Russian Literature LIV (2003) 43-65 Elsevier

www.elsevier.comflocate/ruslit

WHERE DID VENI&A LIVE? SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE WORLD OF V. EROFEEV’S

POfiMA MOSKVA - PETU%I

JOOST VAN BAAK

1. The study of literary world pictures is a topic to which Jan van der Eng made a significant contribution by formulating a coherent and applicable model for the analysis of the narrative text. In his article ‘On Descriptive Narrative Poetics’ (van der Eng 1978) he took stock of what current narrato- logy had to offer in this field, and formulated a both systemic and pragmatic view of the structure of narrative worlds. In those days a structuralist attitude towards the arts was not yet in disrepute. Jan van der Eng’s publication has been an important and lasting impulse in the development of my own ideas about the way the verbal worlds of literature are constructed and function.

2. Much has been said already about Venedikt Erofeev’s Moskva - Pe- tz& (henceforth: M-P), an acknowledged classical underground text of the stagnant Breinev era,’ and of 2Oth-century Russian literature as such. Parti- cularly since its first publication in Russia2 critical and analytical articles have appeared, as well as close readings and detailed commentaries inter- preting and tracing the wealth of quotations, allusions, parodies, ironies, and double-ironies that are so characteristic of Erofeev’s podma. Especially Russian literary critics and historians have hailed it as one of the first, and foremost, works of postmodernism in Russian literature.3

Nevertheless, I think, most of what is said about VeniEka’s universe relies on implicit, rather than explicit, ideas and inferences about his literary world. This article discusses the foundations of the hero’s world by focusing on the relations between its spatio-modal features and VeniCka’s doings and

0304-3479/03/$ - see front matter 0 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved doi: lO.l016/SO304-3479(03)00045-O

44 Joost van Baak

dealings within it. I will pay particular attention to what I think are crucial spatial topics in M-P, i.e. the train, the “pod’ezd” (porch or entrance, including the staircase and landings) and the house (or rather its absence), to certain typological features of the plot, and to the perception of time. And, finally, against the background of these observations, I will also propose an interpretation of the enigmatic final sentences of thepoema.

Every work of literature presents a more or less concrete world picture resulting from particular thematic and structural choices. At the same time a more general, abstract model of the world is realized in terms of genre characteristics, with their inherent features concerning the scope and limits of the literary world, the logic of behaviour and processes, and textual intentions, and also, to a certain extent, in terms of period characteristics.

Erofeev presented the narrative text M-P to his readers as a po&ma. This indication inevitably echoes Gogol’s po&ma Dead Souls, and the parti- cular, paradoxical sense of genre that came with it, conveying Gogol’s spe- cial view of Russia and of his own responsibility as a writer. Therefore, although irony, parody and pastiche are the stylistic core of Erofeev’s work, still this genre indication does suggest a certain grand scale epic intention of the text, and a “message for Russia”.

As I already indicated, the work’s recent reception in Russia pre- dominantly reflects the postmodernist angle of the literary critics of the 1980s and 1990s (cf. Skoropanova in particular). There is certainly much in the polyvalent aesthetics of M-P that speaks for such a classification when some of the canonical criteria of postmodem judgement are applied to it: a general loss of hierarchy on the stylistic and sociolinguistic levels, hybridization of genres, genre forms, and discourses, free quotation and parody, pastiche, travesty, and the debunking of authoritative or classical images. These fea- tures are most conspicuously active in M-P. For a correct evaluation of their literary significance they should, however, be considered in the context of the Soviet society and culture of the late 196Os, rather than of post-Soviet Russia. For then it becomes clear how far M-P is removed from the stylistic and ethical canon of Soviet literary discourse, how utterly illegally and irreve- rently the po&ma undermines the authoritarian, monolithical Soviet world, its ideology, its leaders and other icons.4

On the other hand there are equally important structural features in M-P that rather point to more traditional, modernist, romantic, and even archaic positions. Thus, throughout the work the narrator-hero, however “unreliable” he may be as a source of information, and however ironic, still is intensely involved in his world, clings to an ideal, and feels responsibility. And the author (or rather, his function) is certainly not “dead”. The (abstract) author’s position is not that of a distantial postmodem collector of “simulacra”, who does not believe that there is a story. In M-P the author/narrator indeed has a story to tell, and although Venicka’s world is not presented as a coherent one,

Some Observations on Erofeev ‘s PoBma ‘Moskva - Pet&i’ 45

there is a coherent, or consistent, voice - that of a drop-out -, and a con- tinuous effort to occupy a moral position, - that of the victimized individual against the immoral, repressive, and anonymous Soviet power.5 We could conclude that the narrator-hero, his standpoint, and his behaviour are charac- terized by an ultimately tragic attitude, and it is exactly this position which is typologically alien to the “canonical” postmodem condition.

The basic plot structure of the pobma M-P as a genre is already indi- cated by the title: a train journey with a destiny. It is therefore reminiscent of traditional epic forms in which the idea of trajectory is dominant, like the travelogue, or the quest. Critics have made the association, not only with Gogol’s Mev&vye dus’i (e.g. Smirnova 1990), but also with RadiSCev’s Pu- teJestvie iz Peterburga v Moskvu. The latter parallel is valid on more than just formal grounds, especially in view of the Russian literary tradition (disre- garding a number of obvious, and also less obvious, differences between the texts). In both texts (i.e. RadiSCev’s and Erofeev’s) a trajectory and its articulations provide the basic plot motivation for successive confrontations with people and circumstances that induce a variety of critical and unmasking contemplations about Russia and the state it is in. The intended trajectory of VeniEka’s plot suggests a journey from Moscow’s Kursk station to the suburb PetuSki. But he does not arrive in Petugki. His quest of his ideal destination, PetuSki (harbouring the woman he loves, and his son), ultimately brings him back to the centre of Moscow, where he began his journey. This is, of course, of crucial importance for the meaning of thepogma as a whole.

3. It is obvious that VeniCka’s view of the world is determined by his relation to alcohol. But the alcohol theme in M-P does not simply represent a real social scourge and a desperate escape from moral and social misery; it also is a protest against a state and ideology that brings its subjects to drinking. The alcoholic discourse is a central element of the lifestyle and world view of drop-out heroes like VeniEka, and hence of the pokma’s overall meaning. But there is more to the alcohol theme in M-P. VeniCka’s obsession with alcohol verges on (and often is) religious veneration, and it inspires him to exuberant metaphoric language. The alcoholic discourse actually is a major focus of his consistently mocking, disruptive and anti- authoritarian attitude, a heroic and futile effort to gain freedom where there is none to be gained. It is a clear, and dispiriting, example of camavalization in the Bakhtinian sense, with its inversion of values and anarchic drive.

