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Dances of death: visual and verbal transformations of the body in Russian modernism
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Radchenko 1
Dances of Death: Verbal and Visual Transformations of the Body in Russian Modernism
By Ksenia Radchenko
Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture (Slavic Languages and Literatures)
Doctor of Philosophy (Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture)
Faculty of the USC Graduate School
University of Southern California
December 2019
Radchenko 2
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………...........3
Introduction. The Twilight of Imperial Russia. Motifs of Decomposition and Death in the
Literary and Visual Art ………………………………………………………………………....6
Chapter 1. Lev Tolstoy; An Unexpected Modernist……….…………………………………..24
Chapter 2. Leonid Andreev and the Dance of Death. .………………………………………...84
Chapter 3. Boris Pil’niak. Apocalyptic Transformations……………………………………...129
Chapter 4. Pavel Filonov: Between Russian Folklore and Renaissance………………………193
Conclusion. The Organic Unity of Different Worldviews.……………………………………254
Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………….. 257
Radchenko 3
Acknowledgments.
First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor, Professor John Bowlt, for his
inspirational vision and encyclopedic knowledge of every possible name, work, and painting in
the field of Russian modernism and avant-garde. John Bowlt and Nicoletta Misler made
everything possible to publish and promote the works of Pavel Filonov in the West. Their work
inspired me to pursue my research in this field. Even though only the last chapter of my
dissertation is devoted to Filonov’s oeuvre, Filonov’s organic theory of death inspired the theme
of the dissertation. After John’s course on the Russian avant-garde, I wrote a paper titled “Dance
of Death in the works of Pavel Filonov.” To some extent, this dissertation grew out of that paper.
I am deeply thankful for John Bowlt’s guidance and his confidence in my research skills.
Despite the melancholic topic of my dissertation, it was a joy to write it and see it evolving and
developing like the atoms and flowers in the paintings of Pavel Filonov.
I could not have produced the dissertation without the help of my committee. Professor
Thomas Seifrid’s course on the early twentieth-century Russian literature helped me shape the
topic of my dissertation and find a way to combine the literary and the art historical analysis in a
single research project. During this course, I read Katerina Clark’s “Soviet novel: History as
Ritual,” which provided me with a strong theoretical foundation for my dissertation. My sincere
gratitude goes to Professor Sally Pratt, whose professional guidance and continuous
encouragement helped me develop my analytical and writing skills. I wholeheartedly thank
Professor Greta Matzner-Gore for helpful suggestions for my chapter on Tolstoy. My deepest
gratitude goes to Professor Antonia Szabarri, whose delicate inquiries inspired me to change my
original dissertation proposal.
Radchenko 4
I am grateful for the help and support of the professors of the Slavic Languages
Department and CSLC program. I thank Professor Peggy Kamuf for her life-changing seminar
in literary theory and her guidance in the broader field of comparative literature. Professor
Marcus Levitt’s seminar on XVIII-century literature inspired the religious line in my
dissertation. Professor Alexander Zholkovsky’s seminars got me interested in the semiotic and
the interdisciplinary approach. My special gratitude goes to Susan Kechekian, who can resolve
every possible problem, and Professor Tatiana Akishina, who helped me become a confident
teacher.
This dissertation was made possible through the generous funding from the Graduate
School of the University of Southern California, including the Research Enhancement Graduate
School Fellowship and the Dissertation Completion Fellowship. I am especially grateful for the
Borchard family Summer Research Fellowship, which enabled me to pursue my studies during
the summer. I also thank the Slavic Department and the Department of Comparative Studies of
Literatures and Cultures at USC for providing me with travel grants for presenting my research
at leading Slavic conferences.
I thank the librarians at Russian State Library (RGB) and the archivists in Russian State
Archive for Literature and Art (RGALI) for their assistance in obtaining the needed materials.
My deepest gratitude goes to Olga Seliazniova, my partner on the intellectual journey
through the Russian avant-garde. She provided invaluable emotional and intellectual support
thought the whole writing process. I am thankful to Laurel Schmuck, Natalia Dame, Inessa
Gelfenboym and Erica Camisa Morale for their helpful suggestions and emotional support.
Finally, I am most thankful to my family – my husband Peter and my two kids – Zoya
and Ilya, who suffered tremendously in the past few years, as I was consumed by the analysis of
Radchenko 5
the philosophical importance of half-decayed corpses in the literature of modernism. It is my
husband who inspired me to pursue a Ph.D., carefully listened to my ideas, helped me with the
editing and alleviated my fears. I greatly appreciate all the guidance, support, and love that I
received from my family. Since I was a child, my parents, Elena and Dmitry, developed my
intellectual and artistic skills. Our apartment was filled with books. I am deeply thankful to my
Mom, who read the poetry of the Silver Age to me by heart when I was just a small baby. It is
also her interest in the mysterious side of the world that inspired my fascination in philosophy
and metaphysics. My love goes to my brother and sister, Daniil and Elizaveta. My grandfather,
Gennady, and great grandmother Elena would have been so happy to see me complete my work
on the doctoral dissertation. I have always felt their love and support. To my family I dedicate
this dissertation.
Radchenko 6
Introduction.
The Twilight of Imperial Russia. Motifs of Decomposition and Death in the Literary and
Visual Arts.
Perhaps no bodily experiment in the 20th century surpassed in audacity the attempt to
preserve Vladimir Lenin’s corpse for posterity. Symbolically, this act could be regarded as
necromantic, insofar as sacralization of a political leader’s remains came to supplant the
traditional veneration of Christ’s resurrected body. Reversing the Christian tradition that dictates
worship of sacred relics, there was performed a man-made miracle that posed a challenge to the
finality of death. Indeed, to a large extent, the mummification of Lenin in 1924 constituted both a
concrete and a symbolic axis for the cultural and political development of Soviet Russia, as well
as a cause célèbre for Socialist propaganda. Lenin became, simply, a new saint: a Christ for the
nascent––and, essentially, “religious” ––Soviet art, soliciting devotion from the collective
proletarian body, within which the Orthodox idea of holy communion received a rather novel
interpretation. In 1918, after Fanni Kaplan’s notorious gunshot, Lev Sosnovskii, editor-in-chief
of the Bednota newspaper geared primarily toward the peasant readership, declared the
communal, and thus eternal, character of Lenin: “Lenin cannot be killed. He is fused with the
rebellious and struggling proletariat so that all the workers of the world would have to be killed
in order to kill Lenin. While the proletariat is alive – Lenin lives.”
1
It was through this secular, if
not diabolical, simulation of Resurrection that Lenin assumed his Christ-like persona,
prodigiously commented on by his contemporaries.
1
Tumarkin, Nina. Lenin Zhiv!: Kulʹt Lenina v sovetskoĭ Rossii. Sankt-Peterburg:
“Akademicheskiĭ Proekt,” 1997, p.82
Radchenko 7
However, my dissertation argues that the dream of immortality, central as it was to Soviet
ideology, was born out of the grimmest, least assuageable fears that Russian society faced at the
dawn of a new century as Russia withstood unprecedented changes. Among the most critically
affected were the ideological and religious realms, where the authority of the church in general
and Orthodox Christianity, in particular, was dramatically undermined.
“All religions and philosophical systems are primarily the antidotes to the certainty of
death,” emphasized Schopenhauer.
2
Thus, without the certain antidote of religion, the horror of
inescapable death swelled unchecked. Philosophical ruminations on the impossibility of physical
resurrection were especially pronounced in the culture of fin-de-siècle Russia, thanks to which
the notion of the body lost its sacred moorings. If the dead body of medieval art often served as a
reliable symbol of the body of Christ, modernism seldom presented more than spiritless flesh on
the verge of decay and putrefaction. At the turn of the century, the atmosphere of decadence
prevailed in Russian cultural production, especially among the symbolist writers who carried on
the legacy of Baudelaire's’ Les Fleurs du mal (1857). As Bely recalls, the decadent themes of
existential chaos, death, and abyss were in the air:
Злая нежить бродила по маленьким действиям драмочек Метерлинка; […]
Появлялись в серьезных журналах такие статьи, как "Предсмертные мысли во
Франции"; Фантазия переживалась сгустками субъективного душевного пара в
космической, небытийственной бездне; и эту "бездну" вдруг вспомнили;
заговорили о бездне; пел Минский о ней. Я чувствовал шопенгауэрианцем себя…
2
Schopenhauer, 463
Radchenko 8
Evil spirits wandered through the little acts of Maeterlinck's dramas; [...] Articles
such as "Death-bed Thoughts in France" appeared in serious journals; Fantasy was
experienced by clots of subjective soul vapor in a cosmic, non-existential abyss; and this
“abyss” suddenly came out; everybody started talking about the abyss; Minsky sang
songs about it. I felt like a Schopenhauerian myself. (All translations are my own unless
otherwise noted.)
3
That said, Russian modernism was not enraptured exclusively by decadent French art. In
their defiant search for a pre-bourgeois art, the modernists also reverted to the Middle Ages and
folklore: to the medieval themes of Memento Mori and the Dance of Death, on the one hand; and
to the native pagan rituals, customs, and peasant views on death and cyclicality of life, on the
other. In a way, for the majority of the avant-gardists, folklore forged a pathway back to
primordial times. Aleksandr Panchenko and Igor’ Smirnov argue that Russian medieval
literature, specifically Slovo o Polku Igoreve (The Lay of Igor’s Campaign), had a profound
effect on the poetry of Andrei Bely, Velimir Khlebnikov, Vladimir Mayakovski, and Pavel
Filonov. In the preface to his fundamental work Khristos I Antikhrist (Christ and Antichrist),
Dmitry Merezhkovsky admits that when he first started writing, he thought that “there were two
truths––Christianity as a truth about the heaven, and paganism––the truth about the Earth, and in
the imminent combination of these two truths lies the fullness of the religious faith.”
4
Looking at
culture from a theoretical point of view, he realized that these two truths had already been
combined in the ultimate nature of Jesus Christ. However, I suggest that at least for several
3
Bely Andrei, Vospominaniya o Bloke. Moskva, 1928, p.3
4
Merezhkovsky, D. PSS v 24 tomah, 1914, volume I, p.VI
Radchenko 9
modernists, the figure of Christ forfeited its sacred meaning as they continuously labored over
the “truth about the Earth,” leaving aside Christ’s divinity. In this “organic” line I include Leo
Tolstoy, Leonid Andreev, Boris Zaitsev, Boris Pil’niak, Pavel Filonov, Mikhail Matiushin, and
Nikolai Zabolotsky, whose writings I scrutinize in what follows while attempting to reconstruct
their respective worldviews.
The focus of my dissertation is the ultra-realistic––or, better yet, naturalistic––shift in the
understanding and depiction of the living and dead bodies as it was enacted in the works of the
authors mentioned above. I suggest that the unflinching looks cast at death by young modernist
writers pay homage to Leo Tolstoy's disbelief in the Orthodox idea of the resurrection of the
body, as well as to his disillusionment in the traditional conception of the dying body as an
imitation of the body of Christ. Traditional Russian religious culture depended on a neo-Platonic
version of Christianity via Byzantium, which, in turn, delineated the discursive boundaries of
sexuality and carnality broadly construed. One of the most familiar artistic manifestations of this
was the Russian icon, in which representations of human and divine forms were notoriously
“fleshless,” i.e., the corporeal was taken out of the equation altogether. For example, Andrei
Rublev’s images such as The Trinity are markedly non-naturalistic, although therein one can
observe what theologians call “spiritual flesh,” i.e., the bodies that are light, frail, and unearthly.
The Western notion of Madonna as a full-bodied wife and mother was glaringly absent from
Russian iconology, too. Likewise, Christ’s body taken off the cross never showed any signs of
deterioration: on the contrary, it sometimes emitted light in the form of a halo or rays.
For Dostoyevsky, the depiction of Christ’s flesh by Grunewald was sheer blasphemy.
Even symbolist Maximilian Voloshin in his essay compared Andreev’s depiction of Lazar to
Grunewald’s Christ. He underlines the anti-religious nature of Andreev’s Lazar, as well: “Leonid
Radchenko 10
Andreev only depicts horror at the corpse; the very idea of death is alien to him. He insults the
mystery of Death.”
5
In part, I explain this ideological readjustment by the development of a positivist attitude
toward physicality, and by the many medical breakthroughs accomplished at the time,
particularly in anatomical studies and surgical procedures (from Pirogov in the 19th century to
Sklifosofskii in the 20th). Along with the tendency of the medicalization in artistic treatments of
the body, the growing interest some authors evinced in death, physiology, and transubstantiation
might be attributed to the violence of the 1905 and 1917 Revolutions, the Great War, and
numerous assassinations and public executions. Just as the French Revolution magnified the
physiological and anatomical fullness in the works of Theodore Géricault (1791-1824), so the
torn limbs of modernism pay tribute to the bloody turmoil of the early 20
th
century. Soviet
culture, then, organically grew out of this gory soil.
In The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual, Katerina Clark remarks: “Death also assumes
enormous importance in the Soviet sense of history and individual identity. Most of the great
moments – the 1905 revolution, 1917 revolution, the civil war, Lenin’s death, and World War II
– are marked by human sacrifice and loss.”
6
As Hingley estimates, between 1914 and 1921
Russia “must have lost about thirteen million men.” He also adds that there were no casualty
lists, and that “more perished through famine, disease, and reprisals than as a direct consequence
of military actions. A historian of the period assesses the total number of deaths at a possible
twenty-five million.”
7
Soon after the Crimean war, ample financial support was funneled not into
the universities but into military medical education, which both outlined the governmental plan
5
Voloshin, 1988, 450
6
Clark, 179
7
Hingley, Russian Writers and Soviet Society, 1917-1978, London, 1979, p.9
Radchenko 11
for the next few decades and joined in the mass consciousness the themes of war and medicine––
and by extension, of medicine and death. And yet, while an important variable in and of itself,
the medicalization of scientific discourse was not the sole factor contributing to the
“naturalization” of death in literature and the visual arts.
I suggest that the disintegration of the church as a spiritual bedrock during the 1900-
1920s had a more lasting effect on early-20
th
-century literature than is commonly believed.
Among the most crucial post-revolutionary legislative acts was the 1919 decree denouncing all
religious superstition and building upon the 1918 campaign of confiscating holy relics from
convents and churches. In 1920, the Museum of the People’s Commissariat for Health hosted an
exhibition entitled Moshchi, meant to curtail the spurious and benighted glorification of holy
remnants. In his chronicle of Russia’s post-revolutionary travails, Golyi God, Pil’niak specifies
that the revolution brought nothing less than death to the Church and Christianity:
“Человечество, жившее в двадцатые годы двадцатого столетия, было свидетелем
величайшего события – того, как умирала христианская религия.” (“The humans alive in the
1920s bore witness to a momentous event: they saw the Christian religion die.”)
8
Already reckoned with in the works of Tolstoy, as will be shown in the first chapter, the
crisis of Orthodox culture reached its crescendo in the early 20
th
century. Reflecting on the social
implications of an ethical calamity, Boris Zaitsev describes an archetypal murder of the leader in
his short story “Volki” (“Wolves.”) A similar primeval thirst for violence is unleashed by moral
transgression in Andreev’s “Krasnyi Smekh” (“The Red Laugh,”) where a character sympathizes
with his ancestors feasting on their enemy’s blood. Gruesome revels, blood-drinking rituals, and
gluttonous dead men appear in Pil’niak’s Golyi God and “Ivan-Moskva,” as well as in many of
8
Pil’niak, Sobranie Sochinenii v 6 tomah, volume I, p.59
Radchenko 12
Filonov’s paintings. These images could be viewed as a perversion of the Eucharist––the main
sacrament of Orthodox Liturgy announcing a symbolic union between Christ and the people of
the church; a sign of belonging to the Resurrection of Christ.
9
Viewed from another vantage
point, instead of a demonic, flesh-eating coven the imagery in question may signify a kind of
post-apocalyptic Christian banquet akin to the one recounted in the Revelation, at which the dead
and the living alike gather at the table to partake of the collective body:
“And I saw an angel standing in the sun, who cried in a loud voice to all the birds
flying in midair, "Come, gather together for the great supper of God, so that you may eat
the flesh of kings, generals, and the mighty, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all
people, free and slave, great and small.”
10
As Carl Gustav Jung insisted, this episode should be read as a “devouring of the
individual” and acquisition of the communal
11
. The process of cannibalistic de-individualization
finds disturbing reflections in modernist literature as Tolstoy, Andreev, Zaitsev, Pil’niak, and
Filonov in unison predict the emergence of a collective body as a death-defying juggernaut. The
images these writers call up range from collective humanity as a beehive to the giant Bolshevik
as a new body politic. In 1897 Emil Durkheim wrote his sociological treatise Suicide. He based
his work on the revolutionary methodology of statistical data of suicides among Catholics and
Protestants and explained such an individual event as suicide from a collective standpoint. It is
9
Eucharist, or Prichastie in Russian, literally translates to “being a part of something” and
symbolically stands for enveloping oneself in Christ’s immortality.
10
Revelation,19:17-18
11
Jung C.G. Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis, Collected
Works, Princeton UP, 1970, XIV, 191
Radchenko 13
possible to suggest that with the publication of this book, the time of the masses started, the
psychology of a collective man became an object of newly emerging social science. The
advances in the social studies coincided with the birth of symbolism and the development of the
Neo-Nationalist style in the art colonies of Abramtsevo and Talashkino estates. Mikhail Vrubel
and Victor Vasnetsov turned to the Russian folklore consciousness to create the monumental
figures of the collective national body of Russia in such paintings as Vrubel’s Bogatyr (1899), or
Vasnetsov’s Bogatyrs (1881-1898).
While Tolstoy’s utopian impulse was aimed at the creation of a new Eden on earth, the
reality of collectivization resulted in millions of famine-related deaths. The image of the coming
savior was substituted not with a utopian commune, but with the figure of a Bolshevik (“the
leather jackets,” as Pil’niak dubs them
12
)––a compound entity that devours the world. In
Andreev’s “Gulliver,” this change is instantiated in the death of the titular giant, who embodies
both Russia’s imperial consciousness and the great old God in charge of structuring the
Lilliputians’ lives. The social disaster then is manifested in the birth of a new, massive body: that
of the Bolshevik, as depicted in Boris Kustodiev’s painting “The Bolshevik” (1920), or the figure
of Lenin as represented by Andreev, walking the streets of Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The
sacred image of God is superseded by an aggressive Giant, tearing down antiquated political and
social institutions. The body and blood of Christ ingested together, in spiritual joy, give way to
lust for blood and passion for killing, signaling an irreparable malfunction of the moral compass.
Many of the authors discussed in my dissertation turn to peasant spirituality for salvation
from the revolutionary bedlam. Naum Linderman argues that modernism overall is characterized
by contemplation of the world as chaos:
12
Pil’niak, I,156
Radchenko 14
Сегодня уже никому не надо доказывать, что на рубеже XIX—XX вв. […]
были подвергнуты жесточайшей критике представления о бытии как
целесообразном и упорядоченном Космосе [...]. На смену тому культурному мифу
пришел миф о мире как о неупорядоченном и бессмысленном хаосе и о человеке
как о жалкой случайности природы, обреченной на сплошные страдания и смерть.
[…] Зародился новый тип культуры, который мы привычно называем
модернизмом, а в новых художественных стратегиях, опирающихся на
модернистскую онтологию и гносеологию, стали разрабатываться принципы
эстетического постижения мира как Хаоса.
Today, there is no need to prove that at the turn of the 20th century [...] the ideas
of existence as sensible and organized Cosmos were severely criticized [...]. This cultural
myth was replaced by a myth of the world as disorganized and senseless chaos and of
man as a pitiful accident of nature, doomed to continuous suffering and death. [...] A new
type of culture was born, which we habitually call modernism, and principles of aesthetic
comprehension of the world as Chaos were developed in the new artistic strategies based
on modernist ontology and gnoseology.
13
However, I suggest that the writers of this provisionally titled “Earth Line,” shocked by
this “coexistence with the chaos”, picked the agrarian peasant folklore as an alternative to this
chaos. Pil’niak, for instance, charts a religious crisis on a national scale. Religion and agriculture
13
Leiderman N.L, “Magistral’nyi Siuzhet”. XX Vek Kak Literaturnyi Megatsikl, Ural, 2005,
№ 3, с. 226—239.
Radchenko 15
were the two pillars upon which the life of peasant Russia rested. At the turn of the 20th century,
“80 percent of the population was classified as belonging to the peasantry, and most of the rest
traced their roots back to it.”
14
God in the peasant consciousness was not so much a path to
spiritual perfection as a necessary instrument for systematizing life. Pil’niak describes God in
comforting, domestic terms, more appropriate for a benign but minor house sprite:
В монастырях, в церквах за папертями, в притворах, в алтарях за иконами,
паникадилами, ковриками, по которым нельзя ходить, невидимо – ютился дух
великого Бога, правившего человечьими душами две тысячи лет, – рождением,
моралью, зачатием; и смертью, и тем, что будет после смерти. […] При нем, при
Боге, были служки […]: они мало что знали, они богослужили, но они чуяли, что у
Бога нет крови, хоть и разводят кровь вином, и что Бог уходит в вещь в себе, – они
же протирали лики икон и ощущали себя – мастерами у Бога.
In monasteries, in churches behind the porches, in vestibules, in altars behind the
icons, censers, and rugs on which you couldn’t walk, there nestled, invisibly, the great
God’s spirit, who had ruled the human souls for two thousand years, managing birth,
morals, conception; and death, and what follows death, too. [...] At his, God’s, side were
his servants [...]: they knew little, they worshiped instead, but they sensed dimly that God
had no blood, although they diluted blood with wine, and that God withdrew into a thing-
in-itself—they, in their turn, wiped down the surfaces of the icons and felt themselves to
be the masters of God.
15
14
Fidges Orlando, A People’s Tragedy The Russian Revolution 1891-1924. London: Jonathan
Cape, 1996, pp. 88-89
15
Pil’niak, I, 267
Radchenko 16
By using such anodyne phrases as “nevidimo yutilsya […] za spasami, papyartyami,
kovrikami,” Pil’niak portrays the Russian God as a fixed part of everyday-life rituals, who, just
as Andreev’s Gulliver, regulated the lives of his subjects with the metronome of his giant beating
heart. For millennia, this supernatural presence “managed” every aspect of human life. With the
extinction of these mundane rites followed by no adequate replacement, believers watch
helplessly the demise of the Holy Spirit. The loss of these life-organizing routines disintegrates
life into death and collapses the world as Pil’niak knows it. Warren confirms this idea,
emphasizing the agricultural transformation of Christian holidays and thus the proximity of
peasant faith to earth:
“The coming of Christianity at the end of the 10th century did little to slacken the
almost organic link between the peasant, his land, and nature as he understood it. The
Christian saints, for example, were quickly absorbed into the more ancient calendar of
ritual events. Saints were identified not so much by their deeds or virtues but by their role
as agricultural sign-posts.”
16
The amplified naturalism of bodily depictions could also be ascribed to a return to the
peasant forms of art. While it might seem counterintuitive and borderline improper to apply so
festive a concept as “carnival” to so ghastly an event, the recurrent motifs of madness, laughter,
and apocalyptic transformations into animals, which accompany death in Zaitsev, Andreev,
Pil’niak, Filonov, and even Tolstoy, prove the reverse. Carnival as the spirit of peasant culture is
16
Warner, Elizabeth A. The Russian Folk Theatre, De Gruyter, Inc., 2011
Radchenko 17
not only an ebullient celebration of life; it is also an acknowledgment of the proximity of death,
as Bakhtin stressed in the concluding remarks at his 1946 defense:
As concerns carnival, I did not have in mind carnival as something cheerful. Not
at all. In every carnival image, there is the presence of death. […] the carnival is a
tragedy. It is only that here, tragedy is not the final word.
17
In the above mentioned work Bakhtin regarded Rabelais as the most accomplished
representative of this carnival laugh in Renaissance literature. The reason why my own work on
death in modernism cites Bakhtin lies mainly in the modernists’ fascination with European and
Russian folk art. Moreover, Bakhtin underlines the “biological,” “physiological,” and
“naturalistic” character of Rabelais’ depiction of the body, inherited from the carnivalistic art
forms. The perversion of the Eucharist mentioned earlier is a typical device of carnivalesque
parodic performances. Bakhtin invokes the so-called “parodia sacra,” or sacral parody, popular
in the Middle Ages and tolerated by the official Church, including mock liturgies, mock gospel
reading, mock church psalms and hymns.
18
The language of these performances––vulgar and
low-register, rife with colloquialisms and intimately in touch with the material, corporeal side of
life––migrated into the works of Rabelais. Bakhtin explains that grotesque art thrived, first and
foremost, in opposition to the classical canon.
17
Excerpts from Bakhtin’s Defense of the Dissertation “Rabelais in the History of Realism” at
the Gorky Institute of World Literature in Moscow, 15 November 1946. (adapted by Lars
Kleberg, translated by Denis Zherknokleyev and Caryl Emerson) Limited Conference Edition.
15
th
International Bakhtin Conference, Stockholm, 2014
18
Bakhtin, Rabelais…, 20
Radchenko 18
Death in Russian modernism, as will be discussed in my dissertation, could also be
characterized in terms of grotesque realism. According to Bakhtin, the grotesque body of
Rabelais is given in its relation to the people’s collective body (“narodnomu telu”).
19
It is
impossible to ignore the parallel between the non-canonical, naturalistic body of the 1900-20s
and the abundance of physiologisms in the early Renaissance. Bakhtin stresses that the peculiar
attitude toward the body is dictated by the idea of some organic unity between the body and the
world (an idea, I might add, vital for both Matiushin and Filonov). Moreover, the grotesque that
permeates the modernist depictions of urban monsters and compound bodies could be aligned
quite closely with Bakhtin’s elucidation of Gargantua’s grotesque body. The cosmic, the social,
and the bodily are merged there, wholesale, into the collective body of people:
Материально-телесное начало в гротескном реализме (то есть в образной
системе народной смеховой культуры) дано в своем всенародном, праздничном и
утопическом аспекте. Космическое, социальное и телесное даны здесь в
неразрывном единстве, как неразделимое живое целое. […] Все проявления
материально-телесной жизни и все вещи отнесены здесь, повторяем еще раз, не к
единичной биологической особи и не к частному и эгоистическому,
«экономическому», человеку, – но как бы к народному, коллективному, родовому
телу.
The material-bodily principle in grotesque realism (i.e., in the metaphorical
system of folk culture) is given in its unifying, festive, and utopian aspect. The cosmic,
the social, and the bodily elements are given here as an inseparable entity, as an
19
Bakhtin, Rabelais…, 37
Radchenko 19
indivisible living whole. […] All the manifestations of this material-corporeal life and all
the objects refer, it bears repeating, not to an isolated biological being, and not to the
private, egotistic, “economic” man, but, rather, to some kind of collective, ancestral body
of the people.
20
Following Bakhtin’s line of thought, I view the tendency to revel in naturalistic details,
compound bodies, and organic unity of the world as signs of grotesque realism. In this
dissertation, I try to demonstrate how the folkloric art forms and organicist folk attitudes toward
death shaped the pointedly physiological bodily grotesque in the works of Tolstoy, Andreev,
Pil’niak, Zaitsev, Filonov, and Zabolotsky.
In the past, the theme of death in Russian literature was approached and studied by
several scholars. Irene Masing-Delic in her monograph “Abolishing Death: A Salvation Myth of
Russian Twentieth-Century Literature” analyzed the trope of immortality in Russian fiction and
poetry. In details, she analyzed the influence of Nikolai Fedorov’s “Philosophy of the Common
Task” (Filosofiya Obshchego Dela) on the modernist concept of immortality. The similar
problem was discussed in Darra Goldstein’s “Nikolai Zabolotsky: Play for Mortal Stakes,” and
Sally Pratt’s “Nikolai Zabolotsky: Enigma and Cultural Paradigm.” Nina Tumarkin investigated
the emergence of the mythology of Lenin’s immortality in her book “Lenin Lives! The Lenin
Cult in Soviet Russia.” However, the approach of the authors mentioned above was driven by the
assertion of immortality, my approach to the problem is guided by the acknowledgment of
20
Bakhtin, Tvorchestvo Rable i Narodnaya Kul’tura Srednevekov’ya i Renessansa, Moskva:
“Hudozhestvennaya Literatura”, 1990, p.26
Radchenko 20
mortality in its existential wholeness as the central trope in the worldview of the Russian
modernists.
In my dissertation, I identify several elements that comprise the peculiar view of death in
the 1880s-1930s, in the works of the authors belonging to the “organic” camp -- and these
elements are discussed in each chapter:
Historical and cultural changes leading up to a crisis of Orthodox faith and escalating
contemplations of mortality. The idea of bodily Resurrection, denounced as a
superstition, lays the groundwork for the secularization of the dead body;
The modernist writers’ increased investments in the Dance of Death and Memento Mori,
early Renaissance views on death, and pictorial renditions of the Bible;
Strongly connected with this theme are the expectations of a second coming, anticipation
of the Apocalypse;
Agrarian peasant views on death are precursors to the interpretation of physical decay as
organic metamorphoses of matter;
Animalistic transformations of the body as a combination of folklore traditions and the
Russian interpretation of Darwinism (“evolutionism” or “transformism”). The involution
of human beings into apocalyptic beasts;
The image of a collective body emerges as a strategy for attaining eternal life or as a
symptom of social change.
More specifically, individual chapters are broken down as follows:
Radchenko 21
In the Introduction, I discuss the social conditions of, and the growing interest in, the
medical aspects of death and the body; the philosophical premise of my thesis is established.
Chapter 1. Lev Tolstoy: An Unexpected Modernist. The first chapter focuses on Tolstoy’s
personal crisis opened the floodgates of existential chaos in Russian literature: i.e., how fear of
death and cosmic disarray became the very heart of Russian modernism. I argue that Tolstoy’s
extraordinary “Diary of a Madman,” while voicing the author’s own morbid disquietude, points
to a broader collapse of religious foundations that afflicted the entirety of Russian society. The
first subsection explains the complicated religious atmosphere of fin-de-siècle, with its plethora
of spiritual teachings and philosophical theories (spiritualism, Roerich, Madame Blavatsky, to
name a few). Tolstoy appreciated the Oriental philosophical teachings and often preferred them
to the Orthodox Church dogma. The decadent philosophy of Schopenhauer influenced Tolstoy’s
rejection of the traditional Orthodox view on death and resurrection. I argue that the medieval
principle of Memento Mori governs some of his major thematic and conceptual projects.
The second section examines Tolstoy’s peculiar attitude toward the body. As Olga
Matich points out in her Erotic Utopia, Tolstoy was “an Early Modernist,” who dissected and
dismembered the bodies of his characters metaphorically and physically, in the style of French
decadence. The figure of Tolstoy is crucial for understanding the works of Leonid Andreev,
whose engagement with death is discussed in the second chapter. I analyze how the naturalistic
details, culturally consigned to the world of animals, were adopted by Tolstoy and used in the
representation of human death during the chaos of the Crimean war.
Chapter 2. Leonid Andreev and the Dance of Death. The second chapter is devoted to
the literary output of Andreev insofar as it continues and expands Tolstoy’s legacy. I discuss how
Andreev brought to fruition the seeds planted in Tolstoy’s depictions of sickness and death
Radchenko 22
(“fruition” here being decadent naturalization), and how he elaborated on the image of a
collective self, which, in its anti-revolutionary and anti-war readings, acquires decidedly
negative, at times horrific undertones. Tolstoy’s dream of communal being as a means of
obtaining life everlasting is twisted into a many-bodied, faceless chaos in Andreev’s urban
hellscape. This chapter concludes that Andreev recognized the dangerous duality of
collectivization, and his essay “Veni, Creator” predicts the terrifying transformation of Tolstoy’s
organic peasant community into the Bolshevik state’s immortal collectivity.
Chapter 3. Boris Pil'niak: Apocalyptic Transformations. In this chapter I investigate the
depictions of life and death in Pil’niak’s magnum opus, Golyi God, and in some early stories,
such as “Ivan-da-Maria,” “Ivan-Moskva,” “God ikh Zhizni,” “Tselaya Zhizn’,” “Smertel’noe
Manit,” “Mashiny i Volki,” and “Myatel’.” I argue that Pil’niak furthered the “organic view” on
the questions of life and death that Tolstoy and Andreev had advanced in their works. This
chapter also introduces the writings of Boris Zaitsev, a member of the modernist group “Sreda,”
who influenced Pil’niak’s attitude toward land, the collective self, dying body, human-animal
transformations, and cyclicality of life, the latter characterized as a folklore-inspired variation on
immortality that strips necrological and erotic discourses of their literary conventions. This
chapter also delves into the apocalyptic metaphors in the early works of Pil’niak
21
, and into
the Symbolist tropes of the Bolshevik apocalypse.
Chapter 4. Pavel Filonov: Between Russian Folklore and the Northern Renaissance. My
fourth chapter deals with the pictorial and literary works of Pavel Filonov, the founder of the
School of Analytical Art and a singular artist of the Russian avant-garde, whose early output was
thematically dominated by the terror of war and necrological motifs. Taking as its point of
21
The Apocalyptic tradition in Boris Pil’niak’s works seems to be ignored by Western scholarship.
Radchenko 23
departure John Bowlt’s argument of the affinity between Saint Petersburg modernism and
Northern Renaissance art
22
, this chapter explores the theme of death as corresponding to that of
the Northern Renaissance artists, with their paraphrase of the medieval Dance of Death. In my
purview here is the corpus of Filonov’s work––visual, philosophical, poetic, and pedagogical, as
well as the memoirs of his contemporaries and relevant commentaries by critics and historians––
studied comprehensively to account for the complexity of Filonov’s worldview. This complexity
can be characterized by an entwinement of religious and folklore themes, as well as by
fascination with Renaissance artists (Leonardo da Vinci, Bosch, Durer, Breughel, and Holbein)
that coincides with his interest in scientific advancements (X-ray, Darwin’s theory of evolution,
genetic experiments, and Matiushin’s organic culture).
The second part of this chapter analyzes Filonov’s poetic work, “Propeven’ o Prorosli
Mirovoi” (“The Chant of Universal Flowering”), as an example of native religious drama,
similar to other performances by the Union of Youth. My analysis of “Propeven’…” pays heed
to the following themes: the folk (almost carnivalesque) tradition of depicting death as observed
in ritualistic songs and funeral laments; the influence of Biblical narratives and Orthodox liturgy;
and the return to the native medieval visual tradition of lubki and the western Dance of Death.
22
Bowlt J., “Prekrasnyi I Stradalcheskii Filonov.” Experiment, 2005 issue 11 p. 4
Radchenko 24
Chapter 1.
Lev Tolstoy: An Unexpected Modernist.
“If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from
the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life––and only then will I be free to become
myself.”
Martin Heidegger
While it might seem peculiar, if not implausible, to open a dissertation on Russian
modernism with the figure of Leo Tolstoy, I believe that no thorough discussion of death in
Russian literature is complete without his oeuvre, which incorporates a series of attempts to
objectivize this phenomenon and to systematize all possible responses to it. Though I mostly
train my sights on “Zapiski Sumasshedshego” (“Diary of a Madman”) (published posthumously
in 1912, first mentioned in 1884) and the seminal 1886 novella “Smert’ Ivana Il’icha” (“The
Death of Ivan Il’ich,”) in this chapter I also touch upon Sevastopol’skie Rasskazy (The
Sebastopol Diaries) to see, first, where Tolstoy’s depictions of death in war and peacetime
converge and differ; and second, how Leonid Andreev’s and Boris Pil’niak’s military fiction was
influenced by Tolstoy’s.
The argument that I put forward is that “Diary of a Madman” was both an expression of
Tolstoy’s personal fear of death and a symptom of the far-reaching collapse undergone by
Russian religious foundations writ large. The first subsection summarizes the multifaceted
religious landscape of fin-de-siècle, overflowing as it was with eccentric philosophical theories
such as spiritualism, Roerich’s occultism, Madame Blavatsky’s theosophy, etc. Highly
appreciative of the Oriental teachings, Tolstoy often preferred them to the Orthodox Church
dogma. The decadent philosophy of Schopenhauer, too, had a hand in Tolstoy’s rejection of the
Radchenko 25
traditional Orthodox views on death and resurrection. In addition, I argue that some of his works
are manifestly beholden to the medieval principle of Memento Mori.
23
The second section unpacks Tolstoy’s peculiar attitude toward the body. As Olga Matich
shrewdly observes in Erotic Utopia, Tolstoy was “an Early Modernist,” who dissected and
dismembered the bodies of his characters metaphorically and physically in the style of French
decadence. Tolstoy’s unique thanatological stance also helps us gain a better understanding of
how death was thematized by Leonid Andreev, whom I discuss in the second chapter, and by
Boris Pil’niak, who, in his modernist reworking of “The Death of Ivan Il’ich,” “Povest’
Nepogashennoi Luny”( “Tale of the Unextinguished Moon,”)published in 1926, makes mention
of Tolstoy’s connectedness to the visceral dimensions of being that bypass cognition (“Толстого
читаю, хорошо писал старик” (“I am reading Tolstoy,”) notes the soon-to-be-dead red
commissar Gavrilov, “бытие чувствовал, кровь” (“he sensed the existence, the blood.”)
24
The goal of the last section of this chapter is to show that it was precisely Leo Tolstoy
who laid the foundations for the organic project in Russian modernism. I will look at the folk
component of his intricate mechanism for producing animalistic allegories and metaphors. The
idea of the animal kingdom as a model for the human world, I submit, sprang from Tolstoy’s
quest for a spiritual foundation to support him when facing death. The allegorical
23
Latin: “Remember (that) you will Die,” a medieval Christian concept developed in art and
literature as a means to reflect on mortality and thus aimed at perfecting the way of life by turning
attention toward the immortality of the soul and the afterlife. It is believed that the motif came
from the Roman tradition. According to Tertullian’s Apologeticum, XXXIII, 4, victorious Roman
generals, during the triumphal procession, would have a person (or a slave) standing behind them
in a chariot and whispering “Look behind you! Remember you are a man.” More on this, see Beard,
Mary. The Roman Triumph. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007,
p. 85
24
Pilʹni
͡ ak, Boris. Sobranie sochineniĭ v shesti tomakh Moskva: Terra-Knizhnyĭ klub, 2003.
Radchenko 26
transformations of people into animals (and back) give hope for an eternal life beyond the scope
of Christian Resurrection.
The following chapter seeks to disentangle the artistic effects of the existential fear of
death that plagued Tolstoy as a thinker; the cultural circumstances and belief systems that stoked
this productive anxiety; and some of the methods of coping with death that Tolstoy offered in his
writing. Among the latter, I single out the principle of Memento Mori as a way of achieving the
fullness of life; acceptance of the organic sequencing of life and death; and finally, communal
living as a form of earthly immortality.
An Existential(ist) Encounter with Death in “Diary of a Madman”
As ardent an admirer of Arthur Schopenhauer’s as was Bely, Tolstoy came to understand
death as an organic fact under the tutelage of his World as Will and Representation. Moreover,
perfectly au courant with the latest developments in Western literature and thought, Tolstoy, as
Olga Matich contends, wrote his aesthetics treatises with degeneration theory in mind, and even
popularized European modernism in Russia, however unwittingly:
“It intersects in profound ways with Max Nordau’s Degeneration (1892), which
pathologized early modernist art, including Tolstoy’s writing. Ironically, however, like
Nordau’s book, his essay served as an introduction to early European modernism for
Russian readers, offering them perhaps the most extensive contemporary discussion of
Radchenko 27
modernism in Russian, including the quotation of whole poems by Charles Baudelaire,
Paul Verlaine, and Stéphane Mallarmé.”
25
Concurrently with the French symbolists, on March 30
th
, 1884, Tolstoy jots down in his
diary an idea for the short story “Diary Of a Madman,” envisioned then as a tale of one’s
encounter with death and its fearsome corporeality. Even though the work was never finished,
Tolstoy returned to it several times, in 1887, 1888, 1896, and 1903, which indicates the pressing
urgency of this endeavor at the edge of a new century. In his memoir, Maxim Gorky documents
Tolstoy’s compulsive preoccupation with the subject: “All his life he feared and hated death, all
his life there throbbed in his soul the “Arzamassian terror”––must he die?”
26
Never relegated to the periphery of his thematic repertoire, the question of death rose to
unparalleled prominence in his late works, propelled by the author’s understandably heightened
sense of life’s precariousness. I view this conversation between Tolstoy’s narrative persona and
death as drawing on The Dance of Death genre, in which Death addresses his victim first:
“Чего я тоскую, чего боюсь? — Меня, неслышно отвечает голос смерти. Я
тут. — Мороз подрал мне по коже. Да, смерти. Она придет, она — вот она, а ее не
должно быть.”
25
Matich, Olga. Erotic Utopia: The Decadent Imagination in Russia’s Fin-de-Siècle Madison,
Wis: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005, p. 30
26
Gorky M. Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoy, 1920, New York, p.45 at
http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/rus-gorky-tolstoy.pdf Accessed on the 7/15/2019
Radchenko 28
"Why am I so dejected? What am I afraid of?" "You are afraid of me" - I heard
the voice of Death - "I am here." I shuddered. Yes, - Death! Death will come, it will come
and it ought not to come. (Translated by Constance Garnett
)
27
Following Linderman’s definition of modernism as an idiom for describing the world as a
chaotic system, I argue that Tolstoy’s “Diary of a Madman” is an example of modernist prose,
first and foremost, due to the stream-of-consciousness dialogue that unfolds between the
protagonist and the chaos of non-existence. The anxieties fueling the narrative, and the
vocabulary marshaled to express them, allow me to read the story as a precursor to French
existentialist philosophy, namely Sartre and his “nausea.” The ambiguous confluence of rejection
of death and its avowed, permanent presence creates an uncanny effect; rather than mere fear, I
would describe it as a longing for some prelapsarian temporality: a time when there was no
death. Chaos, as a mixture of oppositions and contradictions, permeates the protagonist’s
existence:
“Все существо мое чувствовало потребность, право на жизнь и вместе с тем
совершающуюся смерть. И это внутреннее раздирание было ужасно. Я попытался
стряхнуть этот ужас. […] Ничего нет в жизни, а есть смерть, а ее не должно быть.
[…] Все заслонял ужас за свою погибающую жизнь. […]Но только что улегся,
вдруг вскочил от ужаса. И тоска, и тоска[...]”
My entire being was conscious of the necessity of the right to live, and at the
same time of the inevitability of dying. This inner conflict was causing me unbearable
27
Tolstoy, PSS, XXVI, 469
Radchenko 29
pain. I tried to shake off the horror; […] The same thing seemed to be repeated over and
over: nothing lasts, life is not, all is death - but death ought not to exist. […] To feel my
life doomed to be taken from me was a terror shutting out any other thought. […] I went
to bed, but the next instant I jumped up, seized with horror. A sickness overcame me, a
spiritual sickness.(
translated by Constance Garnett)
28
Of utmost importance here are the words “toska” and “uzhas,” both of which constitute
the narrative fabric of Tolstoy’s unfinished work. A similar feeling is born in the protagonist of
Andreev’s review of Ibsen’s play “Kogda my, Mertvye, probuzhdaemsya” (When We Dead
Awaken), as will be discussed in the second chapter. Immediate contact with death results in
madness, similar to that which Andreev devastatingly chronicles in “The Red Laugh.” I will now
explain how these existential longings influenced “The Death of Ivan Il’ich,” which sets to paper
similar feelings, and how they diverge from Tolstoy’s earlier works.
To understand the change in Tolstoy’s depictions of death, one might do well to
remember how death is treated in “Detstvo” (Childhood) (1852), or Voina i Mir (War and Peace)
(1869), or even Anna Karenina (1878): the sentimentality of Mamen’ka passing in the former;
the naturalistic fallen soldiers of Sebastopol and the heroic sacrifices on the field of Borodino;
the mystical aura surrounding Nikolai Levin’s passing away. Tolstoy’s contemporary, literary
critic Sergey Andreevsky, in his 1891 essay notes that reverence for death, so pervasive in early
Tolstoy, dissipates later on. Referring to Ivan Il’ich, he even uses a verb primarily applicable to
animal’s death, “okolel.” While negatively connoted and meant to disturb the reader, the
28
Tolstoy, PSS, XXVI, 469
Radchenko 30
animalization of Ivan Il’ich’s departure from the world betrays a fundamental trope, which I will
discuss later. Andreevsky, meanwhile, writes:
Кончина князя Андрея исполнена чудесной грезы о бессмертии души. […]
Зато уже смерть Ивана Ильича есть одна голая болезнь, одно безысходное мучение
тела. Это мучение, подобно картинам ада на монастырских воротах, выведено с
умыслом и с угрозою перед читателями для того, чтобы он устраивал свою жизнь,
в ожидании подобного конца, не так мелко и поверхностно, как Иван Ильич.
The death of Prince Andrew is filled with a wonderful dream of the immortality
of the soul. [...] However, the death of Ivan Ilyich is one naked disease, one hopeless
torment of the body. This torment, like the pictures of hell on the monastery gates, was
inferred with intent and with a threat to the readers so that they would organize thir life
not as shallowly and superficially as Ivan Ilyich.
29
Personified like a skeleton in the medieval Danse Macabre, death talks back to the
protagonist of the “Diary of a Madman”. The paradoxical disavowal of one’s mortality could be
an echo of Schopenhauer’s will to life––that insatiable, combative desire to exist. The
incompatibility of life and death within a person’s psyche produces existential, almost
Heideggerian angst:
29
Andreevsky S.A. “Iz Myslei o L’ve Tolstom” in Literaturnye Ocherki. Spb: Tipo. Tv-va A.S.
Suvorina, 1913, p.221
Radchenko 31
И тоска, и тоска, такая же духовная тоска, какая бывает перед рвотой,
только духовная. Жутко, страшно, кажется, что смерти страшно, а вспомнишь,
подумаешь о жизни, то умирающей жизни страшно. Как-то жизнь и смерть
сливались в одно.
A sickness overcame me, a spiritual sickness not unlike the physical uneasiness
preceding actual illness - but in the spirit, not in the body. A terrible fear similar to the
fear of death, when mingled with the recollections of my past life, developed into a
horror as if life were departing. Life and death were flowing into one another. (translated
by Constance Garnett)
30
Just as in “Diary of a Madman,” death gains flesh in “Ivan Il’ich” appearing, in
accordance with the Danse Macabre dramaturgy, before the protagonist and mortifying him:
И вдруг она мелькнула через ширмы, он увидал ее. Она мелькнула, он еще
надеется, что она скроется, но невольно он прислушался к боку, — там сидит все
то же, все так же ноет, и он уже не может забыть, и она явственно глядит на него
из-за цветов. К чему все? […] Это не может быть! Не может быть, но есть». Он шел
в кабинет, ложился и оставался опять один с нею, с глазу на глаз с нею, а делать
с нею нечего. Только смотреть на нее и холодеть.
And suddenly It would flash through the screen and he would see it.
31
It was just a
flash, and he hoped it would disappear, but he would involuntarily pay attention to his
30
Tolstoy, XXVI, 469
31
Death is referred to as “she” and Tolstoy used the personal pronoun “her”, in the original.
Radchenko 32
side. "It sits there as before, gnawing just the same!" And he could no longer forget It, but
could distinctly see it looking at him from behind the flowers. "What is it all for?" […] It
can't be true! It can't, but it is." He would go to his study, lie down, and again be alone
with It: face to face with It. And nothing could be done with It except to look at it and
shudder. (translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude)
32
This palpability of death as an uncanny presence in Tolstoy’s “converted” period bridges
the conceptual gap between him and Andreev. In Anathema or The Life of Man, death is a similar
shadow figure omnipresent in the life of people, even though life and death are, logically
speaking, mutually exclusive categories. The Symbolists were fascinated by the idea of a blurred
border between life and death, and the medieval topos of Death walking amongst people and
harvesting them as crops was exceedingly appealing to the modernists. Harnessing the medieval
image of an ever-present death, Tolstoy inherits the Symbolists’ fascination with the Danse
Macabre and Memento Mori, teeming with skeletons and ghosts.
A similar, personified grim reaper shadowing the living makes an appearance in
Alexander Blok’s “Balaganchik” (“Puppet Show) (1906) and the “Plyaski Smerti” Dances of
Death (1912-1914) series; in Benois’s artworks and on the front pages of magazines.
33
In
“Balaganchik,” death’s presence is less explicit, and her introduction also reminds the reader of a
delirious patient’s stream-of-consciousness-like ramblings. Blok uses the same personal pronoun
ona (she) and employs an abundance of verbs and nouns of vision to rival Tolstoy’s:
32
Tolstoy, PSS, XXVI, 95
33
The images of skeletons in satirical and political magazines will be discussed in detail in the
third chapter of the dissertation.
Radchenko 33
Tы видишь, как бела ее одежда; и какая бледность в чертах; о, она бела, как
снега на вершинах! Очи ее отражают зеркальную пустоту. Неужели ты не видишь
косы за плечами? Ты не узнаешь смерти?
You see how white her clothes are; and how pale her features are; oh she is as
white as snow on the mountain tops! Her eyes reflect a mirror void. Do not you see the
scythe behind her shoulders? Don’t you recognize death?
34
In the first poem of Plyaski Smerti, Blok seems to make more tangible Tolstoy’s idea of
society’s artificiality:
Как тяжко мертвецу среди людей/ и страстным притворяться!/ Но надо,
надо в общество втираться,/ Скрывая для карьеры лязг костей...
It is hard to be a dead among the people/ To pretend to be alive and passionate! /
But it is necessary, it is necessary to blend into the society, / Hiding the clang of bones to
succeed in a career.
35
As a self-conscious stylization, Blok’s Dances… is suffused both with the socio-political
context of the original “Dances of Death” and with the genre’s philosophical underpinnings,
positioning the vanity of human life in counterbalance to the transcendent value of eternity.
34
Blok A., Sobranie Sochinenii v 8 tomakh, Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo Khudozhestvennoi
Literatury, Moskva-Leningrad, 1961, tom IV, p.13
35
Blok A., ibid, III, 36
Radchenko 34
Medieval plots have attracted Blok’s attention since youth
36
, but became especially pronounced
after he spent summer in Brittany, France in 1911. In 1912 Blok started a play “Roza i Krest”
(The Rose and the Cross) commissioned by the philanthropist M.I. Tereshchenko, appointed at
the directory of the Imperial theaters.
