Nikolai Gogol

Ten years ago, I happened to attend a conference on the literature of this country whose name has been slightly amended since 1993.  One of the conference’s more spirited speakers, an ethnic Ukrainian, recalled a conversation he had had with a famous Russian–born writer at a cocktail party years before.  After the usual small talk on wind and weather, the Russian became curious:

Writer: You have an accent in English.  Are you from Europe?
Ukrainian: I’m from Ukraine.
Writer: From Urania?   [walks away]

Whether such an exchange ever occurred (the joke has the bitter flavor of truth) is not as interesting as the context.  Contempt for Ukrainian literature and the concept of Ukraine as a cultural and political entity independent of both Poland and Russia is still widespread, owing largely to its lack of famous men and women of letters.  Although the founder of the modern language was a poet and artist whose balding head, handlebar moustache, and resigned chin (to the fate of his native tongue, some would say) are engraved into numerous monuments worldwide, his existence is practically unacknowledged outside Slavic departments.  Even in those hallowed halls enthusiasts tend, after Russian, to study Polish, Czech, Serbian, and Bulgarian before knitting their brows at the oddities of the Ukrainian alphabet, Cyrillic with a sprinkling of one–eyes and two–eyes.  Most Ukrainian writers, history regrets to inform us, chose other mediums in which to express themselves.  And none was weirder and more brilliant than this small dainty man, the subject of one of the English language's most succulent literary biographies.              

 

Succulent thanks to the slow, effortless circles which the biographer, himself one of the finest craftsman in both Russian and English, sketches around young Gogol.  We begin with Gogol’s death and end with his birth, and in–between we find that our long–standing impressions of nineteenth–century Russia owe much to his handiwork:

Symbolism with him [Gogol] took on a physiological aspect, in this case optical.  The mutterings of passers–by were again symbolic, this time an auditory effect which was meant to render the hectic loneliness of a poor man in an opulent crowd.  Gogol, and Gogol alone, spoke to himself as he walked, but the monologue was echoed and multiplied by the shadows of his mind.  Passing as it were through Gogol’s temperament, St. Petersburg acquired a reputation of strangeness which it kept up for almost a century, losing it when it ceased to be the capital of an empire.

This is very much the oddness of Petersburg that pervades Russian literature from Pushkin to Bely, the incongruity of traditional European architecture and customs against the thoughts and rapturous originality of its natives.  I have not been to Petersburg in a few years, but little has changed.  Thirty years passed between Nabokov’s last spring in his hometown and the passage above, which, fifty years later felt like it had been culled from the evening edition of Argumenty i fakty.  The point is that Gogol, and Gogol alone, changed Russian literature both for its creators and its admirers, domestic and otherwise.  With the possible exception of Pushkin, he is more responsible than any author for how Slavic literary scholars have evaluated the last two hundred years.  

He did not, however, come about this brilliance by living the simple and successful life of an academically–minded writer who spends days in a library and nights behind his desk.  A soft, effeminate man, Gogol was completely impractical in mind and body: he was constantly impecunious, ill, or both; he loved to fib and exaggerate because, like all great writers, fiction was far richer than the worries of a mortal; he listened to no one but himself, fled from creditors and would–be benefactors alike, and traveled alone and aimlessly in Europe for years as if trying to absorb its culture by sponging its streets with his boots.  The results were few (Gogol would die, we are told immediately, in his early forties after an abortive leeching cure) but magnificent and his modest corpus is still studied with avidity by Russianists everywhere.  Nabokov demolishes some previous attempts at rendering Gogol’s eccentric prose (so badly, in fact, that I don’t think any publisher would have ever hired these poor dead souls ever again) and supplies his own passages, which display his own mastery and wit and swell and ebb with the same unmistakable rhythm of Nabokov’s discursive writings.  All of which, I may add, could probably not be written any more clearly or concisely, nor with more passion and understanding for his subject.

