From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.soviet,rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Venedikt Erofejev: Moskva - Petushki
Keywords: Moskva, Petushki
Date: 10 Nov 92 07:28:50 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Nov10.022854.17291
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <1992Nov9.204121.17276@husc3.harvard.edu> 
verbit@brauer.harvard.edu (Mikhail S. Verbitsky) writes:

>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.  

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

It is hardly a book, Misha, -- more of a missal.

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.

MZ:
>>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.

MV:
>	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 :)

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

MZ:
>>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.

MV:
>[ 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 ]

Huh? who is Rembaud? Just to jog your memory, here is what I wrote:

MZ:
>>This contrast between _homo erectus_, whose gaze is loftily fixed on
>>the majestic sight of the starry sky, and the brute quadrupeds staring
>>earthwards has become a veritable commonplace, especially in the
>>Latinate tradition of Catholic literature, to which Erofeev belongs in
>>virtue of his personal faith.  (See the same image, with similar
>>connotations, in Charles Baudelaire's poem "Le Cygne".  In another,
>>Lutheran context, a similar metaphor plays a crucial role in Kant's
>>famous dual admiration for "the starry heaven above me and the moral
>>law within me".)  You may also recall that, grotesquely and
>>tragically, the same upstanding character reappears in the very last
>>chapter of _Moskva-Petushki, as a man, whose upper half, after he is
>>run over by a train in the station,
>>
>>	remains standing next to the tracks, just like a bust of some
>>	scumbags you can see standing on pedestals all over the city.
>>
>>This truncated recapitulation of the noble image of Ovid is hardly
>>made for the sake of spoofing the Communist scumbags, just as the
>>grotesque and tragic screams of Gurevich, the impotent, blinded
>>Commendatore victimized by the triumphant Don Juan, and forever denied
>>the human ability to look heavenwards, at the end of Erofeev's play
>>_The Walpurgis Night_, are not shown for the sake of supporting the
>>state campaign against alcohol abuse.  You might think about all the
>>religious imagery in both works before you dismiss these references as
>>insignificant, unrelated to the author's worship of _Deus absconditus_
>>in the manner of Blaise Pascal, whose pervasive imagery of Man as
>>_roseau pensant_ may likewise be readily discerned in both works.
>>
>>Like Pascal, Erofeev builds his writing around the Catholic theme of
>>man's degradation and grandeur.  If you want to exercise your personal
>>privilege to regard it as a banal autobiographical anecdote, be my
>>guest, -- I am not about to deny you your inalienable right to the
>>blissful _bestise_ of an earthward-directed quadruped.  But try to
>>keep in mind that Erofeev was a student of philology, not mathematics.
>>Before you make any more categorical pronouncements on the subject of
>>his work, you might want to ask the opinion of someone who does not
>>share your disregard for, and ignorance of, the former discipline.

As you can see, the only quotation is from Erofeev himself.  On the
subject of his religion, see the necrologue in _Kontinent_ 67.

MV:
>	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.

Say what? at this point, I am not at all interested in the putative
political context of the work, on the subject of which I will most
likely agree with your thesis, if only by default.  My question stands
as formulated: what do you make of the pervasive *religious* imagery
in the book? do you think these images are set up only to be
destroyed?

MV:
>	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"). 

Nonsense.  Each allusion is to be interpreted on its own merits.  I
have *explained* why the image from Ovid is used as a symbol of human
dignity; even for a reader unfamiliar with the Latin poem, this point
is quite evident from the passage in question.  Likewise, at the end
of the book, when the laughter of the heavenly angels is compared to
the grotesque amusement of the children dancing around an erect trunk
of the accident victim, it is clear that the image is presented to
emphasize the conflict between this relentless striving for spiritual
elevation, and the base environment about to destroy the book's
narrator.  Recall the constant references to Venichka's chastity and
sensitivity.  Do you think it is insignificant that this emblem of his
imminent fall comes to have the lower part of his body reduced to tiny
fragments and scattered all over the place, while the top half, from
the waist up, remains undamaged and standing by the rails?  Come now,
this is the sort of question I would ask of a freshman literature
student!

MV:
>	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 baby, once again -- save your dogmatic claims about "the real
meaning" for more credulous audience.  I am not about to take you at
your word on this, or anything else.  Just pretend for a moment that
you have to demonstrate your views as you might demonstrate a theorem,
-- give me sone textual evidence, and argue for them.  You might start
by telling me -- how do you explain all the bloody apostrophes to God
and his angels?  Do you think Erofeev is spoofing religion in the same
way he spoofs the official culture?  If so, make a case for it,
instead of merely claiming your enlightened views to be superior to my
own.  Once again, regarding the social message, you are *trivially*
right, -- it is so obvious that there is no merit in figuring it out.
Indeed, the later play can plausibly be read as the reenactment of the
history of Sovok; so what?

Earlier I told you two or three things about Beckett.  Here is what he
wrote in his failed Master's thesis about Proust:

	Here, as always, Proust is completely detached from all moral
	considerations.  There is no right and wrong in Proust nor in
	his world.  (Except possibly in those passages dealing with
	the war, when for a space he ceases to be an artist and raises
	his voice with the plebs, mob, rabble, canaille.)  Tragedy is 
	not concerned with human justice.  Tragedy is the statement of
	expiation, but not the miserable expiation of a codified
	breach of a local arrangement, organised by the knaves for the
	fools.  The tragic figure represents the expiation of the
	original sin, of the original and eternal sin of him and all
	his `soci malorum,' the sin of having been born.

		`Pues el delito mayor
		 Del hombre es naber nacido.'

In the context of your political interpretation, to claim that Erofeev
deliberately "destroys this pathos and shows that Enlightement ideas
in Russia imply only carnage", puts him squarely in the camp of the
plebs, mob, rabble, and canaille.  By contrast, I prefer to regard him
as a true artist, for whom any concern with "a codified	breach of a
local arrangement, organised by the knaves for the fools" is purely
ancillary to the main message of wis work.  This is but an application
of the Principle of Charity, whereby I seek to obtain the least
trivial reading possible.  Once again, you are welcome to your own
reading, as based on your own personal values, however banal they
might be.

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

MZ:
>>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.

MV:
>		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.'

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
" -- I shall speak bluntly, because life is short."