Another poetical cycle of Alexander Blok, inspired by the medieval themes, Dances of
Death, describes society as a whirlwind of living corpses, as if taking one step further Ivan
Il’ich’s inner emptiness or the uselessness of life in “Kholstomer” (“Strider: The Story of a
Horse.”) The medieval trope of death’s omnipresence is inscribed into the fleshly mortality of
Tolstoy's characters. This essential moralistic component of Tolstoy’s outlook further fortifies
my reading of his “Death of Ivan Il’ich” and “Diary of a Madman” as examples of Memento
Mori.
Memento Mori: Beware the Perishable Nature of the Material World
Tolstoy’s constant fixation on the problem of death, paradoxically, brings him closer than
anything else to the mandates of official religion: more precisely, to the late medieval idea of the
perishable nature of all things, especially the human body. As Huizinga underlines in The
Waning of the Middle Ages, in the fifteenth century “an everlasting call of memento mori
resounds through life”:
36
Blok writes about his affection to the Middle Ages in 1919 in the preface to Victor Hugo’s
“The Legend about beautiful Pecopene and magnificent Boldur”. Blok, SS v 8 t-h. tom VI, p.
455
Radchenko 35
Denis the Carthusian, in his Directory of the Life of Nobles, exhorts them: “And
when going to bed at night, he should consider how, just as he now lies down himself,
soon strange hands will lay his body in the grave.”
37
On January 19
th
, 1885, Tolstoy shared the same considerations with his sister Aleksandra
Tolstaya, lamenting people’s forgetfulness of their preordained mortality: “Мы все так давно —
с рождения приговорены к смерти богом, а когда нам это скажет доктор, это точно что-то
новое.”
38
In this sense, “The Death of Ivan Il’ich” sends out a persuasive reminder. Interestingly
enough, Annensky compares the story’s didactic message to the paintings of hell aimed at
stirring primal fear in the sinners. While Tolstoy wanted to distance himself from the Church, the
idea of “memento mori” is essentially a religious one, formulated as a means of preparing people
for impending death. In 1909, Tolstoy admitted in his diary that the philosophical crux of “The
Death of Ivan Il’ich” lay exactly in the proximity of death at any given moment in life:
«Memento Mori» – великое слово. Если бы мы помнили то, что мы: умрем,
вся жизнь наша получила бы совсем другое назначение. Человек, зная, что он
умрет через полчаса, не будет делать ни пустого, ни глупого, ни, главное, дурного в
эти полчаса. Но полвека, которые может быть отделяют тебя от смерти, разве не то
же, что полчаса? Перед смертью и настоящим времени нет.
Memento mori is a great word. If we kept in mind that we were all to die, our lives
would have a completely different purpose. If a person knew that he would die in half an
37
Huizinga, Johan. The Waning of the Middle Ages; a Study of the Forms of Life, Thought, and
Art in France and the Netherlands in the XIVth and XVth Centuries. Penguin Books, 1927.p. 140
38
Tolstoy, XXV, 681
Radchenko 36
hour, he would not do anything trivial, stupid, or, especially, bad during this half an hour.
But half a century that stands between you and your death isn’t it the same as half an
hour? There is no time gap between death and the present.”
39
The idea is, in fact, so modern that it is reiterated by Martin Heidegger, who describes
death as an “eminent imminence,” emphasizing its inevitability: “Death is the possibility of the
absolute impossibility of Da-sein. […] As such, it is an eminent imminence.”
40
For Tolstoy, it is crucial that the borderline between the dying and the living be
permeable (just how wrongful is such separation, will be shown later in this chapter). However,
his deployments of the Memento Mori narrative often elicit quite the opposite reaction from the
onlookers of death: "He is dead, but we are alive," conclude Ivan Il’ich’s colleagues. This
sudden, deeply-felt ecstasy of life is, in fact, a confirmation of universal mortality: one is mortal,
but, so to speak, not now. From this kneejerk reaction––a short phrase dropped in passing by
those in the presence of death and pain––arises an almost self-canceling notion: death confirms
life. In Tolstoy's works, it is not life itself that triggers off the overwhelming ecstasy of living; it
is, on the contrary, death, or at least a near-death experience, that imbues the experience of being
a person with vitality and vigor. By contemplating the dualism of life and death, Tolstoy
attempts to transcend the theoretical precepts of the modern church and recapture the medieval––
i.e., in his estimation, genuine––morality, which accepts death as an indispensable part of life.
This is not an isolated incident. Much like “The Death of Ivan Il’ich,” the short story “Tri
Smerti”(“Three Deaths”) (published in 1859) stages another reimagining of the Danse Macabre,
39
Tolstoy, PSS, XLV, 340
40
Heidegger M. “Being and Time.” In: Marino, Gordon Daniel. Basic Writings of
Existentialism Modern Library pbk. ed. New York: Modern Library, 2004, p. 317
Radchenko 37
trotting out a whole parade of characters––young and old, rich and poor––none of them
impervious to death. The sick barynia and the dying coachman Hvedor (a [[regional or
peasant?]] version of “Fyodor”) constitute the binary opposition that shapes the story’s moral
import. Barynia is a Christian, who nevertheless does not believe in the Christian idea of
salvation, while Hvedor embodies the pagan belief system in which death is built into the natural
life. In a letter to his sister dated May 1
st
, 1858, Tolstoy goes on to elaborate:
Мужик умирает спокойно, именно потому, что он не христианин. Его
религия другая, хотя он по обычаю и исполнял христианские обряды; его религия
— природа, с которой он жил. Он сам рубил деревья, сеял рожь и косил ее, убивал
баранов, и рожались у него бараны, и дети рожались, и старики умирали, и он знает
твердо этот закон, от которого он никогда не отворачивался, как барыня, и прямо,
просто смотрел ему в глаза.
A man dies peacefully, precisely because he is not a Christian. His religion is
different, although customarily he performed Christian rites; his religion is the nature
with which he lived. He himself chopped down trees, sowed and mowed the rye and
mowed the rye, killed rams, and saw the newborn sheep, and children were born, and old
people died, and he knows this law firmly, from which he never turned away like the
noble woman, and looked in its eyes simply.
41
41
Perepiska L. N. Tolstogo s gr. A. A. Tolstoy. 1857—1903. Izdanie Obshchestva Tolstovskogo
muzeia (Spb. 1911), p. 95.
Radchenko 38
By felling the trees and mowing the grass, by killing sheep and seeing birth and death up
close, Fyodor includes himself in the eternal circle of life inherent in nature, and thus remains
immune to the dread of mortality. Unlike the noblewoman, who is “disgusting”
42
in her
presumptuous flight from death (as though geographical borders could stymie its implacable
strides!), Fyodor submissively hands his boots to Serioga, his younger successor: “– Ты сапоги
возьми, Серега, — сказал он, подавив кашель и отдохнув немного. — Только, слышь,
камень купи, как помру, — хрипя, прибавил он.” (You take the boots, Serioga, - he said,
suppressing a cough and resting a bit. “Just, buy a stone, when I die,” he added hoarsely.)
43
Fyodor, supposedly consumed by the same lung disease as the barynia, comes to terms with his
death and quietly, discreetly dies in a corner: “— Везде больно. Смерть моя пришла — вот
что. Ох, ох, ох!—простонал больной.” (It hurts everywhere. My death has come - that's it. Oh
oh oh! - moaned the patient.)
44
Neither the noblewoman nor her relatives care about each other, trapped in and numbed
by their fears and desires. Much like in “The Death of Ivan Il'ich,” an enormous gap yawns
between the living and the dying. The woman feels neglected in her illness, while she, on her
part, does not think about her family, either: “Никому им до меня дела нет, […] Им хорошо,
так и все равно. О! боже мой!” (Nobody worries about me, […] They are well, and it is all the
same to them. O, my God!")
45
Her soon-to-be-widowed husband, as a matter of fact, is busy savoring wine in the
meantime:
42
Она гадка и жалка, ibid, p.95
43
Tolstoy, XLV, 59
44
Tolstoy,XLV, 59
45
Tolstoy, XLV, 55
Radchenko 39
“Ну что, Эдуард Иванович,” — сказал муж, встречая доктора и с веселой
улыбкой потирая руки, — я велел погребец принести, вы как думаете насчет
этого?
“Well, Eduard Ivanovich,” -- said the husband, meeting the doctor and rubbing
his hands with a cheerful smile,” -- I ordered some wine, what do you think about
this?
46
Tolstoy in this paragraph collides two differently modulated egotisms: in the sick
noblewoman’s stream of consciousness, a stark contrast is drawn between the living, with their
epicurean habits such as enjoyment of food and rest, and the dying, who despise them for their
attachment to these simple pleasures.
The peasant consciousness for Tolstoy has access to a certain wholeness, some universal
sensibility, the existential lure of which precipitates in Tolstoy’s philosophy an attempted return
to tradition, to that organic structure that precedes any societal order. Following up on this idea
of Tolstoy’s, Pil’niak also sees the organic life of Russian nature and native folklore as endowed
with all the necessary attributes of a world-organizing tenet. Andrei Bely in The Silver Dove and
Pavel Florensky in his philosophical essays both view peasant life as a paragon of organic unity.
Florensky writes:
46
Tolstoy, XLV, 55
Radchenko 40
Возьмите народную жизнь, хотя бы причитание над покойником. Тут и
польза, и добро, и святыня, и слезная красота. […] Знание крестьянина — цельное,
органически слитное, нужное ему знание, выросшее из души его.
Take the life of the people, for instance, the lament over the dead. Here is the
virtue, and the good, and the shrine, and the tearful beauty. [...] The knowledge of a
peasant is a complete, organically combined, the necessary knowledge that grew out of
his soul.
47
Florensky, who lived in Abramtsevo close to the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra,
ruminated on this spiritual union with nature that was also sensed by other artists: for example,
by Vasnetsov, whom I mentioned before, or Mikhail Nesterov, who transferred the utopian
harmony between Russian national spirit and nature onto his canvases (for instance, in the 1890
The Vision to the Youth Bartholomew depicting young St. Sergius’ encounter with an angel).
Visions marked momentous disclosures of truth for Tolstoy, as well. Going back to
“Three Deaths,” Nastas’ya dreams of Fyodor as he dies, thus revealing their subconscious bond.
To some extent, Tolstoy's interest in peasant culture, in which he discerned the seeds of spiritual
authenticity, could be viewed as a harbinger of the modernists’ fascination with folklore. In
Nastas'ya's dream, Fyodor clambers off his masonry stove and starts chopping wood, fully
recovered. Reminiscent of hagiographic miracles or even Lazarus’ resurrection, the dream is so
realistic that Nastasya keeps sharing it with people long after Fyodor’s death. On the
metaphorical plane, he was, indeed, cured of his sickness through death:
47
Florensky, P. Obschchechelovecheskie Korni Idealizma. Kontekst. Literaturno-kriticheskie
Issledovaniya, Moskva, 1990, p.90
Radchenko 41
Вижу я, будто дядя Хведор с печи слез и пошел дрова рубить. Дай, говорит,
Настя, я тебе подсоблю […] Что ж, я говорю, ты ведь болен был. Нет, говорит, я
здоров, да как замахнется, на меня страх и нашел. Уж не помер ли? Дядя Хведор! а
дядя!
I see that Uncle Fyodor came down from the stove and went to chop wood. Let
me, Nastya, he says, help you [...] I say, weren’t you sick. No, he says, I am healthy, and
started to chop, so that I got scared. Maybe he died? Uncle Fyodor! Uncle, hey!”
48
The last sentences in italics signify that in the peasant subconscious, death is the only
reliable cure from affliction, just like it was for Socrates, whose death so captivated Tolstoy’s
imagination. Fyodor’s “good” death is a world apart from the sentimentality of Andrei’s in War
and Peace. The deathbed encircled by kith and kin is no longer Tolstoy’s ideal, for nobody can
alleviate the horror of one’s death but oneself. Man has to face his finitude alone (perhaps this is
why Tolstoy tried to leave his family when he sensed his imminent demise). Nikolai Leskov, in
his article “O Kufel’nom muzhike i proch” (“About a servant and more”) focuses on the genuine
empathy of Gerasim, who supplied the only consolation for Ivan Il’ich amidst high-society
conventions:
И вот перед отверстым гробом куфельный мужик научил барина ценить
истинное участие к человеку страждущему, — участие, перед которым так
48
Tolstoy, XLV, 59
Radchenko 42
ничтожно и противно все, что приносят друг другу в подобные минуты люди
светские...
And here, in front of the open coffin, the servant taught the gentleman to
appreciate the genuine empathy for the suffering person, - the empathy, which makes
everything that the high society people offer each other at such moments so insignificant
and disgusting …
49
Medicalization of Death
Enamored though he was of the unspoiled, guileless peasant worldview and its
concomitant lore, Tolstoy also kept abreast of the cutting-edge advances in physical and medical
science. The trajectory I have traced goes from death sentimentalized to death most starkly
medicalized, and many contemporary critics noted how accurate the writer was in the latter: Ivan
Il’ich’s diagnosis, allegedly, was crystal-clear to medical-school students.
50
What is crucial here,
49
Leskov N.S. Sobranie Sochinenii v 12 tomakh, v. XI. Moscow, 1958 p.149
50
Commentary to the novella: The real truth in the image is so great that not only a doctor, but any
3rd year medical student will make an accurate diagnosis of the disease ... After reading Tolstoy’s
story, we can almost certainly say that Ivan Ilyich died of cancer in the abdominal cavity
somewhere in the region of the cecum or right kidney. The cause of the disease (bruise), its picture,
course, even the need to lie with one leg raised high - everything speaks for it ... "The death of
Ivan Ilyich" is an ingenious and artistic creation that truly portrays the disease and suffering and
delights the doctor-reader.” (Prof. N.F. Golubov, “The Illness and Death of Ivan Ilyich at Tolstoy
and Dr. Pascal at Emil Zola”, p. 15). Recently, a detailed description of the medical history of Ivan
Ilyich was made in the medical press: “there can be no two opinions about the nature of the disease
of this sufferer. Ivan Ilyich died of cancer - the picture of the disease is clear ... " All the signs of
progressive cachexia and the connection between trauma and malignant neoplasm were conveyed
by Tolstoy with exceptional persuasion: “every doctor of any specialty should carefully read this
story, which is stronger than the world literature on this subject, and those abysses of horror and
doubt will open before him cancer patients survive.” (A. T. Lidsky, “Death, Disease, and the
Doctor in the Artworks of L. N. Tolstoy” —Russian Clinic, 1929, XI, 6, 8–9).
Radchenko 43
besides the loss of death’s sublimity, is the transformation of Tolstoy’s point of view. In the
context?? constraints?? of realist literature, the process of dying was typically observed and
narrated by third-party others, as in the case of Nikolen’ka watching his mother wither away, or
Levin standing watch by his infirm brother’s bed. In “Ivan Il’ich,” however, the reader is given
the protagonist’s own account, issuing from the very consciousness of a dying person. Bakhtin
contrasts Tolstoy’s way of depicting death with Dostoyevsky’s traditional mode, in which the
final agony is witnessed from without. Bakhtin calls this unique way of representing death as a
fact of a fading consciousness “depiction of death from within,” which, for him, unsettles the
narrative formulae of realism:
To depict death from within, Tolstoy does not hesitate to violate sharply the real-
life verisimilitude of the narrator's position (precisely as if the deceased himself had told
him the story of his death, as Agamemnon did to Odysseus).[…]Tolstoy passes from one
consciousness to another as if going from one room to another; he does not know an
ultimate threshold.
51
While Bakhtin calls this viewpoint “fantastical,” for the purposes of my argument I call it
“naturalistic” or “medicalized,” in order to locate Tolstoy’s anticipatory contribution to the
modernist naturalism of death. While Tolstoy criticized Chekhov for his overuse of medical
discourse, his own characters, too, are often explicitly preoccupied with medical concerns.
52
Just
51
Bakhtin, M. M., and Emerson, Caryl. Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
52
Tolstoy in his letter to Maksim Gorky noted: "Medicine gets in his way; if he were not a doctor,
he would write even better.”
Radchenko 44
as Tolstoy categorizes soldiers in “Rubka Lesa,”
53
it is possible to categorize his “sentenced to
death” types. Many female characters are sick, some with consumption, and Tolstoy is especially
disparaging of this “demanding sick type"
54
and contemptuous of their futile struggle with death.
In this conflict between the living and the dying, the antagonism between oneself and the other
becomes particularly heated. Skeptical as ever of religious dogma, Tolstoy dismisses the
moralizing Orthodox understanding of sickness as an outward manifestation of sin inasmuch as
the very mortality of people is a consequence of original sin:
In the Christian tradition, illness represented the price of original sin, a symbol of
the transitoriness of earthly existence, and a foretaste of hell's torments. Most
importantly, however, the disease was a vehicle of spiritual awakening and growth and a
divine reminder that earthly life should be spent preparing for the hereafter. Such
chastisement was particularly important for the wealthy; it was a precious corrective for
the deadliest of sins, vanity.
55
However, for Tolstoy sickness and prolonged dying are not a punishment, as I attempted
to show in the previous section. Physical infirmity, rather, is a gift that reminds one that he is
mortal and ought to live life to the fullest. I argue that Tolstoy’s rejection of the idea of bodily
resurrection allowed him to break the literary taboo against any naturalization or medicalization
53
Tolstoy L.N. SS v 22 tomakh, Moskva, 1984, v.II, p.54
54
The average life span in Russia in 1913 was 30,5 years. And there were only 155 doctors for a
million patients in Russia by 1913.
55
Szabo Jason. Incurable and Intolerable. Chronic disease and Slow Death in Nineteenth-Century
France, Rutgers University Press, 2009, p.70
Radchenko 45
of human death. Starting with the gory details abounding in Sebastopol Sketches and the spots of
decay on Maman's cheek, which Nikolen'ka notices, this taboo-breaking tendency continues with
the horror of a dead body that the little peasant girl senses in “Detstvo” and the disgust felt by the
visitors of Ivan Il’ich's widow. The waxy yellow "something," to which people are ultimately
reduced (also in “Detstvo”), is a big step toward the frank modernist depiction of death.
As early as Sebastopol Sketches, we are introduced to the idea of the organic unity of all
creatures in the face of death, people and animals alike. The same disparity between the natural
decay of animals and "civilized" interment of people that we see in “Kholstomer” is evident in
Sebastopol Sketches. The contrast between the after-death destiny of human and animal bodies is
a device deliberately injected to promote Tolstoy’s philosophy of death. In “Kholstomer,” the
decaying horse carcasses, inseparable from the natural cycle of life and death, are returned to
nature, while people are most unnaturally collected and interred in cemeteries: “[…] Высокая
тяжелая маджара на верблюдах со скрипом протащилась на кладбище хоронить
окровавленных покойников, которыми она чуть не доверху наложена...” (here a tall and
heavy camel-wagon has dragged creaking to the cemetery, to bury the bloody dead, with whom
it is laden nearly to the top.)
56
In Sebastopol Sketches, the difference between the carcasses of
horses and the bodies of men is brought to the fore, as well: “[…] шагаете через полусгнивший
труп какой-то гнедой лошади, которая тут в грязи лежит около лодки […] (you step over
the half-decomposed carcass of a brown horse, which lies there in the mud beside the boat [...])
57
The same, if not more horrific, naturalization of decayed animal remnants is performed in
“Kholstomer”:
56
Tolstoy, PSS, IV, 3
57
Tolstoy, PSS, IV, 3
Radchenko 46
Табун проходил вечером горой, и тем, которые шли с левого края, видно
было что-то красное внизу, около чего возились хлопотливо собаки и перелетали
воронья и коршуны. Одна собака, упершись лапами в стерву, мотая головой,
отрывала с треском то, что
́ зацепила.
In the evening the herd passed by a mountain, and those who walking from the
left side could see something was red below, around which the dogs were busy and the
crows and eagles flew over. One dog, with its paws at the bite, shaking its head, snapped
off what it caught. (translation by Frank D.Millet)
58
The dreadful, forensic vividness that the reader encounters here is a leap into literature’s
near future, its contours drawn not insignificantly by science and medicine. As Jason Szabo
indicated in his discussion of consumption as one of literature’s most highly esteemed (due to its
incurability) diseases, throughout the 19th and into the 20th century the medical and romantic
images of tuberculosis coexisted. However, over time, the medical image began to take
precedence. In Szabo’s view, this precedent reflected the growing prestige of scientific
knowledge, although there was another process at play:
Doctors’ framing of consumption was particularly persuasive because it so closely
mirrored conventional morality. Prevailing systems of thought established a direct link
between aberrancy and suffering. Literally and symbolically, death by wasting
represented the ultimate symbol of personal transgression. In a society reflexively prone
58
Tolstoy. PSS, XXVI, 36
Radchenko 47
to moralization, it was vital that the moral and hygienic lessons of the deadliest diatheses
be commensurate with the misery they caused.”
59
As I mentioned earlier, one of the main reasons for Tolstoy’s induction into medical
discourse is his philosophical contempt of the body. I submit that to a certain extent, the
naturalistic tendencies in the depiction of the human body, which are a salient feature of
modernist thought, could be attributed to Tolstoy’s controversial philosophy of death. The theme
of death, like the theme of eroticism, has always been regarded as disturbing. Tolstoy’s
“Kreutzer Sonata” was pilloried for its extensive eroticism; “The Death of Ivan Il’ich,” for its
emphasis on the other side of Eros, Thanatos
60
. However, for Tolstoy Eros and Thanatos are not
opposing vectors as they both belong to the same sphere of sinful desires and resulting horrors;
in a rather subversive twist, death at times possesses more creative power than Eros.
While Tolstoy “enjoyed the vivisection of his characters,”
61
he remained censorious of
other artists detailing physical suffering. Goldenveiser, in a diary entry from June 18
th
, 1908,
notes Tolstoy’s disapproval of the memoir by a doctor Belogolovy, whose wealth of medical and
physiological particulars regarding Nekrasov’s, Turgenev’s, and Saltykov’s maladies, according
to him, terrified the reader: “Как они боялись смерти! И эти ужасные, отвратительные
подробности болезни, особенно Некрасова.” (“They were terrified of death!These terrible
disgusting details of the sickness, Nekrasov’s in particular”)
62
59
Szabo, 88
60
In Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the death drive is the impetus toward death and self-
destruction. The opposite force is Eros, the tendency toward survival, propagation, sex, and other
creative, life-producing drives. Schopenhauer’s will to life has the similar goal of contradicting
death.
61
Matich, 277
62
Goldenweiser, 142
Radchenko 48
Ageing for Tolstoy lacks any redeeming traces of beauty: “Идет жизнь значит: волосы
падают, зубы портятся, морщины, запах изо рта […] все становится ужасным,
отвратительным [...] (“Life goes on, hair falls, teeth decay, mouth smells bad […] everything
turns into a disgusting substance.”)
63
One might venture that this was one of the reasons why
Tolstoy cherished childhood as a period of life without the erotic and thus, without death. During
his illness, Ivan Il’ich constantly returns to the scene of his childhood, which encapsulated the
sacred essence of life, but realizes that there is no such person as Vanya-the-child anymore:
Там, в детстве, было что-то такое действительно приятное, с чем можно бы
было жить, если бы оно вернулось. Но того человека, который испытывал это
приятное, уже не было: это было как бы воспоминание о каком-то другом.
There, in childhood, there was something really pleasant that you could live with
if it came back. But the person who experienced this pleasant things was no longer there:
it was like a memory of some other person.
64
The impossibility of rejuvenation notwithstanding, this passage still reinforces Tolstoy’s
formula of childhood as salvation from the fear of death, with the caveat that perhaps what he
had in mind was the childhood of humanity, the prelapsarian unity of all beings. Tolstoy’s
characters mentally drift back to pre-adolescent episodes when they first experienced the fear of
death and wanted to prove death’s inadmissibility. Fyodor, the hero of “Diary of a Madman,”
includes in his reminiscences the communion little Feden’ka felt with everybody:
63
Tolstoy, XXVI, 65
64
Tolstoy, XXVI, 92
Radchenko 49
Я затих и думал: «Я люблю няню, няня любит меня и Митеньку, а я люблю
Митеньку, а Митенька любит меня и няню. А няню любит Тарас, а я люблю
Тараса, и Митенька любит. А Тарас любит меня и няню. А мама любит меня и
няню, а няня любит маму, и меня, и папу, и все любят, и всем хорошо.
I calmed down and thought: “I love a nanny, a nanny loves me and Mitenka, and I
love Mitenka, and Mitenka loves me and a nanny. And Taras loves the nanny, and I love
Taras, and Mitenka loves him. And Taras loves me and the nanny. And mom loves me
and the nurse, and the nanny loves mom, and me, and dad, and everyone loves, and
everyone is well.
65
Similar exercises in self-comforting and conjuring up childhood memories resurface in
“The Death of Ivan Il’ich,” when the protagonist is trying to pinpoint his life’s singularity:
Он был Ваня с мама, папа, с Митей и Володей, с игрушками, кучером, с
няней, потом с Катенькой, со всеми радостями, горестями, восторгами детства,
юности, молодости. Разве для Кая был тот запах кожаного полосками мячика,
который так любил Ваня! Разве Кай целовал так руку матери и разве для Кая так
шуршал шелк складок платья матери?
He had been little Vanya, with a mamma and a papa, with Mitya and Volodya,
with the toys, a coachman and a nurse, afterwards with Katenka and will all the joys,
griefs, and delights of childhood, boyhood, and youth. What did Caius know of the smell
65
Tolstoy, PSS, XXVI, 92
Radchenko 50
of that striped leather ball Vanya had been so fond of? Had Caius kissed his mother's
hand like that, and did the silk of her dress rustle so for Caius?
66
I view this formula as an attempt to restore the prelapsarian, Edenic life of a child’s
imagination, in which no eroticism is admitted and therefore no death looms ahead. The sense of
unity that Tolstoy wants his characters to achieve in death, then, is merely a recapitulation of the
unity that existed in childhood, a state blessedly oblivious to its own exhaustibility. Tolstoy does
allow his characters to sink into the safe cradle of childhood, to reach the next stage of selfless
wholeness. The unity that he urges to accomplish in the full knowledge of death comes from
understanding that there is an eternal realm of life, and death is only a part of it.
The end of one's childhood is marked by a fall into sinfulness and a commencement of
protracted spiritual death, which can be only resolved by another kind of death––either moral
rebirth, or suffering and physical decease. Tolstoy is nothing if not straightforward in his
rejection of the bodily. His Father Sergius is the only example of a character who died several
times metaphorically and was reborn. Every instance of his rebirth is related to the shunning of
some physical attributes of life, primarily to his denial of the needs of the body. Each type of
Father Sergius’ “life” ends with an admission of the body’s sinful nature. As the old identity is
lost, a new one emerges bearing no resemblance to its predecessor. First, he cuts off his nobility
and "common sense"; then his finger; then his ego, when he assumes the identity of a wanderer
and puts on "muzhitskoe plat'e," finding peace at last. Life in humility (“Kak ty smirilsya,”
66
Tolstoy, PSS, XXVI, 93
Radchenko 51
exclaims Pashen’ka) grants him a kind of immortality,
67
coded in an atypical open ending. This
humility negates extreme states such as death. Father Sergius expels the sin and thus never
comes to a sinner’s end, rolling forward like a ball (note the roundness, so highly praised by
Tolstoy in Platon Karataev) and blending with his surroundings. His existence is untroubled,
because his body is blissfully unattached.
The Philosophical Background of Tolstoy’s Views on Death. Death that Separates and
Unites: Sickness as Peacetime Battlefield
While discussing matters of life and death in his World as Will and Representation,
Arthur Schopenhauer alludes to Indian philosophy and, in particular, to Bhagavad-Gita. Tolstoy
consistently favored oriental philosophers, even outside of Schopenhauer’s references, and saw
in the Eastern teachings, as well as in Socrates’ philosophy, a refuge from Christian dogma. Most
pointedly, deliverance seemed to be needed from the claim that earthly life should equal humble
monastic acceptance of the original sinfulness of human nature, to be resolved only in the
afterlife. There is a solid spiritualistic and esoteric foundation underneath Tolstoy's views on
death, which once again substantiates my proposition to group Tolstoy with the modernists.
Though exclusive of Christ and the Orthodox idea of resurrection, Tolstoy’s philosophy
of death is not atheistic per se. Annensky emphasized that Tolstoy, in his hubris, wanted to write
67
“The Diary of a Madman” ends with the protagonist giving his belongings to the vagabonds at
the church. However, since it is considered unfinished, it is difficult to draw conclusions about its
end.
Radchenko 52
nothing less than his own Gospels.
68
The narrator’s position in “The Death of Ivan Il’ich” is
similar to the omniscient eye of God, which promises glimpses of infinity and immortality. The
narration, which starts with the death of Ivan Il'ich and his funeral, proceeds to a synopsis of his
life and comes full circle with the actual moment of physical expiry. This cyclical composition
casts the vicissitudes of history as an independent process that continues on with or without Ivan
Il'ich.
Ivan Il’ich dies twice, and yet there is no death. While the word “death” is used in the
title, suggesting centrality, the formal arrangement of the novella makes the reader view it,
rather, as a fragment of eternity. This narrative inversion, potentially, furnishes an answer to the
question of what happens after death, and the answer is, flatly, that it all stays the same: the
clerks go to the office and discuss their promotions; the family members are still embroiled in
their petty worries.
Tolstoy conceptualized the world as an eternal flow of energy. According to Lao Tzu,
whom Tolstoy greatly admired, dualities such as life and death compensate for each other and
are both perfectly commensurate elements of being. According to Goldenweiser’s memoir,
Tolstoy had a particular view on immortality, markedly different from the Russian cosmists’ call
for resurrection of the flesh. In a 1908 conversation, Tolstoy mentions that immortality is an
immutable state of existence:
Бессмертие не будет и не было, оно есть. Оно — вне временных и
пространственных форм. Людям, спрашивающим, что же будет после смерти, надо
ответить: то же, что было до рождения.
68
Annenskii, Innokntii, Knigi Otrazhenii, Nauka, Moskva, 1979, p. 68
Radchenko 53
Immortality “will not be” and it “was not”, it “is”. It is beyond temporal and
spatial forms. To people asking what will happen after death, one should say: the same as
it was before birth.
69
Thus the temporality of life, which is a universal constraint imposed on the human
condition, amount to scarcely more than an illusion. Tolstoy constantly underscores the temporal
character of life, which is on the one hand, a limitation, but on the other hand, an organizing
principle. Donna Orwin notes that Immanuel Kant’s epistemology, conceiving of time, space,
and causality as categories of the mind, was in large measure responsible for Tolstoy’s increased
subjectivism in the 1870s and 1880s.
70
One of “the most common and ugly” lives, the life of Ivan Il’ich, is centered around a
few “commonly cherished” parameters: work, family, leisure. Its fluctuations are minimal; its
monotony is driven by false joys. For Tolstoy, Ivan’s plea to live “хорошо, приятно,” (well,
nicely) is as futile as are his pre-sickness concerns with furniture. The writer’s moralizing
position here is similar to the didacticism of the medieval Christianity, in that all physical
pleasures are irredeemably pointless because none can be taken to the next world. The climax of
Ivan Il’ich’s life is the “Last Judgement” passed by a doctor. Although Tolstoy refused the
notion of the Christian Last Judgement, scheduled to take place post mortem, wounds and
sickness in his works often occasion a last judgement on earth. In “Ivan Il’ich,” this becomes
amply evident:
69
Goldenweiser, ibid, 229
70
Orwin, Tolstoy’s Art and Thought, chap.8
Radchenko 54
Все было, как он ожидал; все было так, как всегда делается. И ожидание, и
важность напускная, докторская, ему знакомая, та самая, которую он знал в себе в
суде […] Все было точно так же, как в суде. Как он в суде делал вид над
подсудимыми, так точно над ним знаменитый доктор делал тоже вид.
Everything took place as he had expected and as it always does. There was the
usual waiting and the important air assumed by the doctor, with which he was so
familiar (resembling that which he himself assumed in court). […] It was all just as it
was in the law courts. The doctor put on just the same air towards him as he himself put
on towards an accused person. (translated by translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude)
71
The doctor’s visit in “Ivan Il’ich,” just like all other scenes of Ivan’s life, is presented as
an event of universal relevance. While many scholars have argued for interpreting this episode in
biblical terms, to me this constellation of banality––"as always, as usual, common"––seems to
refer to the eternal reproducibility of life, adhering to the same scripts as actors come and go.
After the "Last Judgement," Ivan Il'ich becomes estranged from other people; sentenced to death,
he is "not like everybody else" any longer. But the paradox is, he, who enjoyed being “like all
decent people,” refuses to embrace the mortality that binds all humans. In his internal
monologue, he reminisces about his childhood, in which there was no place for death. This
petition for universal physical immortality, which would become a fixture of the new proletarian
consciousness, is not acceptable for Tolstoy, for whom Memento Mori and the logical syllogism
“All humans are mortal, Caius is human, thus Caius is mortal” should be everyone’s life
philosophy. Ivan Il'ich, however, spurns his organic fate:
71
Tolstoy, PSS, XXVI, 92
Radchenko 55
Пример силлогизма, которому он учился в логике Кизеветера: Кай —
человек, люди смертны, потому Кай смертен, казался ему во всю его жизнь
правильным только по отношению к Каю, но никак не к нему. То был Кай-человек,
вообще человек, и это было совершенно справедливо; но он был не Кай и не
вообще человек.
The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter's Logic: "Caius is a man, men are
mortal, therefore Caius is mortal," had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius,
but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius -- man in the abstract -- was mortal,
was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite,
quite separate from all others. (translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude
)
72
Tolstoy, as I have explained earlier, was vocally critical of alienation among people––
primarily, of the gulf between the dying and the living. Once Ivan Il’ich had realized that he
might be sick, he immediately invented a new “us, the sick vs. you, the healthy" opposition,
which diluted his previous sense of unity with the doctor based on the qualities shared by all
judges.
Из резюме доктора Иван Ильич вывел то заключение, что плохо, а что ему,
доктору, да, пожалуй, и всем все равно, а ему плохо. […] Но он ничего не сказал,
а встал, положил деньги на стол и, вздохнув, сказал:— Мы, больные, вероятно,
72
Tolstoy, PSS, XXVI, 93
Radchenko 56
часто делаем вам неуместные вопросы, — сказал он. — Вообще, это опасная
болезнь или нет?..
From the doctor's summing up Ivan Ilych concluded that things were bad, but that
for the doctor, and perhaps for everybody else, it was a matter of indifference, though for
him it was bad. He said nothing of this, but rose, placed the doctor's fee on the table, and
remarked with a sigh: "We sick people probably often put inappropriate questions. But
tell me, in general, is this complaint dangerous, or not? . . . (translated by Louise and
Aylmer Maude
)
73
The very “opasnost’” ––the seriousness or, literally, “dangerousness” of a medical
condition––brings to mind armed conflict on the battlefield of life. “Opasnaya bolezn',” however,
is not “smertel'naya bolezn” (terminal illness). Ivan Il'ich has not been sentenced to death, as, for
example, a character in Tolstoy's other late story, "Bozheskoe i Chelovecheskoe." The sick and
the wounded often suffer a similar fate in Tolstoy’s works, as their deterioration obeys the same
algorithm: hopeful at first (and this hope is their most human attribute), they are then thrust into
an abyss of passions ranging from hatred to extreme, self-abnegating humility.
Gary Saul Morson argues that Tolstoy’s view of sickness and war have a lot in common,
especially when it comes to the unpredictability of either’s outcome: “In Tolstoy’s scheme,
disease, like the battle, is unknowable and unrepeatable; therefore, no course of treatment can
possibly work… Each unhealthy organism is unhealthy in its own way.”
74
73
Tolstoy, XXVI, 84
74
Gary Saul Morson, Hidden in Plain View: Narrative and Creative Potentials in “War and Peace,"
Stanford University Press, 1987, p. 172.
Radchenko 57
In Tolstoy’s framework, death possesses the superpower of organizing human life, just as
it does for Andreev, whom Tolstoy later excoriated. Death, in short, is the sole arbiter of a life’s
worth, and its ruling cannot be overturned. What the narrator of Sebastopol Sketches sees
outside, in the city’s peaceful routine, is drastically different from the suffering of injured bodies
inside the infirmary. Again, the border between life and death seems porous as the narrator
conceives of two worlds simultaneously: one of the living, the other of the dead. Within the
hospital walls, the narrator faces another battle: not unlike the Sebastopol soldiers fighting for
freedom, the doctors and the patients wage a battle with death. Tolstoy pulls no punches in his
highly naturalistic depiction of the injured:
Останавливаетесь перед другим больным, который лежит на полу и, как
кажется, в нестерпимых страданиях ожидает смерти. […] Он лежит навзничь,
закинув назад левую руку, в положении, выражающем жестокое страдание. Сухой
открытый рот с трудом выпускает хрипящее дыхание; голубые оловянные глаза
закачены кверху, и из-под сбившегося одеяла высунут остаток правой руки,
обвернутый бинтами. Тяжелый запах мертвого тела сильнее поражает вас, и
пожирающий внутренний жар, проникающий все члены страдальца, проникает как
будто и вас.
You halt before another invalid, who is lying on the floor and appears to be
awaiting death in intolerable agony. […] He is lying on his back, with his left arm thrown
out, in a position which is expressive of cruel suffering. His parched, open mouth with
difficulty emits his stertorous breathing; his blue, leaden eyes are rolled up, and from
beneath the wadded coverlet the remains of his right arm, enveloped in bandages,
Radchenko 58
protrude. The oppressive odor of a corpse strikes you forcibly, and the consuming,
internal fire which has penetrated every limb of the sufferer seems to penetrate you also.
(translated by Hapgood)
75
To depict the horror of this macabre space, he appeals to all the senses. Unlike the
suffering of the noble woman in “Three Deaths,” the physical unease of the wounded can be
communicated to the narrator: the odor and the internal fire of the wounded penetrates him. This
atmosphere of death deeply affects him as the list of sufferers grows. Tolstoy depicts the miseries
of a woman who was hit by a bomb and had her leg amputated, and later the anguished eyes of a
one-armed old soldier, already claimed by death:
Он сидит бодро, он поправился; но по мертвому, тусклому взгляду, по
ужасной худобе и морщинам лица вы видите, что это существо, уже выстрадавшее
лучшую часть своей жизни.
He is sitting with a wide-awake air, he puts himself to rights; but you see, by his
dull, corpse-like gaze, his frightful gauntness, and the wrinkles on his face, that he is a
being who has suffered for the best part of his life.(Translated by Hapgood)
76
Dubbed a “creature,” the soldier embodies the universal character of physical
impairment; deprived of all agency, he is, rather, an instrument of history, a little atom ambling
75
Tolstoy, PSS, IV, 9
76
Tolstoy, PSS, IV, 8
Radchenko 59
through the vast complexity of war. The quintessence of Tolstoy’s depiction of injured bodies
can be found in the following hospital episode:
Теперь, ежели нервы ваши крепки, пройдите в дверь налево: в той комнате
делают перевязки и операции. Вы увидите там докторов с окровавленными по
локти руками и бледными угрюмыми физиономиями, занятых около койки, на
которой, с открытыми глазами и говоря, как в бреду, бессмысленные, иногда
простые и трогательные слова, лежит раненый под влиянием хлороформа. Доктора
заняты отвратительным, но благодетельным делом ампутаций. Вы увидите,
как острый кривой нож входит в белое здоровое тело; увидите, как с ужасным,
раздирающим криком и проклятиями раненый вдруг приходит в чувство; увидите,
как фельдшер бросит в угол отрезанную руку; […] увидите ужасные,
потрясающие душу зрелища; увидите войну не в правильном, красивом и
блестящем строе, с музыкой и барабанным боем, с развевающимися знаменами и
гарцующими генералами, а увидите войну в настоящем ее выражении — в крови, в
страданиях, в смерти...
Now, if your nerves are strong, pass through the door on the left. In yonder room
they are applying bandages and performing operations. There, you will see doctors with
their arms blood-stained above the elbow, and with pale, stern faces, busied about a
cot, upon which, with eyes widely opened, and uttering, as in delirium, incoherent,
sometimes simple and touching words, lies a wounded man under the influence of
chloroform. The doctors are busy with the repulsive but beneficent work of
amputation. You see the sharp, curved knife enter the healthy, white body, you see
Radchenko 60
the wounded man suddenly regain consciousness with a piercing cry and curses, you see
the army surgeon fling the amputated arm into a corner, you see another wounded man,
[…] You behold the frightful, soul-stirring scenes; you behold war, not from its
conventional, beautiful, and brilliant side, with music and drum-beat, with fluttering flags
and galloping generals, but you behold war in its real phase—in blood, in suffering, in
death. (translated by Isabel F Hapgood)
77
The reader beholds the “anatomical theater” of warfare played out in all its ghastliness to
show the actual––blood-flecked, pained, death-bound––grimace of violence. However, having
borne witness to these sufferings, the narrator expresses a paradoxical sense of some cleansed,
renewed happiness. This little spurt of a joyous, animal-like bliss overtakes many of Tolstoy’s
spectators of death:
“Выходя из этого дома страданий, вы непременно испытаете отрадное
чувство, полнее вдохнете в себя свежий воздух, почувствуете удовольствие в
сознании своего здоровья, но вместе с тем в созерцании этих страданий почерпнете
сознание своего ничтожества и спокойно, без нерешимости пойдете на бастионы...”
On emerging from this house of pain, you will infallibly experience a sensation of
pleasure, you will inhale the fresh air more fully, you will feel satisfaction in the
consciousness of your health, but, at the same time, you will draw from the sight of these
77
Tolstoy, PSS, IV, pp.8-9
Radchenko 61
sufferings a consciousness of your nothingness, and you will go calmly and without any
indecision to the bastion. (translated by Isabel F. Hapgood)
78
Again, just as he later would in “The Death of Ivan Il’ich,” Tolstoy makes his fervent
case for death and suffering as an instructive Memento Mori. Neither is a curse, he maintains;
terminal illness is but an opportunity to look at life from a previously obscured angle. For
Tolstoy, a significant aspect of the problem of death is how life, and, moreover, the death of
others, makes an impact on the living. While “Ivan Il’ich” is, in fact, controlled by an innovative
point of view “from within,” also present are the points of view of those around him; an entire
spectrum of perspectives is thus formed. Furthermore, just as in Sebastopol Sketches and
“Kholstomer,” the death of others brings forth a paradoxically celebratory, all-encompassing
feeling of one’s own life, or perhaps even the Schopenhauerian will to it. While people express
this feeling only in their inner voices and only avow it in inner monologues, for the conventions
of society tend to suppress genuine reactions, the animals, like the wolf cubs in “Kholstomer,”
are much more outspoken:
На заре в овраге старого леса, в заросшем низу на полянке, радостно выли
головастые волченята. […] Так же выхаркнула волчица другому, и третьему, и
всем пятерым и тогда легла против них, отдыхая. Через неделю валялись у
кирпичного сарая только большой череп и два мослака, остальное все было
растаскано. На лето мужик, собиравший кости, унес и эти мослаки и череп и
пустил их в дело.
78
Tolstoy, Ibid, p.9
Radchenko 62
At dawn, in a ravine of the old forest, down in an overgrown glade, big-headed
wolf cubs were howling joyfully. […] In the same way the mother wolf coughed up a
piece for the second, the third, and all five of them, and then lay down in front of them to
rest. A week later only a large skull and two shoulder-blades lay behind the barn; the rest
had all been taken away. In summer a peasant, collecting bones, carried away these
shoulder-blades and skull and put them to use. (translated by Louise and Aylmer
Maude)
79
Kholstomer’s body is transformed into bare matter, every piece of which is utilized and
recycled in an organic way. Tolstoy’s disdain of human bodies and their uselessness is especially
evident in “Kholstomer”: “Ходившее по свету, евшее и пившее мертвое тело
Серпуховского убрали в землю гораздо после.” (The dead body of Serpukhovskoy, which had
walked about the earth eating and drinking, was put under ground much later.)
80
This gothic
invocation of the living dead must have exerted an appreciable influence on the modernists,
especially on Andreev. Once again, the emphasis is laid on irreverence in the depiction of human
bodies, the dead ones in particular:
Ни кожа, ни мясо, ни кости его никуда не пригодились. А как уже двадцать
лет всем в великую тягость было его ходившее по свету мертвое тело, так и уборка
этого тела в землю было только лишним затруднением для людей. […]но все-таки
мертвые, хоронящие мертвых, нашли нужным одеть это, тотчас же загнившее,
79
Tolstoy, PSS, XXVI, 37
80
Tolstoy, PSS, XXVI, 37
Radchenko 63
пухлое тело в хороший мундир, в хорошие сапоги, уложить в новый хороший гроб,
с новыми кисточками на четырех углах, потом положить этот новый гроб в другой,
свинцовый, и свезти его в Москву и там раскопать давнишние людские кости и
именно туда спрятать это гниющее, кишащее червями тело в новом мундире и
вычищенных сапогах и засыпать все землею.
Neither his skin, nor his flesh, nor his bones, were of any use. Just as for the last
twenty years his body that had walked the earth had been a great burden to everybody, so
the putting away of that body was again an additional trouble to people. […] yet the dead
who bury their dead found it necessary to clothe that swollen body, which at once began
to decompose, in a good uniform and good boots and put it into a new and expensive
coffin with new tassels at its four corners, and then to place that coffin in another coffin
of led, to take it to Moscow and there dig up some long buried human bones, and to hide
in that particular spot this decomposing maggotty body in its new uniform and polished
boots, and cover it all up with earth. (translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude
)
81
In this ironic account of “body disposal” (“uborka tela”), not only does Tolstoy upend the
traditional dualistic interplay between life and death, in which death always signals the negative,
he also infringes on an established ritualistic mechanism for coping with death. The burial in
Tolstoy’s view does not attest to the sublimity of death; it is, instead, the stoical acceptance of
suffering that elevates the spectator’s spirit. The narrator in Sebastopol Sketches goes back to this
point later as he walks around town and stumbles upon a funeral:
81
Tolstoy, PSS, XXVI, 37
Radchenko 64
Навстречу попадутся вам, может быть, из церкви похороны какого-нибудь
офицера, с розовым гробом и музыкой и развевающимися хоругвями; до слуха
вашего долетят, может быть, звуки стрельбы с бастионов, но это не наведет вас на
прежние мысли; похороны покажутся вам весьма красивым воинственным
зрелищем, звуки — весьма красивыми воинственными звуками, и вы не соедините
ни с этим зрелищем, ни с этими звуками мысли ясной, перенесенной на себя, о
страданиях и смерти, как вы это сделали на перевязочном пункте.
Perhaps you meet the funeral procession of some officer coming from the church,
with rose-colored coffin, and music and fluttering banners; perhaps the sounds of firing
reach your ear from the bastion, but this does not lead you back to your former thoughts;
the funeral seems to you a very fine military spectacle, and you do not connect with this
spectacle, or with the sounds, any clear idea of suffering and death, as you did at the point
where the bandaging was going on. (translated by Isabel F. Hapgood)
82
The motif of the fullness of life, which I discussed earlier, is the fulcrum of Tolstoy's
philosophy of death. In his vision of death as the guarantor of complete and irreducible aliveness,
Tolstoy anticipates Martin Heidegger's theory of "Sein Zum Tode," according to which the
totality of existence could only be achieved through the understanding of the possibility of not-
being, which actualizes the being. Tolstoy's texts devoted to death encapsulate the paradoxical
duality of forethought and non-thinking, which shows once again just how vexing this topic was
for Tolstoy, the philosopher. Some complicated, intellectually inclined characters only attain to
82
Tolstoy, PSS, IV, 9
Radchenko 65
the in-depth understanding of life through a brush with death; other, simpler minds flicker out
quietly, without ever taking stock of their life’s mission.
Crisis of Faith: The Philosophical Undertows of Tolstoy’s Fatalism
In the fall of 1886, while gravely ill, Tolstoy started his work on the philosophical
treatise “O Zhizni i Smerti.” However, according to his secretary N.N. Strakhov, while
developing his ideas for the treatise, Tolstoy concluded that for a person who has realized his
ultimate goal as devotion to God (i.e., arrived at the highest moral truth), there is no death
whatsoever. This conclusion impelled him to remove the word “death” from the title. And yet, as
it often happened with Tolstoy, his moralistic works aimed at helping others were not always
faithful to his inner struggles. The protagonist of “Diary of a Madman” strives to lead a religious
life, but it only gives him partial freedom from the horrific presence of death, from which, he
soon realizes, nothing could save him. At the same time, in 1884, in the treatise “V chem moya
Vera,” Tolstoy elucidates his peculiar attitude to the church. This treatise is essential for our
understanding of Tolstoy’s crisis of faith, which gave an impetus to the unconventional
depictions of death in his 1880s output.
One of the main reasons I am inclined to view him as a modernist is that Tolstoy
questioned the traditional Christian idea of the sacredness of the dead body––an imperishability
otherwise ensured by resurrection after the Last Judgement. A possible explanation for this
heresy may be located in Tolstoy’s war experience, and the multiple depictions of disfigured
bodies in his works do speak for themselves: the dead, we are made to understand, are
Radchenko 66
irreparably dead; their limbs are scattered across the battlefields, and no Christ-like resurrection
holds sway over them.
Even though Tolstoy devoted the treatise “V Chyom Moya Vera” (“What My Faith Is”)
to the word of Christ, he rejected the very essence of Christianity, which grants hope of eternal
life and unity in Christ. Tolstoy rebuffed the idea of Christ’s miraculous “reversal” of original
sin, which alleges to unburden people of all moral responsibility, and condemned it as illogical
and unfeasible. Consequently, there could be no glimmer of hope for life everlasting in the
physical body:
По этому учению, Сын Бога […] послан Богом на землю в образе
человека затем, чтобы […] снять с них все проклятия, наложенные на них тем же
Богом за грехи Адама, и восстановить их в их прежнем естественном состоянии
блаженства, то есть безболезненности, бессмертия, безгрешности и праздности
[…] Утверждается, что мертвые продолжают быть живыми.
