The Monkey Link

Bitov (Pushkin House, A Captive of the Caucasus) is clearly hugely talented, one of those Russian writers whose art-by turns wildly satiric, surreal and lyrical-attempts to fix the currents of the national soul in its kaleidoscopic course through history. He writes with prodigal invention and immense brio, all of which comes through in what is plainly a brilliant and highly empathetic translation. The problem, for a non-Russian reader, is that so much of the history, geography and poetic and political references with which The Monkey Link is packed hurtle by like scenery barely glimpsed from a speeding train. Bitov's protagonist, who speaks sometimes in the first person, sometimes in the third, journeys around a Russia now mythical, now actual, debating the role of animals in men's lives, man in nature, man as artist, man as political creature; and always there is much drinking and jesting. Dozens of vivid moments leap out, but the pace, and the constant play of symbolism, are so unremitting that it is impossible to grasp the book's thrust or structure. Some explanatory notes by the translator only serve to emphasize the book's difficulty for even a sympathetic American reader. (Mar.)