Yet Gogol’s most significant contribution may well be his obsession with a rather untranslatable word, poshlost’, about which Nabokov digresses for over twenty pages.  Poshlost’ has no precise English synonym (the German Kitsch is probably the closest, although this latter is strictly speaking an aesthetic term), but might be explained as the "the belief in or propagation of superficial, sentimental and populist values as true culture."  Examples would be pop and paparazzi shows and magazines or any Hollywood love or war story, but with a modicum of discipline these can be ignored.  Much more egregious offenders are books which might portray an earnest young man who, in an effort to "make it in the world," befriends some multicultural characters, falls in love with sunsets, dogs and soft jazz, repeats to himself that life is really not about the pursuit of material wealth — although he doesn't quite convince the reader of that — and, at the end of his "journey," metaphorically envisions humanity's fate in the hands of the scattered few around him.  Most books, as it were, fall into this disreputable category.  The word itself is in very common usage in modern Russian, and has come to signify the unshakeable twitch that surfaces upon hearing or seeing something so absolutely false and so infuriatingly pandering to common thought and common happiness that even pacifists like myself want to smack someone in the vicinity.  To Russians' great credit, the word is extremely old and consistently applied; and to Gogol’s credit, he is in every way the opposite of it, just like Tomas is a “monster in the kingdom of kitsch” in this novel.

And to Nabokov’s credit, he restrains himself for the most part from overtaking his beloved forerunner.  Yes, it is Nabokov’s show; but if you are familiar with his work, you know that he cannot share a stage to save his life and that his imprint is indelibly left on everything he touches.   He even has time to tell us about his deepest fears:

In his Dikanka and Taras Bulba phase .... Gogol was skirting a very dreadful precipice.  He almost became the writer of Ukrainian folklore tales and ‘colorful romances.’  We must thank fate (and the author’s thirst for universal fame) for his not having turned to the Ukrainian dialect as a medium of expression, because then he would have been lost.  When I want a good nightmare I imagine Gogol penning in Little Russian dialect volume after volume of Dikanka and Mirgorod stuff about ghosts haunting the banks of the Dneipr, burlesque Jews and dashing Cossacks.

This alternative reality may sound terrifying to Gogol connoisseurs, but some Ukrainians probably would not have minded.  And they would have deeply resented any comments on their status as a minor literature just as much as crude puns, of which Nabokov was particularly fond.   Pity that young Ukrainian writer could only remember Nabokov's last two comments.

Tycoon

For many among us, outlaws will always be heroes.  Not only because most people do not benefit from laws, regardless of the society in which these laws were created, but also because most people during their lifetime do not become fantastically rich, famous, or infamous.  There is little glamour to the quiet, average (and often very good) life which many brave souls are content to pass but which few find inspiring.  Throughout history we have hailed renegades, from Simon Magus to Robin Hood to Jesse James, to the gangsters and goons worshiped by current generations, as the triumph of the simple man over the elite, the rebellion of the downtrodden that halted the unending reign of supremely divine tyrants.  Yet there is nothing bold or revolutionary about the luxurious wealth or hedonistic pursuits which this outlaw eventually flaunts.  Once power has been attained, you will never find a more bourgeois, money-grubbing, rule-oriented manager, since now the laws protect him from, well, other potential revolutionaries.  He is self–serving to the point of justifying his actions by claiming he alone was strong enough to stand up to the authorities and bring them to their knees.  And he will use every legal stipulation and wile to keep his property and influence from the hungry masses whom he invariably shuns.  Since the last twenty years in Russia have seen the mercurial rise of more than one such individual it may be a fine time, on the occasion of the Russian elections, to review this film.

 

The film is based on a novel by Yuri Dubov, who was once the confidant of this billionaire in exile and public enemy of the Russian government denounced as having robbed his fellow citizens blind, deaf, and dumb.*  Whether such thievery actually occurred is less important than whether this life, romanticized as it surely must have been for the screen, could possibly provoke any aesthetic interest in us whatsoever.  The answer is yes, but not for the reasons one might think.  In this version, Berezovsky is given the first name of a philosopher, Platon (Vladimir Mashkov, above) and a last name that is almost that of a rather tremendous but troubled artist, Makovsky.  A little research would tell you that this shift in nomenclature, while elegant, is also not coincidental: in 2004 Berezovsky officially changed his name to Platon Elenin (again a letter shy of a poet’s name).  And all this shifting and guising has much to do with the subject matter, a traditional game of oneupmanship during the years in which the smart exploited what the law neglected, and found a way to circumvent the few stipulations it did contain.  So perhaps we should not be surprised that the novelty of unlimited capitalistic profit in post–glasnost Russia did not yield a new way of spinning an old greedy tale of young (and old) greedy men and the women who love them.  And in the same way, each action by Platon and his gang of cronies, a harmless bunch of smart but ostracized men, is given added weight by the revolution around them.  

