From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.soviet,rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Venedikt Erofejev: Moskva - Petushki
Keywords: Moskva, Petushki
Date: 12 Nov 92 12:10:37 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Nov12.071040.17370
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <1992Nov11.155243.17352@husc3.harvard.edu> 
verbit@brauer.harvard.edu (Mikhail S. Verbitsky) writes:

> zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:

>>verbit@brauer.harvard.edu (Mikhail S. Verbitsky) writes:

MV:
>>>Ohmygod, it's getting longer and longer...

MZ:
>>With any luck, your attention span will rise to the occasion.

MV:
>       No luck.

Your loss.

MZ:
>>>>Dear Misha, you have avoided answering my question.  At the moment, I
>>>>am not interested in any other sketches by Kharms; kindly tell me your
>>>>opinion of the one *you* brought up.

MV:
>       What for? Well, you asked... My opinion on
>       the one I brought up is _positive_.
>       Is that enough?

No.  In what sense is it relevant to the discussion of Erofeev?

MZ:
>>First of all, you were the one who brought up Kharms; in this case, I
>>do believe that the connection is very tenuous, not to say
>>nonexistent.  As for Erofeev's connection with the literary tradition,
>>the internal textual evidence is all there; it remains only to be
>>interpreted, but certainly requires no further confirmation.

MV:
>       Well, connection with Rozanov, Radishchev, Lenin
>       and some others is pretty obvious; I'd say that
>       the persistent claim that it exists (despite
>       that no one other claims that it does not)
>       is rather banal.

What is not obvious is how to interpret this connection.

MV:
>>>     You'll never make me believe that a man who
>>>     created a picture of a chaotic, God-less world
>>>     like in Moscva-Petushki (and enjoyed this
>>>     picture) could believe in God. Better to
>>>     allege the religious belief to Sartre, who
>>>     quoted Catholic authors a lot more often,
>>>     and in many cases with rather positive attitude.

MZ:
>>Well, there's your problem.  Instead of playing doubting Thomas, go
>>read Blaise Pascal, a Catholic apologist who created a picture of a
>>chaotic, God-less world three centuries before Venichka.  I did say
>>_Deus absconditus_, didn't I? do you need further explanations?

MV:
>       You say that Pascal who was constantly
>       tortured by the (purely imaginable)
>       possibility of mental disorder was
>       happy with the chaotic world? 

Why would I need to say any such thing?

MV:
>				      Don't
>       make me laugh. Clearly, his problem
>       was the logical impossibility of
>       the co-existence of God in the world
>       and disorder he carried in his soul.

The alleged clarity is your conclusion, which does not bind anyone
else, in particular Erofeev.  There is absolutely no evidence that
either Pascal or millions of his followers stand in need of a
Leibnizian theodicy, or even of such Jesuit device as a rational
theology based on the _esprit geometrique_.

MV:
>       Erofeev goes perfectly well with this
>       disorder, so to destroy his hero he needs
>       some exterrior force.

Nonsense.  As much as you may wish to avoid saddling him with
Aristotelian aesthetics, there is ample evidence for ascribing
_hamartia_ to his hero.  Example:

	Shall I tell you why?  Because my soul is ill, but I never
	show any sign of it.  Because, as long as I can remember, all
	I have done has been to simulate spiritual health, dedicating
	to this task every single one of my powers, whether mental, or
	physical, or any other.  That is why I am boring.  Everything 
	that you talk about, every one of your daily cares, -- all
	that is infinitely alien to me.  There.  And of that, which I
	care about, -- of that I shall never breathe a word to anyone.
	Maybe because I am afraid of being thought a headcase (iz
	boyazni proslyt' stebanutym), maybe because of something else,
	but anyway -- not a word.   ("Nikolskoe to Altykovskaya")

Sounds like he is aware of some disorder in his soul, doesn't it?

MV:
>			       His personages
>       do not have inner contradictions between
>       the will to see the God in the world and the
>       impossibility to do so, as does the
>       French tradition with which you are
>       trying to tie him.

I am beginning to wonder whether you have read the same book I am
talking about.  In the chapter "Moscow to Hammer and Sickle", Venichka
takes stock of his worldly goods:

	I took all my goods out of the little case, and went through
	them carefully: from the sandwich to the fortified rose' at a
	ruble thirty seven.  I made this inventory -- and suddenly
	started pining (zatomilsya).  I did it again -- and withered
	(poblek)...  Lord, you see before you the sum of my
	possessions.  But is _this_ what I need?  Is _this_ what my
	soul is yearning for (po chemu toskuet moya dusha)?  This is
	what men gave me instead of that which my soul yearns for!  
	And if they had given me _that_, would I have needed _this_?
	Look at this, Lord: fortified rose' at a ruble thirty seven...

	And the Lord, all wreathed in blue lightning, answered me:
	-- Do you think St Theresa needs her stigmata?  They are also
	not what she needs.  But they are what she longs for (oni ej
	zhelanny).

	-- That's it! -- I replied in ecstasy.  -- And I, -- I too
	long for this, but I don't need it!

	"Well, then, Benny, if this is what you long for, then drink",
	I thought to myself (tikho podumal ya), but still hesitated.
	Would the Lord say anything more, or won't he?

	The Lord was silent.

