I’ve been reading (among other things) David Kunzle’s article “Gustave Dore’s History of Holy Russia: Anti-Russian Propaganda from the Crimean War to the Cold War”. In addition to some of the most bizarre academic narrative outside Derrida that I’ve encountered yet, the article had the following great bit:
“1812″ had already figured in Doré’s history as a refrain, a premonition; and afterwards, the date was to be rammed down the Russian throat.
What’s especially nice to me is that it isn’t clear who is doing the ramming – Doré? The imperial, and later Soviet Russian government? France? And what is “the Russian throat”? Does the mythical nineteenth century construct, later revived after the revolution, and again during the Cold War, “The Russian”, have a body now?
“1. to break; be broken; be smashed
“2. to break up; split up
“3. (of a plane) to crash
“4. to be badly hurt.”
Although when first reading the story, I got the feeling these old ladies were dead, the dictionary gave me an iffy feeling about that initial response. Clearly, the old ladies weren’t planes crashing, so cross out #3. Kharms does some insane stuff with language, but were the old ladies really breaking or splitting up? Probably not; #2 can go, too. So here’s the dilemma: If the old ladies were smashed, they were probably dead. Otherwise, per Katzner, they were just badly hurt. If they’re badly hurt, a lot of the punch is taken out of the story. But if they’re smashed (the closest English equivalent I can think of to what would happen to an old lady who fell out of a window due to immoderate curiosity), how in the hell do I translate that? We don’t usually say in English “she was smashed” without inviting questions like “by what?” or “she smashed” without “into what?”, so using a verb like ‘to smash’ would require extra information not found in the original – something like “smashed/crashed into the ground”. And how do I convey the sense of “she died” without adding an extra item to the list of events?
I also can’t decide what to do with the blind man at the end. The natural English would be “a blind man”, or “a lone/single/whatever blind man” if you need to say that he’s not part of a group of blind men. Kharms, though, specifically says “одному слепому подарили вязаную шаль” – “one blind man was given a knitted scarf”. What’s he doing there? Starting a new list? Reflecting the series of old women, but this time as blind men? Just starting a new story? Anyway, I went with “a blind man” for now. Here’s my current stab, with a few more tweaks.
“One old woman, due to her immoderate curiosity, tumbled out of a window, and fell, killed in the collision.
“From the window another old woman leaned and began to look down at the wounded old woman but, due to immoderate curiosity, she also tumbled out of the window, and fell, killed in the collision.
“Then from the window tumbled a third old woman, and then a fourth, and then a fifth.
“When the sixth old woman tumbled out, I got tired of watching them, and I set off for Mal’tsevskij market where, they say, a blind man was given a knitted scarf.”
“Одна старуха от черезмерного любопытства вывалилась из окна, упала и разбилась.
“Из окна высунулась другая старуха и стала смотреть вниз на разбившуюся, но, от черезмерного любопытства, тоже вывалилась из окна, упала и разбилась.
“Потом из окна вывалилась третья старуха, потом четвёртая, потом пятая.
“Когда вывалилась шестая старуха, мне надоело смотреть на них, и я пошел на Мальцевский рынок, где, говорят, одному слепому подарили вязаную шаль.”
“One old woman, due to immoderate curiosity, tumbled out of a window, fell and was badly hurt.
“Out of the window another old woman leaned and began to look down at the wounded old woman but, due to immoderate curiosity, also tumbled out of the window, fell and was badly hurt.
“Then out of the window tumbled a third old woman, and then a fourth, and then a fifth.
“When the sixth old woman tumbled, I got tired of watching them, and I set off for Mal’tsevskij market where, they say, a lone blind man was given a knitted scarf.”
“The response to Erofeev’s article [on the state of Soviet literature] was voluminous and vehement. Most of the responses agree that Soviet literature was undergoing a profound crisis [in 1990] and might indeed be dead. But many took exception to his more iconoclastic statements. One wrote, for example, that Erofeev’s complaint that Russian literature in general was excessively moralistic and didactic was the equivalent of criticizing Gothic architecture for being ‘too arched.’”
