Scenes from life in a Russian dormitory: broken sink, broken toilet, broken stove [the one on the right], recently fixed plumbing.
When people in the future will ask me: “What did you learn in Russia during the six years you lived there?” I will answer: “To fix things.”
The past week has been marked by things first falling apart and then being fixed by me [or by strong Russian men with the right skills and equipment]. The plumbing in the kitchen broke, leaving us all [me and my roommates from Taiwan, Japan & South Korea] feeling like the Apocalypse was upon us. The plumbing underneath the kitchen sinks has probably been broken since perestroika [note the ancient plastic box placed under it on the floor – I didn’t put it there, and I moved in already in 2006], but only this week did it decided that ‘enough is enough’ and revealed years of assorted nationalities’ rotten leftovers. After this one of our two stoves broke – strangely enough, it was the more recent stove [given to us in 2007, if I’m not mistaken] that gave up. It has yet to be fixed and is now a constant moment of stress for me because the one working stove is not sufficient to support the seven women using it to cook on [adding to our Asian-Scandinavian section also the neighboring Russian-Italian-Czech department]. Then last night – exactly at midnight – the lock on our block’s front door decided that it wanted to join the crowd of things falling apart. This problem was fixed almost instantly by me and the Japanese girl being naughty and taking it apart and then putting it together again, without really knowing what we were doing – but as it turned out, we were on the right track all along. Today our toilet broke. It caused a flood of [clean but still] water to come tumbling down on the toilet of those living beneath us, and they arrived knocking on our door to ask what the hell we were doing. Usually we’re the victims of such floods from our upstairs neighbors, so in a way today’s experience was refreshing. One morning in the summer of 2008 I woke up to find it raining indoors – there was in fact a small pool in our kitchen. It was on the day after the water in our building had been turned off, and the people living above us had – of course – left all taps open over night…
In Russia, things are always falling apart.
I don’t think there’s even one thing in the dormitory section where I live that I HAVEN’T fixed [sometimes even twice or more times!] yet. The shower broke once. The refrigerator has been crumbling piece by piece during my years of using it. On days like these it truly feels as if I’m living in a museum! Of course, I’m not fighting cockroaches here like I did during my days in Siberia – but apart from this problem, we’ve got every problem you can imagine. And it has taught me to be inventive. After all, I grew up with a mother who constantly fixed things [mainly, cars] and thus learned how to work out an appropriate abrovinsch at an early age. Did I mention that the door to our room doesn’t shut on its own during winter time [because when it gets too dry inside, the door ‘grows’ and refuses to fit]? I close it with the handle of the thing I use to scoop up coffee with… At first my new roomies are foreign to all of my little ‘improvements’ to our communal living space, and do not understand why they must handle some things with outmost care [I think that’s why the toilet broke today – it was the first time that I let the Japanese girl and the Korean girl clean it, and since they’ve noticed that I’m a huge perfectionist, they were afraid to ‘under do’ it, so they ‘overdid’ it instead, thus breaking it in their feverish tries to please me and my eager eye]. Then they come to understand that if they do not follow my example of care, then everything will eventually TRULY fall to pieces and be broken forever.
In Russia, it is imperative to be careful. Most things here are, after all, antique remains from a now prehistoric regime, which was not known for making things that last longer than five years.
Supposedly, I am currently preparing for that State Final Exam in Russian Literature of mine. Okay, so I am [and that’s why I’m always ‘offline’ now on msn and Skype and Facebook – and oh boy, what a relief that is! I can see you, but you can’t see me] but mostly I’m trying to come to terms with my deep craving of only wanting nothing else but for time to pass and for the 24th of February to come and then to pass solely to never return ever again.
Question 1: Genres and Styles of Russian Classicism in the Light of Traditional Poetics. That’s easy – remember the unity of place, time and action of classicist plays? That’s about it. And how folks back then were resurrecting Aristotle’s “Poetics”? Traditional poetics are all based on the IDEA and that this IDEA can come to life [through characters in books, plays, poems] – thus in classicism it’s okay to love the idea of Freedom in the exact same way that another person will love a real woman of flesh and blood. It is as simple as that.
