The poet and novelist Boris Poplavsky once described literature as an act of friendship. “Art is a private letter sent at random to friends unknown,” he declared in 1932 in the essay Amid Doubt and Evidence. “It’s a kind of protest against the separation of lovers in space and time.” Poplavsky, another Parisian émigré and a good friend of Yuri Felsen’s, knew what he was talking about.
When I first came across Felsen’s work almost a decade ago, he instantly found a sympathetic friend, although it has taken some considerable time for that friendship to bear the fruit of this translation. During that time, I have incurred, on the long and tortuous path to publication, several debts of friendship, which I hope to repay here, if only in part.
To the living descendants of Felsen, who so willingly shared with me their family history and shone a distant, unexpected light on Felsen’s life, I offer up this book, hoping to give you your first glimpse of a relative you ought to have known but whom the evils of his age took away before his time. Bright be his memory, and may that memory be a blessing.
I should also like to thank Ben Schrank and Signe Swanson at Astra House, two of Felsen’s newest friends, and the rest of the team at Astra for placing their faith in me and responding so positively to this work from the moment they encountered it. It is a privilege to be able bring Felsen’s Deceit to new audiences with your support.
Likewise, this publication would not have been possible without the charitable support of the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation and its TRANSCRIPT program, which allowed me to undertake this first major translation of Felsen’s work. The foundation’s generosity has enabled this silenced voice to speak anew in our world today.
To Anastasia Tolstoy and Dzmitry Suslau, both of whom offered much too freely of their time, patience, and expertise in reading various drafts of this work, I owe a lasting debt of gratitude. Your unstinting generosity has at times, I fear, been both a testament to and a test of our friendship.
My final words of acknowledgment bring me to a dedication. To the late Ivan Juritz, with whom I shared my early enthusiasm for Felsen, I say this: In translating Deceit alone, and not with you, I have missed your wit, your imagination—in a word, your genius. Yet your still-lingering friendship has sustained and guided me through every word. This book is for you.