Samizdat 2021-2022

Samizdat Winter 2022

Russian Undergraduate Student Society Publication

Editors Genevieve Corben Daria Gordon Evan Kashtan Marie-Elise Latorre Gabriel Palter Daisy Sprenger Nicholas Howell Design and Layout Daisy Sprenger Cover Design and Art Daisy Sprenger Editor In Chief Nicholas Howell

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Table of Contents:

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4

Ногти/Fingernails Kim

Memory as Metafiction Cormac

Letter from the Editor Nicholas

5 Howell 7 Slipp

The Story of Burgeoning Poetics Connor

Advice from an Outsider Joshua

Christ’s Pity on Man Camille

10 Dimakakos

13 Deslongchamps 22

Как Стать Домовой

Kim Lefort

In the Wake of Sleep Jackson

24 Pinkowski 28 Cao

“The Pattern that Connects” Yuxin in Gogol’s Worldview

32 Lefort

34 Krupa-Gilmore

Expressing Patriarchal Fears Tor

Стихи Daisy

38 Petrov

45 Sprenger 46

Walking Away

Nicholas Howell

48

My Chersonesus

Marie-Elise Latorre

Постмодернизм-Просто Ярлык?

Daisy

49 Sprenger

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Letter from The Editor Or should I say “A Thank You From the Editor.” It’s been awhile since we last had a chance to speak like this, but I promise you that the Samizdat team and I have been busy in the interim.

Since my last “Letter from the Editor” it’s been a year of ups and downs, false starts and restarts, new faces and old, and many, many emails. But before we get into anything too serious there are some thank you’s in order. First, so to my amazing and dedicated editorial team: Daisy Sprenger, Daria Gordon, Evan Kashtan, Gabriel Palter, Genevieve Coben, and Marie-Elise Latorre. Thank you all for your hard work and dedication to the journal, your creativity, and your quick responses to emails sent at 10pm on a Saturday.

Another thank you to everyone who submitted. The hardest part of being Editor-in-Chief is telling people that we were not going to go forward with their piece. Submitting is scary, but there would be no Samizdat without the people who put a little piece of their soul in my inbox.

And of course, thank you to all of our published authors! We have a great selection of pieces this year, from the classics to the contemporary, with a little christian theology in the middle (Which was definitely not on my bingo board at the beginning of the term). So thank you to Camille Deslongchamps, Connor Slipp, Cormac Krupa-Gilmor, Jackson Pinkowski, Joshua Dimakakos, Kim Lefort, Tor Petrov, and Yuxin Cao. Because I am the EIC and I can, I want to give a special thank you to Connor and Tor who I worked with directly. Thank you both for letting me cut so much of your hard work. Submitting a thesis is putting a big piece of your soul out there, so apologies Tor for only being able to get a little slice of it.

Getting to work on Samizdat, being able to rely on so many smart, talented people, has been the highlight of my time at McGill. The Russian Department and our wonderful Student Society spend all year creating a community just to watch people graduate at the end. And then next year they start all over again. Every year brings its own challenges, but this year has been especially difficult. Thank you to those members of our community who donated to the RUSS/ Samizdat fundraiser for humanitarian causes in Ukraine, and thank you to everyone who contributed through other fundraisers and organizations. Language and culture can unite people who are divided by borders, religion, or social systems; but every piece of art is also an expression of the internal, of the inimitable gulf that divides us and makes us each unique. Sometimes we are not the same, and that deserves to be celebrated and protected.

It is now my own time to graduate, but I will always cherish my time at McGill, in the Russian Department, and with Samizdat. I am able to go, confident of what lies ahead for each of these institutions because of the smart, talented, thoughtful, and creative individuals who give them a unique future.

Nicholas Howell, Editor in Chief

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The Story of Burgeoning Poetics C

hildhood is the story of a young aristocratic boy’s early life, but is not the story of Tolstoy’s life. It is much more than a simple story even though that’s what it appears to be at first glance. A superficial reading of this work would conclude that there is an older narrator who is reminiscing about his childhood.

The novel sets itself the task of particularizing, or setting into narrative, the pre-conceptual notion of childhood. By stopping here, however, one would miss the much larger scope of the work.

In fact, it shows the inner workings of a child’s pre-conceptual imagination thereby becoming an aesthetic manifesto based on the child’s perception. It is the story of the development of a poetics of perception told through the story of the maturation of a boy.

By foregrounding the universality of childhood, Tolstoy distances himself from any objective conception of childhood and of aesthetics.

In lieu of this distance, we might find it helpful to consider the “death of the author” as put forth

by Roland Barthes in his essay by the same name.

Barthes writes, “as soon as a fact is narrated no longer with a view to acting directly on reality but intransitively, that is to say, finally outside any function other than that of the very practice of the symbol itself, this disconnection occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins” (Barthes, 142).

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Connor Slipp

Emphasizing the objectlessness of Childhood frees the poetic construction that foregrounds its own origin and development to transcend Tolstoy’s authority. Childhood is narrated in the first person by the protagonist as he recollects his youth. The events of the novel are framed temporally by a primary distance that separates the identity of the narrator from that of the boy. This distance allows for a certain performative function in that the young author in question looks back to his childhood and ensnares the aesthetic, dreamlike pre-conceptual vision that he can recall having been overwhelmed with as a child. The narrator reclaims this level of perception in order to then make use of it to create what he now understands as his art. The most compelling moment in this regard is when he recalls having given his grandmother a poem as a gift on her name-day. Nikolai describes deciding to write a poem for his grandmother as a spontaneous affair: he “immediately found a suitable rhyming couplet, hoping that the rest of it would come just as easily” (Tolstoy, 57). The childish whimsicality that he recalls having had is precisely this “pre-conceptual” aesthetic intuition.

There was no specific reason for him to want to write a poem except possibly for the need to be different from his older brother. He decides to keep his poem a secret because secrecy is one way of expressing his subjectivity in the face of others. He is right at the beginning of the process of discovering who he is, and who he is to others. Nikolai simultaneously develops a worldview whilst discovering his inner-self. The narrator is trying to capture the development of a world view, in this scene and in the novel more generally. It is very important then, in this regard, that the poem itself is not shared with the reader save that last rhyming couplet. This scene is not about the poem itself, but about its creation.

When trying to fill in the rest of the poem after having come up with the couplet so easily, Nikolai searches for inspiration in other poems and finds one that is suitable, written by his own tutor. Upon completing the poem, he originally thinks that “it seemed superb” (58). Having not told anyone what he was doing for his grandmother because of his desire for secrecy, Nikolai was able to feel comfortable with his own creation. It is not until he realizes that the poem will be read and judged by other people that he begins to worry.

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After being overcome by such a thought, he rereads the poem and, passing over what would seem like mistakes in the first ten lines, he fixates on the last one – the couplet that came so easily to him – deciding that it is somehow proof of a lie. The last line reads, “and love you like our mother dear,” but he realizes that he does not love his grandmother like he loves his mother, and begins to believe that his grandmother will find it insulting that he is seemingly forgetting his mother with whom he no longer lives (58). The poem then gets entangled with his self-conscious projections from which stems the fear of critique. It is very important to note, however, that the narrator does not speak of a fear of criticism but of shyness. In one of his direct addresses to the reader Nikolai states, “anyone who has experienced shyness knows that the feeling increases in direct proportion to its duration… the more insurmountable it becomes and the weaker the resolve remains” (61). By calling this feeling shyness, it reaches a level of pre-conceptual relatability.

Despite his trepidation, his grandmother declares “Charmant!” upon receiving the gift and not another word is spoken of the poem (62). Even this one word phrase belies a deeper meaning. Although The form of the text is simple because it follows the growth of a child using the descriptive language proper to the pre-conceptual perception that children have. This pre-conceptual vision itself can be described as “magical” because of its ability to see things simply and for what they are in their purest affective quality, thus allowing for incredible clarity when reflected upon at a later age.

Samizdat In what way then is the death of the author represented within the text? Childhood is a work where “it is language which speaks, not the author” (Barthes, 143). Childhood is unfettered from the common definition of a stage of life, and instead becomes a pre-conceptual aesthetic. The narrator’s childhood becomes a means to rediscover this language and speak artistically in and of itself. It transcends merely expressing his personal experience through writing. This is something that Nikolai learns through reflecting on his experience of writing his first poem: he lies by saying he loves his grandmother like his mother only for his grandmother to ignore the content of the poem and assume simply that it represents an expression of kindness on his part. Regardless of its containing a lie, the couplet is not taken as genuinely artistic and is accepted as merely a gesture.

Because the poem scene metatextually reflects the creation of Childhood the text the reader can understand both the universal origin of the poetic imagination in one’s childhood, and the particular story of the maturation of a boy.

Childhood transcends memetic expectations and exists outside of the personal context from which it supposedly springs. Tolstoy wrote a story about a childish love for art for its own sake, thereby making language itself the origin of beauty and aesthetic “genius,” not himself as the subject “behind” the work.

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Adivce from an Outsdier

Heroism in the simulated world of Oman Ra Josh Dimakakos “The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory– precession of simulacra– that engenders the territory”- Jean Baudrillard on hyperreality (Baudrillard 166).

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Works Cited Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author,” Image, Music, Text, translated by S. Heath. Fontana, 1977, pp. 142-148.

Tolstoy, Leo. “Childhood,” from Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, translated by Judson Rosengrant. Penguin Classics, 2012.

ictor Pelevin’s space novella Omon Ra follows the protagonist Omon on his journey of self-discovery against the backdrop of the Soviet simulacrum.

Because Omon’s personal developments are enmeshed with the heroic values of the Soviet superstructure, once the ideological monolith disintegrates, so does his experience of reality.

This experience of disorientation and dissociation articulates a feeling distinct to the perestroika period. As Lipovetsky argues, “[Pelevin] portrays the Soviet world as a universal, existential metaphor for postmodern existence, with its total relativism of values, its destruction of stable orders of existence, its metaphors combining contradictory states of live and categorical oppositions of consciousness” (Lipovetsky 195). Because Omon must navigate this contradictory world without stability or direction, he has no choice but to create his own personal fulfilment from within.

Omon experiences his life as a series of passive images rather than active lived experiences, illustrating his subconscious absorption of empty Soviet signifiers.

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Omon states that “the course of my own life was already set, determined before I had even begun to think seriously about the way I wanted it to turn out” (Pelevin 10). The “first glimpse of [his] true personality” (Pelevin 8) was the moment Omon realised he could aspire to be a cosmonaut—a program funded and advertised by the Soviet Union in show of its superpower status. Omon’s personality thus owes its development to the Soviet ideological simulacra, and his desire to see the stars percolates through the cultural construct of heroic cosmonauts. Entering the cosmonaut program, the selfless heroism that is demanded of all Soviet citizens guides his life choices. However, Pelevin demonstrates how the values of the simulacrum do not relate to a concrete external reality, but rather, to internal experiences and beliefs. As Urchagin tells Omon, “just one pure soul is enough for the banner of triumphant socialism to be unfurled on the surface of the distant moon.

But there must be one pure soul, if only for a moment, because the banner will be unfurled within that soul” (Pelevin 150). Omon’s sacrifice attains heroic meaning because the act came from within, rather than through external conditions.