From Deming Brown, The Last Years of Soviet Russian Literature: Prose Fiction 1975-1991
I’ve been meaning to write this for a while, but I’m still not sure what to do with it. I just finished Master and Margarita, and one of the things that really caught me about it, well, the beginning at least, is the continual discussion of things that aren’t present (or are supposed not present but are, or are supposed present but in fact not). In the opening scene (all text taken from here), Bulgakov marks the strangeness of the day of Woland’s entrance by an absence, an especially curious absence because the absent people are described in a fair amount of detail (the absent people are “too exhausted to breathe”, they are not walking under the limes, they are not sitting in benches, nor are they at the kiosk or in the avenue):
There was an oddness about that terrible day in May which is worth recording : not only at the kiosk but along the whole avenue parallel to Malaya Bronnaya Street there was not a person to be seen. It was the hour of the day when people feel too exhausted to breathe, when Moscow glows in a dry haze as the sun disappears behind the Sadovaya Boulevard–yet no one had come out for a walk under the limes, no one was sitting on a bench, the avenue was empty.
Immediately following, the first Russians known to meet Woland are treated to yet another absence, as above, in the form of two expected presences:
‘A glass of lemonade, please,’said Berlioz.
‘There isn’t any,’replied the woman in the kiosk. For some reason the request seemed to offend her.
‘Got any beer?’ enquired Bezdomny in a hoarse voice.
‘ Beer’s being delivered later this evening’ said the woman.
‘ Well what have you got?’ asked Berlioz.
‘ Apricot juice, only it’s warm’ was the answer.
‘ All right, let’s have some.’
The third major absence, of a sort, reverses this trend: Nearly every character in the book makes near-constant references to the devil, in whom they supposedly don’t believe, and who supposedly doesn’t exist. Bulgakov and the reader, of course, know better. And so should Berlioz, the first of many to use the expression “the devil!”, the first occurrence, in the book, of which coincides with the first, supposedly illusory, sighting of the one of Woland’s henchmen:
Just then the sultry air coagulated and wove itself into the shape of a man–a transparent man of the strangest appearance. On his small head was a jockey-cap and he wore a short check bum-freezer made of air. The man was seven feet tall but narrow in the shoulders, incredibly thin and with a face made for derision.
…
‘ The devil! ‘ exclaimed the editor. ‘ D’you know, Ivan, the heat nearly gave me a stroke just then! I even saw something like a hallucination . . . ‘
Before returning to the issue of either the devil’s presence or absence, Bulgakov’s characters discuss Jesus Christ, his supposed absence in history and presence in Bezdomny’s (Homeless’ – Bezdomny’s patronymic suggests another absence) poem:
It was hard to say exactly what had made Bezdomny write as he had–whether it was his great talent for graphic description or complete ignorance of the subject he was writing on, but his Jesus had come out, well, completely alive, a Jesus who had really existed, although admittedly a Jesus who had every possible fault. Berlioz however wanted to prove to the poet that the main object was not who Jesus was, whether he was bad or good, but that as a person Jesus had never existed at all and that all the stories about him were mere invention, pure myth
The discussion goes on to mention Jesus’ absence in the writings of ancient historians, and the supposed forgeries that constitute Jesus’ presence in history and then, curiously, the presence of Jesus-like figures in nearly all “Oriental religions”, ending with Berlioz’ declaration that “the Christians, lacking any originality, invented their Jesus in exactly the same way. In fact he never lived at all. That’s where the stress has got to lie.”
Upon the pair’s confession of atheism to Woland, we are treated to another expected-presence-but-doubly-actual-absence:
This valuable piece of information had obviously made a powerful impression on the traveller, as he gave a frightened glance at the houses as though afraid of seeing an atheist at every window.
In Bulgakov’s Soviet Union, Woland should indeed expect to see atheists in every window. However, as we see later, these supposed atheists are often enough anything but. Not only are the atheists not present in the windows Woland supposedly expects them in (and there may even be some issues with the actual presence of Woland’s expectation), but were they present they wouldn’t even be atheists.
