{"id":8224,"date":"2023-06-07T18:02:32","date_gmt":"2023-06-07T18:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=8224"},"modified":"2023-06-07T18:06:29","modified_gmt":"2023-06-07T18:06:29","slug":"a-history-of-the-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2023\/06\/07\/a-history-of-the-island\/","title":{"rendered":"A History of the Island"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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The Scrap Heap of Our Fantasies<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Eugene Vodolazkin once again makes the case for living in the present, this time on a grander scale.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Review by Sarah Clark
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Years ago, as a Russian major in undergrad, I read a book for class called Russian Rebels 1600-1800<\/em> by Paul Avrich. I still have the book; despite its matter-of-fact title, it remains one of the best written and most compelling works of history I have ever read. It recounts the rise and fall of four peasant rebellions in Russia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, analyzing the causes of each uprising, tracing their histories, and ultimately chronicling their failures to upend the feudal, imperial Russian state\u2014a goal that would of course not be accomplished until 1917, and even then not to great effect.<\/p>

One of the most fascinating threads in Avrich\u2019s book, however, is that in each of the four rebellions, \u201cthe rising was directed not against the tsar but against the nobility and bureaucrats and the innovating state they administered.\u201d And not only were the rebellions not directed against the tsar, but their messianic leaders often claimed to be the true tsar\u2014a long-lost son of the royal family whose death had been falsely reported, for instance. As Avrich\u2019s book demonstrates, for centuries, the Russian people truly believed that the far-away tsar was truly \u201cthe protector of the people, the anointed mediator between man and God.\u201d No matter how much the government oppressed and abandoned them, the tsar was on their side and would come to their rescue, if he only knew the severity of their troubles.<\/p>

Ukrainian-born writer Eugene Vodolazkin\u2019s latest novel, A History of the Island<\/em>, takes up this myth of the hereditary ruler as the holy and righteous protector of the people and sets it at the center of an investigation into the nature of history and time. What if, he seems to be asking, a nation really did have a pair of rulers who were righteous, upright, and appointed by God? What effect would that have on the nation\u2019s history?<\/p>

The book\u2019s primary narrative thread is the official historical record of the eponymous Island as recounted by a series of monk-chroniclers. The first of these, Father Nifont the Historian, begins at the beginning: \u201cLong ago we had no history. Memory preserved isolated events, but only those events with a propensity for repeating. Our existence thus seemed to take a circular path.\u201d All of this changed with the coming of Christianity to the Island, bringing along with it both books and writing and an overarching narrative of existence, from creation to incarnation to resurrection, by means of which the islanders could contextualize their own story. \u201cWe know now that human history has a beginning and is hastening toward its end,\u201d Nifont writes. Within this broader story, the Island\u2019s history, \u201cthe years and events that flow past,\u201d could be told.<\/p>

The second thread of the narrative is a series of commentaries and additions to the monastic chronicle by the Island\u2019s former rulers, Their Royal Highnesses Parfeny and Ksenia, who are now very old (very, very old, in fact\u2014we learn that the royal couple are now approaching their 350th<\/sup> birthdays). In his first aside, Prince Parfeny reflects on the nature of time and the keeping of history, which was once a singular record preserved inviolate within the Island\u2019s monastery; now \u201canyone at all, in any place, writes history\u201d\u2014which might account for why history is now so full of \u201cfalsifications.\u201d He concludes, \u201cIt was thought (as now, too) that knowledge of the past is essential for those holding power. That notion seems fair to me. True, it is also fair to say that the knowledge of history has yet to prevent anyone from making mistakes.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Who will save us from the consequences of our folly, of our mad rush into a brighter and brighter future?<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The Island whose history we are following is small; it makes no conquests and suffers only one invasion. In Princess Ksenia\u2019s first aside, she remarks, \u201cAs is commonly known, we did not have emperors.\u201d Nonetheless, its history is punctuated with strife. Its rulers are arbitrary and frequently tyrannical; the Island is periodically struck by famines and natural disasters. The affliction which Parfeny and Ksenia\u2019s marriage and enthronement is prophesied to resolve (by the Island\u2019s foremost seer, Agafon the Forward-Looking) is an endemic civil war between the island\u2019s north and south. Still, it takes a considerable amount of time and machinations before the royal couple are finally allowed to take the throne. At last, the Island is under the rule of good, wise, merciful, and righteous people who are literally appointed by God. They go on confronting disasters and protecting the Island from disaster for a very\u2014even unnaturally\u2014long time.<\/p>