The fictional Platon is a master of disguise, mood, and manipulation, as would be, we surmise, anyone moving in such dark and dangerous circles.  He emerges from this maelstrom in one piece thanks in no small part to his charisma, played up fabulously by Mashkov, a handsome and talented actor who exudes what one reviewer calls “reptilian charm” (there is no better description).  Detailing the plot might dissuade you from seeing the film, so I’ll just say that events do not unravel chronologically and, despite some half-hearted attempts, Platon’s love life remains secondary to his financial profile.  Nevertheless, the political implications of his rise to prominence and its rather minor subplots are not nearly as interesting as Platon’s own maneuvering, inevitable betrayal, and apotheosis – a story which, in the end, should sound extremely familiar.  Are the characters three-dimensional?  No, and for a very good reason: although one-man shows sometimes feature guest performers, these sidekicks only get billing far from the center and in very small print.  Tycoon is a upsized, occasionally preposterous tribute to one and only one of those magnates; everyone else is only important insofar as they help him achieve his goal.  

  

Unfortunately, nothing co-opts the spry and creative mind more than monetary success.  Even the wildest of imaginations considers, at least for a few moments, the life of material wealth and the ease and comfort such a life brings.  There is nothing wrong with ambition, nor with money per se; but when the goal of life and work and all your hours and minutes becomes a relentless hunt after greater and greater fortune, perspective on life’s best offerings is soon lost.  What Platon’s perspective is on the matter may be hard to say, because one gets the distinct impression that he really thinks of himself as some kind of artist.  And what you think of this tycoon, an oligarch in the original Russian, may reflect what you think of the new Russian revolution.  But then you may think of other riches – a live filled with goodness, love, laughter, curiosity, learning, and selflessness – and smile.  And you may gladly cede those outlaw desires to the Platon Makovskys and Charles Foster Kanes of the world.

* Note: Berezovsky ostensibly took his own life on March 23, 2013.

The Literary Foundation Pit

This article appeared in Novaia Gazeta on a rather fascinating topic: the hypothesis (and alleged proof) of the complete and utter fraudulence of this author's work.  As the article states on numerous occasions, most controversies hinge on the authorship of this large novel (a thick dull slab that, I must say, I could not bring myself to read in its entirety), but Zeev Bar-Sella thinks the whole construct of Sholokhov the writer is a sham, hence the title : “Sholokhov was not a writer at all: On the intelligence agency project that won a Nobel prize."

Twice before the subject of a Novaia Gazeta article, a long-awaited book is finally out: Zeev Bar-Sella’s groundbreaking monograph, The Literary Foundation Pit: The “Sholokhov the Writer” Project, published by the Russian State University for the Humanities press.  

Its publication may signal the beginning of genuinely scientific Sholokhov studies.  It is not a dig at Sholokhov, nor a polemic attack.  Whenever the words “studies” or “logic” are attached to a thing or person, the connotation is a desire for scientificity.  But this project has more specific goals: objectivity, impartiality, and obedience to the facts, not to emotions or market demands.  Yet the overwhelming majority of the texts that have been published under the rubric of “Sholokhov studies” have been distinguished precisely by extreme partiality, an unwillingness to adhere strictly to the facts, the ignoring of opponents (sprinkled with, more often than not, some primitive barbs towards those parties) and frank apologetics well outside the bounds of science.  The same can be said of anti-Sholokhov literature, which features the same emotions, the same absence of strict methodology, and the same recycling of private ideas.

