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Liberation and the Authority of the Writer in the Russian, Czech and Slovak Rajendra Anand Chitnis Liberation and the Authority of the Writer in the Russian, Czech and Slovak Fiction of the Changes School of Slavonic & East European Studies-UCL Submitted for the degree of Ph.D. Date: January 15* 2003 ProQuest Number: 10042785 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest 10042785 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Abstract This dissertation represents the first comparative study of works by the ‘writers of the Changes’, those Russian, Czech and Slovak writers who, in the late 1980s and 1990s, presented themselves as ‘liberators’ of literature from its traditional function in Russian, Czech and Slovak culture as the ultimate authority on how to live. The ‘fiction of the Changes’ at once asserts the surrender of this position of authority and contemplates its consequences. In the introduction, the ‘fiction of the Changes’ is placed in the context of a longer retreat fi*om this position of authority in sanctioned fiction. Chapter 1 compares novels by Venedikt Erofeev, Hrabal and Vilikovsky which reflect the defeat of literature’s attempts to perfect the human being and the writer’s desire no longer to be implicated in such attempts. In the works by Evgenii Popov, Placak and PiSt’anek discussed in Chapter 2, the writer ceases to be the voice of the collective, instead asserting his freedom to ‘give shape to his fate’. Writing which no longer seeks to perpetuate the accepted shape of the external world, represents for Ivanchenko, Tolstaia and Mitana, discussed in Chapter 3, a futile but necessary escapism from existence. However, for Ajvaz, Hodrovâ, Kratochvil and Jâchym Topol, discussed in Chapter 4, it represents the energy of being as it passes. In Chapter 5, the aspiration to meaning in writing is, for Kolenic and litvâk, futile, and for Sorokin, indicates a harmful desire for power that must be thwarted. Chapter 6 argues that, while Pelevin and BaUa reject this defeat of creativity, Kahuda rejects the sentimental attachment to writing as to being in other Czech fiction of the Changes. The conclusion divides the writers of the Changes between those who ‘fear speaking’ and those who ‘fear stopping speaking’, and suggests how the writers of the Changes have sought to reconcile these positions. Contents Introduction: The Fiction of the Changes 4 Chapter 1 Deaths of Authors: 32 Venedikt Erofeev, Bohumil Hrabal, Pavel Vilikovsky Chapter 2 Giving A Shape to One’s Fate: 52 Evgenii Popov, Petr Placâk, Peter Pist’anek Chapter 3 The Rejection of Realism: 84 Aleksandr Ivanchenko, Tat’iana Tolstaia, Dusan Mitana Chapter 4 Writing as Being: 114 Michal Ajvaz, Daniela Hodrovâ, Jiri Kratochvil, Jachym Topol Chapter 5 Empty Words: 161 Vladimir Sorokin, Ivan Koleniô, Jan Litvak Chapter 6 Learning to Live With Emptiness: 190 Viktor Pelevin, Vâclav Kahuda, Vlado Balia Conclusion: To Speak or Not to Speak 223 Bibliography 228 Introduction: The Fiction of the Changes In ‘Mâ lâsko, Postmodemo’ (Postmodema, my love), the title story of a 1993 collection by Jih Kratochvil (b.l940), the narrator, a middle-aged writer, frees Postmodema, the little girl he loved when he was a little boy at school, from a prison where she has been kept for forty years, and carries her out into the world on his shoulders/ The story constitutes a mythicisation of the role of Czech writers like Kratochvil, published for the first time following the fall of Communism in November 1989, who, according to Kratochvil, liberated literature from its perceived manipulation for ideological purposes during the forty-one years of Communist rule. In the story, Kratochvil portrays literature as eternally young and innocent, despite what human beings have tried to do to it. His use of ‘postmodema’ is therefore ironic, suggesting that what fashionable contemporary critics like to call ‘postmodernism’ is simply literature, released from the ‘extra-literary’ functions imposed on it by human beings. Kratochvil’s story represents one expression of a trend in Russian, Czech and Slovak literature of the late 1980s and 1990s, in which certain writers presented themselves in their fiction or critical articles as ‘liberators’ of literature. In this dissertation, I attempt to characterise and compare the principles, strategies and techniques underlying their work. This dissertation by no means represents a survey of all the Russian, Czech and Slovak fiction published in the late Communist and early post- Communist period, most of which may be said to reflect and respond to the changing circumstances arising in society and the literary process. Rather, the label ‘the fiction of the Changes’ refers specifically to writing published