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: 11 Nov 92 20:52:40 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Nov11.155243.17352
Organization: Sozialistische Patienten Kollektiv


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

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

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

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

	No luck.

>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.

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


>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. 

	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.


>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.

>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?

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

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

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

	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.


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

>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.) 

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

> 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?

	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 :)

>> 		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?