A Comparative Dialectical Analysis of Paternal-Filial Intergenerational Relationships in Russian Tsarist and Post-Revolutionary Literature 1862-1922

The title of Turgenev's masterpiece Fathers and Sons published in 1862 largely served as a plot spoiler. The title also established one of the most intriguing and enduring themes of Russian literature for the future; in particular, it was a subject that was central to Dostoyevsky's The Devils (1872) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880), Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin’s The Golovlyov Family (1876), and Andrei Bely's Petersburg (1913; revised in 1922).

At heart, these stories read like a parenting guidebook gone wrong. And gone wrong with the kinds of horrifying, louche, salacious, juicy variations that make Russian literature so sublime.

The figurative Father: Ivan Turgenev

The symbolic Son: Andrey Bely

The father-and-son theme breaks down into two basic, simplistic categories:

1. Rebel With A Cause: The son who will do anything to uphold his strongly held beliefs;

2. Rebel Without A Clue: The son who will do anything to uphold beliefs that are bouncing around in his head but which he can’t quite fathom.

To wit:

Fathers and Sons title page

The Rebel With A Cause theme was first unveiled in Turgenev's Fathers and Sons. The father (in this case, Nikolai Kirsanov) represents the grand old order — the landowning, tsar-following, Mother Russia-blindered, Slavophile class that needs to be overthrown by the sons (Arkady Kirsanov and his University friend, Yevgeny Bazarov), who look to the West and Europe for the latest, enlightened ideas of social change. The son is a Rebel Without A Clue; he’s under the influence of Bazarov, but only halfheartedly and his own views are only partially formed. For his part, Bazarov’s views are at best modern and developed; at worst they’re cynical and, yes — drumroll, please! — nihilistic.

Not surprisingly, it’s those darn nihilists who become responsible for the really good stuff down the road.

Dostoyevsky picked up on Turgenev’s theme and naturally twisted and contorted it in The Devils (aka The Possessed and The Demons) beyond anything Turgenev could likely have foreseen. And Dostoyevsky wasn’t happy with just one father-son theme: he constructed multiple variations of the “son” figure, most ending (fittingly) in perdition.

Stepan Verkhovensky is the father figure, a rather silly old man; he’s the spiritual double of the Jim Backus character in the film Rebel Without A Cause. Stepan is a poet, philosopher, lover, and fool — although you can’t help but secretly root for him.

His son Pyotr is Devil #1, a big fan of influential founding Devil #2, Nikolai Stavrogin. Their revolutionary followers include Shigalov, who preaches that millions will need to be murdered before a just society can be realized (always a good start); the doomed religious figure Shatov; the atheist Liputin; and Kirillov, who believes suicide will turn him into a god. Great stuff.

As a former revolutionary himself, Dostoyevsky returned to this theme in other stories and novels throughout his career. After The Devils, his most interesting look at the father-son variations came in The Brothers Karamazov, which was a grand slam, offering a bit of each of our father-son categories.

 

Yul Brynner as that lusty guitar-hero, Dmitri Karamazov

Father Fyodor Karamazov is a lecherous, drunken, greedy buffoon. Fyodor has four sons: Dmitri, a Rebel Without A Clue; Ivan the revolutionary nihilist and Alyosha the saint, both Rebels With A Cause; and the illegitimate Smerdyakov, another Rebel Without A Clue. Talk about trouble waiting to happen.

The only Russian novel that could truly rival The Brothers Karamazov in familial dysfunction was Saltykov-Shchedrin’s The Golovlyov Family. Father Vladimir was good for nothing at best. His sons include Stepan, better known as The Nitwit, and Pavel, who was a bit of a worthless Oblomov-esque dreamer.

Then there’s Porfiry Golovlyov, affectionately called either Little Judas or simply, The Bloodsucker. Porfiry is a fine example of all-consuming greed, back-stabbing jealousy, hypocritical doubletalk, and good old spiritual vacuity, making him an exemplary Rebel Without A Clue.

There’s also a daughter, Anna, but she’s really only an embarrassment due to her elopement and not nearly up to the standards set by the rest of the family.

As discussed in more detail in another post, the Golovlyovs are like the Snopes but with a funny accent. And rumors that The Golovlyov Family was the inspiration for TV’s Dallas are deserving of further study. All in all, the doom and gloom running throughout the novel out-Dostoyevskys Dostoyevsky. Phenomenal.

