Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky: Short Stories

Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (1887-1950) was a Russian writer, playwright, philosopher, and historian, and a man who is “known for being unknown”. This is because most of his work was never published during his lifetime, but only posthumously. Often linked to Bulgakov, with whom he shared certain autobiographical details, Krzhizhanovsky eventually became known for his fantastical, absurdist stories and parables that remind of the works of Borges, Gogol, Calvino and Kafka. In his stories, storytellers lose control of their characters (The Bookmark) or thoughts (In Line/The Life & Opinions of a Thought), for example, and body parts or clothes inexplicably run away (The Runaway Fingers/Comrade Punt). Below, I have selected for review five stories from three short story collections published by the NYRB: Memories of the Future (2009), Autobiography of a Corpse (2013), and Unwitting Street (2020). Some of them reminded me of the short stories of Dino Buzzati – see my reviews of Catastrophe & Other Stories and The Siren, and Kōbō Abe (The Magic Chalk). Both authors were influenced by Gogol and Kafka, as was Krzhizhanovsky. Memories of the Future [1929] (in the Memories of the Future ...