Besides, all the polemics around Sholokhov inevitably lead to the discussion of one narrow problem: the authorship of Quietly flows the Don.  But as Bar-Sella so rightly notes: “There cannot be a scientific discipline concerned with only one individual object, even if this object is Quietly flows the Don.”  That is why “basic conscientiousness forces us to consider the attribution of other texts.”  To this subject Bar-Sella devotes 460 pages in A4 format, sixty-five of which compose a scientific-linguistic apparatus.  On these pages he develops a rather harmonious concept of the appearance, progression and function of the “Sholokhov the Writer” project in which Sholokhov is accorded the role of a sort of placeholder or locum, or, more precisely, of a trademark, a label of an extremely  successful literary project.

The author worked for 20 years and came to certain conclusions; he has stated them and given justifications for their existence.  And from now on we can’t get off cheap with our usual spate of viral abuse such as the terms “Satanic dances,” “slander,” and “literary assassins.”  Now both official Sholokhov scholars and anti-Sholokhov scholars will be forced to sit down together at a table and begin conversations on this book’s core arguments.  It’d be good if the table turned out to be round.   

Not so long ago in Literaturnaia Gazeta, Felix Kuznetsov and A. Ushakov wrote that you were a recent student at Moscow State University.  So tell us a bit about your life before you became a mythological figure in Sholokhovian circles.
If "recent" means 38 years ago,  then one could say the same about my opponents.  I was indeed once a student at Moscow State University, but I finished my studies in Jerusalem.  My first book, however, was published in the USSR, in Makhachkala in 1974.  It was called Investigations into the field of  historical morphology of the East Caucasian languages.  Unfortunately it was a short printing run, owing to the fact that I was already living in Jerusalem at the time.  Friends of mine were able to send me only a few copies.  My second book came out in the U.S. ten years later, although the place of publication listed is Tel Aviv.  It’s called Master Gambs and Margarita, and was written jointly with Maia Kaganskaia.  You’ll find references to it in any subsequent study on the novels of Bulgakov or Ilf and Petrov.  Moreover, a large part of the book was incorporated into a reader for Russian schoolchildren.  Last year in Moscow my third book was published: Yesterday’s tomorrow.  It is a collection of the work of three authors (myself, Maia Kaganskaia, and Ilana Gomel) devoted to science fiction, mostly from the Soviet era.  Excerpts from my following book − Quietly flows the Don: against Sholokhov. Textual criticism of a crime − were published starting in 1988 in the Israeli press, and from 1990 on in the Soviet, then the Russian press.  I was very happy to find out that Solzhenitsyn had a high opinion of this work.

Now to your name.  Ms. Kotovchikhina from the Moscow State Open Pedagogical Institute stated that you are hiding behind your mother’s maiden name...
This would be logical if my mother’s name were Ivanova, and my father’s Rabinovich.  As it were, it’s just the reverse.  Officially, I am Vladimir Petrovich Nazarov.  And my present name, with which I have been living for the last quarter of a century, is nothing more than its Hebrew translation.  Zeev Bar-Sella, is simply Vladimir Petrovich, that is Wolf Son of Rock (in Greek, petros).  

I take it that, of all your visits to Moscow, this is the most pleasant?   
And how!  And that’s because I get to present my fourth book, The Literary Foundation Pit: The “Sholokhov the Writer” Project.  I am infinitely grateful to the people at Russian State University for the Humanities press which has taken on a very heavy workload for the preparation and release of  such a technically complex book.  I am no less grateful to the editorial and publishing council of the University consisting of the most outstanding scientists (but most of all to academician Mikhail Gasparov), who recognized not only my work, but also that the problem itself was worthy of genuinely scientific investigation.

And yet more recently (at a session of the presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences on May 13th) Felix Kuznetsov − correspondent and member of this same Academy − said that, “the scandalous question regarding the authenticity of his (Sholokhov's) authorship is secondary.  [Foremost] is the imposed and unscientific subject.”  And the presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences agreed with him …       
At one point, the French Academy declared the problem of meteorites unscientific.  And they keep falling and falling.  The very fact that there have been questions for 70 years regarding Sholokhov's authorship says that the matter requires scientific resolution, which is exactly what I try to do in my book.  And my method is just as academic Yuri Osipov has said: “by not taking a great interest in emotions.”