According to this teaching, the Son of God [...] was sent by God to the earth in the
form of a man, in order to [...] remove all the curses imposed on them by the same God
for the sins of Adam, and restore them to their former natural state of bliss, that is
painlessness, immortality, impeccability and idleness [...] It is alleged that the dead
continue to be alive.
83
83
Tolstoy, PSS v 90-h tomakh. Moskva, Gos-izdat. khudozhestvennoi literatury: 1935-1958, vol.
XXIII, pp 374-375
Radchenko 67
Tolstoy does not accept the religious idea of the body’s eternal life, for it is marred by a
logical fallacy. Moreover, in his interpretation of the Gospels, he notes that the miracle of
Lazarus’ resurrection is no more than a trick of the Church. Andreev’s tragic resurrection of
Eleazar, too, ends up a ploy intended to boost the church’s waning authority.
84
While Tolstoy
tackles this paradox metaphorically, Andreev goes into great detail recounting the physical
miseries of a resurrected Eleazar fooled by Christ. This discrepancy between the ethics Christ
taught and the miracles he wrought was received negatively by both the official Church and
Tolstoy’s contemporaries. The grievous disconnect was first pointed out by Innokentii
Annensky, who, in his article “Vlast’ T’my,” (The governance of the Darkness) criticized
Tolstoy for accepting only one part of the Gospels (the one referring to the moral fiber of
Christ’s wisdom), and rejecting the miracle of “God-human nature” (bogochelovechestvo), which
lay at the heart of both Christianity and all late 19
th
-century religious philosophy, from
Dostoyevsky to the Symbolists:
Для нас, нетолстовцев, Евангелие совершенно особая книга и представление
о ней не вяжется ни с каким другим, кроме представления о Христе. А делить две
стихии, которые слились в Евангелии, как они были слиты в Христе, т. е. любовь и
чудо, мне, по крайней мере, претит.
For us, the non-Tolstoyans, the Gospel is a very special book and the concept of it
does not fit in with any other concept, but the concept of Christ. And to divide the two
84
In his short story “Eleazar,” Andreev depicts the miseries of Lazarus resurrected by Christ. Even
though he escaped death, his body still had the signs of decay and his eyes were filled with the
chaos of the oterness.
Radchenko 68
elements that are merged in the Gospel, as they were merged in Christ, i.e. love and
miracle, seems wrongful to me.
85
Tolstoy had formulated his own concept of immortality, but according to Aleksandr
Goldenweiser’s memoir, he was staunch in repudiating the resurrection of the body recognized
by the Orthodox Church. Goldenweiser recalls one of his conversations with Tolstoy about the
religious sect called Bessmertniki (the Immortals). His recollections make it abundantly clear that
Tolstoy, in fact, ridiculed the Church’s belief in the resurrection of the flesh: “У них бессмертие
отождествляется с телом. На низком уровне религиозного развития это понятно.
Церковное учение тоже представляет себе воскресение во плоти.”
86
Traditional Orthodox
views on death imply preservation of the body with a view to eventual rebirth. Father Sergii
Bulgakov reiterates the Orthodox theology in his Sofiologiya Smerti (Sophiology of Death):
При этом смерть, как разделение, предполагает возможность и нового
воссоединения духа и тела в воскресении.[…] дух, после мучительнейшего отрыва
от тела, отдается в удел загробному состоянию во всей его ущербности, тело же
предается тлению, сохраняя, однако, в себе жизненную силу для воскресения и в
связи с ним бессмертия.
At the same time, death, as a separation, implies the possibility of a new reunion
of the spirit and the body in resurrection. [...] the spirit, after a painful separation from the
85
Annenskii, Innokentii, Knigi Otrazhenii, Nauka, Moskva, 1979, p. 67-68
86
Golʹdenveĭzer, Aleksandr Borisovich. Vblizi Tolstogo Moskva: Gos. izd-vo khudozhestvennoĭ
literatury, 1959, p. 227
Radchenko 69
body, is given to the afterworld in all its inferiority, while the body indulges in
corruption, preserving the life force for resurrection and consequently, the immortality.
87
The Profanity of the Dead Body: Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky
Disillusionment with the traditional Orthodox treatment of death and afterlife makes
Tolstoy a castaway from realism; however, his disgust of the body excludes him from the
decadent camp, too. Tolstoy persistently denied the need for restoration of physical life.
According to him, the body should be "discarded" after death as it is devoid of all sacred
meaning. Rather than instill in the believer the prideful glory of a body transformed through its
spirit, resurrection ought to blend the mortal husk with nature, as does, for instance,
Kholstomer’s.
Among the consequences of this attitude to death is the idea of alienation of the body,
which also could be regarded as prefiguring Solov’ev’s symbolism. No matter how in thrall to
the folkloric roots and muzhik’s unbreakable ties to his soil, Tolstoy nevertheless rejected the
fundamental “rootedness” of the body. Neither valuable nor viable, the body for Tolstoy is
ridden with sin and by that token, unworthy of resurrection. Tolstoy was skeptical of the 1860s
philosophical materialism and debunked the cult of positivist science, which placed the material
on a pedestal and narrowed the inner world down to reflexes and nerves. In the dichotomy of
body and soul, he most unequivocally takes the side of the latter, dismantling the unity of the two
87
Bulgakov, Sergii N., ‘Sofiologiia smerti’, in Sapov, V. V. (ed.), Tikhie Dumy.
Moskva: Respublika, 1996, pp. 275–306, p.278
Radchenko 70
that resides in the Christian paradigm, since Christ exemplifies a convergence of the human and
the universal. Tolstoy, in other words, brushes aside the very human nature in the human:
Kогда я размышляю, то мне труднее понять, что такое мое тело, чем то, что
такое моя душа. Как ни близко тело, оно все-таки чужое, только душа своя […]по-
настоящему есть только то, чего нельзя ни видеть, ни слышать, ни ощупать, то, что
мы называем своим «я» — своей душою.
When I start thinking, it’s harder for me to understand the nature of my body than
the nature of my soul. No matter how close the body is, it’s still a stranger, only soul is
mine [...] you really possess only what you cannot see, hear or touch, - and that we call
our “I” – our soul.
88
Ever vigilant of the body’s innate sinfulness, Tolstoy neither allows flesh to be an
instrument of pleasure nor lets it embrace its sickness. He denies both the possibility of
resurrection and the natural right to suffer, as he cannot muster any empathy for his characters’
bodies. Moreover, those who cry and cavil––say, the noblewoman in “Three Deaths”–– he calls
“гадка и жалка” (“abject and disgusting”). Interestingly enough, Tolstoy does acknowledge the
need for care, but does not permit his characters to receive it when the offer is extended (this
refusal sets him apart from Heidegger, who posited that care could save us from the anxiety of
death). His dying characters invariably beg for compassion and a soothing hand, but rarely do
they get either:
88
Tolstoy, XLV, 33
Radchenko 71
[…] мучительнее всего было для Ивана Ильича то, что никто не жалел его
так, как ему хотелось, чтобы его жалели: […]хотелось того, чтоб его, как дитя
больное, пожалел бы кто-нибудь. Ему хотелось, чтоб его приласкали,
поцеловали, поплакали бы над ним, как ласкают и утешают детей.
At certain moments after prolonged suffering he wished most of all (though he
would have been ashamed to confess it) for someone to pity him as a sick child is pitied.
He longed to be petted and comforted. he knew he was an important functionary, that he
had a beard turning grey, and that therefore what he long for was impossible, but still he
longed for it.
89
Physicality in general has always been sinful for Tolstoy. The body in and of itself seems
an obstacle for life, since it is egotistic, avaricious, and desirous. For Dostoyevsky, on the
contrary, the body, the dead body especially, was always an allegory of Christ: one need not
recall more than Prince Myshkin’s horror at confronting Christ’s decomposing body in Holbein’s
painting. Dostoyevsky himself, according to his wife’s memoirs, was as shocked by “The Body
of the Dead Christ in the Tomb” (1521). In The Idiot, Myshkin exclaims to the perfectly pleased
Rogozhin: “На эту картину! — вскричал вдруг князь, под впечатлением внезапной мысли,
— на эту картину! Да от этой картины у иного еще вера может пропасть!” (“That painting!”
- the prince exclaimed suddenly, under the impact of a sudden thought. “That painting! Some
people might lose their faith by looking at that painting!”)
90
If for Dostoyevsky the spectacle of
89
Tolstoy, XXVI, 98
90
Dostoyevsky F.M. Idiot Moskva: Azbuka Drofa, 2008, p.228
Radchenko 72
rotten flesh is a temptation, as it throws into question the possibility of resurrection, for Tolstoy it
is the final, sobering confirmation that nothing lies beyond the grave.
Dostoyevsky never gave death the credit that Tolstoy did. As Bakhtin remarked, “In
Dostoyevsky's world death finalizes nothing because death does not affect the most important
thing in the world––consciousness for its own sake. In Tolstoy's world, however, death possesses
considerable finalizing and resolving power.” For Dostoyevsky, as well as for religious
philosophers such as Bulgakov, to overcome death humans should overcome human nature. As
father Sergii Bulgakov sermonizes, “Смертность в человеке может быть преодолена лишь
силою Божественной, чрез Богочеловека.” (“The Mortality in a Man can only be overcome by
the Divine power, through the figure of a God-man.”)
91
It is only in “Bobok," which was initially perceived as appallingly heretical and yet
proved to have a lasting effect on the modernist writers (e.g., Filonov’s “Propeven’,” on which
later), that Dostoyevsky envisions an afterlife of interred bodies. The corpses in their graves
continue living as if they had never died, entrapped by their passions and bodily pleasures. A true
oddity in Dostoyevsky’s oeuvre, “Bobok” is a satirical piece prefaced by a disclaimer: the
narrator and the writer, we are informed, are different people, just like Tolstoy’s madman’s
anonymous voices or Andreev’s narrators in "Krasnyi smekh." Death and madness go hand in
hand once again as the narrator grumbles: “Со мной что-то странное происходит. И характер
меняется, и голова болит. Я начинаю видеть и слышать какие-то странные вещи."
91
Bulgakov, Sergii N., ‘Sofiologiia smerti’, in Sapov, V. V. (ed.), Tikhie Dumy
Moskva: Respublika, 1996, pp. 275–306, p.276
Radchenko 73
(Something queer is happening to me. My character is changing, and my head aches.
I'm beginning to see and hear some strange things.)
92
Unlike Tolstoy, whose madness is caused by the absurd and uncanny palpability of death,
Dostoyevsky’s encounter with death is a slice of fantastic Menippean Satire. The depiction of
living corpses is preceded by some naturalistic details, such as green water in the graves and the
odor of death, "mertvetskii dukh." Otherwise, the portrayal is wholly metaphorical and symbolic,
à la Odoevsky’s “Zhivoi Mertvets.” The theme of eroticism, and even priapism, after death,
plays a prominent role in “Bobok,” as well as in Filonov’s avant-gardist opus “Propeven’ o
Prorosli Mirovoi.” Notably, one of the corpses calls the limbo space they inhabit “the Valley of
Josaphat” (“Милости просим в нашу, так сказать, долину Иосафатову”), which is the venue
of the Last Judgment mentioned in the Book of Joel:
I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat.
And I will enter into judgment with them there, on behalf of my people and my heritage
Israel, because they have scattered them among the nations and have divided up my
land.
93
This Biblical allusion is a tell-tale sign that the dead all are awaiting the resurrection.
However, their death is miserable, and their posthumous thoughts and desires are abject and
lowly, as well. From their rancid abode to the tripping cadences of their broken laughter (“ho-ho-
ho”), this is an apparent model for Filonov's afterlife in “Propeven'.” However, unlike Filonov,
92
Dostoyevsky F.M. Bobok. Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii v 30 tomakh. – Leningrad: “Nauka,”
1980, tom XXI, pp. 41-54, 42
93
Joel, 3:2
Radchenko 74
Dostoyevsky never focuses on the physical decay of his characters, as the object of his satirical
gaze is the decay of morality. The dead carry on with their sinful lives, transgressing the limits
they faced in life, even while waiting for the Last Judgment:
Разврат в таком месте, разврат последних упований, разврат дряблых и
гниющих трупов и -- даже не щадя последних мгновений сознания! Им даны,
подарены эти мгновения и... А главное, главное, в таком месте! Нет, этого я не могу
допустить...
Depravity in such a place, depravity of the last aspirations, depravity of sodden
and rotten corpses and -- not even sparing the last moments of consciousness! Those
moments have been granted, vouchsafed to them ... And worst of all - in such a place!
No, that I cannot admit...
94
What this “depravity” telegraphs is, of course, spiritual rather than physical death; the
foul smell is one of their decayed morals, rather than flesh: "Ведь мы умерли, а между тем
говорим; как будто и движемся, а между тем и не говорим и не движемся […] слышат
вонь, так сказать, нравственную".
95
Perhaps, the taboo imposed on the depiction of a decayed
body was so powerful that Dostoyevsky dared not violate it even in an avowedly satirical work.
Hans Holbein’s painting of dead Christ, which made such an impression on Dostoyevsky as well
as on his characters in The Idiot, is an example of the early Renaissance breaking
94
Dostoyevsky F.M. Bobok. Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii v 30 tomakh. – Leningrad: “Nauka,”
1980, tom XXI, pp. 41-54, p. 54
95
Dostoyevsky, ibid, 52
Radchenko 75
representational rules. The infraction was particularly disturbing as it broke two taboos at once: a
graphic image of physical decay sat alongside a transgression against the sacredness of Christ.
As Szabo notes, "In a brilliant study of Western attitudes toward death, Philippe Ariès claimed
that European societies lost all taste for the macabre in the early modern period and that grisly
imagery was repressed between the seventeenth and late nineteenth centuries.”
96
Unlike Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, guided by his detail-oriented approach, paid attention to
the signs of decay on the bodies of his dead characters, again affirming this as an outward sign of
their sin. In many of his works, he accentuated that the body was subject to decay, and thus, did
not take part in any further resurrection proceedings. As opposed to “Bobok,” the smell of death
is precisely the smell of decaying flesh in many of his works. Here are a few instances:
Тяжелый запах мертвого тела сильнее поражает вас.(The heavy smell of a
dead body hits you;)
97
Петр Иванович тотчас же почувствовал легкий запах
разлагающегося трупа; (Noticing this, Peter Ivanovich was immediately aware of a faint
odor of a decomposing body.) Петру Ивановичу особенно приятно было дохнуть
чистым воздухом после запаха ладана, трупа и карболовой кислоты; (Peter
Ivanovich found the fresh air particularly pleasant after the smell of incense, the dead
body, and carbolic acid; )
98
Только в эту минуту я понял, отчего происходил тот
сильный тяжелый запах, который, смешиваясь с запахом ладана, наполнял
96
Szabo, 59
97
Tolstoy, PSS, IV,5
98
Tolstoy, PSS, XXVI, 95
Radchenko 76
комнату.”(Only then did I understand why that strong heavy smell was occurring, which,
mixing with the smell of incense, filled the room.)
99
Before Tolstoy, to include the smell of a corpse in a literary text was almost unthinkable.
For example, some scholars insist that the phrase "tletvornyi dukh," – “putrid smell” used by
Dostoyevsky in the seventh chapter of Brothers Karamazov, was borrowed from Tiutchev’s
poem: “И гроб опущен уж в могилу,/И все столпилося вокруг…/Толкутся, дышат через
силу, Спирает грудь тлетворный дух…” (1836) (And the coffin is lowered into the grave,
/And everything is crowded/ People are pushing, breathing with difficulty,/The putrid smell
squeezes the breast.)
100
However, the phrase “tletvornyi dukh” here does not exactly convey the
fetid odor of rotting flesh; most likely, Tiutchev alluded to the wet and muddy soil of a grave or a
tomb––an allegorized death, perhaps, but hardly a corpse’s olfactory emissions
101
.
Such an offensively naturalistic detail of death, which shocked both Nikolen’ka in
“Detstvo” and the original readers of Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, for Tolstoy is merely
a step in the natural sequence of events. There is no space in this order for the Christian miracle
of transformation as the only miracle that matter can perform is one of transmutation into a new
form following the stage of organic decomposition.
99
Tolstoy, “Detstvo. Otrochestvo. Yunost’.” Sobranie sochinenii v 22 tomah, tom 1, p.99
100
Tiutchev F.I. “I Grob opushchen uzh v Mogilu…” Lirika v II t-h. AN SSSR. –M. Nauka,1996,
v.I, p.63
101
Tolstoy parts with the cliché of the sentimental depiction of death typical for the early 19
th
century. However, the impressive physicality of the smell that is omnipresent in his death scenes
will not bring him closer the neo-romanticism of Baudelaire, or the gothic horrors of Edgar Allan
Poe. If we mention Poe, Dostoyevsky would be the one following his path. (Bobok)
Radchenko 77
For Dostoyevsky, the smell of decay accompanying the death of Father Zosima in
Brothers Karamazov is an instigation to faith inasmuch as faith, provided it is genuine, needs no
miracles, and one’s belief in Zosima’s blessedness ought to be unconditional; so Alyosha
continues on his spiritual path after an attack of initial doubts. The smell, nevertheless, leads him
to the strengthening of his faith. Dostoyevsky's deaths are filled with allusions to Christ's
temptation, death, and resurrection. For Tolstoy, meanwhile, death is a natural process, and the
human body is reintegrated into nature on par with animal carcasses.
The Organic Idea of Nature
The short story “Three Deaths” discussed above ends with the death of a tree, which is
presented as the most moral and correct way of dying. The image of the same grass growing in
the graveyards of both barynia and peasant encodes Tolstoy’s idea of people’s equality before
death. While the sentence “grass grew on the graves” is the only one in the final version, in a
draft outlining the plot this paragraph is far more explicit in its correspondences between the
cyclicality of nature and that of human life and death:
Надъ могилой дяди Хведора растетъ густая трава изъ-подъ камня. Такая же
трава растетъ около часовни, и та, и другая каждый годъ засыхаетъ, засыпается
снегомъ и обновляется...
Radchenko 78
A thick grass grows out of the stone on the grave of Uncle Fiodor. The same type
of grass grows near the church. Both this grass and that grass dries out, gets covered with
snow and renews…
102
According to Tolstoy, humans after death should become an element of nature, absorbed
back into a larger universal entity. The flesh, which belongs to the organic world, should return
into the realm of natural events. This idea, to a significant extent borrowed from Schopenhauer’s
World as A Will and Representation, would also inspire Filonov’s philosophy of the organic
nature of life and death (to be discussed in the fourth chapter of my dissertation):
The nature expresses that the annihilation of these individuals is a matter of
indifference to her, does her no harm, is of no significance at all [...] Now if the universal
mother carelessly sends forth her children without protection to a thousand threatening
dangers, this can only be because she knows that, when they fall, they fall back into her
womb, where they are safe and secure; therefore their fall is only a jest. With man she
does not act otherwise than she does with the animals; hence her declaration extends also
to him; the life or death of the individual is a matter of indifference to her. Consequently,
they should be, in a certain sense, a matter of indifference to us; for in fact we ourselves
are nature.
103
102
See: http://tolstoy-lit.ru/tolstoy/chernoviki/tri-smerti-varianty.htm, accessed on 6.7.2019
103
Schopenhauer A. The World as Will and Representation in II volumes, v.II, Dover Publications,
New York, 1958, p.474
Radchenko 79
In Sebastopol Sketches there are a number of characters testifying to the authentic, organic
manner of living and dying. As usual, the simple soldiers are unpretentious and represent a
healthy attitude to death and physical discomfort. Some have lost their legs, but cognizance of
one’s external limitations does not engender any kind of inner agony:
На пятом баксионе, ваше благородие, как первая бандировка была: навел
пушку, стал отходить, этаким манером, к другой амбразуре, как он ударит меня по
ноге, ровно как в яму оступился. Глядь, а ноги нет. — Неужели больно не было в
эту первую минуту? — Ничего; только как горячим чем меня пхнули в ногу. — Ну,
а потом? — И потом ничего; только как кожу натягивать стали, так саднило как
будто. Оно первое дело, ваше благородие, не думать много: как не думаешь, оно
тебе и ничего. Все больше оттого, что думает человек.
On the fifth bastion, during the first bombardment. I had just trained a cannon,
and was on the point of going away, so, to another embrasure when it struck me in the
leg, just as if I had stepped into a hole and had no leg. - Was it not painful at the first
moment? - Not at all; only as though something boiling hot had struck my leg.-- Well,
and then? - And then—nothing; only the skin began to draw as though it had been rubbed
hard. The first thing of all, Your Excellency, is not to think at all. If you don't think about
a thing, it amounts to nothing. Men suffer from thinking more than from anything
else.(Translated by Isabel F.Hapgood)
104
104
Tolstoy, PSS, IV, 7
Radchenko 80
Non-thinking, therefore, is the one tenable solution to suffering: this idea, nursed by
Tolstoy since his earliest artistic endeavors and cemented in War and Peace in the figure of
Platon Karataev, is, by and large, at the core of Eastern spiritual practices. Thinking is
attachment; attachment to the earthly life is vain; the vanity of war is comparable to the vanity of
human existence. The city of Sevastopol meets the narrator with a cacophony of life. The
narrator enumerates countless details to be gleaned from the crowds of people, and later contrasts
them to the restricted world of the hospital:
Бабы продают булки, русские мужики с самоварами кричат: сбитень
горячий, и тут же на первых ступенях валяются заржавевшие ядра, бомбы, картечи
и чугунные пушки разных калибров.[…] огромные брусья, пушечные станки,
спящие солдаты; стоят лошади, повозки, зеленые орудия и ящики, пехотные ко
́ злы;
двигаются солдаты, матросы, офицеры, женщины, дети, купцы;[…]
The women are selling rolls, Russian peasants with samovárs are crying hot
sbiten; and here upon the first steps are strewn rusted cannon-balls, bombs, grape-shot,
and cast-iron cannon of various calibers; a little further on is a large square, upon which
lie huge beams, gun-carriages, sleeping soldiers; there stand horses, wagons, green guns,
ammunition-chests, and stacks of arms; soldiers, sailors, officers, women, children, and
merchants; […](translated by Isabel F. Hapgood)
105
This is the same vanity of common routines that would fill the life of Ivan Il’ich until he
realized that he was dying. In the face of death, people are senseless atoms, ants, whose actions
105
Tolstoy, PSS, IV, 5
Radchenko 81
do not make a dent on the course of their own lives, let alone the course of history. Tolstoy used
this metaphor in his notebooks to express the absurdity of analyzing individuals in history:
Человек, личность, есть атом. Он необходим, как необходим атом для
теории физики, но определение его может довести только до абсурда.
A person, individual, is an atom. It is indispensable, as an atom is indispensable to
the theory of physics, but the definition of it will lead only to the absurd.
106
Life is so much larger than the suffering of one of the living, that it does not even register
individual death. Wasting away in the grip of tuberculosis, Chekhov could not agree with
Tolstoy on this issue:
В клинике Остроумова его посетил Лев Толстой, заведший разговор о
бессмертии, суть которого сводилась к тому, что надо слиться с неким
всеобъемлющим началом, “сущность и цели которого, — не без иронии цитировал
в письме Чехов яснополянского мудреца, — для нас составляют тайну”. То есть
купить вечную жизнь ценой утраты собственной индивидуальности. “Такое
бессмертие мне не нужно.
Lev Tolstoy visited him in Ostroumov’s clinic and started a conversation on
immortality, the essence of which was to merge with some kind of comprehensive entity.
“the essence and the goals of which, - as Chekhov ironically quoted in one of his letters, -
106
Tolstoy, PSS LXVIII, 88
Radchenko 82
“are secret for us.” That is, to buy eternal life at the cost of losing your own individuality.
“I don't need such immortality.
107
The only way to cope with death, then, is to realize that it is an organic way of creating
new life. Death obtains its meaning as soon as organic matter becomes crops or food. As Lotman
argues, the traditional Russian attitude to the eternal cycle of life and death has its roots in the
pagan rituals. The idea of cyclical naturalness is hardwired into the folkloric consciousness, and
more often than not, it is animals, trees, or peasants in the works of Tolstoy that embody the
hoped-for acceptance of death. The Christian resurrection has never been a part of the Russian
peasant outlook. In this sense, the secular resurrections of socialist realism, following in the
footsteps of Russian cosmism, are at bottom considerably more religious than Tolstoy’s fusion
with the absolute, in that physicality is prized in the former and barred from the latter.
Conclusion
While most critics argue that “The Death of Ivan Il'ich” stands alone in Tolstoy's oeuvre
announcing the absurdity of life and inevitability of death, this chapter examined Sebastopol
Sketches, “Kholstomer,” and “Diary of a Madman” to identify some repeated motifs in Tolstoy’s
depiction of death. Most of them support the idea that Tolstoy belonged to the modernist wing:
medicalization of the human body; rejection of traditional Orthodox views on resurrection;
understanding of the body as flesh consisting of perishable matter, etc. Also essential for Tolstoy
was the moral instruction of Memento Mori, originated in the 15th century in France and revived
107
Kireev R. Chekhov. Poseshchenie Boga. “Neva”, No.7, 2014, p.195
Radchenko 83
in the art of fin-de-siècle, and, especially in the works of Alexander Blok. Having analyzed
Tolstoy’s view on death, I argue that Schopenhauer’s treatise World as Will and Representation
played a central role in the development of Tolstoy’s view on death, after which Leonid
Andreev’s thanatological sensibility––the subject of my next chapter––was later modeled.
Tolstoy acknowledges the suffering of the body, but he does not allow Ivan Il’ich to
embrace the suffering of his. He notes that the body is in pain, and yet offers no alleviation or
consolation. Unlike Tolstoy, Andreev makes allowances for physical suffering to the extent that
the body is allowed to be independent of the soul. Andreev, then, may have ushered in a new era
in the depiction of death, affliction, and corporeality, but it would not have been possible without
Tolstoy’s contribution.
Radchenko 84
Chapter 2.
Leonid Andreev and the Dance of Death.
And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and
death shall flee from them.
(Rev, 9:6)
This chapter is devoted to Leonid Andreev, one of the darkest pessimists of Russian
literature. It develops and enhances the conclusions of the previous chapter, which argues that
the works of Tolstoy were the first steps in Russian modernism towards the uncanny territory of
the existential chaos. Andreev made horror, inevitability of death, and disenchantment with the
idea of resurrection the central themes of his literary works. Andreev’s short stories unfold a
whole gallery of deaths: different types of suicide (death under a train, poisoning, deadly jump
from a table, an attempt to transgress into cosmos on a plane), death on the battlefields,
apoplexy, illness, and hunger. Almost every story deals with the theme of death, either
metaphorical or physical (Krasnyi Smekh (Red Laugh), Eleazar, Zhertva, Rasskaz o Semi
poveshennykh (Tale of the Seven who were hung), Poliot (Flight), Smert’ Sergeia Petrovicha
(Death of Sergei Petrovitch). This chapter discusses how Andreev developed the sprouts of
Tolstoy’s depiction of sick body and death to the point of decadent naturalization. Tolstoy’s
image of the collective self acquired a negative and horrific undertone in Andreev’s anti-
revolutionary and anti-war interpretation. Tolstoy’s dream of the communal self as a means of
obtaining eternal life became the faceless chaos of many bodies in the urbanist works of
Andreev. This chapter concludes that Andreev recognized the dangerous duality of
collectivization, and his essay Veni, Creator! (Come, Creator!) predicted the terrifying
Radchenko 85
transformation of Tolstoy’s idea of organic peasant community into the Soviet idea of the
immortal collective body of the Bolshevik state.
Tolstoy’s Influence On Andreev. The Collective Selfhood and the Collective Body
Many contemporaries, including Leo Tolstoy, emphasized that Andreev’s oeuvre was
pessimistic in its allegorical darkness and physicality. Indeed, in many of his stories, the allegory
of death is ubiquitous and leaves a man in silence and loneliness. Andreev himself acknowledged
the limitations of his art, constricted by the passion for the depiction of fear of death and creating
characters prone to madness. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the century, Andreev was
immensely popular, which suggests that the deathly tendencies in his art managed to capture the
decadent side of the fin-de-siècle era.
Andreev was always a devoted follower of Tolstoy and even visited him in “Yasnaia
Poliana” shortly before his death in 1910. Andreev deeply cared about Tolstoy’s opinion and
dedicated one of his favorite works – “Rasskaz o semi poveshennykh” (The Seven Who Were
Hanged) (1908) to Tolstoy. However, according to the diary of Tolstoy’s secretary, Valentin
Bulgakov, Tolstoy did not approve of the naturalistic shift in Andreev’s works and wanted to
warn him about the “danger of falling into the naturalistic darkness.”
108
Bulgakov remembers:
Толстой не был безразличен к творчеству Андреева, он с большим
интересом присматривался к его литературному развитию, сожалел о снижении в
его творчестве реалистического элемента.
108
Tolstoy, L.N. Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii v 90 tomakh, т. 75, с. 181
Radchenko 86
Tolstoy was not indifferent towards the work of Andreev; he observed his literary
development with great interest and regretted the decline of the realistic elements in his
work.
109
In August of 1902, Andreev in a letter to the literary critic Aleksandr Izmailov Andreev
admitted that “The Abyss” was “the biological daughter, perhaps illegitimate” of Tolstoy’s
Kreutzer Sonata.
110
To some degree, it is possible to extend his argument and claim that the
majority of the plots in Andreev’s works were influenced by Tolstoy. Tolstoy’s impact on
Andreev’s worldview was vast, and Andreev himself acknowledged it:
Учителем своим признаю Толстого. Толстой прошел надо мною и остался
во мне. Выше Толстого я никого не знаю, каждое его произведение считаю
образцом искусства и мерилом художественности.
I regard Tolstoy as my teacher. Tolstoy surpassed me and stayed within me. I do
not know anyone more important than Tolstoy, and every work of his I view as a paragon
of art and a measure of artistic taste.
111
109
Bulgakov V.F. Lev Tolstoi v Poslednii God Ego Zhizni, p.14
110
See White, Frederick H. Degeneration, Decadence and Disease in the Russian Fin-de-Siècle :
Neurasthenia in the Life and Work of Leonid Andreev Manchester, UK: Manchester University
Press, 2014.
111
Andreev, L. Povesti i Rasskazy v 2-kh tomakh, Moskva: “Khudozhestvennaya Literatura”,
1971, v. 2, p. 421.
Radchenko 87
Tolstoy sensed the approach of the era of the masses early on, when he outlined in War
and Peace the important role of the human masses (the people’s swarm) in the accomplishment
of historical goals. He wrote:
Есть жизнь стихийная, роевая, где человек неизбежно исполняет
предписанные ему законы. Человек сознательно живет для себя, но служит
бессознательным орудием для достижения исторических, общечеловеческих целей.
Совершенный поступок невозвратим, и действие его, совпадая во времени с
миллионами действий других людей, получает историческое значение.
There is the elemental life of the swarm, in which he inevitably follows the laws
decreed for him. Consciously man lives for himself, but unconsciously he serves as an
instrument for the accomplishment of the historical, social ends of mankind. An act
committed is irrevocable, and that action coinciding in time with the actions of millions
of other men acquires historical significance.
112
While Tolstoy emphasized the crucial role of the individual mind in history in his earlier
works, his later works adopted the Schopenhauer’s philosophy of the primacy of the universal
will over the individualistic being. It is evident through the observation of the egotistic being
and the melancholic assertion of the futility of the individual in Kholstomer and Death of Ivan Il'
ich. I suggest that he depicts the individual sufferings of Ivan Il’ich to illustrate Schopenhauer’s
idea that death of one ordinary member of the society does not affect the functionality of society
and the way of life in general. Tolstoy attributed all of the social and spiritual good to the
112
Tolstoy, PSS v 90 tomakh, volume 11, p. 6
Radchenko 88
collective body, especially the collective body of the peasantry. Andreev, while emphasizing his
interest in the general and not the individual, portrayed this coming change with fear. His stories
aimed to be symbolic parables reflecting the general tendencies of consciousness of the masses.
His characters are often not solitary but represent a compilation, a type, an image, reflecting the
transformations of the world. Vikentii Veresaev remembers Andreev saying that the object of
his artistic investigation is not the individual and the unique, but the general and the typical:
В этом-то именно и достоинство художественного описания. Нужно именно
описывать вообще реку, вообще город, вообще человека, вообще любовь. Какой
интерес в конкретности?
This is precisely the merit of the artistic description. It is necessary to describe
the river in general, the city in general, the person in general, and love in general. What
is the interest in concreteness?
113
Along with Schopenhauer's philosophical idea of the primacy of the Whole over the
individual, Darwin’s theory of classification of the units of life was another significant influence
on the modernists.
114
The first Russian edition was published in St. Petersburg as early as 1864.
Darwinism allowed one to think of the individual only as a component of the universal process
113
Veresaev V.V. Sochineniya, Volume 4 Gos. Izdatelstvo hudozhestvennoi literatury, 1948, p.
451
114
Velimir Khlebnikov - while being a student of Kazan University in 1904 - wrote an auto-
epitaph inspired by Darwin’s theory (and, as I suggest, by Tolstoy as well): he was struggling
with the weight of his species and got rid of its influence. […] He supposed that “the
introduction of a structure similar to a bee-hive into the human practice would be beneficial for
the human race” ( Khlebnikov. V. Neizdannye Proizvedeniya.Red. i kom N.Khardzhieva,
T.Gritsa, Moskva, 1940, p.318)
Radchenko 89
of evolution; thus, the idea that the survival of species depends on the strongest individual
rendered the multiple deaths unimportant. The clash between the individual and the collective
was at the very heart of philosophical and, later, political arguments of the century. However,
one of the main consequences of this theory, relevant to our study, is that Immortality can only
be achieved through the life of humanity as a whole.
For Tolstoy, a man in his movement to simplicity and self-abnegation was supposed to
reach the unity with nature and persist on his continuous life path. On the other hand, Andreev,
in his urge to depict different character types, made a revolutionary discovery that there could be
no beneficial "commonality" of people – a novel notion that, as I explain later, turned out to be a
contra-revolutionary and even anti-Leninist. In their conformity, people become a faceless, gray,
and often ecstatic crowd. The philosophical struggle between the collective and the individual
self is evident in many of Andreev’s stories, such as Zhertva, Prokliatie Zveria, Stena, Krasnyi
Smekh. Another significant difference between the two is that Tolstoy expected the birth of the
collective body to originate in the countryside, a rural space where humans are close to the earth
and their metaphorical roots. In reality, however, the collectivism developed in the urban areas,
and Andreev explored the simulacrum of communal life within the realm of the collective urban
life. The city is what horrifies the characters in Andreev's short stories. Pet’ka from Pet’ka na
Dache only dreams of staying in the countryside, but he is dragged out of the idyllic closeness to
nature and imprisoned in the urban jungle. The narrator of Proklyatie Zverya also paradoxically
acknowledges his love for the sea and the forest and fear of the city: Я боюсь города, я люблю
пустынное море и лес (I fear the city, I like deserted sea and forest.)
115
However, shortly
115
Andreev Leonid, Sobranie SOchinenii v 6 tomah, Moskva, Kudozhestvennaya Literatura,
1990-1996, v.III p.17
Radchenko 90
thereafter, he adapts to the surrounding circumstances of the urban life, perceives himself as one
of the many and feels happy and content to belong to the same human species as the others:
Поскорее стать одною из этих маленьких волн, умалиться их малостью,
умножиться их множеством, растворить свое одинокое, сумасшедшее "я" в
однородности всех этих таких же одиноких, сумасшедших "я", сделавшихся
"мы". - Город! Город! […] я похож на всех людей, как и они на меня, что я
тоже принадлежу к этому великому и славному семейству.
Sooner to become one of these small waves, diminish with their smallness,
multiply with their multitude, dissolve my lonely, crazy individuality in the homogeneity
of all those lonely, crazy individual “I” that has become “We.” - City! City! [...] I
resemble all people, as they resemble me, I also belong to this great and glorious
family.
116
Continuing the theme of memento mori, I propose looking at this search for the collective self as
a strategy of fighting death by getting lost in an imagery existence of others. As Merab
Mamardashvili once noted, Memento mori is tautological to the imperative “fulfill yourself,” or
“know yourself,” in the face of death and thus represent a classical existential idea of a person
comprehending his or her existence under the circumstances of the inevitability of death. It is
important that the contemplation about the uniformity of appearance, like wearing hats or having
116
Andreev, ibid, 19
Radchenko 91
a handkerchief triggers the feeling of unity as a symbol of belonging to a particular group of
people:
Что такое носовой платок? […]Но когда он у одного, у двух, у всех,- он
становится символом, маленьким белым знаменем братства. Мы все употребляем
носовой платок.
What is a handkerchief? [...] But when one, two, all of us have it, it becomes a
symbol, a little white banner of brotherhood. We all use handkerchiefs.
117
For the narrator, the discovery of this feature very soon induces bitterness and fear of
annihilation. This is what differs Andreev from Fedorov and his idea of fraternity. Incidentally,
this is also what Chekhov did not like in Tolstoy’s idea of immortality. Chekhov, as it was
mentioned earlier, was reluctant to become a part of a cosmic entity after his death, as he refused
to discard his individuality. The narrator of Andreev’s story also realizes, petrified, that even his
face did not belong to him anymore:
Неприятное началось постепенно, и началось оно с того, что эти
общность и сходство, которым я радовался, стали проникать несколько
глубже,чем я бы хотел […] что воля моя, равно как и желания мои, потеряли
свою самостоятельность и в значительной степени подчинены воле и
117
Andreev Leonid, Sobranie Sochinenii v 6 tomah, Moskva: “Kudozhestvennaya Literatura”,
1990-1996, volume III p. 21
Radchenko 92
желаниям других людей. […] и вот уже не принадлежит мне мое платье, и лицо
мое не принадлежит мне.
The unpleasant started gradually, and it started with the fact that this community
and the commonality that made me happy began to penetrate somewhat deeper than I
would like [...] that my will, as well as my wishes, lost their independence and was
significantly subordinated to the will and desires of others. [...] and now my dress no
longer belongs to me, and my face does not belong to me.
118
Andreev's characters are torn between the urge to keep their individuality, and the need to
be accepted into a larger unit, as if belonging to a larger group of people could save them from
death.
The Fluidity of a Singular Body
It is typical for Andreev to dissolve the boundary between life and death. The wall that
safeguards the human mind from the madness of the encounter with death frequently disappears.
Tolstoy sensed the danger of crossing the line and consciously called it “abnormal” in The Diary
of a Madman. For Tolstoy, the reality of life and body was stronger than madness. For Andreev,
the body is no longer an impregnable wall. He easily transgresses the body so that a person
could travel between worlds. For him, the boundary between a dreamlike state and the real life
becomes invisible to the extent that one cannot figure out where the life of the living beings ends
and where the life of the dead begins. Andreev’s early essay "Kogda my, Mertvye,
118
Andreev, III, 21
Radchenko 93
probuzhdaemsia” (When we, the dead, wake up), which was a reaction to Ibsen's play, is a
perfect example of this transfiguration. The narrator recalls his distant slumber life in a snowy
forest, and when the sound of a village church bell suddenly breaks the silence of his loneliness,
he feels alive again. In this narration the reality is blurred to the level of uncertainty, it is unclear
who is alive and who is dead, and whether the narrator comes to the Garden of Eden after his
death to embrace his lost friends or recovers from the moment of madness to embrace his living
friends:
Теперь уже сам я казался себе мертвым и не верил, что я могу двигаться и
могу через полчаса покинуть эту мертвую белую пустыню,- и я стоял неподвижно
на своих потерявших резвость коньках и закрывал лицо шерстистыми перчатками,
готовясь не то заплакать, не то и взаправду умереть. А вокруг все было
неподвижно и немо.
Now I seemed dead to myself and didn’t believe that I could move and could
leave this dead white desert in half an hour - and I stood motionless on my skates that had
lost their agility, and I covered my face with woolly gloves, preparing either to cry or to
die. And everything around was still and silent.
119
In this essay, Andreev develops the same idea of the spiritual death that Tolstoy develops
in the Death of Ivan Il’ich, the idea that people forget to live until they die: Что непоправимо,
мы видим лишь, когда мы, мертвые, пробуждаемся.- Мы видим, что мы никогда не
119
Andreev, ibid, 411
Radchenko 94
жили.”( What is unfixable we only see when we, having died, wake up. – We see that we never
lived.)
120
However, Andreev, again, reverses Tolstoy’s plot. If for Tolstoy the sense of
overwhelming life evolves out of the interaction with death, for Andreev it is a contemplation of
the simple life among the many that makes one feel the genuine stream of the natural force of life
within. His character is, again, driven by the urge to become a part of a larger entity:
Там люди! Милые, хорошие, живые люди! я помчусь к ним, потому что я
люблю их, потому, что я не мертвый и повинуются мне быстрые коньки мои:
только воздух засвистит, а снежная пыль изовьется по следам, когда пущусь я в
быстрый бег вперед: все вперед, к людям.
There are people there! Lovely, kind, alive people! I will rush to them because I
love them because I am not dead and my fast skates obey me: only the air will whistle,
and the snow dust will follow the footsteps when I run forward: still forward, towards the
people.
121
The same fear of something that could not be named - the Angst, or the fear of death, that
Tolstoy depicted in The Diary of a Madman drives Andreev’s character from the woods towards
the sound of the tolling bell. This uncanny horror that the protagonist The Diary of a Madman’s
Nikolai senses and identifies as the fear of death is, in fact, a much more complex event, the
symbolical encounter with chaos, with the primordial forces that exceed comprehension, as
120
Andreev, ibid, 414
121
Andreev, ibid, 412
Radchenko 95
argued in the first chapter of the dissertation. In some way, it is the primordial universal chaos
that everybody came from and will come back after death. For Andreev, the reality of the
chaotic forces of the universe is very palpable; he often personifies them, for instance, the bloody
laugh as a symbol of aggressive destruction in Red Laugh. This uncanny feeling of otherness, of
the primordial chaos that Tolstoy perceived as death, became the essence of symbolism.
Furthermore, the symbolist notion of the ineffable became a fundamental trait in Andreev's
works. Andreev calls the ineffable the essence of symbolism, thus insisting on the fact, that
symbolism encapsulates something that could not be explained in words but only in symbols,
because the reality that they describe transgresses the conscious of the artist. When Andreev
discusses Ibsen, he also in effect describes himself as a "writer, who sometimes writes articles":
Почти все признают ибсеновский эпилог символическим произведением, и
почти все требуют: объясните мне, что это значит, и притом объясните покороче.
Полагают, что символическое произведение - это что-то вроде веселенького
домашнего маскарадa…. И если им сказать, что Ибсен так же компетентен
растолковать свое творение, как и я, они даже засмеют: помилуйте, сам писал, да
растолковать не может? Да, именно не может… По той же опять-таки причине
появляются время от времени художники-символисты. Символами, и только
символами могут они выразить свое миропонимание.
Almost everyone recognizes Ibsen’s epilogue as a symbolist work, and almost
everyone demands: explain to me what it means, and, moreover, explain it briefly. They
think that a symbolist work is like a joyful home masquerade... And if you tell them that
Ibsen is just as competent to interpret his creation as I am, they will even laugh: have
Radchenko 96
mercy, he wrote it himself, but he cannot explain? Yes, he cannot ... For the same very
reason, symbolist artists appear from time to time. Symbols, and only symbols, can they
express their world view.)
122
In the first years of the new century, Andreev managed to capture the subconscious
horror that Tolstoy only vaguely sketched, and made it the central symbol of his work. In the
summer of 1901 Aleksandr Blok noted that “the end was already near, the unexpected would
soon take place”
123
; this coincided with the decadent mood in the Russian literature. While the
avant-garde of Russian symbolism - Andrei Bely and Aleksandr Blok - openly talked about the
coming apocalyptical changes, Andreev depicted the changes in a concealed way, through ultra-
realistic details, but the symbols he depicted manifested the coming crisis. In 1919 Blok recalled
that in his view Andreev’s novella Zhizn’Vasiliya Fiveiskogo (The Life of Vasilii Fiveisky) was
linked to the Revolution of 1905, as it responded to his inner feeling that the catastrophe was “at
the door”
124
: “…она “ответила ему на его знание” о том, “что везде неблагополучно, что
катастрофа близка, что ужас при дверях.” (“…it responded to his inner knowledge that it was
not safe anywhere, that the catastrophe was close, that the horror was at the doors.”)
125
In her monograph devoted to Andreev’s existentialism, Lyudmila Iezuitova examines his
first literary experiments, among which was a story titled Obnazhennaya Dusha (A Naked Soul)
122
Andreev, ibid, 413
123
See Bethea, David M. The Shape of Apocalypse in Modern Russian Fiction Princeton, N.J:
Princeton University Press,1991, p.109
124
The biblical allegory “at the door” signifying the proximity of the second coming of Christ
plays a very important role in the indication of the apocalyptical mood. In the next chapter we
will regard it when talking about Pil’niak’s story “At the door.”
125
Iezuitova L.A. Leonid Andreev I Literatura Serebryanogo Veka. Izbrannye Trudy, Sankt-
Peterburg, Metropolis, 2011, p. 100
Radchenko 97
(1894). The hero of the story was an old man, who could read other people's thoughts and once
he read the thoughts of a head cut off from its body by a train. According to Iezuitova, “in this
story, he sensed the decadent spirit, that hasn't yet manifested itself in literature.”
126
While the
speaking heads were a salient feature of English gothic literature, beheaded bodies and their cut-
off heads could be found in Tolstoy's Sebastopol sketches, which proves the idea that the
depiction of distorted bodies and physicality of death in literature has a secure connection with
the theme of war. War and violent deaths, indeed, forever change the artist's view of the body
and the soul; one may recall Filonov’s the German War (1914) – the blood-colored painting
filled with the limbs and distorted bodies. Out of this dark and pessimistic abyss was born one of
the most potent decadent symbols of Andreev’s oeuvre - the Red Laugh (1904) – a symbol of the
apocalyptic brother-murdering war that creates immortal soldier-zombies.
Death and Madness at War
The depiction of Dance of Death, or Dance of the Dead (its earlier version), captured on
Hans Holbein’s lithographs or depicted on the walls of churches, was ubiquitous in medieval
France, Holland, and Germany. Death invited people of different social groups, gender, and age
to dance and was depicted as a skeleton. The advances of medicine allowed the people of the
late XIX century to defeat some deadly epidemics, and the death motive slowly disappeared
from the cultural field, just to come back in the culture of fin-de-siècle.
In the works of Tolstoy and Andreev the palpable realization of the inevitability of death,
which was normal for a person of the Middle Ages, becomes a psychotic experience. The first
126
Iezuitova L.A. ibid, p.21
Radchenko 98
encounter with death often results in an existential scream – like the scream of a peasant girl in
Detstvo, who was brought to Mamen’ka’s coffin, or the scream of a child who found a headless
soldier in the fields of Sapun Mountain in Sebastopol Sketches. Horror is the visceral reaction to
a death. Andreev's Red Laugh could be viewed as an expression of the collective anxieties and
horrors of the society at the beginning of the century. It starts with the two words that could
serve as a connotation for many of the works that we consider in this chapter - безумие и ужас.
(madness and horror.)
127
Many of Andreev’s contemporaries complained that he never went to
war, and thus could not depict it truthfully. However, perhaps it was Andreev’s neurasthenia
128
that allowed him to depict war as a truly horrific and transgressing experience. The figure of Red
Laugh, while signifying a very concrete distorted smile that the narrator immediately recognized
in the bloody smile of the smashed face of a narrator's friend, could also be regarded as an
incarnation of the ultimate horror of death that followed people in those apocalyptic days of the
early twentieth century. Indeed, the blood-covered skull with a deathly smile of the naked
jawline and remnants of the flesh is what was depicted as death in the medieval manuscripts.
Andreev writes:
[…] перед моими глазами на месте бледного лица было что-то короткое,
тупое, красное, и оттуда лила кровь, словно из откупоренной бутылки, как их
рисуют на плохих вывесках. И в этом коротком, красном, текущем продолжалась
еще какая-то улыбка, беззубый смех — красный смех. Я узнал его, этот красный
смех. Теперь я понял, что было во всех этих изуродованных, разорванных,
127
Andreev, I, p.22, p.28
128
See: White, Frederick H. Memoirs and Madness: Leonid Andreev through the Prism of the
Literary Portrait. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006, p.224
Radchenko 99
странных телах. Это был красный смех. Он в небе, он в солнце, и скоро он
разольется по всей земле.
[…] before my eyes, in place of the white face, there was something short, blunt
and red, and out of it, the blood was gushing as out of an uncorked bottle, such as is
drawn on badly executed signboard. And that short red and flowing “something” still
seemed to be smiling a sort of smile, a toothless laugh – a red laugh. I recognized it –
that red laugh. Now I understood what there was in all those mutilated, torn, strange
bodies. It was a red laugh. It was in the sky, it was in the sun, and soon it was going to
overspread the whole earth.(translation by Aleksandra Lindem)
129
This transmittable madness affecting people in Red Laugh is an infection of death and violence.
Perhaps influenced by Nikolai Pirogov’s view of the Crimean War as a “traumatic epidemy,”
Andreev also medicalizes war. Normal people suddenly become murderers, and this urge to kill
is driven not by the internal fault, but by the spread of the infection of the Red Laugh. The story
gives a picture of the universal pathological effect of hostility and ferociousness on the society as
well as on the individual. If Tolstoy nurtures the goodness of the individual and develops the
idea of "zarazhenie” (infection) in the sense of inspiration. Andreev, once again, expands and
reverses Tolstoy's theory of infection, by creating an apocalyptical battlefield of mad people
killing each other, the kingdom of death that could be called a Zombie land:
[…]из толпы выделяется солдат и решительно направляется в нашу сторону.
На минуту он пропадает во рву, а когда вылезает оттуда и снова идет, шаги его
129
Andreev, II, 27
Radchenko 100
нетверды, и что-то последнее чувствуется в его попытках собрать свое
разбрасывающееся тело.
