The Naked Year (20 page)

OUTSIDE THE TRIPTYCH, at the end

The day is white and motionless. And towards evening there's a snowstorm–mean, January-like. The wolves howl.

–And white granddad over the stove, white granddad tells his grandchildren the tale of the juicy apple: “Play, play, pipes! Amuse dear father, my native mother. They ruined me, wretch that I am, in the dark forest they killed me for a silver dish, for the juicy apple.” The snowstorm rages in windy streets, falls in a powder of snowy dust, in murkiness, in cold. It's warm up on the stove, among the fleas, the steamy bodies: “Awaken me, daddy, from my heavy sleep, get me the water of life.” “And he came to the forest, dug up the earth on a flowery knoll and sprinkled a twig with the water of life, and his daughter of unspeakable beauty awakened from her long sleep.” “Ivan Tsarevich, why did you burn my frog's coat, –why?”

–The forest stands stern like a stockade and the snowstorm hurls itself against it like furies. Night. Is the saga-legend about how the knights died not about the forest and snowstorm? –More and more snowstorm furies hurl themselves against the forest stockade, howling, yelling, shouting, roaring like wrathful women, dead animals fall, and after them the furies still rush, they never decrease, –they increase like the snake's heads–two for each one cut off, and the forest stands like Ilya-Muromets.

Kolomna

Nikola-Na-Posadyakh

25 December. Old Style. 1920.

AFTERWORD

Boris Andreevich Pilnyak was born Boris Wogau in 1894 in the provincial town of Mozhaisk, of mixed Russian, Tatar, German and Jewish blood. He spent his childhood in provincial towns of central Russia, starting school in Saratov, finishing it in Nizhny-Novgorod (1913). Later he completed an economics course in the Moscow Commercial Institute (1920). He was first published in 1909, and began his career as a serious writer for “thick” literary journals in 1915. Three small books (1918, 1920, 1922) preceded
The Naked Year–
the novel which established his reputation.

His earliest writings deal with the biological nature of life, and in these, as in later works, his dominant message is that violence is an inherent component of life–life as we know it may even depend on this violence for its survival. A question continually elicited from the reader is that in a universe originating in violent conflict between opposing forces, how can its various components be other than violent? Pilnyak seems to be saying something like this: if you look under a microscope, what do you see? You see in microcosm the very essence of life; you see minute organisms continually in motion, continually in conflict, colliding with each other. If you look at higher forms of life–birds, animals, man–what do you see? You see that here too life depends for its existence on movement and the necessary clashes and collisions this involves. Is it possible, we are being asked, that wars, rebellions and revolutions are little more than molecular collisions being enacted on a larger scale? This thesis leads naturally to Darwinian ideas of survival depending on strength, and it was precisely this philosophy which provided the theme for Pilnyak's early story “Over the Ravine” (1915). This is a fable in the Aesopian tradition, with birds assuming human qualities and depicting their struggle for the right to live. Only the mighty survive, and, when the central “character” loses his potency and ability to defend his mate, unsympathetic nature in the shape of a healthy young bird becomes ruler of the roost.

Pilnyak welcomed the Revolution, but his interpretation of its causes and attitude to its progress proved to be too unorthodox, too individualistic for an age which demanded blanket committment to the cause. And like many other “fellow travelers” Pilnyak became an anachronism, fusing the stylistic techniques and approach of the old Symbolists with a view of the Revolution diametrically opposed to that of the Marxists. He welcomed it as a violent upheaval which would rid Russia of the merchant classes, but at the same time Pilnyak believed it had a messianic role to fulfill in reasserting Russia's ancient, oriental past. For him, the Revolution was Alexander Blok's spiritual, Eastern Russia violently reacting against the superstructure of Western influence; her backward, peasant nature triumphing over the “civilized” towns and European veneer which had been so dominant since the seventeenth century. Pilnyak was, in fact, a latter-day Slavophile whose preoccupation with the Slavophile origin of the Revolution caused him to disregard the effects of the Revolution and concentrate on its causes. Indeed, during the late Twenties and early Thirties, when he did make an attempt to obey the Social Command, his writings were often feeble and unimaginative reflections of the powerful experimental prose of a decade earlier.

When in 1920 Pilnyak came to write
The Naked Year
, ideas such as those expressed in “Over the Ravine” were expanded and fused with his Slavophile ideas to produce a literary experiment of great power and influence. Writing in the vein of his contemporaries Bely and Remizov, Pilnyak poured into his work ideas on revolution, historical development and sociological evolution which later provided valuable material for those who wished to attack him for his unorthodoxy.

