Copyright
This edition first published in the United States in 2007 by
The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.
141 Wooster Street
New York, NY 10012
www.overlookpress.com
For bulk and special sale orders, contact [email protected],
or write us at the above address.
Copyright © 2007 by Alexander Levitsky
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
Portions of this book are from the author’s earlier volumes: Life Class, Hotel Splendide, Small Beer, and I Love You, I Love You, I Love You
ISBN: 978-1-4683-1415-1
CONTENTS
COPYRIGHT
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
TABLE OF TRANSLITERATION
A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATIONS
WORLDS OF RUSSIAN FANTASY
In lieu of an introduction, a survey of Russian Fantasy, including new translations of the Phantom of Phantasy, The Forest King, and Svetlana by V. A. Zhukovsky, “Tatiana’s Dream” from Eugene Onegin by A. S. Pushkin, and The Murza’s Vision by G. R. Derzhavin.
PART I
RUSSIAN EARLY-MODERN FANTASY AND UTOPIAN THOUGHT
SECTION A. From Folk Myth to the Fantastic in Early Modern Russian Literature
A1. Foregrounding Travel in Space: Fantastic and Utopian Scapes of Bygone Years
Selections from Medieval Rusian Literature, Folk Tales and Epos, including The Lay of Prince Igor’s Campaign, Orison on the Downfall of Rus, Vasilisa The Beautiful, Marya Morevna, Svyatogor, and Iliya of Murom. Also included are new translations of three “Dreams” from The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum, Written by Himself by Archpriest Avvakum, and Evening and Morning Meditations on the Majesty of God by Mikhailo Vasil’evich Lomonosov.
A2. The Fantastic in Early-Modern Russian Poetry and Prose
Derzhavin, Gavrila Romanovich (1743-1816)
From the ode God
The Magic Lantern
Zlogor
Pushkin, Alexander Sergeevich (1799-1837)
Autumn
The Bronze Horseman
The Queen of Spades. (Transl. by Gillon R. Aitken)
Lermontov, Mikhail Iurievich (1814-1841)
Demon [A proem]
The Dream
Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich (1818-1883)
The Phantoms [abridged]
Two Poems in Prose from Senilia
A3. Arabesque and Bizzare Universes of Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol [-Yanovsky] (1809-1852)
Vyi [abridged] (Transl. by Carl Proffer)
Nevsky Prospekt (Transl. by Alexander Tulloch)
The Diary of a Madman (Transl. by Alexander Tulloch)
The Nose
SECTION B. Early-modern Utopias and Dostoevsky’s responses to Utopian thought
B1. Three Early-Modern Russian Utopias
Bulgarin, Faddei Venediktovich (1789-1859)
From The Plausible Fantasies. (Transl. by Leland Fetzer)
Odoevsky, Vladimir Fyodorovich (1803-1869)
From The Year 4338. Letters from St. Petersburg. (Transl. by Leland Fetzer)
Chernyshevsky, Nikolai Gavrilovich (1828-1889)
From What is to be Done: “Vera Pavlovna’s Fourth Dream.” (Transl. by Leland Fetzer)
B2. Three Responses to Utopian Thought by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821-1881)
Bobok
The Little Boy at the Savior’s Christmas Tree
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
PART II
MODERN RUSSIAN FANTASY, UTOPIA AND SCIENCE FICTION
SECTION C. Russia’s Silver Age and the Fantastic of the Twenties and Thirties
C1. Sampling Russian Symbolist Enigmas
Blok, Alexander Alexandrovich (1880-1921)
The Stranger
From The Twelve
Briusov, Valery Iakovlevich (1873-1924)
Dust Demons
The Republic of the Southern Cross (Transl. by Leland Fetzer)
Sologub [Teternikov], Fyodor Kuzmich (1863-1927)
The Asteroid
A Little Man (Transl. by Maurice Friedberg)
Bely, Andrei [Bugaev, Boris Nicholaievich] (1880-1934)
Demon
From St. Petersburg
(Transl. by Robert A. Maguire and John E. Malmstad)
C2. Russia’s Modernist and Post-Symbolist Prose.