I saw a soldier part from the crowd and direct his steps in a decided manner
towards us. For an instant, I lost sight of him in a ditch, but when he reappeared and
moved on towards us, his gait was unsteady and in his endeavors to control his restlessly
tossing body, one felt he was using his last strength. (translation by Aleksandra
Lindem)
130
In Tolstoy’s Sebastopol Sketches, each soldier represents an individual fate and a singular
story. Andreev creates universal types manifested in his characters. In Red Laugh, he depicts
the collective unity, the sick, and the dead body of the collective soul, which is unhealthy as
well. Even the narrator witnessing the bloody events is not an individual type; instead, he is a
“scriptor” of the apocalypse happening before his eyes. The novella consists of two parts,
narrated by two brothers, but it is impossible to distinguish one from another. The second
brother picks up the narration after the first dies due to a war injury. The latter was infected by
the madness of the red laugh and thought he wrote a talented novel, while in fact, he marked the
paper in convulsions. When the younger brother starts writing, he gets infected with the red
laugh. He continues the narration, just like a soldier who picks up the weapon of his fallen friend
to continue the battle. Even though the writer changes, there is no difference in the style of
narration. The war in which the characters are involved is not any particular war (Andreev's
contemporaries mentioned that it was the Russo-Japanese War, which had a profound effect on
130
Andreev, SS, II, 24
Radchenko 101
the writer’s worldview). Even though the second part of the story happens outside of the war
zone, life, or rather death, unfolds according to the same rules of madness and horror as during
the war. The absence of details referring to any particular war suggests viewing the wartime
chaos as an analogy to the general apocalyptical situation at the beginning of the twentieth
century. In the final paragraphs the younger brother reads a letter from a friend, killed in action,
addressed to his older brother, who is now dead as well, “a letter from one dead to another,” as
he puts it:
...Только теперь я понял великую радость войны, это древнее первичное
наслаждение убивать людей […] Кровавый пир — в этом несколько избитом
сравнении кроется сама правда. Мы бродим по колена в крови, и голова кружится
от этого красного вина, как называют его в шутку мои славные ребята. Пить кровь
врага — вовсе не такой глупый обычай, как думаем мы: они знали, что делали.
Only now do I understand the great joy of war, the ancient, primitive delight of
killing man [...] Bloody feast –what truth there is in this somewhat hackneyed
comparison! We go about up to our knees in blood, and this red wine, as my jolly men
Call it to ingest, makes our head swim. To drink the blood of one’s enemy is not at all
such a stupid custom as we think: they knew what they were doing…( translated by
Aleksandra Lindem)
131
131
Andreev, II, 66
Radchenko 102
Humans and Beasts — The Eschatological War in Red Laugh.
Tolstoy's idea of animals as the paragon of the organic life receives a rather negative
interpretation in Andreev’s works (unlike the works of Zaitsev and Pil’niak, which we will
discuss in the following chapters). Andreev’s characters become animals mostly in the sense of
beasts: they transform into mad monsters on the battlefields in Red Laugh or senseless mute
sheep on the streets of the city in The Curse of the Beast. These images are reminiscent of
Filonov’s painting “The Beasts,” symbolizing the gangs that raped women in Leningrad.
132
Tolstoy wanted to take the best from the animals and unify people and animals in their eternal
journey. Andreev brings out the worst in people and animals. Mad people become beasts on the
streets of the city:
[…]проклятые убийцы, воронье, сидящее на падали, несчастные
слабоумные звери! Вы звери! За что убили вы моего брата? Если бы у вас было
лицо, я дал бы вам пошечину, но у вас нет лица, у вас морда хищного зверя. Вы
притворяетесь людьми, но под перчатками я вижу когти, под шляпою —
приплюснутый череп зверя; за вашей умной речью я слышу потаенное безумие,
бряцающее ржавыми цепями.
[…}You cursed murderers, crows sitting on carrion, wretched, imbecile, animals!
For you are animals. What did you ill my brother for? If you had a face, I would give you
a blow upon it, but you have no face, you have only the snout of a wild beast. You
132
On the theory of conscious evolution of matter that Filonov developed, and the fluid border
between the animals and people, see chapter 4.
Radchenko 103
pretend that you are men, but I see claws under your gloves and the flat skull of an
animal under your hat; hidden beneath your clever conversation I hear insanity rattling its
rusty chains. (translated by Aleksandra Lindem)
133
Once the selfhood became collective, it lost its consciousness. Andreev refuses to accept
the possibility of such a bloody war driven by conscious people. The crowds of lifeless faceless
people that the narrator describes at the beginning of the story are hostile zombies. Andreev’s
description of the battlefields is very different from Tolstoy’s portrayal of Sebastopol or
Borodino. Andreev erases all individual distinctions: all soldiers are depicted as one blurred
bloody mass. There is no hierarchical distinction either, which, again, makes the reader perceive
this war as an eschatological war of all against all. There are no leaders, no war strategy, no
plans, just crowds of distorted bodies united by the madness. Andreev outlines that this war
could only be a result of the loss of consciousness. Otherwise, it is impossible to explain the
events unfolding before the narrator’s eyes:
Сам посуди: ведь нельзя же безнаказанно десятки и сотни лет учить жалости, уму,
логике — давать сознание. […]но к самому факту войны я не могу привыкнуть,
мой ум отказывается понять и объяснить то, что в основе своей безумно. Миллион
людей, собравшись в одно место и стараясь придать правильность своим
действиям, убивают друг друга, и всем одинаково больно, и все одинаково
несчастны, — что же это такое, ведь это сумасшествие?
133
Andreev, II, 68
Radchenko 104
Judge for yourself: one cannot teach people mercy, sense, logic – teach them to act
consciously for tens and hundreds of years running with impunity. […] but I cannot get
accustomed to war; my brain refuses to understand and explain a thing that is senseless in
its basis. Millions of people gather at one place and, giving the order and regularity of
their actions, kill each other, and it hurts everybody equally, and all are unhappy- what is
it if not madness?”(translated by Aleksandra Lindem)
134
Tolstoy always insisted on the importance of the moral reasoning and, thus, he expressed
a similar idea of the lack of morality that inevitably accompanies madness. Goldenweiser recalls
Tolstoy’s argument about the degeneration of the moral reasoning in the mad and the sleeping:
Во сне мы лишены нравственного чувства, или если не лишены, то оно в
значительной степени ослаблено […] Во всяком случае, во сне мы часто делаем
поступки мерзкие, и если смутно и сознаем, что поступаем гадко, то все-таки
спокойно продолжаем их делать и не можем остановиться. А наяву, раз я сознаю,
что я делаю гадость, я всегда могу остановиться.[…] у безумного, как и у спящего,
если не атрофировано, то значительно ослаблено нравственное чувство. И в этом
его главное отличие от разумных. […] Нельзя винить человека в том, чего он не
сознает.
In the dream, we are deprived of moral sense, or if not deprived, it is greatly weakened
[...] do and cannot stop. But in reality, since I am aware that I am doing disgusting things,
I can always stop. [...] the insane, just as the sleeping person has either the atrophied or
134
Andreev, II,47
Radchenko 105
considerably weakened moral sense. And this is the main difference from the sensible
person. [...] You cannot blame a person for something, of which he is not aware.
135
Tolstoy suggested not to accuse those lacking consciousness. Andreev, however,
victimizes both the mad and the society responsible for their madness. For Andreev, it is
important to maintain consciousness throughout life and to be fully present at the moment: that is
why in many of his works the lack of consciousness, similar to hypnosis, goes hands in hands
with death. In Rasskaz o Sergee Petroviche (A Tale about Sergei Petrovich), the protagonist is
nurturing the idea of suicide under the influence of Nietzsche’s philosophy.
136
For instance: “все
эти дни Сергей Петрович находился в состоянии умственной тупости, схожей с
гипнотическим сном, когда над волею безраздельно господствует своя или чужая идея.”
(all these days, Sergei Petrovich was in a state of mental stupidity, similar to a hypnotic sleep,
when his own or someone else's idea reigns supreme over the will.)
137
The Eschatological Mood of Red Laugh
An essential feature of Andreev’s Krasnyi Smekh (Red Laugh) is that the novella’s
ending does not resolve the collective anxiety or alleviate the fearful expectation of the last
apocalyptic war. Unlike Tolstoy in Sebastopol Sketches, Andreev does not give hope for a new
life. On the contrary, he concludes with the whole world infected by Red Laugh virus, which,
135
Goldenweiser, Ibid, 384
136
Andreev inherited Tolstoy’s dislike of Nietzsche
137
Andreev Sobranie Sochinenii, I, 246
Radchenko 106
similarly to the star “Wormwood” from the Revelation, poisons the bodies and minds of people.
While Tolstoy acknowledges the irrational nature of war, the horror of the collective death on the
battlefields of Sebastopol never haunts him. For him, the horror of facing death is depicted in the
individual experience. It is hard to say whether Andreev consciously borrowed some of the
episodes from Sebastopol Sketches and nuanced them with the decadent expressionist horror, but
the similarity between the battlefield scenes is uncanny:
Сотни свежих окровавленных тел людей[…] с окоченелыми членами, лежали на
росистой цветущей долине[…] сотни людей -- с проклятиями и молитвами на
пересохших устах -- ползали, ворочались и стонали,
138
-- одни между трупами на
цветущей долине, другие на носилках, на койках и на окровавленном полу
перевязочного пункта; […] и все так же, как и в прежние дни, обещая радость,
любовь и счастье всему ожившему миру, выплыло могучее, прекрасное
светило.
Hundreds of fresh bodies of people covered in blood [...] with numb limbs lay in a dewy
blooming valley [...] hundreds of people — with curses and prayers on parched lips —
were crawling, twisting and moaning — some between the corpses in the blooming
valley, others on stretchers, on beds and on the bloody floor of the hospital; [...] and just
as in the old days, promising joy, love, and happiness to the whole coming-alive
world, a mighty, beautiful sun came up.
139
138
The emphasis is mine ( K.R), used to facilitate the comparison with the vocabulary of
Andreev below
139
Tolstoy, V, 56 The emphasize is mine (KR)
Radchenko 107
The motif of curses and prayers of the wounded is repeated in Andreev’s depiction of the bloody
masses. This evokes the idea of the responsibility of the society that sent them into war, and the
image of God who allowed these atrocities to happen. Thus, the scene induces the Old
Testament (The Book of Daniel, for instance) theme of eschatological wars sent as a curse by
God. Tolstoy, however, outlines the eternal blossoming of nature. Despite the wars and death,
the field is blooming and covered in dew. He incorporates the distorted bodies into the eternal
cyclicality of night and day, thus outlining the singularity of the deathly events and its minimal
role in the perpetual movement of the whole universe:
выставлены белые флаги, цветущая долина наполнена смрадными телами,
прекрасное солнце спускается к синему морю, и синее море, колыхаясь, блестит на
золотых лучах солнца. Тысячи людей толпятся, смотрят, говорят и улыбаются друг
другу. […] (the white flags are raised, the blooming valley is filled with reeking bodies,
the beautiful sun descends into the blue sea, and the blue sea, shaking, glistens in the
golden rays of the sun. Thousands of people crowd, look, talk, and smile to each
other.)
140
In his works, Tolstoy promoted the essential goodness of people, the Christian
brotherhood that could end the war. Once the formal battle is over, people are smiling and
talking. The natural beauty of the sun, the sea, and the sky overpowers the image of the reeking
bodies. For Andreev, the war not only changes people’s characters and physique, transforming
140
Tolstoy PSS, IV, 59
Radchenko 108
them into angry monsters, but also changes the nature. The air is red and bloody, unlike the
situation in Tolstoy’s text. The red laugh infects the bodies and souls of the people and turns
them against not only the foreign enemies but also their brothers. The image of the bloody
animated field is haunting. It is a sign of the distortion of the world, the beginning of the new
apocalyptic battle:
[…] все поле, залитое неподвижным красным отсветом пожаров,
закопошилось, точно живое, загорелось громкими криками, воплями,
проклятиями и стонами. Эти темные бугорки копошились и ползали, как сонные
раки, выпущенные из корзины, раскоряченные, странные, едва ли похожие на
людей в своих оборванных, смутных движениях и тяжелой неподвижности. Одни
были безгласны и послушны, другие стонали, выли, ругались и ненавидели нас,
спасавших их, так страстно, как будто мы создали и эту кровавую равнодушную
ночь, и одиночество их среди ночи и трупов, и эти страшные раны[…] и все так же
дико копошилось ожившее поле.
[…] the whole field, lit up by the motionless red flare of the conflagrations, began
stirring as if it were alive, breaking out into loud cries, wails, curses, and groans. Those
dark mounds stirred and crawled about like half-dead lobsters let out of a basket, with
outspread legs, scarcely resembling men in their broken, unconscious movements and
ponderous immobility. Some were mute and obedient, others groaned, wailed, swore and
showed such passionate hate towards us, saving them, as if we had brought about that
bloody, indifferent night, and been the cause of all those terrible wounds and their
Radchenko 109
loneliness amidst the nights and dead bodies. […] and the coming-alive field was stirring
wildly as before. (Translated by Aleksandra Lindem)
141
The horrifying episode depicts the reverberation of the war as a field pollinated with the
dead and wounded. It is framed by the refrain – “zakoposhilos’ zhivoe pole” (the field began
stirring as if it were alive) creating a modernist ornamental effect and enhancing the horror of the
endless half-dead bodies. Again, we see the agricultural motif accompanying the depiction of
death at war. The moving mass of half-dead bodies resembles the depiction of hell in the icons
and paintings of medieval artists. This image also reminds one of the painting by Vasilii
Vereschagin, titled Apofioz Voiny (The Apotheosis of War) (1871), which presents a pyramid of
human skulls pierced by arrows and swords, symbolizing the victims of wars.
Mechanization of the Bodies
This haunting image of the immortal dehumanized mass of bodies received an interesting
continuation in Andreev's play Korol’-Golod (King-Hunger). Industrialization was both a curse
that interrupted the traditional way of living and a blessing of the coming century (this theme
will also be developed in the next chapter with a discussion Pil’niak’s and Zaitsev’s works). For
Andreev, industrialization was another source of unification, amalgamation, and mechanization
of the individual self. Just as Tolstoy, who viewed the train as a symbol of the new overrunning
the old, Andreev saw the train as a dangerous sign of the coming future. However, I argue that it
is rather a plant or a factory that embodies the idea of the urbanized communal body. Industrial
141
Andreev, SS, II, 37
Radchenko 110
society turns people into parts of a bigger machine. In Tsar'-Golod (King-Hunger), Andreev uses
the image of a universal mechanism, in which people are senseless enslaved parts of a giant
machine:
Мы сами части машин. – Я молот. – Я шелестящий ремень. – Я рычаг.
Вместо индивидуальностей безличие, отупение и порабощённость.
- Я маленький винтик с головою, разрезанной надвое. Я ввинчен наглухо. И
я молчу. Но я дрожу общей дрожью, и вечный гул стоит в моих ушах.
– Я маленький кусочек угля. Меня бросают в печь, и я даю огонь и тепло. И
вновь бросают, и вновь горю я неугасимым огнем.
We ourselves are parts of machines. - I'm a hammer. - I'm a rustling belt. - I'm a
lever. Instead of individuality, impersonality, dullness, and enslavement - I am a small
cog with a head cut in two. I'm screwed tightly. And I keep silence. But I tremble with a
collective tremor, and the eternal hum is in my ears. - “I am a small piece of coal. I am
thrown into the furnace, and I give fire and heat. And again they throw me, and again I
burn with unquenchable fire.
142
His characters endure perpetual suffering, but they acquire immortality and eternity in
their belonging to a larger entity of the factory (the words in bold emphasize the eternal life of
these small parts.) For instance, the last speaker is a little piece of coal thrown into the fire, but
he rises again and again. Andreev provides a powerful image of urbanized immortality, which is
later developed in socialist realism as the main advance of human species – machine-like ability
142
Andreev, SS, III, 235
Radchenko 111
and performance. Indeed, these parts of the machine, represented by individuals, have
uniformity, and those who lost all the attributes of individuality are immortal. They represent the
Schlecht-Unendliche (adverse infinity) of suffering and lamentation. The image of the negative
eternal life, or rather, an eternal death, is central to the works of Andreev. The idea of the curse
of eternal life full of suffering was prevalent at the dawn of the XX century. One easily recalls
Vrubel’s Demon Sidiashchii (The Demon Seated) (1890), lonely and immortal; Gorky’s Larra,
cursed for eternal life in Starukha Izergil’ (Old Izergil)(1892); and Andreev’s tragic figure of
Eleazar (1906).
Resurrection of Lazarus
Tolstoy analyzed the issue of Resurrection in a nonorthodox way. For him, there could be
no bodily resurrection, because the flesh belongs to the sphere of organic matter and, thus,
should be returned into the realm of nature as organic material. The soul, on the other hand, is
eternal and, instead of waiting for the last judgment, will continue its endless journey of life.
Andreev explored the theme of the impossibility of resurrection and the motif of eternal life as a
curse in many of his works, but this theme is especially pronounced in his notorious Eleazar. In
this work, Andreev reflected the most acute tendencies of the fin-de-siècle epoch: nihilism, the
clash between the materialism and spiritualism, lack of faith in the Orthodox Church, hope for
resurrection, apocalyptic mood, new century’s advances in medicine. Tolstoy, in quite an
esoteric style, argued that there is no death, as there is an eternal cycle of life. For him, the idea
of the physical resurrection of Lazarus was a misinterpretation of the Gospel narrative (as was
discussed in the previous chapter). Andreev provides a new reading of a well-known Gospel
Radchenko 112
narration of raised Lazarus to show the opposite side of the eternal life: eternal death, or an
eternal life of the dead.
Maximilian Voloshin, in his famous critical essay on Andreev’s Eleazar, emphasizes that
Andreev borrowed the plot and the atmosphere of dark melancholy from the poem Lazare of a
decadent French writer Léon Dierx. The translation of the poem was first published in the
magazine Mir Bozhii in 1899. Briusov published another translation of the poem in 1913, which
signifies the importance of the theme of Lazarus’ resurrection to the symbolists. Lazarus, one of
the very few resurrected people on earth, according to the Gospels, is a quintessence of
loneliness and misery. However, he also carries a mystery, as he saw the other world. While for
the symbolists this mysterious knowledge of the otherworldly existence is of the utmost
importance, Andreev is primarily interested in the existential fear of death emitted by Lazarus.
In this Andreev returns – perhaps unknowingly – to the very source of Dierx’s poetry – the
medieval French figure of Lazarus as the encapsulation of the fear of death. According to
Huizinga, the belief that Lazarus lived in misery because of his fear of death was widespread in
the Middle Ages:
Nothing betrays more clearly the excessive fear of death felt in the Middle Ages
than the popular belief then widely spread, according to which Lazarus, after his
resurrection, lived in the continual misery and horror at the thought that he should have
again to pass through the gates of death.
143
143
Huizinga, 148
Radchenko 113
This existential fear returned at the edge of the new century in Tolstoy’s Diary of a
Madman. Andreev’s Eleazar transmits a similar horror, induced by the death experience.
Moreover, the fear of death is a result of the reflection on the impossibility of resurrection.
Indeed, Eleazar is one of the most tragic figures ever created in Russian literature because he is a
man abused by a miracle. Andreev changes the familiar name Lazarus into Eleazar, perhaps,
trying to highlight the gap between his character and the Biblical Lazarus. In the story, Lazarus
rises from the dead, but a grim uncanny fear sublimates the joy and the sense of a miracle that his
relatives feel in the beginning.
Когда Елеазар вышел из могилы, где три дня и три ночи находился он под
загадочною властию смерти, и живым возвратился в свое жилище, в нем долго не
замечали тех зловещих странностей, которые со временем сделали страшным
самое имя его.
When Eleazar left the grave, where he was captured by the mysterious powers of
death for three days and three nights, and came back to his dwelling alive, people around
him for a long time did not notice those sinister oddities that eventually made the very
name of his scary.
144
All his friends provide him with the earthly joys, not noticing the transformation of his body and
his personality:
144
Andreev, II, 192
Radchenko 114
Радуясь светлой радостью о возвращенном к жизни, друзья и близкие
ласкали его непрестанно и в заботах о пище и питье и о новой одежде утоляли
жадное внимание свое.
Rejoicing in the bright joy about the one brought back to life, his friends and
relatives caressed him incessantly and satisfied their greedy attention worrying about
food and drink and new clothes.
145
Again and again, Andreev underlines the futility of the common interests of the society
by introducing the motif of clothing as a thread uniting people, as something that unifies and
covers the individuality of bodies. Just like the handkerchief was a connector between the
people in The Curse of the Beast, the beautiful clothing is an attempt to unite Eleazar with his
living friends. However, beautiful clothing cannot cover the decay in the body of Eleazar, which
Andreev, perhaps, uses as a metaphor for the decay of the soul that people try to mask under
social ranks and beautiful outfits. Moreover, the motif of clothing in Andreev’s works could be
viewed as a fascinating echo of the reality surrounding Andreev. According to the church school
inspector, in the changing realities of the 1910-s urbanization, the peasants became highly
interested in clothing, which adversely affected the relations between the generations of peasant
families. “The only thing observed is a heightened interest in tasteless and useless dandyism. In
many areas, the normal peasant dress is being replaced by urban styles, which cut deeply into the
peasants’ skimpy budget.”
146
145
Andreev, II, 192
146
Ben Eklof. Russian Peasant Schools: Officialdom, Village Culture, and Popular Pedagogy,
1861–1914. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986, p. 423
Radchenko 115
The similar motif of the temporality of earthly pleasures is outlined in the Memento Mori
genre. Andreev does not discuss the mystery of death in an Orthodox way. However, the
philosophical undertone of the story resides in the contemplation of the beyond-death experience
and interaction with the primordial chaos:
И теперь он снова среди людей […] и сквозь черные кружки его зрачков, как
сквозь темные стекла, смотрит на людей само непостижимое Там.
And now he is again among the people [...] and through the black circles of his
pupils as if through a dark glass, the incomprehensible There itself looks at people.
147
The motif of the human body as the only guard between the chaos of non-existence and
the cosmos of existence appears again. Especially emphasized is the image of the eyes
transmitting the chaos.
148
This is why the Emperor orders the soldiers to poke out Lazarus’ eyes
and, thus, stop this channeling of the chaos: he wants to stop the chaos. Perhaps, it was
Andreev’s condition,which Frederick White called “neurasthenia,” that made him realize the
proximity between the two worlds and the importance of a safeguard between them.
149
This
safeguard becomes a recurring theme in his stories and takes on different shapes: the eyes of
Eleazar, transmitting the otherness into the world of the living; the character named somebody,
guarding the entrances (nekto, ograzhdayuzhii vhody) in Anatema; the wall in the story Stena;
147
Andreev, SS, volume II, p. 196
148
This is reminiscent of Diary of a Madman, where Tolstoy engages plenty of the verbs related
to seeing when describing the presence of death
149
For more on this, see: White, Frederick H. Degeneration, Decadence and Disease in the
Russian Fin-de-Siècle: Neurasthenia in the Life and Work of Leonid Andreev Manchester, UK:
Manchester University Press, 2014.
Radchenko 116
the invisible border in “Kogda my, mertvye, probuzhdaemsya”. Andreev creates these
safeguarding points; however, also accentuates how weak and flexible they are. The altered state
of Eleazar is somewhat similar to the madness that Andreev introduces in Red Laugh. This
madness is born out of the incomprehensible interaction with death symbolically equal to the
interaction with the primordial chaos. Eleazar’s friends ask him about what he saw beyond the
grave. Poor Eleazar responds with the degenerated silence; this silence is uncanny and induces
horror. An imprint of the chaos is seen in his eyes, and whoever looks into his eyes is infected by
this horror and turns insane:
Вот еще идет безумец, на которого посмотрел Елеазар […] Приходили,
бряцая оружием, храбрые воины, не знавшие страха; приходили со смехом и
песнями счастливые юноши; и озабоченные дельцы, позвякивая деньгами, забегали
на минуту; и надменные служители храма ставили свои посохи у дверей Елеазара, -
и никто не возвращался, каким приходил. Одна и та же страшная тень опускалась
на души и новый вид давала старому знакомому миру.
Here comes another madman at whom Eleazar looked [...] Brave warriors who
did not know fear came saber-rattling; happy young men came with laughter and songs;
and anxious merchants, chattering money, stopped for a minute; and the haughty servants
of the temple put their staffs at the door of Eleazar, and no one returned the same. The
same terrible shadow descended upon their souls and transformed the old familiar
world.
150
150
Andreev, II, 196
Radchenko 117
Andreev describes a circle dance of fearless soldiers, happy youngsters, serious
merchants, and arrogant church clerks changing after their encounter with death through the eyes
of Eleazar. Andreev’s works in general, and Eleazar, in particular, remove the last consolation
from humans. With pessimism that overpowers the pessimism of Schopenhauer, he demonstrates
the impossibility to overcome nature and debunks the traditional concept of the resurrection of
the flesh. The madness, which is a recurring motif of his works, and which Frederick White
regards as a projection of Andreev's mental state, is, in fact, a reaction of the consciousness to
the absurdity of life. Indeed, Andreev is a writer who introduces the existential loneliness and
the absence of any higher purpose in human life. The realization of the absurdity of life
inevitably leads to madness. Andreev uses death to debunk the hopes of his characters. While
Tolstoy often allows his characters to experience a life-changing near-death experience –
whether it is proximity to one’s death or witnessing somebody’s death – and feel the ultimate
happiness of living, Andreev’s characters die without this transforming experience. Death
abruptly abolishing the “flight” of life and the grammatical use of the conditional unreal clause is
another theme that we encounter in Andreev’s works. Again and again, his characters die just
before achieving their goal, whether it is a card combination (Bolshoi Shlem) or a miserable
sweet gift (Gostinets):
Еще одно бы только движение, одна секунда чего-то, что есть жизнь, – и
Николай Дмитриевич увидел бы туза и узнал, что у него есть большой шлем, а
теперь все кончилось и он не знает и никогда не узнает. (One more movement, one
second of something that is life - and Nikolai Dmitrievich would see an ace and find out
Radchenko 118
that he has a “grand slam,” but now everything is over, and he does not know and will
never know.”
151
Только бы на день раньше – и потухающими глазами он увидел бы
гостинец, и возрадовался бы детским своим сердцем, и без боли, без ужасающей
тоски одиночества полетела бы его душа к высокому небу. (If only a day earlier,
then he would see the gift with his dying eyes, and rejoice with his childish heart, and
without the pain, without the terrifying sadness of solitude, his soul would fly to the high
sky.)
152
The motif of misery and unhappiness also follows Andreev’s characters into the afterlife.
Nobody asked Eleazar if he wanted to be resurrected. Eleazar is profoundly lonely and
miserable. Schopenhauer in World as Will and Representation, argues that the dead would be
unhappy to rise if they were asked: “If one knocked on the graves, and asked the dead whether
they wished to rise again, they would shake their heads.”
153
Andreev's Eleazar, while formally being alive, is described as a senseless zombie, just as
the soldiers from Red Laugh: he who faced death would never be the same. Another typical
feature of facing death for Andreev is a maleficent infection of death. Just like soldiers pass the
virus of the Red Laugh to each other and people beyond the battlefields, Eleazar passes on the
infection of death and apathy.
151
Andreev, I, 155-156.
152
Andreev, I, 302
153
Schopenhauer A. The World as Will and Representation, translated from German by E.F.
Payne, Volume 2, Dover Publications Ic, New York, 1958, p.465
Radchenko 119
Moreover, Eleazar’s body no longer belongs to the tangible world. It is described as
“stopped in the process of decay.” Andreev emphasizes the impossibility of reversing the morbid
work of death. Eleazar’s body continues to live after his soul is dead: thus, he is a symbol of the
spiritually dead. While for Tolstoy, the body without a soul was just a combination of matter
molecules, the vessel of sin – for Andreev, the body continues living after it becomes empty.
Andreev’s frivolity in the treatment of this sacral episode drew strong criticism from his
colleagues. Voloshin, as we mentioned earlier, gave an especially fierce response. He sensed
the nihilistic component of Andreev’s Eleazar. He compared Andreev’s depiction of Lazar’s
body to Hans Holbein’s depiction of Christ’s body taken from the cross. Christ’s body is painted
in a green and blue palette and all covered in bruises and blood. It emanates a fear of the
inevitability of death; it destroys the hope that lies in the very essence of Christianity. Indeed, the
sacral hope of overcoming death has always been the main consolation and antidote to the
certainty of death. Schopenhauer notes: “All religions and philosophical systems are directed
principally to this end, and are thus primarily the antidote to the certainty of death which
reflecting reason produces from its resources.”
154
Andreev’s characters, deriving from the nihilist epoch, can never find consolation in
religion. In Eleazar, the traditional view on death as a gateway to eternal life is substituted by the
inevitability of animated but dead flesh. Voloshin argues that the story only induces the horror of
the corpse and never touches upon the sacral mystery of death: “Андреев же дает только ужас
трупа, идея же смерти совершенно чужда ему. Он оскорбляет таинство смерти.” (Andreev
only produces the horror of the corpse; the mystery of death is alien to him.)
155
154
Schopenhauer A. Ibid, p.463
155
Voloshin M. SS in 6 volumes, I, Moskva, 2007, p.50
Radchenko 120
The Reflection of the Collectivization in the Works of Andreev. The Collective Body
of the Bolshevik.
The emphasis on the depiction of the decaying flesh again signifies the decadent loss of
faith in the traditional spiritual values. Traditionally, the body of Christ represents the united
body of Christian humanity:
The metaphor of "Collective body" has a sacred lineage that goes back to the
Pauline concept of Corpus Christi, the mystical body of Christ. A symbol of the Church,
by extension it represents the whole of the Christian society. The idea mediates between
multiplicity and wholeness: "For as the body is one and hath many members, and all the
members of that one body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ.”(1 Cor. 12:12)
156
What sets Andreev apart is while the collective body in the Christian doctrine and the
view of Tolstoy is a sensible and spiritually enriched entity, the collective whole of Andreev's
characters rather represents a senseless crowd, a mass devoid of spiritual substance.
Many scholars argued that Andreev's works have a political and, thus, revolutionary
connotation. While there is an anti-monarchical impetus, Andreev cannot be regarded as a pro-
revolutionary writer. In Tsar’ Golod and Zhili-byli, Andreev seems to draw on the medieval
theory of the king having two bodies – individual and collective. Ernst Kantorowitz argued “that
throughout the Middle Ages, the concept of the mystical body of Christ, which originally had
156
Paperno, 26
Radchenko 121
liturgical and sacramental meanings, took on legalistic and sociological connotations. It was
transferred to secular social organizations- corporations, the state, people, humankind- an
assemblage or aggregate of people that were seen as one body, as an organism. Medieval
political and legal documents defied relationships between the king and the people through the
metaphor of the king’s double body, the body natural and the body politic, the latter being the
aggregate of the king's subjects. One is a human body, individual, and persona; the other is a
corporate body, “super-individual” and “collective." The first is mortal, the second immortal.”
157
Andreev describes the process of transformation of the body natural into the “body
politic”; however, for him, the collective body acquires the qualities of the faceless crowd. He
also witnesses the process of decapitation of this” body politic” in Red Laugh – when the mass of
people becomes uncontrollable. However, one of the fascinating bodily transformations happens
in his essay Veni, Creator! (Come, Creator), dedicated to Lenin.
158
Но ты суров, Ленин, ты даже страшен, Великий. Смотрю на тебя и вижу, как растёт
вширь и в высоту твоё маленькое тело. Вот ты уже выше старой Александровской
колонны. Вот ты уже над городом, как дымное облако пожара. Вот ты уже, как
чёрная туча, простираешься за горизонт и закрываешь всё небо: черно на земле,
тьма в жилищах, безмолвие, как на кладбище. Уже нет человеческих черт в твоём
лице; как хаос, клубится твой дикий образ, и что-то указует позади дико откинутая
чёрная рука.
157
See Paperno, 27
158
Veni Creator Spiritus is typically sung as a Gregorian chant on the Feast of Pentecost in the
Roman Catholic Church. Pentecost is also one of the Great Feasts of the Eastern Orthodox
Church.
Radchenko 122
But you are punitive, Lenin, you are even terrifying, the Great. I look at you and
see how your small body grows in breadth and height. Here you are already above the old
Alexander Column. Here you are already above the city, like a smoky cloud of fire. Now
you are like a black cloud, stretching beyond the horizon and covering the whole sky: it is
dark on the ground, there is darkness in the dwellings, the silence is as in a cemetery.
Already there are no human features in your face; like chaos, your wild image swirls, and
your improbably folded black hand is pointing at something behind you.
159
In his pamphlet published in Russkaya Volia on September 15 of 1917, Andreev
formulates the general anxieties of the society and the expectation of the new coming of the
Saviour. As early as in 1917, Andreev considers the role of Lenin as the inspiring spirit of the
Revolution and foresees the future role of Lenin's body as a symbolic collective body of the
Russian proletariat. Only in 1923 does the mummified body of Lenin assimilate and integrate
these expectations into a single physical object and become a symbol of the new unified
proletarian society.
While Andreev presents Lenin’s body in its Gargantuan grandeur as both the sacral body
of Christ, and as the body politic of the medieval ruler, he notes that Lenin is, nevertheless, alien
to the Russian soil: he is a foreign conqueror, worse than Napoleon. Lenin is called “Pobeditel”
(Victor), which contrasts with the expected “Spasitel” (Savior) that Andreev consciously avoids;
by avoiding it he outlines his own anti-revolutionary position. He starts his essay with the
description of the bloody rivers, and the corpses which Lenin steps on:
159
Andreev, “Veni, Creator!”,Voprosy Literatury, 1990, No.4, p.278
Radchenko 123
По июльским трупам, по лужам красной крови вступает завоеватель Ленин,
гордый победитель, триумфатор, – громче приветствуй его русский народ! Вот он,
серый в сером автомобиле: как прост и вместе величав его державный лик,
сколько силы в каждом движении его благородной руки: одним мановением она
приводит в движение пулеметы и воздвигает стихии на головы непокорных... Ты
почти Бог, Ленин. Что тебе все земное и человеческое? Что тебе земное? Ты
выше слез, выше проклятий, выше презрения – ты сам есть великое презрение,
ставшее над землею.Гряди, победитель!
Through July corpses, through the pools of red blood, the conqueror Lenin enters,
a proud winner, a victor, - louder, greet him, Russian people! Here he is, gray in a gray
car: how simple and simultaneously great his sovereign face, how much power there is in
each movement of his noble hand: with a single movement he activates machine guns and
throws thunders on the heads of the disobedient... You are almost God, Lenin. What do
you care about everything earthly and human? You are above tears, above curses, above
contempt - you yourself are the great contempt that has come upon the earth. Come,
Victor!
160
The emphasized words illustrate Andreev’s use of liturgical language. Andreev is
preparing the reader to think that Lenin is God, and potentially a beneficent Savior, but Lenin
turns out to be only “almost a god,” still very powerful but harmful rather than beneficent. His
portrait is both sacral and horrifying, as the sacrality is given a negative connotation: Lenin is
presented as the Anti-Christ. Just like the dark forces of the riots in Boris Zaitsev’s short stories,
160
Andreev L. “Veni, Creator!” Voprosy Literatury, 1990, No.4, p.278
Radchenko 124
which are discussed in the next chapter, Lenin directs the natural elements. Andreev paints him
in gray, just as the figure of death or Satan is presented in Zhizn Cheloveka as "Somebody in
Gray." This essay, overlooked by both scholars and readers might be the answer to the question
why Andreev while being so immensely popular at the beginning of the century, was banned
from the literary landscape of the early Bolshevik time. Andreev makes the same auto-poetic
remark that Pil’niak makes at the beginning of Povest’ Nepogashennoi Luny (The Tale of the
Unextinguished Moon.) Pil’niak states that the story is not based on any historical events and, in
particular, has nothing to do with the death of Frunze. Similarly, Andreev describes the bloody
and dark future that comes after Lenin, and then notes that this might be just a dream of an
insomniac writer:
Или ты не один? Или ты только предтеча? Кто же еще идет за тобою? […]
во мраке я слышу голос: – Идущий за мною сильнее меня. Он будет крестить вас
огнем и соберет пшеницу в житницу, а солому сожжет огнем неугасимым. [...] Или
это только галлюцинация, бредни писателя, который не может спать? А наяву все
так спокойно и просто. Вон улица и красные флаги. Вон милиция. Вон министры.
И все вообще ждут Ленина. Гряди же, победитель! Гряди спокойно.
Or are you not alone? Or are you just a precursor? Who else is following you?
[…] in the darkness I hear a voice: - He who follows me is stronger than me. He will
baptize you with fire and gather the wheat into the breadbasket, and burn the straw
with unquenchable fire. [...] Or is it just a hallucination, nonsense of a writer who cannot
sleep? And in reality, everything is so calm and simple. I see the street and the red flags. I
Radchenko 125
see the police. I see the ministers. And all are waiting for Lenin. So come, the winner!
Come calmly.
161
As John the Baptist predicted the coming of Christ, “who would burn the crops,”
Andreev, using the quote from the New Testament, worries that somebody might be coming
behind Lenin. Moreover, Andreev’s Lenin could be viewed as a precursor to the monumental
propaganda that Lenin established. After Lenin- the person would be millions of giant stone and
metal monuments of Lenin, pointing their giant hands forward. Shortly after the publication of
Andreev’s essay, on April 1 of 1918, the Council of People’s Commissars issued a decree
ordering replacement of the tsarist monuments with those of the revolutionary leaders. Lenin
was behind this initiative. On September 12 of 1918, he wrote to Lunacharsky, the minister of
culture: “There is no outdoor bust of Marx[...] I scold you for this criminal negligence.”
162
Tumarkin emphasizes, that “in insisting on monumental symbols to inspire the Russian people
and give them direction, Lenin was willy-nilly helping to lay the foundations for his cult.”
163
Marx was to help provide legitimacy for the new regime. It was his portrait that was carried
during the Moscow Revolutionary procession on November 7 of 1918, which could be viewed as
the beginning of the cult of the absence of God the Father. Lenin was meant to be God the Son
in the vein of the Orthodox Trinity.
“Veni, Creator!” plays a significant role in the literary contemplation of the figure of
Lenin. It not only precedes the ideological trends of the messianic sacralization of Lenin’s body
and the theory of Lenin’s immortality as he continues living in the collective body of his
161
Andreev L “Veni, Creator!”, Voprosy Literatury, Moskva,1990, No.4, p.278
162
Tumarkin, ibid, 66-67
163
Ibid, 67
Radchenko 126
proletarian sovereign but also reflects the practical aesthetic trends that resulted in the
monumental propaganda decree of 1918. It is fascinating how the discourse of the expectation of
immortality changes after Lenin’s mummification in 1924. Lenin’s symbolic body becomes
immortal: not because it is mummified, but because its qualities are delegated to the myriads of
interchangeable proletarian bodies. This Soviet agenda is a sharp contrast to the decaying
collective body on the battlefields of Krasnyi smekh. Before the death of Lenin, the utopian idea
of communal bodies was a disillusionment; after his death, the notion of the public body became
palpable and played an essential role in the attempts to reach eternal life.
For Andreev, the revolutionary figure of Lenin brings the same changes as the other
trends of the new age: urbanization, industrialization, and collectivization. Life in the city
eventually causes the death of the individual, whose distinct features dissolve in the realm of the
crowd. City life embodies the dream of immortality; however, as with any utopian dream,
humanity cannot achieve it. Just as the utopian dream of the Tower of Babel ended with the loss
of the universal language, this dream of the universal body turned out to be a totalitarian trap.
The hatred towards the Bolsheviks united the Russian intelligentsia abroad. Il’ya Repin’s
painting “Bolsheviki” (1918), for example, depicted a grotesque fat face of a man taking bread
from a girl. Nikolai Berdyaev in emphasized that the Bolsheviks were the “serious disease of
Russian society,” a “hallucination of the sick spirit of the people,” or “an uncanny presence of
the mystical otherness.”
164
Conclusion
164
See Berdiaev N. A. Istoki i Smysl Russkogo Kommunizma,
Radchenko 127
Andreev developed many of the existential themes elaborated in the works of Tolstoy.
The onset of modernity allowed him to portray chaos that invaded both political and social
spheres. The war, which can be read as a symbolic infection and which Andreev termed “the red
laugh,” signifies a social crisis; however, the writer also believed it to be an eschatological curse.
While Tolstoy, Zaitsev, and Pil’niak all predicted the emergence of the collective (often a
political) body, Andreev was the first one to sense the danger of the emerging collectivity.
Contrary to the organic commune living envisioned by Tolstoy, the collective entities in the
works of Andreev are represented by the members of the new political regime. In “Veni,
Creator!” Andreev depicts a grotesque figure of Lenin as a “Creator” and the embodiment of the
gory Bolshevism. As it will be shown in the next chapter, Boris Pil’niak represents the giant
body of the state (gosudarstvo) formed by the Bolshevik, or “the leather jackets, “which evolved
out of careful social and natural selection”: “люди в кожаных куртках, большевики. Из
русской рыхлой, корявой народности - отбор.” (people in leather jackets (Bolsheviks!) Of
Russia’s rough, crumbly nation-hood – the best slice.)
165
Lenin’s antithetical double – a “faithful, noble and kind” giant Gulliver from Andreev’s
essay Smert’ Gullivera (1911) – Gulliver, on the opposite, dies and abandons the people of
Lilliput:
И ушло из мира огромное человеческое сердце. И наступила тишина. И с
ужасом прислушивался к ней и плакал горько осиротевший беззащитный лилипут.
Навеки ушло из мира то огромное человеческое сердце, которое высоко стояло над
страною и гулом биения своего наполняло дни и темные лилипутские ночи. […]
165
Pil’niak B. SS, I, 156
Radchenko 128
And the great human heart left the world. And there was silence. And the bitterly
orphaned defenseless lilliput listened to it with fear and cried bitterly. The huge human
heart that stood high above the country, and filled the days and dark Lilliputian nights
with the roar of its beat, has left the world forever.
166
The death of Gulliver could be viewed as a confirmation of the death of God that guarded
the people, or it might also allude to the death of the “giant” of Russian literature - Lev Tolstoy,
which happened in 1910. The grotesque size of Adreev’s Lenin and Gulliver makes them as
significant as the “Bolshevik” on the canvas of Boris Kustodiev (1920). However, it is worth
mentioning that there was an earlier version of the painting, titled Zhupel Revolyutsii (1906) (The
Horror of the Revolution), which portrayed the figure of a skeleton with a saw, in a similar pose
and on the same streets and was devoted not to the victory of Revolution, but to the bloody
nature of the revolutionary riots of 1905.
As it will be shown in the next chapters, the theme of an immortal collective body,
depicted as grotesque, often gigantic figures was soon appropriated and further developed by
Pil’niak and Filonov.
166
Andreev L., SS, VI, 47
Radchenko 129
Chapter 3.
Boris Pil’niak: Apocalyptic Transformations.
Boris Pil’niak’s early works are often viewed as the epitome of 1920s revolutionary
prose. Pil’niak’s contemporary, Marxist literary critic Aleksandr Voronsky, considered him to be
a “physiological writer,” whose art responded to the elemental force of the Revolution: “Pil’niak
accepted the Revolution because he had sought and found something animal, prehistoric in it.”
167
However, Voronsky could not account for Pil’niak’s conflation of contemporary “leather
jackets” and historical pre-Petrine “Rus,’” dismissing this paradoxical conjunction as something
“hastily composed.”
168
The critic, it seems, could not countenance a conclusion impossible in the
early Soviet times: for Pil’niak, the turmoil of revolution was similar to the apocalyptic chaos
that Peter the Great––not a liberator, but an Anti-Christ
169
––had brought to the Russian land in
the 18th century. A similar idea was expressed by Nikolai Berdyaev, who compared the
Bolshevik infection to Peter’s reforms. According to Edward Brown, Pil’niak “never accepted
the Revolution, even though he pretended to welcome its barbarous violence as a cathartic
process.”
170
167
Jensen, Peter Alberg. Nature as Code : the Achievement of Boris Pilnjak 1915-
1924 Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1979, p.70
168
Ibid, p.70
169
In 1919, Pil’niak worked on Rasskaz o Petre, published in 1933 as His Highness Kneeb Piter
Komandor, in which he portrayed Peter as Anti-Christ, based on his physiognomy more than
psychology. Pil’niak depicts the emperor’s body as disproportionate, monstrous flesh, which
reflects his inner disharmony. See Pil’niak B, PSS v 6 tomakh, volume 1, p.385
170
Brown, Edward James. Russian Literature Since the Revolution Rev. and enl. ed. Cambridge,
Mass: Harvard University Press, 1982, p.77
Radchenko 130
At the core of this chapter are the depictions of life and death in Pil’niak’s magnum opus,
Golyi God, and in some early stories, such as “Ivan-da-Maria,” “Ivan-Moskva,” “God ikh
Zhizni,” “Tselaya Zhizn’,” “Smertel’noe Manit,” “Mashiny i Volki,” and “Myatel’.” The
“organic view” on the questions of life and death that Tolstoy and Andreev propose in their
works appears to have heavily influenced Pil’niak’s vision. While it is hard to establish an
explicit relationship between Pil’niak and Andreev, who left Russia in 1906, the former did
count himself among the disciples of Boris Zaitsev, who belonged to the same modernist circle
as did Andreev
171
.
As Olga Matich posits in her book Erotic Utopia, the symbolist belief system
unexpectedly found its continuation in the literary and painterly avant-garde, just as socialist
philosophy had a bearing, however indirect, on the symbolist ethos.
172
This chapter develops the
idea that Pil’niak regarded the October Revolution, the Great War, and the Civil War as
apocalyptic battles waged between giant “geopolitical bodies.” One of them, harkening back to
the figure of Peter the Great, represented the rotten body of the government,
173
while the other
was the compound body of the people, enhanced by a certain mythological, folkloric vigor and
reminiscent of Tolstoy’s image of the Russian peasant. This chapter, then, discusses the origins
of Pil’niak’s organic view of life and death by tracing it back to Zaitsev and attending to such
concepts as the collective self, dying body, human-animal transformations, and cyclicality of life,
the latter characterized as a folklore-inspired variation on immortality that strips necrological and
erotic discourses of their literary conventions. This chapter will also delve into the apocalyptic
171
The writings of Boris Zaitsev have been largely overlooked by Western scholarship
172
Matich, Olga. Erotic Utopia : the Decadent Imagination in Russia’s Fin-de-Siècle Madison,
Wis: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005, p.277
173
In Ivan da Marya, the body of Russia is represented as a yellow map. I will address this later
in the chapter.
Radchenko 131
metaphors in the early works of Pil’niak
174
, and into the Symbolist tropes of the Bolshevik
apocalypse as taken up by Boris Zaitsev, to whom Pil’niak’s prose owes a considerable debt
175
.
The Roots of Pil’niak’s Organic Culture. Zaitsev and Folklore
Although Pil’niak’s Golyi God is not, strictly speaking, written in the transrational
language of zaum, immensely popular among the Russian modernists, its complex verbal texture
and "montage" features do make the novel rather difficult to comprehend. Consequently, a
comparative analysis appears to be an apt critical tool, since finding connections to more
digestible texts might render the text in question relatively transparent. I argue that Boris
Zaitsev’s short stories devoted to the 1905 revolution have the potential to elucidate certain
aspects of Pil’niak’s Golyi God
176
. Hence, this subsection aims to identify the common ground
between Golyi God and Zaitsev’s short stories, such as “The Wolves,” “Black Winds,” “Bread,”
“Earth,” and “People,” and to clarify their treatment of such themes as the body, death, war, and
revolution.
Pil’niak’s first collection of short-stories С последним пароходом (With the Last Steam
Boat) was dedicated to Zaitsev, whose words from the short story “Земная Печаль” (“Earthly
174
The Apocalyptic tradition in Boris Pil’niak’s works seems to be ignored by Western
scholarship.
175
Many scholars accused Pil’niak of unoriginality, citing a long list of writers and thinkers of
whom he is ostensibly derivative: from Heraclitus, Nietzsche, London, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky,
Tolstoy, and Andreev to Bely and Skifstvo. However, a thorough study of Pil’niak’s borrowings
has yet to be accomplished, leaving a vast field for future research.
176
Pil’niak is also well-known for the “recycling” of his ideas, passages, and even chapters. For
example, the episode with the Egyptian mummy from “Ivan-Moskva” resurfaces in Dvoiniki with
slightly altered characters and plotlines. Perhaps this persistence was granted the themes that were
of utmost importance to him.
Radchenko 132
Sorrow”) were used as an epigraph: “И все же безмерно жаль земного.” This epigraph set the
tone for the entire volume and indicated Pil’niak’s interest in the themes of existential
temporality in the material world. A member of the literary circle “Sreda”
177
led by Nikolai
Teleshov, between 1899-1922, Zaitsev, along with Leonid Andreev and artist and art critic
Sergei Glagol’ (Gloushev), represented its left-leaning, modernist wing. Vocal in his admiration,
Zaitsev even organized commemorative events for Andreev after his death. According to
Zaitsev’s memoirs, Gloushev wanted Zaitsev to convey through his works the horror with which
Andreev had infused his own writing: “– Ты мне напиши с жутью, знаешь, как Леонид. С
жутью. Милый Сергей Сергеич любил «жуть.” (You should write with terror, you know, just
like Leonid. With terror. Dear Sergei Sergeevich liked the terror.)
178
The Apocalyptic Terror of the Riots. Symbolic Transformations of the Masses
Zaitsev never portrayed any human corpses per se; however, his use of expressionistic
primary colors in the descriptions of uprisings instilled nothing short of primal fear in the reader,
rooted as it was in the intelligentsia’s apprehensions regarding the masses’ supernatural powers.
Aleksandr Blok in his essay "The People and the Intelligentsia" (1908) compared the peasants to
"a waking giant with a sort of smirk on its lips," or "the shaft-horse looming above, whose heavy
hoofs are ready to come down on us."
179
Blok argued that the intelligentsia should use its last
chance to come to terms with the people before it was too late. Similarly to Blok, Zaitsev
177
Zaitsev, Boris, Prokopov T.F. Sobranie Sochinenii v odinnadtsati tomakh Moskva: “Russkaya
Kniga,” 1991-2001 volume 1 p. 591
178
Zaitsev, Ibid, volume 10, p.3
179
Blok A. “Narod i Intelligentsia”, http://blok.lit-info.ru/blok/publicistika/narod-i-intelligenciya.htm
Radchenko 133
represented the revolutionary people as natural forces to be reckoned with. His metaphorical
allusion to the lupine world in the story “Wolves” (1902) deepens the abyss of contemporary
social crises. In “Chernye Vetry” (1906), Zaitsev alludes to the destructive powers of nature
when describing the riots in Southern Russia and embracing the whole organic range of bodily
transformations. It is not only the wolves, whose bloody feuds suddenly make the reader
recognize herself in the beasts but also the powerful collective self that unexpectedly turns into a
destructive, indomitable physical hurricane. Again and again, Kustodiev’s “Zhupel” (“Horror”)
of Revolution, discussed in the previous chapter, morphs into a Bolshevik and vice versa,
crushing everything in its way.