The five-now-six proofs of God’s existence constitute the next instance of shifting presence:
‘ But might I enquire,’ began the visitor from abroad after some worried reflection, ‘ how you account for the proofs of the existence of God, of which there are, as you know, five? ‘
And after Berlioz’ rejection of these five proofs:
‘ Bravo!’ exclaimed the stranger. ‘ Bravo! You have exactly repeated the views of the immortal Emmanuel on that subject. But here’s the oddity of it: he completely demolished all five proofs and then, as though to deride his own efforts, he formulated a sixth proof of his own.’
This discussion of things that exist or don’t culminates in Woland’s frustrated response to the pair’s disbelief in the devil:
‘ Well now, that is interesting,’ said the professor, quaking with laughter. ‘ Whatever I ask you about–it doesn’t exist! ‘ [the original translation I read had "Whatever I ask about - you haven't got any!"]
Like I said in the beginning, though, I’m not sure I have anywhere to take all this.
According to librarything’s unsuggester, people who enjoyed The Joy of Gay Sex disliked the following books. It may be the most unexpected list I’ve ever seen.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (expected 29.3, found 0)
The time traveler’s wife by Audrey Niffenegger (expected 28.5, found 0)
The kite runner by Khaled Hosseini (expected 26.4, found 0)
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (expected 24.1, found 0)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (expected 21.8, found 0)
On the road by Jack Kerouac (expected 21.4, found 0)
The golden compass by Philip Pullman (expected 20.8, found 0)
The grapes of wrath by John Steinbeck (expected 19.6, found 0)
The poisonwood Bible : a novel by Barbara Kingsolver (expected 18.3, found 0)
The brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (expected 18, found 0)
The ultimate hitchhiker’s guide by Douglas Adams (expected 17.1, found 0)
The secret life of bees by Sue Monk Kidd (expected 16.9, found 0)
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (expected 16.9, found 0)
Snow crash by Neal Stephenson (expected 16.8, found 0)
The unbearable lightness of being by Milan Kundera (expected 16.7, found 0)
The subtle knife by Philip Pullman (expected 16.6, found 0)
The prince by Niccolo Machiavelli (expected 16.1, found 0)
The alchemist by Paulo Coelho (expected 16, found 0)
The historian : a novel by Elizabeth Kostova (expected 16, found 0)
Mere Christianity : a revised and amplified edition, with a new introduction, of the three books, Broadcast talks, Chris by C. S. Lewis (expected 15.8, found 0)
The amber spyglass by Philip Pullman (expected 15.8, found 0)
Persuasion by Jane Austen (expected 15.4, found 0)
Atlas shrugged by Ayn Rand (expected 15.2, found 0)
High fidelity by Nick Hornby (expected 15.2, found 0)
The princess bride: S. Morgenstern’s classic tale of true love and high adventure: the “good parts” version abridged by William Goldman (expected 14.9, found 0)
Blink : the power of thinking without thinking by Malcolm Gladwell (expected 14.8, found 0)
Dubliners by James Joyce (expected 14.4, found 0)
Eragon by Christopher Paolini (expected 14.4, found 0)
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance : an inquiry into values by Robert M. Pirsig (expected 14.4, found 0)
Night. Foreword by François Mauriac. Translated from the French by Stella Rodway by Elie Wiesel (expected 14.3, found 0)
Beloved : a novel by Toni Morrison (expected 14.3, found 0)
Stardust by Neil Gaiman (expected 14.3, found 0)
The god of small things by Arundhati Roy (expected 14.3, found 0)
Atonement : a novel by Ian McEwan (expected 13.8, found 0)
The restaurant at the end of the universe by Douglas Adams (expected 13.7, found 0)
Fight Club : a novel by Chuck Palahniuk (expected 13.7, found 0)
Sophie’s world : a novel about the history of philosophy by Jostein Gaarder (expected 13.5, found 0)
The Screwtape letters by C. S. Lewis (expected 13.4, found 0)
The sound and the fury by William Faulkner (expected 13.2, found 0)
The Eyre affair by Jasper Fforde (expected 13.1, found 0)
A farewell to arms by Ernest Hemingway (expected 13.1, found 0)
Digital fortress by Dan Brown (expected 13, found 0)
The Republic of Plato by Plato (expected 12.9, found 0)
Girl with a pearl earring by Tracy Chevalier (expected 12.9, found 0)