In the course of M-P the theme of alcoholic consumption is steadily developed, and VeniEka’s material world becomes less and less distinct from the world of his fantasies, fears and delirious projections. This goes so far that we can also ask the question whether all that the pokma describes has only taken place in the mind of the narrator-hero as an inner monologue (cf. Skoropanova 1999: 171), or a nightmare. But, although his world becomes

46 Joost van Baak

increasingly blurred and disoriented, he in fact also remains sober to the end. We have here the paradox of an increasingly drunken narrator-hero (and only in that combination) who must tell us about the state of mind he is in, but who cannot himself be in such a state of mind; otherwise there would be no consciousness, and no text to be communicated. On a realistic level VeniCka intoxicates himself with vodka (he “chloroformizes” his consciousness), but on a metaphorical level, i.e. on the level of the literary text, he “intoxicates himself on the word”, as Skoropanova aptly put it (“op’janjaetsja slovom”; 1999: 173), and thus, through his continuous, drunken, polyphonic mono- logue, he creates the text itself. Sobriety is a serious topic for VeniEka, because it causes loneliness, and puts him in a position of critical distance towards (Soviet) reality (170). On the other hand, inebriety, as against sobriety, can also mean a watershed between his perception of life, and that of the “sober public” (“trezvaja publika”; cf. M-P, ‘85-j kilometr - Ore- chovo’, 86):

2, KaK HH 6~0 llblfH, IIOrnJIAen Ha Her0 C U3yMneHUeM. A ny6nmca, Tpe3Ba5I ny6nuxa, IIOYTH IIOBCKaKiWa C MeCT, U B AeC5ITKaX rlIa3 ee 6~mo HanUcaHo rpoManHoe ((ore"! &a, 3Ta ny6nUKa, Bee noHxna He TBK, KaK HWO 6bmo 661 IIOHIITb. [...I

And when he realizes that this time, the thirteenth time (and a Friday at that), he will meet his beloved in PetuSki in a sober state, instead of dead drunk and disoriented (as on the previous twelve Fridays), he feels deeply ashamed (‘Usad - 105-j kilometr’, 98):

3HaY~,MHeeeUpHAeTC~~aTbAOpaCCBeTa.~BCAbHe3HSUO,rAeOHa )fUIBeT. g ll0llaQ~I.II K Heii ABeHaJ&?lTb pa3, U BCe KZUCUMU-TO SaBOp- KaMU H IIb5IHbIii BApe6OflaH... KaK 06UJJHO,WO II HaTpUHaJ(lJaTbIfi pa3 eAyKHejiCOBeplIIeHHOTpe3BbIfi.

But towards the end of the podma, imagining what he will say to God after he has died when asked what his life had been like, he concludes that he has been the soberest of all people (‘PetuSki. Vokzal’naja ploXad”, 113):

A II - 'IT0 R? II MHOrO BKyCUn, a HUKSLKOrO AeiiCTBWl,X AzuKe HU pa3y KaK cnenyeT He paccMexncx, U hfefu ne CTOIIIHU~~ Hn pa3y. R, BKY- CMBIUUfi B 3~0~ MUpe CTOnbKO, vro TepJlfo C9eT II nocneAoBaTenb- HOCTb, - II Tpe3Bee BCeX B 3TOM MUpe; Ha MeHII IIpOCTO TyrO AeiiCT- ByeT... "HOW@ Xe TbI MOn%iIUb?)'- CIIpOCUT MeHl rOCIIOAb, BeCb B CUHUX MOnHUXX. Hy YTO II eMy OTBeYy? TaK U 6yAJ’: MOnWiTb, MOn- WlTb...

Some Observations on Erofeev ‘s PoQma ‘Moskva - Peturiki ’ 4’7

4. The shapes and spaces of VeniCka’s world are, of course, influenced by the type of perception just described. The setting, (greater) Moscow, is presented mainly as the trajectory of VeniCka’s trip on a suburban train (WektriCka”). This means that his world is rendered as a series of spatial articulations, breaking up the travel plot, beginning and ending with parti- cular parts of the city of Moscow. In the overall structure of the po&ma the train furthermore is part of the thematic conflict between linearity and cyclicity (circularity).

Cyclicity is usually considered as a typological characteristic of ar- chaic, or mythical world models, as against linear models acknowledging the structure of time and events as historically unique and successive. However, as Lotman showed, in modem literary texts (i.e. modem in a very broad sense) the plot is typically the resultant of their interaction (Lotman 1997). Erofeev’s text for its symbolic and even metaphysical message obviously relies strongly on the semiotics of cyclic narrative modelling.

This is manifest in compositional phenomena like the (partial) iconic repetition and contrastive mirroring of various parts and concepts in the text. For example, in the structure of Moscow cyclicity is inherent in the motif of the “Sadovoe kol’co”. The “typological” linearity of the train plot is inter- rupted and becomes cyclic after the station (and chapter) “Orechovo-Zuevo”, after which VeniEka is actually returning to Moscow (although he keeps thinking to the end that he is on his way to PetGki). And VeniEka’s story of a day as a whole comes full circle, starting and ending on some “unknown porch” (suggesting that it is the same spot). In the entire composition of the poema there are some striking correspondences, of the sort just mentioned, between beginning and end of the text, as pointed out by Levin (1996); for example: the Kremlin and the Kursk station. VeniEka’s self-exhortation to set off, “idi, VeniEka, idi!” (“go, VeniEka, go!“), in the first chapter, returns in the last chapter (but with a dramatically altered tenor and modality): “begi, Venicka, beg? (“run, VeniEka, run!“). The pathetic “smertnaja toska” (“mortal anguish”) in the first chapter, and “smertnyj Eas” (“hour of death”) in the third, become tragic reality in the end, on the already mentioned “unknown porch”. Finally, VeniEka calls the angry and brutal waiters of the Kursk station restaurant in the third chapter (‘Moskva. Restoran Kurskogo vokzala’) “palaci”, “ executioners” (or “butchers”); they return as the four real executioners that pierce his throat with an awl at the end of the final chapter.6

Although the train as a mobile setting and conflict space can generate certain traditional mobile plot features (which it has in common with coaches, and the like), it is, no doubt, a modem literary setting, technically, and in the perspective of literary history. This is not the place to extensively discuss its characteristics and development as a literary theme, but a few remarks should be made here. As a plot-generating device and conflict space the train primarily motivates movement, and the accidental meeting between

48 Joost van Baak

people. Moreover, trains in literature (and film) often function as vehicles or instruments of fate in various senses. First of all a train passenger is completely subject to the autonomous movement of the train. The fact that he has no control over the trajectory and the duration of the trip, nor over its destination (or, in an abstracting derivation, over “destiny”), can be exploited symbolically in the construction of the plot. In M-P this feature is expressed in the fact that his trip on the WektriEka” does not bring VeniEka to PetuSki, as he intended, but back to Moscow. The fact that VeniCka himself made this happen by stepping on the wrong train at the Orechovo-Zuevo station does not change this fatal role of the train as such.7 In the course of thepo&za the expected destination of the train, PetuSki, is presented by VeniCka increasing- ly as an altogether different world, where everything is better. It is in fact a utopia, or paradise, where the jasmine is never without flower, birds sing day and night, the year round, and even original sin seems harmless there (‘Reutovo - Nikol’skoe’):

l-kTJ’IIIKH - 3T0 MeCTO, IYHe He J’MOJIKaIOT IITHI&.I, HU AHeM, HU HOSbIO,

rat2 HH 3UMOfi, HU IETOM He OT~BCTEiCT ZiCMAH. &PBOPOAHbIti IJJCX -

MOxKeT, OH A 6bm - T2IM HHKOrO He THl?OTHT.

Trains can also act as instruments of fate, and the first example from Russian literature that comes to mind is, of course, Tolstoj’s Anna Karenina, in which fatal train accidents at the beginning (part 1, ch. 18) and at the end (part 7, ch. 3 1) literally frame the doomed heroine’s plot. It is noteworthy that in the final chapter of M-P, ‘Moskva - PetuSki. Neizvestnyj pod’ezd’, immediately pre- ceding - and anticipating - his death, VeniEka remembers a fatal train acci- dent that had occurred earlier at the station “Lobnja”, near the cable work- shop where he worked (118):

KOrAa-TO, O’IeHb AaBHO, B JIo6He, J’ BOK3ZUIa, 3ape3mO IIOe3AOM ZIWIO-

BCKa, A HeIIOCTkUKHMO 3ape3FUO: [. . .I.’