Their Royal Highnesses do not die, and they are not corrupted by power. Nor do they at any point really become less beloved. But nevertheless, the people of the Island are gradually convinced that they need something new\u2014that they need progress. The islanders are not oppressed, but history nevertheless tends toward revolution. Parfeny and Ksenia are ousted and replaced by a series of Chairmen, under the title \u201cHis Bright Futurity,\u201d who each in turn take power and then descend into madness and absurdity. (Post-Soviet Eastern Europe is the clear inspiration for these wryly funny portraits.) One cuts out the section of the History<\/em> that recounts the 150-year occupation of the Island by the Apagonians, as if doing so would somehow erase the past, and instructs historians to be more \u201ccreative\u201d in their research. Another jumps off a balcony dressed as a bee, apparently under the impression that this will enable him to fly.<\/p>

As Chairman replaces Chairman, Nifont\u2019s assertion that the Island\u2019s history is no longer circular seems less and less true. Over and over again, the people of the Island choose (or have chosen for them) worse and less competent rulers to lead them into the future and integrate them into the modern world, while their prophesied saviors quietly live on in a somewhat squalid communal apartment. And meanwhile, Agafon\u2019s final prophesy, concerning the fate of the Island as a whole, is still missing. Still, as Prince Parfeny remarks, what good did it do Agafon to know the future when he could do nothing to avert it? Perhaps history is indeed \u201chastening toward its end.\u201d<\/p>

But though Agafon\u2019s final prophesy is hidden from the people of the Island for centuries, it is not hidden from us, the readers. It appears before the book even starts, on the page facing the Publisher\u2019s Note:<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And the ground will shake,
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 and black water will ignite in the North,
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 and a fiery water will begin to flow in the South.
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And ash will float from the heavens,
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 and your hearts will turn to ash.<\/p>

The Island is indeed brought by its new rulers into the Bright New Future. They begin to imitate people from the Continent, adopting their trains and credit cards and fast food. Meanwhile, the natural resources of the Island are bought up by companies on the Continent, and the funds from the sales somehow end up in the Chairmen\u2019s foreign bank accounts. When the volcano at the Island\u2019s southern end comes to life, and a meteorite ignites the oil reserves in the north into a giant torch, and civil war is threatening to break out once again, the terrified people have no one to turn to but the long-ignored Royal Couple\u2014who walk into a volcano to save their people, never to return. \u00a0<\/p>

Thus the Island, in the end, does have a pair of holy and righteous rulers available to protect them from the consequences of their mistakes. But what of the rest of us? Who will save us from the consequences of our folly, of our mad rush into a brighter and brighter future? And who will save the Island next time, now that Parfeny and Ksenia are gone?<\/p>

In his first entry into the History<\/em>, Prince Parfeny remarks, \u201cIsn\u2019t the life of a people rather similar to the life of an individual person?\u201d And this, I think, holds the key to the puzzle presented by A History of the Island<\/em>. In my review<\/a> of Vodolazkin\u2019s previous novel, Brisbane<\/em>, I wrote about a conversation between the main character, Gleb, and his elderly grandfather Mefody about how to live. Mefody argued that life is made up of only the past and the present, and the future should be left to itself, for, he says, \u201cThe future is the scrap heap of our fantasies. Or, even worse, our utopias: people sacrifice the present to make utopias come true.\u201d As for people, so for nations: we must leave the future to fend for itself, place our hope in a merciful Savior, and learn to be human now.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Sarah Clark<\/strong> lives in New Hampshire with her family. She is a founding editor of <\/em>Fare Forward and the current editor-in-chief, and she owns Scale House Print Shop<\/a>, a letterpress printing studio. She graduated from Dartmouth College in 2011 and received an MAR from Yale Divinity School in 2022.<\/em><\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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A History of the Island<\/strong> was translated by Lisa C. Hayden and was published by Plough Publishing House on May 2, 2023. <\/em>Fare Forward thanks them for providing an advance copy for our reviewer. You can purchase your own copy from the publisher here<\/a>. <\/em>
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Eugene Vodolazkin once again makes the case for living in the present, this time on a grander scale. Review by Sarah 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