Women in the dystopian world...

Continuing on the theme of We as more than a dystopian mouthpiece for Zamyatin, Boris Lanin traces the history of women in Russian 'anti-utopian' literature. Lanin begins his analysis with We and its relationship to images of women in medieval times. Images of women were often found with the word 'diabulos' written underneath and I-330 belongs to the Mefi organization (Mefi from Mephistopheles). For Lanin this relationship of woman to demon suggests a deeper relationship to the genre than to overarching themes of 'the primordial corruptness of female nature.'

In Onestate, I-330 represents all of the society's prohibitions and is 'a strong-willed woman who is in love with [D-503] but who, incidentally, gets nothing from her beloved.' For Lanin, love and the 'unruliness of the flesh' are ways to combat the 'lifeless thought' enforced by the state and also ways of expressing the 'I.' Moments of lovemaking are personal and private, both of which are things the state in anti-utopian literature seeks to destroy. Intimacy becomes a means of rebellion by creating a new world that exists only for the people involved and not for the surrounding state.

Lanin also notes the hostility toward women in other works like Chevengur, Moscow 2042 and Makanin's The Escape Hatch. In Chevengur women are equated with the bourgeoisie and often with death (Kopenkin's desire for Rosa Luxemburg as conflict of Eros and Thanatos and this quote from a gypsy woman, 'А мы шли, шли - да и дошли а вы могили роете, а невест хороших у вас нету.') As Chevengur is a world without women, Lanin thinks all anti-utopias are necessarily anthropocentric and more so, 'androcentric,' worlds where only men are valued.

ФАКТЫ. КОЛОКОЛ. Я УВЕРЕН.

We is often shackled with the problems facing most utopian novels; critics rarely look past the political/social commentary to focus on subtexts and aesthetic achievements. Two articles I've read recently investigate new approaches to Zamyatin's work. Gray Rosenshield's article, "The Imagination and 'I' in Zamjatin's We" is concerned with D-503's transformation from rational scientist to imaginiative poet. The act of writing a journal begins the protagonist's change and it continues in his later desires to write a poem for the Integral and later his overall choice in style of writing. D-503's choice in language and description move from, "[i]mpersonal, precise, and self-assured definitions and logical syntax give way to an array of dazzling color, disjointed word order, and emotionally chared similes and metaphors from teh world of nature." (54) Rosenshield sites the following passage:

Мы шли двое -- одно. Где-то далеко свозь туман чуть слышно пело солнце, все наливалось упругим, жемчужным, золотым, розовым, красным. Весь мир -- единая необъятная женщина, и мы -- в самом ее чреве, мы еще не родились, мы радостно зреем. И мне ясно, нерусимо ясно: все -- для меня солнце, туман, розовое, золотое -- для меня...

Rosenshield points out that through out the novel neither side wins out and the poet and mathematician continue to battle for supremacy in D-503's life. However, what survives D-503 might provide some evidence as to what side is the possible winner. The Integral and D-503's journal are the fruits of both the mathematician's and the poet's labors. What's important for Rosenshield is the shift in muses from the Integral to I-330 and this completes the metamorphosis from mathematician to poet. Though we have products from both of D-503's personalities, the one that matters is the one that comes later as a result of his love for a woman. Imagination and poetry are the important factors and will survive in even the most strict of governments. Even if the state removes D-503's memories and destroys his love, his memoir lives on beyond it.

На старости лет ты побираться будешь...

Angela Livingstone's article on Chevengur deals with the "indifferent tenderness" or "absolutely unemphatic lyricism" of Platonov's prose. Readers, for Livingstone, are often the "protected witness and judge," but in this novel the narrator undermines the normal relationship between himself and the reader. Platonov's novels deliberately expose the reader to "an unusual degree of anguish or insecurity," through several methods.

Livingstone's initial analysis focuses on a syntactical and semantic elements of the text. Bizarre juxtapositions and textual choices undermine the anticipated narrator/reader relationship as she points out with the text below.