But the problem of authorship concerns Quietly flows the Don.  More precisely, its first two volumes.  And yet in your book, not a word about Quietly flows the Don.  How come?
Because I understood that it was necessary to divide two problems cleanly from one another: authorship of Quietly flows the Don and the “Sholokhov question” as a whole.  There cannot be a science of one literary work.  Therefore it is impossible to answer the first question without having answered the second.  At the current time it is not important who the author of Quietly flows the Don really was.  Whoever it was, it was undoubtedly a writer.  And today, it is absolutely clear to me: Sholokhov was not a writer of any kind, and my book is devoted to proving this statement.  Therefore, up till now I have not had any need for Quietly flows the Don.  But only up till now.  There will be a second part to my investigation.  My impatient readers will simply have to consult the works mentioned from the series Quietly flows the Don: against Sholokhov.
  
What do you see then as the central thrust of your most recent book?
It is well-known that a researched and academic biography of Sholokhov does not exist.  Even the writer himself − as always, not quite competently − declared: “My autobiography (!) is in my books.”  It is abundantly clear, however, that neither the description of the First World War (when Sholokhov was 9 years old), nor the description of the Civil War (Sholokhov was still only 14) cannot possibly have anything to do with this “autobiography.”  And then a surprising biography is revealed: “He had no ... did not participate ... was not...”  Instead, "he was exposed ... and was part of.”  What is passed off to us as “The Life of Mikhail” has been repeatedly refuted by Sholokhov himself.  This concerns his childhood, his youth, his adolescence, his tenure in the Komsomol, his tenure in the special purpose detachments, his time in court, his military service, the funeral of his mother, etc.  All this is illuminated in the book and supplied by extremely detailed references to sources.  So no emotions.

So what does all of this yield?
All of this yields the fact that Sholokhov's biography was written by backdating according to the compositions published under his name.  This is not a life of a real person, but a politico-ideological project.  We even managed to find the initiator of this project: the information department of the Joint State Political Directorate.  To put it more simply, the information department of the special services of that time specifically supervised the intellectual life of a whole country.

But you worked nonetheless with manuscripts of Quietly flows the Don?
The history of finding (and, simultaneously, of concealing) manuscripts of Quietly flows the Don explains why The literary foundation pit has already come out, and the completion of Quietly flows the Don: against Sholokhov keeps getting postponed.  As is well–known, we first learned about the existence of these manuscripts from Lev Kolodny in the early 1990s.  First there were a few facsimile reproductions in the newspapers, then more than one hundred pages of the manuscript in Kolodny’s book.  Finally, already around the time of the centennial celebration of Sholokhov’s birth, Kuznetsov reproduced several dozen pages of the manuscript.  At one point, nineteen of them were actually available on the internet.  Now, as Literaturnaia Gazeta announced, the complete manuscript has been published but ... in Kiev, with money from the Leonid Kuchma fund.  One thousand numbered copies in leather bindings and cases under lock and key.  In the Institute of World Literature at the Russian Academy of Sciences, I was informed that the book would not be sold, although the Academy’s name and symbol are printed on the book.   In other words, despite its wooden box − or rather its box of Koscheis − this edition is obviously not intended for researchers.  But as soon as I find a key to this lock, the book about the authorship of Quietly flows the Don will immediately be finished.

Our newspaper has written about your book twice before.  Naturally, before your study came out. What would you be able to say about the reaction to your ideas, even if only expressed in brief newspaper form?
To my work on Sholokhov starting in 1988 there have been about 120 responses.  And to the two articles mentioned − your articles, by the way − no fewer than thirty.  And yet, except for two or three, all of them contain nothing but abuse: “Slander is the revenge of cowards ” (whom are we avenging, I wonder, and what are we are afraid of?).  “Troubled waters,” which for some reason “do not die down,” “Satanic dances,” “a witches’ Sabbath,” and others in the same vein.  And the funny thing is that you state my ideas, but it is you who is generally the target of these insults.  I am simply “a certain Israeli” (true enough, with “limited intelligence”), but you are the “accommodating interpreter” and even a “hairy mongrel.”  But Anatoly Kalinin stated it powerfully and especially well: “an old reptile who crawled out of Novaia Gazeta.”