Trains and stations can function as “improper” houses, as partial (and de- fective) substitutes for the domestic qualities of the house in the proper sense. Often this function of the train is connected with the disruptions and peregrinations that come with war, as in Babel’s Konarmija, or in Pastemak’s Do&or .&vago. The train as a space with walls and windows, places to sit, providing a form of shelter which to a certain extent can remind us of a house, nevertheless is a mockery of domestic space and the stability which is essential of a house. In M-P VeniEka and his fellow alcoholics appear to lead a semi-nomadic existence as a group on suburban trains, finding shelter in railway stations. It is a particular way of life, a sub-culture of drop-outs with a specific view of life. Their life is bound up with the train and its symbolic

Some Observations on Erofeev ‘s PoBma ‘Moskva - Petugki ’ 49

aspects as a metaphor for life and fate, and particularly with that of “progress”, i.e. with one of the central mythemes (or rather “false myths”) of the Soviet ideology. The irony here lies, of course, in the cyclical compo- sition of the pokma. This suggests that the metaphorical train of Soviet society is not moving forward, in accordance with the historic linearity of progress, bringing its passengers to the promised radiant future (i.e. after the end of history). On the contrary, it is running on in circles (cf. also Skoro- panova 1999: 170). It is a circulus vitiosus, or fatal cycle, in which (according to its original meaning) a negative cause keeps returning with increasing force, as in addiction, or in the insurmountable stagnation of the Breinev era. Then VeniCka metaphysically is subject to an endless repetition, an “evil eternity, overpowering the linearity of human life”, as Lipoveckij formulated it.9 I will come back to this point later, in connection with some aspects of thepoema’s time structure.

The illusory, “vicious”, or haunted movement of the train is related to another fundamental aspect of VeniEka’s existence and relation to his world, that of disorientedness, or, in other words, the impossibility of linearity. Dis- orientedness can be motivated by his consumption of alcohol, of course, but it can be observed on a far greater variety of structural and thematic levels, temporal and spatial, as well as in a moral sense. It determines his entire universe, its logic and causality.

In the first chapter (‘Moskva. Na puti k Kurskomu vokzalu’) this is already a leitmotiv, when VeniEka complains how, searching for the Kremlin, he invariably ends up at the Kursk station. He cannot understand why this happens (even when he is relatively sober, as he points out explicitly). But this time it is even more distressing, because now he could not find the Kursk station, though he intended to go there on purpose. Instead, he found himself waking up on that fatal “unknown porch” (“prosnulsja utrom v E’em-to nevedomom pod’ezde”; 18). It had not even made a difference that he had started, as usual, to walk to the centre, i.e. on his illusory course towards the chimeric Kremlin. Neither will he be able to reach Petugki this time. He is doomed to follow wrong tracks, and as a failed epic “hero of the road” he is incapable of linearity, of effective purposeful action. But this is not only an essential aspect of his own actantial make-up, it is inherent in the structure of his world and of his conflict. According to Lipoveckij, commenting on Ve- nicka as ajurodivyj, his conflict is overtly metaphysical, a conflict with the very structure of the world (“eta konflikt s miroustrojstvom”; Lipoveckij 1999: 222).

Forms of disorientedness (or the impossibility of linearity) are ela- borated throughout the text, and not only in VeniEka’s trajectory in the strict sense. It is also part of his basic attitude towards life. In a crucial passage in the first chapter (18) he expresses his view of life in a most characteristic maxim. He realizes that he does not know the porch where he finds himself

Joost van Baak

on the morning of his trip to Petugki (spatial and cognitive disorientedness), but he accepts, even welcomes this as an unavoidable necessity of life’s course:

qT0 3T0 38 nOme3&5I A0 CUX nOp nOH%TWI He UMeIO; HO TaK U HaAO. Bee TaK. Bee Ha CBeTe AOJDKHO npoUcxoJ&iTb MeJ(JIeHH0 M Henpa- BUJIbHO, ~To6b1 He c

& Men 3arOpAUTbCII 9enoBeK, ~06~ =xenoBeK 6bu1

rpyCTeHUpaCTepXH.

The combination “grusten i rasterjan”, sad and confused (or: embarrassed, perplexed, bewildered, helpless), implies a complex, fundamental existential and moral disorientedness. This utterance formulates the conclusion of some preceding considerations that reflect a total philosophical, moral, and existential disorientedness, involving even logical and temporal inversion of causes and effects. He had been trying to reconstruct his drinking pattern on the previous day and to connect this with his trajectory through the city which brought him here, and made some absurd deductions:

O~UHHO BOT noseMy: ITOJI~KO ITOAC=IUTZI&~TO c ynu~bl~exosa ago 3TOrOnOA~e3AaaBbInIuielrIeHa~eCTbpy6ne~-arTOUrAeanUn?B B KaKO$i nOCJIeAOBaTeJlbHOCTU? Bo Gnaro nu ce6e R nn~~ WU BO sno? HuKTo~TO~O He 3HaeT,u HuKorAaT,~nepbHey3HaeT:rrapb EOp~Cy6un IJapeBU~a~MUTpUJIuJIUHaO6OpoT?

In accordance with this type of logic VeniCka concludes that it does not make a difference whether he goes left, or right, or straight on, and that the choice is irrelevant (first chapter, 19):

n KyAa-HU6ynb Aa UAU. Bee paBH0 KyAa. Ecnu Ame TbI nOiiAeLUb HaneBo- nonae,#b HaKypc~aii BOK~~JI; ecnu npaM0 -Bee paBH0 Ha Kypc~ui-i BOK3aJI.

Therefore, when he does make a choice for a particular directioy3 this is both logical and absurd, as well as futile (p. 19, the end of chapter 1):

0, TqeTa! 0, 3@eMepHOCTb! 0, CaMOe 6eccUnbHoe u nosopaoe BpeM5l B xU3HU MOerO HapOAa - Bpem OT paCeBeTa A0 OTKpbITIZII MaWSUHOB! CKOJIbKO JIUIIIHm CeAuH OH0 Bl'IJIeJIO BO BCeX HaC, B 6e3~OMHbIXUTOCKyIO~UXLUaTeHOB! k14U,BeHWIKa,EWU.

In this perspective his self-adhortation “idi, VeniEka, idi!” (“go, VeniEka, go”) is then indeed a sort of desperate conjuration or incantation of illusory linearity.

Some Observations on Erofeev ‘s PO&ma Moskva - Pet&i ’ 5 1

On a more abstract level VeniEka’s desperate struggle with dis- orientation and chaos can also be detected in the “notorious ‘individual graphs”’ (“preslovutye ‘individual’nye grafiki”‘; 34) of the chapter ‘Novogi- reevo - Reutovo’, visualizing the patterns of alcohol consumption of himself and two colleagues at the cable works. Statistics and quantification by themselves symbolize “linearity”, rational planning and control, but here they are applied to chart the main cause of the workers’ disorientation and mal- functioning, instead of the progress of the cable work.14

5. As the title of this article indicates, it is not clear where VeniEka lives. This asks for a more detailed search into the domestic theme in M-P. For all we know he leads a semi-nomadic existence. He is a hero of the road, and declared homeless (cf. the end of chapter 1, the last full quote above). In the beginning of the pobma we learn that he has been on the move since the day before, searching for the elusive Kremlin (“a ved’ celyj veEer krutilsja vokrug etich mest”). Obviously he is not very much attached to domestic values. What really bothers him in the opening chapter is not the fact that he found himself waking up, with his little suitcase, on “somebody’s unknown porch” (“prosnulsja utrom v E’em-to nevedomom pod’ezde”), but that he had lost track of his drinking pattern. But towards the end, in the chapters ‘PetuSki. Vokzal’naja ploSliad” and ‘PetuBki. Sadovoe kol’co’, his delirious disorien- tation, despair and loneliness have reached rock bottom and he begins to realize that he has not come to Petugki at all, but returned to Moscow, which terrifies him with its excessively broad streets and huge houses. We are presented the pitiful image of VeniCka shivering with cold, who in vain knocks on front doors, not understanding why people do not open up to a poor man and let him warm himself for a couple of minutes (114).

