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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
In the current poststructuralist and reader-response era, interpretations, especially “correct” ones, are no longer fashionable. Il'ia Il'f and Evgenii Petrov have also lost some of their luster in the wake of the rediscovery of Mikhail Bulgakov and Andrei Platonov, or, for that matter, the Russian Vladimir Nabokov, and the recent general revision of the postrevolutionary literary canon. When Il'f and Petrov do receive critical attention, the focus invariably turns on the ambiguity of their message, pro-Soviet yet provocative, their deliberate literariness, and intertextuality. These same qualities, however, that earn the “in” authors their literary laurels are, in the case of Il'f and Petrov, viewed as evidence of moral compromise and stylistic shallowness.
I would like to thank my colleagues Susanne Fusso, Olga Matich, Gary Saul Morson, Irina Paperno, Thomas Seifrid, and lurii Shcheglov for their various helpful suggestions.
1. For a survey of opinions see Kurdiumov, A. A., V kraiu nepuganykh idiotov. Kniga ob ll'fe i Petrove (Paris: La Presse Libre, 1983, 9–34 Google Scholar.
2. The term is understood here in a broad sense, covering such disparate cases as The Divine Comedy, the picaresque novel, Don Quixote, Mertvye dushi, and Jaroslav Hašek's Švejk. For the thematic relevance of such comparisons see Iu. K. Shcheglov, “Tri fragmenta poetiki Il'fa i Petrova,” which is part of A. K., Zholkovskii and Shcheglov, Iu. K., Mir avtora i struktura teksta (Tenafly, N.J.: Hermitage, 1986), 85–117, esp. 93–104Google Scholar.
3. The “saga,” as it was aptly titled in an English edition, comprises two novels, Dvenadtsal’ stul'ev (1928) and Zolotoi telenok (1931). The plot of this famous Soviet satire revolves around the adventures of awitty confidence man, Ostap Bender, hunting for individual treasure in his collectivist land. Zolotoi telenokwill be referred to as ZT hereafter and citations will be given in the body of the text.
4. For a more detailed paraphrase of the episode see the appended table.
5. Shcheglov, “Tri fragmenta poetiki,” 93–104.
6. The terms denoting major components of the episode's subplots are capitalized when first introducedand subsequently where necessary for emphasis.
7. “Bytieopredeliaetsoznanie…. Mneprikhodilos’ lechit’ druzei i znakomykhpo Freidu … Glavnoe—eto ustranit’ prichinu sna… . Kak tol'ko sovetskoi vlasti ne stanet, vam srazu stanet kak-to legche, “ 1. Il'f and Petrov, E., Sobranie sochinenii vpiati tomakh (Moscow: GIKhL, 1961) 2: 95 Google Scholar. All references willbe to this edition, unless otherwise specified.
8. See Katz, Michael R., Dreams and the Unconscious in Nineteenth-Century Russian Fiction (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1984)Google Scholar; Gershenzon, M. O., “Sny Pushkina,” in Stat'i o Pushkine (Moscow: GAKhN, 1926, 96–110 Google Scholar; Remizov, A., Ogon’ veshchei. Sny i predson'e (Paris: YMCA Press, 1977 Google Scholar.
9. Among other such less specific subtexts are the title of Fedor Sologub's novel Tiazhelye sny, compare “Odurevshii ot tiazhelykh snov monarkhist “; the line in Evgenii Onegin (4: 36–37) about the hero'srural way of life: “Onegin zhil anakhoretom,” compare “I davno vy zhivete takim anakhoretom?—sprosilOstap “; and the old prince Bolkonskii's exclamation “V svoem dome ni minuty pokoia!” (Voina i mir 2, 5: 3). Compare Khvorob'ev's similar predicament and language. (For these references I am indebted to Iurii Shcheglov, who is completing a detailed Kommentarii to the two novels, see his paper on “Structure andIntertext in Il'f and Petrov” delivered at the nineteenth AAASS Convention, Boston, 1987).