That’s both funny and annoying.  But there is a label  for the two of us: “literary assassins,” like some kind of  brigade or something.  But I would like to make one circumstance clear to our readers.  Some critics have directly hinted that somehow I am either bribed or recruited by you as some sort of literary Mossad.  In fact, you and I have known each other for almost forty years.
Yes, we became friends during that  recent  university period of mine.  I was in the philosophy department at Moscow State University, you were in the historical archives, and for a time we worked together at the Russian Language Institute of the Academy of Sciences in the USSR.  And did you notice then how I was sweet-talking you?

But let’s get back to our topic.  I wanted to ask how this bibliographical battle is reflected in the book published by the Institute of World Literature for the anniversary of Sholokhov’s thousand-page bibliography.     
To my great amazement, there are fewer than ten names given in the bibliography, much fewer than even those known to Kuznetsov who is thanked by the compilers.  One gets the impression that the overall objective of the bibliography is to hide the international significance of studying a problem of authorship.  The same purpose is served by the recently published Dictionary of the language of Sholokhov, edited by Professor E. Dibrovaia.  Being a linguist, I could not assume that it was possible to forge the dictionary.  It turns out that if very necessary, it is possible.  This question is too specialized for newspapers, so any interested parties should consult the review by L. Katsis in Knizhnoe obozrenie, issue no. 22 of this year.

Well then, let’s wish the bibliography much success and be done with it. What was the main substance of the responses? 
Clearly, it’s not Sholokhov's name which has gotten the public all wound up.  Everyone is used to hearing about plagiarism, and the problem of authorship of the first two books is even accepted as a topic of eternal debate.  Which explains the shock value of claiming that one of the authors of the novel They fought for their country was really the great Russian writer Andrei Platonov.  Unexpected support has been rendered to me by a member of the committee for the celebration of Sholokhov’s anniversary, correspondent N. Kornienko, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.  This bit of assistance allowed us to find textual affinities in the novel not only to Platonov’s prose on war and military matters, but also to the classic pre-war story Fro.  I should say right away, however, that this is but one example of fruitful interaction between the representatives of two opposing camps so as to carry out a scientific investigation of Sholokhov.

Bunin, "Свет"

This poem "Light," by Russia's first Nobel Prize laureate in literature, can be read in the original here. 

No emptiness, no darkness waits
But faceless light, the sire of time ...
By midnight gloom, no church bell chime:
You stare and see in blackest shapes

Above you endless, hueless sky,
An inner arch; a window wall –
Far, narrow, blind – evades the eye.
It blinks in secret if at all,

Eleven hundred years, each night ...
Beside you now do crosses weep,
Stone backgrounds, the delicate plight
Of hidden buried saints who sleep
 
In awful prayer in their moss,
Having achieved by unsaid ways.
Before the throne two ingots cross
And in their blackness bend in praise.

And do you see its hard embrace
For Him who suffered for His grace?
In secret our unseen guard, He
Shines light beyond the darkest sea.

Blok, "О чем поет ветер"

There are few lyrical poets and visionaries greater than Aleksandr Blok.  Of the six poems that compose the cycle "What the wind sings" from 1913, this is the first poem, which can be read here:

We are forgotten, alone on earth,
Let us silently sit by warmth’s girth.
From this corner, sequestered and warm,
Watch October’s grey mist fill its form.
Past the window, as were then, are fires;
Dear friend, we have what old age requires.
All that was, indignation and rise,
Is past.  Why look forward with old eyes?

What good now is your thirst to complete
A new tale, why have new souls to meet?
Need you wait for the angel of pride?
All is gone, nothing gained or denied.
Only walls, only books, only days;
Dear friend, we are long set in our ways.
I expect nothing, no growl or mew,
And nothing of my past do I rue.

Once again in your hands is your thread,
A bright bead on a string pushed ahead.
As was once so it is, memory nears:
There was nothing quite like all those years!
Yet younger were your hands, as were you,
When you took all your silk in bright hue.
And your hands were then abler and swift,
So give now to all dimness a gift,
So that silk in your needle most fey
May chase mist with its brightness away.