Alexander Leonidovich Goldstein (; born ,
Tallinn
Tallinn is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Estonia, most populous city of Estonia. Situated on a Tallinn Bay, bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, it has a population of (as of 2025) and ...
,
Estonia
Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...
— ,
Tel-Aviv, Israel) — was a Russian writer and essayist. He was awarded the
Russian Little Booker Prize The Russian Little Booker Prize (Малая Букеровская премия or Малый Букер) was an annual prize awarded in 1992-2001 for a nominated Literary genre, genre of writing. It was established in 1992 as part of the Russian Bo ...
, the
Anti-Booker prize and the
Andrei Bely Prize (posthumously, in the category for
prose
Prose is language that follows the natural flow or rhythm of speech, ordinary grammatical structures, or, in writing, typical conventions and formatting. Thus, prose ranges from informal speaking to formal academic writing. Prose differs most n ...
).
Biography and work
Alexander Goldstein was born in Tallinn, the son of Leonid Goldstein, a man of letters. From his early childhood on, he lived in
Baku
Baku (, ; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Azerbaijan, largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and in the Caucasus region. Baku is below sea level, which makes it the List of capital ci ...
, where he later studied literature at
Baku State University
Baku State University (BSU) (BDU; ) is a public university located in Baku, Azerbaijan. Established on 1 September 1919 by the Parliament of Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, the university started with faculties of history and philology, physics ...
. From 1991, he lived in Tel-Aviv.
Goldstein worked as a journalist for the newspaper
''Vesti'', as well as other Russian-language publications, and sat on the editorial board of the Russian-Israeli journal
Zerkalo. His articles were published in the books ''Расставание с Нарциссом'' (''Parting from Narcissus'') and ''Аспекты духовного брака'' (''Aspects of Spiritual Matrimony''). The first of these volumes, published in 1997, gained recognition as one of the most important books of the decade. For instance, the Russian literary academic
Irina Prohorova wrote about ''Parting from Narcissus'', and indeed Goldstein's work as a whole:
He was the first to describe that peculiar time in which we partly continue to live, but perhaps have already left behind. In any case, beginning with his first articles and his first book, ''Parting from Narcissus'', which marked a huge cultural upheaval in the middle of the 1990s, he was the first to have the courage to say certain things, to push back certain borders and barriers. What he tried to do (and it's even worth asking how he managed to do it) was to find the language of the time.
In the opinion of
Sasha Sokolov
Sasha Sokolov (; born November 6, 1943, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) is a writer of Russian literature.
He became known worldwide in the 1970s after his first novel, ''A School for Fools,'' was published in translation by Ardis Publishers (Ann Ar ...
:
It seems he was only really appreciated by professionals. Living here and now, in Tel-Aviv, I remember our few meetings and frequently walk along Ben Yehuda Street, past his house... Sasha is difficult. He's not only difficult stylistically, but also philosophically. He offers up his immense knowledge without thinking of the reader, without glancing back at him – a knowledge of art, science, philology, naturally. I can understand the value of his texts, but I don't understand how they were made.
In 2002, moved into large-scale forms with ''Помни о Фамагусте'' (''Remember Famagusta''), a "novel in the
Schlegelian sense." With time, he acquired the reputation of a refined stylist, erudite intellectual and thinker.
He died from lung cancer in 2006, the same year that his last novel, ''Спокойные поля'' (''Quiet Fields'') was posthumously published. A volume of his selected prose appeared in
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
translation in 2009, though he has yet to be translated into English.
The poet and essayist
Alexei Tsvetkov remembered him with these words:
...he had very few friends in the commonly accepted sense of the word – that is, people who could climb into each other's skin. He was one of those people who protect their own territory very well. Yet at the same time, as strange as it might seem, it was easier to talk with him than with many in this traditional "subcutaneous" category.
Mikhail Shishkin praised Goldstein's work and cited him as an inspiration. In an English-language talk at the
Harriman Institute
The Harriman Institute, the first academic center in the United States devoted to the interdisciplinary study of Russia and the Soviet Union, was founded at Columbia University in 1946, with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, as the Russi ...
of
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...
, Shishkin said:
For me now, the top of Russian literature is Alexander Goldstein. ..I'm sure in fifty years here at Columbia University and other American universities all professors will consider our time, our epoch, the epoch of Alexander Goldstein. And we, writers, will be just contemporaries of Alexander Goldstein. We just shared with him the epoch. ..And if you asked me, "What Russian writers are important and genius nowadays?", I would say: "Read Alexander Goldstein".
Alexander Goldstein's wife – Irina Goldstein – was also a journalist.
Published works
* "Расставание с Нарциссом" (''Parting from Narcissus''), М.,НЛО, 1997,
* "Аспекты духовного брака" (''Aspects of Spiritual Matrimony''), М.,НЛО, 2001,
* "Помни о Фамагусте" (''Remember Famagusta''), М.,НЛО, 2004,
* "Спокойные поля" (''Quiet Fields''), М., НЛО, 2006
* "Памяти пафоса" (''In Memory of Pathos''), М., НЛО, 2009
References
* ''Most of the content of this article is a translation of the article on
Alexander Goldstein from
Russian Wikipedia
The Russian Wikipedia () is the Russian language, Russian-language edition of Wikipedia. As of , it has :ru:Special:Statistics, articles. It was started on 11 May 2001. In October 2015, it became the sixth-largest Wikipedia by the number of ar ...
.''
External links
In English:
Review of ''Remember Famagusta''Mikhail Kruitov, 'Memory Is Inseparable from Imagination'shma.com
In Russian:
О Саше // Зеркало, 2006, № 27 In Memoriam// Новое литературное обозрение, 2006, № 81 *
ttp://magazines.russ.ru/nlo/2006/81/l19.html Без гарантии возвращения. Станислав Львовский о романе «Спокойные поля»Борис Дубин. Четвёртая прозаЖест в искусстве: Глеб Морев об Александре Гольдштейне*
ttp://magazines.russ.ru/zerkalo/2006/27/go1.html Спокойные поля. «Зеркало» № 27, 2006 Комета Гонзага. Из книги «Спокойные поля». «Критическая масса» № 3, 2006 * [https://web.archive.org/web/20110717102014/http://barashw.tripod.com/authors/goldst.htm Тетис, или Средиземная почта. Из книги «Расставание с Нарциссом» ]
«Аспекты духовного брака». Фрагменты книги *
ttp://gallery.vavilon.ru/people/g/goldstein/ Страница на сайте «Вавилон»Статьи Александра Гольдштейна на сайте журнала «Сеанс»
{{DEFAULTSORT:Goldstein, Alexander
1957 births
2006 deaths
20th-century Russian writers
Russian male novelists
Russian male essayists
Israeli writers
Baku State University alumni
Deaths from lung cancer in Israel
Soviet emigrants to Israel
20th-century Russian novelists
20th-century Russian essayists
20th-century Russian male writers
Burials at Yarkon Cemetery