Samizdat The climax of the novel– the moment of Omon’s “death” and his surprising survival—confronts both him and the reader with an external view of the Soviet simulacrum. Omon wakes up and slowly realises the moon landing was staged on a TV set—the process was a simulation that does not correspond to any external reality. However, as Gomel notes, “the ideological simulacrum enables the individual experience of transcendental self-sacrifice, and thus it is immaterial whether it corresponds to external reality or not” (Gomel 300). Though Omon’s entire dream and career were based on a simulation, his heroism emerged from his personal will to find meaning and thus survives the death of that simulation. Lipovetsky further elaborates on this act as a personal revelation for Omon: “it does not matter how real his flight is, for Omon Ra, it represents completion, like an archaic rite of passage, a crossing through the zone of horrible tests, a temporary death” (Lipovetsky 196). Omon’s (non)death in the space program allows him to be reborn into a new reality, from which he can comprehend the strangeness of his lived experience.

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Towards the end of the novel, Omon reclaims his agency and individuality amidst the Soviet simulacrum. Gomel argues that “Omon’s escape from the totalitarian narrative of utopian heroism hinges on his acceptance of alternative narratives as equally valid and/ or satisfying. He exits the Soviet Matrix into a virtual reality of his own making” (Gomel 301). Omon’s will to meaning survives his rejection of the simulated space program, and with it comes the freedom to step into a “virtual reality of his own making.” While this is not true escape to an “objective real,” it is a point of departure for Omon to create meaning through a new simulacrum of his own.

This freedom expands to a metatextual sense; Omon can now take on the trajectory of any possible future. Pelevin, rather than defining Omon’s future for readers, leaves it unwritten, and thus unmediated by the structural simulacrum of the text. Omon Ra thus captures a shift from an externally imposed simulacrum to one of Omon’s own making, all while acknowledging that the escape from general simulacrum is ultimately impossible.

As a cultural product of the perestroika period, Omon Ra articulates a loss of unity and identity, what Lipovetsky describes as the “severed sense of belonging to the collective of the Soviet people’’ (Lipovetsky “Post-Soviet Literature” 6). Russians in the period of perestroika and its aftermath were confronted with demands of reorientation into a new world, with its uncertain and new mythologies and structures (Fitzpatrick 304). Though Pelevin treats this reorientation as a personal triumph, he points to an “emptiness that follows… the deconstruction of grand narratives, ideologies and transcendent symbols” (“Post-Soviet Literature” 9).

Samizdat The end of the simulacrum is not the emergence of the real, nor the advent of total individual freedom, but reorientation; after his mission, Omon attempts to locate where he is on a map of the Moscow metro, an act of geographical reorientation that mirrors his ideological reorientation. Rather than experiencing enlightenment, Omon is granted an ambiguous restart to his personal relationship to the external world, evoking many of the drastic socio-economic and ideological changes of the perestroika period.

To conclude, Omon’s identity develops in the ideological simulacrum of the Soviet space program. In transcending this reality, Omon finds a degree of freedom in reorienting to a recontextualised world. Gomel argues that the “danger to the totalitarian Matrix is not the truth but rather the DIY formation of individual simulacra” (Gomel 301). Individuals have the power to create their own meaning internally—their own “DIY” simulacra— rather than be subordinated to the collective Soviet simulacrum that had overshadowed the importance of the individual since the 1917 revolution. As Omon emerges from the Soviet reality, the novella ends, and with it the possibility of textual control over his life; this leap evokes his experience of creating his own simulacrum rather than living through the one given to him. The dissipation of the simulacrum and the “emptiness that follows” evokes the feelings of disorientation and change of the perestroika period. Ultimately, Omon Ra captures the individual’s experiential relationship to broader patterns of meaning and explores the ambiguity that emerges when those patterns dissipate.

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Works Cited Baudrillard, Jean. “Simulacra and Simulations.” Jean Baurdrillard, Selected Writings, edited by Mark Poster, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988, pp. 166-184.

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. “Becoming Post-Soviet.”

Tear Off the Masks!: Identity and Im posture in Twentieth-Century Russia, Princeton University Press, 2005, pp.

303-317.

Gomel, Elana. “Viktor Pelevin and Literary Postmodernism in Soviet Russia.”

Russian Science Fiction Literature and Cinema: A Critical Reader, edited by Anindita Banerjee, Academic Studies Press, 2018, pp. 290-305.

Lipovetsky, Mark. “Post-Soviet Literature between Realism and Postmodernism.” The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Russian Literature, edited by Evgeny Dobrenko and Marina Balina, Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp.

175-193.

Lipovetsky, Mark. Russian Postmodernist Fiction: Dialogue with Chaos, edited by Eliot Borenstein, M.E. Sharpe, 1999.

Pelevin, Victor. Omon Ra. Translated by Andrew Bromfield, New Directions Books, 1996.

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Ch r i s t ’ s P ity o n Man A Religious Analysis of Tolstoy’s “the Death of Ivan Ilyich.” Camille n the novella, The Death of Ivan IlyDeslongschamps ich, Leo Tolstoy wrestles with one of

I

the most pressing human questions: what is the purpose of human suffering? The reader is invited to wonder through Ivan, what is causing my suffering? What is it for? Most people—religious and non-religious alike—will at some point stand before these questions and face the inadequacy of human understanding. There may never be a pat answer to the questions Ivan asks, and indeed, Tolstoy does not proffer one. The questions, however, demand from Ivan (and each of us) a response in the form of our very life. From Ivan’s example, and the meaning he finds in his own suffering, we can better understand our own experiences.

Ivan goes through life only in pursuit of ephemeral goods and prestige. He neither understands, nor seeks to understand, things beyond himself; he is self-centered and selfish.

Ivan’s initial struggles—against society, his wife, and himself—come due to his severed relationship with other human beings. Ivan’s approach to work and friendship is the first way the reader witnesses his callous disposition in action. Ivan’s actions and decisions are entirely motivated by his desire to garner affection from “highly placed people” (Tolstoy 47). Tolstoy emphasizes Ivan’s reverence for these “highly placed people,” yet never explicitly defines who these people are or why they are so “highly placed.”

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In this way, Tolstoy demonstrates that why they are “highly placed” is not important.

Still, Ivan lives in constant pursuit of their favor and continuously adapts himself to their preferences. He bases his moral framework upon the judgements of others and his reception in society. For example, in law school, Ivan “committed acts...of great vileness” (Tolstoy 48). These acts “inspired a feeling of self-loathing in him,” at the time, but, once he realized that “such acts were also committed by highly placed people... he forgot all about them and was not troubled in the least by the memory of them” (Tolstoy 48). Idolizing these “highly placed people,” Ivan conveniently ignores their caprice and puts them on a pedestal. He loses the sense of their humanity and becomes increasingly obsessed with these social dynamics, in which the person in power has dominance over the values and actions of his lessers. Viewing social relationships as power struggles, Ivan loses sight of the humanity of those below him as well; “the consciousness of his power, the possibility of destroying any man he wanted to destroy... filled his life” (Tolstoy 53). For Ivan, other people became merely tools to be used for other ends, thus precluding the possibility of any real friendships.

Samizdat Tolstoy exemplifies Ivan’s distorted perspective on human relationships in his marriage to Praskovya Fydorovna Golovina, in which Ivan does not recognize nor appreciate Fydorovna’s humanity. He understands his wedding as “something pleasant for himself in acquiring such a wife,” while also doing “what highly-placed people considered right” (Tolstoy 51). Describing the marriage as an acquisition demonstrates how Ivan viewed the wedding as a business deal and his wife as merely a piece of property.

He intends for her to become a helpful stepping stone on his journey to happiness, yet, by not recognizing her humanity, he sets the marriage up for failure. When Praskovya inevitably turns out to be imperfect and not the ‘stepping stone’ he envisions, Ivan becomes frustrated and short with her. Their relationship with each other quickly deteriorates, and Praskovya, having been treated as an asset rather than a person, “decided that her husband had a terrible character” and became an “unpleasant and crude” wife (Tolstoy 61, 51). She becomes sullen and disagreeable, refusing to empathize with Ivan, even during his illness.

Ivan even loses sight of his own humanity. He expects from himself, and from his possessions, a level of perfection which they cannot reach, and drives himself to the brink of insanity. Ivan’s promotion and move to Moscow exemplifies this drive for perfection; even though he gets a good job, increased salary, and prestige far above his expectations, some things, “as always, were lacking just a little” (Tolstoy 57).

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No matter how many times Ivan adjusts the drapes or how much money he spends on beautiful accessories to the rooms, something would always be lacking in his eyes. Ivan needs to allow himself peace, allow himself to rest in the knowledge that nothing is perfect, especially not human beings. But, in Ivan’s false constructed reality, the “highly placed” people have achieved perfection: the perfect house, the perfect family, the perfect job. Thus, comparing himself to these “perfect” beings, Ivan never finds peace.

The climax of the story occurs as Ivan is climbing a ladder to adjust his new drapery. This image of him reaching for aesthetic improvement evokes his spiritual search for perfection. As he ascends the ladder, grasping for this perfection, he quite unexpectedly and unceremoniously falls and whacks his side on a table. This humiliating fall sets in motion a new reality for him; it is the catalyst for his three-month long illness and, ultimately, death. Ivan, a relatively young and healthy man, seems to be in perfect condition, but it turns out to be a façade. Similarly, Ivan’s many relationships, maintained for the purpose of social gain, hide a corrosive interior. Ivan’s fall and subsequent illness pull back the curtain on his reality: he now must face the choices he has hitherto made in his life.

Samizdat Almost immediately after his fall, Ivan becomes the “lesser” in each relationship he has; “as he put on airs before the accused in court, so the famous doctors put on airs before him” (Tolstoy 61). Ivan placed his worth and happiness in ephemeral goods. And when Ivan loses his grip upon such fleeting things, he experiences profound suffering and sadness.

Ivan’s illness reveals in a powerful way the reality that “human personhood does not flourish in isolation” (Patitsas 7). Human beings rely on real companionship; we stand in need of one another. Moreover, as Ivan begins to realize, he cannot save himself from the reality of his own corrosive interior. As much as Ivan hopes or believes otherwise, he is not self-sufficient. And, since he spends the majority of his life flaunting and purporting his own independence, Ivan struggles when he begins to need help from others.

It is at this point in the narrative—when Ivan’s status mirage has completely evaporated and he stands, as a beggar, in need of others—that Tolstoy introduces the idea of pity through the character of Gerasim. In English, pity is the translation of the Russian zhalost.

However, the English pity does not carry the same connotation as the Russian zhalost. Pity denotes the action of a superior person looking down on and feeling sorry for another. Zhalost, on the other hand, “generally indicates not a distancing or contrasting of subject and object, but a closeness between them” (Danaher 5).

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The Russian interpretation of the word for pity has a positive connotation, one of love and companionship, one of shared pain over an undeserved suffering. The receiver of pity, in the Russian sense, feels teplee na dushe, legche [“warmer in the soul, lighter”], rather than experiencing resentment or belittlement (Danaher 5). Zhalost resists hierarchical connotations, showing that Ivan can no longer orient himself based upon his social superiors and lessers.

While this radical equality with others disorients him, it also demonstrates further his deep need for solidarity and to lighten the burden on his soul.

Unfortunately, Ivan does not fully comprehend his own desire for companionship.

Throughout the story, Ivan asks: “what for?”

(Tolstoy 83). He wants to understand the cause for his immense suffering. He looks for an immediate, tangible, discrete answer to this ageold question, but it is nowhere to be found, not in The Death of Ivan Ilyich nor outside of the text. However, this does not imply that his suffering is meaningless. His suffering is what allows him to finally face his own poverty and embrace his need for pity. And this recognition is his ‘conversion,’ the shift in his outlook experienced in the final paragraphs of the novella.

The religiosity of Ivan’s conversion is debated frequently by scholars of the work.