Now, what was that you said: Venechka does not have inner
contradictions between the will to see God in the world and the
impossibility to do so?  Methinks you are full of shit.

MZ:
>>Then I suppose the recurring images of Gethsemane (compare e.g. the
>>chapter "Moscow to Hammer and Sickle" to Matthew xxvi.36-46) and the
>>Crucifixion (cf. "lama sabachtani" in the last chapter to Matthew
>>xxvii.45-46) are meant as blasphemous? give me a break, Misha.  One
>>does not destroy the pathos by allegorizing his hero as Jesus Christ.

MV:
>       He would destroy the Christian pathos by allegorizing
>       Judas as Jesus Christ - a move typical to, say, Rozanov.

Huh? who is Judas in _Moskva -- Petushki_?

MV:
>       In any case, even trying to tie Erofeev to Russian
>       religious tradition from Dostoevsky to Rozanov
>       you'll fail since Venechka is clearly outside
>       of it - he sees the failures of his predessors
>       too clearly. For instance, reading his essay
>       about Rozanov you see that the idea of latter that
>       traditional Christian chastity and the Orthodox
>       Christians ideas of love are incompatible.

Try the *Catholic* idea of love, as exemplified, say, in _Les fleurs
du mal_, for fit with the case of the red-haired broad in "Kuchino to
Zheleznodorozhnaya".  You are absolutely right, -- this is not
Sonechka Marmeladova; more like Jeanne Duval.

MV:
>       Reading the same essay and Moscva-Petushki
>       you learn that *real* (in the sense of Rozanov)
>       Christianity (i. e., love) is, as Erofeev
>       puts out, destructive and bound to death
>       and materialism.

I see no connection between this and my thesis.

MV:
>       BTW, one thing common to Erofeev and Rozanov
>       (and Russian esoteric Orthodoxy in general):
>       the idea of *impossibility of the sin*.
>       There are no sins in Erofeev's world.

Doubtful about Rozanov, inapplicable to Erofeev.  Complacency, as
exemplified in the cited passage, surely is a tragic flaw in the
Aristotelian sense, and quite undistinguishable from sin in its
consequences.  But even if this were the case, the consequential
innocence of the hero would only amplify the Christ-like connotations.

MV:
>>>     This is a typical scene from Vaugh circa Vile Bodies
>>>     or (once more) Sartre, or...

MZ:
>>I see no connection of this sort.  (By the way, in your holy war
>>against orthography, I wish you would spare proper names from your
>>righteous wrath.)

MV:
>       Sorry, Waugh... Hollis on-line catalogue was down,
>       so I could not check.

Still no connection.

MZ:
>> Think of this image as an antithesis to the
>>Bakhtinian atmosphere of the earlier parts.  (Remember, Venichka was a
>>philology student around the time Bakhtin's dissertation finally
>>appeared in print.)  What does it say to you that his narrator is
>>explicitly set up for a comparison to a man who dies from total
>>annihilation of his lower parts?

MV:
>       And what does it say about uncompatibility of
>       carnival culture and the high one, and about
>       carnival culture being inherent destructor
>       of cultural traditions? What about the law
>       that all cultural connotations in carnivalized
>       text have negative meaning (well, not negative,
>       just the opposite to one they are naturally
>       endowed with)? Read Bakhtin on Bakhtin,
>       not someone else... And good luck, you'll
>       need it rather bad :)

Are you playing dense?  I can forgive you for not reading the bloody
book, but if you wish to argue, at lest try to read my questions!  The
lower parts get *annihilated*; what does it mean?  And if you are so
keen on Bakhtin, think about the one episode at the end of _Gargantua_
that he *explicitly* disclaims being able to account for in terms of
his theory; then think of the obvious recapitulation of the key
passage from Rabelais in the chapter "Chukhlinka to Kuskovo".  (The
book is available at Schoenhof's for $7.95; if you tell the salesgirl
that you are buying it for a lesson in manners, she will let you have
it tax-free.)  One hint: the Rabelaisian motto "FAY CE QUE VOULDRAS",
which serves as the basis of the little arrangement between Venichka
and his comrades, is a paraphrase from St Augustine.  Would you care
to guess how the bishop of Hippo formulated the original version?

If you don't want to figure it out for yourself, ask me to post the
answer; I have the relevant passages buried in an old seminar paper on
Soviet culture...

By the way, Bakhtin makes for very nice reading, but it is not at all
clear how relevant his (very doctrinaire) work is to the understanding
of Rabelais, as distinguished from the popular culture of his time.
Modern French scholarship (perhaps under the abiding influence of
anarchism) tends to pay a lot more attention to the _sui generis_
aspects of utopian humanism, which Bakhtin is forced to discount as
irrelevant.  If you read French, I recommend the book by Rigolot and a
short article by Harvard's own Per Nykrog; in English there is the
excellent work of Screech.

MV:
>>>             I know thy works, and where thou
>>>             dwellest, even where Satan's seat
>>>             is: and thou holdest fast my name,
>>>             and hast not denied my faith, even in
>>>             those days wherein Antipas was my
>>>             faithful martyr, who was slain among you,
>>>             where Satan dwelleth.

>       Misha.
>Pro Antipu-to khorosho, a?

Not my cup of tea.

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
" -- I shall speak bluntly, because life is short."
Newsgroups: soc.culture.soviet