Question 2: The Reform of Russian Poetry in the 1730-1740’s. The Main Stages of Russian Syllabotonic Poetry in the Following Centuries. Alright, here we go – Trediakovsky wanted Russian poetry to be really ‘Russian’, and so he tried to bring this to life by making use of traditional folk poetry and also looking to French and Polish contemporary poetry for examples of something not so ‘strange’ as the Russian poems composed by the poets before him. Lomonosov reacted to this by screaming: “My ass!”. Then he claimed that traditional folk poetry is not a suitable form for expressing the ‘high feelings’ which poetry must express. So he looked to German traditions instead. But basically they both wanted the same thing – for Russian poetry to be true to the Russian language. And on it went in pretty much the same direction during the following centuries.
Question 3: The History of Russian Theater: Innovations and Traditions. There was no real ‘Russian’ theater before Fonvizin started writing his social-political comedies in the late 18th century. But this everyone already knows. In all of them Fonvizin made fun of Russian reality. After him came Griboedov with his “Sorrow because of a Mind” and also he made fun of Russian reality. Then Gogol wrote “The Inspector General” where he continued the fruitful tradition of making fun of Russian reality. Gogol wanted the Russians to look at themselves after seeing this play and for them to understand that he was really making fun of them. If this happened or not – history is silent. Ostrovsky decided that to only make fun of Russian reality was of course a good cause, but let us in the process create a real Russian theater already and so he did it all on his own, while writing about a play a year in which he used funny expressions as his weapon against outrageous Russian reality. At the end of the 19th century Chekhov wants in on this and writes numerous plays where nothing happens. In his last play – that’s already in the 20th century, comrades – called “The Cherry Orchard”, all people in it are good and friends with each other, but cannot take any action as to stop everything from falling apart and thus things end tragically. Yet Chekhov called his play a comedy. The only funny part in it is the people, though.
Question 4: The problem of Sentimentalism and Pre-Romanticism in Russian Literature. Genres and Styles in Artistic Modality Poetics. The problem here is that it is really though to know exactly where to draw the line between sentimentalism and pre-romanticism really, and when you look close enough at something that is known to be ONLY sentimental – like Radishev’s “A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”, your mind will soon be unable to fathom this work of art as belonging to any particular historical epoch at all and you’ll come to the conclusion that Radishev was really writing a post-modern story already in the late 18th century. This will blow up your mind entirely and not long after this you’ll end up searching for intertextuality in Karamzin’s poetry. There’s nothing wrong with this, though, because it is all a part of what’s coming up next at this time in historical poetics – the frightening era of Artistic Modality! Oh the horror! Everything suddenly becomes personal, everything is confused, the old classicist writers run and hide under their blankets and hold their lovers tight in the night because they know that from now on – no old rule is golden any more! Artistic Modality is where we’re still at today. Think of Gogol. Think of “The Nose”. Now think of Kafka. Think of “The Castle”. Now let’s play connect the dots! Yes, that’s what artistic modality poetics will do to a person: leave them plain mad. But laughing all the while going down in their madness. Genres are synonymous to style here. And the other way around. The once again we go around and now we’ve completed the circle of insanity.
Question 5: Romanticism as a Type of Artistic Consciousness. The Problem of Typology and Evolution in Russian Romanticism. This is interesting: as it turns out, romanticism isn’t just something that went down in early 19th European literature century – when poets were turning all of their attention into the deep depth of their own souls, to their memories of loves lost and lovers gone forever – but something that happens whenever society is going through a spiritual, political, social crisis. Romantic types of artistic consciousness appears in literature whenever this happens in reality – at all times. And over and over once again. Thus it is indeed a problem to establish exactly what kind of types and what kinds of evolutions were present [and still are] in Russian Romanticism. Was Pushkin a romantic? Some claim – no way! Others say – come on! Of course he was! Sort of, right? Was Lermontov a romantic? Hell yeah! Or is the correct answer – wait a minute, let me reread “A Hero of Our Time” and contemplate over a shot of cold vodka?