Any collectivity, as Andreev had cautioned the reading public, is a two-faced Janus: it
has both the glowing visage of a Bolshevik marching peacefully, his flag atilt, and the horrific
grimace of a deathly skeleton trampling over mounds of corpses. Zaitsev sensed the growing
power of the masses as an aggressive, ruinous force, and the image of a compound body of
terror, accordingly, took shape in his works. In the short story “Chernye Vetry” (“Black Winds”)
(1906), devoted to the riots in South Russia, he delivers a highly visual, graphic description of
revolutionary crowds, relying on the striking color scheme of black, white, and red. The skirmish
erupts in the meat stalls, where the blood-spattered butchers collide with the white lomoviki
covered in flour, only to be smashed eventually by a black tide of workers:
Посреди площади, у водокачки, сбились кучей ломовики громадные, в
белой муке; красные глаза у них сверкают. […]Приказчики из мясных склабятся и
сучат рукава. Мрачная кровяная туча стелется по земле, ползет, как тяжелый пар.
Radchenko 134
[…] Вдруг из-за станции движется что-то; глухо чернеющей лентой тянутся
рабочие.
In the middle of the square, at the pumping station, there were a bunch of huge
lomoviki, covered in white flour; their red eyes sparkle. [...] Ordermen from meat stores
whip up their sleeves. A dark blood cloud creeps along the ground creeps like a heavy
steam. [...] Suddenly, from behind the train station, something is moving; a dull black,
stretching ribbon of workers.)
180
According to the Ushakov Dictionary, the lomoviki mentioned in the first sentence were
coachmen tasked with carrying heavy loads. Lomoviki is also the title of one of Pavel Filonov’s
1915 paintings, where the term stands for the quintessence of some robust, almost elemental,
rock-solid human force. While the artist’s familiarity with Zaitsev’s literary output may be hard
to prove, both of them, most likely, reflected the social reality around them and were equally
fascinated by the cataclysmic power wielded by the mutineers. Interestingly, the word lomovik
was also used to denote a resilient draft horse. The metamorphoses of people into horses and vice
versa in Filonov’s paintings could have been the result of him pondering these multiple
meanings.
The spirit of Zaitsev’s riots is bloody and fleshy, earthy and cruel. His depiction of the
revolution as a chaotic, primeval force could not but have informed Pil’niak’s interpretation of
the Revolution in Golyi God. As Zaitsev continues to detail the riot, the elemental forces at play
increasingly evoke the folkloric tradition, too, since for the Russian peasant consciousness, every
180
Zaitsev, Boris, Prokopov T.F. Sobranie Sochinenii v odinnadtsati tomakh Moskva: “Russkaya
Kniga,” 1991-2001, volume 1, p. 56
Radchenko 135
natural disaster, whether it be a whirlwind, hurricane, or snowstorm, had to include a demonic
component. Blok sensed a diabolical presence in the blizzard of Revolution in his The Twelve, as
did Khlebnikov in Snezhimochka. In a symbolist vein, Zaitsev also portrays the devils and evil
spirits taking part in the revolutionary events. For him, the riot exemplifies pure destruction and
glorification of death: “Все эти белые гиганты, железный грохот телег, кулаки, драные
одежды и распухшие веки – все сливается в одних злобных, земляных духов.”
181
As
mayhem escalates, the clashes among different social groups are likened to demonic waves
bearing a distinctly Scythian energy of devastation:
Ломовики бурлят;[…] и как орда скифских зверей рушатся они на
противников. Мучные вихрастые волны злей; точно огненнaя буря охватила всех,
гигантская масса воет, бьет, кромсает; тело xляскает, бьют по-иному, рвут. Красна
мгла застилает глаза. Хочется бить друг друга, бьют своих, себя. Уже черных
забастовщиков нет, как раздавленные муравьи сгинули они куда-то, и теперь
ломовые бьют союзников.
Lomoviki seethe; [...] and as a horde of Scythian animals they hit the adversaries.
White shaggy waves get angrier; as if a firestorm swept over everyone, a giant mass
howls, beats, shreds; the body bursts, they hit differently. A red haze blurs their eyesight.
There is an urge to beat each other; they beat their own, themselves. The black strikers
are already gone, as crushed ants, they have vanished somewhere, and now the coachmen
(lomoviki) beat the allies.
182
181
Zaitsev, Boris, Prokopov T.F. Sobranie Sochinenii v odinnadtsati tomakh Moskva: “Russkaya
Kniga,” 1991-2001, volume 1, p. 56
182
Ibid, 57
Radchenko 136
The joint forces of white and red defeat the wave of black workers, reducing them to a
panicky colony of ants. However, the revolutionary energy revitalizes the masses and elevates
them from frightened ants into uncontrollable, savage waves. The rioting crowds of workers are
compared to a “poisonous rash” on the composite body of people: “Черные горящие пятна
растут. Точно гигантское тело народа выгнало ядовитую сыпь, темную, злую болезнь.”
(Black burning spots are growing. Similarly, the giant body of the people kicked out a poisonous
rash, a dark, evil disease.)
183
Not unlike Andreev, Zaitsev depicts the emergence of a collective
body gripped by madness and hostility. Although the workers are defeated, the flour-coated
coachmen are now beating the red butchers. This metaphor of senseless aggression and thirst for
blood is similar to Andreev’s metaphor of red laughter, which drives people mad and compels
them to murder. Moreover, Zaitsev uses the neutral “they” pronoun and the impersonal
construction “there is an urge to hit” to produce an atmosphere of anxiety; violence is in the air.
Indeed, the sum of turn-of-the-century anxieties, the Russo-Japanese war defeat, and the
atrocities of the 1905 revolution conspired to spell out a catastrophe that would alter, irreparably,
the old way of life. Written only a year after the revolution of 1905, Zaitsev’s interpretation of
the riots is analogous to a prophesy of doom. The three colors––black, white, and red––are the
colors of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse; the only one missing is the pale one representing
plague. Zaitsev compares the hordes of workers to clouds of black flies, which later acquire the
power of crushing black waves, breaking into houses and devouring all life. This analogy with
183
Ibid, p. 57
Radchenko 137
swarms of insects plaguing upon the world could also be viewed as an allusion to the
Apocalypse:
Черные отряды липнут друг к другу, как стаи мух; в косом, мглистом
дождичке вечера набрасываются жаркими оравами на одиночных, подминают,
храпят и, как мерзкие цепы, малотят кулаками по живому. […] В бурной тьме
ветров их швыряет из улицы в улицу; они ломят стекла, двери жилья; их бросает в
глубь домов, и, как мрачные валны, топят они жизнь в стонах, боли, муке. (The
black squads stick to each other like flocks of flies; in the slanting, misty rain of the
evening, as hot clouds they pounce on solitary people, crush, snore, and, like nasty flails,
shake their fists on the living. [...] In the stormy darkness of the winds, they are thrown
from one street into another; they break the glass, the doors of the housing; they are
thrown into the depths of the houses, and, like gloomy waves, they drown life in groans,
pain, and agony. )
184
Zaitsev’s diction is so intensely visual that the reader’s experience progressively
resembles the contemplation of a monumental Renaissance painting. The narration, while
chronicling contemporary events, alludes to numerous Biblical plots and thus draws parallels
between said events and eschatological history. In the above-mentioned passage, the root “life”
is used three times, every time in close quarters with destruction and death: “hitting the living,”
“entering the dwelling” (the root is “zhil”), “drowning life.” These reiterations emphasize the
184
Zaitsev B. Sobranie Sochinenii v 11 tomakh. Tom 1, “Tikhie Zori”, Moskva: Russkaya Kniga,
1999, p.58
Radchenko 138
sheer variety of ways in which life may be annihilated. The next paragraph goes on to describe
the four fires that burn “people, girls, and children.” The number four here can be read as an
allusion to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as well. Taken as a whole, the riots then evoke
the eschatological wars of the Old Testament, now unfolding anew in modern times:
[…] мощные колоколa гудят; они гудят страшным полуночным воем, как
трубы бед. В дальнем мраке полыхают зарева, медный гул катит в воздухе на
могучих колесницах; и в четырех концах города и дальше над великой страной
встают четыре грозно-пламенных факела, четыре дикие жертвенника, где горят
люди, девушки, дети. – Да будет! (The powerful bells are buzzing; they buzz in terrible
midnight howls like pipes of trouble. In the distant darkness, the glow is blazing, the
copper rumble rolls in the air on mighty chariots; and in the four corners of the city, and
further over the great country, four menacing and fiery torches arise, four wild altars,
where people, girls, and children burn. - Yes, let it begin!)
185
Of particular significance here is the metaphor of church bells tolling as “trumpets of
sorrows.” This allegory could be read as a reference to the trumpets that angels blow in the
Revelation of John, announcing the commencement of disasters to bring the sinners to
repentance. “Let it happen” is the confirmation of God’s will and a fatalistic acknowledgment of
the beginning of eschatological warfare. A demonic sabbath is set off, and the sad face of “Old
Mother” looks down upon this “great suffering” and pandemonium from above. The demons
185
Zaitsev, Ibid, p.59
Radchenko 139
(“cherti”) are reveling in the massacre, bringing to mind the Orthodox iconography of the Last
Judgment where the hooved and horned devils are fighting for the souls of people:
“Вихри кричат железными и звериными голосами; на железно-сетчатом
мосту засели небольшие черти и визгливо голосят; […] и захлебываются в
кровавых наслаждениях.” (Whirlwinds are screaming in iron and bestial voices; on the
iron-mesh bridge, small devils have hidden and wail shrilly; [...] and choke in bloody
pleasures.)
186
Skeletons as symbols of death were seldom depicted in the Russian Orthodox tradition. In
some Russian lubki, one might find the occasional image of a skeleton, but it was mostly due to
the transplantation of the “Dance of Death” motif from some European originals. The sole case
of using skeletal imagery is when artists painted a skull and two bones under the feet of Jesus,
representing Christ’s triumph over death. In the religious icons, the hairy black demons with
hoofs and horns signify the forces of death and destruction. Likewise, in native Russian lubki,
death was depicted as a hairy demon with a saw, as in Anika-Voin i Smert’ (Anika-soldier and
Death). The modernists’ deployment of their “native” ghouls had strong ties to folklore. Much
like Zaitsev, Pil’niak enlists folkloric demons to participate in the revolution and its aftermath.
According to Pil’niak, there is a whole throng of evil Slavic spirits wailing in the revolutionary
blizzard:
186
Zaitsev, Ibid, p. 59
Radchenko 140
Слышишь, как революция воет: – как ведьма в метель! И леший барабанит:
– гла-вбум! главбуумм!... А ведьмы задом-передом подмахивают: – кварт-хоз!
:кварт-хоз!... Леший ярится: – нач-зва:к!” (Can you hear revolution howling like a
witch in the blizzard! And the wood-demon drums: -gla-vbum! Glavbuum! And the
witches wiggling their rears and fronts-kvart-hoz! Kvart-hoz!)
187
A correlation between the Slavic demons and revolutionary chaos was also established by
another representative of 1920s ornamental prose, the writer Malashkin who narrated a certain
“chertovschina” in his story “Bol’noi Chelovek” (“A Sick Man”). The devil in the story comes to
the protagonist, Andrei Zavulonov, disguised as the white wachtmeister whom Zavulonov killed
in the Civil War. Zavulonov sees the wood-demon in the pub and hears the howling of the
witches. Besides its engagement with the Slavonic codes of diabolical interference, the story also
conjures up the European genre of the Danse Macabre:
Мы не бежали, а нелепо топтались на месте, оттопывали усталыми ногами, а
возле нас на снегу подпрыгивали наши огромные тени, откалывали танец. Наши
тени походили на этот раз на скелеты смерти. (Instead of running, we ridiculously
trampled on the spot, stumping with the tired feet, and our huge shadows jumped on the
snow near us in convulsed dance. Our shadows looked like the skeletons of death this
time.
188
187
Pil’niak B. Sobranie Sochinenii v 6 tomakh, Moskva: Terra-Knizhnyi Klub, 2003, vol.1, p.77
188
Malashkin S. Bol’noi Chelovek, Moskva: Molodaya Gvardiya, 1928, kindle
Radchenko 141
Pil’niak marshals the images of demons to various metaphorical ends. In a letter to
Voronsky discussing the paths of modern Russian literature, Pil’niak uses the metaphor of devils
as some inner impetus gnawing away at the authors as a sort of Socratic daemon. At the same
time, he admits to the empirically verifiable reality of these demons by comparing them to the
“chiort” that his great-grandmother kept in her backyard:
У меня была прабабка […], так у нее на веревочке был привязан черт, она
ему ставила молоко, черт этого молока не пил […] она этого черта мне показывала
-я его не видел- […]так пусть Толстой, Маяковский, Замятин каждый видит своего
черта […]прошу не мешать мне видеть своего, это и есть литература (– I had a
great-grandmother […], so she kept a devil tied on a string, she would give him milk,
which he wouldn’t drink […] she showed this devil to me — I didn’t see him, but she
was an honest old lady — so let Tolstoy, Mayakovsky, Zamyatin – each has their demon,
this is called literature […])
189
While Dostoyevsky portrayed the metaphorical demons of revolution, the idea of quite
palpable demonic forces swept up in a blizzard could be traced all the way back to Pushkin, who,
in his “Besy,” famously wondered: “Что так жалобно поют?/Домового ли хоронят,/Ведьму
ль замуж выдают?” (What's the plaintive song is sung? Is a house-demon being buried,
Or a witch married there?)
190
Although the Futurists notoriously wanted to “throw” him
189
Jensen, Peter Alberg. Nature as Code: The Achievement of Boris Pilnjak 1915-
1924. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1979, p.83
190
Pushkin A.S. Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii v 16 t. –Moskva; L.: Izd-vo AN SSSR, 1937-1959,
t.3, kn.1. p.226-227
Radchenko 142
“overboard the ship of modernity,” the link to Pushkin remained indispensable for Pil’niak. After
all, Pushkin was the first to depict the whirlwind of a peasant revolution embodied by Pugachev,
who steps right out of a snowstorm. Pushkin was also a collector of folk songs
191
and engaged
with the folk language and traditional beliefs in his writing, ever-insistent on the necessity to
preserve them intact. Pil’niak, was also influenced by the demonic and chaotic world of
Aleksandr Blok, who in the poetic cycles “Puzyri Zemli” (1904-1905), and “Strashnyi Mir”
(1909-1916) considered the connection between the Slavic demonic world, earthly and material,
and the turmoil of revolution.
Along with detecting a demonic presence in the Revolution, Zaitsev and Pil’niak both
resort to the personification of nature. Natural forces become actively implicated in murders,
which confirms their eschatological finality. The blizzard and the darkness take part in the riots
as the whirlwinds are screaming and the river is boiling. The waves of revolt roll in with the
implacable weight of the Great Flood, called upon to cleanse the Earth.
Political and Metaphorical Dimensions of the Apocalypse
According to my analysis of modernist literature and visual arts, apocalyptic motifs come
to the forefront in most works about war, insurgency, revolution, and death. While there is no
shortage of prophecies foretelling the end of humanity both in the Old Testament and non-
Biblical tradition, the landscape of eschatological literature within Western civilization remains
dominated by the Revelation to John, dated c. 90-95 A.D. As Abrams puts it,
191
Kirievsky’s collection of Russian folk songs contains extensive materials passed down to him
from Pushkin.
Radchenko 143
[…]it has become the text that has most palpably influenced our Western views of history
as a plot: […] a final crescendo with awesome denouement (the Parousia, or Second
Coming, of Christ, followed by the replacement of the old world by a "new heaven and
new earth."
192
Early modernists were inspired by the book of Revelation. The most famous and
straightforward example is Natalia Goncharova’s series of lithographs Images of War (1914)
depicting the Great War as an eschatological battle between the evil forces of Germany and the
righteous Russian soldiers, who are ensured divine support. The same eschatological clash is
afoot on the metaphorical battlefields of Ivangorod in Filonov’s Propeven’ o Prorosli Mirovoi.
193
Briusov’s “Kon’ bled,” named after one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, narrates the
appearance of the Horseman named Death amidst the city hustle. In short, eschatological
expectations were the order of the day, paired up inevitably with madness. As Nicoletta Misler
contends, the symbolist and avant-garde artists “emphasized the apparent parallels of war and
revolution with the prophecy contained in the Book of John the Apostle, i.e., firstly, catastrophe
and destruction, and secondly, the messianic reorganization of the order of the world, albeit the
earthly world.”
194
192
Bethea, David M. The Shape of Apocalypse in Modern Russian Fiction Princeton, N.J:
Princeton University Press,1991, p.7
193
The argument is developed in full in the manuscript: Radchenko K., Seliazneva O. “Biblical
Eschatology in Filonov’s works”
194
Misler, Nicoletta. “Apocalypse and the Russian Peasantry: The Great War in Natalia
Goncharova’s Primitivist Paintings”, Experiment 4, 1, 1998: 62-76, p.62
Radchenko 144
According to Zamyatin, Pil’niak was one of the writers who defined the messianic role of
Russia in these eschatological proceedings.
195
Once again pointing up the proximity of the
modern epoch to the times of Peter the Great,
196
he insisted that literature should reflect its
attendant historical violence, because history is, simply, made of blood and violence. Pil’niak
had a vivid sense of zeitgeist and a gift for channeling his time’s preoccupations into his works.
Indeed, the metaphorical apocalypse coincided with a political one. According to Joshua
Sanborn, in the early 20
th
century, the Russian Empire went through three phases of
decolonization: imperial challenge, state failure, and social disaster. Violence and barbarism are
especially prevalent in the third phase, as essential and ineluctable social processes that structure
the war period
197
. In Golyi God and some early stories, Pil’niak depicted the social disaster stage,
i.e., the chaos and agony of a dying state. The violence in Babel’s and Pil’niak’s works has
usually been regarded as a sign of the birth of a new society. However, I suggest that it might,
and should, be read as the death throes of a moribund empire, inextricably linked to its
eschatological implications.
Pil’niak enhanced some of the eschatological motifs proliferated earlier and put forward
some of his own. Dyed in the traditional apocalyptic colors are the motifs of an eschatological
battle between good and evil and the triumph of death, the sabbath of dark forces, and the
shadow of the Anti-Christ (incarnated by Peter the Great), as well as the apocalyptic staple of
wormwood. It is important to point out that Pil’niak’s depiction of the Apocalypse reminds one
of an apocryphal narrative similar to the religious peasants’ chants, combining Orthodox and
195
See Zamiatin E. Ya Boyus'. Stat'i. M., 1999 p.183-205
196
Zaitsev B.K. Sobranie Sochinenii v 11 tomakh, Moskva: “Russkaya Kniga”, 1990-2001 volume
9, p. 110
197
Sanborn, Joshua A. Imperial Apocalypse: the Great War and the Destruction of the Russian
EmpireOxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Radchenko 145
pagan references in the turmoil of the Revolution. It is a carnivalesque blend of the Gospels,
Bible, Psalter, and folklore demonic characters, intensified by an organic worldview inherent in
the folkloric consciousness. Many of Pil’niak’s letters suggest a religiosity typical of the old
intelligentsia. Unlike Filonov, who staunchly rejected any spirituality in his works or life,
Pil’niak, for instance, celebrated the Orthodox Easter, albeit with an emphasis on the holiday’s
pagan strain. Appreciative of its affinity to the pagan rites of “promiscuous” Spring, he saw in
Easter a vibrant salute to the annual natural cycles and a jubilant victory of life over death, which
transcended for him the dogmatic frames of Christianity:
[..] в природе Рождение и Смерть прекрасны! […] И христианская наука, как
память страдания Христа – не нужна мне. Но люблю я Пасху язычески, как
великий весенний праздник великой Блудницы, зажигающей кровь в жилах!
In nature both the Birth and the Death are marvelous! […} And Christian
knowledge as a memory of Christ suffering – is not for me. However, I love Easter in a
pagan way, as a great spring rite of a great Whore, lighting up blood in veins!
198
According to Gary Browning, Pil’niak’s and Bely’s engagement with Russian folk art
was a symptom of their eschatological worldview: “Influenced by the revolutions of 1905 and
1917, Belyi and Pil'niak connected the folk with a possibility of a dramatic or even apocalyptic
change that could undermine their social status and the very existence of their class.”
199
On the
198
Pil’niak B., Bulaeva. O. ed. Mne Vypala Gor’kaya Slava…Pis’ma 1915-1937, Moskva:
Amfora, 2004, p.16. This idea will be recycled in several of his stories, which means that Pil’niak
set a lot of store by it.
199
Browning, Gary. Boris Pilniak : Scythian at a Typewriter Ann Arbor, Mich: Ardis, 1985, p.22
Radchenko 146
pages of Pil’niak’s works, folklore-bred witches and wood-demons are howling as the
apocalypse has already begun, and death is walking among the living. For the self-conscious
Pil’niak, even the act of writing itself was connected to death. In his story “At the Door” (“Pri
Dveriah”), which will be further discussed in detail, the writer protagonist laments:
Ну, скажите […], какое экономическое бытие определило, чтоб стать мне
писателем, и ничего не любить, кроме писательства, и ходить все время no
трупам!?
Can you tell me, […] which economic being has ordered me to become a writer
and to love nothing besides writing and to always walk over corpses!?
200
Signs of the Apocalypse: Pale Yellow
Throughout his works of different periods, there can be observed several recurring
metaphors and motifs that allow us to define the apocalyptical mode of Pil’niak’s oeuvre. While
blood and violence, immanently, were companions of the Revolution and war, for Pil’niak the
atmosphere that engulfed his characters was not painted in red or crimson; instead, it was yellow,
green, and “murky” (“mutnaya”). Several scholars have hesitantly noted the uniqueness of
Pil'niak's colors, but I propose to read them as an allegory of the already-happening Apocalypse.
In The Revelation, the colors of three Horsemen are unambiguous: white, red, and black, just like
200
Pil’niak, I, 236
Radchenko 147
the colors of the crowds in the descriptions penned by Zaitsev. It is not unlikely that Pil’niak and
Zaitsev were both aware of these particular colors’ symbolic stakes. Akin to the Horsemen of the
Apocalypse, the crowds of rioting people wreak havoc upon the world. The color of the horse
that carries the fourth horseman, whose name is Death, is usually translated to Russian as “pale”
(bled, as in Bryusov’s poem). The Greek word used in Revelation is khloros, a yellowish-green
or a pale yellow very similar to the waxy hue of a corpse.
And I looked, and behold a pale (khloros) horse: and the name that sat on him was
Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part
of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of
the earth.
201
The same Greek word khloros refers, simultaneously, to fresh sprouts of greenery and the
pallor of ultimate decay: a seemingly incongruous mix that might have partially shaped the
attitude to death within the organic school. Just as Plato’s term pharmakon, as Derrida argued, is
at the same time a remedy and a poison, the khloros of death is indistinguishable from new,
verdant, organic life. In addition, this idea may have had a bearing on Filonov’s theory of “the
world’s sprouting,” which connects life and death in the eternal movement of an organic whole.
The theme of organic culture in the art of Filonov and Matyushin will be addressed in the next
chapter.
The above-mentioned short story, “Pri Dveriah,” has an eschatological epigraph pointing
to the imminence of the second coming: “So also, when you see all these things, you will know
201
Revelation, 6:8
Radchenko 148
that He is near, right at the door.”
202
Omitted, though, are the preceding paragraphs that recount
the horrors and disasters to culminate at the End of Days. In this story, Pil’niak compares,
through colors, an early morning to the face of a corpse:
“А утро nришло – восковое, воздух в морозном солнце был желтым, как
воск, – желтым, как воск, было солнце, – как лицо мертвеца.” (And the waxy
morning came; the air in the frosty sun was yellow like wax; yellow like wax was the sun
— like a dead man's face.)
203
; “День. Воздух в морозе, желт, как воск, – желто, как
воск, солнце.” (Day.The air in the frost is as yellow as wax, -- the sun, as yellow as
wax.)
204
.
This hypnotic refrain of the words “yellow” and “wax” yields an atmosphere of suspense
and morbid expectancy, further amplified when the protagonist, Troparov (the root means
“path”), is mistakenly named Truparev (the root is “corpse”) as he embarks on a train journey to
Moscow across all of Russia, metonymically presented as a yellow map. Thus death itself is
doubled: a corpse travels through a country that is already as dead and outdated as a faded map
on the wall. The same image crops up in Golyi God, as well: “Россия была лишь желтой
картой великой европейско-российской равнины.”
205
Pil’niak transforms the
multidimensional space of Russia, along with a multitude of meanings ascribed to the Russian
land, into a flat, brittle, bleached map that Troparov crosses by train. What makes such reliance
202
Mathew, 24:33
203
Pil’niak, 1:184
204
Pil’niak, 1:203
205
Pil’niak, 2:59
Radchenko 149
on the image of a map all the more intriguing is that by giving his narrative a cartographic
setting, Pil’niak employs the same device as did medieval Russian icon painters. According to
the semiologist Boris Uspensky’s “The Semantical Syntax of the Icon,” “the depiction of the
building on the backdrop was paradoxically one of the ways of the depiction of the interior.”
Moreover, Uspensky compares the compositional system of ancient icons to a geographical map,
with its schematic depiction of certain elements. He points out that in Ancient Russian
miniatures the landscape, in fact, resembled a geographical map: a river, for example, would be
shown as a whole from beginning to end.
206
So Troparov, too, is traversing a topographical
Russia. What Pil’niak accomplishes in this story is the same process that the reader of a medieval
icon would undertake: he interprets the two-dimensional surface of a map as a three-dimensional
country. It is crucial that the map on the wall was printed in 1825: “Тропаров приехал в
Москву no желтой карте Европейской Российской Равнины, Императорского
Топографического Департамента издания 15 декабря 1825 года.” (Troparov arrived in
Moscow following the yellow map of the European Russian Plain, published by the Imperial
Topographic Department on December 15, 1825.)
207
Pil’niak uses the date of the Decembrist
revolt to set another temporal benchmark for 20
th
-century revolutions. Meanwhile, the Petrine
epoch in the story is directly adjacent to the revolutionary upheaval: “Тропаров приехал от
тоски и от заборов, торчащих в тоску. Впрочем, от семнадцатого века также не уйдешь.”
(Troparov arrived from anguish and from fences protruding into anguish. However, you cannot
escape the seventeenth century either.)
208
206
Uspensky Boris, Semiotika Iskusstva, М.: “Yazyki Russkoi Kul’tury”, 1995, p. 286
207
Pil’niak, I, 236)
208
Pil’niak, I, 225)
Radchenko 150
According to Collins, temporal, historical discord is a defining feature of apocalyptic
literature. For Pil’niak, it is not only a diachronic temporal clash but also a synchronic spatial
clash. As the traveler draws closer to Moscow, the yellow of his 1825 map gradually infects the
20
th
-century Russia. On the following page, the alternating root zhel/zhelt (yellow) is used
fourteen times in different variations: zhelch (bile), zheltuha (jaundice), zheltizna
(yellowishness), zheltyi (yellow). With the help of this tautological abundance of the root
“yellow,” Pil’niak saturates his apocalyptical mode with overtones of madness and disease, his
allegory of yellow as the color of madness probably borrowed from Dostoyevsky. As an allusion
to Dostoyevsky, perhaps, the train is personified, shaking as though in a seizure, which grows in
intensity as it approaches Moscow. The intensity of yellowness grows, too, and epilepsy is
accompanied by jaundice (zheltukha). Making use of the whole spectrum of shades, from ochre
to bilious, Pil’niak also remarks that the yellow atmosphere was similar to that of Renaissance
paintings
209
:
С каждой истерикой стоянок, коими эпилепсировал поезд, передвигаясь по
карте […] от периферии к Москве […] как на карте, не жаль желчь желтухи и
желтый порядок - желтых лиц и пожелтевших от времени бумаг. Желтое. Бледно-
желтое. Зеленовато-желтое….[…] эпилепсия может упорядочиваться желтухой,
станционными службами в охре, пожелтевшими[…] лицами в сплошном желтом
синяке и в движениях, медленных, как бледная немочь желтухи.[…] проводник
международного вагона, в желтухе блузы и штанов, жужжал пульверизатором и
209
И кругом пожелтевшие холмы как задний план на картинах эпохи Ренессанса (And the
yellowish hills as a backdrop on the Renaissance paintings surround this)(Pil’niak, I, 220)
Radchenko 151
сулемой
210
(With each hysteria of the stops, by which the train shook in epilepsy,
moving along the map [...] from the periphery to Moscow [...] as on the map, you don’t
feel pity for the jaundice bile and the yellow order - of the yellow faces and aged papers.
Yellow. Pale yellow. Greenish-yellow. […] The epilepsy can be organized by jaundice,
station services colored in ochre, yellowed [...] faces covered in a solid yellow bruise and
movements slow as pale jaundice. [...] the conductor of the international carriage, in the
jaundice of a blouse and pants, buzzed with a spray gun and mercuric chloride.)
211
While Patricia Carden looks on this text, structured around parallelisms and repetitions,
as an example of “ornamental prose,” and asserts that Pil’niak uses “words as motifs in an
ornamental musical pattern,”
212
my intention is to address, first and foremost, the visual effect
that these repetitions produce, since the “yellowness” as a color mostly targets the sight. The
mesmerizing reiterations of the word “yellow,” along with several references to the yellow
landscapes of Renaissance paintings, congeal into a viscously feverish, schizophrenic aura. I
suggest regarding the yellow-green color in the works of Pil’niak as an apocalyptical motif, a
sign of the Fourth Horseman’s arrival. A jaundiced, deathly atmosphere also hypnotically
permeates Golyi God, so much so that even sunsets and sunrises in it are colored green and
yellow, resembling a dead body:
210
Sulema is a highly poisonous chemical mercuric chloride, which was used to treat syphilis, and
often as a preservative of the biological species, akin to formaldehyde. The connotation of death
is pronounced too.
211
Pil’niak, I, 222
212
Carden, Patricia,” Ornamentalism and Modernism”, Gibian, George., and Tjalsma, H.
W. Russian Modernism: Culture and the Avant-Garde, 1900-1930. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell
University Press, 1976, p. 50
Radchenko 152
Знойное небо льет знойное марево, и вечером долго будут желтые сумерки.
(The sultry sky pours a sultry haze, and in the evening there will be long yellow
twilight)
213
; Кунц [...] желтыми сумерками пойдет с подружками в синематограф
«Венеция». (With yellow twilight Kuntz will go to “Venice” cinematography with her
girlfriends)
214
; День отцвел желтыми сумерками, к ночи пошли сырые туманы. (The
day had faded with yellow twilight, and wet fogs arrived at night.)
215
; День отцвел
желтыми сумерками, в сумерки Оленька Кунц пошла в кинематограф “Венеция”
(The day faded by yellow twilight, at twilight Olenka Kuntz went to the cinema
“Venice”)
216
. Шло уже солнце к западу, наползли желтые сумерки. (The sun was
already going west, yellow twilight was crawling)
217
; И приходят желтые сумерки,
шарящие по дому. (And the yellow twilight comes, rummaging around the house)
218
; а
вечером будут желтые сумерки, и бьют колокола в соборе:- дон-дон-дон! (and in the
evening there will be yellow twilight, and the bells ring in the cathedral: - don-don-
don!)
219
; День цветет зноем и солнцем, и вечером – желтые сумерки. (The day
blooms in heat and sun, and in the evening - yellow twilight)
220
; И всю ночь были
болотно-зеленые сумерки с белой конницей облаков. (And all night long there were
swampy green twilight with white cavalry of clouds)
221
; Первыми о рассвете сказали
стрижи, летали в желтом сухом мраке, щебеча. (Swifts were the first to tell about the
213
Pil’niak, I,41
214
Pil’niak, I,42
215
Pil’niak, I,44
216
Pil’niak, I,45
217
Pil’niak, I,45
218
Pil’niak, I,78
219
Pil’niak, I,78
220
Pil’niak, I,82
221
Pil’niak, I,87
Radchenko 153
dawn, flying and chirping in the yellow dry darkness.)
222
; Солнце уходило широким
желтым закатом. Знойный день отцвел желтыми сумерками. (The sun was leaving
with a wide yellow sunset. The hot day faded in the yellow twilight.)
223
; Несколько
минут мир и город Ордынин - церкви, дома, мостовые - были зелеными, как вода,
как заводь[...] Затем мир и город Ордынин стали желтыми, как листопад. (For a few
minutes the world and the city of Ordynin — churches, houses, and pavements — were
as green as water, as a backwater [...] Then the world and the city of Ordynin turned as
yellow as a fall leaf.)
224
It could be also the allusion to the so-called “yellow peril,” the invasion of the Asians,
considering Pil’niak’s interest to Asia, his essays about Japan and the image of “Kitai-Gorod”
(China-town) that he developed in Golyi God. In general, the repetitive use of the same word
could also be read through the prism of Filonov’s theory of analytical painting. Not only does
Pil’niak reiterate “yellow” as a poetic pattern, he also depicts the city and the world at large from
different angles, thus tapping into the fullness of his representation. The image of a movie-
theater becomes central to the life of Ordynin Gorod in Golyi God.
225
The Cinematograph
“Venice,” which Olen’ka Kuntz frequents with some of the Ordynin sisters, is the focal point of
their everyday activities, pictured from the point of view of different characters:
222
Pil’niak, I,97
223
Pil’niak, I, 100
224
Pil’niak, I, 119
225
I doubt that Pil’niak was engaged in the development of cinematographic methodology, it was
1919 when he started to write his Golyi God. Perhaps Pil’niak’s documentary-like style was
influenced by Dziga Vertov’s new documentary series “Kino-Nedelya,” the first issue of which
came out in 1918. Also Pil’niak’s wife Kira Adronikashvili was interested in film. In 1936 she
became a student of Sergei Eisenstein at VGIK.
Radchenko 154
“Оленька Кунц […] пойдет с nодружками в синематограф “Венеция.’”
(Olenka Kuntz [...] will go to the “Venice” cinema with her girlfriends)
226
; “в сумерки
Оленька Кунц пошла в кинематограф “Венеция”, там играла Вера Холодная” (At
dusk Olenka Kuntz went to the “Venice” cinema; there Vera Kholodnaya “was
playing.)
227
; “Лидия Евграфовна с дочкою и Катерина Евграфовна вернулись из
«Венеции»” (Lydia Evgrafovna with her daughter and Katerina Evgrafovna returned
from “Venice.”)
228
A similar repetitive method was implemented by Pavel Filonov. While the multiplication
of hands and feet in his paintings does remind one of Italian Futurism, Filonov himself rejected
any ties to the Futurists. His method of analytical painting is similar to what Pil’niak does when
he describes the same event from different characters’ perspectives. While explaining the
analytical method to his students, Filonov once sketched a horse and the corner of a house just as
a realist painter would do it. However, afterward, he began to draw the same horse from a
different point of view, through the eyes of a woman leaving the house, placing the horse’s head
on the tail of the one painted earlier. In the absence of drones in the 1920s, he urged his students
to imagine. First, the viewpoint of a sparrow looking at the horse from above; then, that of a man
observing it out a second-floor window; and finally, through the eyes of a woman opening the
door to the street along which the horse was walking. Filonov combined all these viewpoints in
the same painting, which resulted in a horse having the same torso but several heads, different
226
Pil’niak, I, 43
227
Pil’niak, I, 45
228
Pil’niak, I, 66
Radchenko 155
positions of legs, etc. This method, though clearly reminiscent of montage, is not an organized
sequence of shots but, rather, an attempt to capture an object from different angles and on
different spaceplanes at different times, thus creating a perfect totality.
Pil’niak in Golyi God enacts the same analytical perception of time and space. The
novel’s coherent plot covers one year, ending with the death of everything artificial or
tyrannically threatening to the organic wholeness of life. It means, therefore, that there is a unity
of time in the novel. There is also a unity of space since the writer observes the situation from a
universal point of view and captures the events in Ordynin town, Moscow, and the woods
between those cities. The yellow-dawn refrain creates the unity of time; it is the same
apocalyptically yellow light that dawns upon the whole of Russia (the yellow dawn is also a
mainstay of Blok’s melancholic poetry). The colors intensify at night, creating a gothic,
suspenseful ambiance as Irina looks in the mirror in the moonlight and her body composes itself
into a sort of gothic Frankenstein, an urban monster of the Apocalypse:
В окна идет лунный свет, […] - при лунном свете все кажется зеленоватым.
У тела своя жизнь, я лежу, и начинает казаться, что мое тело бесконечно
удлиняется:, узкое-узкое, и пальцы как змеи. Или наоборот: тело сплющивается,
голова уходит в плечи. А иногда тело кажется огромным, все растет удивительно, я
великанша, и нет возможности двинуть рукой, большой, как километр.
Through the windows comes the moonlight, [...] - everything looks greenish in the
moonlight. My body has its own life, I am lying down, and it begins to appear as if my
body is infinitely extending: very, very narrow, and my fingers are like snakes. Or vice
versa: the body is getting flatter, my head is going into my shoulders. And sometimes my
Radchenko 156
body appears huge, everything keeps growing in an surprising way, I am a giant, and
there is no possibility of moving my hand, which is almost a kilometer long.
229
As green as a corpse in the moonlight, this grotesque body, subjected to an altered view,
is busy contemplating death: “теперешние дни, как никогда, несут только одно: борьбу за
жизнь, не на живот, а на смерть, поэтому так много смерти.” (modern times, like never
before, bring only one thing: the struggle for life, to the death, that is why there is so much
death.)
230
The moon in Pil’niak’s works is often associated with death: suffice it to recall his Tale
of the Unextinguished Moon, in which this celestial body acts as an evil spirit laying waste to the
city and the protagonist’s life. Moreover, in Russian folklore, the moon has a long history of
affiliation with the kingdom of death. The moon was the arena of resurrection for Fedorov and
Russian cosmists; in Filonov’s Propeven’, the Biblical Abel is resurrected on the moon; the
resurrected Ieshua and Pontius Pilate are walking down a moonlit path in Bulgakov’s Master and
Margarita.
Signs of the Apocalypse: Wormwood
Another apocalyptic motif utilized by Pil’niak is the smell of wormwood that haunts the
characters of Golyi God, trapped as they are in a transitory, liminal place redolent of death:
229
Pil’niak, I, 109
230
Pil’niak, I, 110
Radchenko 157
С рассветом горько запахло полынью, – и Наталья поняла: полынью,
горьким ее сказочным запахом, запахом живой и мертвой воды […] пахнут все
наши дни, тысяча девятьсот девятнадцатый год. Горечь полыни – дней наших
горечь.
With the dawn came the bitter smell of wormwood, and Natalya understood: of
wormwood, of its fabulous bitter smell, the smell of the water of life and the water of
death [...] smell of it, the year nineteen hundred and nineteen. The bitterness of
wormwood – is the bitterness of our days.
231
The wormwood in this passage begs to be read as an allusion to the Revelation, where it
appears as the star Absinthian:
The third angel sounded his trumpet and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell
from the sky […]A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the
waters that had become bitter.
232
According to the consensus interpretations, the image of wormwood pervading the waters
is an allegory for the bitterness and sorrow that will flood the Earth in the final days. Pil’niak,
however, concentrates on the most tangible and striking qualities of wormwood: its smell and
taste. While in a broad southern steppe the plant seems an organic and natural element, the smell
of polyn’ disturbs the people. Much like the color yellow, the smell of wormwood is often
231
Pil’niak, I, 97
232
Revelation, 8:10-11
Radchenko 158
mentioned several times on the same page. The bitterness of wormwood uncannily permeates the
fabric of the novel, bringing forth apocalyptic expectations:
Поросла полынь, пахнула горько. (Wormwood sprouted, smelling bitter)
233
; И
горько пахло над Увеком полынью (And wormwood smelled bitterly over Uvek)
234
;
Запахло горько полынью, полынь обросла холм серебряной пыльной щетиной,
пахнуло горько и сухо. There was a bitter smell of wormwood, the wormwood grew all
over the hill like silver dusty stubble, it smelled bitter and dry )
235
; Наталья пила
полынную - ту ведьмовскую скорбь. (Natalia drank the wormwood’s- the witch's
sorrow )
236
; горько пахло полынью. (wormwood smelled bitter.)
237
The smell of wormwood drives forward the relationship between Natal'ya and Baudek,
thus cloaking it in fatalistic, sinful, and foreboding shadows. As I have mentioned earlier,
Pil’niak tends to describe situations from different points of view; however, this particular
relationship is only seen “through the eyes of the anarchist Natalia,” to whom it smells of
wormwood (perhaps because the two met by an ancient tomb, in an old graveyard). Their
conversations are rife with contemplations of death as they muse on the fatal, mystical
transformations of Russia. The “Graveyard Poets” were an obvious influence on Pil’niak, since
he used a paragraph from Eduard Young’s “The Complaint, or Night Thoughts” (1787) as a
preface to Naked Year: “Всякая проходящая минута вечностью начинаться может” (Every
233
Pil’niak, I,93
234
Pil’niak, I,94
235
Pil’niak, I, 94
236
Pil’niak, I, 106
237
Pil’niak, I,107
Radchenko 159
passing minute can turn into an eternity). This is especially true of Natalia, desperate to live in
the moment, for there could be no earthly future for her and Baudek:
Пришел день, жаром своим испепеляющий уже землю, когда надо было
испить его жажду, чтобы вечером идти за иной полынью, полынью Баудека, за
горечью радости, ибо никогда не было у Натальи этой радости полынной, и
принесли ее эти дни, когда надо жить - сейчас или никогда.
Day came, scorching the earth with its heat, when it was necessary to drink its
thirst, in order to goin the evening for more wormwood, Baudek's wormwood, for the
bitterness of joy, since Natalya had never had this wormwood joy, and these days brought
it, when it is necessary to live - now or never.
238
In the Old Testament, the image of wormwood (la’anah in Hebrew, polyn’ in the Russian
translation) first surfaces in the Book of Proverbs when Solomon warns against adultery. Another
man’s wife is compared to honey, which takes on a wormwood bitterness after it is tasted: “But
in the end, she is bitter as wormwood, Sharp as a two-edged sword.”
239
More importantly still, in
another densely allegorical passage, the feet of promiscuous women touch death directly, and
their footprints lead straight into the realm of the dead: “Her feet go down to death, Her steps lay
hold of hell.”
240
The symbolist undercurrent is even stronger since Golyi God has an epigraph
from Aleksandr Blok’s poem devoted to Russia’s dark times. The motif of eschatological peril
issued by the feminine is reiterated in Blok’s poem “K Muze” (1912), which opens the cycle
238
Pil’niak, I, 98
239
Proverbs, 5:4
240
Proverbs, 5:5
Radchenko 160
“Strashnyi Mir” (1909-1916), devoted to the decadent infernal themes. Perhaps Blok also alludes
to the Songs of Solomon, as he compares the muse to a promiscuous woman, whose songs
disseminate the doomsday revelation: “Есть в напевах твоих сокровенных/Роковая о гибели
весть, / Есть проклятье заветов священных,/Поругание счастия есть.” (There is a fatal
message of death in your melodious tunes. There is a curse of sacred precepts. There is a
reproach of happiness.) In the final stanza, the motif of transgressing patriarchal rules is also
coupled with the bitterness of wormwood: “И безумная сердцу услада — Эта горькая страсть,
как полынь!” (And this crazy heart delight - This passion, as bitter as wormwood!)
241
Pil’niak’ s Eros invariably walks hand in hand with Thanatos. In times when “you need to
live now or never” because the end is nigh, the smell of wormwood is semantically linked up
with sin, sex, death, as well as with the realm of the dead. Perfectly aware of two different kinds
of wormwood––one real, the other allegorical, fusing together all the meanings mentioned
above––Natalia feels that very same carnal desire predictive of death that the Book of Proverbs
imbues with “wormwood bitterness”:
И еще, потому что Баудек положил голову к ней на колени, потому что
ворот вышитой его рубахи был расстегнут, и был зной, – чуяла иную полынь, о
которой молчала.
And also because Baudek laid his head on her knees, because the collar of his
embroidered shirt was open, and it was hot, - she smelled more wormwood, which she
was silent about.
242
241
Blok A. Sobranie Sochinenii v 8 tomakh, tom 3, Moskva, Leningrad: Izd-vo Khudozhestvennoi
Literatury,1960, p. 7
242
Pil’niak, 1:98
Radchenko 161
Pil’niak repeatedly uses the metaphor of drinking wormwood water, along with allusions
to the folkloric “dead and living water,” which can either grant life or administer death. This
combination of folklore and Biblical allegories weaves a unique, eclectic pattern of endemic
Russian eschatology, wherein Pil’niak’s characters are marooned in the temporal and spatial
continuum of the steppe, set against the backdrop of eternity––in an apocalyptical narrative, that
is, which reaches far back into prehistory. Similarly to the doomed members of Egyptian
excavations cursed by ancient witchcraft, none of the participants of the Uvek dig leave the site
alive. Donat is pronounced dead even before the narration begins in earnest; the whole Ordynin
family dies out; the elder Arkhipov commits suicide; the foreign archeologists and Natalia are
killed in a shooting. The apotheosis of death is attained in the fifth chapter, where three “panels”
of the Death Triptych are unveiled. The “Smerti Triptih Pervyi” part marks the expiration of the
archeological/anarchist commune: “И Аганька умерла в июле - по земле ходили черная оспа
и тиф […] Смерть, смута, голод. Утром в коммуне никого уже не было.” (And Aganka died
in July - black pox and typhus walked on the ground [...] Death, distemper, famine. In the
morning there was no one in the commune.)
243
Even Natalya, the last of the Ordynin family who was meant to live because she did not
have hereditary syphilis, meets her demise. Wormwood, as foretold in the Revelation, poisoned
the whole anarchist community, itself a mere microcosm of the agonizing country.
243
Pil’niak, I, 102
Radchenko 162
The March of the Fourth Horseman: Dead Characters in Pil’niak
As the economy collapsed to approximately one-fifth of its pre-war levels, the Civil War
consumed all the energy of the new regime, and the famine in the South claimed millions of
lives, the socio-political reality of the first three decades of the 20
th
century in Russia remained
consistently bleak. Zaitsev, for example, remembers some of the most shocking consequences of
the Civil War:
В 1921 году наступил летом голод – один из самых ужасающих в России. На
Волге, в Крыму ели детей... все это на нашей памяти.
In the summer of 1921, the famine started, one of the most lethal in Russia. On
the Volga, in the Crimea, they ate children ... all this is in our memory.
244
The images of physical death took the art and literature of that period by storm. However,
the visual and literary depictions of mutilated, broken bodies, and human suffering did more than
document reality: they also transformed it through the symbolic prism of apocalyptic misgivings.
In apocalyptic literature, such as the Book of Daniel and the Revelation, all the ordeals are
limned with a naturalism aimed at inspiring reverential fear. The naturalistic details could be
read as acceptance of death, similar to the didactic genres of “Memento Mori” or “Dance of
Death.” Tolstoy, in his The Death of Ivan Il’ich, or The Diary of a Madman, as shown in the first
chapter, regarded death as an extraordinary and fearful event. What happens, meanwhile, in the
modernists’ apocalyptic consciousness, with its overabundance of skeletons, mummies, decaying
244
Zaitsev, B. Brat’ya –Pisateli, Moskva, 1968, p. 20
Radchenko 163
corpses, and eviscerations, could be dubbed an apocalyptic “normalization” of death. Nikolai
Tikhonov, one of the members of the Serapion Brothers, acknowledges this phenomenon in his
1921 poem:
Огонь, веревка, пуля и топор/Как слуги кланялись и шли за нами,/И в
каждой капле спал потоп, [...]/И дети не пугались мертвецов…
Fire, rope, bullet, and ax / As servants bowed and followed us, / And in every
drop, there was a flood, [...] / And the children were not afraid of the dead …
245
Pil’niak’s works are teeming with images of slaughter and putrefaction. However, his
unflinching depictions of death are frequently offered up as baroque grotesques bordering on
Hoffmanian mystification. Similarly to Rabelais, who places the death not beyond everyday life
but, rather, at its very center, Pil’niak treats death as he does life, the loss of which is not a
mystery leading to the doors of Heaven but, instead, a cold physiological fact. The profusion of
anatomical specifics is especially characteristic of his battlefield scenes, strewn with Bakhtinian
“grotesque anatomical deaths”:
Дается подробный анатомический анализ смертельного удара и
показывается физиологическая неизбежность смерти. В этом случае смерть дается
как голый анатомо-физиологический факт, со всею его ясностью и четкостью. (A
detailed anatomical analysis of the fatal blow is given, and the physiological inevitability
245
Tikhonov N.S. Sobranie Sochineniiv 6 tomakh, Moskva, 1956, v.I, p.201
Radchenko 164
of death is shown. In this case, death is given as a naked anatomical and physiological
fact, with all its clarity.)
246
Pil’niak, however, merges this detached, forensic approach with folklore beliefs. For him,
the state of death, while physiologically candid, is also fluid. Pil’niak often treats the dead and
the living equally, which could be explained by the eschatological mode of his novels. His dead
characters are similar to the zombies of Andreev’s “Red Laughter” in that the half-decomposed
soldiers keep on eating porridge and firing off their guns, while the three-thousand-year-old
mummy of an Egyptian princess comes to life during the Revolution, passes from one family to
another, and dances in the frigid rooms of Moscow communal apartments. Golyi God opens with
the heat of revolution searing the bodies and souls of people. The depictions of natural disasters
feed into the overall apocalyptic atmosphere as the world is burning both in the metaphorical
heat of war and the literal heat of fires and scorching summer days. Pil’niak uses the same verb
“to burn” for the fires and for the War and Revolution:
В 1914 году, в июне, в июле горели: красными пожарами леса и травы […]
В 1914 году загорелась Война и за ней в 1917 году – Революция.
In July 1914, in June, in July, the woods and grasses burned in red conflagration
[…] In 1914 the War flared up and after it in 1917 - the Revolution.
247
246
Bakhtin M.M. Literaturno-Kriticheskie stat’i. Mosvka: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1968.
p. 228
247
Pil’niak, I, 34
Radchenko 165
In “Ivan-Moskva,” Pil’niak also underscores that the events are unfolding in the heat of
the war, additionally aggravated by merciless temperatures. The fever of typhus mirrors the
ubiquitous madness and violence: “Это было в дни гражданской войны, на Кубани.[…] Был
зной лета и был тиф.” (This took place during the days of civil war, on the Kuban. […] There
was the summer heat and typhoid.)
248
Five soldiers run away from the battlefield carrying their
dead friends. Moreover, the dead that “left the battlefield” are also described with the active verb
ushli (walked on their feet), forging a quasi-gothic narration of the walking dead:
Пятеро они ушли с поля боя: два живых боевых товарища, два мертвеца и
он, Москва, третий живой. Трое живых горячествовали тифом.
Five men left the battlefield: two comrades in arms, two dead ones and he,
Moscow, the third living man. The Three Living ones were burning with the flame of
typhoid
.249
The consciousness, brains, and bodies of the soldiers are burning up, communicating
decay to the dead bodies and the minds of the living alike. The gruesome images of putrescent
cadavers, their jaws falling off while eating porridge, parallel the survivors’ state of mind; death,
once again, dovetails with madness. The living, for instance, “did not notice or forgot” that their
friends had died:
248
Pil’niak, IV, 10
249
Pil’niak, IV, 10
Radchenko 166
В бреду они не заметили или запамятовали, что эти два боевых товарища
умерли. Они несли мертвецов.[…] Живые клали мертвецов на землю, совали в их
руки винтовки.[…] На бивуаках мертвецы несли караул. Живые в бреду не
замечали, не заметили, что в июльском зное за эту неделю мертвецы совершенно
изгнили, у одного отвалилась челюсть, у другого вывалились кишки. Живые
кормили мертвецов, насовывая им во рты своими ложками пшенную кашу.
In the delirium, they hadn’t noticed or had forgotten that these two comrades in
arms had died. They carried the dead bodies with them. [...] The living ones would place
the dead ones on the ground and would stick rifles in their hands. [...] The dead ones
would keep the watch duty. In delirium the two living ones had not noticed, did not
notice, that in the course of the July heat of the past week, the dead ones had completely
rotted away, one had lost the jaw, the other’s intestines had fallen out. The living ones fed
the dead ones, stuffing their mouths from their own spoons, with millet porridge.
250
The fact of death goes unnoticed by the living. In literary realism, the division between
the living and the dead was a fundamental one, and their coexistence is only possible in fantastic
literature––or in the Biblical discourse of resurrection. The images of living corpses might
amount to a metaphorical examination of the events in Sebastopol, which Pil’niak would
describe in the “Blue Sea” in 1928: “На Малаховом кургане, […] часовыми ставили чучела
солдат и мертвецов.”
251
The story of Ivan-Moskva and his fellow-corpses unfolds parallel to the
goings-on in Moscow, presumably in 1917, but ordinary life during the Revolution is not
250
Pil’niak, IV, 10
251
Pil’niak, III,383
Radchenko 167
ordinary, either. The narration nonchalantly introduces one of its central characters, the 3,000-
year-old mummy of an Egyptian princess, whose physical transformation is triggered by the
Revolution and whose ontological status, identical to that of soldier corpses, is attested to by the
active verb “to live”: “Все годы великой русской революции в Москве жили: люди,[…] и –
мумия, трехтысячелетняя, обнаженная, коричневая, как иссохший ремень.” (Through all
the years of the great Russian revolution in Moscow there lived: people, [...] and - a mummy, a
three-thousand-year-old, naked, brown, like a withered belt.)
252
The weather extremities are not to be discounted, either. It is not the summer heat,
however, but the unbearable cold of winter that completes the mummy’s revivification:
Пришла великая русская революция, […] героика героизма, холода и
голода. […] И странными судьбами тогда – в геологии и Гофмане
253
русской
революции – мумия: ожила! – Нянька профессорской дочери, подлинная скифка,
которая вообще с первых дней возникновения мумии, убедившись окончательно,
252
Pil’niak, IV,7
253
The Hoffman of the Russian Revolution is a very important theme for Pil’niak. For him, the
revolution combines the incompatible, enabling a Hoffmanian interplay between time and space,
opening passageways into the past, and corridors into different dimensions. Revolution is magic,
the magic of transformation, which indeed is the feature of fairy tales, akin to Hoffman and Russian
fairy tales. Hoffman is a master of the uncanny, psychosis, of manipulating space and time, on the
one hand; but on the other hand, he is as masterful with wiping off the distinction between dead
and living matter. Even though it seems like there is no affinity between Bulgakov and Pil’niak,
nevertheless there are motifs that the former borrowed from the latter. One of them is this
Hoffmanesque attitude toward time and space; another is the entanglement of eschatology,
existentialism, and social satire: Революция прошла ледниковый московский марш, вышед в
эпоху уплотнений, поистине – эпоху жизни русских городов, породивших уже не
достоевщину, но нечто более страшное, что разбирается клинической психопатологией.
This “more terrifying” thing will be developed by Bulgakov in “Zoikina kvartira” and Master i
Margarita.
Radchenko 168
что мумия не есть мощи, твердую враждебность имела к мертвецу, – так вот нянька
– первая – заявила, что мумия стала: – пахнуть. Затем нянька сказала, – что мумия:
светится. Потом нянька сказала, что мумия: – гудит.
The great Russian revolution came, [...] the heroics of heroism, cold and hunger.
[...] And then the strange destinies - in the geology and Hoffman of the Russian
revolution - the mummy: came to life! “The professorial daughter’s nanny, a genuine
Scythian, who, from the first days of the mummy’s appearance in the apartment, had
been certain that the mummy was not holy remnants, had a firm hostility towards the
dead, so it was the nanny who first had said that the mummy started to: - smell. Then the
nanny said - that the mummy: glows. Then the nanny said that the mummy: - hums.
254
The fluorescent light, sounds, and scent that it started emanating removed the mummy
from the pedestal of “holy remnants” down to the level of an anatomical object. I argue that this
episode corresponds to a state campaign denouncing the sacred value of “moshchi” launched
shortly after the Revolution. In 1919, a decree discrediting religious superstition was issued,
building upon the 1918 campaign of confiscating holy bodies from the convents and churches. In
1920 in Moscow, at the Museum of the People Commissariat of Health, there opened an
exhibition of “moshchi” aimed to debunk the religious validity of holy remnants.
Just as in Golyi God, where Pil’niak emphasizes the longevity of ancient bones and cities
and the disrespect accorded death in modern times, the fate of dead soldiers is different from the
mummy’s, opening up a space for conversation about varying degrees of being dead in the works
of Pil’niak. Paradoxically enough, those who are long dead are more alive than those who
254
Pil’niak, IV, 8
Radchenko 169
recently died in wars and revolution. The decaying soldiers finally get buried somewhere out in
the fields, while the mummy’s carefully preserved husk, its shape unchanged through millennia,
continues to reside in Moscow apartments. Pil’niak thus broaches the intricacies of the
anthropology of death, by which I mean worshipful traditions associated with death in the past
and the carelessness with which it is tackled in the present. The mummy episode is revisited in
Dvoiniki, Pil’niak’s last novel written in 1937 right before his arrest. In the new version, it was a
mummy who “lived” in Moscow and the actor Lachinov “lived behind her,” so his life remained
predicated upon hers. Moreover, the light that the mummy emits shines next to radium
emanations, as Lachinov later travels to the radium factory.
255
In following the mummy’s posthumous life, Pil’niak is armed with the psychoanalytical
proximity between sex and death and writes about both with an equal lack of stylistic
inhibitions
256
. Furthermore, he entwines the two passions, too, as many of his characters have sex
with dead or sick, delirious women, once again harnessing the folklore motif of the dead bride,
as well as Russian folklore jokes and songs eroticizing the deceased. Throughout his literary
output, women are routinely compared to dead queens of some ancient world. In the episode
with the mirror in Golyi God, Irina casts an erotically-charged gaze at her own body bathed in
moonlight. However, her body is not pink or plump; it is as green as a decomposing corpse and
changes in a phantasmagorical way. In the “Narian Mar Station” fragment, women are raped in a
packed train car while asleep, i.e., in a state which semantically approximates death.
255
The factory episode could have influenced Vasilii Aksenov's novel Redkie Zemli (2006)
256
More on the depiction of sex in the works of Pil’niak see Halva, Helen, Levine, Madeline G.,
Lapushin, Radislav, Masing-Delic, Irene, Putney, Christopher, and Vuletic, Ivana. “Primitivist or
Moralist?: The Biological Ethos in Boris Pil’niak’s Shorter Prose”. ProQuest Dissertations
Publishing, 2010. http://search.proquest.com/docview/815243572/. Accessed 4.5.2019
Radchenko 170
Michael Kunichika’s insightful research sheds light on Pil’niak’s Scythian fascination
and his interest in archaeological digs in Uvek.
257
However, I argue that it is not so much the
local excavations that profoundly influenced Pil’niak as the global ones. It is during the time
Pil’niak wrote the majority of his works that the archeological excavations in Mesopotamia were
led by British archaeologist Leonard Wooley. In 1922-1934, he discovered the ancient Assyrian
city of Ur and the tomb of Queen Pu-Abi in particular. The artifacts were then taken to the
British Museum, and most likely were seen by Pil’niak, who visited London in 1923. If we take
into consideration his whole oeuvre, many of his dead women are not native (i.e., Scythian, made
of stone) but ancient Assyrian, Persian, or Egyptian. In "Pri Dveryah," for instance:
Ирина, – никто не видел древних ассириянок, но все думали, что должны
они быть, как Ирина, – груди, как чаша, глаза, как миндаль, и как у каменного
Аримана волосы, как конские, и косами на грудь, и лицо и тело почти квадратные,
почти каменные, – и легкие, как у цирковой наездницы. (Irina, - no one saw the
ancient Assyrians, but everyone thought that they should look like Irina - breasts like a
bowl, eyes like almonds, and hair like hair of a stone Ahriman’s, like horse’s braids
coming to the chest. The face and the body is almost square, almost stone-like, and light,
like ones of a circus rider.)
258
Лицо Ирины – лицо ассириянки. (Irina's face is the face
of an Assyrian woman.)
259
257
See Kunichika, Michael. “Our Native Antiquity”: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Culture
of Russian Modernism Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2015.
258
Pil’niak, I,198
259
Pil’niak, I, 200
Radchenko 171
Pil’niak treats his women as sleeping oriental princesses, taken forcefully by Russian
men. Tall and desiccated, flat-hipped, and dark-skinned, they all share similar features. The
Golyi God version of the Sten’ka Razin legend amalgamates all those motifs at once: the Persian
Princess is held in captivity in a tower; she is no stranger to witchcraft, and can turn into a
magpie or a wolf; and finally, Razin finds her fast asleep, temporarily devoid of soul, which is
functionally comparable to being dead. While Kunichika calls the stone idols symbols of native
antiquity, Pil’niak’s female characters do not bear any similarities to those fetishes. Many of the
living women in his Golyi God are cold and stiff, as though ossified; he often compares a live
woman’s hips to the rigid hips of Assyrian queens or Egyptian mummies.
In contrast to the Scythian stone idols that often served as symbols of fertility, Pil’niak’s
women primarily symbolize death inasmuch as they, their hips not fit for child-bearing, produce
no future life. The motif of sexual intercourse with a dead queen is not an infrequent one. In
“Ivan Moskva,” Pil’niak describes a mummy that wanders from house to house until finally one
of the male characters dances and has sex with it. The intercourse between Baudek and Natalia
happens at an ancient grave, followed by the woman’s immediate death. These multitudinous
dead women could be stand-ins for the dying Russia as well, since the country has always been
straddled with an unequivocally feminine identity, and barren women are a tell-tale sign of the
apocalypse. What can save the world, according to Pil’niak, is a return to the roots, to some form
of organic natural life, the ideal of which is often to be sought in the animal world. Animal tribes
live harmoniously, much like the peasant families who are attuned to the natural cycles and
promise continuity of the species: see, for example, Pil’niak’s “Tselaya Zhizn” or Zaitsev’s
“Volki.”
Radchenko 172
Folk Wolves: The Organic Unity of the World
Pil’niak’s universe is oftentimes arranged in accordance with animal life, but the
contiguity between man and beast, so prominent in Tolstoy’s works, is treated differently both by
Zaitsev and Pil’niak. Tolstoy, in his comparisons, mostly favored the animal world, and insisted
that people should learn from them, especially in their attitude to death; moreover, it is precisely
the animals’ attitude to death that guarantees life eternal, as was shown in the first chapter. The
depiction of animals in the works of Tolstoy, Zaitsev, Pil’niak, and especially Filonov, was
largely informed by Darwin’s theory of genetic affinity between people and animals. Death and
decay in the animal world, according to both Schopenhauer’s idealism and Darwin’s theory of
evolution, contain the potential for beauty, rebirth, and renewal. Velimir Khlebnikov went so far
as to proclaim Darwin’s teaching a new religion that substituted “Quran, and the Gospels, and
the ethical code.”
260
Pil’niak’s characters often experience animalistic metamorphoses, similar to those found
in Russian folktales. Transformations can be physical, such as Irina’s elongation of the body in
the moonlight, or psychological, as in Roschislavsky’s lycanthropy and in the constant references
to frogs or magpies transforming into princesses and back. Not at all pathological, as opposed to,
say, Kafka’s 1915 “Metamorphoses,” Zaitsev’s and Pil’niak’s animals––predominantly wolves
and large birds bearing human features––embrace both folklore and naturalistic discourse. While
animalistic motifs in Russian literature are often in touch with the folklore tradition, for Gilles
Deleuze and Felix Guattari, who conducted a structural analysis of Kafka’s works, the term
“animal” itself is synonymous with metamorphosis, for animals are continuously transforming
260
Arkhiv Khardzhieva, tom 2, p.45
Radchenko 173
and evolving and thus represent a revolutionary being and the very essence of modernity
261
. Both
Pil’niak and Zaitsev contrasted the advances of civilization with the harmony of an idyllic
natural life. “Mashiny i volki” and “Hleb, Lyudi i Zemlya” are just some of the examples of the
two writers’ propensity to contrast the organic and the human worlds.
The holistic approach of Zaitsev is shot through with the idea of divine presence.
Evgeniya Deich, a scholar of Zaitsev’s writings, recalls the bookshelves above his bed full of
religious literature that he perused
262
. Zaitsev’s works, overall, pursue some pure unity among
nature, light, colors, and people. He regards the forces of nature as primal, almost brutish: a
primordial impetus for human life, one that is biological at heart, rather than social. Blok classed
him with a young generation of realists and outlined his singular attitude to nature thusly: «Есть
среди “реалистов” молодой писатель, который, намеками, еще отдаленными пока, являет
живую весеннюю землю, играющую кровь и летучий воздух. Это – Борис Зайцев.”
263
Indeed, the effortless ease of his narratives seems utterly unaffected; life in his books develops
organically, and nature is snugly intertwined with humanity.
Zaitsev and Pil’niak often use the animal world as a tuning fork for the natural cycles of
life and death––a natural pattern that precivilized societies shared with their immediate
surroundings. Both writers lament the forfeited unity with nature, especially relevant in light of
rapid urbanization, and enlist totem animals such as wolves and birds of prey to draw parallels
between human and beast. According to folklore scholars, wolves have always been a totem
animal for the Slavic tribes. What is especially pertinent to Pil’niak’s Scythian aspirations,
Herodotus relates a story of the Scythians miraculously changing into wolves once a year for a
261
Deleuze and Guattari. Kafka, 64
262
Zaitsev B. Sobranie Sochinenii, 2001, tom 10- 7)
263
Blok A. Sobranie Sochinenii v 8 tomakh. M.: Literatura, 1962, tom 5 p. 124
Radchenko 174
few days.
264
While they did, in fact, believe in the possibility of human-animal metamorphoses,
Herodotus somewhat grounds this transformation as he describes the Neuri tribes “covering
themselves with a garment made of wolves’ skin.”
265
Thus, there exists an established cultural
and historical connection between the Scythians and wolves. Both Pil’niak and Zaitsev elucidate
the natural rhythms through a lupine example: love fever in spring, the birth, and rearing of cubs,
the change of leadership, death. However, animals, archetypal though they are of the natural
world, embody this world’s duality and thus demonstrate the duality of a new, evolving human
nature. On the one hand, it is an aggressive beast, cutting the throats of its fellows; on the other
hand, it lives out the harmonious utopian ideal of intuitive, compassionate existence.
In order to articulate a previously unavailable rhythm, in which death becomes an integral
part of life, Pil’niak––in Golyi God as well as in “God ikh Zhizni” –– continually juxtaposes the
new way of life and death against the tradition filled with mythological creatures and governed
by natural cycles. The close kinship between life and death is an inevitable pattern of nature, as
Tolstoy argued. The physiological details of animal deaths that Zaitsev lays out in his “Volki”
carry over into the depictions of human death in the works of Pil’niak. In “Myatel,” particularly
reminiscent of Zaitsev’s “Volki,” the wolves, traditionally a vessel for the natural, idyllic life,
turn against their leader. The plot of Zaitsev’s short story revolves around a pack of wolves
roaming a snow-drifted desert, reminiscent of Moses’ wandering: “И теперь волкам казалось,
[…] что белая пустыня действительно ненавидит их; ненавидит за то, что они живы, […]
они чувствовали, что она погубит их [...] – Куда ты ведешь нас? – спрашивали они
старика.” (And now it seemed to the wolves [...] that the white desert really hated them; hated
264
Larcher, P.H. Notes on Herodotus. Historical and Critical Remarks on The Nine Books of the
History of Herodotus. In two olumes. Vol. II, London, 1829, p. 74).
265
Larcher, 73
Radchenko 175
that they were alive, [...] they felt that it would destroy them [...] - Where are you taking us? -
they asked the old one)
266
As their anxiety mounts, the narration, not unexpectedly, ends with the murder of the old
wolf (he uses the word “starik” – the “old man,” literally, for the old wolf): the crowd brutally
massacres the leader. Written in 1901, the story both hints at the murder of Alexander II and
predicts the future of Russian monarchy and old Russia in general. Nevertheless, Zaitsev, due to
his inner convictions that tabooed any depiction of human blood and dismemberment, depicts
wolves, not humans:
И прежде чем старик успел разинуть рот, он почувствовал что-то жгучее и
острое пониже горла, {…} и сейчас же он понял, что погиб. Десятки таких же
острых и жгучих зубов, как один, впились в него, рвали, выворачивали
внутренности и отдирали куски шкуры;
And before the old man had time to open his mouth, he felt something burning
and sharp beneath his throat, {...} and immediately realized that his dye was cast. Dozens
of the same sharp and burning teeth dug into him, tore, twisted the intestines and tore off
pieces of the skin.
267
As he portrays the death of the wolf leader, the metaphorical equation between people
and wolves comes through with archetypical clarity. Filonov's painting Animals (1926), which
endows beasts with human features, immediately springs to mind. Viacheslav Zavalishin recalled
266
Zaitsev, Boris, Prokopov T.F. Sobranie Sochinenii v odinnadtsati tomakh Moskva: “Russkaya
Kniga,” 1991-2001, volume I, p. 32).
267
Zaitsev, SS, I, 34
Radchenko 176
that Filonov had inserted into his Animals a metaphorical nod to an infamous gang rape in
Leningrad
268
.
From Wolf into Frog: Interspecies Transformations
The permeability of the border between man and animal is a pivotal theme for the folk
and organic school. As discussed earlier, Zaitsev depicts the metamorphoses of human masses
into destructive, brute forces of nature. The problem of the human body’s pliability is directly
connected to the fascination that the early XX century artists had not only for the rationality of
Darwinism but also for the spiritual realms of esoteric writings, especially Kabballah.
Maximilian Voloshin, in his article on the influence of antiquity on Roerich, Bakst, and
Bogaevsky, locates another ancient source drawn upon by the thinkers of the period. He opens
his essay with a quote from Kabbalah:
Камень становится растением, растение зверем, зверь – человеком, человек
– демоном, демон – Богом», – говорится в Каббале.
A stone becomes a plant, a plant becomes a beast, a beast becomes a man, a man
becomes a demon, a demon becomes God, ”says the Kabbalah.
269
268
John Bowlt’s presentation at Rgali conference, June, 2019
269
Voloshin, Maksimilian, “Arhaizm v Russkoi Zhivopisi. Rerikh, Bogaevsky I Bakst” Zhurnal
Appolon, No 1, 1909
Radchenko 177
Kabbalah appeared in Pil’niak’s works: in Golyi God introduces a half-mad character,
whose trunks are stuffed with French esoteric books and who quotes Kabbalah and compares the
events in Ordynin town to the Last Judgment.Kabbalah allows for the flexibility of natural forms,
but traditionally, the path that it privileges is one of evolution, in which spiritual growth spurs its
physical counterpart. Nikolai Gurdzhiev and his disciple Petr Ouspenskyi, whose writings
exploring the metaphysical “Fourth Dimension” had a considerable effect on Matyushin and
many other Russian philosophers interested in the idea of conscious evolution from one lifeform
to another. Filonov, similarly to Gurdzhiev, insists that both involution and evolution are
possible. Pil’niak’s texts illustrate the same theory of evolution (or involution) that Filonov
advances in some of his treatises and letters to his students, according to which the form is
malleable; the border between man and animal, porous; and transformation from one into the
other, a viable option. Pil’niak trots out multiple animal characters that are not ontologically
divorced from humanity. For him, an involution of man into beast is entirely feasible. In
“Ryazan’-yabloko,” for instance, Pil’niak follows the life of Prince Yuryi Roschislavsky in an
asylum: “Юрий Росчиславский, с ума сошедший в волка.” ( Yuri Roschislavsky, who lost his
mind to become a wolf.)
270
The Prince writes letters to his friend, in which he expresses
contentment that he is a wolf now and not a human being. Here again, we encounter the motif of
madness, which symbolically fixes the moment of death of the human I and its transmutation
into an animal self.
Philip Maloney explains this tendency by Pil’niak’s enchantment with the instinctive
rather than intellectual life
271
; however, the above-mentioned quote bears witness, precisely, to
270
Pil’niak, II, 231
271
See Maloney, Philip. “VIACHESLAV POLONSKII: THE PRESS AND REVOLUTION.”
ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1973. http://search.proquest.com/docview/302652905/.
Radchenko 178
involuntary transformation, as inseparable from madness as it was in the works of Andreev.
Madness, as well as the transformation itself, is an instance of death, in the sense that the death
of human consciousness is inflicted by inhuman social atrocities. If we read Pil’niak’s stories as
a manifestation of the instinctive over the intellectual, we can also read the revolutionary events
in his works as the ultimate war, followed only by the final judgment and return to the Garden of
Eden on earth. In “God ikh Zhizni,” Pil’niak suggests an idyllic model of natural living shared by
two humans, happy in their prelapsarian unawareness and Edenic simplicity. The closeness of a
bear living next to them reminds us of St. Seraphim’s hagiography on the one hand, and of the
Scythians tribes wearing bear skins and venerating bears as totem animals, on the other.
In summation, for Pil’niak, the physical and psychological transformations of people into
wolves are never ruled out. Among the defining features of Russian organic modernism, as this
dissertation argues, is the possibility of transformative evolution, or involution, between different
species: a theory that paradoxically weds Darwinism to Russian folktales. A frog’s miraculous
transformation into a maiden, in the Russian fairy-tale “Tsarevna-Lyagushka,” may be
interpreted as a metaphor of premature transformation, which punctuates Golyi God as a refrain.
The line “you should not have burned down my frog skin, Ivan Tsarevich” refers to the
complication in the fairy-tale. According to the plot, Ivan Tsarevich, overly excited by the beauty
of his wife, rushes back home and throws her frog skin into the fire. After that, the curse returns,
and she is whisked away to the kingdom of Kaschei-Bessmertnyi, i.e., dies for all intents and
purposes.
Ivan Tsarevich now has to travel to the kingdom of death to retrieve his wife––a plot that
is, of course, hard to decouple from Orpheus and Eurydice, recommending itself to various
readings and positioned on various semantic planes. The prematurity of transformation brings the
Radchenko 179
princess to metaphorical death, for she does not have a body. The human body that she possesses
is dysfunctional since her earthly journey should have been continued in the guise of a frog. This,
in itself, might suggest a nod to the political predicament of the revolution, with its
incompatibility between means and goals. The archetypal plot of this fairy-tale proves that
violence and haste will not bring about the desired result, foregrounding the inability of the
revolutionaries fully to comprehend the momentousness of their historical moment and to act
accordingly. If we take into account the affinity between this fairy-tale and the myth of Orpheus
and Eurydice, the bodyless princess also reveals her potential as a metaphor for the soul of
Russia. Pil’niak thus undertakes the task of seeking the right body for the Russian soul, since the
new Soviet state described in Golyi God is evidently an inappropriate receptacle. What makes
the situation irreversibly hopeless is that nobody volunteers to descend into the netherworld to
save the princess-soul, Russia.
As I have shown earlier, it is typical of Pil’niak to combine folklore and Biblical
references in his works. Frogs are mentioned in Revelation as the manifestation of demons sent
to Earth as harbingers of doom. In his “Seminar on Nietzsche's Zarathustra,” Jung observes that
frogs and toads were “the first attempt of nature towards making something like a man... so they
are symbols for human transformation.”
272
This motif is closely aligned with the early Soviet
attempts to create a Soviet “superman” and to prolong human lives by dint of blood transfusions
and other biological interventions: “Pavlov’s experiments with dogs, Voronov’s animal implants
into humans, and Lysenko’s experiments on the life-cycles of plants, investigations which touch
on the subjects of genetic mutation and eugenic modification. Bulgakov described how these
272
Edinger, 131
Radchenko 180
experiments could go wrong in his novels The Fatal Eggs and Heart of a Dog.”
273
While hopeful
for eternal life, some of the characters in Golyi God are constrained by the liminal space of
Ordynin, waiting for the last metamorphoses to conclude and for the Last Judgement to be
passed, while some are already taken to hell on the wheels of trains.
Trains as Disruption to Organic Life
Unlike Malevich who regarded machines as superior beings and an emblem for human
evolution
274
, the “organic” cohort of Russian modernism viewed the trains as an intrusion upon
nature. This subsection argues that Pil’niak’s horrific image of a train in “The Darkest Triptych
of the Death” in Golyi God represents a distorted image of Noah’s Ark: the space of inverted
morality, the belly of the beast carrying sinners to hell, and a prelude to the staccato of death
trains in 1937.
The prominence of trains in Russian fin-de-siècle is well documented: one need not look
further than the Lumière Brothers’ “Train Arriving at the Station,” which “alarmed visitors to the
Nizhnii Novgorod Fair of 1896”
275
. In early Soviet propaganda, the trains were an essential
symbol of progress roaring into the far-flung regions of Russia. The idea of speed, rapid
273
Bowlt J.E. “Lenin Lived! Lenin Lives! Lenin Will Live!”: Challenging Mortality in
the Early Soviet Republic, unpublished essay.
274
Ставьте на месте святом новую святыню — машину. Через икону мы идем к вечному
безжизненному покою (ожидание неба), через машину к вечному бегу по клокочущим
далям пространства. (Put the new shrine – the car – in the holy corner. Through the icon we go
to the eternal lifeless peace (waiting for the sky), through the car to the eternal run through the
bubbling expanses of space.) Malevich K. Sobranie sochinenii, Moskva, Gileya, 2004, volume V,
p.385
275
Bowlt, J.E. Moscow and St. Petersburg 1900-1920. Art, Life and Culture of the Russian Silver
Age, the Vendome press, New York, 2008, p.101
Radchenko 181
movement, steam power, and mechanical perfection seeped into many works of the avant-garde:
for instance, Goncharova’s Aeroplane above a Train (1913), or Malevich’s Simultaneous Death
of a Man in an Airplane and on the Railroad (1913), or Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie
Camera (1929), enraptured with the might of inbound railroad cars.
However, the feeling of alienation from the land and the fear provoked by the engine’s
unstoppable power also resulted in more pessimistic, even eschatological visions. Though a
paragon of industrialization and progress, the newly-introduced train made many thinkers worry
over the loss of unique nature in rural areas. The low-register, sarcastic word chugunka, which
the common people use in Golyi God to denote the railroad, captures the people’s ambivalence
toward industrialization efforts. In 1910, Pavel Florensky published a volume of Russian folk
couplets (chastushki) from the Kostroma region, voicing in the foreword a similar concern
regarding the “rotten” railroads compromising original regional cultures: “Однако есть
причины торопиться с изучением нашего быта. Железные дороги, фабрики, технические
усовершенствования, освободительные идеи и газетчина — эти факторы являются
гнилостными микроорганизмами, все ускореннее разлагающими быт.” (However, there are
reasons to hurry studying of our lifestyle. Railways, factories, technical improvements, liberation
ideas, and yellow newspapers— these factors are putrefactive microorganisms that increasingly
decompose traditional lifestyle.)
276
Andreev’s hatred of trains prompted him to reenact Anna Karenina’s suicide in his
novella “Zhertva” (1916):
276
Florenskii P. “Kontekst”, 1991, p.17
Radchenko 182
А боль? А страх? А бешеное биение сердца? А неописуемый ужас живого
тела, которому предстоит сию минуту быть раздробленным железными, тяжелыми
катящимися колесами?
And what about the pain, the fear? The anxious beating of the heart? What about
the indescribable terror of the living body, which is to be crushed under the iron, heavy,
rolling wheels?
277
Andreev brings up what Tolstoy never quite avowed: the question of the body suffering
from a senseless and cruel machine. Typical of Andreev’s creative sensibility as a whole, the
motif was once again used in the description of a relentless factory devouring people, which I
discussed in the previous chapter.
Boris Zaitsev in his 1905 “Khleb, Lyudi i Zemlya (Wheat, People, and Land)” echoes
Andreev’s idea as he castigates trains as alien to human nature since their initial goal is to
transport food, mainly wheat, rather than people. The idea of railroad carrying bodies as a
commodity, equating flour sacks with living humans, lends the image an almost demonic quality:
А поезд с человечьим телом недолго застаивается на станции, ему нужно
дальше, надо дать место следующему — тот тоже с солдатами.
And the train with the human flesh does not stay long at the station, it has to go
further to give space for the next one – also carrying the soldiers.
278
277
Andreev L., Sobranie Sochinenii v 6 tomakh, Moskva: Khudozhestvennaya Literatura, 1990 -
1996, volume VI, 1996, p.113
278
Zaitsev, I, 48
Radchenko 183
The train is compared to a snake, with people in its belly, an ominous and vile creature:
“Влево вдаль ушла тяжелая змея, набитая хлебом, с красноглазым хвостом” (Zaitsev).
Using this animalistic metaphor, Zaitsev is trying to conceive of this emerging technology as an
element of the old world––i.e., of that organic entity that his peasants constitute, as though
“growing out of” their landscape: “Но их лица в складках сплошь заросли мочалой, серо–
рыжими космами; они похожи на сухие грибы, что растут на истлевших деревьях[…]”(
But their faces in the folds were completely overgrown with spongy, gray-red hair; they look like
dry mushrooms that grow on decaying trees.)
279
Zaitsev’s image of peasants organically
incorporating themselves into the fabric of time and space had undoubtedly colored Pil’niak’s
portraiture: “Лицо старика походила на избу, как соломенная крыша падали волосы,
подслеповатые глаза смотрели на запад, как тысячи лет.” (The old man’s face looked like a
hut, like a straw roof grew the hair, the half-blind eyes looked to the west like they had for
thousands of years)
280
The peasants have been connected with their land for thousands of years,
but the trains break this connection and drag them out of the normal rhythm of life and death.
While transformations of the peasants’ bodies occur organically, the metamorphoses of human
bodies on the trains impose a surrealistic change. Life is replaced with clangorous machines,
which also could be viewed as a feature of the coming apocalypse, the iron beast of the
Revelation: “They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was
like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle.”
281
In Zaitsev’s prose, once
the war breaks out, trains become the instrument of torture, akin to mythological beasts
demanding new sacrificial flesh: “Но уже мало одного хлеба; уже нужно на замену
279
Zaitsev, I, 47
280
Pil'niak, I, 97
281
Revelation, 9:9
Radchenko 184
съеденных где то человечьих тел, которые везут все по той же дороге, — новые.” (But
bread is not enough anymore; it is already necessary to replace the human bodies eaten
somewhere, and the new ones are being transported all along the same road.)
282
The train is only
taking them one way, and returns with sacks of flour, which makes the black wind serve a
funeral liturgy to Russian countryside:
Больше и больше приходит поездов с солдатами[…] В вагонах мужики–
солдаты скоро засыпают. Тогда они совсем похожи на кули с мукой, что везут им
навстречу. […] ветер хмуро играет придорожными рощами, носится над полями,
отпевая черную русскую деревню.
More and more trains are carrying the soldiers [...] In the carriages, muzhiki-
soldiers soon fall asleep. Then they become similar to the flour sacks that are carried
towards them[...] the wind is gloomily playing with roadside groves, rushes over the
fields, singing the funeral song to the black Russian village.
283
Some of the most horrific images in Pil’niak’s works are not ones describing death, but
those envisioning the eternal mechanical life of industrial monsters: steam trains and factories.
One of Pil’niak’s calling cards is the Hoffmanian animation of mechanical things. Typologically,
this motif is similar to re-animation of the dead, which was discussed earlier. For instance, in
Golyi God, the factory’s self-regeneration eclipses the resurrection of Lazar: “Завод –
самовозродился, самовозжил. – Это ли не поэма, стократ величавее воскресения Лазаря?!”
282
Zaitsev, I,49
283
Zaitsev, I, 49
Radchenko 185
(The factory -- renewed itself, came back to life (“self-resurrected”). Is this not a poem, a
hundred times more majestic than the resurrection of Lazarus?)
284
Pil’niak’s interpretation of
trains is undergirded by Zaitsev’s and Andreev’s symbolic readings of the train as a weapon
obliterating “organic” life. He continues the animalistic allegories set forth by Zaitsev and
furthers the theme of trains devouring human bodies. Pil’niak picks up where Zaitsev left off,
delivering a funeral service for the country folk: “С тех пор много уже сгорело костров, и
много песен метельных отпели дни, унося людей.” (Since then many campfires have burnt
themselves out, and the days have sung many blizzard songs, carrying people away.)
285
The body of the Russian countryside is universalized into that of a Russian soldier, ever
the cannon fodder and sacrifice to the formidable god of war. Pil’niak’s trains often represent a
separate spatial and temporal unit, thus assuming the functions performed by ships in Russian
folklore and Greek epics. Nikolai Gumilev’s “Zabludivshiisia Tramvai” (“A Lost Streetcar”),
similarly, imagines the tram as supernatural transport shuttling between life and death. As Irene
Masing-Delic argues, Gumilev’s tramcar is a “vehicle of transmigration,” which carts the souls
of the diseased off to the point of reincarnation.
286
The inversion of heaven and hell is highlighted by the number of effort people expend to
embark on the train as if it were the doorway to heaven or Noah’s Ark rather than the mouth of
hell:
284
Pil’niak, I, 161
285
Pil’niak, I, 134
286
Masing-Delic, Irene. "The Time-Space Structure and Allusion Pattern in Gumilev's
'Zabludivshiisia Tramvai.'" Essays in Poetics. Vol. 7, 1, 1982, pp. 68-69
Radchenko 186
Люди, […] отстоявшие право ехать с величайшими кулачными усилиями,
ибо там, в голодных губерниях, к теплушкам бросались десятки голодных людей и
через головы, шеи, спины, ноги, по людям лезли во внутрь.
The people, who stood their right to travel with the greatest Kulak fortitude, for
here, in the hungry provinces, at every station dozens of hungry people dashed for the
freight cars and across their heads, necks, backs, legs, they crawled over people to the
inside.
287
On board, the altered reality of fantastic bodily transformations reigns supreme. Severed
from nature and taken away from their land, these people, starkly contrasted against the
organically “growing” peasant, indulge in mechanical interactions with each other, not dissimilar
from the mechanical mutations in the Hell part of Bosch’s triptych Garden of Earthly Delights.
The similarity is reinforced by more than their excessive, infernal egotism: bodies undergo
transformations, as well. The human self begins to double and triple; the pervasive madness is
augmented by the nearness of death and lack of sleep:
Человек чувствовал, как его “я” двоится, троится, как правая рука живет и
думает по-своему, самостоятельно, и спорит о чем-то с раздвоенным “я”.
The man felt his “I” breaking into two, into three, his right-hand living and
thinking in its own way, independently, and arguing about something else with the
divided “I.”
288
287
Pil’niak, I, 144
288
Pil’niak, I, 145
Radchenko 187
While Pil’niak does not acknowledge the influence of Bosch’s hell on this particular
train, the artist undeniably contributed to Pil’niak’s artistic worldview. For instance, in "Sneg,"
one of the characters compares the diabolical events of civil war to the unholy figures on Bosch’s
canvases:
“– Удивительнейшаg чертовщина! А вы знаете, есть еще живоnисец – Босх.
'У того еще больше чертовщины. Заговорили о Гойе, о Босхе, о св. Антонии.”
What a fascinating diablerie! You know, there is another painter - Bosch. 'Even
more diablerie! And they started talking about Goya, about Bosch, about St.Anthony.
289
In the short story “Pri Dveryah,” the narrator suggests that Dostoyevsky used the
“psychological color palette of Bosch” to depict Moscow: “пользуясь тюбиками психик –
Аполлинария. Васнецова, Чурляниса, Босха и, конечно, Ленина, Троцкого и
Луначарского?” (using the psychic tubes – of Apollinary. Vasnetsov, Churlyanis, Bosch and, of
course, Lenin, Trotsky and Lunacharsky.)
290
Pil’niak’s train seems to pour out of Bosch’s
“psychic tube” –– a hellish mosaic of human hands, legs, bellies, backs, lice, and feces. The
Boschian connection could explain the piling of the bodies, the whimsical combination of the
animal and the human, and the accent on physiological abjection, including sex and acts of
defecation:
289
Pil’niak, I, 329
290
Pil’niak, I, 224
Radchenko 188
А поезд No. 57[…] ползет по черной степи. Люди, человеческие ноги, руки,
головы, животы, спины, человеческий навоз, - люди, обсыпанные вшами, как этими
людьми теплушки.[…] Кто-то хрипит, кто-то чешется, […]ноги одного лежат на
груди другого, а третий заснул над ними, и его ноги стали у шеи первого.
And train No. 57 mixed[...] crawls over the black steppe. People, human legs,
arms, heads, stomachs, backs, human manure, - people, crawling with lice, as the freight
cars are with people [...] Somebody is snoring, somebody is scratching themselves, [...]
and the third has fallen asleep above them, and his legs have gone and stood by the neck
of the first.
291
Finally, the structure of Pil’niak’s novel divided into triptychs is in itself a pictorial
device putting the reader in mind of either religious icons or Renaissance paintings, which often
proposed a three-partite world. A new, mechanical, and inorganic fusion of bodies is born in this
liminal space, entailing the birth of a new brotherhood:
[…]человек думает о новом, необыкновенном братстве – упасть,
подкошенному сном, прижаться к человеку – кто он? почему он? сифилитик?
сыпнотифозный? – греть его и греться человеческим его телесным теплом.
[…] the man is thinking about a new, unusual brotherhood - to fall, felled by
sleep, to huddle against a man - who is he? why he? syphilitic? Has he got typhus? -
warm him and warm oneself by his human body warmth.
292
291
Pil’niak, I, 144
292
Pil’niak, I, 145
Radchenko 189
Perhaps this image inverts the idea of brotherhood suggested by Fedorov and lays bare
the impossibility of resurrection in the new Soviet circumstances concentrated around train
stations. And as if a fatal irony, Leo Tolstoy, the organic Gulliver of Russian literature, died at a
train station, in 1910.
Conclusion
For Pil’niak, the reality of the “Princess Frog” fairy-tale is as palpable as that of an
archeological excavation site, for both occasions troubled contemplation of Russia’s
eschatological fate. His argument is an offbeat blend of mythological and political discourses, in
which Russian people are constantly compared to Ivanushka the Fool, who ultimately lost
everything. The archaeological past in Golyi God is interlocked with the mythological past of
Scythian Rus’, and a dig for ancient relics is paired with a stream of consciousness spewing out
bits of fairy tales, folk songs, and nonsensical prattle. In what appears to be less an archaic
longing than an urge to systematize modernity, the myth struggles to establish some semblance
of order and counteracts the chaos of revolution. I read this combination as an attempt on
Pil’niak’s part to find his own Troy, in the spirit of the tremendously popular turn-of-the-century
archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, whose search for Troy was mapped out by The Iliad––a
mythological product, rather than historical evidence.
Pil’niak liberally muddles his timeframes: the remnants of the tower, for instance, should
not be over 100-200 years old, since it was Sten’ka Razin who entered it, yet Pil’niak’s
characters, upon discovering said remnants, tell a markedly different story of Razin’s
Radchenko 190
relationship with the Persian princess.
293
According to Egorka, a local herbalist and healer, the
Persian princess imprisoned in this tower turned into a magpie, and “as a wolf” kept on
confusing people until Razin saw her asleep, while her soul was fluttering around. He then called
the priests and sprinkled holy water over the windows and doors. Since then, legend has it, her
soul has been flying over the steppes, unable to reenter the tower and reconnect with its proper
body. The legend acquires more veracity than archeological evidence when Egorka warns them
of the bad omens and advises to abort the dig:
Не дело вы затеяли рыть эти места. Потому, место эта, Увек, тайная, и
всегда она пахнет полынью […] Место эта глухая, тайная.
You have no business digging these places. Because, this place, Uvek, is
mysterious, and it always smells of wormwood [...] This place is silent, mysterious.
294
The reality of the myth is stronger than the new “real” reality because the curse cast
upon this space is more potent than any revolution could hope to be.
In regard to the chronotope of the novel, there is the natural time holding sway over the
life of animals; the para-natural time (the Church calendar); and the unnatural time, unrelated to
either nature or church and regulating the lives of “the leather jackets,” kotelki, and soldier
buttons––in a word, the urban life. Pil’niak wrote to Maxim Gorky on February 22, 1920:
“Последняя глава романа развязывает весь роман, весь роман построен на ней – над ней.”
(The last chapter of the novel unleashes the whole novel, the whole novel is built on it - above
293
Remarkably, the monument to Stepan Razin was among the first ones erected by the Soviet
Government after the monumental propaganda program started in 1918.
294
Pil’niak, I, 104
Radchenko 191
it.)
295
The last chapter is, in fact, a compilation of folklore songs accompanying weddings and
burials. At the beginning of the novel, the same idea of reality being born out of folk songs is
expressed: “И идут по проселку с негромкими песнями: иному те песни - тоска, как
проселок. Ордынин родился в них, с ними, от них.”
296
The sentence supports dual readings:
either the reality of the spoken word is so substantial that it can give birth to a city (a Mediaeval
and very Russian concept), or, on the metaliterary level, these folk songs had sparked the idea of
Ordynin Gorod for Pil’niak the author. Either way, folk songs appear to be more observably real
than historical documents.
As Michael Kunichika notes, Pil’niak was fascinated by archaeological excavations, but
he never dug himself. Golyi God thus can be read as a speech act that allowed him to become an
archaeologist and to make his own discoveries, engendering an eschatological chronicle similar
to The Iliad. The temporality of human life described in the novel clashes with eternity. While
excavating the remnants of Uvek, his characters do not fully realize that their death, less
ritualized and less beautified than the deaths of their predecessors, will also one day become a
clue to the past at the hands of future generations. The commune mowed down by gunfire; the
peasants who died in a famine; the Ordynins wiped out by syphilis: all of these will be viewed as
markers of their time in the excavations of some distant future.
However, the last chapter, which narrates the continuation of organic life in the remote
“black” villages, is not devoid of hope. As Sergei Bulgakov argues, the Apocalypse of John was
not so much a threat or a self-enclosed parade of horrors as an intimation of hope for a new life
295
Pis’ma B.Pil’nyaka k M.Gor’komu//Russkaya Literatura. 1991, No1, p.184
296
Pil’niak, I, 36
Radchenko 192
that will blossom out of the ashes. These sprouts of renewal play a crucial role in the art of Pavel
Filonov, to whom the next chapter is devoted.
Radchenko 193
Chapter 4.
Pavel Filonov: Between the Russian Folklore and the Northern Renaissance.
Pavel Filonov’s theoretical and pictorial practice has been the focus of substantial
historical research over the last twenty years. However, there are still many lacunae in the
existing studies of his creative career, especially in the context of its stylistic and philosophical
roots. The terror of war and the motifs of death thematically dominated the early art of Pavel
Filonov. Extending John Bowlt’s argument about the genetic affinity of the St. Petersburg
modernism and the Northern Renaissance art
297
, this chapter views the theme of death as
corresponding to that of the artists of the Northern Renaissance, with their paraphrase of the
medieval “Dance of Death.” I examine the corpus of Filonov’s works – visual, philosophical,
poetical and pedagogical, as well as the memoirs of his contemporaries and the relevant
commentaries of critics and historians, to demonstrate the complexity of Filonov’s worldview.
This complexity can be characterized by the coexistence of the religious and folklore themes
with his interest in the advances of the modern science (X-ray, Darwin’s theory of evolution,
genetic experiments and Matiushin’s organic theory), as well as his fascination with the
Renaissance artists: Leonardo da Vinci, Bosch, Durer, Breughel, and Holbein.
298
I argue that
Filonov’s interest in the life and works of Leonardo da Vinci influenced his enigmatic pictorial
and pedagogical tenets of “analysis” and “formula.”
299
This chapter also explores Filonov’s
297
Bowlt, “Prekrasnyi I Stradalcheskii Filonov”. Eksperiment 2005 issue 11 p. 4,
298
While the Rumyantsev Museum in Moscow had a rich collection of Durer’s litographs, I
suggest that Filonov saw the majority of the works of the Northern and Italian Renaissance
during his extensive trip to Europe that we will discuss later.
299
This argument is developed in an article “Eschatological Motifs of Filonov’s art” by
Radchenko K. and Seliazneva O., to be published soon.
Radchenko 194
poetic work, “The Chant of Universal Flowering” (Propeven’ o Prorosli Mirovoi), as an example
of the native religious drama, similar to other performances by the Union of Youth. There are
several essential tropes in the depiction of death that I analyze while rereading the Propeven’: the
native folklore tradition of depicting and contemplating death, which is found in lubki, and the
influence of the Biblical plots, Orthodox liturgy and Hans Holbein’s visual rendering of the
origin of death.
The early period of Filonov’s art (1910-1915), with color schemes, themes, and images
typical of the old Renaissance masters, significantly differs from the late period. In works such
as The Heads (1910), or The Young Men (1910), the graphical style is similar to Durer's
engravings and Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical sketches. Early Filonov’s works are permeated
by the image of the Eucharist: At the table (1912-1913), Three behind the Table (1914-1915),
two versions of the work Abraham and the Holy Trinity (1912 and 1913), two versions of the
painting The Feast of the Kings (1911-1912 and 1912-1913), The Last Supper (late 1910s - early
1930s) – all represent people sitting at a table or standing with their hands crossed on the chest,
surrounded by fish and bottles of wine, which traditionally symbolizes the Eucharist.
300
The
Feast of the Kings bears thematic affinity to The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci, while the
ultra-realistic works of Filonov – such as “Portrait of Evdokia Glebova, the Artist’s
Sister”(1915), or “Portrait of Aleksander Aziber with his Son” were painted in the style of the
early Flemish portraits, such as St Luke Drawing the Virgin (1440) by Rogier van der Weyden,
which had been in the Hermitage collection since 1884.
300
A "sacramental fish", accompanied by a carafe of red wine and a basket of bread signifies the
Eucharist and the Last Supper.
Radchenko 195
Reception of the Renaissance in fin-de-siècle Russia. The visual counterpart.
Filonov is not a typical figure in the Russian Avant-garde. He highly appreciated such
incompatible artistic landmarks as the Medieval Russian temples and the Cathedral of St. Jean in
Lyon, Peter Bruegel, and Leonardo da Vinci. He insisted that his theory of art is influenced by
various styles and artists. The most important to Filonov was the notion of “madeness,” which
united the works of certain masters of the past and the present:
Если желаете искать связь нашей теории с бывшими до нас, ищите ее по
всему миру и за все века искусства.
If you want to search for the connection between our theory and those of the past,
search for it all over the world and through all the centuries of art.
301
According to the memoirs of Filonov’s students, he appreciated da Vinci for his “strong
painterly form.” Nikolai Lozovoi recalls: “Filonov highly appraised Leonardo da Vinci, Holbein,
Durer. But above all, perhaps, Filonov put Leonardo da Vinci."
302
The name of da Vinci was
metaphorically used by Filonov as the highest criterion for a “made” picture. He did not only
promise to teach everyone “to draw like da Vinci” but also said that he could “draw better than
Leonardo da Vinci.” It is not a coincidence that Filonov, while describing his conversation with
Isaak Brodsky in his diary, was proud that “he has already taken a firm and undeniable position
in the history of art," as the art critic Ieremia Ioffe considered him to be on a par with such artists
301
Filonov P.N. “Kanon i Zakon”. Filonov. Khudozhnik. Issledovatel’. Uchitel’. V. II. p. 81
302
Lozovoi N. “Vospominaniia o Filonove.” Filonov. Khudozhnik. Issledovatel’. Uchitel’. V.II.
p. 346
Radchenko 196
as Giotto, Leonardo, Titian, Raphael, Angelo, Courbet, Rembrandt, Cezanne, Van Gogh."
303
In
his work “Synthetic Art,” Ieremia Ioffe analyzed just a few Russian artists and cultural figures,
concentrating mainly on the European authors. Filonov’s art is discussed in the section
"Expressionism and Surrealism" with the subtitle "Van Gogh-Meidner-Filonov," which
emphasizes the metaphysical and expressionistic features of Filonov's work.
304
Filonov did not
agree with this parallel, so in a conversation with Brodsky, he created his own parallel, placing
himself on par with the Renaissance masters. Thus, it was vital for him to remain in the history
of the arts, along with the names of the old masters.
