Julio Jurenito (Russian: Необичайные похождения Хулио Хуренито и его учеников, The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito and his Disciples) is a modernist novel by Soviet author Ilya Ehrenburg. It was his first novel, and considered to be one of his best works (maybe add more here)

The book was written in a month in 1921 and published by Berlin-based press Gelikon in 1922. It was well-received.(source: Mark Lipovetsky write more about specific reactions) Despite this it was repressed etc etc etc brain too dead for details

write something about how Ehrenburg considered it his favorite novel blablabla etc

Summary edit

The narrator, also named Ilya Ehrenburg, arrives in France on 26 March 1913. In the Café de la Rotonde, he meets a young Mexican named Julio Jurenito, and begins to treat him as a "Teacher". Jurenito is a cynical man of limitless talents, such as the ability to speak a countless amount of languages. Jurenito has six "disciples" - an American named Mr. Cool, a Russian named Alexey Spiridonovich Tishin, a French undertaker named Delet, a German named Schmidt, an Italian named Bombacci, and a young Senegalese boy named Aisha. Each are parodies of racial and national stereotypes of the time. Jurenito takes on Ehrenburg as his 7th disciple. this is not the end of the summary write more

At the end, Jurenito dies on 12 March 1921 in Konotop.

Analysis edit

The influence of Dostoevsky (https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/variatsiya-k-dostoevskomu-roman-i-erenburga-hulio-hurenito, https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/idei-i-obrazy-f-m-dostoevskogo-v-romanah-i-g-erenburga-pervoy-poloviny-1920-h-godov)

some more links to use (https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/roman-i-erenburga-hulio-hurenito-v-kontekste-antiutopicheskih-syuzhetov-20-h-godov-hh-veka, https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/imya-sobstvennoe-kak-reprezentant-lichnosti-literaturnogo-personazha-zaglavnyy-antroponim-romana-i-erenburga-neobychaynye, https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/tsennostnye-smysly-v-provokativnom-prelomlenii-ili-rechevye-manipulyatsii-geroev-l-andreeva-i-i-erenburga-dnevnik-satany-i-neobychaynye, https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/2011-03-030-emigrantskiy-tekst-v-sovetskoy-kulture-sovetskiy-tekst-v-kulture-russkogo-zarubezhya-svodnyy-referat

Certain critics, including Henrietta Mondry, find Julio Jurenito to be a crypto-Jewish figure. Although Jurenito is never stated to have Jewish heritage, and is in fact explicitly stated to be born a Catholic, Mondry points to how the narrator perceives Jurenito on their first meeting to be hiding horns and a tail, and connects this to European antisemitic depictions of Jews secretly hiding diabolical physical characteristics, such as horns and a tail, and argues that in this way, Ehrenburg marks Jurenito as a Jew. Mondry also notes that Jurenito criticizes Christianity, possibly because he is free from Christianity, and that he takes seven disciples (with 7 being a sacred number in Judaism), rather than 12 disciples, as Jesus had.[1]

(?write about woland and ostap bender (mark lipovetsky?) https://real.mtak.hu/78693/)

Reception edit

Julio Jurenito was the first novel published by Ehrenburg, and established his reputation as a writer in the USSR. Yevgeny Zamyatin, Marietta Shaginian, Viktor Shklovsky, Mikhail Lifshitz and Lev Lunts all praised the novel highly, while Yury Tynianov held a negative opinion of the novel.[2],[3] Nadezhda Krupskaya, wife of Vladimir Lenin, wrote that she had read Jurenito to him during his illness in 1921, and that he had enjoyed the book. (It is inferred he was read a censored version of the novel, as Ehrenburg mocks Lenin in Julio Jurenito).[4] Julio Jurenito is commonly considered to be among the best of Ehrenburg's works, especially when compared to his later fiction.[5][6][7][8] In 2008, Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta listed it #46 of the greatest 100 novels of all time.[9]

References edit

  1. ^ Mondry, Henrietta (2009). "Ilya Ehrenburg and His Picaresque Jewish Bodies of the 1920s". Exemplary Bodies. Academic Studies Press. pp. 88–100. ISBN 978-1-934843-39-0. Retrieved 5 April 2024.
  2. ^ Lipovetsky, Mark (2011). "Khulio Khurenito: The Trickster's Revolution". Charms of the Cynical Reason. Academic Studies Press. ISBN 978-1-934843-45-1. Retrieved 18 February 2024.
  3. ^ Lifšic, Michail Aleksandrovič (2018). Crisis of ugliness: from cubism to pop-art. Translated by David Riff. Leiden Boston: Brill. ISBN 9789004366558. Retrieved 1 February 2024.
  4. ^ Dudakov, Savva (2017). "Ульянов-Ленин. Штрихи к портрету". Россия и современный мир: 44–45.
  5. ^ Slonim, Mark (19 January 1964). "A Soviet Writer Who Throughout His Life has Worn Many Masks; in Many Places; JULIO JURENITO. By Ilya Ehrenburg". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 February 2024.
  6. ^ Radley, Philippe (1985). "Review of Ilya Ehrenburg: Revolutionary Novelist, Poet, War Correspondent, Propagandist: The Extraordinary Epic of a Russian Survivor". World Literature Today. 59 (3): 450. doi:10.2307/40140995. ISSN 0196-3570. Retrieved 5 April 2024.
  7. ^ Gifford, Henry (1985). "The White Crow: Ilya Ehrenburg". Grand Street. 4 (2): 225. doi:10.2307/25006720. ISSN 0734-5496. Retrieved 5 April 2024.
  8. ^ Lourie, Richard (25 August 1996). "Vow of Silence". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 February 2024. In the heady nihilism of the postwar 1920's, Ehrenburg published his best novel, The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito and His Disciples....This novel, and Ehrenburg's last work, his memoirs People, Years, Life, are probably all that will continue to be read. The rest, like the man himself, belongs to history.
  9. ^ "От Божественной Бутылки мэтра Франсуа Рабле до скандального «Голубого сала» Владимира Сорокина" [From the Divine Bottle of the master François Rabelais to the scandalous "Blue Lard" of Vladimir Sorokin]. Nezavisimaya Gazeta. 31 January 2008. Retrieved 6 April 2024.