Question 6: The Dynamics of Russian Realism. Problems of Typology. When did it all begin? When did the proud tradition of Russian realism, which came to torture the innocent souls of people worldwide for hundreds of years by way of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and their enormous novels which people are afraid not to read because they don’t want to be seen as savages culturally? It began with Pushkin, of course – for you see everything always begins with Pushkin – and with his ‘novel in poetry’, “Eugene Onegin”, which is also proclaimed as the first ‘realistic’ novel in Russian literature. This is absurd, and we all know it, and since it starts with absurdity then it will also continue in this exact way. After Pushkin came Gogol and then along with him came the Natural School. And they portrayed reality in all its most natural horror. Though realism claims to portray things ‘realistically’, don’t let yourself be fooled, but understand already at this early stage that realism is just as much a literary thing as everything else – it has nothing to do with reality. This causes the above-mentioned problems of typology. Nobody knows exactly when the dynamics of realism ended. It is a mystery to all. Some say it ended when modernism took over, but a lot of folks say it is still around today and that 20th century socialist realism and 21st century neo-realism are clear indications that it never died in the first place. Everyone is thus perplexed and for answers we turn to Pushkin. Pushkin presents only absurd ideas and we get mad in general at Pushkin for being such a timeless genius.
Question 7: Poetics of Narrative in Russian 19th Century Prose (on the example of works by one or two authors). In 19th century prose we’ll often see that it is not the writer who’s name is on the book that is presenting the story to us, but a narrator, and this narrator is often confusing for sometimes he or she says they know things that they cannot possibly have any clue about whatsoever. Sometimes this narrator is not a part of the story, and then we are keen to forgive him or her for presenting things to us that he or she should not know [like what’s going on inside a character’s brain or soul and heart for that matter]. But when the narrator is a part of the story, we’re not so likely to forgive this. Dostoevsky often used a narrator who openly confessed to not having a clue at all about what’s REALLY going on. The narrator in “The Brothers Karamazov” is so confused and unsure that in the end we’re inclined to think that none of this happened at all, or if it happened, then in another way with completely different people in a country far, far away. Gogol also uses this trick, but his narrator is often more aware of what’s going down than the characters he’s talking about, and thus making us want to ask the narrator: “But why don’t you just tell these poor people what’s happening! Why are you such a cruel person? You could have saved them all this trouble in the first place!” But had Gogol’s narrator done so, then we wouldn’t have the pleasure to enjoy these works now… Food for thought, anyone?
Question 8: Sketches of Individual Artistic Worlds in the Aspect of Ontology and Poetics (on the example of one or two authors). For this question we’ll take Dostoevsky – for if anything we know Dusty pretty well by now – and explain roughly how his life [ontology] inflicted on the way he wrote his works [poetics]. Dostoevsky wrote for money, and he published his novels in as series in journals, thus he wanted to make the reader go out and by the next number and not be content with what has already been read – and hopefully also understood. So in Dostoevsky’s novels the reader is constantly left wanting more. Maybe we’ll say a little something about Shalamov, too, for we all love Shalamov, and of how his life was so influential on his works that he dedicated his entire body of work to portray the horrors of his life.
Question 9: Theory of the Novel. Modifications of the Novel Genre in Russian Literature. The novel was dead before it was even born. Whenever we try and look at a work of prose and want to give it the proud genre of ‘novel’, we must always first ask ourselves: “But what is this REALLY?” And more often than not it turns out that what we have in front of us is not a novel at all, but something else entirely. Every great ‘novel’ in Russian 19th century literature is something else. “Dead Souls” by Gogol is a poem. “Notes from the Dead House” by Dostoevsky is just ‘notes’. “War & Peace” by Tolstoy MUST be a novel, right, for it is so long and exhausting? No, Tolstoy says: “It is NOT a novel, NOT a historical poem, it is NONE of the above, for it is what the author wanted to say in the form that it presented itself it”. Interesting, Tolstoy. And yet the novel has been the most popular genre in Russian literature ever since it was first ‘invented’. Remember Bakhtin and how he defined the novel. Then think about it for a while. Be kind to Bakhtin, though, when you proclaim that the novel as a form in Russian literature is nothing else but a playground where Russian writers can do whatever they please and write for as long as they want to write for there are no rules.