10. “On pomolilsia bogu, ukazav emu, chto, kak vidno, proizoshla dosadnaia neuviazka i son, prednaznachennyidlia otvetstvennogo, byt’ mozhet dazhe partiinogo tovarishcha, popal ne po adresu. Emu, Khvorob'evu, khotelos’ by uvidet’ dlia nachala tsarskii vykhod iz Uspenskogo sobora” (94).
11. On the strategic role of ungrammatically in the production of the poetic sign see Riffaterre, Michael, Semiotics of Poetry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978 Google Scholar, 3ff. and passim.
12. See Il'f and Petrov, Sobranie sochinenii 3: 193–197, and their Kak sozdavalsia Robinzon (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel', 1935), pp. 32–37. My analysis is based on Iu. K. Shcheglov and A. K. Zholkovskii, “Poetics as a Theory of Expressiveness,” Poetics 5 (September 1976): 207–246, esp. 220ff.
13. Vse otniala u menia sovetskaia vlast'… . Ona dazhe podmenila moi mysli. No est’ takaia sfera, kuda bol'shevikam ne proniknut', —eto sny, nisposlannye cheloveku bogom” (94).
14. See Morson's, Gary Saul seminal study, The Boundaries of Genre: Dostoevsky's “Diary of aWriter” and the Traditions of Literary Utopia (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981, 115–141 Google Scholar.
15. Morson, Boundaries of Genre, p. 116. Along with Morson and others, I use the term dystopiadespite its dubious Greek etymology.
16. Evgenii Zamiatin's My (1924), Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1931), Vladimir Nabokov'sPriglashenie na kazn’ (1938), George Orwell's 1984 (1949), Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1950), and Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange (1962). For brevity's sake I concentrate on the common denominator of these texts, without doing justice to variations, which at best are mentioned parenthetically.
17. For more detail see Zholkovskii, Alexander, “Zamiatin, Orvell i Khvorob'ev,” Grani no. 140 (1986): 190–198.Google Scholar
18. For example, Zamiatin's constructor of the “Integral” supermachine, Huxley's technicians of hypnopaediaand poetic propaganda, Orwell's Ministry of Truth official engaged in updating the past, and Bradbury'sfireman burning forbidden books.
19. The provocateur is an important fixture in the writing of the fellow travelers, as evidenced by the figures of Jurenito, Benia Krik, Ivan Babichev, Bender, and Woland and his retinue.
20. See Morson, Boundaries of Genre, p. 141.
21. This predictable recycling of the traditional desired dream is found in all six dystopias.
22. Here and throughout the expression “to order (ordering, ordered) dreams” is used in the sense ofzakazyvat’ (zakazyvanie, po zakazu), that is, “to call up made-to-order dreams,” as in to order a meal or abook and not in the sense of making dreams orderly, well arranged, consistent.
23. Imprisoned and observed very closely, Winston Smith realizes that in order not to betray himself, “from now on he must not only think right; he must feel right, dream right” (1984, 231). This epiphanetic conclusion replaces his earlier belief: “Confession is not betrayal … only feelings matter… . They [the interrogators] could lay bare … everything you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable” (137–138); compare note 13 above forKhvorob'ev's similar initial naivete.
24. This is explicitly stated in the text: “Sovetskii stroi vorvalsia dazhe v sny monarkhista” (95).
25. This crippled condition is very much in the spirit of the times; compare Pasternak's contemporaneousstatement ( “Kogda ia ustaiu ot pustozvonstva,” 1931):
My v budushchem, tverzhu ia im, kak vse, ktoZhil v eti dni. A esli iz kalek [sic]To vse ravno: telegoiu proekta Nas pereekhal novyi chelovek.
26. A similar figure is “zitspredsedatel’ Funt, … chelovek s ran'shego vremeni,” who went to jail (as the front of various shady companies) under several tsars and revolutionary regimes; compare the old railway worker Kordubailo in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's “Sluchai na stantsii Krechetovka,” who has taken amilitary oath of allegiance to five consecutive regimes, and, on the other hand, the anonymous old prole in1984 (1: 8) whom Winston Smith probes in vain for information about prerevolutionary times.
