from The Teacher of Symmetry Cycle
Преподаватель симметрии
Prepodavatelʹ simmetrii
Literal: Teacher of symmetry
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?