Question 10: The Evolution of Genre Consciousness in Russian Lyrical Poetry. This question is fuzzy enough for us to only point at one lyrical genre – for if we point in more than one direction then we might end up splitting ourselves into two or more parts as we go running off in all of these directions simultaneously – the sonnet. The sonnet is a ‘hard’ genre in poetry. It consists of 14 lines, the first four lines have crossing rhymes, the second four lines have either crossing rhymes or mirrored rhymes, then we have to four lines rhyming with each other, and the whole thing is finished off with two lines rhyming with each other and also echoing the first two lines of the sonnet semantically. Yes, it is simple, isn’t it? But now consider Brodsky. Yes! Do as you’re told! What’s going on with his sonnets? He’s skipping the rhyme totally but still keeping the ‘hard’ form of fourteen lines. Now that’s what I call evolution!
Question 11: Artistic Individuality, Critics and the Russian Literary Process. I do not know anything about critics, but I think it played a pretty influential role on the Russian literary process, for everyone in Russia reads everything and reading too much has made this country mad. Reading – as well as living here – has also made me mad. But the first part of the question is easy – here we’ll point here and there and say something about Mayakovsky, something about Akhmatova, something about someone else and in general try to keep the conversation flowing freely.
Question 12: The Silver Age’s Philosophical Critics and Russian Literature. Generally speaking, it was philosophy that gave birth to the Silver Age of Russian poetry in the first place. The religious ideas of Solovyov, for example, and how he influenced poets like Blok and Bely. I will pray that I do not get this question, for it I do – then I’ll be doomed and only focus on the two last words of it: “Russian Literature” and mainly talk about how Pasternak went from futurism to “Doctor Zhivago” and how much I would have wanted to be Larissa and get it on with Zhivago for I’m pretty sure he was good in the sack.
Question 13: Modernistic Strategies and Poetry Practice in the Late 19th Century and Early 20th Century (on the example of works by one or two poets). The best poet in this context is Mayakovsky, not solely because we’ve actually read him and actually like him, but also because he presents a lot of new stuff in Russian poetry in the early 20th century. But we can discuss also some general points of symbolism, achmeism and futurism. We can talk about how the ‘symbol’ came to life in the poetry of the time, and how it arrived from Russian religious philosophy, and how the achmeists got all angry with the symbolists and said: “Whatever! Enough with all the symbols already, we want to get back to life!” and so they did. Soon the futurists were furious: “What’s up with all this praise of life and culture? Life sucks! And so does that old culture of yours! We want to throw Pushkin and Dostoevsky off of the ship of literature and sail on to new shores!” And so they did. This could have gone on forever and been rather fruitful, but in October 1917 Lenin – who was concerned with literature not from the perspective of poetics, but from the perspective of propaganda possibilities – took matters into his own hands and said: “Let’s all build Communism instead!” And so they did. And we all know how that ended.
Question 14: Variations of Artistic Behavior in Russian 20th Century Literature (on the example of works by two or three writers). For the answer on this question I’ve chosen to compare Shalamov and Solzhenitsyn with each other. Often people tend to compare them solely because they both spen time in Soviet labor camps and prisons and because they later in life wrote prose about their experiences in these Soviet labor camps and prisons. But really they are very different, and perhaps it is not justified for us to compare them with each other? In reality, they are both examples of completely different variations of artistic behavior in Russian 20th century literature. First of all, Shalamov was 11 years older than Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn never knew the pre-revolutionary Russia, for he was born in 1918, yet that’s where he wanted to return. Shalamov cannot and should not be understood outside of the revolutionary movement of the 1920’s, for that was the time that formed him both as a person and as a writer. Shalamov did not want to go back to the Russia he knew as a child, but rather to the Soviet Union of the 1920’s. Shalamov didn’t want to ‘save’ the Russian people, he had no ‘mission’ as a writer. Solzhenitsyn wants to – supposedly – write for future generations of Russians, but it is clear that he is indeed writing for the contemporary citizen of the Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn was deeply religious; Shalamov was a proclaimed atheist. And the way they worked was completely different. When Shalamov screamed: “But you’re nothing but a graphoman!” and ran away in the middle of the night from Solzhenitsyn’s dacha, he truly meant it.