Ryan Gerard Duns outlines the different ways in which readers interpret the final moments of Ivan’s life. Firstly, there are the “hermeneuts of denial,” as he refers to them: those who simply do not see religious themes within the story at all. (Duns 215). Instead, they locate “his conversion in the last-minute acceptance of the telos or end of human life” (Duns 218). Ivan’s conversion comes when “he renounces his life’s false ends and embraces death” (Duns 218).

Samizdat Ivan does not convert towards a personal God, but instead accepts his death—his telos—by disavowing his previous shallow priorities.

Duns proposes that Ivan’s slight moral progression was his conversion. The problem with this reading of the text is that it fails to grasp that Ivan’s conversion was not a continuation of some previous experience, but rather was a wholly divergent path, requiring him to leave behind his old life.

The “hermeneuts of divinity,” on the other hand, highlight religious elements within the text, but similarly make a critical omission (Duns 215). Instead of focusing on the relationship between characters as symbolic of Christ’s relationship with man, these hermeneuts focus too much on Tolstoy’s own relationship with the Church; they read the entirety of Ivan’s conversion through a specific and limiting lens of Tolstoy’s fraught relationship with the Orthodox Church. While these critics recognize Gerasim as a “quasi-sacramental mediator of God’s grace,” they do so at the service of a larger, extra-textual narrative (Duns 219). In so doing, these critics miss out on the depth of Christianity in the relationships between Ivan and the world itself.

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There is another way to read the novella that denies neither a religious element to the text nor looks outside the text for religious meaning. I propose that Ivan’s conversion is indeed a religious one, but one that emerges within the drama of the text itself—through Ivan’s new encounters with Gerasim and his son, which reveal Christ’s pity for him. These characters are not “quasi-sacramental mediators of God’s grace”: they are the actual, tangible and concrete way by which Christ’s own pity is revealed to Ivan. As previously discussed, his conversion is precipitated by the recognition of his poverty and his need for close human companionship to lighten the weight of his burdens. As I will show, it is a religious conversion due to the nature of Him who provides this pity: Christ.

Christ, canonically understood to be fully man and fully divine, is uniquely capable of providing pity (zhalost) to mankind. As God-Man, Christ does not stand over and above humanity as a distant judge or abstract ideal. He is fully united with all of humanity. As a fellow man, He understands humanity’s need to satisfy its desire for meaning; yet, while also being God, He is able to fulfill this longing Himself. Thus, the pity of Christ is different from the pity of a mother, father, sibling, friend, or stranger.

The pity of Christ upon man, according to Monsignor Luigi Giussani, founder of the Catholic lay movement Communion and Liberation, has the ability to change a person’s “way of looking at heaven and earth, of getting up in the morning and going to bed at night” (Giussani 89). Being unblemished, Christ still decides to love and pity us, forgiving us for our sins.

Samizdat This pity, as Giussani describes, then takes all burdens, all sufferings, away from our own shoulders and onto Christ’s, allowing human beings to live lighter. Accepting this pity changes one’s own disposition towards life and suffering. Now, because of the awareness of Christ’s pity, human beings are able to lift these struggles up to Christ and allow him to hold the weight that they cannot bear.

Tolstoy mirrors this change on a smaller scale through the relationship between Gerasim and Ivan. Gerasim’s pity, like Christ’s pity on humanity, tangibly lightens Ivan’s burdens.

During the period of his sickness, Ivan’s friends and family members abandon him. Even Ivan’s “wife and daughter...did not understand anything, were vexed that he was so cheerless and demanding” (Tolstoy 6465). Instead of showing empathy, they become irritated at his illness for causing them discomfort. Only Gerasim, Ivan’s servant, understands the “situation and pitied him” (Tolstoy 75-76). When Ivan asked, Gerasim “went to him… embraced him… effortlessly and as if without pressure, led him, almost carried him” during his time of need (Tolstoy 74). Gerasim literally lightens Ivan’s burden by his pity and recognizes the humanity in Ivan during his period of agony and helplessness. Ivan cannot move himself, cannot dress himself, cannot feed himself; only with Gerasim’s compassion and aid can Ivan function.

His wife and daughter, who are supposed to love Ivan unconditionally, do not lift a finger to help Ivan live with dignity.

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Gerasim delivers the pity that Ivan needs: “to be caressed, kissed, wept over, as children are caressed and comforted” (Tolstoy 76), Although Gerasim does not caress, kiss, or weep over Ivan, he shows Ivan the care that a mother shows to her child--the seemingly unlimited patience and forgiveness she possesses. And, in showing this care, Gerasim fulfills Ivan’s need for compassion and allows Ivan to live “warmer in the soul, lighter” (Danaher 5).

Ultimately, however, Gerasim’s pity, the physical embodiment of Christ’s pity, does not release Ivan from his spiritual struggles. Ivan lives constantly “alone with It. Face to face with it, and there was nothing to be done with It. Only look at it and go cold” (Tolstoy 72). He does not “face” It, only dreads It and “hopes It will disappear” (Tolstoy 72). This It does not allow Ivan to have a semblance of peace for the duration of his illness, particularly because neither Ivan, nor the reader, can explicitly define It. Gary Comstock illustrates this point by pointing out the different ways which readers of Ivan Ilyich interpret It. The “naive reader” becomes “increasingly uncomfortable with” the elusive definition of It, so, “following the lead of the disoriented, displaced patient,” looks “for an escape” (Comstock 329). Incapable of confronting the true meaning of It, these readers come to the premature conclusion that It represents “death” (Comstock 329). This conclusion never allows the reader to come into true contact with the conflict between Ivan, the reader, and the reality of It.

Samizdat Similarly, the more “mature” interpretation decides that the story “narrates the decomposing corporality of textuality itself. Unraveling around its central indeterminacy—the nonreferential It—the work subverts all attempts to assign it any stable meaning” (Comstock 329).

From this perspective, the meaning of the story becomes entirely at the discretion of the reader; relativism and personal experience supersede any moral truth at the center of the story.

“Rather than attempting to deal with the echoes and hints arising from one’s own horizons within the experience of reading, the interpreter is encouraged to divagate in whatever manner pleases him or her” (Comstock 330). Much like Ivan himself, the readers thus allow themselves the freedom to define their own meaning of reality, rather than face what it actually is.

I propose that the It in the story represents Ivan’s poverty—his need for pity— which Ivan takes the whole novella to finally understand and accept. Due to his severed relationship with others, and with himself, Ivan found it “quite impossible” to admit the indecency of his life (Tolstoy 87).

And when it occurred to him, as it often did, that it was all happening because he had not lived right, he at once recalled all the correctness of his life and drove this strange thought away. [emphasis added] (Tolstoy 85)

Tolstoy uses the pronoun “it” as the introduction to this idea, that Ivan did not live well.

However, every time “it” is mentioned, Ivan shuts the thoughts down, insisting upon his own “correctness.”

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Although it takes Ivan his whole life to come to this conclusion, Ivan converts, with his son Vasya, a symbol of Christ, as the catalyst for this conversion. As Ivan lays in his bed dying, Vasya comes into his room. Ivan’s hand, thrashing about in agony, “landed on the boy’s head” (Tolstoy 90). “The boy seized it, pressed it to his lips, and wept” (Tolstoy 90).

The physical grip, the tears, and the kissing of Ivan’s hand allowed Ivan to experience, in that moment, a conversion: “Just then Ivan Ilyich fell through, saw light, and it was revealed to him that his life had not been what it ought, but that it could still be rectified” (Tolstoy 90). Witnessing the “light,” Ivan came to an awareness of Christ’s pity. Ivan’s life had strayed from reality when he chased the mirage of status; he strayed from truth when he insisted on his moral rectitude, but, even with just one hour left to live, his life “could still be rectified” (Tolstoy 90). The last sentence of the paragraph of Ivan’s conversion says simply: “He felt sorry for him” (Tolstoy 90). Due to the fact that Ivan, earlier, mentions his own pity towards his wife, most readers assume the subject of this sentence to reference Ivan, meaning that Ivan felt sorry for Vasya. However, the antecedent of the subject “he” is ambiguous.

Samizdat Instead, perhaps Vasya is the subject, meaning that, gazing upon Ivan, Vasya, symbolic of Christ, feels pity for Ivan.

This radical pity, coming through the physical touch of his son, allows Ivan the chance to be forgiven. And, once he accepts his need for this pity, Ivan begins to live “differently,” as Giussani proposes; Ivan “sought his old habitual fear of death and could not find it” (Tolstoy 91). No longer does Ivan live in pain (“Where are you, pain?”) or fear (”he could not find it”) but he lives his final two hours in a place where “instead of death there was light” (Tolstoy 91). Vasya, portraying Christ, puts his hands on Ivan and, through physical touch, releases Ivan of all of his burdens. Vasya fulfills Ivan’s need for pity, for both physical and spiritual closeness, finally releasing Ivan of his burdens.

The physicality of Ivan’s conversion mirrors the Gospel story of the woman who touches the hem of Christ’s garment and is healed. This woman, who “had spent all her living on physicians… could not be healed by anyone” (Luke 8:43 ESV). Simply by coming up behind Jesus and touching “the fringe of His garment,” she was cured (Luke 8:44). This story exemplifies the power and the necessity of physical touch for conversion and healing. It is also a precursor to the Church’s understanding of the sacraments: that spiritual healing is communicated through physical means.

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The first step in being healed is knowing that one is sick. Through Ivan’s story, Tolstoy suggests that, as fallen creatures, humankind is sick; we stand in need of relationships with each other and, ultimately, with a God who saves. Ivan determinedly ignores this reality for his whole life, minus the final three hours.

Finally, at the very end, he recognizes his need for true companionship with his family, with friends, and most importantly, with Christ.

When his son weeps over him, his long-unfulfilled spiritual needs become clear. The physicality of Vasya’s love and pity also mirrors the physicality of Christian sacraments, which according to Christian doctrine, are tangible signs of an invisible reality. In receiving the sacrament of Last Rites, which allows for the forgiveness of sins and anointing of the body before death, Ivan is given a physical grace and is able to die in peace.

Tolstoy’s beautiful crafting of The Death of Ivan Ilyich invites the reader to join Ivan in his three-month long death. Perhaps it is an unwelcome invitation. The questions Ivan asks however, “What for?” “What? Take communion? Why?” “And what if my whole life, my conscious life, has indeed been ‘not right’?” are ones each of us must ultimately face (Tolstoy 83, 89). These questions clearly reveal Tolstoy’s own cry for meaning in his life. Tolstoy notoriously struggled with the Church, believing the idea of the Eucharist to be “quite incomprehensible” and that the Church “preached things so incompatible with reason and contemporary knowledge” (Duns 215). Tolstoy’s own search for meaning amid the suffering of life is certainly echoed in Ivan’s story.

Samizdat Although there is not an easy answer to these questions and others within The Death of Ivan Ilyich, there is nonetheless a response.

Ivan asks “What for?” and the response comes as the last words Ivan ever speaks: “What joy!” (Tolstoy 91). Through his suffering, Ivan understands his inability to carry his burdens alone, and thus must give them up to Christ.

In this there is great joy. St. Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical Salvifici Doloris, On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering, puts this idea succinctly: “Down through the centuries and generations it has been seen that in suffering there is concealed a particular power that draws a person interiorly close to Christ, a special grace. To this grace many saints, such as St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius of Loyola, and others, owe their profound conversion.