Уныло и жарко начинался долгий день; солнце, как слепота, находилось равнодушно над низовою бедностью земли; но другого места для жизни не было дано. (from Котлован)

How can the day begin both, "hot and depressed/dejected" or how is the "sun like blindness?" By combining subjective and objective adverbs (уныло и жарко) or seemingly incoherent comparisons (солнце как слепота) Platonov, "discourages thought while provoking anxiety and anger." In the article, Livingstone will continue use close textual analysis to argue that Platonov's style upsets reader by the means of illogical turns of phrase or indifference in description during heavily emotional moments (descriptions of the famine, death of children, etc.)

One of the important stylistic choices that separates Chevengur from We and The Red Star is the place of the narrator in the context of the novel. Both Bogdanov and Zamyatin use the first person narrator as a device to provide us a different context for the reader. Bogdanov's revolutionary narrator, Leonid, and can be seen as a contemporary of the reader. D-503 is a futuristic counterpart who becomes the reader's representative of the futuristic society. Between these narrators is the dialogue of what 'we' see (Leonid) and what 'they' see (D-503) and how we as the reader are supposed to react to these narratives. With Leonid, the reader identifies with his shock and naivete when encountering the new world of utopian Mars. D-503 does the opposite by calmly reporting events we should find shocking (pink slips for procreation, marches as the only acceptable music). If we agree with Livingstone, Platonov's narrator does the opposite by creating no context or ability for the reader to relate to the narrator. Linguistic choices and "indifference," in addition to the novel's content, are the means by which Platonov can create an atmosphere of dystopia.

Heaven on Earth...

Further investigations in the realm of modernist utopias lead me to an article by Renata Galtseva and Irina Rodnyanskaya titled, "The Obstacle: The Human Being, or the Twentieth Century in the Mirror of Dystopia." The article is a retrospective overview of utopian and dystopian works highlighting the familiar favorites (1984, Brave New World, We, Chevengur) as well as other works less frequently seen as part of this canon (Life and Fate, The Castle, Invitation to a Beheading). What comes of this study is a paradigm of the major tropes of utopian and dystopian works. Eugenics, the absence of passion, collectivism, art without freedom, and even overcoming death all play part in what the authors will define as the true goal of a social utopia:

"While the proclaimed goal of social utopias is the general well-being, the remaking of the individual, undertaken for this purpose, soon reveals itself as the only real goal." (310)

Removing individuality becomes the central hurdle of all the fictitious dystopian worlds as is evidenced by the reeducation of the protagonist(s) into a correct way of thinking presented in the ideologies of the state (Ingsoc, Sole State Science, etc.) Not to belabor the point of utopias being new 'heavens' on earth and thus a substitute for the New Jerusalem of Judeo-Christian (J-C from here on out) thought, Galtseva and Rodnyanskaya do point out the overlap from religious to secular developments.

Salvation is the ultimate goal of both the utopian philosophy and the J-C theology. They write, "A utopia proposes to consider its immutable and final decisions in everything regarding the person and the world as not subject to appeal in the court of history (for, as was said by the Chevengurean communards and undersigned by the ideally motionless world of Huexley, world history itself had ended)-that is, as salvationary. This is heaven: achieved in the new, last eon (century) and revoking the flow of time." (304) Along with this, there is the Christian baptism present in the rebirth, or renaming, that happens in a number of dystopian works (specifically, Christopher Columbus and Fedor Dostoevskii in Chevengur or the names and numbers of We). Ultimately, the dystopian writer, "cannot do without a reworking of the central Christian mystery," but the important difference between the J-C and utopian/dystopian traditions becomes how the writer does "not dispute [the] devilish argumentation" of the poem of the Grand Inquisitor. Freedom in these dystopian societies is viewed as chaotic and destructive and without any form of protection. The protagonists have to decide between the joyless safety of the State or the uncontrollable delight of freedom.

Finally, for the State to achieve victory over the 'obstacle,' the human being must become transparent to an almost literal degree. The nature of watching and voyeurism present in 1984, Brave New World, and We reveals the necessity of the state to know the inner-workings of its citizens. By rejecting the transparency of being like everyone else, the opaque protagonist holds on to the very thing that State can't allow, being unique.