Question 15: The Role of the Regional Factor in Russian Literature. Russia is an enormous country with many regions. These regions all have their own writers who wrote stuff that are tightly connected with these particular regions, but in reality none of these writers can be considered as ‘great’ Russian writers, for greatness only comes when you as a writer are above your local region. End of story.
Question 16: Utopia and Anti-utopia in Russian Literature. We’ll remember Zamyatin’s “We” and Platonov’s “The Foundation Pit” and connect both utopias and anti-utopias with each other – for without the first the second is unthinkable – and mention in passing how contemporary Russian literature focuses only on the anti-utopia, and by doing so it is far from representative but solely a cry in the dark, a cry that will not last longer than its own echo.
Question 17: The Phenomena of Socialist Realism – Ideology, Esthetics, Artistic Practice. Of course we can talk for ages on this subject! We’ll remember Gorky – only to later quickly suppress all of our memories of him and how we forced ourselves to read through his ugly and boring socialist realism standard novel “Mother” – and we’ll remember the 1930’s and we’ll talk a little about what Lunacharsky said about literature. It could be fun.
Question 18: Genre Modifications of the Short Story in Russian Literature. Yes, the short story changed quite a lot in Russian literature. We can settle that fact already to start with, and thus we have something to begin with. In the 19th century prose genres were given the names ‘novel’, ‘novella’ and ‘short story’ in Russian literature not so much because of their sizes, but because the novel was considered the ‘best’, the novella a little ‘worse’ and the short story was just plainly a ‘bad’ genre to be working in. Short stories got no respect in the 19th century. But that was until Chekhov turned up and said: “Wait a minute! There’s nothing wrong with writing short stories!”, and thus his cheers did a lot for the genre, and his short stories went on to revolutionize not only Russian, but also world literature. But even Chekhov was feeling the pressure to write something ‘bigger’ and so he wrote “Steppe” which was misunderstood by everyone for Chekhov in it wrote a novel according to the regulations of the short story. Then came Bunin and he did a lot for the genre, too. After Bunin Shalamov took over and said that it is the only genre worth while. A wise man he was.
Question 19: Russian Literature and Russian Émigré Literature – Unity and Separation. The pain, the pain, oh the pain! This is such a painful question for me, because it reveals to me my own aching reality of being myself something of an émigré writer, of someone torn from one’s Motherland, writing away in foreign languages in foreign countries… The first wave of émigré writers were sent away from Russia after the revolution in 1917. They saw as their mission to save Russian culture and lived their lives in poverty while writing away about the Russia they had loved but now lost forever and some of them – Bunin was the only one though – went on to win Nobel Prizes for their nostalgic trips only in mind though back to the Holy Motherland. The second wave of émigré writers couldn’t return to the USSR after the WWII for fear of being sent to Soviet concentration camps – though most of them had just been released from German concentration camps. Most of them moved to the USA where they wrote little of distinction. The third wave of émigré writers were sent away from the USSR in the 1970’s and 1980’s for they were dissidents and disagreed with everything Soviet. But even though they didn’t live within Russia, they still wrote for Russian readers. There’s unity in the language – Russian – but there is also separation, for the émigré writers did not share the same themes as the rest of Russian literature.
Question 20: “The Situation of Post-modernism” and Russian 20th and 21st Century Literature. What can I say? I know little to nothing about this. But I guess I can talk some on Grishkovets, for example, and of how his prose his influenced by the world around him, and this world being contemporary Russia. And about how Ulitskaya has reformed the novel as a genre in “Daniel Stein, Translator”. Generally, I am afraid of Russian 21st century literature. Even more so afraid since I have published a novel myself in Russian in the 21st century, and am thus as much guilty of the chaos as anyone else.