A result of such a conversion is not only that the individual discovers the salvific meaning of suffering but, above all, that he becomes a completely new person. He discovers a new dimension, as it were, of his entire life and vocation.” (John Paul II)

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Tolstoy presents to the reader the fact of Christ’s pity on man, on all of us. However, each of us must decide for ourselves how to utilize our freedom when “face to face” with reality. Duns comments how “the final page can stand as an encounter with nothingness or as a metaphor of revelation” (Duns 218). If there is one thing clear from Ivan’s life story, it is that the idols of status or self-sufficiency do not serve to answer the needs of his heart and will not inoculate him from the reality of suffering and death. The question remains how to interpret his suffering.

Do his struggles, in the end, assume meaning within the context of Christ’s own suffering and death, or will his life, and suffering, simply end when he dies, leaving nothing behind? The key lies in Ivan’s freedom to accept the caresses of his son and the pity of a God-who-saves. As Ivan grasps his son’s hand and is finally released from the burden of his sin and suffering, Tolstoy invites the reader to look for a hand reaching out in pity and love in his or her own life.

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Works Cited Comstock, Gary. “Face to face with It: The naive Reader’s moral response to Ivan Ilych.” Neophilologus 70 (1986): 321–333. https://doi. org/10.1007/BF00459815.

Danaher, David. “The semantics of pity and zhalost’ in a literary context.”

Glossos 3 (2002): 1-21.

Duns, Ryan Gerard. “Desire and Conver sion in The Death of Ivan Ilyich.”

Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture 27 (2020): 215237. muse.jhu.edu/article/757321.

Giussani, Luigi. Generating Traces in the History of the World: New Traces of the Christian Experience. Transl ated by Javier Prades and Stefano Aberto. Montréal, Québec: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011, 86-95.

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John Paul II. Salvifici Doloris.

Accessed November 26, 2021.

Vatican.va.

Martin, Paul. “Poetry as Theology: An Orthodox Perspective.” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 52, no.

1 (2007): 145-195.

Pachmuss, Temira. “The Theme of Love and Death in Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich.” American Slavic and East European Review 20, no. 1 (1961): 72–83. doi:10.2307/3001246.

Patitsas, Timothy. “A Feeling for Beauty: The Aesthetic Ground for Orthodox Eth ics.” The Road to Emmaus 57, no. 2 (2018): 3-39.

Tolstoy, Leo. The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

Translated by Richard Pevear, and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Vintage Classic, 2012.

Samizdat

Как

Стать

б

ыть домовым это неблагодарное дело. Надо много мудрости, знаний и интеллекта, но никто не ценит эту работу достаточно. Однако, этой работой, можно гордиться . Итак, вот так можно стать домовым. Прежде чем стать домовым, нужно быть человеком. Я был мужчиной за 85 лет до того, как сдал домовым! Это было не так уж плохо, я многому научился, поступил в университет в Москве и изучал историю с литературой. Так же я изучал фольклор и пытался найти себя; я хотел быть домовым.

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Домовым Kim Lefort

Домовым нужно много знать, tак как они стоят во главе дома. Например, домовым нужно знать как влиять на семью, как достигать мира, как исключать зло и как защищать дом. Университет может быть полезным, но одного образования не достаточно! Да, образование дало мне знание, но мне также был нужен опыт. Итак, после 4 лет в университете я отправился путешествовать по России. Во время своих путешествий я наблюдал за правительством, церквями и школами, чтобы узнать больше о том, как люди формируют и организуют свои сообщества — так сказать, формальные имитации семьи. Политики сказали мне, что думать; священники говорили мне, как думать; учителя сказали мне, почему я должен думать. Контроль, традиции и структура — это основы общества. Я создал свою собственную семью по подобию обшества и обнаружил что был не прав. Когда я стал отцом, я перестал существовать только для себя. Это чувство — родительства, защиты, ответственности является продуктом не страха и авторитета, а любви! Любовь питает душу, выворачивает кишки и заставляет нагадить в штаны, когда чтото идет не так. Вероятно, это было самое сложное, что я когда-либо делал, и я не сделал это идеально.

Samizdat

Я не буду утомлять вас подробностями. Это слишком личное. Но скажу, что любил, пока мое тело не выдержало. Потом я умер, но моя душа продолжала любить. Итак, вот в чем секрет: стать домовым — значит любить очень сильно, чтобы душа не могла отделиться от него. Банально, не так ли? Сейчас, каждый день я сплю в теплом очаге дома, в печи. Если семья делает постыдные вещи, напримир говорят плохие слова или выпивают всю водку за одну ночь, то я забираю их лошадей или свиней. Если семья делает хорошие вещи, например, дает мне соль и хлеб, то я помогаю им по домашней работой . Также, если семья уезжает в отпуск, им нужно сесть перед отъездом. Если они не сядут, то я не узнаю, что они уезжают, и буду думать, что они замышляют что-то не хорошее! Работа домового очень сложная. Но она того стоит.

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In the Wake of Sle e p

The Form of Waking and Dreaming in “A Double Life” and “Eugene Onegin” Jackson arolina Pavlova’s novel A Double Life Pinkowski

K

opens with an epigraph, taken from The Dream written by the English Romantic poet Lord Byron. This epigraph not only touches upon themes that run throughout A Double Life, but also situates Pavlova’s novel amongst the other works of Russian Romanticism, not least of all Pushkin’s novel in verse, Eugene Onegin. Thinking of these texts in conversation, two similar themes arise: that of form, the worlds of poetry and prose, and that of consciousness, the worlds of the waking and sleeping. Pushkin and Pavlova employ a mixed use of both poetry and prose, but both in distinct manners. Eugene Onegin is written in a style of verse with a strict meter and rhyme scheme, although the structure and topic are more akin to the novel. A Double Life, by contrast, uses prose to describe the protagonist’s waking experiences, and poetry for what she experiences while she sleeps. It is apparent that poetry and prose, as well as dreaming and waking, run as parallel themes throughout each work, however what must be investigated is the effect which they produce. While Pushkin’s synthesis of both form and dream state reflects the multitudinous, privileged life afforded to men, Pavlova’s separation of the two depicts the stifling and monotonous life imposed upon women.

Winter 2022

The waking world of Cecily Von Lindenborn, the heroine of Karlina Pavlova’s A Double Life, is one that revolves around the singular goal of marriage.

However, in making Cecily’s narrative centered upon the societal pressure to become marriageable, Pavlova shows how mundane and meaningless this reality is. With the first line of the novel, Pavlova sets the tone for the rest of Cecily’s waking life: “But are they rich?” (Pavlova 1). This abrupt opening is just a countless example of Pavlova’s terse prose, lacking the embellishment and frivolity that is expected in the world of the aristocracy. Yet, through the author’s deliberate restraint the heroine’s life feels banal, and in that manner realistic. In the few cases where the sentence runs, it is only to emphasize the superfluous nature of societal expectations, emulating within the reader the sense of boredom and monotony Cecily must feel. The society which the Cecily inhabits is so demanding and strict that it not only shapes what she does, but also shapes what she thinks: “Now at eighteen she was so used to wearing her mind in a corset that she felt it no more than she did the silk undergarment that she took off only at night” (Pavlova 29).

Samizdat Along with the corset as a symbol of Cecily’s bondage, Pavlova masterfully simulates this constricting feeling through her sparse prose, leaving the reader seeking more, something they can only find at night when Cecily removes both her physical and mental binder.

When viewing Pavlova’s prose and Cecily’s reality as parallel aspects of the novel, they begin to work in harmony with the express intent of portraying the stifling life of a woman in the Russian aristocracy.

Though the day-time life of Pavlova’s heroine is prosaic and banal, her world of sleep is the opposite, particularly regarding form. Cecily’s dreams mark the introduction of poetry in Pavlova’s work, and this new form only recurs once the protagonist falls asleep, at the end of each of the ten chapters.

In comparison to her waking world, Cecily’s dream sleeping world is lush and romantic, filled with vivid imagery and symbolism; it holds meaning, something that her other world does not. Analyzing Cecily’s dreaming world through a formalist lens, one must look to the original Russian text. In Barbara Heldt’s English translation the heroine’s dreams are in free verse, however in Pavlova’s original text there is a rhyme scheme present.

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While the Pushkin Sonnet is intricate and uniformly used throughout the entirety of Eugene Onegin, Pavlova’s poetry follows an ABAB rhyme scheme, while occasionally deviating into non-rhyme. Through the decision to depict the sleeping world in poetry while not adhering to a precise and restricting style, Pavlova endows Cecily’s dreams with a simultaneous sensation of beauty and freedom. It is during the second occurrence of these poetry-filled dreams that their purpose becomes clear: “In the quiet, in a marvelous dream, / With the mysterious force of a kiss / I will lift the shackles from your soul” (Pavlova 20). Compared to the prose form of Cecily’s waking life, this dream is filled with romantic ideals and promises of enlightenment, those that are accessible to men like Onegin and Pushkin but withheld from women like Cecily and Pavlova. It is through these dreams, away from reality of aristocratic life, that Pavlova gives Cecily a window to the world which is denied of her; it is through poetry that Cecily is freed from the constraints of her prosaic reality.

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Just as the form of A Double Life parallels its character’s sleeping and waking world, so is the case in Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, albeit with a different result. The work’s combination of poetic form with prosaic subject matter, featured in Eugene Onegin, creates a radiant and detailed portrait of Russian high society. When it comes to the pleasantries of aristocratic life, Pushkin’s novel in verse is light and funny, encompassing the fanciful habits of the nobility.: “The guardsman clinks his spurs and dances / the charming ladies twirl their feet- / enchanting creatures that entreat” (Pushkin 17). Although this is the same aristocratic world which Cecily inhabits, it is told through a different lens; the verse of Pushkin’s male gaze transforms this realm into one of magic and whimsy, with Cecily no doubt as merely one of countless “charming ladies.”

Seen in the passage, the combination of a poetic form with novellike conventions creates an ephemeral air around the text; the narrator’s eye is constantly wandering, never dwelling on one subject for too long. Translator of Eugene Onegin, James E. Falen echoes this same sentiment when describing “a universality to Pushkin’s work- a lightness of touch, weight, and illumination” (Falen xv).

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26 At the risk of simplification, Eugene Onegin is a work with dream-like qualities.

It is impossible to discuss this aspect of the text without mentioning the specificities of its form, namely the Onegin stanza. This style of verse written in iambic tetrameter is the defining formalistic feature of the novel, bestowing the work a dual sense of extravagance with its pleasant meter and rhyme, as well as brevity with the reader feeling that each word has a distinct purpose in the complex stanza. As both poetic and prosaic forms converge, so too does Onegin’s sleeping and waking world; for Pushkin’s male hero, the world is so abundant in opportunity and action, it reads like a marriage of dream and reality.

While Slavic scholar Olga Peters Hasty argues for the translation of Pavlova’s text as A Two-fold Life in reference to the work’s Byronic epigram (Hasty 53) the true essence of Cecily’s life lies within Heldt’s translation A Double Life. Cecily’s life is not “two-fold” because her waking and sleeping worlds are equal in neither freedom or value; her life is “double” as it is divided in two, one of poetry and one of prose, one of meaning and one of meaninglessness. It is Onegin who lives A Two-fold Life, one that is twice as great and is manifold in its combination of poetry and prose, as well as sleep and dream.

Onegin’s freedom is so apparent it is not only manifested in his superfluous nature, but it permeates in the form of the work itself. In direct opposition, Pavlova knows that Cecily’s is bound by her society and emancipation can come only in the wake of sleep.

Samizdat Works Cited

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Falen, James E. Introduction. Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse, by Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin, Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. vii-xxiv.

Hasty, Olga Peters. “Karolina Pavlova’s A Twofold Life.” Essays on Karolina Pavlova, edited by Fusso, Sussane and Alexander Lehrman, Northwestern University Press, 2001, pp. 53-85 Pavlova, Karolina K. A Double Life. Translated

by Barbara Heldt, Columbia University Press, 2019.

Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich. Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse. Translated by James E. Falen, Oxford University Press, 2009.

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“The Pattern tha t Connects” in Gog o l’s Yuxin Cao Worldview H

ow would you define what a nose is?

How do you know that your human nose is the same organ as an elephant trunk? What makes you believe that your nose is still a nose, not a man or a monster, when you see it slipping away from your face, hanging around St. Petersburg in an officer’s uniform, and not behaving like a nose at all – as happened in Nikolai Gogol’s The Nose? These questions are all answerable with the concept of the pattern that connects, proposed by anthropologist Gregory Bateson. Challenging our conventional epistemology, Bateson argues that we know things not through extracting their distinctiveness, but through finding their connections with other known things. As such,the cognitive pattern gives rise to such a connection - the pattern that connects - and is context-dependent (Bateson 8, 14). A nose is cognized not as an isolated entity but as the body part that connects with the eyes and mouth through a pattern in the spatial context (Bateson 16). A human nose and an elephant trunk are analogical because there is a pattern in the anatomic context enabling their inter-species connection (Bateson 16). One’s fleeing nose is certainly a nose; its biological pattern tells one to connect it with that smelling organ rightfully serving one’s body.

Winter 2022

In contrast,he cognitive pattern in Gogol’s The Nose does not cooperate with biology. Distorting the organic-based categorizations of human and non-human objects, this pattern ludicrously recognizes a well-dressed nose as a human officer, whereas almost banishes the real but nose-less officer, Kovalyov, from the bureaucratic society. The nose’s humanization processes and Kovalyov’s fear of exclusion proposes an alternative pattern of connection that favors the bureaucratic exterior over the organic essence, leading to questioning the stability of humanity in a bureaucratic social context.

The organic connection constituting the human/non-human distinction is suppressed by the bureaucratic-centered exterior connection on an individual scale when the nose’s humanized camouflage confuses the least possible person - its owner Kovalyov. Due to its bureaucratic exterior - “its uniform, its hat, and its whole appearance” - the nose is regarded by Kovalyov as a state councilor, which determines his later actions (Gogol, Diary of a Madman, The Government Inspector and Selected Stories 119). Approaching the nose with a highly humanized appellation, “my dear sir,” Kovalyov quickly connects it with humans instead of organs (Gogol 119).

Samizdat While explaining his request, Kovalyov does not outwardly state that the nose should go back to his face for its biological obligation. Instead, with reasonings such as “[being] promoted soon”, “[being] acquainted with several highly placed ladies,” and “from the point of view of duty and honor,” he expects the nose to understand his social dilemma, as if it is a human proficient with the survival rules in the bureaucratic, upper society (Gogol 119). Despite Kovalyov being fully aware of the nose’s biological essence as his body part and the fakeness of its exterior, he still allows the nose’s superficial connection with the bureaucrats, not its essential connection with non-human objects, to determine the mode of his speech. Ultimately, this is in response to the bureaucratic signals on the nose’s appearance upon which the confrontation is established.

In addition, the nose’s bureaucratic exterior is amplified to be the most crucial factor defining its identity, making it more of a human than an organ for Kovalyov. In such a bureaucratic-centered conversational context, the organic connection that distinguishes humanity from the non-human world is powerless in front of the superficial connection that shatters this distinction.

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This ludicrous pattern of connection extends beyond Kovalyov to a broader social scale when the other members of St. Petersburg also humanize the nose. According to the police officer’s message, the nose’s “passport was made out in the name of some civil servant,” and it is “boarding the stagecoach bound of Riga” (Gogol 130). Being able to obtain a valid passport and almost embarking on a trip, the nose is accepted as any other human for walking and handling legal affairs in the city for a fairly long time before the police officer comes to interfere. However, even the police officer “[mistakes] it for a gentleman at first” (Gogol 130). For the short-sighted police officer, he first notices the nose’s humanized appearance while its organic reality as an organ is noticeable only in further observation with his spectacles. Once again, the noses’ exterior connection with the bureaucrats prevails over its biological connection with non-human objects. Occurring at a social level, the prioritization of the exterior connectivity over the organic is not only Kovalyov’s individual action but becomes a collective cognitive pattern of the massive population of the city. Submerged in a bureaucratic-centered social context, the public of St. Petersburg responds to the bureaucratic signals on the nose’s appearance yet ignores its biological reality, eventually allowing the nose, a non-human intruder, to break into the realm of human bureaucrats.

The collective blindness to the human/non-human distinction thus pushes the boundary of humanity at crisis to a broader scale.

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Kovalyov’s fear of exclusion reveals the distorted pattern and the neglect of the human/ non-human distinction in a bureaucratic social context from another perspective. In contrast to the nose’s humanization as an officer, Kovalyov without a nose is at the risk of being excluded from the bureaucratic society. As he exclaims, “a man without a nose… is God knows what, neither fish nor fowl; just something to be thrown out of the window” (Gogol 128). With a single exterior alteration, he loses all confidence to socialize in the bureaucratic society, knowing that his new feature would be repelled by others.

When he has the nose back, he is relieved to be “in perpetual high spirits,” chatting and joking with his bureaucratic acquaintances, showing a strong contrast with his previous fear (Gogol 138). Throughout Kovalyov’s experience, his appearance is the only changing variable that both generates and relieves his fear of being excluded by the members of the bureaucratic society. However, his unchanging connection with them based on an organic essence - as the same human individual Kovalyov, an officer in the bureaucracy - is absent in his concern.

Kovalyov’s fear for exclusion is thus exclusively exterior-focused, and it reveals that appearance being the deterministic factor of one’s sociality is interiorized by Kovalyov and all other members in the bureaucracy.

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Kovalyov’s adventure is the result of the same exterior-oriented pattern in a bureaucratic context as that in the nose’s humanization processes working reversely. The non-human nose is accepted as a bureaucrat

by Kovalyov and by the society based on an exterior connection, whereas Kovalyov, the real bureaucrat, is almost excluded because of an exterior disconnection. Together, their experiences present a society that values the level of bureaucracy in one’s exterior over one’s biological identity and mentality. Such a bureaucratic-centered social context gives rise to a distorted worldview that is capable of humanizing the non-human object and dehumanizing the human. In the upper circle of St. Petersburg, the concept of organic-based human identity is inconsistent and discardable, being easily overthrown by an exterior alteration.

Through the nose’s humanization on both micro and macro scales and Kovalyov’s fear of exclusion, the biological connection that constitutes the basis of human/non-human distinction is destabilized by an exterior connection that arises from a bureaucratic social context. Valuing the exterior over the interior creates a social context that arbitrarily chooses whomever or whatever that possesses a favored appearance to be the bureaucrat, even if it might not be a human. Ultimately, it would result in an absurd political collective with questionable quality.

Similar plots and doubts to bureaucracy can be found in many other of Gogol’s works when applying Bateson’s concept.

Samizdat For example, in The Government Inspector, because of his “feature,” “manner,” and “behaving,” the bankrupt and morally degraded Khlestakov is assumed to be the government inspector from St. Petersburg without further inquiries (Gogol 227, 228). On Christmas Eve, the blacksmith Vakula, who has never been to the big cities nor mixed with the upper-class, is immediately accepted into the palace and liked by Tsarina Catherine after putting on fancy clothes (Gogol, Evenings Near The Village of Dikanka 171, 176). The plots of these stories cover a broad range of settings, but they all demonstrate how the superficial connectivity based on bureaucratic patterns, such as one’s clothing and behavior, outweigh other patterns, such as one’s actual background, purpose, and mentality, that are more fundamental to humans. The comparative analysis with Bateson’s concept reveals a pervasive bureaucratic pattern that connects Gogol’s worldview and his underlying critique of the humanity crisis in bureaucracy. Although the supernatural elements are exaggerated, Gogol’s stories nonetheless warn the readers of the potential political degradation in an overly bureaucratic society.

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/Fingernails П

о закону, в нашем обществе мне запрещено рассказывать эту историю. Но признаюсь, я не очень законопослушная гражданка. Ведь однажды преступница, всегда остается преступницей. Мой грех - это не наркотики, не алкоголь и даже не убийство. Это грех трудно описать. Если вы не отсюда, вы не сможете это понять. Все, что вам нужно знать, это то, что я против некоторых законов. Но я, положа руку на сердце, не хочу причинять вред. Ну, достаточно обо мне.

Works Cited Bateson, Gregory. Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. Clarke, Irwin & Company Limited, 1979.

Gogol, Nikolay. Diary of a Madman, The Government Inspector and Selected Stories. Translated by Ronald Wilks.

Penguin Classics, 2005.

Gogol, Nikolai. Evenings Near The Village of Dikanka. Edited by Ovid Gorchakov.

Foreign Language Publishing House, 1957.

Ногти Kim Lefort

Этот рассказ о молодежи и обществе, о здоровье ума, тела и души. Давным-давно, была группа молодых людей, которые потеряли свои ногти. Люди говорят, что они потеряли ногти от холода, но Православная Церковь настаивала на том, что это их души покинули тело через их пальцы. Итак, над той молодежью состоялся суд . Суд начался в седьмой день седьмого месяца. Все предсказиваы, что молодежь отправят в тюрьму, так как церковь всегда осуждает. Никуда не деться от правосудия. Однако новый врач, не боявшийся церкви, решил помочь им. Он утверждал, что у них больная печень, из-за чего их пальцы желтеют, а ногти выпадают. Вот как прошел суд:

«Вы знаете, какая бывает молодежь!», врач высказался перед присяжными. “Они пьют, курят и делают много вещей, которые вредны для их тела! Мы тоже все это делали.”

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33 “Да, но у нас у всех есть ногти! Они, вероятно, сделали что-то более злое, чем мы!” - ответил старый священник, у которого не было зубов. Во время этого спора молодежь молчала. Какой смысл говорить? Никто не спрашивал их мнения, и никто их не слушал. Если бы они слушали, то знали бы, что молодые люди стригут себе ногти из-за своей идеологии. Это не было опасно, просто они думали по-другому. В конце концов, ни религия, ни наука не выиграли суд. Они не могли договориться о причине проблемы, а потом случилось нечто более важное, и общество на время забыло о молодежи. Но, иногда, когда общество не может решить какую-нибудь проблему, оно будет обвиняет молодежь, которая без ногтей. Теперь, вы наверное думаете: почему эта история незаконная? Ну это и есть настоящая загадка. Общество считает криминальным то, что не может понять.

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Memory as Metafiction

Art and Ideoology in “the Admiralty Spire” and “Return of the Chorb” n “Good Readers and Good WritCormac ers,” the conjunction of art and memory is crucial to Nabokov’s Krupa-Gilmor

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literary ideology and ultimately informs readers about his expectations when reading any literature piece. Along with one’s imagination and a dictionary, Nabokov demands his audience to utilize memory and artistic sensibility while approaching literature.

Furthermore, Nabokov describes artistic inspiration as implicitly influenced by memory and dependent “upon the perfect fusion of past and the present” (GRGW 378). As such, art and memory also appear in Nabokov’s literary ethics. In The Art of Literature and Commonsense, Nabokov decries common sense and the triumph of generalization over particularity, remarking, “the most essential visions and values of life are beautifully round, as round as... the eyes of a child at its first circus show” (372).

Essential visions and values, composed of minute and illogical impressions, are often found entrenched in memory. According to Nabokov, these details are the crux of literature’s moral rationale, making up the “things that common sense would dismiss as pointless trifles [and] are used by the creative mind in such a fashion as to make iniquity absurd” (376).