It makes sense to first study the porch (“pod’ezd”) and its significance for the entire story. As I indicated above, it is most probable that it is on this same unknown porch that he meets his death in the final chapter. The anonymity of the porch, by itself the most anonymous and inhospitable area of the domestic space, is, of course, symbolic of VeniEka’s social position and status in the urban Soviet space. The porch is in a sense a topological no man’s land, not a part of domestic space proper, neither house nor street.” At the same time with the porch (or rather the staircase that comes with it) where VeniEka took shelter for the night Erofeev emphatically introduces verticality as the dimension of spirituality and religious thematics as against the horizontality of the epic text of the po@ma (he explicitly states that the place where he sat down to go to sleep was forty steps up, counting from below).16 The literary modelling capacity of this opposition in M-P is further enhanced by the framing position (begin and end) of the porch in relation to Venicka’s plot world. In the two chapters before the final one (‘PetuSki. Sadovoe kol’co’, and ‘PetuSki. Kreml’. Pamjatnik Mininu i Poiarskomu’) the build-up

52 Joost van Baak

of suspense begins with VeniEka meeting the four men who will kill him, and VeniEka’s decision to run for his life (end of ‘PetuSki. Sadovoe kol’co’; 116). This coincides with his ultimate realization that he is not in PetuSki, and with the sudden and totally unexpected view of the Kremlin (instead of the in- escapable Kursk station; 117):

He neTyLUKn 3T0, HeT! KpeMnb CUNI lIepeA MHOIO BO BCeM BeJln- Konenun. II XoTb n cmman yxe cswn TOIIOT noro~n, - II ycnen IIoJIyMaTb. ~"~,nCX0mi~1~ni%~C~0M0~~~y~~0nbUnonepeK,Tpe3BbI~ U c IIoxMenIorn, - 51 Hn pa3y He Bnnen Kpemn, a B IIOnCKaX KpeMm BCerfla IIOl-I~ZLJl Ha Kypcioii BOK3EUI. H BOT TeIIepb yBnACJI - KOrAa K~PCK~ ~0~3~i~IMHe~y)K~eeBceroHacBe~e!..~

Together these coincidences in a dramatic way indicate the end of his journey, in the epic (“horizontal”) sense, but also in a “vertical”, spiritual or religious sense, as I suggested above, marking the special significance of the final chapter, in which VeniEka is going to die. The title of the final chapter, ‘Moskva - PetuSki. Neizvestnyj pod’ezd’, indicates that the story has made full circle, resuming the entirepokma’s title, and also resuming the unknown porch. In this chapter the porch, with the landing at the top of the staircase, also realize!; verticality as the canonical dimension of suspense in a danger- ous space. VeniCka flees upstairs to the highest landing, finds himself trapped there, and listens to his killers climbing the stairs and closing in upon him (118):

CepAUe 6nnocb TaK, WO MeIIILWO BCJlyLUnBaTbCSI, U BCB-TaKn I! paC- C~bIIu~:ABepb~OA~e3AaBHU3yMe~eHHO~pUOTBOpIZnaCbUHe3aTBO- pSIJIaCbMrHOBeH&WITb...

Becb COTpSICaSICb, II CKa3ZlJl ce6e: “Tann$a KyMU,TO eCTb BCTaHb U IIpnrOTOBbCa K KOHQlHe... %OYXe HeTlUIU@aKyMU,R BCe ryBCTByr0, 3TO JI a M a C a B aX $ a H U,KaK CKa3aJI CIIaCnTeJIb... To eCTb: u&IR YerO,rOCnOAb,TbI MemOCTaBUJI?'

"AHrenbIHe6eCHbIe,OHnrIO~bIMaIoTCX! ZITOMHeAenaTb?rITOMHe Ce~~aCc~enaTb,wo6bI~eyMepeTb?aHrenbl!.."

He is fully aware of his impending death and explicitly compares his predi- cament to that of Jesus on the cross. In his agony he implores the “heavenly angels” (whom he had addressed more jovially earlier on his journey) to help him against his mortal enemies. This passage shows an expressive merging or mutually reinforcing co-operation of the two semiotic functions of verticality, i.e. the religious function (the association with Jesus, and the angels’

Some Observations on Erofeev ‘s Poema Moskva - Pet&i ’ 53

attribute: “angely nebesnye”), and the suspense function of the staircase (“oni podymajutsja!“).r8

Above I pointed to the anonymity of the porch and staircase which play such an important role in VeniEka’s story. In that quality they are comparable to the stations and train carriages where much of VeniEka’s life takes place. The conclusion is then that he apparently has no place of his own (which is perhaps the most simple but adequate minimal definition of the essence of a house). The house - as well as the lack of it - represents an anthropologically universal concept, and there is probably no culture and literature in which it is not a gestalt and symbol with social, moral, psychological, emotional, or religious connotations. Homelessness, then, may be a universal theme of literature as such, but there are always culturally and historically specific aspects to consider when we confront it in a text. VeniEka’s situation should therefore be viewed in its (Soviet) Russian context. This is not the place to discuss this topic in Russian literary history as a whole (e.g. Van Baak 1990: 1994, and forthcoming, Singleton 1997, SC&in 1997), but it will be evident that the lacking, or loss of houses and homes plays a significant role in it, from the beginning of the 19th century onward. In the 20th century it is even very prominent as a thematic focus. The historic disasters that have struck Russia in that century and their effects on the way people used to live are reflected in many texts. Wars, revolutions, as well as the developments during the Soviet period deeply affected the entire country’s social fabric and the way the majority of the Soviet citizens were forced to live, the most prominent phenomenon being, of course, that of the kommunalka, or com- munal housing system. This is a result of historical and political circum- stances. The kommunalka is a topos with profound ideological and symboli- cal implications. The Soviet experiment must be seen as the result of an originally utopian enterprise, fundamentally affecting the collective and the individual, its consequences often being remarkably negative, often seeming- ly unrelated to, or even the opposite of, its original high ideals and aspira- tions.”

The theme and situation of houselessness (homelessness) can provide the most powerful images of loneliness. It can be viewed as a fundamental human defect and deprivation against the background of what I would like to call a positive “House Myth” (van Baak 1994, and forthc.) in the sense of a general cultural master plot, and as a specific topic of Russian literature and culture. Thus apart from manifestations of the positive gestalt inherent in the House Myth, ?o ’ m Russian cultural and literary history we can also observe a characteristic reluctance, or distrust, towards the values of domesticity in the western sense, a feeling of uneasiness with the idea of a “homely home” with its comfort and commodities as something undeserved, as a symptom of materialistic laziness and egoism, or as something undesirable in the light of persisting social inequality and immorality.2* In the context of 20th-century

54 Joost van Baak

Russian literary and cultural history we can often observe a deep conflict (an incongruity, or paradox) between, on the one hand, what appears to be a universal human need for domesticity (i.e for shelter, warmth, etc., but also for a space of oneself and one’s kin, for privacy), and, on the other hand, the ideological demand to transcend the old barriers of the individual ego and to develop the true collective spirit of the “New Man” for whom the rift between the individual and the collective has ceased to exist. Prime examples of these ideological and moral tensions around the House and its values are, of course, Andrej Platonov’s novels. In Kotlovan (The Foundation Pit), where enthusiasts suffer the hardships of life in the barracks in the name of the virtues of collectivity, but without achieving their ideal: building the home for the proletariat. In his other, equally dystopian novel &vengur, things are driven to utter absurdity, because the inhabitants of the city of that name in their ultimate revolutionary dynamism continuously move around their houses (cf. also van Baak 2001). A more recent example could be Aleksandr Zinov’ev’s pseudo-philosophical satirical Zijaju.Sie vysoty (Yawn- ing Heights, 1974) in which the fictional town of Ibansk features as a paro- distic scale model of the Soviet Union.

