From: verbit@brauer.harvard.edu (Mikhail S. Verbitsky)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.soviet,rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Venedikt Erofejev: Moskva - Petushki
Keywords: Moskva, Petushki
Date: 10 Nov 92 01:41:19 GMT
Organization: Sozialistische Patienten Kollektiv

In some article zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
>In some article verbit@coolidge.harvard.edu (Mikhail S. Verbitsky) writes:



>MZ:
>>>Erofeev's book contains explicit allusions to books by Ovid, Rabelais,
>>>Goethe, Turgenev, and Pushkin, among many others.  

And his book on Lenin contains direct quotes from Lenin's letters :)

MV:
>>	For example, there
>>	is a short play written by Kharms: Gogol
>>	appears, fumbles, falls. Pushkin appears,
>>	fumbles over Gogol, says "Devil", falls.
>>	Gogol... etc etc. I hope you will not state
>>	that in this play there are cultural 
>>	connotations. Exactly the same happens in Rozanov
>>	essay and in M.-P.

>Indeed, Kharms' skit consciously exploits the ridiculous veneration in
>which the Russian public holds the names of Pushkin and Gogol.  Try a
>thought experiment: substitute for the above the names of Verbitsky
>and Zeleny, and consider the question of whether the work's meaning
>remains the same, or changes significantly.

	Funny thing is that most of >>100 Kharms' sketches are
	just like that: he uses Pushkin, Gogol and Ivan Susanin
	only in 7 pieces. After, these 7 stories on 1/2 page
	each created a whole wave of folklore which was
	traditionally attributed to Kharms. I guess, Misha Z.
	was deluged by this into believing that Kharms
	wrote only about Pushkin and Gogol. A typical
	story by Kharms which has nothing to do with
	esteemed literators is that, say, Petrakov-
	Gorbunov appears on a scene, tries to say
	something, gags and vomits. Some woman artist
	appears, tries to say, gags and vomits. 
	It repeats several times, and then the little
	girl appears and saus "The theatre is closed:
	everybody pukes". Finita :)

	------

	The following is the only contribution in Erofeev discussion
	by Zeleny:

>As for allusions in Erofeev, I shall be happy to explain one of them
>as an example.  Consider the following passage from the chapter
>"Saltykovskaya--Kuchino", wherein the drunken narrator is recalling
>his no less intoxicated plea to his seriously ill son.

>	When you're not with me, little one, I am so alone... Do you
>	understand?.. you played in the forest this summer, didn't
>	you?...  And, perhaps, you remember the pine trees there?..
>	Me, I'm like one of those pine trees...  It's so tall, and so
>	very lonely, lonely, lonely, just like me...  Like me, it
>	looks up at the sky, and can't and won't look under its
>	feet...  It's so green, it will be forever green, until it
>	collapses.  And me --- I too will remain forever green, until
>	I collapse...
>
>As you can see, the monologue hesitates, interrupted by the ellipses,
>punctuated by hiccup-like commas.  One can hardly expect coherence,
>much less classical allusions.  And yet there is a very significant
>and obvious allusion to the famous image in Ovid's _Metamorphoseon_:
>
>	os homine sublime caelumque videre
>	iussit et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus:
>	sic, modo quae fuerat rudis et sine imagine, tellus
>	induit ignotas hominum conversa figuras.

[ what follows is 3 pages with quotes from Rembaud and Pascal
  which are supposed to prove that the the driving force
  behind Erofeev's writing was his alleged Catholicism ]

	That is like to say that Erofeev was an avid democrat
	and that the purpose of his other book Leniniana
	is to accuse Lenin in crimes :) You should not
	base anything like that on arbitrary quotations
	from Catholic authors who (like Rembaud) were
	known to (and liked by) Erofeev. The whole idea of his book
	is not to give the new life to those images,
	but to destroy them.

	Let me start with the more transparent allusion
	in Moscva-Petushki - from the allusion to Radishchev
	book. Following your way of thought, we should
	agree that Erofeev writes as Radishchev supporter
	and apologist (since there are lots of explicit
	and not explicit quotes and allusions to Radishchev's
	book, starting from the plan of Moscva-Petushki,
	which is exactly the plan of Radishchev's book
	"The travelling from Petersbourgh to Moscow"). 

	In fact, the real meaning of the quotation
	from Radishchev (reading of his book, full of 
	Enlightement pathos and radical ideas, was strictly
	prohibited to Russians from 1778 to 1905 by the
	Tsarist goverment) is *strictly opposite*.
	Erofeev destroys this pathos and shows that
	Enlightement ideas in Russia imply only carnage.
	Similar thing happens to everything in Russian
	(and not Russian) culture which appears in Moscva-
	Petushki. The book is not about apologizing, it is
	about destruction of a cultural connotations,
	more like Alice in Wonderland than Kapitanskaya
	Dochka. Naturally, there are lot of quotes
	in Alice :), but for Erofeev this is not a
	precedent: he writes as in the empty battlefield
	full of carnage. He is a lone warrior on the verge
	of alcoholic insanity and suicide, not a catholic 
	bookworm Misha Z. is trying to paint instead.

>>	Misha.

>>		Anyway, they say she comes on a pale horse,
>>		But I'm sure I hear a train.

>This disagreement should not be misconstrued by Verbitsky's detractors
>as my reneging on the solemn promise to plant copper-coated lead
>flowers in their silly heads, should they be foolish enough to try to
>shut him up.

		O boy! I don't even feel no pain-
		I guess I must be driving myself insane.
		Damn it all! does earth plug a hole in heaven,
		Or heaven plug a hole in the earth-
		'how wonderful to be so profound,
		when everything you are is dying underground.'
Xref: sparky soc.culture.soviet:9715 alt.whine:766