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The Admiralty Spire and The Return of Chorb offer metafictional perspectives of Nabokov’s literary ethos through the transformation of memory into art by each story’s protagonists. The characters, emblematic Nabokovian solipsists, obsessively manipulate memory into an aesthetic experience, and apply Nabokov’s conceptions of artistic inspiration and literature’s ethic-aesthetic rationale. In Practicing Nostalgia, Philip Sicker remarks, “[Nabokov’s] tools were memory and art, and through their related agency he sought to unify the constituent parts of his ego, to trace the ‘coloured spiral in a small ball of glass’ that was the pattern of his life” (Sickner 245). Patterns of loss inhabit The Admiralty Spire and Return of Chorb, as both protagonists attempt to understand and overcome their loss through the joining of memory and art; a process described by Nabokov, in his lecture on Proust, as the struggle to “keep... impressions from vanishing under the pressure of the present” (TWSP 247).

Samizdat The narrator of The Admiralty Spire defines his own love affair by a “practicing [of] a distant nostalgia, so that subsequently, when that past really existed for us, we would know how to cope with it, and not perish under its burden” (Spire 352). The narrator reminisces about his love affair in an effort to bear the weight of loss, and for describing, enlivening, and attempting to recover his past. In addition, the story is composed of the narrator’s denunciation of an author he supposes to have “kidnapped” the story of his first love (349). The narrator criticizes the author and what he interprets as a morbid translation of his story, though the letter delves further into reminiscence and an artful recollection of his own personal relationship. As such, he offers the novelist “a contribution of my own...lashes which... seemed longer toward the outer corners, giving her eyes a very special, illusory, slant” (350). The narrator, who describes his critical amendments of the novel as a form of memorial justice, wishes to participate in the fictionalization of Katya, and this reminiscence is organized by literary references. While professing his love to Katya, who the narrator suddenly assumes is the author herself, he offers lyrics from Maurice Ravel’s Tzigane.

The narrator refers to his letter as a “rather odd little epistle,” and questions the author’s surprise following the “sudden appearance of the hero [they] invented” (348, 349). The narrator attempts to grasp his own pattern of loss using memories of a relationship he recurrently defines as one in which neither him or Katya were “fully conscious of irreparable losses” (352). As a result, the narrator’s transformation of memory into art is then an attempt at reconciliation, an enactment of Nabokov’s definition of writing: “The art of seeing the world as the potentiality of fiction” (GRGW 2).

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In The Return of Chorb, the death of Chorb’s wife is described as “a most rare, almost unheard-of occurrence; nothing, it seemed to him, could be purer than such a death” (Chorb 148). In the weeks following her death, Chorb absorbs himself in pursuit of aesthetic reminiscence regarding his honeymoon in which he translates memory into an aesthetic catharsis. “He thought that if he managed to gather all the little things they had noticed together—if he re-created thus the near past— her image would grow immortal and replace her forever” (149). The honeymoon is depicted solely through memory and sensory experience; “the dewy touch of iron against his palm was the keenest of all memories” (149). Upon the completion of Chorb’s “agonizing and yet blissful test,” he travels “back to the very source of his recollections” (152). Chorb reconfigures his loss into a process of recollection and sensory experience, while the narrator of The Admiralty Spire engages in a similar transformation of memory into fiction. In their attempts to understand and navigate loss through art, both characters enact Nabokov’s idea of the “potentiality of fiction,” and offer a metafictional account of artistic practice (GRGW 2).

Samizdat The stories profess Nabokov’s view of literature’s ethic-aesthetic rationale as both are driven by a rigorous application of detail over generalization. In “The Art of Literature and Commonsense,” Nabokov notes, “The main delight of the creative mind is the sway accorded to a seemingly incongruous detail over a seemingly dominant generalization” (Art 374).

This triumph is also the crux of “goodness”, described by Nabokov as “something irrationally concrete,” the success of an author’s use of illogical details to render immorality as ridiculous (375). As described by Leona Toker, “[Nabokov’s] ethics [are] rooted in the formative influence of individual aesthetic experience” (Toker 235), and these experiences, experienced through the memory-art transformations of each protagonist, are pursued resolutely, while commonsensical generalizations are relegated to nullity.

In The Return of Chorb, Chorb purposefully delays informing his wife’s parents of his wife’s death in order to wholly inhabit the grief that sparks his reminiscence. Chorb’s journey, composed of recollections of incongruous details, supersedes the commonsensical actions demanded by the occasion of his wife’s death.

In his unfaltering pursuit of aesthetic sensation, shared memories begin to replace any discussion about her, “Chorb remembered that she whom he never named liked to take rides in cabs” (Chorb 149).

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As an effect, Chorb prioritizes minute details and shared fragments of memory instead of his own wife, as seen in, “the fat man in his shirtsleeves who was vomiting right in the passage... the presence of a lovely blond hair in the washbasin” (149). In comparison, the contradictions of the narrator in The Admiralty Spire belies the generalization that he has little bearing on who actually wrote the story, or even whether he is sane in assuming the novel is a presentation of his own experience. Rather than dwell on this generalization, the narrator propels himself into the conflicting details of his memory, recalling “the echoes of modish tziganshchina that inclined Katya to singing, and me to composing verse!” (Spire 351).

The rigorous pursuit of detail over generalization performed by both the Narrator and Chorb is a direct representation of Nabokov’s ethic-aesthetic rationale, ironically complying with Nabokov’s definition of goodness as something “irrationally concrete” (Art 375). Through the transformation of memory into fiction and aesthetic impressions, and the ceaseless pursuit of detail over generalization, the characters of The Admiralty Spire and The Return of Chorb adopt Nabokov’s own principles of literature and creativity. In their stories and reminiscences, both protagonists appeal both to Nabokov’s ideation of goodness, and to his remark, “fiction appeals first of all to the mind...the brain, [and] the top of the tingling spine” (GRGW 4).

Samizdat Works Cited Nabokov, Vladimir. “Good Readers and Good Writers.” Lectures on Literature, ed. Fredson Bowers. New York and London, 1981.

Nabokov, Vladmir. “The Admiralty Spire.”

The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, Vintage International, 2008, pp. 348358.

Nabokov, Vladimir. “The Art of Literature and Commonsense.” Lectures on Literature, ed. Fredson Bowers. New York and London, 1981.

Nabokov, Vladmir. “The Return of Chorb.”

The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, Vintage International, 2008, pp. 147155.

Nabokov, Vladimir. “Marcel Proust: The Walk

by Swann’s Place.” Lectures on Literature, ed. Fredson Bowers. New York and London, 1981, pp. 207-251.

Sicker, Philip. “Practicing Nostalgia: Time and Memory in Nabokov’s Early Russian Fiction”, Studies in 20th Century Literature, Vol. 11: Iss. 2, Article 7, 1987.

Toker, Leona. “Nabokov’s Worldview.” The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov, ed. Julian W. Connolly, Cambridge New York, 2005.

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Expressing Patriarchal Fears-the Fragile Ego of the Post-Soviet Man

Expcerpt from “the Enemy Within- Gender, Economics and Tor Petrov Vampirism in Post-Soviet Russia”

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he vampire’s recurrence in a family context or in a relationship is easy to understand when you look at the word relationship in other contexts.

The repeated use of words like “suck,” “drain,” and even to some extent “bleed” have often been used to refer to resources such as energy or money, things that a toxic relationship can extract from you. Many of the more recent examples of Slavic vampirism make comparisons between blood and other sources of life, illustrating what has come to stand for vitality in the post-Soviet moment.

But what does this tell us about constructions of gender in the family after the Soviet Union? All Pelevin’s military werewolves working for the government refer to each other as “comrade,” despite the book’s setting in Post-Soviet Russia (Pelevin 2005, 323). The staff at Alexander’s government office look back with nostalgia at the Soviet era, and describe its end as “everything falling apart” (Pelevin 2005, 324). In looking at the Soviet past from a post-Soviet perspective, we’re conscious of a great sense of loss among the characters, loss of a dream, a purpose, or as Pelevin has written in other works “an eternity” (Pelevin 1999, 4).

The promise of equality and work for the good of all left a void that nothing in the post-Soviet world seems truly capable of filling.

But despite the ideology of equality and the greater good that was supposed to strengthen the Soviet project, gender discrimination was rife. As Buckley puts it “even in those professions numerically dominated by women, it is evident that female authority fails to match female skill” (Buckley 1981, 88). Buckley postulates that this may have been due to pervasive traditional and cultural biases, something that we can see fairly clearly in many of these vampire texts (1981, 89). In the wake of massive male casualties due to repeated warfare, women rebuilt the country. Why then, do we see both economic dependance and economic discrimination? In Night Watch, Bekmambetov’s vampirized woman speaks about the way she was robbed of choice – and though we’ve looked at it as a loss of the right to consent, can’t we also see it as a facet of economic discrimination (Bekmambetov 2004)? Her criticisms of the patriarchal system’s theft of her choices could just as easily extend from sexual freedom to economic discrimination (Bekmambetov 2004).

Samizdat Some of the answers to the paradox of the female role in Russia can perhaps be found by looking at the current hypermasculinization of Russia’s leader. Putin projects an image of excessive and conservative masculinity, reinforcing both what the ideal Russian male should be, and what he should not be through his political targeting of the LGBTQ community in Russia (Sharkov 2016; Human Rights Watch 2018). Pelevin explicitly calls out this targeting and ties it to both what it means to be in power and what it means to be male (Pelevin 2005, 234). Putin takes hypermasculine propaganda to a whole new level, depicting himself not only as a strong and macho figure, but as a sexy figure whom women desire (Sperling 2014, 40-41). Songs and articles are written about how being a man in Putin’s mold will make you more appealing (Sperling 2014, 39).

Some of Putin’s power accordingly rests on “his assertion of power over other men… …

This process of ‘topping’ makes challengers appear less masculine, and thus less powerful” (Sperling 2014, 30). Putin’s toxic conception of masculinity and the trickle-down effect it leads to is a response to gendered paranoia. Given the important role women have played historically in Russia and the Soviet Union, the social upheaval of the Soviet Union’s fall forced men out of the roles they had grown accustomed to and may have created a fear that their positions would be filled by women. This fear wouldn’t be without historical precedent—Buckley writes that many companies would preferentially hire women over men because they worked for less (1981, 83).

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When a woman is bringing all the money home to support the family, the traditional image of the male as the family’s breadwinner crumbles.

The male faces a loss of identity and purpose, feels dissatisfied, and takes it out on his family, replacing the once loving father figure with a spiteful creature who lashes out at their closest family first, but looks like the once beloved father. Pelevin’s work shows us this fragile male ego firsthand, taking us almost step by step through the formation and destruction of his vampiric protagonist’s relationship. A Hu-Li and Alexander’s meetings always took place in Alexander’s space—he would call her, ask to meet, and they would retire to his apartment, a space that he controlled (Pelevin 2005, 95).

The situation stays relatively stable until that fateful day when they kiss (Pelevin 2005, 242).

With Alexander’s transformation from a wild wolf into a domestic dog, the situation rapidly alters (Pelevin 2005, 242). As soon as their mutual commitment is expressed through a kiss, he slowly loses everything by which he defined himself. His change in form reflects that. As if that weren’t enough, the next time A Hu-Li sees him, a scant three days later, he’s begun to drink, lost his job and home, and been shot (Pelevin 2005, 246).

Samizdat It’s only at this point that the two of them move in together, literally being forced by circumstance into A Hu-Li’s space, one which Alexander doesn’t control. He’s been moved from his bachelor pad into a domestic “feminine” environment where he feels purposeless.