in this period in which the author foregrounds the attempt to change conventional perceptions about why literature is written and how it is read. A chronological thread mns through the six chapters, based on when works were first published in their author’s native country, but I have not stuck rigidly to this, given that the year of writing often differed substantially from the year of publication in this period. Throughout, I emphasise the comparison between the three literatures. ^ See Kratochvil, J., Mâ lâsko, Postmodemo, Brno, 1994, pp. 113-15. Chapters 1, 2 and 6 examine works by a Russian, a Czech and a Slovak writer. In Chapters 3 and 5 I focus on Russian and Slovak writers, and in Chapter 4 on Czech writers, reflecting not only the similar way in which the leading Czech writers of the Changes enact their ‘liberation’, but also the contrast between their approach and that of their Russian and Slovak counterparts. Given the limits of space, I have chosen to concentrate on what I consider paradigmatic works, and therefore some writers may appear under-represented. I have tried to reflect the views of some of these writers in this introduction, in which I seek to characterise the ‘fiction of the Changes’ and its reception in general terms and in its literary-historical context. In early 1989, Literatumaia gazeta published two articles reflecting on recently published Russian fiction, prefaced by a reader’s letter, worth quoting since it typifies the perception of the role and nature of literature challenged by the writers of the Changes. Citing works she has just read by Valeriia Narbikova (b.l958), Viacheslav P’etsukh (b.l946) and Tat’iana Tolstaia (b.l951), the (female) reader remarks: It seems to me that some of the writers (and especially female writers - which surprises me most!) have exploited glasnosf in order to display for general inspection only what is filthy and disgusting. There you go, they say, take that!... Can there be anything gained from such ‘trufii’? Can writers have forgotten that literature should elevate and enlighten the human being, and not bend him to the ground?^ The very title of the second article, ‘Plokhaia proza’ (Bad fiction), by Dmitrii Umov, left the reader in no doubt about its author’s views.^ However, the first article, by Sergei Chuprinin, entitled ‘Drugaia proza’ (Other fiction), constituted an early attempt to define the emerging ‘new’ writing. Chuprinin dates the origins of ‘other fiction’ back to the late 1970s, when literature that failed to commit itself to the service either of the regime or of its opponents ‘really felt itself to be other, that is to say emphatically and provocatively alternative in its relationship both to the reigning morality and, in fact, to all that was considered ^ Chuprinin, S., ‘Drugaia proza’, Literatumaia gazeta, 1989,6, p.4. Hereafter Chuprinin, ‘Drugaia’. ^ See Umov, D., ‘Plokhaia proza’, Literatumaia gazeta, 1989,6, p.4. The transition in critical method is reflected in the uneasy contrast between Umov’s fierce attack on Narbikova, and his anxiety to point out that, though he found this type of writing more or less unreadable, he was not seeking to deny its right to exist. literature in Russia’."^ The first collective expression of this position came, according to Chuprinin, with the abortive attempt in 1978 by Vasilii Aksenov (b.l932), Andrei Bitov (b.l937), Viktor Erofeev (b.l947), Fazil’ Iskander (b.l929), and Evgenii Popov (b.l946) to secure the uncensored publication of an anthology of ‘non-committed’ literature called MetropoV (Ann Arbor, 1979)/ MetropoV united writers from different generations who had difficulty publishing in Brezhnev’s Soviet Union, including prominent figures from the height of the Thaw, like Aksenov, Bitov and Iskander, whose major post-Thaw works did not appear until theglasnosf period, and those, like Erofeev and Popov, who would be considered central to the ‘new fiction’ of the late 1980s/ Despite this continuity, critical discussions of ‘other fiction’ - while noting precursors - focused almost exclusively on writers whose work was not associated with an earlier period, even though it had often been written in the 1970s or early 1980s. The major anomaly was Moskva-Petushki (Paris 1973, Moscow 1989, dated as written 1969) by Venedikt Erofeev (1938-90, no relation of Viktor), which was widely known or known about, having already been published and reviewed abroad and in samizdau but became for critics a defining example of the ‘new’ aesthetic. The core names listed by Chuprinin or other critics included both Erofeevs, Narbikova, P’etsukh, Popov, Tolstaia, Zufar Gareev (b.l955), Aleksandr Ivanchenko (b.l945), Liudmila Petrushevskaia (b.l938) and Vladimir Sorokin (b.l955).
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