Back to the past: with a smile or a grimace

Back to the past: with a smile or a grimace Post-modern Russian culture

Komar and Melamid: Sotsart • Vitaly Komar (1943) & Aleksandr Melamid (1945) • Studied together in Mingled Soviet Pop and conceptual art • 1973 expelled from youth wing of Soviet Union of Artists • 15 September 1974 “Bulldozer Show” 20 artists organized open-air show in Moscow – show broken up and paintings destroyed with bulldozers – including K & M’s • 1977 emigrated first to Israel, then New York • Tend to seek artistic relationship of political subjects (e.g. portrait of Hitler) • Now organizing to save Socialist Realist monuments • Nostalgic Socialist Realism Series (1981-83) “Sots-Art”

Stalin with a muse - probably Clio, muse of history and poetry, who was punished by being made to fall in love with a man and bear him a son. “The Origin of Socialist Realism” (1982-1983)

Marx & Engels and Collective Farmers with Prize Bull (1982-3)

Literature after 1991 • Realist writing consigned to the garbage: Solzhenitsyn, Tolstoy. • Threatened decline of the Russian reader • Books entirely in private sector • Translation of foreign literature: Japanese, Serbian, French, Spanish, etc. • Pulp fiction: first translated, then local. • Sci Fi

“Returned” Literature • Late perestroika period removal of censorship (effective 1987-1988) • Flood of formerly forbidden authors: • Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita, , Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, Andrei Platonov, Varlam Shalamov, Josef Brodsky, “Silver Age” poetry. • Also: Berdiaev (philosopher), and other religious philosophers. • Western authors: James Joyce.

Post-modernism • Socio-political function of art is abandoned. • Collapse of all over-arching narratives: Marxism, Fascism, progress, capitalism • Literature becomes a self-sufficient game • Irony and the contradiction of different narratives • Questionable narrator • Allusive: refers to other works of art, contains in-jokes. • Tends to be “dead-pan.”

Victor Pelevin, b. 1962 • Studied at Moscow Energy Institute, worked for magazine Science & Religion, wrote articles on Eastern philosophy • Writes short fantastic novels and stories • Omon Ra 1992 • The Yellow Arrow 1993 • Life of Insects 1993 • Generation P 1999

Victor Pelevin • The gap between language and reality, especially between Soviet rhetoric and reality, “Potemkin villages” • Moulds fantastic situations out of the garbage and kitsch of Soviet reality, close to science fiction • Virtual reality, hyper-reality and morphing – influence of computer, television zapping • Literature as its own reality – multi-referential, e.g., to other texts of Russian literature from the past • Pelevin’s writing resists interpretation: not an allegory of something.

Pelevin • Owes a debt to Nabokov, Gogol, Kafka, Lewis Carroll; frequent surreal situations, cf. Douglas Coupland, Generation X • Cool irony that is not satirical or directed towards change or improvement of situation

Pelevin’s art: “Absurdistan” • Descriptions of decaying wreck of Soviet society, e.g. in Yellow Arrow – develops Grebenshchikov’s metaphor of Russia as a “train on fire” • Omon Ra: “cosmonauts” in a fake spaceship that they pedal • semi-mythical characters from Soviet past (e.g. Lenin, Chapaev), • Morphing: in Life of Insects, characters morph into mosquitos and back

Omon Ra (1992) • First major work of Pelevin’s • Title is the first name of the hero (named after the Police Swat teams), plus his chosen last name • (Brother’s name OVIR is named after the Office of Visas and Registration) • Last name is the name of an Egyptian god - man with a falcon’s head. • What is the result of the juxtaposition of these two images in a single name?

Fake Soviet Reality • The space ship knocked together from planks. • The sky at the end which turns out to be projected lights. • Other examples?

Themes • Heroism: “The news that my heroism would remain unknown was no blow to me. The blow was the news that I would have to be a hero” (45). • Other themes?

Motifs • Macaroni stars, chicken • Descriptions of the sky • Other motifs?

Omon and Mityok • The first-person narrative: the loneliness of the hero • Mityok’s death accentuates the loneliness.

References: Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam over Ra’s father’s bed (p. 4)

Kuindzhi’s painting that hangs over Mityok’s bed (pp. 57, 90, 92)

Mityok’s Ravings (pp. 80-91) • Meskalamdug: early Sumerian king • Ninlil: Sumerian goddess of wind and air (See Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature) • Vögel von Richthofen: German flying ace • Ahnenerbe: a Nazi think tank on racial history.

References: Pink Floyd (pp. 117-118) • “One of These Days” • “Summer 68” • “If” • “Overhead the albatross” • (NB PF made an album The Dark Side of the Moon)

Zabriskie Point (1970) • Michelangelo Antonioni, Italian film director • Last imagined explosion scene. • Final scene with music by Pink Floyd

Questions • What is the overriding theme? • What motifs (recurring details that acquire meaning)do you see? • How is it written? • What is the time frame? • How is the world perceived?

Boris Akunin Pseudonym of Grigory Chkhartishvili (b. 1956) • Specialist in Asian languages, tr. from Japanese, English • Awarded the Order of Japan by Emperor • Assistant editor of Foreign Literature until 2000 • Scholarly work The Writer and Suicide (1999)

Akunin’s detective stories First story Azazel (1998) • Stories take place before Revolution, Erast Fandorin resembles Sherlock Holmes • Film and TV versions • Translated into English • English Website

Detective stories: • Darya Dontsova (b. 1952) • Over 100 books • Russia’s answer to Agatha Christie!

Science fiction - Sergey Lukyanenko (b. 1968) • known for Night Watch (made into film with special effects) • Night Watch • Website in English

Back to the past: with a smile or a grimace