305
Filonov’s interest in the figure of da Vinci was not only a personal phenomenon but also
a reflection of cultural tendencies. There was a certain continuity between the artists of the
modernism and the Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci and the versatility of his genius
corresponded to the idea of synesthesia, which fascinated Russian modernists.
306
The
revolutionary mood of the early XX century, accompanied by a belief in the omnipotence and
freedom of a man, inevitably created connections with the humanist anthropocentrism of the
Renaissance. Friedrich Engels, the ideological inspirer of the new Russia, emphasized the
continuity between the arriving era of scientific progress and the Renaissance. Filonov
303
Filonov P.N. Dnevniki. Sankt-Peterburg, 2000, p.351
304
Ioffe I.I. Izbrannoe. Sinteticheskaia Istoriia iskusstv. Vvedenie v isotriiu Hudozhestvennogo
myshleniia. M, 2010, p. 519-526
305
It is important to emphasize that Filonov was critical of Rafael, saying that he paints with the
round form, which was a bad characteristic (“тот пишет круглой формой”)//Lozovoi N.
“Vospominaniia o Filonove.” in Filonov. Khudozhnik. Issledovatel’. Uchitel’. V. II. p. 347, and
Michelangelo’s “drawing and painting were equally bad” (“его рисунок и живопись
одинаково плохи”) in Filonov P. Dnevniki, Moskva, 2000, p.270.
306
For more onLeonardo Da Vinci and Filonov, see Radchenko K. “L’Homme Universel: Pavel
Filonov et Leonard De Vinci”// Kandinsky, Malevitch, Filonov Et La Philosophie. Les Systemes
de L’abstraction dans L’Avant-Garde Russe. Jean-Philippe Jaccar, Ioulia Podoroga (dir.)
Editions Nouvelles Cecile Defaut, 2018 pp. 291-308
Radchenko 197
recommended that his students read Engels’ “Dialectics of Nature” (1894), in which Engels
argued that Renaissance artists were the creators of the new, progressive, rational culture, in
which there was no gap between theory and practice, science and art. “It was the most significant
upheaval that humanity has experienced until that time, an era that needed titans and produced
Titans in terms of thought, passion, and character, versatility, and scholarship."
307
Brockhaus and
Efron Dictionary
308
(1890-1907) emphasized the scientific nature of the art of the Renaissance
period: “the reconciliation of artists with nature, their closest penetration into the laws of
anatomy, perspective, light, and other natural phenomena.”
309
While most of the avant-garde
artists rejected the natural phenomena as an object of modern art and wanted to dismantle the
sun, the “organic” view on the world was an essential feature of Filonov’s creative philosophy,
led by the principle of Universal Blooming, which will be discussed separately in the context of
his literary work.
Kazimir Malevich referred to the genre of the Renaissance portrait at the end of his
creative life, for example, in his works Self-Portrait (1933) and The Portrait of the Artist's Wife
(1933).
310
Nicoletta Misler writes:
307
Engels, F. Dialektika prirody. Gosudarstvennoye izdaniye politicheskoy literatury, M. 1953,
p. 4
308
Encyclopedia "Brockhaus and Efron" - a universal encyclopedia in Russian, published in the
Russian Empire in the years 1890-1907 by the printing press of I. Afron. The first 8 volumes were
a literal translation of the German encyclopedia "Konversations-Lexikon" published by
Brockhaus. The rest contained original articles by the leading scientists of Russia. The dictionary
was widely used by writers, researchers and artists as the main source of encyclopedic data.
309
Article “Renessans”//Статья «Ренессанс»// Encyclopedia "Brockhaus and Efron"
310
See Misler N, "Kazimir Malevich and His Self-Portrait of 1933: The Artist as The Savior",
manuscript
Radchenko 198
Like Huizinga, Malevich linked himself with the Renaissance Man, as an artist
and scientist (or let’s say theoretician), an individual of multiple dimensions, whose
creativity was playful or jocular, because it “liberated” creative activity, carrying it
beyond production or “free quest for the experiment.”
311
Vladimir Tatlin struggled to create the organic flying apparatus, similar to the machines
from da Vinci’s diaries, and demanded that his students write in “Leonardo's handwriting.”
Renaissance, in general, became a subject of interest of art historians, cultural scientists,
and writers in the early XX century Russia. Philosophers, such as Nikolai Berdyaev, Pavel
Florensky, and Dmitry Merezhkovsky, used the term Renaissance in an attempt to characterize
the contemporary state of culture. In his Dawn of Art, Berdyaev accused the modern art of
spiritual atomization, typical for the Renaissance period.
An active popularization of the history of the Renaissance art started in 1908, when The
Beginning of Italian Renaissance, the work of the historian, and art historian, A. K. Dzhivelegov
was published. In 1911-1912, the first and second volumes of the three-volume Images of Italy
by art historian Pavel Muratov
312
were published. In 1912, Brockhaus & Efron publishing house
issued the Russian translation of the Classical Art by a Swiss art historian Heinrich Wölflin, and
in 1913 – the Russian translation of Renaissance and Baroque. In 1912, Count V.P. Zubov, who
attended Wollflin’s lectures at the University of Heidelberg and was inspired by the Institute of
Arts in Florence, opened the public “Institute of Art History” in St. Petersburg. Baron E. C.
Lipgard – an apologist for the old masters, who insisted that the Hermitage acquire Leonardo da
311
“Svobodnyi Opyt Iskaniya” (Misler’s note)
312
Pavel Muratov also was the founder of the Italian Research Society in Moscow Studio Studio
Italiano
Radchenko 199
Vinci's painting Madonna with a Flower (Madonna Benois) in 1914 – gave lectures on the
Italian art of the Renaissance at the new educational institution. Likewise, many works devoted
directly to Da Vinci were published in Russia at the edge of the century.
313
Leonardo da Vinci
became the symbol and the quintessence of the Renaissance. The symbolists depicted Leonardo
as a mystical figure, a prophet, torn between the demonic and the divine spheres. Alexander
Benois, explaining the unprecedented attention paid to the personality of da Vinci, outlined his
innovative approach to reality, so relevant to the naturalistic discourse of the early twentieth
century:
Есть что-то сладостно-ненасытное в отношении Леонардо ко вселенной, к ее
законом, к ее тайнам. Больше всего дразнило ум Леонардо желание понять
организм каждого предмета в отдельности и организм всего мироздания.
There is something sweetly insatiable about Leonardo’s relation to the universe,
to its law, to its secrets. Most of all, Leonardo’s mind was teased by the desire to
understand the organism of each object separately and the organism of the entire
universe.
314
313
Filippov M. M. Leonardo da Vinchi kak khudozhnik, uchenyi i filosof: Biograficheskii
ocherk. Spb,1892); Seal' G. Leonardo da Vinchi kak khudozhnik i uchenyi. SPb., 1898; Sumtsov
N. F., Leonardo da Vinchi. Spb, 1900; Merezhkovskiy D. S. Voskresshiye Bogi. Leonardo da
Vinchi. Spb, 1901; “Florentiyskiye chteniya: Leonardo da Vinchi” (1914); Volynskiy A. Zhizn'
Leonardo da Vinchi. SPb., 1900; Vrangel' N. “Madonna Benua” Leonardo da Vinchi. SPb.,
1914; Lipgart E. K. Leonardo i yego shkola. Leningrad, 1928; Dzhivelegov A. K. Leonardo da
Vinchi. Moskva, 1935.
314
Benua A. N. Istoriya zhivopisi vsekh vremen i narodov. SPb., 1912, v.II, p.144
Radchenko 200
As a deep and thoughtful reader, Filonov was familiar with many works devoted to
Leonardo. In particular, after reading Dmitry Merezhkovsky’s novel, The Resurrected Gods
Filonov was amazed at the description of the artist’s workshop and noted that “he did not find
such a description in any other writers’ works.”
315
According to this remark, he could have read
other works dedicated to da Vinci. Perhaps, the description of the workshop as a room of a
scientist-alchemist reminded him of the St. Petersburg Kunstkammer, in which Filonov could
have studied anatomy, as John Bowlt suggested.
316
Filonov was fascinated by natural sciences.
Like da Vinci, he was a brilliant connoisseur of proportions and human anatomy, and once noted
in his diary: “I am a naturalist of the same type as a scientist who studies nature [...] I approach
my work as a researcher.”
It is customarily considered that the Renaissance, which replaced the Middle Ages in
Italy in the XIV century and spread throughout Europe in the XV-XVI centuries, was a time of
blossoming for the secular culture. A shift happened from the ascetic religiosity of the Middle
Ages to the flourishing of secularism, science, natural philosophy, the liberation of the body, and
the emergence of artistic individualism. This shift was, perhaps, considered to be similar to the
cultural revolution happening in the modernist art of the early twentieth century. However,
concentrating on the general upheaval of thought, many forget that “the Renaissance and
Baroque periods are a time of increased preoccupation with death. In the age that is believed to
have rediscovered the joys of life, the traditional confrontation of humans with death becomes so
widespread in the arts that death, paradoxically, runs the risk of becoming trivialized.”
317
Smith
315
Lozovoi N. “Vospominaniia o Filonove.” in Filonov. Khudozhnik. Issledovatel’. Uchitel’. V.
II. p. 347
316
See Bowlt. E. J. “Die Anatomie der Phantasie” (The Anatomy of Fantasy) in Harten J and
Petrowa E, eds Pawel Filonow und Seine Schule, Kohln, 1990, 50-69, p.56
317
Guthke, 85
Radchenko 201
agreed, claiming that the Renaissance “treated the theme of death with exceptional inventiveness
[…] and Renaissance art, such as the Dance of Death amused or shocked the viewers, but
eventually, it prepared them for death. Today a man is here; tomorrow he is gone.”
318
The
images of death permeated newly emerged printed literature. Short after the invention of
printing there appeared devotional books, such as “Ars Moriendi” (The Art of Dying Well), or
the” Biblia Pauperum”
319
, representing a series of illustrations of Bible stories so arranged that
the New Testament events were faced by the Old Testament anti-types, the stories which were
held to prophesy or prefiguration of the Acts of Christ.
320
In 1498 Durer published his
Apocalypse. Macabre plots appeared in many media – frescoes, altar paintings, sculptures, book
miniatures, etchings on copper: Three dead and three living, Triumph of Death, Dances of
Death, The Art of Dying. The theme of death permeates the first “newspapers,” proclamations
and secular literature, such as Michael Wolgemut’s The Nuremberg Chronicle published in
Nuremberg in 1493. Death is represented in a variety of ways – as an old lad with a scythe, or as
a gothic bat, or corpses with pieces of flesh on the bones, or skeletons – these are just some of
the terrifying images of the Renaissance popular culture. “The standard icon of death throughout
the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance was the skeleton (which in antiquity had symbolized
not death, but the dead person, or rather his larva, his ghost.” Considering the political and social
situation in Europe of the early twentieth century, it is not a surprise, that the images of death,
skeletons and the motif of the triumph of death returned to the popular art at the dawn of the new
Era. There was an outburst of “Memento Mori”, “Dance of Death” and “The Triumph of Death”
318
Smith, 209
319
The concept of Biblia Pauperum is very close to the peasant views on the Bible, as a mixture
of the Old and the New testament. The very idea of simple eclectic influenced the religious ideas
of Filonov’s Propeven’, as it will be shown later.
320
See Murray Peter and Linda, The Art of Renaissance, Thames and Hudson, 1985, p.182
Radchenko 202
motifs in all artistic media: from Musorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death (1877), World of Art
and Blue Rose group renderings of the decadent themes, Balmont’s Danse Macabre, Blok’s
Dances of Death, Filonov’s The Feast of the Kings to Bulgakov’s Memento Mori in Master and
Margarita. The covers of the 1906 Post-revolutionary satirical journals all over Russia unfold a
whole gallery of skeletons, monsters and vampire bats representing death, disaster and political
failure of the government: Mephistofel, No.1, 1906; Pchela, No.3, 1906; Ovod, No.1, 1906;
Zarevo, No.1, 1906. Zhupel, No.2 1905 contains one of the most famous pictures rendered by
Kustodiev – Zhupel Revoliutsii or Nashestvie – depicting a skeleton running over crowds of
people on the streets of St. Petersburg. In 1913 Petr Ivanov (Mak), looking like a skeleton, and
Elza Kruger danced the Tango of Death to a select Moscow audience. The theme of the dance of
death even reached the United States. In 1922 Dudley Murphy produced an experimental film
titled “Danse Macabre” devoted to the young lovers, Youth, and Love, trying to escape Death’s
invitation to dance. Accompanied by Camille Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre symphony, it gives a
horrific image of a skeleton playing the violin and haunting two desperate lovers in Spain
devastated by Black Plague. A medieval Dance of Death started with the conversation between a
person and death and later death engaged a person into the dance, and the person died dancing.
Dialogues with death evoked another Renaissance motif – a theme of maiden and death, as in
Hans Balding Grien, Death and the Maiden, 1518-20.
321
The plot was used by Gorky, in Smert’ i
Devushka, Zabolotsky, in Iskushenie, and in others.
321
The painting is exhibited in Öffentliche Kunstsammlung in Basel. According to Bely’s
description of his travel given in the next section, Bely visited Basel, so perhaps Filonov also
saw it during his European trip. The Hermitage and the Rumiantsev Museum (Pushkin’s
Museum nowadays), had an extensive collection of German lithographs before the revolution.
Radchenko 203
Renaissance plots
While the themes in Filonov’s art could have been inspired by the traditional Russian
Orthodox iconography, they are thematically close to the Renaissance paintings. Even though
Filonov painted icons, such as the Icon of St. Catherine (1908–1910), the plots of his early art are
most likely influenced by the classical European interpretation of the Biblical themes. For
instance, the Flight into Egypt, which Filonov uses as an illustration for his Propeven’ o Prorosli
Mirovoi, was not a canonical plot in the Russian Orthodox tradition and was hardly ever depicted
on Russian Icons (only as one of the small “kleimas” on the icons describing the life of Christ
and on Coptic icons). Filonov must have seen various interpretations of the theme by the
Northern Renaissance masters during his European trip – Lucas Cranach’s Rest on the Flight to
Egypt (1501), Peter Breughel the Elder’s Flight into Egypt, (perhaps, the image of the mountains
on Filonov’s drawing was influenced by this painting), Albrecht Altdorfer’s Rest on the Flight
into Egypt (Berlin, 1510). One interesting example is Giovanni Andrea Ansaldo’s Flight into
Egypt (the 1620s), which Filonov could have seen in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica in
Rome because the figure of Mary is painted in the standing or walking pose, similar to Filonov’s
figure. In some of the Renaissance paintings, the holy family is accompanied by an angel. In
Filonov’s painting, it is a native American or an African with an Indian feather headband.
Interestingly, Maximilian Voloshin, in his essay on the role of antiquity in the art of modernism,
writes:
Radchenko 204
С той минуты, когда глаз европейца увидел на стене Кноссоского дворца
изображение царя Миноса в виде краснокожого и в короне из птичьих перьев
напоминающей головные уборы Северо-Американских индейцев […]
From the minute that the European's eye saw the image of king Minos depicted as a
“redskin,” wearing a crown of bird feathers resembling headdresses of the North
American Indians […]
322
Perhaps, Filonov used the image of the American Indian as a link to the Mesopotamian
route of the holy family, similarly to Voloshin, who compared the Mesopotamian kings to the
American Indians.
The Heads (1910), The Adoration of the Magi (1913), Magi (1914), Man and Woman (or
Adam and Eve) (1912-1913) and The Peasant Family (The Holy Family) (1914) are other
examples of Filonov’s engagement with classical biblical motifs and a demonstration of his
Christian upbringing. The Hermitage Museum had only a few Renaissance paintings: two by
Leonardo: Madonna Litta (1490-1491), purchased in 1865, and Madonna Benois (1478),
acquired much later, in 1914. It also had a vast collection of “Old German” lithographs (22,000
items). However, Alexander II contributed half of the collection to Moscow’s Rumyantsev
Museum in 1862. By 1918, the Rumyantsev Museum had the second most extensive collection
of Old German lithographs in Russia, enlarged by the donations of private collectors: Piotr
Sevast’yanov, who donated his collection of lithographs in 1865, and Nikolai Basnin, who in
1918 donated his extensive collection of lithographs by Martin Schongauer, Wilhelm
322
Voloshin, Maksimilian, “Arhaizm v Russkoi Zhivopisi. Rerikh, Bogaevsky I Bakst” Zhurnal
Appolon, No 1, 1909
Radchenko 205
Wohlgemuth and Durer. Filonov, most likely, encountered the rest of the works of the
Renaissance artists as reproductions while studying in the Academy of Art. The demonstration of
the Renaissance art was a part of the education program of the Academy of Arts. Moreover,
Filonov independently implemented the traditional European “Grand Tour” for artists, where he
could personally see all the works of the Renaissance masters. John Bowlt writes:
That Filonov knew the work of Cranach, Durer, Grunewald, Holbein, is clear, and
his analytical mind appreciated their incisive styles. But these assumptions cannot be
documented because FIlonov does not refer to a single German work of art in his
writings, makes only one brief mention of Holbein, and gives no indication of the works
of art that he saw in Austria and Germany in 1912.
323
While it is indeed impossible to establish the route of Filonov’s trip, his contemporary, Andrei
Bely, recalled his experience in Northern Europe, mentioning many of the Northern Renaissance
hallmarks:
[…] мимо неслись города: Мюнхен, Базель, Фицнау, пооткрывались откуда-то
издали галереи, музеи: суровый Грюнвальд, Лука Кранах, блистающий красками,
Дюрер и младший Гольбейн нам бросали невыразимую мысль своей палитры.
324
323
Filonov, Pavel Nikolaevich, Misler, Nicoletta, and Bowlt, John E. Pavel Filonov : A Hero
and His Fate : Collected Writings on Art and Revolution, 1914-1940 Austin, Tex: Silvergirl,
Inc., 1984, p 9
324
Bely A. Simvolizm I Filosofiya Kul’tury, Moskva, Direkt-Mediya, 2012, p.379
Radchenko 206
[…] the cities flew by: Munich, Basel, Fitznau, galleries, and museums opened their
doors from afar, the stern Grunewald, Lucas Cranach, glittering in colors, Durer and the
younger Holbein threw at us the inexpressible thought of their palette.
It is possible that Filonov’s trip followed a similar route in Northern Europe, embracing
the art of Grunewald, Durer, Lukas Cranach, and Holbein the younger. Bowlt illustrates the
affinity between Filonov and the Northern Renaissance artists by comparing Filonov’s Heads
(1910) with Lucas Cranach the younger’s Christ and a Woman Taken in Adultery, and noting the
similarity in “the combination of monstrous and normal heads:”
The painting by Cranach […] was demonstrated in an exhibition devoted to the
opening of a new section of the Academy of Art in September 1910. It received a vast
reception, and its reproductions appeared in press exactly at the time when Filonov left
the canonical principles of classical art for his terrifying colors and haunting blackness.
325
A similar composition of whimsical heads appeared in Albrecht Durer’s Christ among
the doctors, which depicts Christ as the central figure, surrounded by ugly heads. Similar
techniques are used with an emphasis on profiles and hands. A horrid and mortifying face in the
dark corner, just as the one in Filonov’s sketch The Hero and His Fate (1910.) While Christ
among the doctors is kept in Madrid nowadays, students of the Academy of Art were well
acquainted with the works of Durer, as he penned one of the most crucial manuscripts on
perspective. Gleb Ershov refers to the orthodox iconography when discussing the images of
325
Bowlt J. “Prekrasnyi I stradalcheskii Filonov”, Eksperiment, 2005 issue 11, p. 4.
Radchenko 207
ships on the canvases of Filonov (West and East, East and West (1912-1913).
326
However, the
tradition of depicting boats with a variety of people on them goes back to the Renaissance plot of
the Ship of the Fools. Also of interest to us are the rites of burying on ships and sending to sea
and the folklore connotation of the boat as the transport of the dead soul.
In Filonov’s painting Man and Woman (1913), the naked couple is caught in the
moment of a silent dance. The twist of their figures reminds of the intertwined figures of
skeletons in the Dance of Death. They are surrounded by kings on thrones, who, despite their
social rank, are also subject to death. The equality of all social classes in the face of death is the
favorite theme in Holbein's engravings. In her reading of Filonov’s painting Man and Woman,
Nicoletta Misler suggests that an enigmatic figure that sits on the throne is Death.
327
It watches
the whimsical dance of the naked couple, and as such, it represents a similar engagement with
the theme of the Dance of Death.
The roots of Filonov’s organic understanding of death and eternal life
The key to Filonov’s understanding of death is his theory of the atomic and continuously
evolving structure of the world. In his desire to make the painting an intellectual practice,
Filonov followed the path of intellectualization of art. Filonov emphasized that new art should
become similar to science. This might be the reason for using the scientific word “formula” as a
title of his paintings.
326
See Ershov Gleb, Hudozhnik Mirovogo Rascveta Filonov, S-Petersburg, 2015, pp. 43-45.
327
Misler, 21.
Radchenko 208
Considering Filonov to be a self-taught artist, because he was an accomplished painter
even before he got into the studio of Dmitriev-Kavkazsky, we can assume that he read a
compilation of Leonardo’s theoretical works, including the famous Treatise on Painting. First
published in 1651, this treatise had been repeatedly reprinted and was considered a classic
textbook for the beginning artists. Leonardo emphasized that art should be supported by science,
namely, a precise knowledge of natural forms, a rational understanding of their essential
principles, and the underlying codes. In his notes, Da Vinci wrote that the understanding of
nature is a continuous intellectual process and, therefore, the painting itself deserves to be
considered a mental practice similar to natural science. “First we establish the scientific and true
foundations of painting [...] which are understood only by consciousness without the work of
hands,” wrote Leonardo.
328
At the time, the available books and practical instructions for the art
students were similar to the instructions for the medical students. As John Bowlt notes, among
those were: Anatomicheskie Zapiski (Anatomical Notes) of Il’ya Buyal’skii(1860), Prakticheskii
Samouchitel’ Izyashchnykh Iskusstv (Practical teaching of the Fine Art) by Erenberg and Rikhel
(1873), and Kurs Plasticheskoi Anatomii Cheloveka (A Course of the Plastic Anatomy of a Man),
a cycle of lectures by Mikhail Tikhonov (1906), mentioned by Filonov in his autobiography.
329
In his theory of the “seeing” and the “knowing” eye, Pavel Filonov also emphasized the
necessity for the rational approach to the object. In his analysis of the world, the artist engaged
the “knowing eye,” which, unlike the “seeing” eye, could rationalize and intuitively conceive
countless object predicates, and even foresee their evolution in time and space. The analytical
328
Leonardo da Vinchi. Izbrannye Proizvedeniya. Perevody, stat’I k ommentarii A.A. Gubera,
A.K.Dzhivelegova, V.P.Zubova, V.K. Shileiko I M.A.Efrosa-M.L: Volume II, p. 521
329
See Bowlt. E. J. “Die Anatomie der Phantasie” (The Anatomy of Fantasy) in Harten J and
Petrowa E, eds Pawel Filonow und Seine Schule, Kohln, 1990, 50-69, p.56
Radchenko 209
method of Filonov escapes the limitations of Realism, which only reveals two characteristics of
the object: the form, and the color. Filonov wrote: “I call my method naturalistic for the purely
scientific method of thinking about an object, adequately foreseeing and intuiting all its
predicates […]” to sub-and-above-conscious level.
330
The “predicates” that Filonov discusses are
still biological or physical, but they are not visible to the ordinary eye. Among them are:
[…] динамика, граница перехода из плоскости в плоскость и из формы в
форму биодинамика, формула, субстрат, пульсация жизни, аналитическое
разложение и претворение, истребление формы, выбор, конструкция, объём,
тяжесть, клетчатка, атомистичность, свет, тень, и, наконец, цвет.
[…]The dynamics, the boundary of the transition from plane to plane, and from
form to form, biodynamics, formula, substrate, pulsation of life (he meant the movement
of the liquid inside the plants - the notion borrowed from Carl Linne), the analytical
decomposition and implementation, the destruction of the form, the choice, the
construction, the volume, the gravity, the fiber structure, the atomistic structure, light,
shadow and finally, the color.
331
While Filonov’s theory reflected the recent advances in natural science, the overall
methodology of discussing the invisible characteristics of the painterly object belongs to the
domain of Leonardo’s treatise on painting. Leonardo wrote about similar features visible to a
330
Bowlt. E. J. “Die Anatomie der Phantasie” (The Anatomy of Fantasy) in Harten and Petrowa,
eds Pawel Filonow und Seine Schule, Kohln, 1990, 50-69, с79
331
Bowlt, ibid, 79
Radchenko 210
painter’s eye: “Painting extends to all ten duties of the eye, namely: darkness, light, body, color,
figure, place, distance, intimacy, movement, and peace.”
332
Filonov did not only discuss the methodology of artistic work but also implemented it in
his works. What made Filonov’s paintings especially uncanny, is the vivisection of the surfaces
similar to the anatomical experiments that Filonov observed in the Kunstkammer and the
anatomical textbooks during his study at the Academy of art. Filonov’s eye penetrates the layers
of the epidermis, opening the hidden processes. The depiction of physical matter in Filonov’s
paintings was probably influenced by the recent discovery of the X-rays. However, the main
influence was a study of anatomy. According to a number of academic instructions, artists and
sculptors were supposed to depict the visible muscles and veins in their sculptures and
paintings.
333
As Yuri Tsivian notes, “cultural expectations aroused by the X-ray exceeded
anything that could be observed in connection with other scientific discoveries of the time.”
Another significant influence was the development of the microscope and microphotography.
While aerial photography had produced an enchanting effect on the futurists, Filonov’s painting
method, with its attention to the atomic structure, attests to his interest in the microscopic world.
The development of Filonov’s investigations of the interior was probably influenced by the
1910s’ demonstrations of the microscopic films, showing the worlds of moving blood cells
within the human body. One of the motion pictures showed germs attacking red corpuscles and
destroying them.
334
Tsivian notes that while the film was intended for scientific use, the release
332
Leonardo da Vinchi. Izbrannye Proizvedeniya. Perevody, stat’I,kommentarii A.A. Gubera,
A.K.Dzhivelegova, V.P.Zubova, V.K. Shileiko I M.A.Efrosa-M.L: Volume II, 520
333
Bowlt. E. J. “Die Anatomie der Phantasie” (The Anatomy of Fantasy) in Harten and Petrowa,
eds Pawel Filonow und Seine Schule, 50-69, p.56
334
Maurin Evg. Kinematograf v Prakticheskoi Zhizni, Petrograd, Tekhnicheskoe Izdatel’stvo,
1916, p.16
Radchenko 211
of the film for general distribution achieved unexpected success with the Russian audiences of
the 1910s.
335
As I mentioned in the previous chapter, Filonov did enjoy cinematography; that is
why he was likely to have watched this film. According to Standish D. Lawder, “the influence of
technology on culture has never been so direct and obvious as in the effect of micro
cinematography upon the arts of prewar Europe”
336
The metamorphoses of the blood cells
interested Velimir Khlebnikov: “поверхность кровяного шарика равна поверхности земного
шара, деленной на 365 в десятой степени.”
337
(the surface of a blood cell(?) equals the surface
of the earth divided by 365 to the power 10.) The idea of the revolutionary struggle received an
exciting interpretation as an echo of the cells’ struggle within the blood veins. For illustration,
consider Aleksander Blok’s “world fire in the blood” line from his poem The Twelve, V.
Khlebnikov’s 1922 play Pruzhina Chachotki, devoted to the struggle between the tuberculosis
spirochete and the red blood cells, and Mayakovsky’s 150 000 000, which mentioned spirochetes
and vibrios. While this might not be directly relevant to Filnov, it indicates the interest of the
avant-gardists in the advances in medical science.
Natural “decomposition” as the main principle of the “Made Art.” The Penetrating
vision of the artist
Filonov’s principle of “madeness,” which was discussed earlier, is closely connected with
the principle of “the knowing eye” penetrating the surface. If we look at it through the prism of
335
Bowlt, John E., and Matich, Olga. Laboratory of Dreams: the Russian Avant-Garde and
Cultural Experiment Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1996, p.85
336
Lawder Standish D. The Cubist Cinema, New York: New York Univrersity Press, 1975, p.14
337
Khlebnikov V. Sobranie Sochinenii. SPb, v.V. p. 242
Radchenko 212
Leonardo's works, which Filonov considered to be a model of accomplishment, we can say that
“madeness” is a re-creation of the path that nature follows in its organic development. The
“madeness,” according to Filonov, is an organized, systematic work that a person implements on
the material trying to depict the phenomena in their external and internal complexity. Such
representation is a result of the intense analytical work of the mind of the artist, and not the result
of his technical skills. What sets Filonov apart from Tatlin, who was mainly interested in the
mechanical part of the da Vinci theory, is his interest in the organic and not the mechanical. Any
mechanization absent in nature is alien to Filonov’s principle of “madeness.” Trying to
reproduce the organic and physiological development of a phenomenon, Filonov imitated the
Creator. The concept of the artist as a Demiurge, whose creations can be equated to the creations
of God, originated precisely during the Renaissance. Filonov believed that the creative impulse
an artist puts in his works allows them to live and develop in time. In his biography, Filonov
described the path that gradually led him to the principle of “made” images:
Уже в 1906-1907 гг. были введены натуралистические и абстрактные
положения, вплоть до того, что писались физиологические процессы в деревьях и
исходящий из них, струящийся вокруг них запах. Писались процессы,
происходящие в них и создающие вокруг них ряд явлений в сфере. [Далее была
написана] чисто биологическая картина «Девочки» - как ряд процессов,
происходящих в человеке и в сфере
338
вокруг него, и ряд эманаций из человека в
сферу и др.
338
He means the space that surrounds the object
Radchenko 213
As early as in 1906-1907, naturalistic and abstract guidelines were introduced that
led to the depiction of the physiological processes in the trees and the smell emanating
from them and flowing around them. The processes occurring in them and those creating
several phenomena around them in the sphere [atmosphere] were painted. [Further] a
purely biological picture “Girls” was painted, representing a series of processes occurring
within a person and in the sphere around him, and a number of emanations from a person
to the atmosphere, etc.
339
Thus, Filonov achieves the effect of the biological “madeness” by “opening up” the
visible surface of the object. This mental preparation of the living material is similar to the
traditional anatomical preparation of the corpses. “As a symbolic act, anatomy connotes
uncovering the hidden depth and revealing the underlying causes of life and death (the Russian
term, “vskrytie,” “uncovering,” reinforces these connotations).
340
By doing so, he represents
the usually invisible processes, that even now can only be seen through the advanced medical
equipment, and in the XV century were only visible through “opening up the skin of the
deceased and presenting the unwelcoming interior, as, for instance, in Grunewald’s “The Dead
Lovers.” However, unlike the early Renaissance art, in which the demonstration of the dead
flesh was a synonym of the temporality of the Earthly life, for Filonov, it is a celebration of the
eternal life that manifests itself in every cell and every atom of the atmosphere. Filonov’s act of
uncovering the interior demonstrates the proximity between the living and the dead matter
339
Filonov P. “Zhizneopisanie Pavla FIlonova.” Filonov.Khudozhnik.Issledovatel’.Uchitel’.v.
II,p.34
340
Paperno, Irina. Suicide as a cultural institution in Dostoevsky’s Russia Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell
University Press, 1997, p.33
Radchenko 214
typical for the modernists. However, his penetrating gaze, more similar to the one of an
anatomical pathologist rather than of an artist, also performs an act of decomposing, which is
typical for the postmodernism. According to Michelle Foucault’s argument The Birth of a
Clinic, “working from the manifest to the hidden, dissection turns the body into a legible text. In
decomposing phenomena into their elements, dissection performs analysis. As an act of analysis,
postmodern examination only extends what is done by death: “Death is the great analyst that
shows the connections by unfolding them, and bursts open the wonders of genesis in the rigor of
decomposition, and the word decomposition must be allowed to stagger under the weight of its
meaning.”
341
Even though Filonov’s palette was dominated by the bloody hues of red, burgundy, and
brown, as, for example, in The Feast of the Kings, Filonov emphasized that it is possible to paint
any form in any color if it depicts the processes occurring inside the object. Thus, the processes
inside the object were more important than the traditional painterly approach of striving to depict
the color and the shape:
Так, например, можно, видя только ствол, ветви, листья и цветы, допустим,
яблони, в то же время знать или, анализируя стремиться узнать, как берут и
поглощают усики корней соки почвы, как эти соки бегут по клеточкам древесины
вверх, как они распределяются в постоянной реакции на свет и тепло,
перерабатываются и превращаются в атомистическую структуру ствола и ветвей
[…] Именно это должно интересовать мастера, а не внешность яблони.
341
Foucault M. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception, New York,
1975, p. 144
Radchenko 215
For example, while only seeing the trunk, the branches, the eaves and the flowers
of an apple tree, one might at the same time know, or strive to find out, how the tendrils
of the roots sap the liquids of the soil, how these juices run upward through the wood
cells, how they are distributed in a constant reaction to light and heat, and are
transformed into the atomistic structure of the trunk and branches […] That is what
should interest the master and not the appearance of an apple tree.
342
Aleksander Benois noted a similar X-ray vision of da Vinci, using very similar words to
those of Filonov, which suggests that these ideas were discussed in the cultural and artistic
circles:
Дерево его [Леонардо] интересует не своим силуэтом, не орнаментом, но
тем, как оно произрастает, как наполняет суставы соками, как оно неуловимо для
глаза постоянно развивается, и, следовательно, движется.
He [Leonardo] is neither interested in the silhouette of the tree, nor the patterns,
but in how it grows, how it fills the joints with juices, how it constantly imperceptibly
evolves and, therefore, moves.
343
Merezhkovsky, in his literary rendering of Leonardo’s works, quotes Leonardo
emphasizing that the “human body is transparent,” and one can see it “if looking at the sun
342
Filonov P. “Manifest “Intimnaia Masterskaia Zhivopistsev I Risoval’shchikov “Sdelannye
Kartiny’’. Filonov. Khudozhnik.Issledovatel’. Uchitel’. Moskva, 2006, V.II, p.85
343
Benua A.N. Istoriya Zhivopisi Vsekh Vremion i Narodov. Spb., 1912, v. II, p.144
Radchenko 216
through one’s fingers.”
344
Besides the decomposition of the interior of the bodies (again, it is
worth noting that it is not the same mechanical decomposition as the one performed by the
futurists and cubists), Filonov demonstrates the links between the body and the atmosphere and
decomposes the atmosphere around the body as well. He depicts it with small and meticulous
strokes of the brush, as in the later paintings named “Formulas”: The Formula of Spring (1920),
or The Formula of Petrograd Proletariat (1920-1921), where the atmospheric processes take up
a significant part of the painting. The analytical exercise that Filonov implemented is somewhat
comparable to Leonardo da Vinci’s analysis of the emanations of the bodies. In the Russian
translation of his “Treatise” almost the same wording is used:
Kаждое тело само по себе наполняет весь противолежащий ему воздух
своими образами и что этот самый воздух в то же самое время принимает в себя
образы бесчисленного множества других предметов, в нем находящихся, […] и
каждое тело целиком представлено во всем воздухе и целиком в малейшей его
части, все предметы по всему воздуху и все в каждой малейшей части.
Each body in itself fills the entire surrounding air with its images and that this air
at the same time receives the emanations of countless other objects in it; […] and each
body is completely represented in all the air in every smallest part.
345
344
Merezhkovsky D. PSS v 24 tomakh, 1914, v. II, p.181
345
Leonardo da Vinchi. Izbrannye Proizvedeniia. Perevody, Stat’i. Kommentarii Gubera A.A.,
Dzhivelegova A.K., Zubova V.P., Shileiko V.K. I Efrosa M.A. М.-Л.: 1935. Vol. II, 535
Radchenko 217
Calling for the depiction of the density of the air on canvases, Da Vinci was guided by
the knowledge of physical laws that were unknown to his predecessors. Filonov, on the other
hand, knows the microscope, the X-ray, and the theory of evolution, and he uses these
achievements of natural science to work in the genre of naturalistic realism. He not only strives
to depict the visible properties of a natural object and to assume the influence of internal features
on the exterior, but also reveals, prepares, and studies its microscopic and macroscopic
development. If Leonardo portrayed muscles, bones, and internal organs only in sketches or
anatomical sketches, Filonov makes anatomy an aesthetic subject, combining the concepts of the
artist and the scientist. Leonardo was torn between the anatomical research and the painting
practice, while Filonov combines these two practices: in the painting The Rebirth of an
Intellectual (1914-1915) Filonov depicts metamorphoses happening in a person, in Volchonok
(Wolf Cub) (1923-1924), the internal organs of an animal shine through the outer form. In the
painting Mother (1916), a woman’s cheek is “opened,” exposing the atomistic structure of the
interior. The unveiling of the internal processes in living organisms is a way to show that there
is no death. The matter never dies, -- it only changes its form. Filonov’s paintings Girls (1920)
and Goat (1935) depict the dispersion of the atoms of the matter, which is analytically
decomposed to the state of being unrecognizable on canvas.
Interestingly, the process of the dispersion of matter in his works after the first World
War. Unlike the depiction of the multiple hands and feet, denoting the movement of an object, or
an object from multiple points of view, the painting German war (1914) represents distorted
limbs and dispersed bodies as if the object was painted on glass which later was shattered into
tiny pieces and assembled in a random order. It is the Great War that influenced this worldview.
Radchenko 218
The Renaissance produced some marvelous examples of war paintings, and in Merezhkovsky’s
novel the fictional Leonardo paints a horrid picture of war, with exploding bodies:
Он перевернул лист и показал мне изображение боевой колесницы с
громадными железными косами. На всем скаку врезается она во вражье войско.
Огромные стальные серпообразные острые, как бритвы лезвия... разбрасывая
клочья мяса и брызги крови, рассекают людей пополам. Кругом валяются
отрезанные ноги, руки, головы, разрубленные туловища. ...Ужасом веяло на меня
от этих гроздий голых тел, висящих в воздухе. Это казалось оружейною палатою
дьяволов, кузницею ада.
He turned the page over and showed me an image of a battle chariot with huge
iron braids. At full gallop, it crashes into the enemy army. Huge steel sickles, razor-sharp
blades scattering the shreds of meat and splashing blood, cut people in half. The cut legs,
arms, heads, hacked torso everywhere. ...The horror blew on me from these clusters of
naked bodies hanging in the air. It seemed like the armor of devils, the forge of hell.
346
While Filonov’s visual rendering of the Great War indeed bears similarities with
Merezhkovsky’s depiction of Leonardo’s painting, Filonov’s eschatological view of war as
chaos, represented in his literary work, whimsically combines the religious and the peasant art.
As I mentioned earlier, one of the first printed books during the Renaissance was the Biblia
Paperium, which combined text with illustrations for the Old and New Testament and was
targeting the illiterate public. In Filonov’s Propeven’ o Prorosli Mirovoi (The Chant of
346
Merezhkovsky D.S. PSS, 1914, vol. II, p. 197
Radchenko 219
Universal Flowering), the events that occurred during the Great War were interwoven with the
Biblical themes. While the text mentions the Biblical figures from the Old Testament, the
illustrations in the book produced by Filonov, such as The Flight into Egypt and The Magi, refer
to the New Testament. This eclectic engagement with the Biblical themes and the folk characters
in the Chant of Universal Flowering is reminiscent of Russian lubok. Lubok prints were made on
a variety of different subjects and included an explanatory, often humorous text written either in
the body of the picture or below the image. The Religious lubok prints covered the themes from
the Old and the New Testaments, hagiographical stories, fairy tales, popular dramatic characters,
and were very popular among the Russian peasantry. It is crucial to outline that the plots of the
earlier lubki were borrowed from the western originals. For instance, the hagiographic lubki
depict the typically western saints – such as St. Christoforus and St. Antonius. Lubki Stupeni
Chelovecheskogo Veka, (Steps of human life), Starik I Smert’ (Old Man and the Death),
Malovremennaya Krasota Mira Sego Zertsalo Greshnago (The Temporary Beauty of this Sinful
World) were similar to the genre of medieval Memento Mori, a simplistic lithograph
accompanied by a short text, outlining the temporality of the worldly existence. Kartiny is Biblii
I Apokalipsisa Rabot Mastera Korenya (The Pictures from the Bible by the painter Koren’)
strikingly remind of the depiction of the fall in the Holbein’s Dance of Death lithographs.
In 1881 Dmitry Rovinsky, a Russian intellectual and a collector of peasant art, published
a volume titled“Russkie Narodnye Kartinki.”
347
The renaissance of this folk style occurred in the
early XX century. “The First Exhibition of Lubok,” organized by Dmitry Vinogradov from the
collections of Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova, Igor Efimov was opened on the nineteenth
347
The collection is available in the digitalized form on the website of the New York Public
Library. It can be viewed at https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/russkiia-narodnyia-
kartinki-sobral-i-opisal-da-rovinskii#/?tab=about accessed on 04/01/2019
Radchenko 220
of February 1913 in the “Moscow School of Arts, Sculpture and Archtecture (“MUZHVZ”). The
exposition included Russian, Japanese, Chinese, French, English lubki and “New Russian Lubki”
by Natalia Goncharova. Much like the Russian Futurists, Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov
and Kazimir Malevich, Filonov was fascinated by the Russian lubok. The Great War actualized
the propagandistic nature of this art, as a trusted method of patriotic influence on the peasants
and soldiers. Lubok played the role of the informational and agitational media for the illiterate
masses of peasants and soldiers:
[…]лубок патентованный, разлившийся в стороне от большой литературы в
целое море-окиян и хлестнувший в фабричные пригороды и подгородные деревни
огромной волной “новых военных песенников”, сатир, стихов, рассказов, картин и
пр. […]По ее первому появлению в мужицких избах можно судить, что роль лубка
в настоящие исторические дни является столь же ответственной, как и роль
газетной печати.
The river of patented lubok, which spilled into the whole ocean away from great
literature and smashed into the factory suburbs and suburban villages as a massive wave
of “new war song-books”, satyrical works, poems, stories, paintings, etc. [...] it can be
concluded that the role of lubki was as necessary as the role of the printed newspapers.
348
Among the most famous examples of futurists, luboks are Malevich’s patriotic
lithographs printed in 1914. Accompanied by satirical verses written by Vladimir Mayakovsky,
348
Zhulev P. Lubochnoe Polovod’e in “Russkaya Shkola: Obschepedagogicheskii Zhurnal”, No
1. p. 54.
Radchenko 221
they were aimed to lift the spirit of Russian soldiers. Filonov also appreciated the media of lubok
and mentioned “The Judgement Day with a Serpent” in some of his notes, and in 1912 he even
painted his own “Three horsemen, Orientation to Russian Lubok.” Inspired by its visual
characteristics, contemporary plots, and the use of vernacular language, Filonov could have
applied significant principles of lubok to his literary work as well.
The Influence of the Liturgical Drama on Propeven’
As mentioned in the chapter on Pil’niak, the search for the ultimate foundation and new
aesthetic values led the modernist thinkers to the exploration of native folklore. Mayakovsky
encouraged the investigation of the native art, by comparing it’s significance to Leonardo and
Rafael’s art: “простая красота дуг, вывесок, древняя русская иконопись безвестных
художников, равная и леонардо и рафаэлю.”
349
Filonov’s art can be viewed as a complex and
unique combination of religious motifs transformed through the prism of peasant art with its
attention to agricultural motifs. Filonov devised his imagery embedded in the religious spirit of
Russian traditional art. In the manifesto entitled “Made Paintings” (1914), he suggested to “make
paintings and drawings that are equal to the stone churches of Southeast and West Russia in their
superhuman tension of will,” as they would “decide your destiny at the Last Judgement of Art.”
350
The architecture of Novgorod Churches was similarly outlined by Nikolai Fedorov, who was
fascinated by the peasant practice of communal construction of churches. These architectural
pieces built in one day were perfect examples of a “collaborative spirit, that will someday allow
349
Mayakovsky V.V. Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii v 13 t-h, 1955, V.1, p.320
350
Filonov, Pavel et al. Filonov. Khudozhnik. Issledovatel’. Uchitel’. V dvukh tomakh.Moskva,
2006, p. 135
Radchenko 222
Russians to lead the universal task of resurrecting the dead, an example of a realistic, non-
magical “miracle” of ordinary people working together.”
351
The ideas of the equation of the
Russian native art and the Renaissance was in the atmosphere of the twenties. In Pil’niak’s Golyi
God, the same idea is promoted by Gleb Ordynin, who became a monk:
Величайшие наши мастера, которые стоят выше да-Винча, Корреджо,
Перуджино — это Андрей Рублев, Прокопий Чирин и те безымянные, что
разбросаны по Новгородам, Псковам, Суздалям, Коломнам, по нашим монастырям
и церквам.
Our greatest artists who are superior to da Vinci, Correggio, Perugino- are Andrei
Rublev, Procopii Chirin, and those nameless ones who are scattered about the
Novgorods, Pskovs, Suzdals, Kolomnas, about our monasteries and churches.
352
(translated by Tullock)
The idea that the Chant of Universal Flowering relied on the native traditions can also be
supported by the fact of Filonov’s engagement with the “Union of Youth” theatrical
performances. It is commonly accepted that Pavel Filonov’s Propeven’ o Prorosli Mirovoi
(PoPM) is indebted to the poetry of Velimir Khlebnikov. However, Filonov’s involvement in the
“Union of Youth” must have had a profound effect on the art of Filonov in 1913-1915, and the
PoPM, in particular. It could be viewed as just another link in a chain of avant-gardist theatrical
performances. In particular, it is connected with the performances of the Union of Youth, a group
351
Young, 28
352
Pil’niak, I, 73
Radchenko 223
to which Filonov belonged at the time. The Union of Youth began its theatrical engagement with
Khoromnyya Deistva, which evolved from a liturgical performative event named The Fiery
Furnace (Pechshnoe Deistvo.) The fiery furnace was based on Biblical plots and was dedicated
to the martyrdom by the fire of the three youths Ananija, Azarija, and Misail. The Fiery Furnace
was staged in churches in Moscow and several other cities during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, to which period belong the only extant copies of the text.
353
The performance was
somewhat interactive: “khaldei” disguised their faces and engaged with the public. The same
engagement with the themes of religious martyrdom and the same level of interaction with the
public can be seen in Khoromnye Deistva’s performance of Tsar’ Maximilian. The return of this
theatrical form at the turn of the century is a remarkable sign that the avant-garde artists in their
search for the Russian theater turned to the very roots of Russian theatrical performance.
According to Elena Strutinskaia, “a tragedy Tsar Maksem’yan (or Tsar Maximilian) was
written in the 1740s or 1750s “possibly in religious seminaries that stood in opposition to the
politics of Peter the Great” who, together with his son Alexei, may have been a model for the
characters of Tsar Maximilian and Adolf.
354
The play is centered around the non-Christian king
Maksem’yan and his Christian son Adolf. Being a Christian, Adolf suffers for his faith and dies.
At the end of the Play, Death comes for his father as well. This play was never put on a big stage
before the Union of Youth, but it was nevertheless quite famous. According to Strutinskaia:
353
Warner, 6
354
Strutinskaia E. “Khoromnye Deistva “Soiuza Molodezhi.”” 241-251. Voprosy Teatra,2016, 1-
2, p.241 http://theatre.sias.ru/upload/voprosy_teatra/2016_1-2_241-251_strutinskaya.pdf.
Accessed on 02/12/2019
Radchenko 224
Пьеса более полутора веков оставалась популярной и игралась в
деревенской, фабрично-городской и солдатской среде . . . Устойчивого текста и
закрепленной манеры исполнения народная драма не знает.
The play has remained popular for more than a century and a half and was played
in the peasant, factory-urban and soldierly circles. […] The national drama does not
know the stable text and a fixed manner of performance.
355
The original text of Tsar’ Maksem’yan is similar to Filonov’s Propeven’ in that it was
“not a single unified drama but, rather, an amorphous collection of scenes, only tenuously linked
together, the number and content of which varies considerably from one text to another.”
356
The
set of characters of the Union of Youth performance that survived strikingly reminds of the
characters in Filonov’s drama: gravedigger, death, kings. Just like Tsar Maximillian and his son
Adolfa, Filonov’s protagonist Van’ka Klyuchnik originated during the reign of Peter the Great
and was a popular figure of peasant verbal art. The modernists have expressed a particular
disgust in the figure of Peter the Great. As it was shown in the previous chapter, Pil’niak
regarded Peter the Great as an antichrist, who prematurely stopped the development of the
national roots and implanted European culture to Russia. Berdyaev accused Peter the Great in the
use of political purge, similar to the Bolsheviks.
357
The ballad about Van’ka Kliuchnik originated at the end of the seventeenth or beginning
of the eighteenth century, and over two centuries, it became a piece of oral folklore and inspired
many lyrical renditions. The premise of the original story is rather simple: a steward named
355
Strutinskaia, 244
356
Warner, 155
357
This theme is discussed in details in the third chapter of the dissertation
Radchenko 225
Van’ka has an affair with the wife of a prince and is sentenced to death. Before Van’ka gets
executed, he mocks the prince by telling him that he enjoyed sleeping on the prince’s soft bed
and eating pastries with the prince’s spouse. After Van’ka’ execution, the grief-stricken princess
commits suicide. Remarkably, the song inspired by this plot was forbidden along with the songs
about count Volkonskya and Arakcheev at the end of the nineteenth century.
358
Because the song
was officially banned, Van’ka Kliuchnik could be viewed as a song about the protest against the
Russian nobility and class difference, and Van’ka would be a peasant hero akin to Sten’ka Razin.
In the first decade of the twentieth century, the story experienced a resurgence. In 1904
Innokenty Annensky penned a poem entitled Van’ka Kliuchnik v Tiur’me (Van’ka The
Housekeeper in Prison); In 1908, Fyodor Sologub used the plot in his play Van’ka-kliuchnik i
Pazh Zhan (Van’ka the Housekeeper and Page Jean;) In 1909, a film under the title “Van’ka
Kliuchnik” was produced by Aleksandr Khanzhonkov.
The unique form and the content of Propeven’ may have been a tribute to the folk or
liturgical dramas and religious songs and cryings, that influenced the Union of Youth’s dramatic
performances. Warner argues that secular drama in Russia, unlike secular performances in
Europe, did not grow out of liturgical dramas (like Peshchnoe Deistvo). Thus the form of the
Union of Youth dramas by their return to the religious plots breaks up with the secular theatre.