A game of thrones by George R.R. Martin (expected 12.9, found 0)
Deception point by Dan Brown (expected 12.8, found 0)
The giver by Lois Lowry (expected 12.7, found 0)
The red tent by Anita Diamant (expected 12.7, found 0)
Gulliver’s travels by Jonathan Swift (expected 12.3, found 0)
Charlotte’s web by E. B. White (expected 12.2, found 0)
The Aeneid by Virgil (expected 12.2, found 0)
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (expected 12.1, found 0)
The trial by Franz Kafka (expected 12.1, found 0)
Coraline by Neil Gaiman (expected 12.1, found 0)
Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (expected 12.1, found 0)
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (expected 11.9, found 0)
The wind-up bird chronicle by Haruki Murakami (expected 11.9, found 0)
The adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (expected 11.8, found 0)
White teeth by Zadie Smith (expected 11.8, found 0)
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books by Azar Nafisi (expected 11.7, found 0)
Speaker for the dead by Orson Scott Card (expected 11.7, found 0)
The horse and his boy by C. S. Lewis (expected 11.7, found 0)
Life, the universe, and everything by Douglas Adams (expected 11.6, found 0)
Jurassic Park : a novel by Michael Crichton (expected 11.6, found 0)
She’s come undone by Wally Lamb (expected 11.4, found 0)
Gone with the wind by Margaret Mitchell (expected 11.4, found 0)
The voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis (expected 11.4, found 0)
The shadow of the wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (expected 11.4, found 0)
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (expected 11.3, found 0)
Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson (expected 11.2, found 0)
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams (expected 11.2, found 0)
Possession : a romance by A.S. Byatt (expected 11.1, found 0)
The silver chair by C. S. Lewis (expected 11, found 0)
Things fall apart by Chinua Achebe (expected 10.9, found 0)
Fear and loathing in Las Vegas : a savage journey to the heart of the American dream by Hunter S. Thompson (expected 10.9, found 0)
Really? Plato’s Republic?
In the preface to The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, Foucault has some interesting things to say about lists:
[I]t is not simply the oddity of unusual juxtapositions that we are faced with here. We are all familiar with the disconcerting effect of the proximity of extremes, or, quite simply, with the sudden vicinity of things that have no relation to each other; the mere act of enumeration that heaps them all together has a power of enchantment all its own: ‘I am no longer hungry,’ Eusthenes said. ‘until the morrow, safe from my saliva all the following shall be: Aspics, Acalephs, Acanthocephalates, Amoebocytes, Ammonites, Axolotls, Amblystomas, Aphilisions, Anacondas, Ascarids, Amphisbaenas, Angleworms, Amphipods, Anaerobes, Annelids, Anthozoans….’ But all these worms and snakes, all these creatures redolent of decay and slime are slithering, like the syllables which designate them, in Eusthenes’ saliva: that is where they all have their common locus, like the umbrella and the sewing machine on the operating table; startling though their propinquity may be, it is nevertheless warranted by that and, by that in, by that on whose solidity provides proof of the possibility of juxtaposition. It was certainly improbably that arachnids, ammonites, and annelids should one day mingle on Eusthenes’ tongue, but, after all, that welcoming and voracious mouth certainly provided them with a feasible lodging, a roof under which to coexist.
And that is one of the powers of lists: They provide that common locus and do the work of making the dissimilar similar; they glue things together into enormously complex structures in which we find meaning and utility. In fact, suppose I were to make a list of things that were dissimilar: cats, laundry baskets, water, sunlight. These dissimilar things, in the context of my list become similar through their very dissimilarity. We can begin to see in them the similarities we started by denying. We can even create a narrative through which these objects become similar above and beyond their dissimilarity, pushed along by the montage of things merely in proximity.