Let us see what VeniEka himself has to say about this. Most of it is implicit. In the chapters ‘KaraEarovo - Cuchlinka’ and ‘Cuchlinka - Kus- kovo’ (29-32) VeniCka tells about his settling down, ten years earlier, at the station of Orechovo-Zuevo, moving into an apartment where four other men (colleagues at the cableworks) were already living. In the beginning they live in harmony. But after a while he invokes their anger because he drinks beer and apparently does not have to go to the bathroom, at least not ostensibly. By behaving like that he is giving the impression that he feels superior to them (“my grjaznye iivotnye, a ty kak lileja!..“). He pleads that he has an excessive innate delicacy and sense of shame, referring even to the days of Ivan Turgenev to justify himself. But his comrades do not accept this. On the contrary, in their eyes his chastity, or rather prudery (“celomudrie”), is a sure sign of his lacking fundamental upbringing.22 One of the men remarks significantly that “with such scandalous opinions” he “will be for ever lonely and unhappy” (“S takimi vzgljadami ty budeg’ ve&ro odinokim i nescast- livym”; 3 1).

In the chapter ‘Kuskovo - Novogireevo’ (33) VeniEka continues to tell us how he lived together in harmony with his comrades at the cableworks: “Having cast aside shame and further worries we lived an exclusively spiritual life” (“Otbrosiv styd i dal’nie zaboty, my iili iskljuEitel’no duchov- noj iizn’ju”).

A special link in this thematic connection is Blok’s poem ‘Solov’inyj sad’ (‘Nightingale Garden’, 19 15) which VeniEka gives his comrades to read in the chapter ‘Kuskovo - Novogireevo’, in order to “widen their horizon as much as possible”, stressing that it is a “timely book” which they “will read

Some Observations on Erofeev ‘s PO&ma Moskva - PetGki ’ 55

to their great benefit” (“svoevremennaja kniga, ja skazal, - vy proctete ee s bol’goj pol’zoj dlja sebja”; 33). In this poem Blok presents his lyrical hero in an existential crisis. The poem’s hero is confronted with utter loneliness and he realizes that he had been under the spell of an unattainable (and un- deserved) personal happiness (symbolized by the image of a woman in an enchanted garden from which he is excluded). One commentary to this poem states that Blok here polemically rejected the “particularly hateful idea of ‘personal comfort”’ (“osobenno nenavistnyj emu ‘licnyj ujut”‘), and the indi- vidual’s right to personal happiness (“licnoe scast’e”; Blok 1971, 3: 345). Blok himself emphasized for this poem the themes of duty, of compassion with the weak and the poor, the fact that everybody has to go their own, chosen way, and the necessity to tight for a new, better world (cf. Blok 1997: 886).

Yet the interpretation Venicka gives of this poem is curious and hard to connect with Blok’s text, ironic in its familiar irreverent and bantering tone, and with a mockingly didactic twist. He sheds an unorthodox light on an authoritative text of symbolism, and presents an autobiographically engaged view of the predicament of Blok’s lyrical hero, leaving aside, as he says, “all those fragrant shoulders and unillumined clouds of mist and pink towers in smoky garments” (“vse eti blagouchannye pleCa i neozarennye tumany i rozovye baSni v dymnych rizach”; 33). He states that at the centre of the poem is a lyrical hero who has lost his job for “drunkenness, whoring and absenteeism” (“uvolennyj s raboty za p’janku, bljadki i proguly”), thereby implicitly projecting on the poem his own homelessness and tramping around. VeniEka, too, repeatedly says that every man cannot but go his own way.23

A plausible conclusion, then, would be that it is (at least) the tragic heroism of the themes of loneliness and unattainable happiness that appealed to VeniEka and that made him bring it to his comrades’ attention. There is furthermore the utopian association with the paradise garden in Blok’s poem, echoing Venicka’s vision of longed-for PetuSki as a paradise where the house of his beloved and his son is.24

In the entire text of M-P not a single normal domestic, indoor situation occurs. In the chapter ‘Cemoe - Kupavna’ (48) he tells how on his twentieth and thirtieth birthdays friends came to visit him, bringing bottles of vodka and zakuski as presents, but these visits only made him feel unbearably lonely and sad.

Staying indoors is impossible for VeniCka, just as he cannot quit drink- ing, even though his reason literally tells him to do so. In the chapters ‘Novogireevo - Reutovo’ and ‘Reutovo - Nikol’skoe’ he describes his heart’s struggle with his reason and his sense of duty over the question whether to drink or not to drink (37). Reason, of course, tried to convince VeniCka (and his heart) that he should refrain from drinking, at the same

56 Joost van Baak

time, interestingly enough, linking this with going out, i.e. with his leaving the house (VeniEka’s reason speaks to him): “Ty ne vstane?, Erofeev, ty nikuda ne pojdeg’ i ni kapli ne vyp’eS”’ (“You will not get up, Erofeev, you will go nowhere and will drink not a single drop”). The heart pleaded in favour of some leniency, and reason gave in to a compromise: VeniCka may drink 150 grams. But he must stay home (“Nu, chorogo, Venja, - skazal, - chorogo, vypej sto pjat’desjat, tol’ko nikuda ne chodi, sidi, sidi doma.. .“). Then VeniEka started to drink 500 grams a day in order to keep his place (i.e. stay home), but did not succeed for all that of course (37):

qT0 )Ke BbI ,QfMaeTe? fl BbIIIUlI CT0 l-ISITbAeCBT II YCmeJI AOMa? Xa-Xa. x C 3TOl-'O HHII nH.Jl n0 TbICFIC IUITbCOT KmbIfi ,l(eHb, YTo6bI YCHfleTb AOMa,UBCe-TaKUHej'CUAeil.

After six days of heavy drinking, when, as he observed, “the boundary be- tween reason and heart had disappeared”, these two had sanctioned his leaving for PetuSki, to find his joy and be saved:

(Lfloe3xaji, noesxaii B %rym~~+! B lky.max - moe cnaceme u p~ocTb~~0x,noesxiG."

For restless VeniCka the idea of the House, together with that of happiness, is, at most, an ideal, spiritual, but elusive, and ultimately immaterial destination, not unlike that of eternal Jerusalem, merging in his imagination into the unattainable paradisiac locus of Petuiki. This concept of PetuSki seems to find itself outside of normal, oriented space and time, for, as we noticed earlier, VeniCka, caught in disorientedness and evil cyclicity, admits himself that he does not even know where to look for the house of his beloved in Petugki (cf. the chapter ‘Usad - 105-j kilometr’; 98).

On another, equally figurative level VeniEka’s factual houselessness is also symbolical of the houselessness within the Soviet world of his roaming spirit. The House as an “archetopos” or gestalt is therefore ambivalent (as archetypes typically are). That means that the absence of a house must not alwa

G9 s or not necessarily, be a deficiency, but also is a condition for free-

dom. VeniEka (consciously or intuitively) flees the threat of stagnation that comes with sedentary life.26 He is out on the streets by his own choice, which is the only freedom he has as a powerless drop-out. It allows the minimal degree of involvement with the Soviet world and system that is accessible for him. Topologically VeniEka’s position is consistently in the periphery of society, being the typical zone of existence for drop-outs. The House as a topos (in the sense of the House Myth mentioned earlier) is certainly not a peripheral structure. On the contrary, it is a centred concept par excellence.z7 It is even tempting also to interpret in this light the fact that in the very

Some Observations on Erofeev ‘s PoQma ‘Moskva - Pet&i 57

beginning of the pokma VeniEka stresses his inability to approach the centre of Moscow. The idea of reaching Pet&i can be seen as a form of “home- coming” for VeniEka, but that is not to happen.

Moscow is VeniEka’s world, with the Kremlin at its centre, outside of which there is very little, except for PetuSki, of course. The equation City- World is very old (cf. Jerusalem, Rome as Urbs - Orbis, Augustine’s Civitas Dei, etc.). But VeniCka’s city is not a good concentric city in the ideal, classical sense, the spiritual, just and ordered centre of the universe. Moscow, as we come to see it through VeniEka’s eyes, is an increasingly chaotic, treacherous and demonic place. This urban demonism has been noticed by many critics in connection with the intertextual references and literary associations with the St Petersburg of Dostoevskij, and with his novel Crime and Punishment in particular (cf., among others, Levin 1996). He cannot find the Kremlin, the centre and seat of his enemy. He only sees it when he is close to his death.

