by Robert Mueller


Reading Evgeny Zamyatin’s A Godforsaken Hole (Na kulichkakh, 1914), what is the novel like?
First of all, it is very funny. And famil­iar. And yet the strange thing is that those other nov­els and texts that it can remind you of would seem to come after; and it would not be any par­tic­u­lar writer or book, but merely the feel­ing of its being so familiar.

What is funny about this book?  Here we feel in Walker Foard’s trans­la­tion (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1988) the full effect of its capri­cious humor.  The magic of caprice does in fact lead to some­thing dif­fer­ent, some indi­ca­tion of Zamyatin’s genius and per­son­al­ity.  But the novel is known for its bit­ing satire, and it got on people’s nerves once they noticed it, and so they burned and banned it: “By decree of the Supreme Commissariat of the Committee of Culture under Special Arrangements of His Most Esteemed the Tsar Nicholas of Russia the Second, any and all pub­li­ca­tion, illus­tra­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion or infes­ta­tion what­so­ever of the writ­ings pur­ported to be unleashed under the title A Godforsaken Hole authored regret­tably by the pro­fane pen of one Evgeny Zamyatin are now and hereby placed in sub­jec­tion to penalty by law and out­rightly for­bid­den.” (offi­cial quo­ta­tion mine).

What got their goat?  It is hard to say.  How satir­i­cal is the novel?  I am not so sure the trans­la­tor has suc­ceeded in mak­ing the char­ac­ters real (Neorealism).  The humor, the eccen­tric­ity, the crazi­ness and goofi­ness all come across but only to point at how expo­sure of their hypocrisies might sting, not how the moral awful­ness graph­i­cally stows and swel­ters.  In other words, they come across, but not to bring them to life, these hypocrisies and these mis­er­able selves, these most appe­tiz­ingly mis­er­able parts of them.

Does the trans­la­tor deserve credit?  Yes.  We get hints, point­ers, the many signs and co-​​signs of the lit­er­ari­ness and its urg­ing fac­tors.  We get an idea of what sort of wicked char­ac­ter­i­za­tions of what sort of devi­ous char­ac­ters we just might expe­ri­ence were we graced with some sort of lust­ful trov­ing of Zamyatin’s actual crush­ing words.  We can at least see how we might know them to have them.

But, hold on.  What if you have fun with the translator’s words?  What if you make a delib­er­ate and care­ful effort?  What if you pay them close atten­tion, such as, for exam­ple, the geo­met­ri­cal (Andrei Ivanych’s fore­head) and geo­graph­i­cal (Molochko’s warts) aspects of face and fig­ure and body?  What if you chime in?  You just might get some of the gen­uine flair of the swords of the Zamyatin jug­ger­naut thrust­ing and par­ry­ing with all the might of deep-​​envisioned schlopp, deep-​​immersioned schmat­ter­ing.  So.  To the mat­ter of the round­ness of Captain Nechesa’s wife, to her total geometry:


The captain’s wife was lying in bed, small and com­pletely round: a round lit­tle face, round quick eyes, and tiny round ringlets on her fore­head ? in fact, all her charms were round.  The cap­tain had just given his spouse a smack on the cheek and left.  And the ring­ing of one of the glasses on the shelf, a result of the captain’s foot­steps, had not yet died down when in walked Lt. Molochko.  And hav­ing said hello, he pro­ceeded to smack the captain’s wife on the very spot that the cap­tain had chosen.

 

Ok, so some­thing obvi­ously shocks the author­i­ties; and though we our­selves are prob­a­bly not too shocked, say, by the loud kisses and army-​​camp famil­iar­i­ties, we are closer, we are approach­ing know­ing what it is like for the captain’s wife, either in mirth or dis­may.  It depends.

On most occa­sions Walker Foard suc­cess­fully ade­quates the humor of this or that clever image.  When Marusya (Captain Schmidt’s wife) is shown walk­ing over icy stretches of ground that resem­ble “an unkempt corpse,” the descrip­tion of her has noth­ing to do with her col­or­ful speech or some kind of rau­cous dis­play.  It is sim­ply a por­trait, and so it hits home in its sweet way:  “She buried her chin deeper into the soft fur: she became still more like some sort of timid, downy, pre­cious teddy bear.”  As indi­rectly voic­ing the feel­ings of her pie-​​eyed com­pan­ion, the idea is lovely.  Plus, there is noth­ing like this scene between Andrei Ivanych and his beloved for good-​​old traips­ing through des­o­late tracts.  It is one of the bet­ter scenes, in fact, for com­pre­hend­ing a character’s emo­tional sta­tus (Andrei’s emo­tions being insuf­fi­ciently hearty to war­rant a “state”).  As beloved, Marusya on her side is unwit­ting.  Or…  Or, if any­thing, still more press­ing unpleas­antries are afoot.  I invite you to find out.

