Subject
Re: Query: Istreblenie tiranov "Tyrants Destroyed"
Date
Body
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 10:04:13 +0000
From: Ulrike Goldschweer <goldsub3@mailhost.rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de>
----
I think I can help Ms. Soile Lädeaho.
I wrote my MA thesis about the short stories of the thirties,
integrated a part of it in my dissertation, and last winter also
held a seminar about it.
Have you thought about the relation between the protagonist and the
tyrant (of course you have)?
The tyrant stands for mass, mediocrity and majority, and because
he is kind of a collective being, he has no name (think of Oblako,
ozero, basnja: "obrazuja odno sbornoe, mjagkoe, mnogorukoe sushchestvo,
ot kotorogo nekuda bylo devat'sja").
He "kills" recollection, and takes myth for a surrogate (i.e. turns
the living spiral into a dead circle).
In the first chapter the tyrant's petrification is described, how he
turns into stone, into something lifeless, how he is dehumanized,
the culmination of which is the white cubus wearing his face, so to say.
The protagonist clearly symbolizes the opposite: He is an individual,
he does remember, he turns out to be human, because he is weak.
But this relationship does not persist: There is a strange kind of
"doppelgaenger-dynamics" going on, which changes the distribution of
power: The individual tries to gain power over the majority, and
succeeds in this task by laughing.
Laughing doesn't change the real circumstances, but it sets the
individual free from fear, and that's the point.
For this definition of laughing see Mikhail Bakhtin's "Tvorchestvo
Fransua Rabele i narodnaja kul'tura srednevekoja i renessansa"
(I know that Bakhtin's hypotheses and especially their cultural
implications have been controversially discussed recently,
but I think some of them do very well in this case).
There's also an interesting chapter about the grotesque, traits of which
apply to the description of the tyrant as well.
And I think, the notorious article on Nabokov by Georgij Adamovich is
worth reading in this context to, for he completely misses the
dynamics of this story.
(I hope I'm not expelled from NABOKV-L for suggesting this)
By the way: Efforts to understand and to describe the dynamics and
the narrative strategies of a story are never useless, for a story represents
a kind of complexity of its own, very similar to the complexity of the world
("life, universe, and all the rest"). Every reading is a selection of
certain features, and selecting them, I think, creates - or exposes -
new complex features. So, maybe, exploring the complexity of a story
means exploring the complexity of the world.
Ulrike Goldschweer
Lotman-Institut fuer russische
und sowjetische Kultur
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
D - 44780 Bochum
goldsub3@rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 10:04:13 +0000
From: Ulrike Goldschweer <goldsub3@mailhost.rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de>
----
I think I can help Ms. Soile Lädeaho.
I wrote my MA thesis about the short stories of the thirties,
integrated a part of it in my dissertation, and last winter also
held a seminar about it.
Have you thought about the relation between the protagonist and the
tyrant (of course you have)?
The tyrant stands for mass, mediocrity and majority, and because
he is kind of a collective being, he has no name (think of Oblako,
ozero, basnja: "obrazuja odno sbornoe, mjagkoe, mnogorukoe sushchestvo,
ot kotorogo nekuda bylo devat'sja").
He "kills" recollection, and takes myth for a surrogate (i.e. turns
the living spiral into a dead circle).
In the first chapter the tyrant's petrification is described, how he
turns into stone, into something lifeless, how he is dehumanized,
the culmination of which is the white cubus wearing his face, so to say.
The protagonist clearly symbolizes the opposite: He is an individual,
he does remember, he turns out to be human, because he is weak.
But this relationship does not persist: There is a strange kind of
"doppelgaenger-dynamics" going on, which changes the distribution of
power: The individual tries to gain power over the majority, and
succeeds in this task by laughing.
Laughing doesn't change the real circumstances, but it sets the
individual free from fear, and that's the point.
For this definition of laughing see Mikhail Bakhtin's "Tvorchestvo
Fransua Rabele i narodnaja kul'tura srednevekoja i renessansa"
(I know that Bakhtin's hypotheses and especially their cultural
implications have been controversially discussed recently,
but I think some of them do very well in this case).
There's also an interesting chapter about the grotesque, traits of which
apply to the description of the tyrant as well.
And I think, the notorious article on Nabokov by Georgij Adamovich is
worth reading in this context to, for he completely misses the
dynamics of this story.
(I hope I'm not expelled from NABOKV-L for suggesting this)
By the way: Efforts to understand and to describe the dynamics and
the narrative strategies of a story are never useless, for a story represents
a kind of complexity of its own, very similar to the complexity of the world
("life, universe, and all the rest"). Every reading is a selection of
certain features, and selecting them, I think, creates - or exposes -
new complex features. So, maybe, exploring the complexity of a story
means exploring the complexity of the world.
Ulrike Goldschweer
Lotman-Institut fuer russische
und sowjetische Kultur
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
D - 44780 Bochum
goldsub3@rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de