Happiness by Yuri Felsen

Happiness (1932) is the second novel in Yuri Felsen’s cycle The Recurrence of Things Past, following the critically acclaimed Deceit. Written as a diary addressed to his beloved Lyolya, it unfolds as an intense stream of consciousness in which Volodya – its anxious, self-scrutinising narrator – revisits the fragile equilibrium of their difficult relationship.

When new figures enter Lyolya’s orbit, Volodya’s hard-won certainties begin to collapse. Forced to contend with a series of rivals – a Soviet film star, a dashing ex-soldier, a wealthy businessman – he is driven ever deeper into jealousy and self-analysis, with tragic results. As the relationship fractures, Volodya probes the uneasy bond between emotional suffering and artistic creation, and the elusive nature of happiness itself.

Set among the exiled Russian community of interwar Paris, Happiness offers both a vivid social snapshot and an unnerving psychological portrait. Felsen’s exploration of desire, rivalry, masculinity and self-deception, shaped by shifting sexual and emotional mores, feels strikingly modern.

Both subtle and profound in its exploration of love, art, literature, and human frailty, the book traces the tormented romance of its protagonist alongside his artistic evolution, standing at the forefront of aesthetic and philosophical currents in European modernism.

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