The very shape of this novel is anti-Western. The traditional novel had evolved from Western culture, and its traditional components, such as character development and plot structure, did not lend themselves easily to Pilnyak's purpose. In order to depict the Revolution in terms of an anti-Western rebellion, and at the same time portray its chaotic nature, it was necessary that the form of the novel should also bear as little resemblance as possible to anything in Western culture, and produce feelings of confusion and incomprehension in the reader. Thus at first sight, to the uninitiated reader, the novel resembles an unsystematic collection of random jottings, disjointed or unrelated camera shots of the violence and disorder which characterized the Revolution. And in
The Naked Year
characters do not develop in the “normal” way–they are presented in an impressionistic manner. They have little or no psychology and appear only to portray different viewpoints of the Revolution, or as the various aspects of pre- and post-Revolutionary society the author wishes to portray at a given moment. While in the traditional novel characters respond to and develop within the action of the rest of the narrative, in
The Naked Year
the role normally played by the
dramatis personae
is largely taken over by symbolism and allegory. For example, in this and most of Pilnyak's other works, nature assumes anthropomorphic dimensions in its role of symbolizing the stability and permanence of peasant Russia. And the house in which the central characters, the Ordinins, live, stands as a monument to the past which has now been swept away by the forces of history. Moreover, the conflict of personalities within its walls represents the ideological conflict outside. For a hundred years the house has stood as a symbol of Tsarism in Russia, just as now its decaying walls and syphilitic inhabitants symbolize both the destructive powers unleashed by the events of 1917 and the putrescence of the society from which it came.

Moving away from the general symbol of the Ordinin house, Pilnyak then proceeds to the particular symbols of the members of the Ordinin household. The most important of these are Gleb, the truth-seeking artist, celibate and pure; his brother Yegor, the drunkard; Boris the syphilitic, and Marfusha the maid. The only member of the family who could possibly be deemed a useful member of society is Natalya, who becomes a Bolshevik. The incongruity of Natalya within the family is summed up by Boris who says of her, –“Gleb is degenerate, Katerina is degenerate, Lidia is degenerate, –Natalya's the only human being.”

The textual importance and social significance of these characters is manifested not by their actions or reactions to situation, but by a series of conversations which take place either among themselves or with other characters in the novel who are outside the Ordinin family circle. For instance, the chapter entitled “The House of the Ordinins” is divided into three parts–the general introduction, the second part (“Two Conversations. Old Men”), and the dénouement. The first part introduces the characters, sets the scene, and lays out the themes to be dealt with in the following sections. We are reminded of the hangovers from a by-gone age by the princess who still clings to her grand routine of distributing the maids' duties, and by the old prince who retreats more and more into a world of make-believe, wrapping himself in the overcoat of religion to protect himself from the icy blast of revolution. But the children express a genuine, if confused, interest in the events going on outside and in “Two Conversations. Old Men,” and “Dénouements,” the inquiring minds of the generation of the Revolution are examined and analysed. In the conversations between Gleb and the old priest, Sylvester, the conflict between the Old and the New Russia is highlighted. Gleb, like Pilnyak, is unclear in his mind about his attitude to the Revolution. Both welcome it as the destroyer of the merchant-capitalist classes, but both realize also that Western influence, far from being removed, has actually been enhanced by that same Revolution. Here, as in a famous later story entitled “Mahogany” (1929), Pilnyak holds up artisan and artistic Russia as proof that essential Russia is inviolable. The Bolsheviks and their philistine henchmen may have gained the upper hand militarily, but they will never succeed in destroying the peasant roots and values of the nation.

Gleb anticipates “Mahogany” when he declares that the true Russian art is to be found in the churches of Novgorod, Pskov, and Suzdal:

“Our greatest artists”–says Gleb quietly, “who are superior to Da Vinci, Correggio, Perugino–are Andrei Rublyov, Prokopy Chirin and those nameless ones who are scattered about the Novgorods, Pskovs, Suzdals, Kolmnas, about our monasteries and churches. And what art they had, what talent! How they solved the most complicated artistic problems…”

For Gleb, native Russian art is virtually synonymous with Russia's spiritual essence; it is Russia's soul and the technological revolution which was initiated in Russia by the 1917 Revolution is tantamount to an attempt to destroy it:

The machine culture forgot about the culture of the spirit, the spiritual. And recent European art: in painting–either the poster or the hysteria of protest, in literature–either the stock market and detectives, or adventures among aborigines. European culture is a cul-de-sac. The rulers of Russia during the past two centuries, since Peter, have wanted to adopt this culture. Russia languished in a stifling, utterly Gogolian atmosphere. And the Revolution set Russia against Europe. And furthermore. Immediately after the first days of the Revolution, Russia, in its way of life, customs and towns,–returned to the seventeenth century.

