annals of revolutionary heteronymy: Vladimir Mazin, Irina Kobayashi

[Vladimir Ossipovich] Lichtenstadt was condemned to death, then pardoned; he spent ten years in prison at Schlüsselberg [in Petrograd] ... 

One morning in March 1917 the prisoners of Schlüsselberg were called to the courtyard by guards bearing weapons. They believed they were going to be slaughtered; they could hear the cries of a furious crowd surrounding the prison walls. Actually, this crowd was deliriously joyful; it broke down the doors, the blacksmiths with their tools at the head of the crowd, to break the prisoners' chains. ...On the day he got out of prison, Lichtenstadt and the anarchist Justin Jouk took charge of the town of Schlüsselberg. ... After the death in battle of another prisoner, Lichtenstadt adopted the dead man's name and called himself Mazin, to remain faithful to his example.--Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary.

*

Irina Kobyashi Kobayashi  trépassa la même année, d’une hémorragie que quelqu’un avait provoquée sur sa personne tailladant les poignets jusqu'à l’os. Comme toujours lorsque l’un de nôtres était assassiné, nous constituâmes un collectif portant son nom. Sa voix vibra avec la nôtre, dans la nôtre. Sa mémoire continua à exister, a remuer des souvenirs pour que nous pouvions nous approprier, et elle continua à fabriquer des images où nous nous déplacions avec bonheur, des rêves qui niaient le réel et qui le subvertissaient. … Plusieurs d’entre nous disparurent a cette époque : Jean Khorrasan, Verena Nordstrand, Rita Hoo, William Lethbridge, Vassilissa Lukaszczk. Comme pour tous ceux qui les avaient précédé dans la liste des morts, nous leurs rendîmes hommage. Dans le quartier de haute sécurité, les survivants ont toujours considéré qu’ils pouvaient servir de support vocal et physique à l’intelligence de ceux qui ne répondaient plus aux appels.--Volodine et al, Le post-exotisme en dix leçons, leçon onze (gross emphasis mine).

Lutz Bassmann, Ellen Dawkes, Iakoud Khadjbakiro, Elli Kronauer, Erdogan Mayayo, Yasar Tarchalski, Ingrid Vogel, and Antoine Volodine (the eight authors listed on the second frontispiece of Le post-exotisme) needn't have read Victor Serge. Needn't have been thinking of Lenin and all his heteronyms, either. It's in the logic of the thing: not only do clandestinity, subversion, and friendship make it self-evident that one would write in the name of another, particularly in the name of the dead friend comrade, but it's also in the logic of fragmentary writing: "any fragmentary text already had an indeterminable, that is, always future relationship with the other or with others... any fragmentary text was already a text with multiple authors; it was by definition a collective text that might be signed in a gesture of irreducible singularity by each and every indeterminable other..." (Leslie Hill, Maurice Blanchot and Fragmentary Writing). They needn't have read Blanchot, either; it's not a question of influence (in the case of Blanchot) or reference (in the case of Serge).

Reader contest: Where is this phrase, in what post-exotic text: so long as there remains a voice and a fragment of love...? Extra difficulty: it's probably not been translated into English yet.