Reading Zamyatin’s A Godforesaken Hole, what is it like?  Take “the gen­eral oozed like a pan­cake in oil.”  Not catchy, per­haps.  It lacks that spoon­lash­nos­ing swing of dipped dri­vel at its mealiest.  It lacks the nec­es­sary absorb­ing gump­tion.  Still, we know the type.  We are not sur­prised.  The gen­eral as glut­ton; gen­eral as nasty bas­tard pig.  The gen­eral as very civ­i­lized nasty bas­tard pig, as very civ­i­lized nasty bas­tard poly­sat­u­rat­ing Roman-​​style deeply fully gour­man­deer­ing greedy greasy lust­ing pig.  What else is new in perime­ter?  We feel for the horses and their miss­ing oats.

Did I men­tion that the novel is very funny?  Actually it’s hilar­i­ous, as in the scene at the offi­cers’ club.  The pasty, jolly fla­vor of the slarmy Russian dis­course does not come through in trans­la­tion, the wild and drunken scene with its wild and wit­less and delight­fully ridicu­lous singing.  Yet you can tell that there is a fla­vor.  And it’s hilarious.

Did I say delight­fully ridicu­lous?  I could have said depress­ingly ridicu­lous. This is pretty hilar­i­ous too, the moment of Zen for Andrei Ivanych and Marusya when their beau­ti­ful but­ter­flies of the soul go flut-​​flut-​​fluttering:


Never to be for­got­ten — stowed away in a trea­sure chest — was one par­tic­u­lar evening.  Glorious warm weather — peo­ple went with­out over­coats though it was November.  And then sud­denly a north wind blew in, the blue sky paled, and by evening ? winter.

Andrei Ivanych and Marusya didn’t light a fire; they sat lis­ten­ing intently to the rustling of the twi­light.  The air filled with plump flakes as mounds of snow formed, blue and quiet.  Quietly it sang a lul­laby ? float, float, rock in the waves of the twi­light, lis­ten, lull away the sadness…

Andrei Ivanych pur­posely sat away from Marusya in the far cor­ner of the couch: it was bet­ter that way.

That way there would be only what was most del­i­cate, most white — the snow.

 

They whis­per a few sweet noth­ings while the spell is about to be dis­solved, thusly:


Marusya’s face with its closed eyes was so ten­der, slightly bluish from the blue snow out­side; and what lips she had…  In order not to see ? for it was bet­ter not to see ? Andrei also closed his eyes.

But when they lit the lamp, noth­ing was there any­more, noth­ing of what had been vis­i­ble with­out the lamp.

And all those words about the bird doz­ing on a snow-​​covered tree, about the blue evening — they all seemed so pal­try, so ordi­nary, even a lit­tle funny.

But they were never to be forgotten.

 

If this pas­sage were really good satire, and I hap­pen to believe it is, we could not only track down the equal sen­ti­ments from the source and sources that are being del­i­cately par­o­died.  We could not only do that to absorb them into our lit­er­ary grasp; we could also have heard their famil­iar lilt­ing charm (Tolstoy?).  We can never hear that music in trans­la­tion, but we may some­how be able to know that we would if we could, and the knowl­edge that we could is in itself sat­is­fy­ing.  Meanwhile, satire is not just pok­ing fun but it is a full, a “sated,” and is this whole rats’ life stew, all that’s unfit to print in this god­for­saken world.


Well, I won’t go on.  I can’t go on.  I invite you to peruse the novel.  You’ll find out what hap­pens, to …


New York City
December, 2008

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Robert Mueller is a stu­dent of com­par­a­tive lit­er­a­ture, accord­ing to the indi­ca­tions on his advanced degree cer­tifi­cate.  He writes for fun, and he main­tains a curi­ous and con­stant inter­est in books of all kinds.  Mr. Mueller shares an apart­ment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side with two female cats, Rudy and Grace, a short­hair and a longhair.


Copyright ©2008, by Robert Mueller. All Rights Reserved.

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