The second time the Union of Youth resorted to the theatrical enactment was in 1913,
when, together with the group Gileya, “The First in the World Futuristic theater” performed two
plays: Vladimir Mayakovsky’s play Vladimir Mayakovsky. A Tragedy (stage designs by Iosif
Shkol’nik and Pavel Filonov) and opera Victory over the Sun- a collaborative work of
358
For the performance of the song-ballad about count Volkonsky and Van’ka the Housekeeper
people were beaten with flogs, and for the song about Arakcheev not only beaten, but also sent to
Siberia. For more see; “Russkaia Starina”, 1886, No.2 p.484
Radchenko 226
Kruchenykh, Khlebnikov, Matiushin, Malevich. Filonov's PoPM was likely meant to be staged
by the Union of Youth and continue these series of Union of Youth performances. This opinion
is supported by Oleg Minin, who argues that Filonov conceived Propeven' o Prososli Mirovoi as
an experimental play, a dramatic work for the Futurist theater, akin to the earlier Futurist
performances, such as Victory Over the Sun and Vladimir Mayakovsky. A Tragedy. Especially
interesting is that “Victory over Sun” invites “those who are living, but have not died yet”:
“Люди! Те кто родились, но еще не умер! People!” (Those who were born, but have not died
yet!)
359
Filonov’s work, on the opposite, touches the themes of afterlife, descending into hell and
the fate of soldiers on the battlefields. Undoubtedly, it was the influence of the Great War, that
made him radically change the mood of the futuristic plays.
War as the Consequence of Brotherly Rivalry
The Great War had a profound effect on many of the avant-gardists. Velimir Khlebnikov, for
instance, never went to war preferring to be placed in the Psychiatric Asyllum. Nevertheless he
wrote very important plays about war, such as “Voina v Myshelovke” ( 1935) etc. Malevich puts
forward the semantical cluster war-madness that Andreev developed as early as in 1905 in his
1916 letter to Mikhail Matyushin:
Мне не делается мрачно оттого, что пойду на войну, что придется удобрить
квадратный аршин земли. Война прошла уже давно, теперь ужас, кошмар впился в
359
Люди! Те кто родились, но еще не умер!
Radchenko 227
бодрый разум, то, что делается теперь, […]это бешенство мозга человеческого.
Мозг вырывает сам себя из мяса черепа и убегает в землю обезумев.
I do not get upset because of going to war, where I (my body) will have to
fertilize a square yardstick of the earth. The war was over a long time ago, but now the
horror, the nightmare sucked into the vigorous mind, what is happening now, [...] is the
insanity of the human brain. The brain pulls itself out of the meat of the skull and, having
gone insane, runs into the earth.
360
Malevich outlined that even after the end of the war, the terror of war continued to live in
the psyche of people. Khlebnikov highly praised Filonov's literary work as “one of the best
works” ever written about war.” Since he viewed “Slovo o Polku Igoreve” as the most significant
literary work that would be able to revive the dying Earth and to justify the lives of the poets,
possible he viewed Filonov’s work as similar to the Russian medieval opus. Aleksandr
Panchenko and Igor’Smirnov in their article “Metaphorical Archetypes in the Medieval Russian
literature and in the Poetry of the Early Twentieth Century” develop the theme of metaphorical
clusters that the futurists borrowed from Russian medieval literature, in particular from “The Lay
of Igor’s Campaign.” Unlike Khlebnikov and Mayakovsky, who, as Smirnov and Panchenko
argue, wrote their plays about war borrowing the old Russian syntax and vocabulary, Filonov
created a unique but hardly conceivable poetic language. His Propeven’ is written in his version
of Zaum with the new syntax, which, while growing out of the Church Slavonic, could not be
reduced to the old word forms.
360
Malevich, Sobranie Sochinenii, Moskva, Gileya, 2004, V. I, p.9
Radchenko 228
Propeven’ unfolds around the words “death” and “murder”: smertnym, smertoubiistva,
smert’, mertv, which is explained by the war thematic of the work. The abundance of ancient
corpses (The Old Prince, The Decayed Komandor, Van’ka Kliuchnik, Kniaginia) along with the
corpses of the soldiers on the battlefields may be considered as evidence of the temporal clash
and the beginning of the Last Judgement. In the traditional iconography of the Last Judgement,
the sea and the earth expel the bodies of the dead, which may explain the striking presence of the
sea motif in Filonov’s text. At the beginning of the PoPM, Van’ka speaks about the Decayed
(Tleni), which appear to dwell in the sea, and says: “тихо-жизнь моря став старинны / мертвен
съѣда человѣковъ.”) (the quiet life of the seas became ancient/ the death has eaten the
humans.)
361
The Talker (Govoritel’) responds to him: “Орыданья вѣръ старинныхъ гдѣ моря
хоронены / Mертвецы.” (The weeping of the old beliefs where the dead are buried in the
seas.)
362
Moreover, the theme of brotherly hatred and murders on the battlefield of Ivangorod
becomes very prominent. The Biblical plot of Cain and Abel rivalry was often reworked in the
peasant songs and proverbs. Many of the biblical narratives were woven together with the
peasant agricultural rites. According to the Bible, the first person on Earth to be cursed by God
was Cain after he murdered his brother Abel: “Now you are under a curse and driven from the
ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.”
363
This is the
first instance of Earth taking the blood of the innocently killed, the motif which will be
developed in literature through centuries. The earth in Propeven’ is depicted as a living organism
that receives the bodies and blood of the soldiers and giving it a new life in the vegetation:
361
PoPM, 4
362
Ibid, 4. More on this theme see Radchenko.K., Seliazniova O. “Biblical Eschatology in
Filonov’s works” accepted for publicationin the volume “The Old Testament and the Russian
Avant-garde”
363
Gen. 4:11
Radchenko 229
На нѣмецкихъ поляхъ убіенные и убойцы прогнили цвѣтоявомъ/ скотъ ѣстъ
бабы доятъ люди пьютъ живомертвыя дрожжи […] земля ѣжно-черная хлязи стра-
брани въ остраньяхъ міра/ взнесетъ кровью тихою небу. (On the Germanfields the
murdered and the murderers decomposed and flourished/ the flock eats, women milk,
people drink living-deadly yeast […] the southern black earth, the abyss of the old
battles/ will bring the quiet blood to heaven.)
364
Propeven’ gives a very unusual reading of the rivalry between Cain and Abel, perhaps,
projecting his hope for peace to the modern military rivalry between Germany and Russia. In
Propeven; the two brothers meet on the Moon in the afterlife, and Abel gives Cain a kind and
forgiving handshake: “чаром гляда мертвыи Авель оживаетъ на лунѣ обернутъ / косматною
шкурои / Каина руку тяжкую жметъ беззлобно ему вѣря онъ лежа.”
365
The scene in PoPM
alludes to Abel’s forgiveness and acceptance of Cain.
366
Filonov’s interpretation also subverts
the folklore superstitions, which suggest that people may see Cain and Abel in the dark spots of
the Moon. Aleksei Popov writes that according to the vernacular beliefs, God placed Adam and
murderous Cain on the Moon as an edificatory reminder aimed to prevent people from
committing other murders.
367
The brother’s handshake on the moon promises the ultimate
forgiveness for humanity, and, perhaps, even the possibility of defeating death. A similar hope
364
PoPM, 8
365
PoPM, 6
366
Their reunification in brotherhood can be read in the vein of Fyodorov’s ideas of universal
brotherhood, which, once achieved, becomes instrumental in the resurrection of the dead fathers.
(Fedorov, Sobrannie sochinenii, I, 43).
367
Popov, 209
Radchenko 230
that love will defeat death is asserted in Gorky’s rendition of Biblical events in his poem
“Maiden and Death” Death in the form of a tired old woman falls asleep waiting for the young
girl to have her last love night and sees a dream. Death is not only anthropomorphized but also
humanized, as it can see the dreams. Death is dreaming about “her father Cain, along with his
grandson Iscariot” are trying to reach God but are banned from heaven until the times when
somebody takes over the power of death:
Знай,- доколе Смерть живое губит, Каину с Иудой нет прощенья/Пусть их
тот простит, чья сила может/Побороть навеки силу Смерти.
You should know that while Death kills the living, there will be no forgiveness
for Cain and Iuda/ Let they be forgiven by the one who can defeat the power of Death.
368
The death is defeated by love at the end of Gorky’s play. The fate of Filonov’s maidens is
different, however. While love and death are interrelated too: “I will love you being killed
forever,” says Knyaginya, nevertheless, Filonov’s women are dead. The image of “A Beautiful
Deceased maiden” is a significant moment in Filonov’s art. “A song of a beautiful deceased
maiden” is written as a separate part of Propeven’ and it is unclear whether the author is dealing
with the death of the same female protagonist – knyaginya, or a different one. Ambiguous
368
This motif becomes the focal point of Bulgakov’s “Master and Margarita”, This overlooked
influence on Master and Margarita is very important for the understanding of the authorial idea.
First of all the connection with Gorky’s Devushka I Smert’ is outlined in the Goethe’s intertexts
and might have influenced the “Master and Margarita” love line. It is well known that Gorky
read this poem to Stalin and Voroshilov in 1931 and Stalin, who loved the poem, left an
autograph on the last page of the poem: “Эта штука сильнее, чем «Фауст» Гете (любовь
побеждает смерть.” Second, the motif of forgiving Pilate and giving him new life through the
power of love between Master and Margarita is reminiscent of the death’s dream about Iuda and
Cain climbing the mountin to heaven and asking for forgiveness.
Radchenko 231
feminine figures were widespread on the canvases of Filonov in the early period of his art. The
connection between death and women is very pronounced. Women’s womb is said to be a gate to
Heaven. However, Heaven appears to be in an upside-down state, and hence stands in place of
Hell: “притаимшис вѣгами гнѣзда матерей открываютъ въ небѣ Створы ...въ старомъ саду
рай перѳвернулся спину грѣть.”
369
Besides woman’s ability to “feed death” (as women
produce mortal children), women seem to emanate some aggressive eroticism:
“Oцалован тайнобраньем живобого” (kissed by the mystery of the living
God;)
370
Евой подъ деревомъ знанья смертнымъ безумьемъ цѣлованъ”( Under the
tree of knowledge kissed by the deathly madness of Eve;)
371
“встаетъ любовь жадная
цѣлуетъ кости юношей русскихъ;”(A greedy love stands up and kisses the bones of
young Russian men;)
372
“осторожно ручку тонко-цѣловальную проѣдаеть” (carefully
eats through the tender kissable women hand;)
373
“Дарят женские зовы безсмертны в
дух цѣлованій безсильных.” ( Immortal women calls to grant the spirit of the powerless
kisses.)
374
Filonov’s treatment of women thus is similar to that of Mayakovsky: while they have the
potential to produce life or revive someone, they also serve as agents of disaster. Theoretically,
they can be divided into two types: femme Fatales, that bring destruction, and the Eternal
369
Ibid, 9
370
Ibid, 3
371
Ibid, 10
372
Ibid, 10
373
Ibid,12
374
Ibid, 17
Radchenko 232
Feminine (“Sophias”) that feel sorrow for the disintegrating world - women with a tear in
Mayakovsky and Filonov’s ‘Skorbitel’nitsy’ (Female Mourners) and other crying women.
Through staples of the Symbolic aesthetics, these feminine characters have no place in the future.
That is why, at the end of both works, it is only one male figure that transcends the Apocalyptic
event. In Vladimir Mayakovsky. A Tragedy the poet - Vladimir Mayakovsky goes North nearing
the abyss of the ocean, and in Filonov’s Propeven’, the guest goes to the upside-down Heaven –
South, into the sky to participate in the Eucharist: “гость устами за вином и хлѣбом входит въ
небо.” (a guest enters the heavens while the mouth accepts wine and bread.)
375
In reading the
Propeven, ’ one might get an impression that Filonov is writing a new version of the Old
Testament.
Misler also outlines the absence of female characters in Filonov’s works after 1915:
It is not a coincidence that the picture Flowers of the World Blooming was created
in 1915, a year after the German war (1914) Death captured the maiden, which
disappears from the canvases of Filonov starting with 1915, having turned into death
herself.
376
Indeed, it makes sense to look at the Propeven’ as another version of Memento Mori or
Danse of Death. The apparent allegory of war as the dance of death was also used on the other
side of the barricades. For instance, Austrian war artist, Albin Egger-Lienz, painted a work
375
PoPM, 1915, 26
376
Misler, N. Smert’ I Devushka. Experiment, 25, 2005,16
Radchenko 233
named “New Danse of Death of the year 9” (1915), Max Beckmann and Otto Dix were also at
the battlefields and expressed the horror of death and distorted bodies in their works.
Danse Macabre Roots of Propeven’ o Prorosli Mirovoi
The image of death conversing with people and the motif of bargaining with death is
influenced by both Russian folklore, but also by the genre of Early Renaissance motif of maiden
and death and the genre of dance of death, in which death is talking to people before engaging
them to death: Смерть приходит к человеку/Говорит ему: «Хозяин…” Nicoletta Misler was
the first to mention the connection between Hans Baldung’s “Maiden and Death”(1510) and
Filonov’s art. “This plot goes through the German and Flemish Renaissance in different
variations (for example, Adam, Eve and Death, Eve and Death, Knight, Death and Devil” in the
art of the artists from Durer to Altdorfer and Grunewald[..] which seem very meaningful for his
art of the 1910s”.
377
The theme of death and maiden in art is often a result of rethinking of
several classical motifs, among which is the episode of the dance of death with a maiden
378
, and
the theme of Expulsion from Paradise. As Guthke reckons, “the basic premise was that death is
the wages of sin.
379
The original sin was Adam and Eve disobedience to God. God had warned
Adam, before the creation of Eve, that the punishment for eating from the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil would be death. (Gen, 2:17)” It is not surprising therefore, that late medieval
377
Misler, ibid, 16
378
There is a very interesting example of the genre Dance of Death, devoted specifically to
women. It is a fifteenth century manuscript, titled Danse Macabre of Women. Lavishly illustrated
the poem is devoted to 36 women different in their social status and age engaging in a dialogue
and eventually dancing with Death.
379
Rom, 6:23
Radchenko 234
and early Modern “Dances of Death”, for example, Holbein’s (ca 1525), Nikolaus Manuel’s
(1516-1519) and Heinrich Aldegrever’s(1541) chose the fall and expulsion from paradise as their
opening scene, thus reminding the viewers of the origin and nature of death”.
380
The composition
of Filonov’s Propeven’ is similar to the thematic sequence of Holbein’s Dance of Death. Holbein
starts with the Genesis and continues with the Creation, the Temptation, and the Expulsion from
Paradise of Adam and Eve. Holbein’s series ends with the Last Judgment, followed by the
victory over death scene. In Holbein’s woodcuts, the image of a skeleton representing Death
materializes as soon as Eve gives the apple to Adam. In the sequence of the woodcuts, the figure
of death follows all people - from King to peasant and is aimed at reminding people of their
mortality. Likewise, in Filonov’s text, death becomes a shadowy female figure that stands above
the fallen soldiers on the fields of Ivangorod and kisses the flesh of the wounded bodies:
и когда поднимается тѣнь смертная бѣл-росами поля ночи / кроетъ
прострѣленным нѣжносурово твердь тѣлъ.
and when the deathly shadow raises above the dewy fields of the night/ covers
tenderly and toughly the wounded flesh of the bodies.
381
Even though Adam is not mentioned in Filonov’s text, he is the archetypal male figure, as
well as the first victim of temptation. Biblical allusions to sin and redemption transformed
through the folklore consciousness are also evident in the story of sinful love between Van’ka
Kliuchnik and Kniaginia. Death also originates from the disobedience of Eve: “Евой подъ
380
Guthke, p.40
381
PoPM, 10-11
Radchenko 235
деревомъ знанья смертнымъ безумьемъ цѣлованъ.”
382
(Under the tree of knowledge kissed by
the deathly madness of Eve.) The hedonistic nature of women is underlined by the abundance of
promiscuous wives in the text of Propeven’. A decomposed Komandor complains: “я раздавилъ
парня въ бѣлый / день скромно мною плюнули я ржалъ по вешнему / стирая штаны
жены моеи.” (I smashed the guy during the day/ I was dumped and wickered as if in springtime/
when washing the underpants of my wife.)
383
A Bavarian king killed his promiscuous wife: “а
Баварскій король лязгаетъ зубовно- / гнилъ измѣнницу жену полуребенка умертвилъ
грозенъ.” (The Bavarian king clings the rotten teeth, murdered the promiscuous wife and half-
child.)
384
In PoPM, the discourse of Adam and Eve’s primordial sin as a sin of disobedience is
endlessly repeated on the earthly plane as the sin of spousal unfaithfulness. In the Orthodox
iconography, there is a figure of a Benevolent Adulterer or Generous Fornicator (milostivyi
bludnik), who is depicted naked between the Heaven and Hell on the icon of the Last
Judgement.
385
Being a very kind man, the benevolent adulterer belonged neither in Hell nor in
Heaven.
Similarly, an adulterer Van’ka Kliuchnik is not in Hell; moreover, his body, unlike the
bodies of many other characters of the poem, does not appear to be in a state of decay.
Komandor admits to committing a murder: “я раздавилъ парня въ бѣлый день.” ( I smashed
guy during the day.)
386
This is not a singular event: his desire to continue killing is pronounced:
“буду убивать сколько бы не жили”( I will kill whenever you live) and causes him to descend
382
PoPM, 3
383
Ibid, 5
384
Ibid, 7
385
On the representation of the Last Judgement in the Orthodox Iconography, see Pokrovskii, N.
V., “Strashnyi Sud v pamiatnikakh vizantiiskogo i russkogo iskusstva.” Trudy VI
Arkheologicheskogo S’ezda v Odesse (1884), vol. 3, Tipografiia A. Shul’tse, 1887, pp. 285-382.
386
PoPM, 5
Radchenko 236
into hell: “я проваливаюсь ко всѣмъ чертямъ въ адову сѣру” ( To the devils, I fall into the
hell’s Sulphur)
387
. Immediately after that, Kniaginia sees God at the doorway “Ваня! Бог наш в
двери дивен сед бел”(Vania, our God in the doors is miraculous, gray, white) as a visual
confirmation of both the divine presence and His judgment.
388
It suggests both: salvation for
Van’ka and Kniaginia and punishment for Komandor. Kniaginia and Van’ka seem to be justified
by their suffering for love. Her humility and the acceptance of death - “буду любить убиваемая
всегда” (will love despite being killed always) - show her as a martyr, and it is through this
suffering for a love that her sins are being absolved.
389
Thus the redemption and salvation are
also present in the PoPM, making it complete compositionally.
Agricultural Metamorphoses in the Works of Zabolotsky and Filonov
As it was mentioned earlier, the agricultural motifs and the struggle with death unites the
Propeven’ and the Bible. The rituals engaging the Earth and the crops were one of the most
important for the peasant community. Yearly spring sprouting has always been regarded as a
symbolical resurrection, as it was mentioned in the previous chapter when the pagan influence on
Pil’niak’s religiosity was discussed. According to the semiotic analysis of Russian medieval
literary metaphors implemented by Smirnov and Panchenko, the metaphorical cluster “ battle-
feast” was very important for the Medieval Russian culture. As an example, they suggest to look
at the depiction of the battle in The Lay of Igor’s Campaign:
387
Ibid, 8-9
388
Ibid, 9
389
Ibid, 9.
Radchenko 237
Бишася день, бишася другыи, третьяго дни къ полуднию падоша стязи
Игоревы.[…] ту кроваваго вина не доста, ту пиръ докончаша храбрии Русичи:
сваты попоиша, а сами полегоша за землю Рускую.
They battled through the day; they fought for another, on the third day at noon, Igor’s
banners fell. There blood-wine ran out; there, the brave sons of Rus’ completed the feast,
gave drink to the matchmaker, they lay down for the Russian land.
390
Panchenko and Smirnov argue that this trope became very pronounced in the art of
Russian futurists, namely Khlebnikov and Mayakovsky. They mention Filonov briefly,
overlooking, however, that this motif was crucial for Filonov’s art and philosophy. While the
authors of The Lay of Igor’s Campaign compare the battle with a bloody feast as a purely
metaphorical device. The futurists, while borrowing this trope, emphasize the cannibalistic
tendency at war. Khlebnikov in Nevolnichii bereg, for example, writes: “Many cookies out of
human fodder has been served to the cast iron canons”, or Mayakovsky in The Tragedy, or
Filonov’s: “mertvye zhivleny zhenskoi grud’yu doinoi,” again, overlooking a significant quote
from Propeven’: when speaking of the German atrocities, the Old Prince/Kniaz’ (the Russian
one) says: “Настало цареванье сырожабени самоваръ построен до неба сѣли ѣдятъ сладко
человѣчину изнутри.”(The kingdom of wet todds began, the samovar is built upto the skies
390
See Panchenko A.M., Smirnov I.P. “Metaforicheskie arkhetipy v Russkoi Srednevekovoi
Slovesnosti i v Poezii nachala XX Veka”, p.34
http://lib2.pushkinskijdom.ru/Media/Default/PDF/TODRL/26_tom/Panchenko_Smirnov/Panche
nko_Smirnov.pdf accessed on 5/20/2019
Radchenko 238
they sat and ate sweet human meat from the inside )
391
or “А Баварский Король (...)/ Бога съел
с косточками.”( And the Bavarian king ate God with bones.)
392
More importantly, the article analizes the earlier folklore metaphorical cluster battle –
reaping (zhatva), that was suppressed by the New Testament motif of reaping as “communion.”
While the authors never develop this argument in connection to Filonov’s works, the theme of
bloody communion was vital for his art from the very beginning. For instance, his “Feast of the
Kings” can be read as a combination of all of the metaphorical meanings – the battle, as the
kings, remind of the knights all covered in blood, the feast, as they are sitting at the table, and the
reaping as the Eucharist, because the fish and wine and their hands symbolize the Communion.
The motif of the harvest is significant for the “Propeven’.” First of all, the combination of the
paganism and Christianity is pronounced in the very title of the genre of the work – “Propeven’,”
combining the word “propoved’’”(sermon) and “propet’” (to chant). The term prorosl’ (sprout)
at the same time bears the prophetical expectation of the second coming. In the Bible, the sprout
(prorosl’) and germ (rostok) were often used to denominate the coming of the Messiah: “He
grew up before him like a tender shoot (otprysk in Russian translation), and like a root (rostokin
Russian translation) out of the dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.”
393
The agricultural motifs in words
“prorosl’ and “mirovaya” (world) send us back to the connection between the peace after
battle
394
and the bearing, and, eventually, to the logical connection between the battle, death, and
391
PoPM, 1915, 7
392
PoPM, 1915, 7
393
Isaiah, 53:2
394
The word “Mirovaya” usually translated as “Universal” might as well has the connotation of
“peaceful”, which is important, considering the war-theme of the work. This reading will open
the work to the pacifistic expectation of the new world akin to the expectations of the second
coming.
Radchenko 239
corpses as the seeds and crops of the new life, as the bodies of the soldiers grow into the flowers.
The important archetypal and symbolical double of the field is the harvest.
395
In peasant culture
there was a spring rite when a naked Orthodox priest would roll on the field to symbolically
fertilize it; thus symbolically for the peasant conscious, it was imperative to “feed” the soil with
bodies. Thus Filonov’s idea of Universal blossoming as a positive consequence of death is
motivated by the very deep archetypes evolving from paganism, medieval literature, and
Orthodoxy. This idea of the organic dissemination of physical matter in the world and
resurrection through the fertilizing of the soil is also pronounced in the works of his
contemporary, Nikolai Zabolotsky. His worldview combining the religiosity and organic culture
was very similar to Filonov’s theory of universal flowering. The connection between Filonov and
Zabolotsky was discussed briefly in a chapter of Darra Goldstein book devoted to Zabolotsky.
She emphasized that “they both investigated the kinship between man and nature,” and what is
more important on the organic link between life and death. Irene Masing Delic compared
Zabolotsky’s poetry with Khlebnikov’s Ladomir (1920) and Oshibka Smerti. She states that
“both poets draw on a Fyodorovian legacy, stating that blind nature can be persuaded to abolish
death in a common effort involving all mankind.”
396
I suggest analyzing Zabolotsky’s attitude to
death for the organic, agricultural theory of death is a necessary element of world cycles. Nikolai
Zabolotsky was fascinated by Filonov’s art and wanted to become a student of his studio of
395
Andrei Platonov, whose books are usually printed with Filonov’s paintings on the cover,
outlined a similar idea in his notebooks: “Мертвецы в котловане — это семя будущего в
отверстии земли”. (“The dead in the foundation pit – is a seed of the future in the hole of the
Earth”) ( Platonov A. Zapisnye Knizhki, Materialy k Biografii. Moskva, IMLI RAN “Nasledie”,
2000, 43). And he later writes the quote from Derzhavin, “Death of Count Meschersky”, in
which the food and death are put side to side: Где раньше стол был яств, Теперь там гроб
стоит. (Where once was a table full of delicious dishes, now a coffin is.) (Platonov, ibid, 92)
396
Masing-Delic I. Abolishing Death. A Salvation Myth of Russian Twentieth- Century
Literature. Stanford University Press, 1992, p. 243
Radchenko 240
“masters of Analytical Art.” Even though he never did, Zabolotsky could be viewed as, perhaps,
the only a propagator of Filonov’s theory. The peasant view of death as an organic part of life
and themes of agricultural resurrection unites Filonov’s pictorial and literary works and
Zabolotsky’s worldview. Filonov and Zabolotsky were both of peasant origin
397
, and their
connection to the roots and nature could be categorized as a feeling of universal wholeness,
which is also typical for Pil’niak’s peasants. For Masing-Delic Zabolotsky’s later poem, “The
Triumph of Agriculture” (1933) asserts the collectivization of agriculture and the communal
possession of land and tools as the beginning of salvatory fraternal cooperation.
398
Zabolotsky’s poem “Iskushenie” (Temptation) (1929) also combines the important tropes
that were discussed in the previous chapters – the connection of death and fairy-tales (like in
Pil’niak’s works) and the connection of laughter and death (like in Andreev’s works.) The plot of
the poem is straightforward: death comes to an old peasant and wants to capture him. He is not
ready to part with life and gives away his young daughter instead. The earlier version of the
poem was developed around the theme of laughter. Like Andreev’s Red laugh, which emerged
out of the shock of witnessing the bloody smile of the dead soldier, Zabolotsky’s laugh seems to
be a reaction to the absurdist transformations of matter. It is hard to conceive that the living
matter can be transformed into the decomposing meat. The laugh saves one from the absurd of
this process. Perhaps, the “Temptation” refers to the attempts of the dead matter to continue
living as if it was still alive. Death suggests the dead maiden to raise. In the style of Christ
raising Lazarus, death commands: “Try to raise! (Ну, попробуй, поднимись!)” However, it
397
More on the peasant connections of Zabolotsky, See Pratt, Sarah. Nikolai Zabolotsky :
Enigma and Cultural Paradigm Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 2000
398
Masing- Delic, 244
Radchenko 241
only leads to the complete deterioration of the body: bang, and burst The rest of the poem is
dedicated to the naturalistic changes happening to her body in the grave:
И течет, течет бедняжка
В виде маленьких кишок.
Где была ее рубашка,
Там остался порошок.
Изо всех отверстий тела
Червяки глядят несмело,
Вроде маленьких малют
Жидкость розовую пьют.
So the poor thing is flowing, flowing
in the form of small intestines.
Where her shirt was
Just powder remains.
From all the holes of the body
The worms look timidly
Like small babies
They drink the pink liquid.
Where a maiden was– now there is cabbage soup.
399
399
Zabolotsky N.N. Metamorfozy. Ed. Loschchilova E.I. Moskva, 2014, p.98
Radchenko 242
This poem ends with the repetitions used in folklore lullabies, that makes us regard the genre of
the poem as a song too. Zabolotsky’s depiction of the decomposing body of the maiden might be
viewed as folklore grotesque with its liberal application of the naturalistic and vulgar depiction
of the dead. Death is presented as a kind force, caring about people:
У меня во гробе тихо.
Белым саваном укрою
Всех от мала до велика.
It is quiet in my coffin
Everybody – young and old
Will be covered with the white veil.
400
This image of death is similar to Filonov’s “deathly love” kissing the bones of Russian
soldiers: встаетъ любовь жадная цѣлуетъ кости юношей русскихъ/въ черной съѣдени
смертной на путяхъ Ивангорода. (A greedy love stands up and kisses the bones of young
Russian men/ in the deathly black feast near Ivangorod.)
401
400
Zabolotsky N.N. Metamorfozy. Ed. Loschchilova E.I. Moskva, 2014, p.97
401
PoPM, 1915, 10. The proximity of love and death is also depicted in Gorky’s “Maiden and
Death”(written in 1896, published in 1918) , which is supposedly influenced Zabolotsky’s
“Iskushenie” and the trope could be traced back to Solomon’s songs, which were the influential
source for Russian Modernists. Alexander Kuprin’s Sulamif” published in 1908 came out with
the epigraph: “for love is as strong as death, its jealousy1 unyielding as the grave. It burns like
blazing fire, like a mighty flame.” (Song of Solomon, 8:6).
Radchenko 243
Organic Metamorphoses of Matter in the Works of Zabolotsky and Filonov
“The Temptation” outlines the cyclical character of life and death by comparing it to the
agricultural phenomena: The field will plow itself, Rye will rise without a plow (Поле
выпашется само, Рожь поднимется без плуга)
402
. Filonov’s characters are also caught in the
process of the transformation of matter. Unlike the Orthodox Resurrection, which expects the
bodies of the dead to remain intact at the moment of Resurrection, Filonov’s and Zabolotsky’s
bodies are subject to decay. According to Filonov’s theory of Universal Flowering, which gave
Propeven’ its name, the eternal life of the universe is warranted by the transformation of the
decayed matter into the new growing organisms. Filonov thought that new life is a random
combination of the atoms of the previous life, and new life grows directly out of the dead matter
- “убіенные и убойцы прогнили цвѣтоявомъ.”
403
In Zabolotsky’s poem, the resurrection is
also occurring while the bones are transformed into trees:
солнце встанет — кожа треснет,
мигом девица воскреснет.
Из берцовой из кости
будет деревце расти,
будет деревце шуметь,
про девицу песни петь.
The sun will rise – the skin will crack
402
Zabolotsky N.N. Metamorfozy. Ed. Loschchilova E.I. Moskva, 2014, p.98
403
PoPM, 1915, 9
Radchenko 244
in an instance, the girl will be resurrected.
From a tibia bone
will grow a tree,
the tree will be making noise
and sing songs about the maiden.
404
Both Filonov and Zabolotsky challenge the idea of resurrection of the physical bodies;
the new life appears to be merely floral, and not human. Historically, the continuation of life was
seen in the propagation of children. Vasilii Rozanov, for instance, argues that the human desire
to live on Earth eternally enhances our love and care for children:
Жажда бессмертия, земного бессмертия, есть самое удивительное и
совершенно несомненное чувство в человеке. Не оттого ли мы так любим детей,
трепещем за жизнь их более, нежели за свою, уже увядающую.
Thirst of immortality, the Earthly immortality, is the most incredible and
completely undeniable feeling in a human being. Isn’t it because of that we love children
so much, we tremble for their life more than for our own, already withering one.
405
The human children, in Zabolotsky and Filonov’s literary works on the other hand, are
either killed or not fully formed: “Баварскій король ляагаетъ зубовно-/ гнилъ измѣнвицу
жену полуребенка умертвилъ” (The Bavarian king clings the rotten teeth, murdered the
404
Zabolotsky N.N. Metamorfozy. Ed. Loschchilova E.I. Moskva, 2014, p.98
405
Rozanov V.V. O Tvorchestve Dostoyevskogo. Sbornik Statei. Moskva-Berlin, 2018, p.12
Radchenko 245
promiscuous wife and half-child)
406
; “камень бесполый, сѣмя жизни.” (A genderless stone,
sprout of life)
407
; “промозжитъ меч челоѣз полудитя рукопугое” (a sword will penetrate the
fearful half-kid)
408
; “спящ мальчик/ раем станет.” (a sleeping boy will become heaven.)
409
While this theory seems derivative of Nikolai Fedorov’s philosophy, which considered children
and women to be a destructive force, and predicted the resurrection of the fathers instead of
seeing life continuing in children, Fedorov never talked about the agricultural metamorphoses of
the matter as a way to new life. As Misler writes: ”Death becomes acceptable and even justified,
if the body destroyed by violence, human ash turns into the nourishing environment for the
resurrection of life, transfigured by a total blooming.”
410
The idea of organic evolution of matter
producing the continuation of life, while seems to be inspired by Darwin, in fact, is closer to the
esoteric ideas of the wholeness of the world, that was popular at the beginning of the century.
The proximity of Filonov’s theory with the theories of Gurdjieff and Uspensky might be the
reason why Filonov was accused of mysticism. For instance, George Gurdjieff, in one of his
letters, wrote a similar idea:
The matter is the same everywhere, but it constantly changes place and enters into
different combinations. From the density of the stone to the finest matter, each has its
emanations, its atmosphere; for each thing either eats or is eaten. Everything within man
either evolves or involves. An entity s something which remains for a certain duration
406
PoPM, 7
407
Ibid, 12
408
Ibid, 17
409
Ibid, 18
410
Misler N. “Smert’I Devushka. Razmyshleniia na temu Nekotorykh Maloizvestnykh
Proizvedenii Filonova,” Experiment, 11, 2005, pp. 15-26, p.25
Radchenko 246
without involving. Each substance, whether organic or inorganic, can be an entity. Later
we shall see that everything is organic. Every entity emanates (sends forth) a certain type
of matter. It refers equally to the earth, to man, and the microbe. The earth on which we
live has its emanations, its atmosphere.
411
The similarity between the ideas of Filonov and Gurdjieff could not only be a
coincidence. Mikhail Matiushin, whose ideas and art Filonov highly respected
412
Matiushin,
who invented the term “Organic Culture,” in his turn, admired the work of Petr Ouspensky( the
follower of Gurdjieff, who promoted his teaching in Russia). In Matiushin’s library, there was
Uspensky’s book “Tertium Organum: The Third Canon of Thought. (1911) A key to the
Enigmas of the World» with his marks. This work inspired Matiushin’s understanding of the
spatial universe and his theory of the “knowing eye” – “zorved.” According to Ouspensky’s idea,
“all aspects of the specialty and physical relationship are simultaneously present, but, because of
the limitations of human cognition one is only able to perceive a partial ( three-dimensional
view) of this spacial plentitude.”
Filonov’s Formulas, for example, the Formula of Spring (1920), or the Formula of
Petrograd Proletariat (1920-1921), depict the invisible atmosphere processes. The processes are
driven by the idea of "evolution," which he defined as the real biological force that penetrated all
bodies and controlled their development in time and space.
413
The depiction of these processes
he titles with such a scientific word as “formulas.” The evolution, according to Filonov,
411
Views from the Real World.Early talks of G.I.Gurdjieff. Penguin Compass, 1973, p. 205
412
in Filonov’s letter to Matiushin, 1914 he wrote: “this will be the center [of new art]: I, you
and he(Malevich) and no one else”( Misler, Bowlt, 139)
413
Zabolotsky N.N. Metamorfozy. Ed. Loschchilova E.I. Moskva, 2014, p.505
Radchenko 247
continues in stones and dead bodies, thus it is the evolution of the matter that ensures the
immortality. Similar metamorphoses denoting immortality are happening in the poetry of
Zabolotsky. In the poem titled: Metamorphoses (1937), he expresses a similar understanding of
eternal life as the interchange of the multiple forms of the whole. Like Filonov, he includes
stones and dead matter into his gallery of living and dead phenomena:
Как мир меняется! И как я сам меняюсь!
Лишь именем одним я называюсь,
На самом деле то, что именуют мной,-
Не я один. Нас много. […]
Я умирал не раз. О, сколько мертвых тел
Я отделил от собственного тела![…]
Вдруг и увидишь то, что должно называть
Бессмертием. О, суеверья наши!
How the world is changing! So how I am changing! In fact, what is named “myself” - /Is
not me alone. There are many of us. […] I died not once. Oh, how many dead bodies I
separated from my body! […] Nature is alive. […] This way, you will see what ought to
be called Immortality. Oh, our superstitions!
414
By this line and especially by the last exclamations – “Our superstitions,” which he
repeats in many other poems about life and death, Zabolotsky emphasizes his understanding of
414
Zabolotsky N.N. Metamorfozy. Ed. Loschchilova E.I. Moskva, 2014, p.505
Radchenko 248
the immortality, which differs from the traditionally accepted immortality as the life of your
current body. This loop returns us to Tolstoy’s idea of the insignificance of the physical body in
the universal cycle of life and death. Nature and the evolution of the humankind as a whole do
not care about the fate of the individual body. Moreover, just as Filonov, Zabolotsky includes the
products of creativity into the realm of living things in Metamorphoses (1937)
Что было раньше птицей,
Теперь лежит написанной страницей;
А то, что было мною, то, быть может,
Опять растет и мир растений множит.
What used to be a bird,
Now lies as a written page;
A thought has been a simple flower[…]
And what had been me, that might
Be growing again and multiplying the world of plants.
415
The atomistic pictures of Filonov are permeated with this power, and their creation is
the embodiment of evolution. The artist depicted the evolution in various aspects. The process of
decomposition that is represented in his paintings, and which we discussed through the notion of
the penetrating vision of the artist, is in fact, the evolution happening within the object, its
development in time and space. Filonov demanded that the artist invented a painterly form every
minute to identify the connection between the thing and the evolution taking place in it. He calls
415
Zabolotsky N.N. Metamorfozy. Ed. Loschchilova E.I. Moskva, 2014, 506
Radchenko 249
this thing a "pure form." At the same time, Filonov completely denied the perspective as a pre-
existing law, since the artist's eye is also driven with evolutionary power, and is not static.
Overall, Filonov's concept of evolution, even though inspired by Darwin’s theory, was
nevertheless closer to the holistic folklore understanding of nature, than to the Darwinian
expanded classifications of the animal world. Filonov’s idea of eternal life reminds Tolstoy’s
idea of the eternal life of the soul. In Filonov's theory, different species might paradoxically
transform into each other, as the evolution is possible between different species, which in fact,
reminds more of the fairy tales and anthropomorphic transformations of animals in Boris
Pil’niak, that the biological evolution of Darwin. This insight might explain the
anthropomorphism of animals on the canvases of Filonov. He writes:
Верим, что тот, кто держит в своих руках инициативу эволюции, может
значительно сократить время перехода в иную высшую форму, в сравнении с тем,
кто эволюционирует бессознательно; так, лошадь, если когда-нибудь осознает в
себе эволюцию […] то может выявить собой любую форму на выбор до человека
включительно.
We believe that those who hold the initiative of evolution in their hands can
significantly reduce the time of transition to another higher form, compared to those who
evolve unconsciously; so, a horse, if it at some point recognizes the power of evolution
[…]can “manifest” as any form, including human.
416
416
Filonov P. Kanon i Zakon. Filonov.Khudozhnik. Issledovatel’. Uchitel’. V. II, p.80
Radchenko 250
According to Filonov's theory, the viewer of his paintings also becomes susceptible to
this intellectual evolution. The more intelligent and strong the painter’s work on the painting
was, the stronger the action of the work is on the viewer. The idea of the artist and his desire to
act on the viewer's intellect is the main factor in the conscious direction of evolution. Moreover,
Filonov believed that the constant organic evolution of the living forms was the garant for the
eternal life:
Сознательное или бессознательное существо, или предмет, или отвлеченное
понятие пребывают в процессе эволюции как в вечно активной силе, несомненно
пронизывающей насквозь и выходящей через все его видимые и предполагаемые
частицы, окружающие его, как атмосфера, имеющая вес, цвет, запах и форму и
ежеминутно претворяющая его в новое, и новое настолько, что согласно идее нет
двух моментов одного и того же состояния формы. В этой атмосфере ее сущность
пребывает вечно, ибо смерть как прекратитель сознательной или
бессознательной эволюции отрицается самим развитием идеи эволюции. Мы
верим, что тот, кто держит в своих руках идею эволюции, держит и вечную жизнь
A conscious or an unconscious being, or an object, or an abstract concept, exist in
the process of evolution. The evolutionis an perpetually active force, undoubtedly
penetrating all the visible and the imaginable particles surrounding it as an atmosphere
that has weight, color, smell and form and that every minute transforms the object into
somethung new. It is new to the extent that, according to the idea (of evolution) there are
no two same states of the form. In this atmosphere, its essence remains forever, for
death as a terminator of conscious or unconscious evolution is denied by the
Radchenko 251
development of the idea of the evolution itself. We believe that the one who holds the
idea of evolution in his hands also holds the eternal life.
417
Thus, Filonov’s aesthetical philosophy managed to bring together several “organic”
tactics for the acquiring of the eternal life that we discussed throughout the dissertation:
Tolstoy's and Andreev’s plea for the wiping of the borders between life and death, their idea of
the communal bodies and the uniformity of all bodies in the process of transformations –
whether they are animal bodies or human bodies, and, finally, the idea of eternal organic life
manifested in the image of natural flowering.
Conclusion
Just as Tolstoy, Andreev and Pil’niak do in their literary works, Zabolotsky and Filonov
express the theme of the collective bodies in their art. Zabolotsky articulates this motif in his
poems, which could be united under the motto: Разрозненного мира элементы/Теперь слились
в один согласный хор, (the separated elements of the world are now united in one harmonious
choir.)
418
For Filonov, the intertwined and interconnected world is a warrant of eternal life.
Colorful atoms on Filonov’s canvases unite in a complex picture, like life and death amalgamate
in the process of the material metamorphoses. Filonov's art conveys the divine connection
between the microcosm and the macrocosm. Matiushin summarizes:
417
Filonov P. “Kanon I Zakon”. Filonov.Khudozhnik. Issledovatel’. Uchitel’. V.II p.79
418
Zabolotsky N.N. Metamorfozy. Ed. Loschchilova E.I. Moskva, 2014, p. 260
Radchenko 252
Мир стал населен не распыленным человечеством, а великим общим телом
Бога. Жизнь этого тела пошла по новым законам внутреннего склада. […]
Благодать творчества этого общего тела может пройти и через одного. […] Один за
всех – Филонов – втянул в себя и перекрутил все нити новых путей.
The world became inhabited not by the dispersed humanity, but by the great
collective body of God. The life of this body followed the new laws of the internal
order. […] The grace of the creativity of this communal body can be transmitted through
one person. […] One for all – Filonov – pulled into himself and twisted all the threads
of the new paths.
419
The ideas of immortality, regeneration, and resurrection are typical for the eschatological
consciousness of the fin-de-siècle and – together with the religious, naturalistic, and folkloric
motifs – are the landmark of Filonov’s artistic philosophy. Just as the metaphorical archetype of
communion is intertwined with deathly battles and agricultural motifs of the reaping in the
Medieval Russian literature, death and eternal life become an integral cluster on the canvases of
Filonov. The motif of the Eucharist as a communal sharing of the unified body of God is
especially prominent in Filonov’s early paintings. However, the idea of the immortality of all
things involved in the process of the self-perfecting metamorphoses becomes the philosophical
impetus for his later works. Like his intellectual goal was to unite all the living organisms in the
process of evolution, his creative philosophy itself was a result of an eclectic combination of
Western European art and native folklore traditions. As it is shown in the first part of this
419
Matiushin M. “Tvorchestvo Pavla Filonova.” Pavel Filonov: Real’nost’ I Mify. ed.
Pravoverova.L.L. Moskva, 2008, p.91
Radchenko 253
chapter, many of Filonov’s early works are reminiscent of the Northern and Italian Renaissance.
The motif of the last supper and the Eucharist, typical for the art of Renaissance, haunts Filonov
throughout his entire creative journey.
420
The connection between Filonov’s work and the most
famous depiction of the Last Supper – Leonardo's fresco – has been repeatedly noted by
researchers. However, as I argue in this chapter, the link between these two incredibly distant
artists exists not so much on the stylistic level, but rather on the symbolical and ideological ones.
Leonardo trusted in the flourishing of human genius.
Pavel Filonov believed in the sacredness of the changes brought by the scientific and
political revolution. He predicted a new Renaissance of culture, a so-called Worldly Flowering
of art, for which he would become the first prophet.
420
Like the Catholic communion service, the Orthodox service entails the eating of the holy
bread and the drinking of the wine.
Radchenko 254
Conclusion.
The Organic Unity of Different Worldviews.
Arthur Schopenhauer argued that “death is the true inspiring genius, or the muse of
philosophy”
421
Indeed, having analyzed the depiction of death in the works of Tolstoy, Andreev,
Zaitsev, Pil’niak, Filonov and Zabolotskii, I tried to achieve the complex picture of their
worldviews. While initially I planned to include Tolstoy only as an important precursor to the
modernist depiction of death, the examination of his works provided me with unexpected
conclusions. “Growing out” of Tolstoy, the dissertation distinguished the organic, naturalistic,”
earthly” line of the depiction of death in Russian modernism. Analyzing the embeddedness of the
depiction of death in modernism in the folk art forms, I outline the connection of the “organic
track” in the depiction of death to the peasant folk roots and the carnival perversion of the
Christian rites and the sacral attitude to the body.
I scrutinized Sebastopol Sketches, “Kholstomer,” and “Diary of a Madman” to identify
some recurrent motifs strung together into Tolstoy's philosophy of death. Most of them turned
out to be consonant with the ideas that Andreev, Pil’niak, and Filonov developed in their artistic
projects. Among those are: the medicalization of the human body; the rejection of traditional
Orthodox views on the resurrection; understanding of the body as flesh consisting of perishable
matter, etc. Also essential for Tolstoy was the moral instruction of Memento Mori, originated in
the 15th century in France and revived in the art of fin-de-siècle.
Having analyzed these tropes, I claim in full confidence that the proliferation of gruesome
decaying bodies and candidly depicted horrors of death in modernism owed no small debt of
421
Schopenhauer, II, 259
Radchenko 255
gratitude to Tolstoy. No matter how critical of Leonid Andreev for his bleak, morbid naturalism,
it was Tolstoy himself who invited the palpable existential horror of death into Russian literature.
Besides a sizeable contribution to the literary de-stigmatization of disease and decay,
Tolstoy elaborated on the communal aspects of the death experience that would prove fundamental
to socialist realist representations of dead bodies and Soviet than to politics overall. Much like
Pil’niak, Tolstoy looked for new strategies of social organization, which for him, ideally, consisted
of a community based on the laws of nature. Tolstoy advocated unity of all people in life and
death––an idea taken up by Filonov and Malevich in their view of humanity as "the common body
of God." Leskov regarded Tolstoy as a spiritualist, just like Tatiana Glebova believed Filonov was
one, too. Both denied that appellation; however, it is hard to discount the evidence that points to
their shared vision of the world as an organic whole, in which people, animals, and plants may live
and die happily.
Andreev developed many of the existential themes elaborated in the works of Tolstoy.
Contrary to the organic commune living envisioned by Tolstoy, the collective entities in the works
of Andreev are represented by the members of the new political regime incarnated in the giant
figure of Lenin. While Tolstoy, Zaitsev, and Pil’niak all predicted the emergence of the collective
body as the way to overcome death, Andreev perceived the threat that the emerging collectivity
posed.
Developing the argument of the collective image of the body that appeared in the works
of Tolstoy, Andreev, Pil’niak, Filonov, Matyushin and Zabolotsky, I claim that the Socialist
realism treatment of death is deeply connected with the death of Lenin, which helped surpass the
tragedy of proletariat’s father death by establishing the new symbol of the collective body of the
proletariat. The dissertation shows that Russian modernism created the image of the collective
Radchenko 256
body, which later acquired the propagandistic and ideological meaning in the hands of
Bolsheviks. While the collective body was a way to escape death in the modernism, in Soviet
Socialist realism, it became a warrant of a sacrifice for the whole because of the disintegration of
the frames of the individual, again undergoing the semantical transformation. In the standard plot
of the Soviet realism novel individual suffering the was submissive to the profit of the whole,
just as Lenin’s last years were presented in Media: “His vessels were so clogged with built-up,
that his last political activity was а heroic act for the sake of his country.”
422
The dissertation
concludes that the problem of immortality in Socialist Realism and predominantly, the obsession
of the Soviet leaders with physical immortality and the cult of the perfect body, grew out of the
fear of death and the organic understanding of the inevitability of mortality in modernism.
The aim of this work is to contribute to a better understanding of the problems of death
and body in Russian literary and philosophical tradition of fin-de-siècle.
422
Tumarkin, 84
Radchenko 257
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Abstract (if available)
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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Radchenko, Ksenia
(author)
Core Title
Dances of death: visual and verbal transformations of the body in Russian modernism
School
College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Program
Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture (Slavic Languages and Literatures)
Publication Date
10/24/2020
Defense Date
12/18/2019
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
analytical painting,Animals,Body,Boris Pil'niak,Boris Zaitsev,Dance of Death,Death,death studies,Folklore,Leonid Andreev,Lev Tolstoy,liturgical drama,Memento Mori,Naked Year,Nature,OAI-PMH Harvest,organic culture,Pavel Filonov,Red Laugh,renaissance,Russian modernism,transformation,Union of Youth
Language
English
Contributor
Electronically uploaded by the author
(provenance)
Advisor
Bowlt, John Ellis (
committee chair
), Pratt, Sarah (
committee member
), Szabari, Antonia (
committee member
)
Creator Email
kradchen@usc.edu,ksenija101@hotmail.com
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-228210
Unique identifier
UC11673715
Identifier
etd-RadchenkoK-7882.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-228210 (legacy record id)
Legacy Identifier
etd-RadchenkoK-7882.pdf
Dmrecord
228210
Document Type
Dissertation
Rights
Radchenko, Ksenia
Type
texts
Source
University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
Access Conditions
The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...
Repository Name
University of Southern California Digital Library
Repository Location
USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA
Tags
analytical painting
Boris Pil'niak
Boris Zaitsev
Dance of Death
death studies
Leonid Andreev
Lev Tolstoy
liturgical drama
Memento Mori
Naked Year
organic culture
Pavel Filonov
Red Laugh
renaissance
Russian modernism
transformation
Union of Youth