Based on
a
review at the Modern Novel website, part of this story involves the devil showing
photographs of the future to a man named Vanoski (an obscure author from the 1930s). So,
we’ve got photos-from-the-future, but no actual time travel. However, there is time travel
in another story (
“Fotografiya Pushkin (1799–2099)”) from the
Teacher of Symmetry Cycle. And just to pile satire on top of satire, the
16 stories in the cycle were purportedly written by an obscure Englishman named A.
Tired-Boffin, and Bitov was merely the humble messenger who provided translations of these
lost gems into Russian.
Also, according to Fantlab[/b] and Labirint, this is the central
story of Bitov’s Teacher of Symmetry Cycle, which consists of 16 of avant-garde stories by
an unknown English author, A. Tired-Boffin (1859–1937). Bitov purportedly found and
translated some of these stories to Russian.
Итак, на фотографии был бесспорно я, и мое
будущее лицо мне нравилось и подходило, но чем же
оно тогда было так искажено?
So, it was undeniably me in the photograph, and I liked and suited my future face, but why
was it so distorted then?
English