25 Nov 2012 01:59:19
Although it was only founded in 1703, St Petersburg holds "more beauty, more suffering, more dreams and nightmares than are packed into cities far more ancient", writes Reyes in the introduction to this evocative anthology. In this latest addition to the superb City-Pick series of urban literary guides, Reyes offers ample evidence to back up her claim, including many modern passages translated for this volume. Joseph Brodsky, who was born in St Petersburg, thought narcissism was the inevitable fate of this city of canals and rivers. It was, he said, "an utter egoist preoccupied solely with its own appearance". Peter the Great's urban fantasy was built by a quarter of a million serfs and soldiers within 50 years. Thousands died in the waterlogged land. Solzhenitsyn – so often his nation's conscience – could not forget this: "It was with clenched teeth, rotting in murky swamps, that the Russians built this beauty." The city of Dostoevsky and Pushkin, as well as the cradle of the Russian revolution, is above all, as Simone de Beauvoir said, a "ghost-haunted" city.
