: hb/Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich]
about the author
- Nicholas J L Luker. Alexander Grin (Letchworth, Hertfordshire, 1973) [nonfiction: hb/]
links
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