27. One linguistic remark in the text invokes the Utopian obsession with mathematics, targeted by antiutopians from Swift (in the Laputa part of Gulliver's Travels) to Zamiatin and his followers: “On … prinuzhdenbyl sluzhit’ zaveduiushchim metodologichesko-pedagogicheskim sektorom…. O, etot sektor!Nikogda Fedor Nikitich, tsenivshii vse iziashchnoe, a v torn chisle i geometriiu, ne predpolagal, chto etoprekrasnoe matematicheskoe poniatie, oboznachaiushchee chast’ ploshchadi krivolineinoi figury, budet takoposhleno” (93).
28. “Postel’ imela besporiadochnyi vid i svidetel'stvovala o torn, chto khoziain provodil na nei samyebespkoinye chasy svoei zhizni” (92).
29. Note the elegant combination, in Bender, of three roles: his usual selfs as manipulative Kombinator, the dream genre's listener-interpreter, and dystopia's Inquisitor-Provocateur.
30. Unlike II'f and Petrov, the authors of most dystopias are in moral sympathy with the victimizedprotagonist, disillusioned as they are with the human condition.
31. Noted by Katz, Dreams and the Unconscious, 114, 118.
32. The upwardly mobile toady Kozlov declares “chto on vidit v nochnykh snakh nachal'nika Tsustrakhatovarishcha Romanova i raznoe obshchestvo chistykh liudei” that he so wants to join; see Platonov, Andrei, Kotlovan (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1973), 41 Google Scholar.
33. For dream control in Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, Nikolai Zabolotskii, Mikhail Bulgakov, Thomas Mann (“Mario and the Sorcerer “), and others, see Zholkovskii, “Zamiatin, Orvell,” 201–206.
34. Bakhtin defines Foma as a “buffoon who has become the unlimited despot on … [the] estate, … a carnival king” and “anticipates in many ways the future heroes of Dostoevsky,” see Bakhtin, Mikhail, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, ed. and trans. Emerson, Caryl (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. 163 Google Scholar.In transcribing parts of the Foma-Falalei subplot in dystopian terms, all I am claiming is that Selo, aswell as “Nevskii prospekt” and Zavist', are partial precursors or analogs of dystopias proper.
35. “U [Falaleia] bylo … litso kragavitsy … On byl do toso … prostodushen, chto … egomozhno bylo schest’ durachkom … nezlobiv, kak barashek, vesel, kak schastlivyi rebenok… . FomaFomich … reshilsia byt’ blagodetelem Falaleiu,” Dostoevskii, Fedor, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsatitomakh (Leningrad: Nauka, 1972) 3: 60 Google Scholar. All page references are to this edition.
36. “Starik Gavrila … otkryto osmelilsia otritsat’ pol'zu izucheniia frantsuzskoi gramoty. [Foma] vnakazanie zastavil uchit'sia po-frantsuzski … Gavrilu” (Dostoevskii, PSS 3: 61).
37. “Nastrogo zapretili emu videt’ takie grubye, muzhitskie sny … Kakovy mysli, takovy i sny… .Razve ty ne mozhesh’ … videt’ vo sne chto-nibud’ … oblagorozhennoe, kakuiu-nibud’ stsenu iz khoroshegoobshchestva … gospod, igraiushchikh v karty, ili dam, progulivaiushchikhsia v prekrasnom sadu?Falalei obeshchal … Lozhas’ spat', Falalei so slezami molil ob etom boga i dolgo dumal kak by sdelat’ tak, chtoby ne videt’ prokliatogo belogo byka. No … opiat’ vsiu noch’ snilos’ pro belogo byka i ne prisnilos’ niodnoi damy” (Dostoevskii, PSS 3: 62).
38. “Foma Fomich ob'iavil reshitel'no, chto ne verit… vozmozhnosti podobnogo povtoreniia sna, achto Falalei narochno poduchen kem-nibud’ iz domashnikh … v piku Fome Fomichu … Falalei nikak nemog dogadat’ sia solgat'… . chto videl … naprimer, karetu, napolnennuiu damami i Fomoi Fomichom “ (Dostoevskii, PSS 3: 62–63).