6. Above the cyclic nature of VeniEka’s ways, and of his making sense of the world was pointed out. VeniEka is subject to endless repetition, to an “evil eternity, overpowering the linearity of human life”, as Lipoveckij has formulated it. On the most concrete level of the plot his perception of time, and of all relevant processes and rhythms in his life, as we saw, are first and foremost regulated by his need for alcohol. He gives his opinion about the higher meaning of this lifecycle on three occasions which deserve special attention because of their poetically and compositionally marked structure. He speaks with the voice of Ecclesiastes, using the full register of rhetoric (apostrophe, repetition, ornate digressions, and the like), alternately lament- ing the fate of his country, or extolling its virtues, depending on the opening or closing hours of the stores that sell liquor; cf.:

O,TaeTa! O,+eMepHOCTb! O,CaMOe6ecCu.r1bHOe uIIO3OpHOeBpeMn B xU3Hu MOerO HapOAa - BpeM5I OT paCCBeTa A0 OTKpbITUrr MalWuHOB! CKOJILKO JIUUIHWX CeAuH OH0 Bnneno ~0 Bcex HaC, B 6e3AOMHbIX II TOCKYKNIJUXLLI~T~HOB! (‘Moskva. Na puti k Kurskomuvokzalu'; 19)

O,c~o6oAa u paBeHcTBO! 0,GpaTCTBO u I;uyqUBeHrecTBo! 0,cnaAocTb HeIlOAOT=IeTHOCTU! 0,6IWKeHH&hIIee BpeMR BH(U3HU MOerO HapOAa- Bpelwr OT OTKpbITWl U A0 3aKpbITUSI MaIWUHOB! (‘Kuskovo - Novo- gireevo'; 33)

[...I HO ZITO OHU TeIIepb - AeHbrU?.. 0, +leMepHOCTb. 0, TWeTa! 0, rHyceeEmee,no30pHe2iuIee spehin B xu3Hu Moero HapoAa- BpeMrr 0T 3aKpbITu5I~arawiH0~~0pacca~a!.. (‘Petu&i.Perron'; 112)

58 Joost van Baak

There is a beautiful and compelling tripartite compositional symmetry here which can be interpreted as a representation of the world order underlying the po&ma. It is a condensed verbal and compositional icon of VeniEka’s cyclical world picture, of his peculiar cosmology and mythology, or, in other words, of what life is about according to VeniCka.

The first and third passage frame the podma’s beginning and end, re- peating and even mirroring each other (“tSEeta, efemernost’, efememost’, Meta”; vanity and ephemerality / v.v.), and building the diurnal cycle that imparts sense to life: from dawn till the opening of the shops, and from closing time till dawn, with the middle passage covering the missing link between opening and closing time.28

This second passage, the middle one, rhetorically runs parallel to the other two (complying with the cycle structure), but has a totally different tone and attitude. The framing passages set the dominant tone, that of vanity and ephemerality, representing the “powerless and vile time of his people”. The middle passage tells about the timespan when the shops are open, the blissful time of the unruly outcast and freeloader, when “brotherhood and depend- ence” (“bratstvo i iidivenCestvo”) and the “sweetness of unaccountability” (“sladost’ nepodotEetnosti”) can be enjoyed.

The message of this icon then appears to be: harmony, freedom and brotherhood (the topics of utopia and paradise) exist, but they are framed by chaos and misery.

As we saw earlier (cf. also paragraph 4 above), VeniEka is convinced of the vanity and relativity of all human effort. He loses interest in the passage of time when he realizes that he has lost PetuSki, and with it the heavenly paradise he once possessed (“By1 u tebja nebesnyj raj, [. . .] a teper’ nebesno- go raja bol’Se net, zacem tebe vremja?“; ‘PetuSki. Vokzal’naja ploSCad”; 113). On the other hand he tells his pursuers that he wants to go to PetuSki again the next day (interestingly, this occurs in the chapter with the explicit cyclic reference in its title, the Garden Ring: ‘PetuSki. Sadovoe kol’co’; 116).

But there is still another type of time, or perhaps rather of time per- ception, that exerts its power over the podma. This is the chronotype (to borrow the term of Bender and Wellbery 1991) that has to do with the per- spective of death and VeniEka’s attitude towards death. VeniEka anticipates his own death. In the chapter ‘PetuSki. Vokzal’naja ploSEad” he states: “If I ever will die - and I will die very soon, I know that, - I will die without having accepted this world after all” (“I esli ja kogda-nibud’ umru - a ja o&n’ skoro umru, ja znaju, - umru, tak i ne prinjav etogo mira”; 113). Thus, he remains an outsider consistently to the end. But the interpretation of the pokma’s ending presents a peculiar problem, a temporal riddle. This ending, together with the cyclic features of its plot, the monological nature of VeniCka’s discourse, and the recurrence of the landing framing the pobma text as a whole, can lead to an interpretation of the text as if there has been no

Some Observations on Erofeev’s Pobma Moskva - PetuZki’ 59

train trip, and it is only a bad dream of an alcoholic (e.g. Skoropanova 1999: 171). The last sentence runs like this:

ryccarr Kpawarr 6yma “KY’ pacrrnacmnacb y Mem B mmax, 3a- ApOXCm2$ U C TBX IlOp II He IIpHXOAHJl B C03HaHEie, EI HHKOrAa He

‘TP”W.

The following conclusion presents itself. After the “dense red letter YU” had sprawled before his eyes, a new time frame, or chronotype opened, replacing that of plot and narrative succession. It is a time frame that is determined by negation, absence inaction: and I never wi11.“3o

“since that time I did not recover consciousness, It is a paradoxical utterance, because made by a man in a

state of unconsciousness, and cast in a frame of time without change or passage. Its nature and “range” is (or can only be?) presented in negative terms, through the negation of the imperfective aspect of the past tense (“ne prichodil”), and through negation of the perfective aspect of the future tense (“nikogda ne pridu”).

But this chronotype is not altogether new, because the final sentence recalls, or resumes earlier remarks by VeniCka that could easily be over- looked in the first chapter and on which the final sentence sheds an altogether different and portentous light, because together they can now be seen as manifestations of a time Came enclosing that of the podma itself. In the first chapter VeniEka said he did not know what and where he had been drinking before he found himself on the “unknown landing”. He literally says that “nobody knows this, nor will ever come to know it”, - i.e. in the same way using negation of the present tense as well as of the future tense -, and also that “hitherto” he has no idea what kind of landing this is (my italics):

[...]a=0 A r&R IIHJI? II B KaKOii IIOCJIeAOBaTeJIbHOCTH? BO Gnaro JIU ce6e R nun IUIA BO sno? HuKmo 3mozo ne snaem, u rtuxozda menepb ue y3rtaem. ~TO 3~0 38 non’besn? II do cux nop He wuew n0~~mu.x 31

As we saw, this time frame is characterized negatively. It is not the chronotype of plot and succession or history, nor even of cyclicity; it is total difference. It can be interpreted as an attempt by VeniCka to express what he (for whatever reason) cannot make actual in concrete, discrete terms of subjective language, i.e. eternity. VeniEka the narrator would then indeed be dead, or dreaming, and be in a different time-world.32 Indeed, we will never know. That world remains unspecified and implicit, but as a poetical two- world structure M-P fits in the category of typological romanticism.33

7. Where did VeniEka live? In an evil, merciless universe which in- exorably imposed inhuman claims and conditions on him, and those like him.

60 Joost van Baak

With all the emphasis on comradeship there is a continuous threat of f&da- mental, existential loneliness which VeniCka vainly tries to ward off and control with his delirious monologue on his illusory trip to PetuSki.