Now look back on Aldiss’ lists: The dissimilar things on the shelves become similar through their placement on those shelves and on the page. The things themselves and their proximity tell a story above and beyond what Aldiss is willing to come out and say. And their contrasts further that story: Why would S have a copy of ‘Pregnancy–Conception To Childbirth’ and an issue of ‘Boy’s Own Paper’? Why an oily rag and a chair leg? Aldiss doesn’t give any clues, beyond what the other characters in the book do with this information. These characters are in the same position as the reader – their task, and the reader’s, is to decipher the meanings of these lists.
There’s a Gogolian element to Aldiss’ storytelling: the use of lists: lists of objects, of actions, of movements, and most interestingly, of layers of glass. Gogol, though, would never do what Aldiss does – Aldiss uses lists like Tolstoy would have used lists had Tolstoy used lists (which I’ll get back to in a later post). For now, three examples of Aldiss’ love of the list:
His legs were doubled under him, so that he sat on the tawny planking with the following parts of his anatomy touching it: some of his right buttock, the outer side of his right thigh, his right knee, the outer side of his right calf, his right ankle, and his right foot, while his left leg copied the attitude of his right one, overlapping it so that from the knee down it also touched the planking and the tip of the left shoe pressed against the heel of the right shoe. The shoes were dusty. His right shoulder and part of the right-hand side of his body pressed against the brickwork beside the round window.
I like this one because its a weird way to use a list. He’s describing the position in which this guy was crouched by listing, in detail, body parts and proximities. It just gives you a funny sense, not of the croucher, but of the observer who is writing all this down.
On and in these shelves was a collection of articles belonging to or acquired by S, including three empty jam jars and a jar containing runner bean seeds; a bowler hat, in the rim of which lay a patent inhaler designed to fit up a nostril; a worm-eaten leg of an upright chair; a tartan plastic fountain pen; a perished hot water bottle; a brass handle off a drawer; a cotton reel containing brown thread; an empty pigskin purse; a china candlestick of an earlier age, on which was printed a representation of a devil breathing fire; a paperbound book entitled ‘Low Point X’, the cover of which was curled upwards, exposing brown pages; a broken coach lantern lying cheek-by-jowl with a group of three walnuts; a straw hat of the kind called ‘boater’, bound round by a red and blue ribbon; an umbrella with a handle representing a fox’s head lying under the boater; two enamel notices bearing the legend Beware of the Dog in black letters; a small collection of groceries and eating utensils, including a cracked blue and white cup and an unopened tin of sardines; a small brass crocodile; a bundle of newspaper; an enamel chamber pot with no handle; some shaving things lying in a small basin with floral decorations on it; a brass hinge and an iron key; an ancient tennis ball with most of its knap missing; a briefcase; the skeleton of a long-eared bat with its left ear missing; a pottery carthorse with its head missing; and a mousetrap still bearing a crumb of cheese on its single rusty tooth. Most of these articles were covered with a fine dust.
This one, to me, is notable not only for its obscene length but also because this isn’t the first occurrence of this list in the book. The one above occurs on 115-116. On 61-63 we see:
Some of this equipment still remained, though in the main the shelving was monopolized by articles belonging to or acquired by S.