Which brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation to Andrei Bely's Petersburg, some thirty years later. (Bely is also sometimes translated as Biely, the penname of Boris Bugaev.) The father here is Apollon Ableukhov, an official in the Tsarist government. His son is Nikolai, a revolutionary Rebel With A Cause who has been ordered to assassinate his own father by planting a bomb in his study as part of the Russian Revolution of 1905. Dostoyevsky would have given anything to have dreamed up this plot.

 

The English-speaking world had to wait until
1959 for the first translation of Bely's Petersburg

And in many ways, with Petersburg, Bely himself assassinates all of the Russian writers who came before him. Much like Joyce (whose own Ulysses from several years on followed its own father-son theme), Bely’s writing style assimilated the writers of the past, toyed with and even parodied their styles and themes, and created a new style, chock full of poetry, modernism, symbolism, word play, and — gasp! — even humor. A fine twist to the father-son theme.

For more on Petersburg, see the exemplary website http://petersburg.berkeley.edu/bely/bely_content.html

For a discussion of Petersburg translation, see the fine blog http://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/translation-translation-translation/

A Lovely Autumn Weekend, Pilnyak, and Thou...

Leaving for an autumn getaway with my darling wife to the northwoods to see the fall colors: What book to bring? I got lucky at the library and chanced upon a copy of Gary Browning’s literary biography, Boris Pilniak: Scythian at a Typewriter (Ardis, 1985)! I remember when the book was first published, but having just graduated from college at the time, I had no spare change to buy a copy; now it’s a valuable rarity. Still, I’m pretty certain I was the first and only one to ever check out the Minneapolis Public Library’s sole, lonely copy. And what a read! Part mystery, part detective story, Browning details Pilnyak’s amazing story and his stunning works.

Socialist realism page-turner

Boris Pilnyak is largely dismissed as a Soviet apologist, primarily based on his late social realist novel The Volga Falls to the Caspian Sea (translated and published in the USA by Cosmopolitan Press, 1931). It’s easy to see things in black and white when viewing Stalinist Russia from the remove of fifty-plus years and the easy freedom of the United States, but Pilnyak’s life and times were much more complicated and shadowy, as Browning describes.

Pilnyak’s early works, such as The Naked Year, published in 1921, made him a literary star and was a prime influence on other Russian writers of the day, including Evgeny Zamyatin, Andrei Bely, and more. Everyone wanted to write like him at the time, Browning explains. To me, Pilnyak’s prose in The Naked Year is like an Eisenstein film with its short, clipped sentences that create a montage of dramatic images. Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin didn’t screen until 1925, and I wonder if he was inspired in part by Pilnyak’s writing?

Never judge a book just by it's cover...

Pilnyak’s prose also reminds me of Mayakovsky’s graphic design of the time, with its incredible use of sans-serif fonts and dizzying cubist angles that shout out the author’s message. I have an early translation of The Naked Year, published by Payson & Clarke Ltd of New York in 1928 that features cover and title-page typography reminiscent of Mayakovsky’s graphics, albeit in a much tamer fashion. It’s a gorgeous publication, and this is the only copy I’ve ever seen.

Mayakovskian graphic typography, circa 1928

With the layering of multiple voices as well documents, news reports, and such, The Naked Year is a novel of sounds as well as images. The cacophony of voices reminds me of James Joyce’s Ulysses, published in 1922, Faulkner and Dos Passos, or from decades later, William Gaddis’ The Recognitions and JR.

I dream of reading Pilnyak’s Machines & Wolves from 1924, but as far as I know the novel has not be translated into English. Alas. 

My favorite work by Pilnyak, however, is the novella, Mother Earth. It’s a much easier read than The Naked Year, and succinctly captures his great theme of the wild heart of Russia that he viewed as untamable by revolution or progress.

Gary Browning’s biography was excellent. He explains aspects of Pilnyak’s personality—as well as his writings—that played a role in his fall from favor in Stalin’s eyes. Pilnyak was arrested on October 28, 1937 on charges of  spying for the Chinese and was tried in 15 minutes on April 21, 1938. Sent to Siberia, he disappeared. According to Browning, a small yellow slip of paper was found decades later in his file that read: “Sentence carried out.”