If a cosmological analogy is permissible, in relation to Moscow with the Kremlin as the centre (“sun”) of the fixed Soviet planetary system, Venicka’s trajectory in the pohza is rather like that of an unruly, centrifugal comet, with PetuSki as the ultimate goal of his extraplanetary orbit. However, during his lifetime he fails to escape from the system’s fatal attraction and vicious circles. Confronted with the impossibility to escape from this uni- verse in the spatial sense, VeniEka in the end escapes from time, as we can conclude from the poem’s closing sentence, dying under the sign of the “dense red letter ‘Yu”‘.~~ We cannot but conclude that M-P is a story told by a man from eternity.

NOTES

1

2

3

4

5

6

1

8

9

10

According to Skoropanova (1999: 145) the work was written in 1969, or in the beginning of 1970. In 1988 in a shortened version in the journal Trezvost’ i kul’tura, and completely in 1990 (St. Petersburg); cf. Skoropanova (1999: 146). Cf. besides Skoropanova’s synoptic review of the Russian M-P reception, for example, Ju. Levin (1992ab, 1996), M. Lipoveckij (1992), I.A. Paperno and B.M. Gasparov (1981), E.A. Smimova (1990). This also indicates systematic differences (sociological and ideological) be- tween Russia and the West as to the emergence of postmodemism and its cultural contexts. M. Lipoveckij (1992: 217), for example, discusses the postmodem features of M-P, but also emphasizes the “integrity of the perception of the world of author and hero” (“celostnost’ mirovosprijatija avtora i geroja”) There is another significant foursome: the comrades with whom he lived for a while as a brigadir at the cableworks of Orechovo-Zuevo (ch. ‘Karacarovo - cuchlinka’ and ‘&&h&a - Kuskovo’, 29-3 1). The station Orechovo-Zuevo is about 95 km from Moscow; the distance Moscow - Pet&i is 125 la-n. Erofeev uses the characteristical Russian impersonal construction of fate: “zarezalo poezdom Celoveka”. “Tak dumaja beskonecnost’ kol’ca odolevaet liniju Eeloveceskoj iizni” (Lipoveckij 1992: 223). Levin (1996: 31) connects this with a passage from Dostoevskij’s address at the PuSkin jubilee (Dnevnikpisatelja za 1880 g.): “Smiris’, gordyj Eelovek, i

Some Observations on Erofeev ‘s Poema ‘Moskva - PetGki ’ 61

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

preide vsego slomi svoju gordost”‘, which reaches back to PuSkin’s Cygany: “Ostav’ nas, gordyj Eelovek”. In my opinion VeniEka’s special paradoxical and ironic tone of resignation here also strongly recalls that of many of Pla- tonov’s narrators. This is just one example of such absurd inversion of logic; cf. e.g. also in chapter 10 ‘Novogireevo - Reutovo’ (36), where he says that crucifixion has taken place after resurrection (referring to his being tired for alcohol abuse). This passage also shows how his drinking habits literally determine his orientation in life, spatially, temporally, as well as morally: “- a Eto i gde ja pil, i v kakoj posledovatel’nosti? Vo blago li sebe ja pi1 ili vo zlo?” According to Levin’s analysis (32) this alludes to the saying, that “all roads lead to Rome”. One could also think of it as a mockery of the traditional topos of crossroads, which is presented to an epic, or mythical hero, demanding an inevitable and crucial decision which will determine his life and fate. In VeniEka’s case this mocking comparison even more stresses the inconse- quentiality of his decisions, and hence his existential disorientedness. N.B.: this is also in line with thep&ma’s general anti-heroism, cf. e.g. in chapter 22 (‘Moskva. Restoran Kurskogo vokzala’) he vents his scathingly anti-Soviet praise of “vseobscee malodusie” (“universal pusillanimity”) as the “predikat velicajsego soversenstva” (“the true mark of perfection”). This recurs towards the end, the opening of the chapter ‘PetuEki. Vokzal’naja ploSEad”. Only in the latter case he remarks that he has nowhere to go. VeniCka’s own curve (obviously echoing the graphs of Tristram Shandy) shows flourishes and protuberances, charting, in his opinion, “the beat of a proud heart, the song of the stormy petrel, the ninth wave”. The closest phenomenological analogue, for modem man, would probably be something like a cave to a traveller in trouble, a make-shift abode. The religious and cultural significance of the number 40, in relation to death and the journey of the soul, has been noticed by various critics. Critics have pointed to the evident analogy with the staircase in Dostoevskij ‘s Crime and Punishment (e.g. Levin 1996: 92). We could point to another passage involving such dimensional semiotics where VeniEka elaborates the metaphor of the social ladder, in a negative way. There he vents a strongly “anti-vertical”, egalitarian attitude against the verticality of power, careerism and social ambition after his degradation as brigade-leader, feeling humiliated (ch. 10, ‘Novogireevo - Reutovo’, p. 36):

ti BOT - II TOP%CTBeHHO 06’WIB.WO: A0 KOHIJa MOUX AH&i II He IIJJeA-

IIpuMy HuYeI-0, 9~0661 IIOBTOPUTb MOfi rWElJIbHbIk OIIbIT B03BbIlUeHUSl.

2 OCTaKNZb BHu3Y, u CHUSJ’ JIJIKNO Ha BCKI BaIIIy 06IQeCTBeHHyro

JICCTHUUJf. Aa. Ha KWYIO CTJ’IIeHbKy JIeCTHUqbI - ll0 JlJ’IeBKy. qTo6bI

II0 Hefi rIOAbIMaTbC& HaA0 6bITb ~WOBCKO~~ MOPAOIO 6e3 crpaxa u

YIIpeKa, HaA0 6bITb IlUAOpaCOM, BbIKOBaHHbIM U3 WCTOii CTaJIU C

rOJIOBb1 a0 IIRT. A II - He TaKOti, [. . . .] Hu3bI He XOTenu MeHII BuneTb, a

62 Joost van Baak

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

sepxri He MOI-nu 6ea cMexa 060 Mne ro~opwrb. “Bepxtt He MOI-JIA, a HE13bI He XOTeJlA".

Hence, probably, the paradoxical but strong “sense of the unreal”, so typically inherent in much of the underground literature grappling with the problem of Soviet reality (e.g. also Abram Terc and Aleksandr Zinov’ev). Vajl’ and Genis interpreted M-P as a “fantastic novel in its utopian variety”. They stress that it was VeniCka’s task to “inspire the soullessness of being with an in- vented intoxicated world” (“oduchotvorit’ bezduchovnost’ bytija izmyllen- nym p’janym mirom”), and that in Russia this fantastic world (“a creation of vodka and books”) already existed for a long time. Furthermore, they also make the striking remark that “people live in the unreal as simply as in a communal appartment” (“Ljudi iivut v nesu&5estvujuSEem tak ie prosto, kak v kommunal’noj kvartire”; after Skoropanova 1999: 15 1-152). An interesting recent sociological and phenomenological analysis of the kommunalka world is provided by Il’ja Utechin in his recent O&&i kommunal ‘nogo byta (2001). Its most expressive, and characteristically 19th~century Russian manifestation is, of course, the country estate, or usad’ba, and the specific culture that it supports, together with the metaphorical image of a “nest”, a “gnezdo”. Cf. especially S&kin (1997). Cf. also Aksakov’s emphasis on the slavophile ideas of sobornost’, as a community ideal, and the “gnezdo” (“nest”), patriarchal concepts stressing the spiritual community, at the expense of individuality and material comfort. But even in the work of Pugkin the house as a symbol of durability and security is doubtful (cf. van Baak 1998). It is certainly not far-fetched to interpret this story with its grotesque inversion of values as a scathing irony on life in the kommunalka, with its inescapable lack of privacy. This could be associated with the final lines of Blok’s poem:

A CTpOnAHKH,npOTOnTaHHOiiMHOK), TaM,mexHX@iHanpemae 66ma, CT~JI cnycKaTbcapa6owitic~Hp~0Io, lloro~~~z~ymoroocna.