Though originally a situation he was in control of, the kiss took their relationship into a sphere of shared control. Unaccustomed to sharing control, or perhaps not understanding it, Alexander sidelines himself. He spends more and more time as a dog, or as we can interpret it, within the domestic space of the house. He criticizes A Hu-Li and her methods of financially supporting their family, while not contributing financially himself (Pelevin 2005, 284). When she mentions a possible return to her own (chaste, as it’s illusory) prostitution, he shouts at her. ‘“Don’t you dare talk like that!’

‘And don’t you dare say “don’t you dare” to me, all right?’

‘My girl’s going to sell herself… I can’t get my head round that’ ‘“My girl, my girl…” Exactly when did you privatize me?’”

– Pelevin 2004, 284-285

A Hu Li calls him out on his use of the possessive my – it represents his continued desire for control over her, even when he’s unable to control his own life. The use of “privatize” here also has interesting connotations given the loaded historical significance of the word in a post-Soviet context. In trying to grasp for control at things that were never in his control in the first place, we can see Alexander’s continued deterioration.

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A Hu-Li is conscious of these sudden domestic changes as well as the way Alexander has started treating her – like “a piece of property and a trophy status symbol” (Pelevin 2005, 283). In considering how better to handle her now frequent quarrels with Alexander, she reflects that “you should never directly contradict a man, especially if he is tormented by doubts about his own worth” (Pelevin 2005, 285). Looking back at Alexander’s behavior it’s clear that his own self-image is the problem. And the root of that problem? He’s not able to live up to his own society’s ideal of masculinity.

After losing his job and by extension his ability to provide, Alexander questions his own worth and lashes out at the only person close to him, his partner. However, this only perpetuates a vicious cycle, where his lack of perceived worth prevents him from finding a job and changing the situation. Eventually, his need for validation spells the end of his and A Hu-Li’s relationship.

A Hu-Li’s revelation that she is in fact the super-werewolf destroys his feeling of superiority (Pelevin 2005, 289). The tragedy of their failed relationship is that, were his male social conditioning different, their partnership wouldn’t have had to end.

Samizdat It’s true that Alexander is less than his female partner; he’s literally a child in comparison, but if the basic assumptions around a family unit were different, their relationship could have worked. But alas, the idea of the man as the provider seems too deeply ingrained. As A Hu-Li later reflects, in order to escape the world around us (read ‘society’ or ‘social conventions’) and transcend to a higher state we must first find out “in what way he imposes the illusion on himself ” (Pelevin 2005, 332).

Doubtless the use of “he” is intentional in this sentence, given that the book is narrated by a female protagonist. The recognition that all our ideas about our roles in the world are socially constructed and illusory is explicit. But only by recognizing the problems in our social paradigms can we hope to escape them.

Pelevin is also able to critique the default assumptions of heteronormativity that are tied up in Russian masculinity by setting Alexander up as a symbol for the typical Russian man. A Hu-Li explicitly posits that Alexander’s homophobia is a specifically Russian impulse:‘ “I didn’t often discuss the nature of Alexander’s homophobia with him (he didn’t like to talk about it), but I was sure its roots had to be sought in the criminal catacombs of the Russian mind.

His homophobia went so far that he rejected anything that was even remotely gay.

‘Why do you dislike gays so much?’ I asked him once.

‘Because they go against nature.’

‘But it was nature that created them. So how do they go against nature?’”

Pelevin 2005, 234

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The idea that homosexuality is unnatural is something Putin’s Russia has promoted, with some Russians even seeing the lack of acceptance for homosexuality as a point of pride and opposition to American lifeways (Sperling 2014, 37). It’s unsettling to hear this same government conditioned idea of going “against nature” from Alexander’s mouth. It’s telling that we’ve so far only discussed Russian gender as a binary. The stifled climate that the LGBTQ community faces in Russia, rife with discrimination and even vigilante violence, allows for a state sanctioned erasure of their voices (Human Rights Watch 2018). Though issues of discrimination can be difficult for authors to address directly, vampires and vampirism have long been used to explore sexual feelings that diverge from a cultural norm (Veeder 1980, 198). But as with the other assumptions that we can see baked into the Russian masculine identity throughout his book, Pelevin councils us to escape heteronormativity and see that gender conditioning is social and not innate (Pelevin 2005, 332). Not only does his work endorse a plethora of sexual orientations by challenging authoritative paradigms about who a ‘Russian’ can be, but it draws attention to the governmental endorsement of homophobia in Russia.

Samizdat The subversion of the governmentally imposed assumption of heteronormativity and masculine privilege forces a traumatic reckoning with the self. This disconnect between expectations and actual life is what creates angry, parasitic male “vampires.” We can see this in ideas of the male as a provider or as a symptom of post-traumatic stress. Alexander has a military rank and refers to himself as an officer, and in The Family of the Vourdalak, Gorcha only returns as a vampire after combat with the Turks (Pelevin 2005, 327; Tolstoy 1844).

When a war veteran returns to civilian life, their combat-conditioned expectations and the haunting memory of the past make it difficult for them to adjust to the new realities of their life, creating another vampiric disconnect.

One of the hallmarks of vampirism is its ability to be passed from person to person. At first glance the explanation of vampirism as a way to understand or examine emotional states after a disconnect looks like it can’t be passed on. But the way vampirism is transmitted becomes clear if we examine it in the Slavic context of the family. Instead of transmitting it to random individuals, vampirism is transmitted within the family – from parent to child.

As one of the family’s parents is replaced by their vampiric double, they inflict violence on those around them, including their children.

This translates into an abused child, a victim of vampirism, raised with the expectation that their own childhood experience is universal, and taking it out on their own children. The vampire creates more vampires.

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This idea of generational violence is not absent in vampire stories, especially within the Slavic world. Gorcha, the oldest member of the family, turns the youngest member vampiric in The Family of the Vourdalak, and the violence of the patriarchy in that text, especially against children, has already been examined at length (Tolstoy 1844). Even the idea of vampires as immortal, or at least undying, presupposes them as older than their victims, making them an ideal means of contextualizing and examining generational as well as gendered violence.

The idea of generational violence is mostly absent in western vampirism, partially because it’s something that many have been reluctant to admit to. Given the long history of slavery and structural racism in the Americas, it’s probably comforting for those in power to think that what their ancestors did was a one-and-done event. If only the people who had actually been enslaved suffered, their descendants wouldn’t be due any form of institutional recompense and structural change wouldn’t be as necessary. There are distinct economic benefits to not acknowledging generational trauma when you are the ruling capitalist elite of a country built by slavery.

Samizdat But why is the vampire so relevant in the post-Soviet moment? Once again, we should keep in mind that the creation of a human vampire seems to occur through a disconnect between expectations and reality. The vampire remains so pertinent in Russia today because with the fall of the Soviet Union, an entire generation of vampires was created. Pelevin writes specifically about the loss of Soviet expectations leading to the suffering and pain of the present day (Pelevin 2005, 219). Not only were people pushed out of work by privatization and the end of the planned economy, but the expectations that the youth had about Soviet life were disrupted – they were raised for a life that no longer existed. This massive generational disconnect can surely be credited with creating its own fair share of “vampires.”

The generational trauma that potentially goes along with vampirism can explain the vampire’s continued relevance in Russian culture today, with films like Night Watch and Day Watch reaching immense popularity (Dolgopolov 2013, 48). If we see the vampire not only as an abuser, but the victim of abuse, they deserve some of our sympathy, and they are capable of redemption and good. Though Anton Gorodetsky’s neighbor Kostya is a vampire in Night Watch, and they’re on the opposite sides of Light and Dark respectively, they are still friendly, almost friends (Bekmambetov 2004). Importantly, Kostya was bitten and transformed into a vampire by his own father, whom he still lives with, reinforcing the generational abuse by the patriarchy model of viewing vampirism (Bekmambetov 2004).

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The nuanced nature of the modern Slavic vampire, in some ways so much more similar to humans than their western counterparts, is explained by the idea that they are in fact human, just the products of disconnect or abuse. Created from humans by humans, they have the potential for redemption. But these generational vampires seem predominantly male. There’s almost an implicit acknowledgement that male and female vampires are created in different ways, males through disconnect and generational trauma, women through instances of sexual violence. The way they rebel against those systems is different too. While the female vampire speaks out against the society that failed her, but only after patriarchal structures surrounding her have been removed, the male either spirals still lower into vampirism or leaves, as Alexander does in The Sacred Book of the Werewolf, either no longer able to cope with his expectations or perhaps seeing himself as unnecessary, and given the pain he causes, his family is better off without him (Pelevin 2005, 321). But reflected in both vampires, we can see societal issues, either those that privilege the patriarchy, or those that create unrealistic expectations of what it means to be masculine in society. Vampires remain relevant in Russian society because they tell a story of lived and current experiences that many face, whether it’s one of loss, abuse, or discrimination. As long as these cycles continue to be replicated across generations, the vampire in Russia will never truly die.

Samizdat Works Cited Bekmambetov, Timur. 2004. Night Watch.

United States: 20th Century FOX. International Version, originally published in Russian as Nochnoi Dozor.

Buckley, Mary. 1981. “Women in the Soviet Union.” Feminist Review. Sage Publications, INC. 8: 79-106.

Dolgopolov, Greg. 2013. “High Stakes: The Vampire and the Double in Russian Cinema.” In Transnational HorrorAcross Visual Media: Fragmented Bodies. Dana Och and Kristen Strayer Eds. New York: R outledge. 44-66.

Human Rights Watch. 2018. “No Support.”

Human Rights Watch. New York.

Accessed November 2021. https:// www.hrw.org/report/2018/12/12/ no-support/russias-gaypropaganda-law-imperils-lgbt-youth#.

Meydan, Lena. 2010. Twilight Forever Rising. Andrew Bromfield Trans. New York: Tor. Pelevin, Victor. 2005. The Sacred Book of the Werewolf. Andrew Bromfield Trans. New York: Penguin Books.

Sharkov, Damien. 2016. “Russians Go Wild for a Song About Loving ‘Someone Like Putin.’” Newsweek. Accessed November 2021. https://www.news week.com/russians-go-wild-hitabout-loving-someone-putin-450578.

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Sperling, Valerie. 2014. “Putin the Sex Back in Politics: Gender Norms, Sexualization, and Political Legitimation in Russia.” In Sex, Politics, and Putin: Political Legitimacy in Russia. Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2014: 29-80.

Tolstoy, Alexei. 1844. The Family of the Vourdalak. Nina Zumel trans. Accessed September 2021. https://americanlit erature.com/author/alexei-tolstoy/ short-story/the-family-of-the-vourdalak.

Veeder, William. 1980. “Carmilla: The Arts of Repression.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language. University of Texas Press, 22(2): 197-223.

Два Чернобелых Сонета

Samizdat

Walking Away W

Экранизация Сочувствия Я очарована этим - почему? многие, без сомнения, считают, этим рассказом воображают, И хуже, я стыдно вернулась к фильму! Тёмным образом сочувствую ему, То сюжет почти древен утверждают, Всё-таки, какие чары работают, Когда я смотрю Анну и Диму… Мне смешно размышлять над тем, что Я бы была дамой с котёнком, Всегда тоскую по любови невозможноМожно, понимают этим сказом, Что любить кого-нибудь сложно, Буду нашим единственным утешенном!