Kuprin, Alexander Ivanovich (1870-1938)
A Toast (Transl. by Leland Fetzer)
Liquid Sunshine (Transl. by Leland Fetzer)
Remizov, Alexei Mikhailovich (1877-1957)
The Bear Cub
The Blaze
From the novels Russia in a Whirlwind and In a Rosy Light
Zamiatin, Evgeny Ivanovich (1884-1937)
The Dragon
The Cave (Transl. by Gleb Struve)
From We [Records 1-4] (Transl. by Samuel Cioran)
Pilniak, Boris Andreevich (1894-1937)
A Year in Their Life
From The Naked Year
[Chapter VII and The Last Triptych]
C3. The Waning of Modernism in Post-revolutionary Years.
Zabolotsky, Nikolai Alekseevich (1903-1958)
Signs of Zodiac
Human of the Snows
Kharms, Daniel [Yuvachev] (1905-1942)
The Young Man who Surprized the Watchman.
The Dream
Yuri Olesha, Yuri Karlovich (1899-1960)
Love
On the Fantasy of H. G. Wells
Bulgakov, Mikhail Afanasievich (1891-1940)
The Fatal Eggs. (Translated by Carl Proffer)
From Master and Margarita [Chapters 20 and 21]
SECTION D: Pre-Soviet & Soviet Visions of Outer Space
Bogdanov [Malinovsky], Alexander Alexandrovich (1873-1928)
From The Red Star. (Transl. by Leland Fetzer)
Tolstoy, Alexei Nikolaevich (1883-1945)
From Aelita. (Transl. by Leland Fetzer)
Platonov [Klimentov], Andrei Platonovich (1899-1951)
From The Sun, the Moon, and the Ether Channel Transl. by Elliott Urday and A. L.)
Efremov, Ivan Antonovich (1907-1972)
From The Andromeda Nebula
SECTION E: On Contemporary Russian Fantasy and Science Fiction. A Postcript by Sofya Khagi
Bibliography and Suggested Readings
Permissions
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
A.L. and M. K. —Alexander Levitsky and Martha T. Kitchen
ed. —edited by
intro. —intoduced by
L. —Leningrad
M. —Moscow
N.Y. —New York
P. —Press
SF —Science Fiction
St. P. —Saint Petersburg
tr. —Translated by
U. —University
TABLE OF TRANSLITERATION
The Library of Congress system of transliteration with the diacritical marks omitted is used in this anthology, with the following exceptions: a. commonly used spellings of place-names or personal names (Moscow rather than Moskva, and Maria rather than Marriia); b. well-known writers (e.g. Fyodor Dostoevsky rather than Fiodor Dostoevskii; Boris Pilniak rather then Boris Pil’nik); c. certain well-know first names (but not patronymics) are spelled by their common published practice (such as Yuri rather than Iurii, Evgeny
rather than Evgenii, and Alexander rather than Aleksandr); d. surnames ending with “-skii” are given throughout as “sky” (for example, Zabolotsky rather than Zabolotskii).
A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATIONS
In compiling an anthology, space considerations always impose difficult choices. This is true even for collections dealing with fairly narrow or self-limiting themes—perhaps the works of a single author or literary school, or of a particular historical period. The present volume has broader ambitions. We hop to provide the general reader with an introduction to the incredibly rich trove of fantasy and science fiction produced over the span of many centuries by Russia’s folk singers, fabulists, poets, novelists, and masters of other genres more difficult to pigeonhole.
About half of the works in this volume have been newly translated, with the remainder borrowed from previous publications. By necessity and choice, ours was not a unified method. Ideally every work would be presented in its entirety, but this is rarely possible and in fact was not practicable for us: some works are here in full form, and a few have been cut.