(“And down the path, made by me, I There, where the hut used to be, I A workman descended with a pickaxe, I Urging on someone else’s donkey.“) Where, as we saw earlier, the jasmine is never without flower, birds sing day and night, the year round, and even original sin seems harmless (‘Reutovo - Nikol’skoe’). I am leaving aside other contextual connections with Blok’s poem which are of a more actual, political nature. Therefore, as a matter of principle, the concept of the House should not be identified with the idea of “home”, even though a motif like “‘homecoming” (just like its opposite, the “loss of home”) should be considered as an integral part of the House Myth (HM). The thematical inventory of this HM includes,

Some Observations on Erofeev’s PoQma ‘Moskva -Pet&i’ 63

26

21

28

29

30

31

32

33

i.e. is larger than, the set of motifs defining “home”. The “home” function is never a stable, given one, but related to individual plots, the House concept is hierarchically more general, i.e. has the status of invariant in relation to the level of particular plots and their axiological (evaluative) differentiations. Which by itself already makes him a typologically romantic hero. His position very much reminds one of the topological behaviour of e.g. the “house- fleeing” Cossacks of Gogol’ (cf. Lotman 1968) and of Babel’ (cf. van Baak 1983). Cf. the cosmogonic capacity of the House to be the centre of the universe (cf. e.g. Bollnow 1963). Cf. also the passage in the chapter ‘Krutoe - Voinovo’ (91) where “all remaining time was taken up by purely speculative debate” about which shops opened earlier than others:

A BCe OCTaBIIIeeCII BpeMa nOrJIOWeH0 6bmo IIPeHWIMU Ha TeMy WiCTO j'M03PIITenbHJ'Kl: KTO PaHbIIIe OTKPOeT MaIZESUH, TCTJI Ma- IIIaBAH~peeBCKOMUJlHTeTIl~~aB~OJIOMaX?

After this follows an indication of place and time of writing: “Na kabel’nych rabotach v Seremet ‘evo - Lobnja, osen ’ 69 goda. This addition in italics is not part of the text world of thepoema, but has a metafictional status. There is also a moral and ideological message. According to Skoropanova VeniCka says with his last words (“i nikogda ne pridu”) that he will never be part of “a system which crucifies man”, that he “boycotts” it (Skoropanova 1999: 171-172). Followed by the observation: “Ne znaem ie my vot do sich por: car’ Boris ubil carevica Dimitija ili ie naoborot?” Then the reversed logic of time and cause here can be seen as another marker of this paradoxical chronotype. Cf. also Kuricyn (in Skoropanova 1999: 152) who takes the view that VeniEka is dead, interpreting the poema as a journey in the afterlife (with the train as an equivalent of Kharon’s boat), and that he is “outside of time” (“vne vre- men?). Other typological associations could be the shamanistic two-world system, or, perhaps, the aboriginal Australian concept of “dreamtime”. One analogy I can think of, but a positive one, is Lermontov’s poem “Vychoiu odin ja na dorogu” (“Alone, I come out on the road”). The lyrical ego wants to find oblivion, and dream on in a state of eternity, cf. the following lines:

x 6 xoTen3a6bITbCsI ~3acHy~b [...I x6 HceJEUIHaBeKHTaK3aCHyTb, Hano ~aoZi 9~06,BegHO3e~IeHe51, TeMHbI# Ay6 CKJIOH5UlCJIHLUJ'MeJI.

64 Joost van Baak

(I would like to find oblivion and to fall asleep [. . .] // I would like to fall asleep forever N [so that] a dark evergreen oak would bend and rustle over

34 me.) Which could then be interpreted as equivalent to the omega (a, the Ultimate, the End), and to 04 the mathematical symbol of infinity?

LITERATURE

Baak, J. J. van 1983 The Place of Space in Narration. A Semiotic Approach to the

Problem of Literary Space. With an Analysis of the Role of Space in I. E. Babel’s “Konarmija “, Amsterdam.

1990 ‘The House in Russian Avantgarde Prose: Chronotope and Arche- type’. Essays in Poetics, 15/l, I-16.

1994 ‘Mif doma v russkoj literature. Programma literatumogo i kul’tu- rologiCeskogo analiza’. W.G. Weststeijn (Ed.), Dutch Contributions to the Eleventh International Congress of Slavists, Bratislava 1993. SSLP, Vol. 23, Amsterdam, 23-44.

1998 “‘Domik” Pu?&ina i vopros o russkom bidermejere’. IIOA YTPO IIOIY K 70-nemuto Bnaouwpa Hutconaesuva Tonopoea. Moskva, 583-591.

2001 ‘Paradoks i psevdologika u Platonova’. Paradoksy russkoj litera- tury. Peterburgskij sbornik, vyp. 3 (pod red. Vladimira MarkoviCa i Vol’fa Smida). Sankt-Peterburg.

forthc. [About the House in Russian Literature. A Typological and Diachro- nit Study of its Thematic and Symbolic Significance.]

Bender, John, and David E. Wellbery (Eds.) 1991 Chronotypes. The Construction of Time. Stanford.

Blok, A.A. 1971 Sobranie soFine@ v 6 tomach, t. 3. Moskva. 1997 Polnoe sobranie soeinenij v 20 tomach, t. 3. Moskva.

Bollnow, Otto Friedrich 1963 Mensch und Raum. Stuttgart.

Eng, J. van der 1978 ‘On Descriptive Narrative Poetics’. In: On the Theory of Descriptive

Poetics: Anton P. Chekhov as Storyteller and Playwright. Dutch Studies in Russian Literature, Vol. 4. Lisse, 9-94.

Erofeev, Venedikt 2001 Moskva -Pet&i. Moskva.

Levin, Ju. 1992a ‘Klassiceskie tradicii v “drugoj” literature’. Literaturnoe obozrenie,

Ng 2, 45-50.

Some Observations on Erofeev ‘s Podna ‘Moskva - PetuS ’ 65

1992b ‘Semiosfera VeniCki Erofeeva’. Sbornik statej k 70-let@ projY Ju.M. Lotmana. Tartu, 486-500.

1996 Kommentarij kpoeme “Moskva - Petuski”. Graz. Lipoveckij , Mark

1992 ‘Apofeoz Eastic, ili dialogi s chaosom (Zametki o klassike, Vene- dikte Erofeeve, Poeme “Moskva - PetuSki” i russkom postmo- demizme)‘. Znamja, 8,214-224.

Lotman, Ju.M. 1968 ‘Problema chudoiestvemrogo prostranstva v proze Gogolja’. Trudy

po russkoj i slavjanskojj;lologii, XI, Literaturovedenie. Tartu, 5-50. 1979 ‘The Origin of Plot in the Light of Typology’, Poetics Today, Vol.

l:l-2, 161-184. Papemo, I.A., Gasparov, B.M.

1981 SEukin, Vasilij

“‘Vstan’ i idi”‘. Slavica Hierosolymitana, V-VI, 387-400.

1997 Mif dvorjanskogo gnezda. Geokul ‘turologi2eskoe issledovanie po russkoj klassiCeskoj literature. Krakow.

Singleton, Amy C. 1997 No Place Like Home. The Literary Artist and Russia’s Search for

Cultural Identity. New York. Skoropanova, IS.

1999 ‘Karta postmodemistskogo mar&uta: Moskva - Pet&i Ven. Erofeeva’. Russkaja postmodernistskaja literatura. Moskva, 145 182.

Smimova, E.A. 1990 ‘Venedikt Erofeev glazami gogoleveda’. Russkaja literatura, 3, 58-

66. Utechin, Il’ja

2001 Oc’erki kommunal’nogo byta. Moskva.