Among these articles, the following could be distinguished: a storm lantern of antique design; a bowler hat; two empty jam jars; a patent inhaler made to fit the nostril; a streamlined pottery representation of a carthorse, the head missing; a pair of nail clippers; a collection of nail clippings, gathered in an ash tray; a mousetrap; part of the skeleton of a long-eared bat, discovered during an expedition to the chamber below; a brief-case purchased on the day that S had been given the post of secretary to Mr. Mary; the leg of an upright chair, worm-eaten; a fountain pen constructed of a tartan plastic; a hotwater bottle; a brass handle off a drawer; a cotton reel on which was wound brown thread, with a needle balanced on the top of it; a pigskin purse, lying open and empty; a chipped china candlestick on which had been printed a crude representation of the devil; a paperbound book with a curled-up cover entitled ‘The Penguin Handyman’; three walnuts; a coach lantern with its glass smashed; another empty jam jar; an umbrella, across which lay a straw hat with a red and blue band round it; an oval notice made of metal coated with enamel, on which was printed the legend Beware of the Dog; an oblong notice of the same materials bearing the same legend; a punched bus ticket; a comb with teeth missing; a hair brush with hair missing; an upright shaving mirror with the mirror missing; an elaborate iron key; a cigarette packet; a free luncheon voucher; another jam jar, this one containing purple runner bean seeds; a brass hinge; an oily rag; a small basin with a floral design containing a razor, a shaving brush, and a spoon; a rag; a slice of green soap; an enamel chamber pot without handle; a brass crocodile eight centimetres long; a small collection of groceries and eating utensils, among which a blue and white striped cup and a packet of tea were noticable; a row of books, including a ‘Typist’s Desk Book’; ‘Low Point X’; Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Miserables’; ‘Pickwick Papers’ without its cover; ‘Pregnancy–Conception’ To Childbirth’; Band I of Spengler’s ‘Der Untergang des Abendlandes’; ‘Toys Through the Ages’; ‘Living for Jesus’; ‘First Steps in the Bible’; ‘First Steps in Chemistry’; ‘First Steps in Philosophy’; ‘Understanding God’; ‘A Shorter Shorthand Manual’; ‘Sex in Practice’; ‘Black’s Picturesque Tourist of England’; ‘My Alps, by Mrs. Meade; and the ‘Boy’s Own Paper’ for the second week in August, 19–.
The lists of layers of glass and other objects between an observer and someone observed are by far the most interesting use of lists in Report on Probability A. These mostly occur when S is watching Mr. Mary’s wife (presumably Mrs. Mary?) through a telescope:
These lips were viewed through six thicknesses of glass, four consisting of the little lenses in the telescope, one consisting of the square of glass that formed the central panel of the nine glass panels together comprising the round window in the front of the old brick building, and one consisting of the openable but closed portion of the kitchen window. So near was this closed portion of the kitchen window to the moving lips that the breath issuing between them had fogged the pane, obscuring still further both the right cheek already obscured by the towel and a part of the towel itself.
and:
Between her head and the eye of the watcher were interposed the glass of the kitchen window, the glass of the round window in the old brick building that had once housed a gentleman’s private coach, and the four lenses of the telescope.
I decided to take a look at Brian Aldiss’ Report on Probability A. Any book that opens with the passage “One afternoon early in a certain January, the weather showed a lack of character.” is going to be nice. I’m sure there will be more on it later, but for now: There’s a stylistic aspect that reminds me of Tolstoy’s “The Death Of Ivan Ilych”.
Tolstoy, for me, has always seemed like one of those annoying masses of contradictions. He did all sorts of nice things for his serfs (short of actually freeing them), but had sex with the serf women he owned, and seems to have seen this as his right as their owner. He lived during a time when he could “free” his serfs (they still wouldn’t have the status of free persons, but they wouldn’t be subject to corporal punishment), but instead petitioned the Tsar to abolish serfdom, leaving his own serfs to work for him. until that time His writing was very critical of middle class life, with its card games and parties, but he very much participated in this life himself. But there’s more than that: I just don’t trust him.
His writing is full of bland indictments, implicit claims of moral superiority, religiosity, and I don’t believe that he believed a word of it. I feel, and this might be something peculiar to me, that I’m being lied to when I read him, that there’s something deeply dishonest about him. When he describes a sunset I feel like I’m hearing the description from someone who’s never seen a sunset. Perhaps the only honest sentiment I’ve felt from him is in his descriptions of mediocrity and his (self-)disgust with it.
I guess, most of all, like a lot of nineteenth century Russian intelligenty, I just don’t feel like he knew what he was talking about. His idolization of serfs and serf life was a version of a myth that drove much of Russia for nearly a century, but in the end it wasn’t even a myth that could sustain life, but just another mode of expressing dissatisfaction with this life.