Naturally, shorter poetic works, such as the poems of Blok, Briusov and Zabolotsky were kept intact. But long verse narrative like Lermontov’s The Demon, or a lengthy text like Blok’s The Twelve, for example, are represented by selected excerpts. Our approach has been flexible in other ways as well. Pushkin’s The Bronze Horseman is also a narrative poem: although the work is brief enough to appear here in its entirety, our new translation renders only the prologue in rhymed verse. For the remainder we chose instead unrhymed but rhythmical prose (metered in iambic octameter), which we feel presents the imagery and themes of this seminal text to the general reader in a more accessible form, with paragraphs corresponding to the irregular stanzas by Pushkin. The same method was applied to Derzhavin’s folkloric Zlogor.
It is not really the case that translating prose is less demanding than translating poetry. Master prose writers—19th century “giants” like Dostoevsky, Gogol, and Turgenev, or 20th century classics like Bulgakov, Remizov, Pilniak, and Olesha—work with subtleties and shadings as complex as any poet’s. To convey some sense of this in English was a challenge that deepened our appreciation of their varied narrative genius.
Moreover, whenever possible we have been at great pains to match the scansion of an English line with its Russian original: our poetry translations are rhymed and retain their original meter, as we have taken seriously Joseph Brodsky’s axion: “Meter is everything.”
ALEXANDER LEVITSKY
MARTHA T. KITCHEN
WORLDS OF RUSSIAN FANTASY
(In lieu of an introduction)
The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
—ALBERT EINSTEIN
The New York Times headline of October 5, 1957 read:
SOVIET FIRES EARTH SATELLITE INTO SPACE;
IT IS CIRCLING THE GLOBE AT 18,000 M. P. H.;
SPHERE TRACKED IN 4 CROSSINGS OVER U.S.
MY AGE-WORN and yellowed copy of this issue has someone’s inscription pencilled in red block letters over the headline. It reads: A NEW WORLD HAS BEEN BORN. “Astonished” is the first verb in the lead article conveying the reaction of the directors of the United States’ earth-satellite program. Such were indeed the feelings around the globe about this date, or rather about the previous day (October 4 of the International Geophysical Year), when the first man-made object capable of defying gravity was actually hurled into space. Beeping by radio signals at regular intervals from the blackness of the star-studded skies, it inspired excitement and awe—of a kind that previously had only been dreamed of in works of literature, especially science-fiction.1
The launch of this first Sputnik—the Soviet Space Program had chosen the name, which in Russian denotes “a fellow traveler”—was deemed by some a unifying expression of mankind’s universal desire to explore the heretofore uncharted zones of space. But the same date also marked the brutal police suppression of student demonstrations in Poland—the Soviet Union’s political satellite on terra firma—a story which also appeared on the front page of that day’s Times. In this sense the date served to remind realists of how divided the globe still was; indeed, it sent the American government, unwilling to be included as a Soviet “fellow traveler” in the political sense, into a funding frenzy. Dozens upon dozens of new Russian Studies programs were created at American universities, with the express purpose of educating their students to avoid this fate. For the same social system, which had finally accomplished the technological marvel of a space flight—formerly found only in utopias of imagined future worlds—was in itself derived from earlier Russian utopian dreams. These dreams, however, had gone terribly wrong and had caused the extermination of Russia’s own citizens—by tens of millions—in concentration camps scattered all across the eleven time zones of the Soviet Union’s geographic space.
Time seemed to accelerate for mankind at an ever increasing pace after Sputnik was launched into space. It was only a few years later that a man within another metallic sphere was hurled into orbit and felt for himself the vastness of the universe surrounding his Earth. As if tied to it by an umbilical cord, he was still held in orbit by gravity, but within several years more he felt confident enough to tear himself from Earth and walk for the first time on another celestial body—the Moon. Dizzying advances in technology, particularly computer technology, led some to believe during these years that the moment had come in which technology itself, with its power to expand man’s mind, could transcend Mankind and assure us of a computer-android Eden—not only on the Earth, but eventually throughout interplanetary space.