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Daisy Sprenger Любят Трагичеслую Героиню Я потеряюсь романтизмами Но зачем, просто я не скажу. В высокие радости я ляжу; Я живу черно-белыми буквами. Читая с напрасными надеждами, Их самое сладкое чувство я жну Итак, какой-то свет я вижу Сгорает танцующими словами Знают как Русская литератураВысказывает волшебным отсветом. Но у героинь редко счастливая судьба, И верно, часто кончаются горем. Даже так, обменялась бы чем-нибудь я, Чтобы наслаждаться лирическим светом.

hat do you think of when you think of “subculture?” The tightest jeans you ever owned? Or maybe the baggiest? Your favorite music that you cannot play at your parents’ house? That way of doing your makeup that totally was not a phase? However many people are reading this right now, I am comfortable predicting that they each thought of something different. Even you dear reader, you might have thought of more than one thing; those two different groups of friends that definitely do not overlap. That is what we---you and me both, dear reader---love about subcultures. They are different, differentiable, and just so totally you. And whatever teenage angst that you are still holding on to, there is a subculture out there just waiting for you.

But therein lies the problem; what is “subculture?” It is not punk or emo or hippies, it is all of them. And there are not too many hats they can all wear together. Luckily, Ken Gelder identified six key components of subculture that differentiate it from the mainstream in his book on the subject Subcultures.

Subcultures generally have a negative relationship to work, and even more outrageously, a negative relationship to class (Gelder 3). The third identifier, which naturally follows from the first two is that subcultures are removed from property ownership; instead “subcultures territorialise their places rather than own them” (Gelder 3). Next, subcultures are separate from the “domestic sphere,” and are associated with families of choice rather than blood (Gelder 4).

Nicholas Howell The final two features function together. Subcultures are typically associated with excess “behavior, styles and dress, noise, …language, consumption,” and subcultures are opposed to the banality of the mainstream. Considering Gelder’s language of subcultures, it becomes almost impossible to differentiate them from one of the most symbolic institutions of youth: the university. Oh, the university, the home of the indolent student, who is certainly free of work and property ownership. And therein lies the next problem. Subculture, for all its youthful confidence and freedom, is not suited to life in the mainstream. Nevertheless, it recreates many of the structures it sets out to repudiate.

No earnest and self-respecting subculture is totally without class for example. But to borrow a phrase from Pierre Bourdieu, it is oriented towards other kinds of capital. There is still a right way to make punk music. As I am preparing to be ejected from university, I personally am ready to go. There is no subculture so liberating, university included, that it will not start to trap you in its own way.

Samizdat For students and scholars of Russian Literature, the best example of this is one Timofey Pavlovich Pnin. First and foremost, Pnin is a professor, an adjudicator of university specific capital. But he is also a compatriot of his students in many ways. Pnin is propertyless, a consummate tenant, and as such vulnerable to sudden shifts in the housing market, such as his landlord’s daughter’s divorce (Nabokov 83). He is also a hero to his teenage son Victor, who is himself grappling with the banalities of high school and his psychologist mother and stepfather (Nabokov 95, 88). However, subculture also means someone personal to Pnin. He is a Russian émigré, and among other peers of this group, is witty, charming, and a killer with the croquet mallet; in short, Pnin has his own, personal subculture. And this is where the trouble starts. As mentioned previously, a subculture is a kind of culture. Therefore, it has its own rules that delimit acceptable behavior. It can be freeing to play by different rules from the rest of the world, but that is not the same as playing without rules. Subculture is not anarchy, and neither is it liberating beyond an individual aligning with the rules of the subculture over the dominant culture.

Pnin’s escape to the Pines is a chance to play by rules he better understands. But these rules have their own painful limitations, specifically one Vladimir Vladimirovich.

It is because Pnin cannot abide by working under Vladimir Vladimirovich that he takes a step that many of us could not imagine with our own subcultures; Pnin walks away. He is not graduated out, or ostracized.

He is specifically asked to stay “in the most cordial terms” (Nabokov 186).

47 But Pnin values freedom, actually making his own rules and assigning value to his own forms of capital, over connecting to other people under any set of rules.

And so, at the end of four years, I will endeavor to do the same. Perhaps without Pnin’s fervor (read; hatred), but with his willingness to reconsider. Because that is what subcultures, and youth, and youth subcultures, are all about. They are a reconsidering of what is dominant. But still, even when you are comfortable, especially when you are comfortable, and especially when you are not, it behooves you to reconsider. To look at the rules you are playing by and to think: “What do I accept that I might not agree with?” I am graduating, but first I am walking away. It is the difference between forgetting everything you have learned and rejecting it. Nothing good is built on forgetting, but everything is built on some kind of rejection.

And you can do it too. Before it is too late, walk away. Learn something new, get youthful again and find a subculture to your subculture. Play by new rules. Figure out what your Vladimir Vladimirovich is and just walk away.

Work Cited: Gelder, Ken. Subcultures. Routledge, 2007.

Nabokov, Vladimir. Pnin. Vintage Interational, 1989, New York.

Samizdat

My Chersonesus E

very summer, my mother would take me to the church where I had been baptized. We’d have to get up at the crack of dawn, board a fairly crowded bus, and drive for an hour before arriving at our destination. I liked the place, but I despised the tours we were forced to take. My mother wanted to make sure I never forgot the history, so she made me go on the tour over and over again. The tour guides would always begin at the amphitheater, where we were sometimes lucky enough to see a troupe perform. They would then lead us to a framework with barricaded arches. Through the small squares of the metal bars, you could see many ancient relics.

Some were wine jars, others were pieces of pottery, but they were all in the dark. The final stop was always the ruins of the 1935 Basilica. In reality, no one knows what the basilica’s original name was, so they named it after the year the ruins were opened to the public. The most noticeable trait of the ruins were definitely the Corinthian columns standing tall on their own. I remember seeing tourists gather around them to take photos, but my family would always avoid them and instead explore the rest of the ruin. I’d always try to dash down the stairs to catch a glimpse of the horizon. The smell of the sea would always sting my nostrils, but it was such a pleasant sensation. I hope to one day come back, without the tours and all, to my Chersonesus and to breathe the sea again.

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48 Marie-Elise Latorre

Samizdat

49

Постмодернизм Просто Ярлык? Daisy Sprenger С

борник Виктора Пелевина сам кажется “бесконечный,” как черная дыра описывается ночным мотыльком Дима в рассказе “Свет Горизонта.” Этот Рассказ был сначала часть второго романа Пелевина “Жизнь Насекомых” - сборник рассказов о философских насекомых. “Свет Горизонта” прекрасный пример постмодернистского образа Пелевиным. В рассказе рассказывается о двух ночных мотыльках, Диме и Мите, которые падают в черную дыру. На самом деле, они были одна мотылек и свой дворник, то показывает на тему отражения. Дима дворник Митя, и так его отражение. Эта тема связывается с вопросом: как отличать действительность от иллюзии? Отражение метафор для того, как культур оказывает общество. Но в постмодернистском мире, не ясно что отражение и что действительность. Митя зависит от своего отражения, Дима, который объяснял Мите сложные событии мира. Это показывает то, что ни начала ни конца нет - страшное ядро постмодернизма. В словах Димы, “когда зеркало убирают, они исчезают, потому что им больше не в чем отражается, тогда выясняется, что их ни на саком веще никогда не было” (Пелевин 422).

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Сразу показывается то Митя обращает вопросами и Дима отвеяает ему, поэтому то кажется, что Дима мудрый и Митя наивный. Но это отличие не так ясно из-за того, как Дима часто мудрит на кругом - прививка, которая заставляет сомнению, что верно ли он объясняет Мите правду. Например, когда Митя отмечает каменную голову, ответй Димы ходят в кругом: -Похоже на надгробие, - сказал Митя неожиданно для себя.

-Это и есть надгробие. Здесь могила Бога.

-Могила Бога?

-Да.

-Ты хочешь сказать, что мы умерли?

-Я не говорю, что это наша могила. Это могила Бога. Митя посмотрел на каменную голову.

-Это лицо Бога?

-Нет. У Бога нет лица.

-А почему у него такое надгробие?

-Наверно, потому, -сказал Дима, -что ему так захотелось -Значит Ницше был прав? Бог умер?

-Это Ницше умер. А Богом все в порядке.

-Почему тогда есть могла?

-Сказать, что у Бога нет могла, означало бы утверждать, что он лишен чего-то и в чем то органичен. Поэтому могила у него есть, но…

(Пелевин 425-426)

Samizdat Этот разговор интересен, поскольку он касается философской темы, но тайность никак не разрешается. Всётаки, разговор составляется какими частями этого рассказа. Персонажи понимают мир культурным фигурами как Ницше. Но они пользуются этими както бессмысленно. Целья этого рассказа никак чтобы объяснять о Ницше ни о Боге - точнее, чтобы покалывает что смысльа нет, поэтому нужно искать свое смысль. Как Симкина пишет в своем статье “изоморфный образам пелевенских героев — искателей истины” (Симкина 56). Именно, что исканы - самосознание и самонаблюдение. Внутри черной дыры - внутри сама. И так Митя достигает самосознания, влетев черной дыре. То пишется Симкиной, “решение вопроса об истинности множественных миров, редуцированных до индивидуального сознания” (Симкина 55). Но, это сознание не достаточно, если не может выходить. И так вторая часть понимания - узнавать выход, как представляют понятие того снаружи. Сложное дело в связи с тем, что высказывает Димой, “снаружи отражается то, что внутри. А внутри отражается то, что снаружи. Оба эти слова -просто бирки в одном и том зеркале” (Пелевин 438). Эта круглая логика характерна Дими, и она добавляется вообще чувство летит на кругом, именно как персонажи в рассказе.

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50 Черная дыра символ своего сознания, но она тоже рассказывается о дыре культуры, которая часто описывают как “постмодернизм.” В рассказе “свет горизонта”, черная дыра представит эту культурную пустоту. Это показывает когда Дима легко раскапывает о Набокове, Ницше и физике. Заклятия список культуры добавляется растерянности. Всё оказываются даже страннее в контексте разговора мотыльков находятся в черной дыре - так странно, то этот список ссылки поистине становятся “просто ярлыками” - постмодернистский бесконечный парадокс. Как Липоветским описан в своей статье, хотя творчество Пелевина занимаются постмодернизм, по сравнению тех других писателей русского постмодернизма оно, в не только показывают пустоту - точнее, как выходить от пустоты.

Samizdat

51 Ссылки-

Часто Дима называет что-то “просто ярлыком” или “просто бирками” высказывая, что пользоваться словами сам ничтожные. Эти выражения показывает понятие в короне постмодернизма, а тоже показывает парадокс. Если всё просто ярлык, то постмодернизм тоже ярлык. Сомневаться смысл слов опасно дело в книге, которой нужны словы, чтобы понята. Но именно это чувство, к чему постмодернизм стремится. А Пелевин добивает что-то важный. Как это объяснит Липоветски, Пелевин не доволен показывает дыру, а стремится к чему, чтобы строить смысль от пустоты. Даже все просто ярлык, то должно строить свое смысль- как доделает Митя, чтобы выходить из чернуой-дыры. Сознавая что он нет просто мотыльком, но в самом деле светлячком, Митя проделает свое свет. Это как, можно справляются с постмодернизмом- проделать свой свет воображения.

Winter 2022

Пелевин, В. О. “Свет Горизонта” рассказ из сборника Все Рассказы. Эксмо 2005. С. 419-443 Lipovetsky, Mark (2000) “Literature on the Margins: Russian Fiction in the Nineties,” Studies in 20th Century Literature: Vol. 24: Iss. 1, Article 7 Симкина, В. С. ”Энтомологический Маскарад в Прозе В. Пелевина” от образ к философии превращений” Литературоведение. С 53-59. https://web.archive.org/ web/20210218015205id_/https:// vestnik.mgpu.ru/pdf/2274.pdf