Good Literature for an Emotional Breakdown...with love from Russia

My struggle with reading for want of a more interesting book each time this summer has got me thinking of the Twentieth Century Russian Literature module i grew to adore in First Year. The module was the most depressing thing i've ever studied (obviously not because i didn't enjoy it) but because the process of falling in love with it required ripping the literature apart tentatively, layer by lamentable layer to it's bitterly sorrowful core. I remember sobbing over open pages the night before the exam, not because of fear of failure, but because it hurt to come to the realisation that through the swathes of surrealism, dark humour and fantastic tales of dodgy science and lovingly fraudulent characters in these books, there lay only (and not so well disguised after all) genuine human suffering.

I think i felt more emotionally destroyed by these books because of the brilliantly submissive style of writing the authors adopted to follow censorship guidelines set by the Soviet government. As a result, everything about the books; the characters, the plots seemed 'unreliable', not because of the author's intention to deceive the reader exactly, but because of the need to reveal as much as possible through as little as possible, which felt slightly abusive. In practical psychology, the individual is easily reduced to a vulnerable state through the realisation of their childhood state. I felt like reading these books did something similar to me, because of the sense of struggle to find and validate the familiar or 'the obvious'.

The module covered some lesser known works of russian literature (as opposed to the Tolstoy or Dostoevsky) in the context of the changes that occurred within the country during the Soviet period.

‘Dammit, i spent five years doing nothing but extracting cerebral appages...You know how much work i did on the subject- an unbelievable amount. And now comes the crucial question-what for? So that one fine day a nice little dog could be transformed into a specimen of so-called humanity so revolting that he makes one’s hair stand on end.....this doctor, is what happens when a researcher, instead of keeping in step with nature, tries to force the pace, and lift the veil’.

I wrote my essay on Bulgakov's relatively under-appreciated 'Heart of a Dog' (the full english translation can be found here) as opposed to his most recognised novel 'The Master and Margarita" (which i actually haven't read yet). Heart of a dog has the 'mad scientist' moniker highly in place as it follows the story of a Dr. Preobrazhensky- a bourgeoisie surgeon with a typical distaste for the proletarians echoed by his ambition to transform a lowly street dog (Sharikov) into a human being- who ironically turns out to be a proletariat who Preobrazhensky must either come to terms with or destroy. As you can imagine the end is inevitable.. It is a relatively simple storyline that Bulgakov builds upon beautifully to allow for worlds of exploration in thematic structure which includes the obvious conflict between the bourgeoisie and proletariats and also class struggle to a Communist utopia in Russia.

Preobrazhensky complains about the carpet being removed from the staircase in his block of flats, by the management committee of soviet communists, he says in anger,

‘Did Marx forbid people to keep their staircases carpeted?’

Being somewhat of a 'scientist' myself, i particularly enjoyed the portrayal of science under the Soviet system in Heart of a Dog. The short comings of science in the novel reflect the short comings of the political system. Not only did the Soviet Union limit the ability of science to improve by restricting the type of research conducted (i.e. genetic research was discouraged in order to culturally isolate Russia from capitalist influence of Germany where genetics was a prime area of study), but also by channelling the obsession with space research and animal experimentation that lead to unethical scientific practise (i.e. Demikhov's two headed dog - also there was a program recently on channel 4 about Soviet Dogs in Space if one is interested)

"There is always a place for heroism in our lives"

"Omon Ra"by Victor Pelevin (full English translation here) was probably my favourite of all the novels we studied, because it epitomises the playfulness of Russian Literature in expressing those strong values of friendship, compassion, bravery, all the nice things that make good adventure stories, yet is a thoroughly harrowing, awesome bit of Russian sci-fi which follows the young Omon, a boy with an aspiration to leave his dull soviet life to be a fighter pilot. Omon's brilliant ability in aeronautics has him unexpectedly accepted into a space program to the moon where he is trained up to be a astronaut. Along the way, Pelevin sensitively presents humanity in a heartless world with a brilliant plot twist. Heart-Breaking:

"all of my childhood dreams about the future were born of gentle sadness native to those evenings that seem to be detached from the rest of your life, when you lie in deep grass by the remains of someone else's campfire, your bicycle resting nearby, the west still bearing purple bands from the sun that had just set, while in the east there are already first stars popping up. I haven't seen or experienced very much in my life, but I liked most of what I have, and I always counted on the trip to the Moon to absorb everything that I passed by in hopes of encountering it again later, to take it in more finally and forever this time; how was I to know that the best things in life are always seen as if from the corner of one's eye? While I was a kid, I often imagined extraterrestrial vistas: stone-strewn planes, furrowed by craters and illuminated by otherworldly light, sharp mountain peaks in the distance, black sky with the glowing coal of the sun and stars around it; I pictured the layers of space dust, many feet deep, and the stones resting motionless on the lunar surface for billions and billions of years - I was for some reason strongly impressed by the thought of a stone being able to remain in one place for all that time, and then I would bend down and pick it up with the thick fingers of my spacesuit. I thought of looking up and seeing the blue globe of Earth above, looking like the school globe distorted by the teared-over lenses of the gas mask, and how this ultimate moment of my life will connect me to all those other moments when I felt myself on the verge of something wondrous and unfathomable"

I should be reading that one again soon.

I wrote about Platonov's "Foundation Pit" in the exam; an account of dystopia set during the first year of the Five-Year plan, evolves around the idea of the Kohlhoz- the complete Collectivization of farms ordered by Stalin and the destruction of the Kulaks (rich peasants) resulting in a horrific famine and death of thousands of innocent people. The plot is straightforward; the peasants are building a 'foundation pit' so as to build on top of it a huge house to accomodate all the proletariats of the world where they can live in peace together, and find 'happiness through labour' away from the destructive world. The peasants are steeped in a hopeless existence glossed with illusions of a empty promise unable to recognise that they stand knee deep in dirt. Yet they 'do it for their children' and use the young girl Nastya as the little hope that they work for, the little girl who represents the new Russia who they are building the pit for. *Spoiler* one can't help but be amused that at the end of the novel the pit serves as a very large grave for the little girl who dies as a result of neglect from the workers, too caught up in their own dreams that they abandon reality.

However, reading this book is a little less straightforward as although from the outset Platonov seems to wallow in crude 'pity for the pitiful', his surreal style of writing (precursor to modern existentialism) about people and their lives rather confusedly, produces words just as futile as the endeavours of these peasants who dig mindlessly night and day for a pit that is forever doomed to be completed. It seems that Platonov has this extraordinary talent for immersing his characters and his readers in emotional angst, stubbornly producing the existence of the suffering peasants in his novel into the mind of the reader ever present now as they were back then.

‘they lay in their empty coffins as if they were cramped little homes, feeling shut in and at peace’.

It is interesting to note that Platonov grew up next to a railway, where his father worked as a railway engineer. It is said that the young Platonov considered the trains as living and breathing machines, which is most evident in the breath of life he gives to his works, especially the foundation pit, where the characters in themselves are represented as hollow, starving, hopeless souls, filled only with pretty passionate pointless words.....It is a great read if only for the writing style but be prepared to get serious, seriously absurd.

I hope to be this enthusiastic about a book again some day. Forster's "Passage to India" almost killed me. I can't start on "Midnight's Children" just yet either.