But as we chart our course in a new century and contemplate its unknowable unfolding, a future governed by technology and predicated on rational thought seems a rather less desirable proposition than it did in 1957. The centrifugal forces of globalism, bolstered by rapid advances in information technology, could potentially free mankind to participate in a new world without borders—some even maintain to create a brave new world without material want. Yet such developments threaten other needs of man. Irrational or undesirable these needs might appear to some, stemming as they do from human experiences gained in more limited polities: nation, tribe, family, cultural roots, and native tongues. Nonetheless they are respected by those who define man in broader terms than simply by his ability to reason. We stand on the threshold of the third millennium, in which the diversity of human languages is declining at a rate that outstrips even the notoriously swift decline in bio-diversity. At such a moment it might behoove us to reflect on the roots of culture, and of Russian culture in particular, considering the fact that it has just celebrated a millennium of its own rich and continued growth. Such a turn seems to be especially warranted since Russia and the vast Soviet Union it created and dominated for the last seventy years of that millennium, has in our recent past conducted social experimentation on the most grandiose scale—anticipating “global village” advocates—experimentation which failed miserably after decades of tinkering with the concept of Man.
Of course, Russia has offered the world not only a technological realization of a man’s dream to fly. Indeed, our volume attempts within its modest confines to chart a reflection of Russian cultural history as it moved through its works of literature often in defiance of any commonplace notions of conquering so-called objective reality. These include escapes to the worlds generated by fantasy-making, which—along with idealistic visions of futures founded on advances in science and technology—offer their rejection as well by those who scoff at any kin
d of imposed social order. Beginning with folk tales and folk epics, the volume charts all kinds of imaginative scapes on a path between the netherworld and the stars, both in their physical and spiritual manifestations. It offers literary dreams and other-worldly visitations, satires, as well as the utopias merging science and fiction, chronologically ending roughly at the time when Sputnik was launched into space.
Let us note that the term “utopian literature” is subject to many definitions and can incorporate many separate genres. It thus becomes not very useful, unless one speaks only of literature closely resembling the content and the rhetorical departure of a much earlier work, Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, or at least his understanding of the word itself (which he derived from the Greek ou and topos, denoting literally “no place”). If understood in More’s usage (he sometimes employed the term Nusquama derived from the Latin nusquam or “nowhere” when he referred to his book), and if, in addition, one keeps in mind that the story of Utopia is told by Raphael Hytloday (his family name derived from the Greek hutlos meaning “nonsense” and loosely translated as Raphael the Nonsense-speaker, then at least one half of More’s design implies any other but a “real” place, that is a truly fictional place for the setting of his Book Two. Book One, on the other hand, consists of an unveiled satire on 16th-century England and as such constitutes a narrative with a “real” place as its implied setting. It is important to note that More’s respective settings coexist in the same time frame; a prospective “future,” if any, is only implied for England in the sense that it might imitate some of the customs of Utopians, including their communal living, moneyless economy, etc., which, if adopted, could turn England (also an island society) into Utopia almost overnight. More’s narrator does not expect this to happen as he ends the book. In other words, Utopia represents for More primarily a mental projection of a moral ideal attainable at any time, should the inhabitants of any commonwealth choose to embrace the ways of Utopia. The Renaissance’s second most famous utopia, Tommaso Campanella’s poetical dialogue, La Citta del Sole (The City of the Sun)—though different from More’s in many striking aspects—is nearly identical to it in its formal design, describing an island communal society, surrounded by a wall, coexisting in time with the narrative dialogue describing its ways. For that reason and for clarity’s sake, we shall employ the word utopia throughout our text as having a neutral sense in terms of its time displacement or value judgement as to the desirability of its imagined world. Eutopia, desired or positive utopia will be the terms used to describe “the good place” from the vantage point of its author, whereas dystopia, admonitory or cautionary utopia will denote the converse.
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