Muravyov, V. (2020). Swift's way. Moscow: Rudomino. (In Russ.)

Abstract

The book is a collection of two texts separately brought out half a century ago: one on Jonathan Swift (1968), the other on his famous novel Gulliver's Travels (1972). If on the first publication they attracted attention it was thanks both to the hero, presented as a satirist and political journalist, and the author Vladimir Muravyov (1939-2001), who enjoyed a reputation among Moscow intelligentsia as a dissident intellectual whose taste in poetry was appreciated by Anna Akhmatova. The texts in a new book are identical to those published in the Soviet time. Muravyov must have mastered stylistic inventiveness of his hero — to speak in a manner quite direct and at the same time elusive. He wanted to tell a life story of the writer whom he had chosen as one of his literary guides and whose lifelong battle on the side of the Reason must have looked too archaic, and therefore safe, to the Soviet censor but quite actual to the penetrating eyes of the audience.