39. “Skazhi, Falalei, kakoi son ty videl segodnia … ?—Pro … pro vashi dob … pro belogo byka!… —Po krainei mere, ia … uvazhaiu tvoiu iskrennost’ … ia proshchaiu tebia” (Dostoevskii, PSS3: 155).
40. Dostoevskii spoofs the traditional recurrence of vse tot zhe son not only by iteration, but also bythe dream's very content: the Russian idiom skazka pro belogo byka, bychka means “beskonechnoe povtorenie odnogo i logo zhe,” see the seventeen-volume Slovar’ Sovremennogo Russkogo Literaturnogo lazyka (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1948) 1: 379 (“Belyi “).
41. In the spirit of Tynianov's analysis of Opiskin as a parody of Gogol “s Vybrannye mesta iz perepiskis druz'iami, see “Dostoevkii i Gogol'. K teorii parodii” in Tynianov, Iu., Poetika, Istoriia literatury, Kino (Moscow: Nauka, 1977, pp. 212–226 Google Scholar. The purported dream about elegant ladies and Foma him self can be seen as an ironic combination of Piskarev's fixation on his prostitute qua lady and the fanatic insistenceof Gogol’ in Perepiska on the educatory role of the company of beautiful ladies (especially in thechapters “Zhenshchina v svete” and “Chto takoe gubernatorsha “). Khvorob'ev echoes this only in the verygeneral sense of yearning for dreams from court life. His one possible direct link with Perepiska is in themention of “tsarskii vykhod iz Uspenskogo sobora” (see note 10), comparable with the praise from Gogol’ of the book Tsarskie vykhody: “Mne … tak i videlsia vezde tsar’ starinnykh prezhnikh vremen, blagogoveinoidushchii k vecherne, v starinnom tsarskom svoem ubranstve” ( Gogol', N. V., Sobranie sochinenii v semitomakh [Moscow: IKhL, 1967] 6: 270; see also 6: 570Google Scholar).
42. Compare the concept of conversion in Riffaterre, Semiotics of Poetry, 63–80, and passim.
43. “Dvenadtsatiletnim mal'chikom [Ivan] prodemonstriroval … pribor … i uverial, chto …mozhet vyzvat’ u liubogo—po zakazu—liuboi son,” Iu. Olesha, Izbrannye sochineniia” (Moscow: GIKhL, 1956), 74 Google Scholar.
44. “Mat’ … krichala: —On oshibsia … Nu chto zh, chto tebe ne prisnilos'? … Zvon otnessia vdruguiu storonu…. la, ia videla bitvu pri Farsale! …—Ne lgi” (Olesha, IS, 75).
45. An important parallel is also the figure of the provocateur, which, incidentally, helps solve some ofthe problems encountered in translating the episode into dystopian metalanguage (compare note 34). Thefather, a stern school principal, teacher of Latin, guardian of “right dreaming,” and enforcer of order, makes a plausible inquisitor, the mother a woman, and the little Vania a child protagonist on a quest. As for the rolereversal of the protagonist and the inquisitor in dream manipulation, it constitutes a legitimate variation onthe masterplot: It combines the protagonist's typical attempts at countermanipulation (as in Zamiatin, Bradbury, and Burgess) and the “duplication” by the provocateurs of the state's machinery with their own mockstructures (compare Bender's Kontora po zagotovke rogov i kopyt to Gerkules and Ivan's Ofeliia to Chetvertak).An additional twist projects this original combination into the protagonist's childhood.
46. The contents of columns 2 and 5 could be split into abstract references to generic features andconcrete quotations from specific subtexts, yielding, all in all, a sevenfold description.
47. This episode, featuring an artist who paints the portraits of Soviet officials with oats and otheravantgardist materials, gives the chapter its title, “Krizis zhanra,” emblematic also of Khvorob'ev's stylisticduel with the Soviet system of genres.
48. The notion of intertextual clusters is developed in Zholkovsky, , “On the Intertextual Progeny of ‘lavasliubil… ‘“ in Fourth Pushkin Symposium, ed. Kodjak, Andrei (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica [forthcoming])Google Scholar.