In the second of these conversations Prince Boris discusses similar themes with his father, Evgraf. Evgraf was intended by Pilnyak to represent the displaced aristocracy who tried in desperation to convince themselves that history had not caught up with them, and that the Revolution was nothing more than a dreadful nightmare. Despite Evgraf's assertion that religion is not a haven of peace for him in a world gone berserk, everything about him suggests that a sanctuary is precisely what religion
is
for him. His room is filled with ikons, statues and holy books, and the very atmosphere of his room, impregnated with incense and a church-like gloom, suggests the solitude of sequestered cloisters rather than the battlefield of the Revolution. In Evgraf's room time has not moved forward for centuries, and the hallowed walls pesistently refuse to admit that the October Revolution has happened. Like the room, Evgraf portrays a morbid fear of change or of anything which threatens to undermine the status quo which he so desparately wants to preserve. When Boris informs him that he (Boris) is dying of syphilis, his only reaction is: “I don't know, I don't know.… Go away, Bolshevik!”

Not even the crisis in his own family, a crisis which threatens him also, can elicit any positive response from him: he, and by implication his class, choose not to come to terms with social problems but to ignore them in the vain hope that they will melt away of their own accord.

The final part, “Dénouements,” deals with the fates of the three Ordinin daughters, Lidia, Katerina and Natasha. The first two, like Boris, are ridden with syphilis. They reinforce the previous descriptions of degeneracy and appear merely for the purpose of disclosing that they are carriers of the “shameful disease” (Pilnyak frequently emphasizes the moribund state of the aristocracy by symbolic references to syphilis), and to serve as a contrast to Natasha, the only member of the family who responds to the events of the times. She is the new breed of woman, devoted to the Bolsheviks and scornful of the bourgeoisie and its surviving characteristics of social behavior, among which she includes love. (She terms love “banality and suffering.”) She admits only of the existence of the mind, denying herself all sensual pleasures and stating categorically that the Revolution is the one consuming passion in her life.

“I'm a Bolshevik, Gleb. Now you know, Gleb, as I know, that the most valuable things are bread and boots, right?–dearer than all theories, because without bread and the factory worker you will die and all your theories will die. But it's the peasants who give bread. Let the peasants and factory workers themselves dispose of the valuables.”

Another technique for exposition (and one which is perhaps more original) is Pilnyak's use of such sections as those entitled “Through the Eyes of Andrei”, “Through the Eyes of Natalya”, “Through the Eyes of Irina.” As in the conversations, this technique can obviously be used to convey personal opinions or interpretations of events. But the stylistic value is increased by his confining it to one chapter (“About Freedoms”) in that its effect is not lessened by over-indulgence. To deal with the themes incorporated in this chapter by conversational exchanges would have been less successful for two principal reasons. In the first place there would have been a danger of merely repeating the arguments and format of
Chapter Two
; and the “action” of the novel would have been considerably reduced. By its very nature, conversation can only present actions or events at second hand; in
Chapter Three
the illusion is created in the reader's mind that he is witnessing events as they occur.

Secondly, conversations are limited within time. Reality as expressed in conversations can only refer to the past or the present; the future is of necessity reduced to conjecture, and as such, conversational exposition gives little scope for portraying the consequences and practical results of opinions or ideas. By constructing the chapter as a juxtaposition of component units, each being the “Weltanschauung” of different individuals caught up in the vortex of the Revolution, the author illustrates in practical terms the causal forces of the Revolution and also the results of the interaction of these forces in a more graphic and demonstrable manner. There is also another advantage this device has over pure conversation. The protagonists of this chapter fulfill a dual function simultaneously. They represent various views of the Revolution; but they all serve also as concrete examples of man's eternal searching for abstract, absolute freedom. The Revolution was fought in the name of a “freedom,” but as Pilnyak demonstrates in this novel, there is no absolute freedom, because definitions of freedom differ from person to person. Prince Andrei Volkovich seeks his freedom among the anarchists, whose “freedom” depends on their ability to deprive others of their freedom: