{"id":491,"date":"2023-07-14T20:55:57","date_gmt":"2023-07-15T03:55:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/live-usc-dornsife.pantheonsite.io\/alexander-zholkovsky\/?page_id=491"},"modified":"2023-12-07T13:03:02","modified_gmt":"2023-12-07T21:03:02","slug":"palissandria","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/alexander-zholkovsky\/palissandria\/","title":{"rendered":"THE STYLISTIC ROOTS OF PALISANDRIIA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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<\/a><\/p>\n

THE STYLISTIC ROOTS OF\u00a0<\/b>PALISANDRIIA1<\/a><\/b><\/h2>\n

Alexander\u00a0 ZHOLKOVSKY (USC, Los Angeles)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Palisandriia\u00a0<\/em>is a major milestone in the development of Russian letters. In this his most recent fiction Sasha Sokolov has achieved the felicitous synthesis of elements that defines a “great novel.” His two most important successes consist in the creation of an unexpected but <\/a>immediately welcome central character and of an eccentric, yet in some sense timely verbal style to match the character and the related narrative problems. It is too early to judge where the book will eventually settle on the scale of Russian literary masterpieces, but Palisander does seem to belong with Evgenii Onegin, Koz’ma Prutkov, Khulio Khurenito, Ostap Bender, and Humbert Humbert.<\/p>\n

Although confined so far to the hothouse habitat of exile,\u00a0Pal\u00adisandriia\u00a0<\/em>has received prompt recognition from Western critics. Several pioneering studies have brought the novel to the attention of the Slavic field and sketched its thematic and textual profile. In what follows I concentrate on some specific facets of\u00a0Palisan\u00addriia’s\u00a0<\/em>style, assuming the reader\u2019s <\/a>familiarity both with the novel and its critical evaluations.2<\/a><\/b>\u00a0I begin with remarks on the various <\/a>types of intertextuality characteristic of the work, then focus on one major component of the novel’s intertextual back\u00adground, the “military and patriotic” tradition, and proceed to ex\u00adamine its refractions in the text, in particular, how it combines with its “decadent” opposite.<\/p>\n

\n

I. Intertexts and Style<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

1. The boundary between\u00a0style\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0intertextuality\u00a0<\/em>is in\u00adevitably problematic if <\/a>style is defined by the course the writer charts through the terrain staked out by those whose influence he is anxious to transcend.3<\/a><\/b>\u00a0This is especially so in a pointedly metaliterary text like Sasha Sokolov’s\u00a0Palisandriia,4<\/a><\/b>\u00a0<\/em>where almost every page abounds in quotations, allusions, collages, and pastiches. An intertextual companion to\u00a0Palisandriia\u00a0<\/em>would make a long book; here I will take from it only a few representative pages.<\/p>\n

Most obviously, there are the\u00a0explicit references<\/em>\u00a0–<\/em>–<\/em>literary names, critical terms, and quotations –which the graphoma\u00adniacal narrator ostentatiously drops throughout <\/a>the text: Derzhavin blessing Pushkin, Garshin and his suicide, Bobo\u00adrykin, Chekhov, Pasternak, Soloukhin\u00a0alias\u00a0<\/em>Solzhenitsyn (!); Lope de Vega, Skovoroda, Casanova, Balzac; Shakespeare and\u00a0The Merry Wives of Windsor,\u00a0<\/em>Joyce and\u00a0Ulysses,\u00a0<\/em>Beckett and\u00a0Godot;\u00a0<\/em>Andrei Bolkonskii’s oak, Gogol”s Major Kovalev; “the little man” of Russian literature, Acmeist benches, Symbolist esthetics;\u00a0“Vse tonet v fariseistve!” vspomnil i<\/em>a<\/em>\u00a0slova Pasternaka\u00a0<\/em>(p. 153); and more.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Equally unambiguous are well-known titles and quotations casually worked into the unsuspecting text:\u00a0“Oskorbliu i unizhu”\u00a0<\/em>(Dostoevskii),\u00a0dvorianskogo pozhilogo gnezda\u00a0<\/em>(Turgenev), the word\u00a0vakkhanaliia\u00a0<\/em>several lines away from Pasternak’s name,\u00a0musornyi veter\u00a0<\/em>(Platonov), v\u00a0nevidimykh miru<\/em>\u00a0slezakh\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0do smeshnogo skvoz’ slezy\u00a0<\/em>(Gogol’),\u00a0sred’ shumnogo bala\u00a0<\/em>(A. K.Tolstoi),\u00a0“Zatseluiu dop’iana”\u00a0<\/em>(Esenin).5<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

Next come\u00a0vaguer echoes,\u00a0<\/em>which are either too distorted or too generic or refer to motifs rather than to verbal texture and thus border on purely typological intertextuality. For the most part, however, their sources are still identifiable. Beriia’s pre-suicide words,\u00a0Akh, Iosif, Iosif, zachem ty ostavil nas, genatsvale?!<\/em>\u00a0(p. 10) sound like an echo of Christ’s lament on <\/a>the cross. The recur\u00adrent motif of an old soldier’s affected candor, especially ironic when praise rather than criticism is being “candidly” offered, may go back to Evgenii Shvarts’s Prime Minister in\u00a0Golyi korol’.\u00a0<\/em>The trysts Palisander has with\u00a0gorbataia i priduroshnaia pobirukha s … kladbishcha\u00a0<\/em>(p. 99) seem to derive from those be\u00adtween Fedor Pavlovich and Lizaveta Smerdiashchaia (Brat’ia Karamazovy<\/em>), while the\u00a0lopushok\u00a0<\/em>that supposedly\u00a0proizrastaet\u00a0<\/em>on her grave hints at Bazarov\u044ds view of life after death (Ottsy i deti<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Such bricolage of different sources is a recurrent device in\u00a0Palisandriia.\u00a0<\/em>The\u00a0gir’ka of khodikov\u00a0<\/em>that fell on the infant Pal\u00adisander’s nose because\u00a0raspalas’ sviaz’ vremen (p. 103)\u00a0<\/em>com\u00adbines a Sternian detail (in the opening scene of\u00a0Tristram Shandy)\u00a0<\/em>with Hamlet’s “the time is out of joint.” The multiple wordplay on the verb\u00a0igrat’ k\u00a0<\/em>propos the staged execution of Berina played by Major Gekuba (pp. 199-201)6<\/a>\u00a0draws on Pasternak’s poem about the actress playing Mary Stuart (“Skol’ko nado otvagi …” in the\u00a0Vakkhanaliia\u00a0<\/em>cycle), on the motif of gambling losses (ubiquitous in Russian literature), on a Khlestakov line\u00a0(v doroge … poizderzhish’sia; Gogol”s Revizor),\u00a0<\/em>and probably on the or\u00adchestra accompaniment of the execution in Nabokov’s\u00a0Priglashenie na kazn’.\u00a0<\/em>Sokolov’s verbal play is sometimes so intense that a mere word will boast a constellation of sources. The name of\u00a0stantsiia Emsk-Kabatskii<\/em>\u00a0(p. 69) results from the initial letter of\u00a0Moskva,\u00a0<\/em>the railway-bureaucratese toponymic pattern like\u00a0Moskva-Tovarnaia,\u00a0<\/em>the secrecy-styled toponym\u00a0Ensk\u00a0<\/em>(‘N\u00ad<\/em>ville,’ e. g. in Kaverin’s\u00a0Dva kapitana<\/em>),<\/em>and Esenin’s title “Moskva Kabatskaia.” In other cases it is less a superposition of sources than a hesitation between them. The indoor exchange of letters between Palisander and Moderati (pp. 244 ff.) may be modeled on Viacheslav Ivanov and Mikhail Gershenzon’s\u00a0Perepiska iz dvukh uglov\u00a0<\/em>or on similar practices in\u00a0Besy.\u00a0<\/em>In the same way, Palisander’s words\u00a0Molchit…. narod moi\u00a0<\/em>(p. 24)point toward the ending of\u00a0Boris Godunov (Narod bezmolvstvuet)\u00a0<\/em>just as much as toward\u00a0Mertvye dushi (Rus’-troika … ne daet otveta).<\/em><\/p>\n

One recurrent effect consists in a peculiar prosaization of verse material, whereby snippets of poetry are used as building blocks in characterization or narrative: Pushkin’s orgasmic\u00a0poslednie sodrogan’ia,\u00a0<\/em>Anna Akhmatova’s famous\u00a0perchatka s levoi ruki,\u00a0<\/em>the awakening that\u00a0zastigalo . . . vrasplokh\u00ad\u00a0<\/em>Pasternak-style,\u00a0rasstelena i postel’,\u00a0<\/em>from Evgenii Evtushenko, etc. Entire passages constitute expanded prosaic variations on the plot or structure of famous poems. The story of a heroine’s seduc\u00adtion by the\u00a0proezzhii kornet\u00a0<\/em>(p. 50) is a variation on the plot of “Chto ty zhadno gliadish’ na dorogu . . ?” (a popular song to the words of Nekrasov) amalgamated with that of another similar song (to the words of E. P. Grebenka’s “Moloda eshche is devitsa byla . . .”). The anaphoric sequence\u00a0guliaiu li <\/a>ia … , predaius’ li ia\u00a0<\/em>etc. (p. 21) mimics Pushkin’s “Brozhu li ia vdol’ ulits shumnykh . . .”). And even something as innocent as the gerun\u00addal phrase\u00a0shagaia . . . s kakikh-nibud’ obraztsovo-pokaza\u00adtel’nykh pokhoron . . .\u00a0<\/em>(p. 21) combines Akhmatova’s\u00a0opiat’ prishel s kakikh-to pokhoron\u00a0<\/em>(in her “Boris Pasternak”) with a Soviet cliche (spoofed in the style of Il’ia Il’f and Evgenii Petrov’s\u00a0dezhurno-pokazatel’nye shchi).\u00a0<\/em>Sometimes the <\/a>prosaization tar\u00adgets poets’ characteristic motifs rather than their specific texts, as in the quasi-Pasternakian passages with the wind,\u00a0galerei, zhaliuzi,\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0maliariino znobiashchie\u00a0<\/em>passions (pp. 17-8) and the trysts in a storm-ravaged garden (p. 183).7<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/a>Finally, as is only natural in so self-conscious a writer as Sokolov, there are semi-transparent references to his own name (Chasovoi vzvilsia sokolom,<\/em>\u00a0p. 9; ia gol kak sokol,<\/em>\u00a0p. 174) in the spirit and even the same avian code as\u00a0gordyi gogol’\u00a0<\/em>at the end of\u00a0Taras Bul’ba.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>2. Often intertexts form\u00a0clusters,\u00a0<\/em>which take the form of either\u00a0recurrent\u00a0<\/em>references to a single source or multiple <\/a>references\u00a0overdetermining\u00a0<\/em>a single detail.\u00a0Recurrence is\u00a0<\/em>illustrated by the above allusions to Pasternak.8<\/a><\/b>\u00a0The subtextual presence of Eduard Limonov, who is variously alluded to in\u00a0Palisandriia,9<\/a><\/b><\/em>\u00a0seems also to manifest itself in the episode of Palisander\u2019s dinner with Beckett. The scene reads as a replay of Limonov’s imaginary meeting with Salvador Dali in\u00a0My — natsional’nyi geroi<\/em>10<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>and a reformulation of the bid for acceptance by Western cultural figures. <\/a>Writing in the aftermath of both Limonov’s pre-emigra\u00adtion\u00a0My — natsional’nyi geroi\u00a0<\/em>and his post-emigration Eto\u00a0ia — \u00adEdichka\u00a0<\/em>11<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>Sokolov is able to subsume and correlate the playfully megalomaniacal pretensions of the former with the painful frustrations of the latter.<\/p>\n

The discrepancy between the anticipated glorious course of events and pathetic reality is played out, to Pal\u00adisander’s humiliation, in the Belvedere scenes. Moreover, Sokolov brings off a happy final twist, with Palisander effec\u00adtively teaching a grateful Samuel Beckett how to write. He thus remythologizes, as it were, the original wishful artifice of\u00a0My — \u00adnatsional’nyi geroi.\u00a0<\/em>Characteristically, the dinner with Beckett both precedes, in the dicourse, and follows, in the story, the Belvedere discomfiture.<\/p>\n

Another recurrence testifies to a significant, if unavowed, link to\u00a0Tristram Shandy<\/em>.12<\/a><\/b>\u00a0The common denominators include preoccupation with clocks, beginning in both novels on the first page; the quasi-serious focus on military history, fortifications, and other tactical matters; a deformed nose (in Palisdandeir\u2019s case due to a clock weight, in Tristram’s, to the doctor’s pincers at the moment of birth; cf. also Sterne’s “nosological” passages); a character’s forever postponed birth and\/or maturation and un\u00adcertain sexual identity (see Uncle Toby’s supposedly castrating wound). Even Palisander’s ultra-modern championing of hermaphrodites’ rights and his discussion with Striutskii about the rights of the unconceived have a parallel in Sterne’s legalistic defense of the unborn. And in its general style and design,\u00a0Palisandriia\u00a0<\/em>belongs to the Sternian <\/a>tradition of parodic narra\u00adtive with the incessant temporal shifts and quirky <\/a>characters preoccupied with time, masculinity, military prowess, and physical deformity.<\/p>\n

Overdetermination\u00a0<\/em>isrepresented on the minor scale by countless cases of verbal bricolage (some of which have been briefly discussed above, e. g.\u00a0Emsk-Kabatskii)\u00a0<\/em>and on a broader <\/a>scale by such leitmotifs as the ‘equine’ aspect of Palisander’s loves and labors. The initial image of the Trojan\u00a0den’-kon’, “<\/em>ahorse of a day” (p. 154) introduces the <\/a>emblematic concept of being “fraught” with meaning, which, indeed, will materialize in the wealth of subsequent variations. The Trojan element also sym\u00adbolizes the ancient world, the archaic, and Time in general. The Hellenic connotation reappears when Palisander’s equine self <\/a>becomes jealous of the stallions of Hellas, and in the perverse love \u00e0\u00a0trois\u00a013<\/a><\/b>\u00a0<\/em>among Palisander as stud (viz. Apuleius’\u00a0Golden Ass\u00a0<\/em>of sorts14<\/a><\/b>\u00a0), Prince Potemkin,15<\/a><\/b>\u00a0and Catherine the <\/a>Great. This triangle combines the themes of ‘love unto death’ (Catherine dies during intercourse; Palisander the stud is punished by slaughter; his skull will be lying in wait for its Prince Oleg from the Pushkin poem) and ‘time’ (the young play with the late stud’s knucklebones\u00a016<\/a><\/b>).<\/p>\n

<\/a>Both themes are developed with the help of another implicit subtext: “Kholstomer.”17<\/a><\/b>\u00a0The posthumous use of the remains of Palisander-qua-stud, as well as the parallel lives and deaths of the horse and master,18<\/a><\/b>\u00a0echo both the ending of Tolstoi’s story itself and the Kholstomerian topos in Soviet literature of the twenties: Boris Pilniak’s “Mat’ syra-zemlia,” Mikhail Bulgakov’s “Sobach’e serdtse,” Iurii Olesha’s Zavist’, and Osip Mandel’shtam’s “Egipetskaia marka.”19<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>Time and death are also overcome by the stud’s later <\/a>incarnation (in the narrative’s present) as a man whose love affairs, like his mistress Mazhoret’s, are at times conducted in equine terms, replete with neighing and the like. <\/a>This, in turn, brings up the theme of ‘sex, ‘which also reverberates with links to Kholstomer, whose budding love for a young filly leads to surgical neutering, a possible pro\u00adtotype for the medical examination that reveals Palisander’s hermaphroditism and causes him to switch to <\/a>the first-person neuter narrative (ia zapamiatovalo, p.\u00a0<\/em>268, and the like).20<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

Palisander\u2019s sexual ambivalence is just one manifestation of his superhuman universality. Not only is he child, man, woman, horse, frog, and toad,21<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>he is also a tree\u00a0(palisandr,\u00a0<\/em>“rosewood”) and as such opposed to the Bolkonskii oak-tree and associated with the apple-tree and apples and also Dionysian grapes.22<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>On the equine plane, the ‘day full of ripening apples’ fuses metaphorically with the ‘Trojan horse, full <\/a>(actually, devoid) of unknown content,’ and with the idiomatic ‘dapple-gray,\u00a0v jablokakh,\u00a0<\/em>color of the horse’s skin’ (which color resurfaces in the description of the hide’s–<\/em>–\u00a0<\/em>chaloi v jablokakh shkury<\/em>\u00a0–<\/em>\u00ad<\/em>posthumous use, p. 181). In the novel’s present, the horse\/tree\/apple fusion recurs when Palisander’s “equine” lovemaking is compared to the (supposedly) Andorran method of harvesting apples by hitting the apple-tree with a wooden ham\u00admer. The scene is voyeuristically enjoyed by a masturbating squadron of horse marines wearing little seahorse cockades on their military caps and perched on the Bolkonskii oak opposite thebedroom window.23<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

Horse imagery also finds its place in the extensive network of\u00a0Palisandriia’s\u00a0<\/em>‘military’ motifs (see II). Note the horseplay in the company of\u00a0fel’dmarshal\u00a0<\/em>Potemkin, the horseback deflo\u00adration of Mazhoret and her obsession with horse races, her father,\u00a0staryi kavalerist s <\/a>krivymi nogami\u00a0<\/em>(p. 256), and so on. Thus a peripheral intertextual vignette can capture the major thematic concerns of the novel: time, death, chivalry, sexual polymor\u00adphism.<\/p>\n

3. Along with actual allusions, Sokolov’s novel evokes nu\u00admerous\u00a0typological parallels,\u00a0<\/em>though suspicions of borrowing linger in some cases. An example of a\u00a0virtual source\u00a0<\/em>is found in the opening scene with Beriia hanging himself on the Kremlin clock. It is a <\/a>perfectly self-explanatory expression of the Chronos theme but it may also have been inspired by the image in Iurii Olesha’s\u00a0Zavist’24<\/a><\/b>\u00a0<\/em>of Kavalerov hanging himself on a telescope, as dreamt by Andrei Babichev (only a page earlier another char\u00adacter, Makarov, talks about Time, the “entire dial of the epoch,” and his dream involving a telescope).<\/p>\n

<\/a>Zavist’\u00a0<\/em>isa likely item on Sokolov’s reading list, as is Vladimir <\/a>Nabokov’s\u00a0Otchaianie,25<\/a><\/b>\u00a0<\/em>which affords such parallels to\u00a0Palisandriia\u00a0<\/em>as a narrator-graphomaniac with delusions of personal and authorial grandeur, a mistaken Doppelgaenger re\u00adlationship, fear of mirrors and failure to recognize one’s reflec\u00adtion, and even the “mirror-like” reversal of words, including\u00a0zerkalo –> olakrez,<\/em>26<\/a><\/b>\u00a0cf. the scene where Palisander is made to look in the <\/a>mirror and accept his old age (p. 227). But that scene also bears a strong resemblance to an episode in another Nabokov novel,\u00a0The Real Life of Sebastian Knight.<\/em>27<\/a><\/b>\u00a0The picture of its writer-protagonist shows the head of the Narcissus-like hero re\u00adflected in a pool, with leaves, twigs, and ripples slightly obstruct\u00ading the view. The remarkable similarity should, of <\/a>course, be put down to the common theme of narcissism and a shared stylistic disposition (the latter probably as a result of direct influence), de\u00adspite the uncanny replication of leaves and twigs (so relevant to Palisander\u2019s dendroid identity).28<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

Olesha and Nabokov are among Sokolov’s natural precur\u00adsors, if not direct sources. There are also what might be called\u00a0intertextual parallels.\u00a0<\/em>Although hardly part of Sokolov’s bag\u00adgage, Virginia Woolf’s\u00a0Orlando. A Biography<\/em>\u00a029<\/a><\/b>\u00a0displays a broad spectrum of typological parallels; I will highlight these aspects of\u00a0Orlando\u00a0<\/em>without reviewing the corresponding elements of\u00a0Palisandriia.<\/em><\/p>\n

Orlando is\u00a0<\/em>the life of a writer (the Biographer’s task is repeat\u00adedly emphasized) whose <\/a>life spans more than three centuries, from Shakespeare’s time to the present. The protagonist is of noble origin and hobnobs with royalty, aristocracy and the finest writers of the intervening periods, providing a pretext for a fictionalized survey of English literature. Literary allusions abound, among which such jocular ones as “a Moor in Venice”, a romance with a gamekeeper <\/a>(D. H. Lawrence), and a “dung-\u00adbedraggled fowl” (Poe’s Raven). Throughout the centuries the protagonist works on a poem about an oak and identifies with the tree in real life, sitting under it, building a house of oak timber, metaphorically associating with it, and burying the poem under it.30<\/a><\/b>\u00a0Although Woolf does not make the protagonist into a tree, she does have Orlando born a boy and later turned into a woman, and she endows him\/her with a taste for all sorts of partners. Other characters, too, exhibit sexual dualism. Moreover, the narrative focuses on the transience of life, on death, Time, and its rela\u00adtivity.31<\/a><\/b>\u00a0Orlando has a longing for “other landscapes and tongues.” Disgraced at the Court, he\/she lives in honorable exile (as the Ambassador to Constantinople) and eventually returns to England to live in internal exile in his\/her beautiful castle. In the mirror Orlando sees herself\u00a0 \u201clike a fire, a burning bush, and the candle flames about her head were silver leaves; or again, the glass was green water, and she a mermaid, slung with pearls” (p. 185).<\/p>\n

<\/a>Minor similarities between the two novels are no less striking. Orlando’s Biographer notes the proliferation of literary criticism, “works about works.” After several centuries of fail\u00adure Orlando’s book brings fame and prizes. The oak leitmotif is supplemented with <\/a>links to other trees and plants, among them the Christmas and family trees, roses, and rosewood (!). The ‘time’ theme produces a number of clocks (the novel ends on the stroke of one of them) and the activity of “time-keeping.”32<\/a><\/b>\u00a0The protagonist longs for different selves and experiences <\/a>several metamorphoses, sometimes passing through death-like states; his\/her crypts contain coffins of “ten generations” of ancestors. Orlando’s first beloved is a mannish Russian princess who is associated with a fox, a wolf, an olive-tree, a hill-top and has “something rank in <\/a>her” (p. 72).33<\/a><\/b>\u00a0The protagonist starts out as a clumsy boy who likes solitude. There are toy-boats, the Order of Bath, baths, and bath-salts. A ledger is quoted in extenso.34<\/a><\/b>\u00a0In the opening scene the boy plays with the heads of Moors killed by his forefathers that hang from the rafters of the ancestral castle.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Despite the remarkable affinities, Orlando ishardly germane to our task: stylistic analysis should proceed from the major thematic concerns underlying the novel’s structure.35<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

II. The ‘Military’ Theme<\/b><\/p>\n

<\/a>1. The identity of a literary text is defined by its\u00a0dominant,\u00a0<\/em>which is threefold: ideological, stylistic, and intertextual. Thus, Il’f and Petrov\u2019 s style embodies their ebullient satirical stance by playing Soviet cliches off those of prerevolutionary and Western culture.36<\/a><\/em><\/b>\u00a0In Platonov, the tragi-farcical subversion of the working man’s utopian dream results in a deliberately clumsy amalgamation of Symbolist, technological, and Communist dis\u00adcourses.37<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/a>Fazil’ Iskander\u2019s sanguine ethnic liberalism is re\u00adflected in a quasi-primitive style that blends Tolstoian defamil\u00adiarization with an ambiguous de- and re-flation of the Stalinist stereotype of “national,” in particular, “Oriental,” writing. The early Aksenov forged his <\/a>objective correlative of the individual’s liberation from a dogmatic establishment out of elements of Socialist Realism, Hemingway-like rugged individualism, Salingerian teen protest, the rediscovered heritage of Russian modernism, a rehabilitated Ostap Bender turned lyrical hero, and the upgraded and “canonized” jargons of contemporary youth sub-culture.38<\/a><\/p>\n

Palisandriia’s\u00a0<\/em>dominant can be defined as a post-modernist repudiation of the ideological partisanship of the Soviet era in favor of an all-inclusive aestheticism.39<\/a><\/b>\u00a0Hence Sokolov’s mock remythologizing of the Kremlin\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>of Silver Age decadence\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>of dissident and emigre literary sensibility, in particular, its interest in supermen and graphomaniacs. Since Palisander’s polymorphism is an emblematic embodiment of this eclectic pos\u00adture, one may seek a key to the stylistic secrets of the novel in the way the panoply of discourses are successfully fused into a <\/a>lin\u00adguistic vehicle for the new aggregate self. Creating a credible hybrid of a Kremlin ruler (a Stalin), poet (a Blok), political exile (a Solzhenitsyn), and obsessed bisexual (an Edichka) called not only for imaginative plot and characterization but first and foremost for a stylistic\u00a0tour de force.\u00a0<\/em>In what follows I look at some underpinnings of Sokolov’s verbal miracle.<\/p>\n

<\/a>2. Of the manifold expressions of\u00a0Palisandriia’s\u00a0<\/em>‘statist,’ or “Kremlinist,” thematic pole I concentrate on the one provi\u00adsionally called\u00a0‘military.’ As\u00a0<\/em>Siniavskii-Terts has shown, So\u00adcialist Realism is a throwback to eighteenth-century classi\u00ad<\/a>cism.40<\/a><\/b>\u00a0In another context, Siniavskii discusses Gogol”s\u00a0Vybrannye mesta iz perepiski s druz’iami\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Taras Bul’ba\u00a0<\/em>as manifestations of the same “heroic” spirit, outdated <\/a>even as Gogol’ wrote.41<\/a><\/b>\u00a0It is therefore only natural that the post-modernist “revaluation” of Stalinism, for instance, in sots-art, should make use of the odic and epic archaics. Komar and Melamid’s painting “Comrade Stalin and the Muses” shows Stalin in his Generalissimo uniform, Socialist Realist style, attended by Classicist muses draped in semitransparent tunics.42<\/a><\/b>\u00a0Palisan\u00addriia <\/a>is\u00a0<\/em>written in the same stylistic key, but goes the painting one step further by fusing Stalin and the Muses into one character: Palisander.<\/p>\n

Along with\u00a0Taras Bul’ba,<\/em>43<\/a><\/b>the entire military-heroic strand of Russian and European literature is relevant to\u00a0Palisandriia,\u00a0<\/em>whose title boasts a Homeric suffix\u00a0(The Odyssey is Odisseia\u00a0<\/em>in Rusian). Its modern Russian lineage runs from Pushkin’s “Poltava’ through K. M. Staniukovich, A. I. Kuprin\u00a0(Poedinok),\u00a0<\/em>V. V. Maiakovskii,44<\/a><\/b>\u00a0A. N. Tolstoi\u00a0(Petr Pervyi), A.\u00a0<\/em>S. Novikov\u00adPriboi\u00a0(Tsusima),\u00a0<\/em>Arkadii Gaidar\u00a0(Sud’ba barabanshchika),\u00a0<\/em>V.A. <\/a>Kaverin\u00a0(Dva kapitana)\u00a0<\/em>and countless books about the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. This official canon formed the staple reading diet of generations of schoolchildren. Also popular were such Western books as Alexandre Dumas-p\u00e8re’s d’Artagnan saga and its revolutionary spin-off,\u00a0Spartacus\u00a0<\/em>by Rafaello Giovagnoli. In Sokolov’s case the military fixation may have been reinforced by the fact that he grew up in the family of a ranking officer and studied at the Institute of Foreign Languages of the Military-Diplomatic Academy.45<\/a><\/b>\u00a0Thus, “military-patriotic” <\/a>literature, whether classical or second-rate, is a natural source and target of\u00a0Palisandriia’s\u00a0<\/em>highly subversive discourse. In this subversion Sokolov makes important <\/a>use of the adolescent character of such reading; it underscores Palisander\u2019s reluc\u00adtance to grow up and imparts an aura of infantile dreams to his military palaver.<\/p>\n

The subversion is not without precedent. The principle of stylistic grandiloquence anent trifles46<\/a><\/b>\u00a0may go back to Gogol’ and Sterne, obviously two of Sokolov s prime mentors. As for the focus on <\/a>undermining ‘imperial’ discourse, one close prede\u00adcessor is Tynianov with his stylized mock heroic tales set at the courts of three militaristic emperors.47<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>Another important pre\u00adcursor is the Bender saga, which has been one of the most read books through many generations of Soviet youth. <\/a>Like\u00a0Palisan\u00addriia,\u00a0<\/em>Il’f and Petrov’s two novels embody a playfully childish outlook and feature an essentially adolescent hero. Ostap Bender takes on the Soviet state itself, has an almost Renaissance variety of gifts, among them literary (see his aphorisms), and spends his life traveling48<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>on <\/a>a Europe-bound quest that ends back in Russia. Bender and his creators’ parodic superposition of offi\u00adcialese on all possible discourses including the military, yields episodes in which Bender appears as a\u00a0Komandor\u00a0<\/em>in charge of “the parade” and other prefigurations\u00a0of Palisandriia.<\/em>49<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/a>Especially important is the stylistic affinity with the Bender saga;\u00a0Palisandriia’s\u00a0<\/em>play with Sovietese, though much less pervasive than in Il’f and <\/a>Petrov, has a consistent role in the amalgamation of the ‘military’ and the ‘decadent.‘50<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

Literary subversion is rarely undertaken for subversion’s sake alone; its tools and targets usually betray the author’s gen\u00aduine tastes.51<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>We might therefore try taking at face value Pal\u00adisander’s aesthetic manifesto <\/a>that\u00a0po pravilam klassitsizma<\/em>\u00a0prekrasnoe . . . obiazano byt’ velichavo (<\/em>p. 207).<\/em>52<\/a><\/b>The words\u00a0velichavyi\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0prekrasno\u00a0<\/em>denote not only the “classicist” element spoofed in the book but also the sublime, elegant, precious, pretty, but never vulgar style in which the parody is couched. In staging a mutual subversion of classicist ‘stateliness’ and Silver Age ‘decadence,’ Palisander may make liberal use of Limonov\u00ad-like scabrous content but insists on sidestepping his form.53<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/a>Incidentally, this sidestepping figure is indicative of Sokolov’s discourse strategies. It underlies his general metalit\u00aderary orientation away from reality, as well as his reliance on periphrastic structures, which are a meeting ground of classicist and Silver Age poetics. In a word, subversion it is, but it is also an aesthetic reconfirmation of the two discourses that capture the narrator’s almost exclusive attention.<\/p>\n

3. The\u00a0military motifs\u00a0<\/em>can be roughly divided into four sub\u00adgroups: referential (or “real-life”), referential-stylistic, stylisticproper, and linguistic.54<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

Referential motifs.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>a)\u00a0‘Manliness.’\u00a0<\/em>This motif, linking themilitary’ sphere with the broader sexual and existential prob\u00adlematic of the novel, is considered in detail under III.2c.<\/em><\/p>\n

b)\u00a0‘Militarism’ proper.\u00a0<\/em>The main subcategories are: military ranks and branches of <\/a>military service; parades, saluting, and other rituals; types and details of uniforms; weaponry, fortifi\u00adcations, and other physical realia; strategy and tactics; actual military <\/a>movements and warfare; and militaristic and strategic formulae, often metaphorical, bordering on a militarism purely verbal in nature.55<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>To illustrate the whimsical richness of Palisander\u2019s vocabulary, I footnote a near-exhaustive list for one representative sub-category: military\u00a0nomina agentium.<\/em>56<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

c)\u00a0‘Hunting.’\u00a0<\/em>This ready-made para-military (and thus slightly ‘decadent’57<\/a><\/b>) motif is mostly confined to <\/a>the episodes of Brezhnev’s leisurely pastimes, but on a minor scale it deploys the same range of military realia and phraseology (types of dress, ammunition, rituals, etc.).<\/p>\n

Stylized referentiality.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>a)\u00a0‘Imitation of great generals.’\u00a0<\/em>The goal here is to introduce the historical paragons of military style. Stalin is referred to as\u00a0Generalissimus\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0polkovodets,\u00a0<\/em>and there are stereotypical references to Napoleon,58<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>Hannibal\u00a0(pobedonosnyi),\u00a0<\/em>Kutuzov\u00a0(fel’dmarshal\u00a0<\/em>in the <\/a>context of his\u00a0izbushka . . . v Filiakh), Julius\u00a0<\/em>Caesar\u00a0(po-tsezarianski ne otryvaia pera of bumagi,\u00a0<\/em>p. 150), Charles XII and Sulla,59<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>and even Hitler\u00a0(vydaiushshiisia … voenachal’nik).<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>Remarkably, Suvorov never appears in the text, though the spirit of energetic brevity, straightforwardness, and direct con\u00adtact between private and general, as well as a certain <\/a>aura of clownishness, epitomized by his image, pervade Palisander s style.60<\/a><\/b>\u00a0Note the motif of the sentry checking the identity of the supreme commander,<\/a>zholkovsky\/palissandria\/#61″>61\u00a0<\/b>Beriia’s last words\u00a0(“Palisandr, Palisandr, derzai zhe<\/em>‘\u00a0<\/em>“<\/em>, p. 13) and Palisander’s own la\u00adconicity.62<\/a><\/b>\u00a0These stylistic offshoots of <\/a>the military posture also draw on fictional sources (see below).<\/p>\n

b)\u00a0‘Chivalry.’\u00a0<\/em>This element is announced very early on (ia napominaiu sebe … <\/a>rytsaria<\/em>),\u00a0<\/em>and builds on the much em\u00adphasized military ritualism. One recurrent motif is ‘duelling;\u00a063<\/a><\/b>\u00a0whose relevance is overdetermined by its cliched character and its conventionalized theatricality. Much is also made of officer’s honor\u00a0(slovo kadrovogo ofitsera<\/em>, p. 150), of being\u00a0bez upreka<\/em>,64<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>and of formal introductions. Once the protagonist <\/a>finds himself in Europe, the chivalric metaphor is reified through numerous medieval realia.65<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

Stylistic motifs.<\/em><\/p>\n

a)\u00a0Military genres.\u00a0<\/em>Palisander readily refers to epics, epistles, and similar genre categories66<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>and, laying the device bare, uses metaliterary terms in his imagery\u00a0(Vlaga voen<\/em>n<\/em>o<\/em>–<\/em>patrioticheskogo umileniia osteklenila im ochi,\u00a0<\/em>p. 141). He both <\/a>formulates military and patriotic devices (for instance, by indulging in self-congratulatory descriptions of his own style:\u00a0neukosnitel’nyi dnevnik; i<\/em>a<\/em>\u00a0byl otryvist i lapidaren, slovno na linii fronta, ognia,\u00a0<\/em>pp. 177-8)and implements them, for instance, by styling a philosophical exchange as military command and response\u00a0(“Ved’ smerti <\/a>netu<\/em>\u00a0?<\/em>—<\/em>“Est’ smerti netu!”, p.\u00a0<\/em>144) and using stylized military language\u00a0(Ba<\/em>,67<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>da vy, pogliazhu ia, ustroilis’ prosto otmenno!\u00a0<\/em>(p. 118).<\/p>\n

<\/a>b)\u00a0Prutkovisms.\u00a0<\/em>One source for this kind of mock-military style is Koz’ma Prutkov (with an admixture of Nikolai Bolkonskii). Some passages are merely Prutkov-like, patterned on the generic eighteenth-century combination of enlightenment and military realia.68<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>In other cases —as, for instance, when Palisander comes by his intellectual revelations while\u00a0inspek\u00adtiruia sostoianiie chelovechestva\u00a0<\/em>(p. 203)69<\/a><\/b>–the military and philosophical blend is more specifically Prutkovian.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Direct pastiches of Prutkov (whose name, like those of Sterne, Suvorov, Pushkin, <\/a>Il’f and Petrov, and Limonov, is conspic\u00aduously absent from the text) are quite numerous. Palisander replicates one of Prutkov’s most famous truisms (“Bud’<\/em>,\u00a0esli mozhesh’, schastli<\/em>v<\/em>oi.Bud’!”)\u00a0<\/em>and concocts another Prutkovian, this time metaliterary, tautology as the epigraph to “Kniga otmshcheniia” (“Chelovek, vziatyi pod strazhu, podoben tekstu, vziatomu v skobki: on otchuzhdaetsia”,<\/em>\u00a0p. 150). There are at least three more distinct prutkovisms70<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>and one anecdote in the man\u00adner of\u00a0Prutkov-ded,\u00a0<\/em>at once archaic and risque and thus an ideal hybrid of the ‘military’ and the ‘decadent.’71<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/a>Linguistic motifs: archaisms.\u00a0<\/em>These range from specifically military to generic eighteenth-century types and from regular, if somewhat overdone usage, to absurd exaggerations. I cite here a few striking examples and footnote some others.<\/p>\n

<\/a>a)\u00a0Lexical archaisms\u00a0<\/em>are either (quasi-)Old Russian\u00a0(spospeshestvuia; pleskalishche,<\/em>\u00a0i.e.,\u00a0<\/em>Palisander’s tub;\u00a0abrakadabryi,\u00a0<\/em>a nonsensical archaic-style neologism to denote nonsense;\u00a0zane<\/em>)<\/em>72<\/a><\/b>\u00a0orobsolete Western borrowings\u00a0(pofrishtikav; <\/a>pizhamnichat’,\u00a0<\/em>a neologism;\u00a0telefonirovat’,\u00a0<\/em>an already dated turn-of-the-century borrowing),73<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>or archaic neologisms, e.g.\u00a0mokrostupy,\u00a0<\/em>a notorious test-case in the early nineteenth-century conflict between the archaists and innovators.<\/p>\n

b)\u00a0Morphological archaisms\u00a0<\/em>consist mostly of short adjectives\u00a0(gnevliv, no <\/a>otkhodchiv,\u00a0<\/em>the model cliche of this style;\u00a0shchupl, ziabl i proezzh; vecheren),<\/em>74<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>but there are other kinds as well\u00a0(voshed, podoshed, voskuriv, vzlepetal, varival, s legkostiiu).<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>c) Prominent among\u00a0syntactic archaisms\u00a0<\/em>are ungram\u00admatical absolute constructions with different subjects in the de\u00adpendent and independent clauses (of the type\u00a0Pod”ezzhaia k gorodu, s menia sletela shliapa),<\/em>\u00a0e. g. prochtia . . ., stalo ne do<\/em>\u00a0z<\/em>abav\u00a0<\/em>(p. 53).<\/em>75<\/a><\/b>\u00a0The second most frequent syntactic irregularity is the abuse of <\/a>predicative short adjectives\u00a0(predstavlialsia troiak; chtoby vam sdelalos’ pokaianno; strashno tvorchesk<\/em>!).76<\/a><\/b>Other ungrammatical or borderline archaic usages are less con\u00adsistent\u00a0(byl . . . voditel’; rasprostranilos’<\/em>\u00a0bikfordovo; schitat’<\/em>pokoinogo vyshed).<\/em><\/p>\n

d) Often several similar or different effects converge to pro\u00adduce striking\u00a0archaic clusters (blagovolite na esplanadu; ton byl bon<\/em>,\u00a0t. e. iskliuchitel’no svetsk).<\/em>77<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

III. “Military-Decadent” Hybrids<\/b><\/p>\n

1. All the above motifs are, of course, merely mock-military, the result of systematic\u00a0subversion.\u00a0<\/em>Generic subversive effects are achieved by the jocular tone of narrative, by stultifying tautology\u00a0(Vozdymaias’ po lestnitse, kruto is vozdymaius’ po nei,\u00a0<\/em>p. 118) and other types of non-informativeness, and by deflation (for instance, reducing sublime pretensions to mundane causes:\u00a0po-tsezarianski ne otryvaia pera of bumagi, a sebia<\/em>\u00a0–<\/em>–<\/em>ot edy, proiznes i<\/em>a<\/em>, p. 150). More specific and thematically relevant is subverting the ‘military’ by wedding it to its ‘decadent’ opposite. Often such a combination is built into the way the military motifs are articulated in\u00a0Palisandriia.\u00a0<\/em>Thus, the narrator’s vaunted ‘manliness’ is a thin disguise for his sexual ambiguity, and ‘chivalry’ connotes courtly effeminacy. Recourse to the fictitious graphomaniac Prutkov is doubly literary, while Palisander’s archaisms are pure make-believe — \u00ada slipshod bricolage of scraps of secondary-school knowledge.<\/p>\n

In these and other types of mediation, the ‘military’ pole can be represented by the ‘military’ <\/a>proper, the archaic, the epic\u00ad-heroic, etc., while the ‘decadent’ pole can run the gamut of the merely human, the artistic, the sexual, the dissolute, the porno\u00adgraphic, the pitifully decadent, and so on. There are several\u00a0pat\u00adterns\u00a0<\/em>of fusion. One consists in applying the ‘military’ mode of expression to ‘decadent’ realia, another in creating real-life hy\u00adbrids, a third <\/a>in highlighting a real hybrid by verbal fireworks. A subtle vehicle of the ‘decadent’ principle is the covert orna\u00admention of ‘militaristic’ prose with poetic devices– <\/a>especially with regular meters and paronomastic aliterations (e.g.\u00a0vREMia sTREMiT iskRoMETno,\u00a0<\/em>a dactylic trimeter, p. 87).78<\/a>\u00a0Sometimes a combination of elements belonging to one and the same pole but varying in intensity functions as a combination of opposite poles. In the image of the chain-smoking Faina Kaplan, who,\u00a0vsiakii raz, kak ee postigal orgazm, zakhodilas’ eshche i v tabachnom kashle\u00a0<\/em>(p. 146), the coughing is an extreme symptom of ‘decadence,’79<\/a><\/b>\u00a0whereas the orgasm represents a comparatively healthy state and thus approaches the ‘military.’80<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

Let us have a brief look at the major combination types.<\/p>\n

<\/a>a)Military phraseology denoting civilian reality: general<\/em>–<\/em>\u00adgeneral filosofskikh voisk\u00a0<\/em>(patterned on\u00a0general-leitenant), gvardii pozhiloi\u00a0<\/em>(instead of\u00a0riadovoi), vsia tolshcha vospominanii\u00a0<\/em>(i.\u00a0<\/em>e. the novel itself)\u00a0chitaetsia bezotlagatel’no, tsyganskii khor osobogo naznacheniia\u00a0<\/em>(a probable echo of Iskan\u00addei s\u00a0Sandro iz Chegema), ordenonosnaia konka\u00a0<\/em>(Stalin’s his\u00adtorical private subway, made to sound both more military and more nostalgically civilian and pre\u00adrevolutionary [“horse-drawn”]).81<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/a>b)\u00a0Military phraseology applied to sexual realia:… mertvye sramu ne imut<\/em>\u00a0(p. 18; Prince Sviatoslav s proverbial military ‘shame’ punningly literalized into an obscenity);\u00a0predprinial vmeshatel’stvo vo vnutrennie ee dela<\/em>\u00a0(p. 87); Palisander as\u00a0novobranets,\u00a0<\/em>doing his\u00a0sluzhbu riadovogo kliuchnika na katorge eroticheskikh buistv<\/em>\u00a0(pp. 90-1);\u00a0audientsiia zavershena\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0svidanie okoncheno\u00a0<\/em>(pp. 186, 187; svidanie is\u00a0<\/em>a pun: ‘rendez\u00advous’ plus ‘prison visit’).82<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

Two examples in this group deserve special attention. In one Palisander says that his lovemaking is\u00a0obkhoditel’no, no bezapelliatsionno\u00a0<\/em>(p. 38),\u00a0<\/em>using yet another categorical epithet (cf.\u00a0bezotlagatel’no, bezzavetno,\u00a0<\/em>v<\/em>setselo\u00a0<\/em>in (a) and Note 81)that describes the intensity of love in military-bureaucratic terms. Similar techniques were developed in earnest by Pasternak in an attempt to combine the traditionally poetic with various <\/a>kinds of the vernacular, cf. Liubimaia, bezotlagatel’no<\/em>…<\/em>\u00a0otvet’\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>(“Dva pis’ma”). In the other, Palisander says (to Brezhneva, on making love):\u00a0Est’ ekzistens<\/em>..<\/em>. i khotim my etogo ili ne zhelaem, on pred”iavliaet nam s vami dostatochno zhestkie<\/em>\u00a0trebovaniia. Vypolnit’ ikh<\/em>\u00a0–<\/em>–<\/em>nasha zadacha\u00a0<\/em>(p. 177). Here the primary stylistic source is five-year-plan discourse, but on a subtler level, its fellow-traveler literary domestication may be targeted as well; see <\/a>Pasternak’s\u00a0pozhiznennost’ zadachi\u00a0<\/em>in ref\u00aderence to his poetic art or ironic Benderisms like\u00a0Takovy surovye zakony zhizni<\/em>.<\/em>83<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/a>c)\u00a0Real-life combinations of the two poles.\u00a0<\/em>One class of such motifs is provided by the barracks-lore celebration of the swash\u00adbuckling Don Juan:\u00a0pozvolil i<\/em>a<\/em>\u00a0sebe nechto v dukhe nashikh gvardeitsev, neredko ozornichavshchikh so svoimi podruzhkami v krepostnykh podvorotniakh\u00a0<\/em>(p. 38; Palisander as a boy, on making love to a maid).84<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>Palisander’s role models include Napoleon, who\u00a0ukroshchal dvortsovykh stroptivits<\/em>…<\/em>\u00a0sred’ shumnogo bala,\u00a0<\/em>85<\/a><\/b>v pylu srazheniia, na parade\u00a0<\/em>(p. 39) and whom he tries in vain to emulate. Napoleon will be invoked once more, when the aged Palisander is victimized, this time in the role of an overused sex object:\u00a0Mazhoret ostavliala mne lis<\/em>h<\/em>‘ chetyre napoleonovskie chasa na son … na iskliuchitel’no zhestkoi koike\u00a0<\/em>(p. 275).<\/p>\n

d)\u00a0<\/a>Real military-sexual hybrids reinforced by military tropes.\u00a0<\/em>The description of the sexual encounters with Kaplan in the shooting gallery is couched in terms common to military and amatory codes: the trysts take place during\u00a0strel’ba iz poloz\u00adheniia lezha;\u00a0<\/em>Palisander\u00a0atakoval ee shompolom negi s kazennoi chasti;\u00a0<\/em>while she,\u00a0uperev volevoi podborodok v meshok s peskom, prodolzhala tselit’sia v iablochko<\/em>\u00a0(pp. 144-6).86<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/a>An in\u00adteresting case is presented\u00a0by filosofskie voiska (<\/em>ofwhich Beriia\u00a0is general-general).\u00a0<\/em>At first read as pure verbiage, these military hybrids are reified in the episode with\u00a0maior teatral’nykh voisk Gekuba,\u00a0<\/em>who is actually executed in the role of Beriia.<\/p>\n

<\/a>e)\u00a0Other combinations\u00a0<\/em>include reporting sexual situations in pointedly archaic language, e. g., the quasi-archaic neologism\u00a0iunoshestvovat’\u00a0<\/em>(pp. 96, 108), especially when used as a transitive\u00a0verbum copulandi<\/em>\u00a0(p.\u00a0<\/em>146).87<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>Sometimes the archaic style soars into poeticisms representing both poles at once: the military, loftily archaic, and the decadent, waxing lyrical.88<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>Finally, there are cases involving ‘militaristic’ descriptions of the ‘decadent’ at its feeblest –infantile, decrepit, sexless: the\u00a0spitsebleshchushchaia\u00a0<\/em>kolesnitsa (p.88; a quasi-Homeric refer\u00adence to Shagane’s wheelchair) and the name\u00a0Trukhil’da\u00a0<\/em>(p. 217), combining\u00a0trukha,\u00a0<\/em>“rot” with the suffix of such heroic names as Brunhilde.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0<\/em>I will now examine in some detail\u00a0four representative cases<\/em>of ‘military-decadent’ combinations: a word, an episode, and two motifs. (In fact, they are all textual fragments of roughly the same size but on different levels\u00a0of\u00a0<\/em>abstraction.)<\/p>\n

a) The sculpting episode. Sprosil plastilinu i gipsu i gde-to vblizi kazarmy predavalsia lepke, pleniaia boleznennoe voobrazhen’e matrosskikh mass ne stol’ko mnogofigurnost’iu kompozitsii, skol’ko zdorovoi erotikoi fabul i form. Po okonchan’ — vse rozdal. Net vysshei nagrady khudozhniku, nezheli zret’, kak trepetno vozhdeleiut k ego iskusstvu zasko\u00adruzlye ruki ratnogo prostoliudina (p. 161). The episode (whichtakes place on the exclusive prison estate soon after Palisander’s attempt on Brezhnev’s life) deploys a variety of discourses, whose skillful combination produces a veritable poem in prose inspired by the novel’s dominant themes.<\/p>\n

The scene features Palisander enjoying uncommon freedom in his captivity and rapidly turning out pornographic sculptures for his marine guards. The freedom is, of course, patterned on the way royalty are kept in prison (cf. Napoleon), and creative activity in jail is a wide-spread topos (cf., in particular, Zhilin’s sculpting in Tolstoi’s “Kavkazskii plennik”).<\/p>\n

Guards and barracks supply the ‘military’ element, which serves as a pretext for military-revolutionary sloganeering (the “sailor masses”)and for its archaic counterpart, the classically periphrastic\u00a0ratnyi prostoliudin.\u00a0<\/em>The archaic layer also includes such words as\u00a0zret’\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0nezheli\u00a0<\/em>and contracted endings of verbal nouns\u00a0(voobrazhen’e, <\/a>okonchan’i).\u00a0<\/em>The archaisms link the im\u00adperial Classicist style with a Romantic <\/a>focus on the artist:\u00a0predavalsia, pleniaia voobrazhen’e, vysshaia nagrada, trepetno.<\/em><\/p>\n

Epic grandeur and lyrical effusiveness are interspersed with an “objective” third person account of the creative process in the language of (Soviet) art criticism (“not so much by… as… by…;”\u00a0mnogofigurnost’ kompozitsii; fabul i form; zdorovoi erotikoi).\u00a0<\/em>This “scholarly” point of view further promotes the protagonist’s megalomaniacal narcissism by objectifying his self-praise.89<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>One stylistic strand that helps to bridge the subjec\u00adtive-objective split90<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>is the memoiristic (both personal and fac\u00adtual) tone set by the opening words, which evoke an ancient trav\u00adeler stopping at a simple <\/a>roadside inn and “calling for”\u00a0(sprosil\u00a0<\/em>+ the partitive genitive in\u00a0-u<\/em>) ink, paper, bread, goat-cheese… They also convey the sentimentalist aura of acting on the spur of the moment, supported by the immediate giving away of the fruit of artistic inspiration and the studied imprecision of\u00a0gde-to vblizi….<\/em><\/p>\n

The entire stylistic agglomerate is patently absurd, with its simultaneous use of both plasticine and plaster-of-Paris and the oxymoron of “pathological imagination” and “healthy eroticism.”91<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

But most of the discrepancies are artfully concealed, and the point of the passage is, of course, the perfect fit of absurdly incompatible elements. One subtle combination is the super\u00adposition of the two cliches hinging on “imagination:” the Ro\u00admantic\u00a0pleniaia voobrazhenie\u00a0<\/em>and the psycho-diagnostic\u00a0boleznennoe voobrazhenie;\u00a0<\/em>the clash is underscored by the ar\u00adchaic short ending in the linking noun\u00a0(voobrazhen’-e).\u00a0<\/em>Another such combination is the double entendre based on the archaic verb\u00a0vozhdelet’,\u00a0<\/em>blending spiritual craving for art with carnal desire for the pornographic statuettes. A different slant to the same cen\u00adtral ambiguity comes from the close-up image of\u00a0zaskoruzlye ruki,\u00a0<\/em>a Socialist Realist cliche about the <\/a>simple laborer, which meshes well with the ‘plebeian’ element of the <\/a>archaic\u00a0prostoliudin,\u00a0<\/em>while clashing with and underscoring the erotic physicality of the gesture.<\/p>\n

The overall design of the episode is held together, on the plot level, by the master combination of the great man’s creativity with low-brow pornography, each involving ‘militarism’ and ‘decadence.’ Generic unity results from its being cast in the mold of Prutkov’s philosophising fragments, with their usual mix of affectatious graphomania and officialese.92<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>Finally, the dis\u00adparate strands are woven together by pervasive alliteration and prosodic regularities.93<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/a>b)\u00a0Zizi.\u00a0<\/em>Palisander introduces this euphemism for genitalia early on (p. 51), heralding a whole range of motifs that overde\u00adtermine his word choice. The opportunity for <\/a>creating the term is provided by the unmentionability of the object, doomed to lead\u00a0neiavnyi, sumerechnyi obraz zhizni\u00a0<\/em>(a ‘decadent’ element) in spite of its\u00a0vysluga <\/a>let, vernopoddannost’, stoikost’ i drugie boitsovskie kachestva\u00a0<\/em>(all typical ‘militarisms’). Insisting on Silver-Age linguistic decorum,94<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>Palisander extolls the\u00a0kurtuaznost’\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0blagosozvuchnost’ vetrovym kolokol’chikam\u00a0<\/em>of the chosen term, devoid of “even a shadow of vulgarity.” Among its advantages are its infantile flavor95<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>and its applica\u00adbility to the\u00a0genitalii i dzhentel’menov, i dam,\u00a0<\/em>which of course foreshadows the revelation of Palisander’s neuter\/\u00adhermaphroditic identity and polymorphism,96<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>while as an\u00a0inter\u00adnatsional’noe rechen’e\u00a0<\/em>it prefigures his peregrinations. Gram\u00admatically\u00a0zizi\u00a0<\/em>is neuter, which is emphasized in the text\u00a0(to, ono)\u00a0<\/em>and provides a foretaste of Palisander’s eventual switch to the first person neuter.<\/p>\n

Intertextually, the word goes back to Pushkin: . . .\u00a0Tsimlianskoe nesut uzhe,\/ Za nim stroi riumok uzkikh, dlinnykh,\/ Podobno talii tvoei,\/ Zizi, kristall dushi moei,\/ Predmet stikhov moikh nevinnykh,\/Liubvi primanchivyi fiial,\/ Ty, o<\/em>t<\/em>\u00a0kogo i<\/em>a<\/em>\u00a0p’ian byval (Evgenii Onegin,\u00a0<\/em>5: 32). The subtext, in addition to certifying the metaliterary tenor <\/a>of the\u00a0zizi<\/em>-passage,\u00a0<\/em>replicates most of its thematic components. Note the hint of the military\u00a0stroi\u00a0<\/em>and the comparison of a wine-glass to a woman’s waist, <\/a>resulting in the image of “love’s phial,” which is both titil\u00adlating and sublimated (‘courteous’); especially as it transforms itself into the metapoetic “subject of verses.” The sexual ambi\u00adguity of the image is reinforced in several ways: the Frenchified (that is, “international,” cf. Palisander’s\u00a0internatsional’noe rechen’e)\u00a0<\/em>name is feminine, but quite anonymous, the verses are “innocent,” and the central metaphor,\u00a0kristall,\u00a0<\/em>inanimate and masculine.97<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>On Palisander’s lips, “the soul’s crystal” acquires additional phallic overtones and reconfirms its spiritual and metaliterary nature.98<\/a><\/b>\u00a0Thus, Palisander’s\u00a0zizi\u00a0<\/em>is at once his polysexual –‘militant’ and ‘decadent’ –organ and a Pushkinian crystallization of bantering metapoeticity.<\/p>\n

<\/a>c) ‘Manliness, virility,’ in the narrow sense, refers to the in\u00adsistent but subversively ambiguous use in the novel of the root\u00a0muzh-.\u00a0<\/em>The ambiguity is minimal when it results from the gen\u00aderal mock-heroic style, as in the unnecessary exaggeration of the masculine element:\u00a0skupaia, kak muzh<\/em>s<\/em>kaia sleza, meblirovka\u00a0<\/em>(of Stalin’s room, p. 82). Here the stylistic subversion is rein\u00adforced by metaphoricity and recourse to the cliched image <\/a>of a lonely old soldier, but there is no explicit ‘decadence’.99<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

More often masculinity appears in the context of sexual fan\u00adtasies and is thus “corrupted:” e.g.,\u00a0vsia nizost’ muzhskoi natury\u00a0<\/em>(p. 50) of the fancied officer-rapist (who is borrowed from “Chto ty zhadno gliadish’ na dorogu. . . ?”) and Mazhoret’s willful connoisseurship <\/a>of\u00a0nas, muzhchin,\u00a0<\/em>as manifested by her preference for sex with several males (p. 255).100<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

The last example borders on the group where the subversion of virility takes the more explicit form <\/a>of ‘unsexing, unmanning, emasculation.’ On two occasions, Palisander’s\u00a0muzhaiushchii podborodok\u00a0<\/em>(pp. 34, 165)\u00a0<\/em>is undermined by the ironic proximity of his infantile habitat, the bathtub, where he masturbates and wears\u00a0a monisto,\u00a0<\/em>“necklace,” and the conspicuous archaism\u00a0muz\u00adhestvuia\u00a0<\/em>turns out to be a favorite self-description of Palisander’s elderly female lovers.101<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>The epiphany of Palisander’s sexual ambiguity comes in the scene of a medical examination, after which he is referred to in the neuter: vy-s,\u00a0baten’ko, vy, sladen’koe moe; prostite, i<\/em>a<\/em>\u00a0sovershenno zapamiatovalo<\/em>\u00a0(pp. 267\u00ad-8).102<\/a><\/b>This epiphanetic reversal is foreshadowed in the mirror scene, where Palisander is literallly brought face to face with his old age and thus unmanned. Trying to twist the irrefutable facts, he says,\u00a0Byvaet, pripudrit tebia … putevoiu pyl’iu, priporoshit, i vse <\/a>dumaesh’<\/em>…<\/em>\u00a0ek tebia<\/em>…<\/em>\u00a0sirotu, vozmuzhalo da posurovelo: ne uspel oglianut’sia, a uzh i v dedy sebe zapisalsia\u00a0<\/em>(p. 231).This sentence combines an oxymoronic equation (grandfatherly age = virility) with the neologistic impersonal (and therefore neuter) form\u00a0vozmuzhalo,\u00a0<\/em>which, again paradoxi\u00adcally, takes the subject of the alleged attainment of manhood as a passive grammatical object of a faceless neuter “it.”<\/p>\n

d) ‘War games.’ This motif has two variations: Palisander\u2019s\u00a0poteshnye<\/em>,<\/em>mock, but real-troops, and the toy ships he plays with in the bathtub.103<\/a>\u00a0<\/b>Both serve as pretexts for eloquent descriptions of mock-battles in the lofty military style and fit into the overall thematic structure of the novel.<\/p>\n

<\/a>The ‘war games’ subvert the ‘military’ pole by reducing it to a childish, un-manly level. Equally important is their make-be\u00adlieve, theatrical character. The concept develops further by means of a pun when Palisander declares:\u00a0Liubliu i morskie srazhen’ia. Tseniu ikh torzhestvennost’, plavnost’,<\/em>\u00a0raspakhnutost’ ikh teatrov\u00a0<\/em>(p. 19). Later the theatrical metaphor comes to life in the episode of the execution of the False Lavrentii, played by\u00a0maior teatral’nykh voisk Gekuba\u00a0<\/em>(pp. 199-201). The episode is, of course, a spoof of Stalin’s show trials and Potemkin villages, but the post-modernist pay-off results from the perfect hybrid of the military and the theatrical.104<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

The war games motif is reactivated at another plot juncture: Palisander’s attempt on Brezhnev’s life. As Palisander\u00a0paradno pechatal marsh k propusknomu Kutaf<\/em>‘<\/em>\u00a0emu punktu\u00a0<\/em>(p. 141; the episode is rife with military paraphernalia and terminology), the\u00a0starosluzhashchii chasovoi… reshil, chto i<\/em>a<\/em>\u00a0poprostu predaius’ obychnoi svoei zabave<\/em>\u00a0–<\/em>–<\/em>igraiu v soldatiki\u00a0<\/em>and therefore let him pass. The attempt is made possible by an atmosphere of play\u00adacting and fails for similarly “aesthetic” reasons: Brezhnev and his bodygards are all wax figures, commissioned from the (official Soviet) sculptor E. V. Vuchetich, whom Palisander, on finding out what foiled his attempt, mentally apostrophizes for having prostituted his noble art (p. 156). Note also that this episode, as well as most of the plot, including the execution of Beriia, is stagemanaged by\u00a0general-general filosofskikh voisk\u00a0<\/em>Andropov, and the role of ‘war games’ in the overall artistic strategy of the novel becomes clear.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/b><\/p>\n

In these somewhat loose and lengthy notes I have pursued sev\u00aderal goals. I wanted to trace a major aspect of\u00a0Palisandriia’s\u00a0<\/em>style to the novel’s central thematic and intertextual concerns. I tried to classify the corresponding motifs and combination types and show how densely they permeate even minor textual vignettes. In this way I hoped to substantiate my strong claims about the artistic stature of\u00a0Palisandriia.\u00a0<\/em>Many of my statements will seem disputable, as is only natural in our field, especially where intertextuality is concerned. But some of them are in\u00adtended to be “more equal” to the task than others– as testimony rather than critical insights.\u00a0Palisandriia<\/em>\u00a0is a forbiddingly “ethnic” text, making extreme demands on the reader’s famil\u00adiarity with the Russian language, literary tradition, and everyday culture. I may be wrong about the urgency with which\u00a0zizi\u00a0<\/em>evokes Pushkin, or that\u00a0shagaiu s kakikh-nibud’… pokhoron\u00a0<\/em>brings up Akhmatova’s once controversial poem about Pasternak, or that <\/a>Palisander as a character and stylist relies on Ostap Bender. But it is certain that Sokolov plays mostly with well-known– schoolbench or topical –literary cliches, and it probably makes sense to begin registering the reactions elicited in the “natives” of this culture, especially Sokolov’s contemporaries.<\/p>\n

\n

University of Southern California<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

NOTES<\/b><\/p>\n

<\/a>1<\/a>. I would like to thank Michael Henry Heim, D. Barton Johnson, Donald Fanger, Olga Matich, Thomas Seifrid, and Thomas Venclova for their helpful suggestions.<\/p>\n

2<\/a>. See Olga Matich, <\/a>“Sasha Sokolov’s\u00a0Palisandriia:\u00a0<\/em>History and Myth,”\u00a0Russian Review,\u00a0<\/em>45, No. 3 (1986), 415-26; D. Barton Johnson, “Sasha Sokolov s\u00a0Palisandriia,” Slavic and East European Journal,\u00a0<\/em>30, No. 3 (1986), 389-403; Boris Grois, “Zhizn’ kak utopiia i utopiia kak zhizn: Iskusstvo sots-arta,”\u00a0Sintaksis,\u00a0<\/em>18 (1987), 177-78; I. S. [Igor Smirnov], “Nepoznavaemyi sub”ekt: Bessub”ektnost’, polisub”ektnost’, inosub”ektnost’,”\u00a0Beseda, 6\u00a0<\/em>(1987), 137.43; see also Olga Matich, “Sasha Sokolov and His Literary Context,” in this volume.<\/p>\n

<\/a>3<\/a>. The immediate reference is to\u00a0The Anxiety of Influence. A Theory of Poetry\u00a0<\/em>by Harold Bloom (New York: Macmillan, 1973), whose formula actually amounts to a Freudian literalization of the Formalists’ concept of evolution as the struggle of literary sons against their fathers.<\/p>\n

<\/a>4<\/a>. Ann Arbor. Ardis, 1985. Note Palisander’s own interest in the\u00a0pisavshie ob etikh pisa<\/em>v<\/em>shikh, a takzhe pisavshie o pisavshikh naschet pisa<\/em>v<\/em>shikh\u00a0<\/em>(p. 20).<\/p>\n

5<\/a>. See also:\u00a0molodoi Karuzo\u00a0<\/em>(an American movie),\u00a0son moego filigrannogo razuma\u00a0<\/em>(Goya),\u00a0luchshii, talantliveishii\u00a0<\/em>(Stalin on Maiakovskii),\u00a0kogda zhe pridet nastoiashchii den’… ?\u00a0<\/em>(N. A. Dobroliubov), “A<\/em>\u00a0byl Ii mal’chik<\/em>?<\/em>(Gor’kii,\u00a0Klim Samgin); bez viny vinovatost’\u00a0<\/em>(A. N. Ostrovskii),\u00a0pamiat’ serdtsa\u00a0<\/em>(Batiushkov and a Soviet film);\u00a0Ne stesniaites\u00a0<\/em>–<\/em>–<\/em>–<\/em>delaite svoiu intimnuiu zhizn’ s Palisandra\u00a0<\/em>(Maiakovskii);\u00a0teatral’nyi raz”ezd\u00a0<\/em>(Gogol’);\u00a0Prost, kak mychan’e!\u00a0<\/em>(Maiakovskii); invoking Persians against the <\/a>Russian consulate (an allusion to the seizure of the consulate headed by Griboedov), singing\u00a0v tserkovnom khore<\/em>\u00a0(Blok);\u00a0prosnulsia . . . Kazhdoi vetkoi. I ptitsei\u00a0<\/em>(Fet),\u00a0odinochestvo sverkhmarafontsa\u00a0<\/em>(Alan Sillitoe),\u00a0Vremia, vpered\u00a0<\/em>(Kataev).<\/p>\n

6<\/a>. This thematically and compositionally important episode is extremely rich in intertextual underpinnings. In <\/a>particular, the Major’s name seems to combine the Russian version of Hecuba (note the Hamletian question,\u00a0chto imenno vam Gekuba?<\/em>) with a Georgian-sounding name (in keeping with Beriia’s nationality and the actual closeness between Stalin and the Georgian actor Gelovani, who played Stalin in the film\u00a0Padeniie Berlina);\u00a0<\/em>also, similarity with the name of the legendary Soviet border guard Karatsupa may not be irrelevant.<\/p>\n

7<\/a>. For more examples of “vaguer” echoes, see also, in order of appearance:<\/p>\n

—\u00a0privychnyi zapakh kazennogo vremeni\u00a0<\/em>(Platonov?);\u00a0zima ego trevolnenii\u00a0<\/em>(John Steinbeck and Shakespeare’s\u00a0Richard III); sushchnost’ gosudarstva rossiiskogo\u00a0<\/em>(Karamzin); the way Uncle Ho\u00a0brosaet emu [Iosifu] v litso chto-to edkoe\u00a0<\/em>(Esenin has\u00a0derzkoe)<\/em>;Stalin’s calling Palisander\u00a0Sandro\u00a0<\/em>after his poetic debut\u00a0(diadia Sandro’s\u00a0<\/em>artistic encounter with Stalin in Iskandei s “Pity Valtasara”);\u00a0pri vsem svoem liubopytstve prisluga nasha leniva, neliuboznatel’na\u00a0<\/em>(Pushkin’s\u00a0my lenivy i neliubopytny\u00a0<\/em>on encountering Griboedov\u2019s coffin in\u00a0Puteshestvie v Arzrum); Chto mne proku v etix susal’nykh pogonakh…?\u00a0<\/em>(Tat’iana in Ch. 8 of\u00a0Onegin); I sam otvetil …\u00a0<\/em>(Lenin on Tolstoi in Gor’kii\u2019s memoirs of Lenin);\u00a0— proviziia . . . s dushkom (osetrina\u00a0<\/em>in “Dama s sobachkoi”);\u00a0tak b’iut navskidku\u00a0<\/em>(Pasternak’s “Tak nachinaiut .”);\u00a0bochkotara\u00a0<\/em>(Aksenov);\u00a0Borot’sia, derzat, ne sdavat’sia\u00a0<\/em>(from the titles of two sections in\u00a0Dva kapitana:\u00a0<\/em>“Borot’sia i iskat’” and “Naiti i ne sdavat’sia”); throwing money into the fireplace\u00a0(Idiot),\u00a0<\/em>the operatic libretto with Brezhnev as Casanova (Tsvetaeva’s play); bathing together with Andropov (Smith,\u00a0Gorky Park);\u00a0<\/em>Godot’s entering with an apple (Bender’s first appearance in\u00a0The Twelve Chairs\u00a0<\/em>(in a Gogolian effect, the apple is comically taken up by the waiter, who thinks dessert is being discussed);<\/p>\n

— the topos of love between a prisoner and a free woman (Stendahl’s\u00a0La Chartreuse de Parme,\u00a0<\/em>Pasternak’s\u00a0Leitenant Shmidt); No-mimo, mimo\u00a0<\/em>(the narrator’s favorite formula in\u00a0Master i Margarita<\/em>; cf.\u00a0<\/em>also the statement that “bones essenttially do not <\/a>rot,” patterned on Voland’s remark about manuscripts not burning); the\u00a0cheln\u00a0<\/em>that was\u00a0utl (Mednyi vsadnik),\u00a0<\/em>the Socialist Realist\u00a0mekhanicheskie masterskie,\u00a0<\/em>the resurrection of dead souls and bodies (Gogol’ plus Fedorov); Europe that is\u00a0uzhe za kholmami (Slovo o polku Igoreve).<\/em><\/p>\n

8<\/a>. The relevance of Pasternak to\u00a0Shkola dlia durakov\u00a0<\/em>isdiscussed by Matich (in this volume); apparently, in\u00a0Palisandriia\u00a0<\/em>Sokolov continues to settle scores with him. Esenin, too, is quite <\/a>prominent in the subtext and supplies the name for a protagonist (Shagane). For discussion of several other literary figures intertextualized in\u00a0Palisandriia\u00a0<\/em>see Matich, “Sasha Sokolov’s\u00a0Palisandriia… ,” passim,\u00a0<\/em>and Johnson, Sasha Sokolov’s\u00a0Palisandriia,”\u00a0<\/em>pp. 399-401.<\/p>\n

<\/a>9<\/a>. See Matich, “Sasha Sokolov’s\u00a0Palisandriia . . .”,\u00a0<\/em>p. 424.<\/p>\n

<\/a>10<\/a>.\u00a0Apollon-77,\u00a0<\/em>ed. Mikhail Shemiakin (Paris: Lee Arts Graphiques, 1977), pp. 57-64.<\/p>\n

<\/a>11<\/a>. New York: Index Publishers, 1979.<\/p>\n

<\/a>12<\/a>. Sterne’s novel is known to the sophisticated Russian reader not only as such but also through the intermediary of Shklovskii, in particular his “Parodiinyi roman.\u00a0Tristram Shendi\u00a0<\/em>Sterna,” in Viktor Shklovskii,\u00a00 teorii prozy\u00a0<\/em>(Moscow:\u00a0<\/em>Federatsiia,1929), pp. 177-204.<\/p>\n

<\/a>13<\/a>. Narrated in a footnote (pp. 180-81) to the description of an erotic encounter which includes the proverbial Russian wisdom that old age does not impede sex\u00a0(“Staryi kon’ borozdy ne isportit”, pp.\u00a0<\/em>179-180).<\/p>\n

<\/a>14<\/a>. Along with\u00a0The Golden Ass,\u00a0<\/em>John Updike’s\u00a0The Centaur\u00a0<\/em>(published in Russian in 1966 and very popular at the time) may be a relevant source.<\/p>\n

<\/a>15<\/a>. On Potemkin cf. note 60 below.<\/p>\n

<\/a>16<\/a>. The games of\u00a0babki\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0svaika\u00a0<\/em>are associated with the theme of historical change, for instance, by Mandel’shtam in “Nashedshii podkovu:”\u00a0Deti igraiut v babki pozvonkami umershikh zhivotnykh,\/ Letoisehislenie nashei ery podkhodit k kontsu.\u00a0<\/em>See Omry Ronen,\u00a0An Approach to Mandel’shtam\u00a0<\/em>(Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1983), pp. 154-55, and also p. 84 on horse and horseshoe as symbols of time.<\/p>\n

<\/a>17<\/a>. The Kholstomer connection is noted by Johnson, “Sasha Sokolov’s\u00a0Palisandriia,”<\/em>\u00a0p.\u00a0<\/em>400.<\/p>\n

<\/a>18<\/a>. Note in particular the motif of selling the horse because of the owner’s interests of the moment, e.g. the plan to sell Palisander to a seraglio after Mazhoret’s losses at Epsom Downs.<\/p>\n

19<\/a>. See Aleksandr Zholkovskii, “Dialog Bulgakova i Oleshi o kolbase, parade chuvstv i Golgofe,”\u00a0Sintaksis, 20\u00a0<\/em>(1987), 97, 103, and “‘Egipetskaia marka: ‘\u00adpopytka Zavisti?,”\u00a0<\/em>in Osip\u00a0Mandel’shtam. An International Symposium, Bari, June 1988,<\/em>\u00a0ed. by Efim Etkind and Fausto Malcovati (forthcoming). One probable reference to\u00a0Zavist’\u00a0 is\u00a0<\/em>the stud’s meat <\/a>being made into mockingly personified sausage\u00a0(memuarami tekh kolbas my, k neschast’iu ne raspolagaem, p.\u00a0<\/em>181), cf. Andrei Babichev\u2019s parental and bridal love for that product. The boots made of the horse’s hide may have Gogolian connotations (cf. the Bashmachkin clan’s preoccupation with boots). Links to Pilniak’s “Mat’ syra-zemlia” in\u00a0Mezhdu sobakoi i volkom\u00a0<\/em>are cogently argued by Matich in this volume.<\/p>\n

20<\/a>. This switch constitutes the novel’s major stylistic reversal. With this\u00a0Es-\u00adErzahlung\u00a0<\/em>(Smirnov, <\/a>“Nepoznavaemyi sub”ekt,” p. 139)\u00a0Palisandriia\u00a0<\/em>continues the innovative play with points of view begun by the\u00a0Ich-, Du-\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Wir-Erzahlung\u00a0<\/em>in\u00a0Shkola dlia durakou\u00a0<\/em>(see also Matich in this volume). It is noteworthy that a “my<\/em>-narrative,” or rather, “vy-nas-<\/em>narrative,” also finds its way into\u00a0Palisandriia —\u00a0<\/em>in the passages narrated by the elderly aunts (pp. 96 f.).<\/p>\n

<\/a>21<\/a>. The frog\/toad motif may go back to the folkloric Princess Frog.<\/p>\n

<\/a>22<\/a>. See Matich, “Sasha Sokolov’s Palisandriia . . . ,” p. 423.<\/p>\n

<\/a>23<\/a>. Incidentally, the apple appears several times alongside horses and bones in Mandel’shtam’s poems dealing with the theme of time: “Nashedshii podkovu,” “1 ianvaria 1924,” and “Grifel’naia oda.” See also the reference to Godot’s apple above.<\/p>\n

<\/a>24<\/a>. See his\u00a0Izbrannye sochineniia (Moscow:\u00a0<\/em>GIXL,1956), pp. 97-98.<\/p>\n

<\/a>25<\/a>. Ann Arbor, Ardis, 1978 (reprint).<\/p>\n

<\/a>26<\/a>.\u00a0Otchaianie,\u00a0<\/em>p. 23; see Aleksandr Zholkovskii, “Vliublenno-blednye nartsissy,”\u00a0Beseda,\u00a0<\/em>6 (1987), 146-9; ‘fear of mirrors’ may also go back to Dostoevsky’s “Dvoinik” and even to E.T.A. Hoffmann’s\u00a0Abenteuer der Sylvesternacht,\u00a0<\/em>which features the motif of ‘mirror-draping,’ prominent in\u00a0Palisandriia.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>27<\/a>. New York: New Directions, 1959, p.119; see also\u00a0Otchaianie.\u00a0<\/em>pp. 59-60.<\/p>\n

<\/a>28<\/a>. Discussing such cases, Sokolov has repeatedly claimed unfamiliarity with likely sources (personal communication); in any case, the pointlessness of consciously pillaging Nabokov without intertextual play is obvious.<\/p>\n

<\/a>29<\/a>. San Diego, New York and London: Harvest\/HBJ,1956 [1928].<\/p>\n

30<\/a>. Probably,\u00a0Orlando\u00a0<\/em>is the, or at least, a butt of Nabokov’s irony in\u00a0Priglashenie na kazn’<\/em>\u00a0(Ann Arbor, Ardis, 1979 [reprint]), p. 125, targeting the model contemporary novel, <\/a>entitled\u00a0Quercus,\u00a0<\/em>where numerous historical events take place around an oak-tree. Cf. John Kopper\u2019s recent contribution to the ongoing search for the prototype of\u00a0Quercus\u00a0<\/em>(“The Prison in Nabokov s\u00a0Priglashenie: A\u00a0<\/em>Place to Have the Time of One’s Life,” Russian\u00a0Language Journal,\u00a0<\/em>41, No. 140 [1987], 176-77); Kopper emphasizes the Tolstoian connection.<\/p>\n

<\/a>31<\/a>. Decades can pass in a half-day; the protagonist’s house has 365 rooms and 52 staircases.<\/p>\n

<\/a>32<\/a>. Cf.the sacred profession of\u00a0chasovshchiki,\u00a0<\/em>“the timekeepers” in\u00a0Palisandriia.<\/em><\/p>\n

33<\/a>. Since she is <\/a>Orlando’s (and Virginia Woolf\u2019s) alter ego, the ‘lupine’ connection acquires additional emblematic overtones. And one can hardly help speculating about the coincidence of her name, Sasha, with that of the author of\u00a0Palisandriia\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Between Dog and Wolf.\u00a0<\/em>Incidentally, Woolf is the author of a “canine” narrative,\u00a0Flush\u00a0<\/em>(1933).<\/p>\n

<\/a>34<\/a>. Like the menu of Palisander’s dinner with Beckett.<\/p>\n

<\/a>35<\/a>. Exaggerating for the sake of clarity, one could say that even if this were a case of plagiarism, it would not make\u00a0Orlando\u00a0<\/em>a relevant subtext, because in no sense is\u00a0Orlando\u00a0<\/em>a meaningful literary target of Sokolov s discourse.<\/p>\n

36<\/a>. See Iurii Shcheglov, <\/a>“Semioticheskii analiz odnogo tipa iumora,”\u00a0Semiotika i informatika, 6\u00a0<\/em>(1976), 185-98,\u00a0<\/em>and “Tri fragmenta poetiki Il\u2019fa i Petrova (mir sotsializma; obraz Bendera; mifologizm romanov), in A. K. Zholkovskii, Iu. K Shcheglov,\u00a0Mir avtora i struktura teksta. <\/a>Stat’i o russkoi literature\u00a0<\/em>(Tenafly NJ: Hermitage, 1986), pp. 85-117.<\/em><\/p>\n

37<\/a>. See Thomas Seifrid, “Writing Against Matter. On the Language of Andrei Platonov\u2019s\u00a0Kotloven,” Slavic and East European Journal,\u00a0<\/em>31, No. 3(1987),370-87.<\/p>\n

<\/a>38<\/a>. Elsewhere I have described Aksenov’s dominant as\u00a0optimisticheskaia moderniia\u00a0<\/em>(“Iskusstvo prisposobleniia,”\u00a0Grani,\u00a0<\/em>138 [1985], 93).<\/p>\n

<\/a>39<\/a>. On\u00a0Palisandriia’s\u00a0<\/em>post-modernism see Grois, “Zhizn’ kak utopiia,” and Smirnov, “Nepoznavaemyi sub”ekt.”<\/p>\n

<\/a>40<\/a>. Abram Tertz [Andrei Siniavskii], “On Socialist Realism,” in his\u00a0The Trial Begins and On Socialist Realism\u00a0<\/em>(Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press), pp. 127-219.<\/p>\n

41<\/a>. Abram <\/a>Terts,\u00a0V teni Gogolia\u00a0<\/em>(London: Overseas Publications Interchange, 1976), pp. 93-94. For\u00a0Perepiska’s\u00a0<\/em>totalitarian, as well as post-modernist, reading see Alexander Zholkovsky, “Rereading Gogol”s Miswritten Book (Notes on\u00a0Selected Passages from<\/em>\u00a0Correspondence with Friends),”\u00a0<\/em>in “The Logos of Gogol,” ed. Priscilla Meyer and Susanne Fusso (in preparation).<\/p>\n

<\/a>42<\/a>. For a reproduction, see\u00a0Artforum\u00a0<\/em>20, 8 (1982), 38.<\/p>\n

43<\/a>. Note the possible importance of Siniavskii s writing both on Socialist Realism and on Gogol’ for the <\/a>conception\u00a0of Palisandriia\u00a0<\/em>(see esp.\u00a0V teni Gogolia,\u00a0<\/em>pp. 282-83, 408-18). In particular, Palisander\u2019s “soldierly” style dovetails with what Siniavskii says about Gogol”s Petrine “need to combine the image of the poet with the honest face of the official” (“chinovnika”) and to be a\u00a0“poet odicheskogo sklada”,\u00a0<\/em>who is\u00a0“po-soldatski priamolineen”\u00a0<\/em>(p. 246) and fancies\u00a0“religious asceticism<\/em>\u00a0and military discipline”\u00a0<\/em>(p. 252).<\/p>\n

<\/a>44<\/a>. On Maiakovskii’s “militarism,” see A. K. Zholkovskii, “O genii i zlodeistve, o babe i vserossiiskom masshtabe (Progulki po Maiakovskomu),” in Zholkovskii, Shcheglov,\u00a0Mir aotora i\u00a0<\/em>struktura\u00a0teksta,\u00a0<\/em>pp. 268-274.<\/p>\n

45<\/a>. Sokolov has noted that a group of writers of his generation– Iosif Brodskii, Eduard Limonov, Iurii <\/a>Miloslavskii, Aleksei Tsvetkov — come from officers’ families and therefore share a common sensibility. He also confirms having been reared on most of the above authors (Staniukovich, Kuprin, A. N. Tolstoi, Novikov-Priboi, Gaidar, Kaverin, Giovagnoli); Tars\u00a0Bulba\u00a0<\/em>he read “s\u00a0trepetom”\u00a0<\/em>(oral communication).<\/p>\n

<\/a>46<\/a>. It is formulated by Palisander himself as he “reviews” one of his other books:\u00a0No\u00a0<\/em>i\u00a0tut vam ostaetsia lish’<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0voskhitit\u2019sia umeniem autora opisat’ use tak, chtoby ne opisat’\u00a0 nichego\u00a0<\/em>(p. 264).<\/p>\n

<\/a>47<\/a>. “Voskovaia persona” features Peter I, “Podporuchik Kizhe,” Paul I, “Maloletnyi Vitushishnikov,” Nicholas I.<\/p>\n

<\/a>48<\/a>. In particular by a special,\u00a0liternyi\u00a0<\/em>train, mentioned also by Palisander, p. 208.<\/p>\n

49<\/a>. To sketch briefly the Palisandriia-like details in\u00a0Zolotoi telenok:<\/em><\/p>\n

— Bender is\u00a0a potomok ianychar,\u00a0<\/em>a pseudo-son of the legendary Lieutenant Schmidt, and passes himself off for a Kiev policeman; Balaganov is called\u00a0pervenets\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0liubimyi syn leitenanta, gvardeets,\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0admiral;\u00a0<\/em>Panikovskii is issued a fireman’s uniform and later “demoted”\u00a0iz brandmeisterov v prostye toporniki:\u00a0<\/em>the entire band is compared to the\u00a0tri bogatyria\u00a0<\/em>of Russian folklore.<\/p>\n

–Bender tends to paint activities of his team in military-strategic colors. He gives their car a proper name, treating it\u00a0 kak\u00a0voennyi korabl’, primeniaet’sia k osobennostiam protivnika\u00a0<\/em>(at the film studios), and decides (since\u00a0vziat’<\/em>\u00a0krepost’ neozhidannoi atakoi ne udalos)\u00a0<\/em>“to launch a proper siege of the fortress” (i. e. Koreiko).<\/p>\n

–<\/em>–\u00a0<\/em>As\u00a0Komandor,\u00a0<\/em>he emulates Lawrence of Arabia and Napoleon (who is tatooed on his chest). Other characters claim to be the Viceroy of India and Julius Caesar; Panikovskii is said to “be wearing the costume of a king in exile;” while the head of “Gerkules” Polykhaev (one of Bender’s counterparts within the establishment) fumes at the lack of respect for his rank\u00a0(“Oni pishut mne predlageetsia’! … s uma … poskhodilil”;\u00a0<\/em>cf. Palisander’s\u00a0“Sovsem . . . obezumeli<\/em>–<\/em>–\u00a0<\/em>leitenantov shliut!”).<\/em><\/p>\n

—<\/em>”<\/em>Komandovat’ paradom budu ia!”,\u00a0<\/em>insists Bender. This leitmotif recurs several times\u00a0(Nam predstoiat velikie boi<\/em>..<\/em>.<\/em>Vyslat’ lineinykh v moe rasporiazhenie … Chastiam pribyt’… Forma odezhdy karaul<\/em>‘<\/em>naia … Trubite marsh!),\u00a0<\/em>involving victories and defeats\u00a0(Par<\/em>a<\/em>d ne ladilsia).<\/em><\/p>\n

–Bender’s two major setbacks take the form of military debacles. The first is set against the background of military maneuvres and a gas-drill: Bender, who has lost track of his foe and is carried on a stretcher under the windows of “Gerkules,” sings a military song and describes himself as a soldier who\u00a0pal smert’iu khrabrykh na pole brani.\u00a0<\/em>The second and final humiliation comes when Bender, attacked and robbed by the Romanian border guards\u00a0(Sobytli<\/em>a<\/em>\u00a0razvertyval<\/em>i<\/em>s’ s voennoi bystrotoi),\u00a0<\/em>must abandon his plans of settling in the West and beat it back to Russia, clinging to the\u00a0chudom sokhranivshiisia v bitve orden Zolotogo Run<\/em>a<\/em>(which Palisander also has). This second fiasco, spelling the failure of the hero’s “American” dream, may have influenced Palisanders humiliations at Belvedere.<\/p>\n

–In a foreshadowing of\u00a0Palisandriia’s\u00a0<\/em>fusion of ‘love’ and ‘war,’ Bender’s courtship of <\/a>Zosia begins in the gas-refuge to the accompaniment of a lecture about the properties of poison gases. Later he instructs his underlings\u00a0(gospoda vol’noopredeliaiushchiesia)\u00a0<\/em>to wash up for the young lady’s visit. Even the ‘equine’ motif makes two brief appearances as Bender runs\u00a0nozdria v nozdriu\u00a0<\/em>with his interlocutor at the film studio and\u00a0po-loshadinomu mot<\/em>a<\/em>l golovoi\u00a0<\/em>in the battle at the border.
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

50<\/a>. In this sense Matich overstates the case when she writes that “in\u00a0Palisandriia …\u00a0<\/em>there is . . . no imaginative play with Soviet cliches, a venerable Russian literary tradition” (“Sasha Sokolov’s\u00a0Palisandriia … ,”\u00a0<\/em>p. 417); see the examples like\u00a0obraztsovo-pokazatel<\/em>‘<\/em>nyi\u00a0<\/em>throughout the present article.<\/p>\n

<\/a>51<\/a>. For instance, Zoshchenko’s funny cultural simpletons reflect the author’s earnest craving for healthy simplicity and rupture with hyper-sophisticated culture; see Aleksandr Zholkovskii, “Lev Tolstoi i Mikhail Zoshchenko kak zerkalo i zazerkal’e rusakoi revoliutsii,”\u00a0Sintaksis,\u00a0<\/em>16 (1986), 121.<\/p>\n

<\/a>52<\/a>. This slightly garbled quotation from Pushkin’s “19 oktiabria 1825” is immediately undermined by its actual reference — a trip by blimp.<\/p>\n

53<\/a>. This principle (discussed by Matich, see “Sasha Sokolov’s\u00a0Palisandriia … ,”\u00a0<\/em>p. 417) is explicitly <\/a>stated by Palisander (see below, III. 2b). In another revealing formulation Palisander admits his indebtedness to the\u00a0neisto<\/em>v<\/em>ye modernisty drevnosti\u00a0<\/em>(p. 234), i.e., the writers of the Silver Age, who, seen from the future, present an ideal combination of the modern and the classical. A similar combination is provided by the mummy of King Tut, exuding the aroma of\u00a0drevnie pover’ia,\u00a0<\/em>borrowed from Blok’s\u00a0neznakomka.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>54<\/a>. The intermediary second category reflects the problem posed by ‘reality’ coming to the writer in forms preprocessed by culture.<\/p>\n

<\/a>55<\/a>. Soldaty istorii, pole brani, poezd sugubogo\u00a0naznacheniia, otmennyi<\/em>\u00a0sluzhbist,\u00a0<\/em>v<\/em>nedrenie uoisk<\/em>\u00a0u neokhvachennye raiony zemnogo shara,\u00a0<\/em>and so on.<\/p>\n

56<\/a>. In order of appearance:\u00a0veteran, kaznachei-pope<\/em>c<\/em>hitel, general<\/em>–<\/em>general, chasovoi, voenachal’niki, g<\/em>v<\/em>uardeets, sluzhbist, of<\/em>i<\/em>tserishka, povar kantseliarii na marshe, Komandor, pekhota, orudiinaia prisluga, strel’tsy, Generalissimus, polkovodets, strel’tsy-privratniki, denshchik, kavaleristy internatsional’nykh brigad, konniki, otstavnoe zhandarmskoe\u00a0<\/em>v<\/em>oinatvo, tovarish<\/em>c<\/em>h po oruzhiiu, shtafirka, khorunzhii,\u00a0<\/em>k<\/em>ornet, voennyi v chinakh, ordinarets, polko<\/em>v<\/em>nik, okhrana, soldaty, intendant, geroi voiny, kaza<\/em>c<\/em>ehii marshal, polovoi v mundire o<\/em>t<\/em>\u00a0meditsinskikh voisk, agenty vsevozmozhnykh\u00a0<\/em>s<\/em>luzhb, fel<\/em>‘<\/em>dmarshal, marshaly, of<\/em>i<\/em>tser zapasa, kapitan o<\/em>t<\/em>\u00a0skladirovan<\/em>ii<\/em>a, vyshestoiiash<\/em>c<\/em>hii po zvaniiu komandir, skladeets (<\/em>sic), otsta<\/em>v<\/em>nik, novobranets, riadovo<\/em>i<\/em>, grenader, maior, kashevar-na<\/em>–<\/em>\u00admarshe, intendant vysokogo rang<\/em>a<\/em>, leitenant, karaul, gvardiia, m<\/em>ich<\/em>man dal’nego plavaniia, kavaleriiskii podkhorunzhii, starosluzhash<\/em>c<\/em>hii, morskoi kavalergard, propavshie bez vesti, vestovoi, dobrovolets, voennosluzhashchie, kare pochetnogo karaula, bratva s<\/em>…<\/em>\u00a0batarei<\/em>….<\/em>\u00a0diviziona<\/em>…<\/em>\u00a0brigady, beregoviki, primorskie artilleristy, barabansh<\/em>c<\/em>hik, of<\/em>i<\/em>tser, kortezh, eskort, shpalery politsmeisterov, kentavr o<\/em>t<\/em>\u00a0zhandarmerii\u00a0<\/em>(sic);\u00a0<\/em>cf. note 14),\u00a0ratobortsy, gorodovye, nachal’nik moiei okhrany, kadrovyi of<\/em>i<\/em>tser, podporuchik, sledovatel’<\/em>v <\/a>chinakh, kapitan-kaptenarmus, praporshchik o<\/em>t<\/em>\u00a0bukhgalterii, narochnyi, matrosskie massy, ratnyi prostoliudin, sledovatel’ pervogo ranga, kaptenarmus, sverkhsrochnaia matrosskaia chern<\/em>‘<\/em>, telokhranitel’, general, kavalergardii podporuchik, matrosiki, maior teatral’nykh voisk, chiny tamozhennoi inspektury, staryi kavalerist, neizvestnye soldaty, generalitet.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>57<\/a>. On hunting as an “acceptable” form of warfare in\u00a0War and Peace\u00a0<\/em>see S. G. Bocharov,\u00a0“Voina i mir L.\u00a0<\/em>N. Tolstogo,” in S. G. Bocharov, V. V. Kozhinov, D. P. Nikolaev,\u00a0Tr shede<\/em>v<\/em>ra russkoi klassiki\u00a0<\/em>(Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literature, 1971), pp. 17 f.<\/em><\/p>\n

58<\/a>. E. g.:\u00a0proshel po-napoleonovski slavnyi put’ o<\/em>t<\/em>\u00a0prostogo… ; sravnival sebia s Bonapartom… “Net, v uzurpatory i<\/em>a<\/em>\u00a0pok<\/em>a<\/em>\u00a0ne gozhus’<\/em>“;<\/em>\u00a0Khrushchev’s\u00a0napoleonovskaia shinel’; chetyre napoleonovskie chasa na son.<\/em><\/p>\n

59<\/a>. These two owe their appearance to Palisander’s ogre-like quality:\u00a0Karl Dvenadtsatyi … tot i vo<\/em><\/a>v<\/em>use byl paralitik, a<\/em>na rukakh nosili. A Sulla, Kornelii Liutsius, kotorogo bukval<\/em>‘<\/em>no zabrasyvali tsvetami, kogda on skakal po Appievoi doroge,<\/em>–<\/em>–\u00a0<\/em>razve on ne stradal parshoiu<\/em>\u00a0(p. 24). Sulla is in all probability borrowed from Giovagnoli’s\u00a0Spartacus\u00a0<\/em>rather than from history books, while Charles XII arrives, stretcher and all, straight from Pushkin’s\u00a0Poltava.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>60<\/a>. On Suvorov’s carnivalesque image and on that of Potemkin, see Iurii Lotman, “The Poetics of Everyday Behavior in Eighteenth-Century Russian Culture,” in\u00a0The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History.\u00a0<\/em>Essays by Iu. M. Lotman, L. Ia. Ginsburg, B. A. Uspenskii, ed. by Alexander Nakhimovsky and Alice Stone Nakhimovsky (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1985), pp. 82-85.<\/p>\n

<\/a>61<\/a>. Pred’iavitelia besprimerno znaia v litso, no i otchetlivo znaia ustav, chasovoi … polistal dokument (p. 10).<\/p>\n

<\/a>62<\/a>.\u00a0Vekami, vekami,\u00a0<\/em>the concluding words of his version of Lomonosov’s “Vechernee razmyshleniie o bozhiem velichestve pri sluchae velikogo severnogo siianiia” (after dinner with Beckett, p. 140).<\/p>\n

<\/a>63<\/a>.\u00a0t<\/em>reboval satisfaktsii; i uzh nepremenno streliat’sia; vyzvat’ … k bar’eru … sposobom puli ili klinka. Druzhba druz<\/em>h<\/em>boi, duel<\/em>‘ –<\/em>–<\/em>duel’iu; nelepyi skandal, edva ne postavivshii nas k bar<\/em>‘<\/em>\u00a0eru.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>64<\/a>. Stalin is referred to as\u00a0Don-Kikhot bez upreka i strakha (p. 78).<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>65<\/a>.\u00a0Geral’dika,\u00a0<\/em>castles with figures of knights in the hallways, with their\u00a0kol’chugi, laty, kop’ia, mechi,\u00a0<\/em>and the like.<\/p>\n

<\/a>66<\/a>.\u00a00 … slave oruzh’ia pristalo tvorit’ epopei; kak portretist, P. ne zhaloval melkie plany<\/em>\u00a0–<\/em>-khotelos’ monumental’nogo;\u00a0<\/em>Brezhnev\u00a0rasskazyval umoritel’nye voennye anekdoty, chto pozzhe legli v osnovanie ego epokhal’nykh knig.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>67<\/a>. This “soldierly” interjection occurs only in literature.<\/p>\n

<\/a>68<\/a>. In several adjacent paragraphs\u00a0bravye polunoshchniki… [my] razop<\/em>‘<\/em>em butyl’ konfiskovannogo u gvardeitsev belogo …. probeseduem s denshchikom do zari … [i] otda[dim] dosug filosofskim progulkam, gerbariiu, akvareliam<\/em>, and “monumental” painting (pp. 116-7).<\/p>\n

69<\/a>. Some of the other profundities come to his mind “at the embroidering frame” (za pial’tsami),\u00a0<\/em>a pronouncedly feminine pastime (cf. Palisander’s androgyny), which probably refers to Gogol”s love of knitting and the embroidering Governor in\u00a0Mertvye dushi.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>70<\/a>. Namely, the definition of Tuesday as the second day of the week, the exhortation\u00a0vsiakii den’ beredi sebe dushu voprosami\u00a0<\/em>and the comparison of the\u00a0liubopytstvuiush<\/em>c<\/em>ehee chelovechestvo\u00a0<\/em>to cockroaches.<\/p>\n

71<\/a>.\u00a0Odnazhdy <\/a>na<\/em>\u00a0vechere u printsessy Monako prints Likhtenshteina, imevshii s nei ranee bolee nezheli tesnye otnosheniia, no osvobozhdennyi of nikh kak nespraviushiisia s obiazannostiami, pri vsekh predlagaet ei kurtuaznyi vopros:\u00a0<\/em>”<\/em>Kak vy dumaete, esli by my uslovilis’ nazyvat’ svoi nogi usobitsami, to chto v nashem sluchae my razumeli by pod mezhduusobitsamif”<\/em>\u00a0–<\/em>–<\/em>“V vashem, Vashe Vysochestvo, sluchae,” oskorbilas’ printsessa, “sovsem nemnogoe”\u00a0<\/em>(pp. 111-12).<\/p>\n

72<\/a>. <\/a>Also\u00a0pospeshaiu, nadlezhat, obretaetsia; litsezriu, nalichestvuiu, vosposledovavshii, derznu, iunoshestvoval; sedalish<\/em>c<\/em>he, pleskalishche, uzilishche, supostat, mzdoimtsy, mzdodavtsy, kaznokrady, ratobortsy, mraz, rukomeslo, gg.<\/em>borzopistsy, trapeznaia; prechudno, blagosozvuchnoe, spitsebleshchushchaia; sie, chrez, ravno i.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>73<\/a>. Also\u00a0otfrishtikav, pikiruius’, ekzertsirkhauz, batal’ia, kurtina, ravelin, bivuak, bastion, vits-mundir, moveton, epistola, muzyka, virshi.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>74<\/a>. Also\u00a0chakhotochen i khaotichen; letuch, vetren; vezdesushch; smuglovat, khmurovat i podtianut; vzvikhren; bled i neobratim.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>75<\/a>.\u00a0Naveshchaia …. mne pokazali; usmotrevshis, … mne sdelalos’ bol’no; ogibaia… ostro<\/em>v<\/em>a, besprestanno kachalo.\u00a0<\/em>The text also abounds in perfectly correct gerundal and other absolute constructions, which create an eighteenth-\u00adcentury aura by their sheer number.<\/p>\n

76<\/a>.\u00a0Also predstaval molodtsevat, <\/a>predstal kromeshen, sluchilsia udachen, sluchilsia raduzhen, skazavshis’ zaniat, preby<\/em>v<\/em>aet bodr, sdelalsia opechalen, kak derzno<\/em>v<\/em>en!;<\/em>byvaem zastignuty, ono shchemiashche, mogli byt’\u00a0<\/em>v<\/em>pechatliaiushchi, eto kraeugol’no; z<\/em>v<\/em>uk byl<\/em>…<\/em>\u00a0ne pereponchat; sluchaetsia odinoko.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>77<\/a>.\u00a0Also paki i paki vlachish’sia; begite sikh alchushchikh plotskogo; vrachevat’ ikh, bichuia; nevezha, neuch, ne druzhen s inostrannymi iazykami i, mankiruia obrazo<\/em>v<\/em>aniem, zhuiruet zhizn’.<\/em><\/p>\n

78<\/a>.\u00a0Also kudlatogolov, bludo<\/em>v<\/em>zoren, raskhristan\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0liubliu, povtoriaiu, morskie srazhen’ia\u00a0<\/em>(amphibrachic tetrameters);\u00a0SHaSHki vySHli iz noZHen s SHelestom SHokoladnoi fol<\/em>‘<\/em>gi; … PodGORNyi i GeoRGadZe, GOnchie i boRZye; Ne zaRE<\/em>Iu<\/em>t Na RE<\/em>I<\/em>akh\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0izRanenno RE<\/em>iia\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0sREDI DEREv’ev;\u00a0<\/em>and so on.<\/p>\n

Paronomasias, alliterations, rhythmical sequences, poetic tropes, entire passages written in the manner of Belyi’s prose and Pasternak’s poetry, and other devices characteristic of verse language abound in\u00a0Palisandriia.\u00a0<\/em>As stylistic manifestations of the ‘decadent’ pole, they should have been listed separately from their combinations with the ‘military’ motifs. This may constitute the subject of a separate study; here I will confine myself to two examples. The metaliterary <\/a>exchange between Beckett and Palisander is punctuated with anapaests and paronomasias:\u00a0“moi GoDo NiKuDa Ne GoDitsia”\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0“snisKHoDiTel’no vKHODiT GoDO”\u00a0<\/em>(pp. 139, 140). In the ongoing emulation by Russian wordsmiths of Verlaine’s famous paronomasia,\u00a01<\/em>l<\/em>\u00a0pleur<\/em>e<\/em>\u00a0dans mon coeur\/ Comme it pleut\u00a0<\/em>s<\/em>ur la vill<\/em>e<\/em>,\u00a0<\/em>Sokolov scores a remarkable success:\u00a0U mnogikh oblozheno n<\/em>\u043b<\/em>bo, no nebo<\/em>–<\/em>–\u00a0<\/em>u\u00a0<\/em>vsekh (p. 93).
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

79<\/a>. To be sure, the addiction to tobacco also has its revolutionary, i. e. ‘military,’ side.<\/p>\n

<\/a>80<\/a>. The archaic style, in its turn, may stand for the ‘decadent’ pole, for instance, when it is the only representative of the aesthetizing principle.<\/p>\n

81<\/a>. Also\u00a0po<\/em>–<\/em>otecheski bezzavetno liubil\u00a0<\/em>(Beriia’s feelings for Palisander);\u00a0v<\/em>ozliubil usetselo, slo<\/em>v<\/em>no syno<\/em>v<\/em>(Palisander’s love of fallen leaves, quite natural in view of his being a tree);\u00a0v\u00a0<\/em>poriadke otchaiania povesilsia\u00a0<\/em>(p. 9; cf. Il’f and Petrov’s\u00a0v poriadke mirazha); pokhodnaia vanna;\u00a0<\/em>telling \u00a0v\u00a0<\/em>pokhode o peruoi <\/a>liubvi;\u00a0<\/em>becoming\u00a0roditelem<\/em>–<\/em>odinochkoi v pokhodnykh u<\/em>s<\/em>loviiakh; legiony memuaristo<\/em>v<\/em>; prudy\u00a0<\/em>v<\/em>\u00a0ledianykh mundirakh\u00a0<\/em>(a metaphor fit for a bona fide lyric);\u00a0general\u00a0<\/em>(Andropov), who is also\u00a0a f<\/em>i<\/em>latelist\u00a0<\/em>(cf. the cliche of a Nazi camp\u00a0Kommandant\u00a0<\/em>playing the violin);\u00a0krepnet nasha dusha, ode<\/em>v<\/em>aias’ bronei korosty.<\/em><\/p>\n

82<\/a>. Also\u00a0legion Poxoti; v period voennykh perturbats<\/em>i<\/em>i, kogda vopreki ustavu sluchalos’\u00a0<\/em>v<\/em>se chto ugodno\u00a0<\/em>(Breznev’s thoughts in the presence of the sauna maid);\u00a0otchety soitel’nitsy\u00a0<\/em>(where the first word is bureaucratese and the second a legalistic neologism on the pattern of\u00a0sozhitel’nitsa); vozdat’ po\u00a0<\/em>v<\/em>sei strogosti\u00a0<\/em>(on punishing sexual disloyalty);\u00a0na kladbishche komendantskii cha<\/em>s<\/em>\u00a0(i.\u00a0<\/em>e. orgy time);\u00a0ocherednaia razriadka moei napriazhennosti<\/em>\u00a0(i. e. orgasm); the sexual encounters with Faina Kaplan on the firing range;\u00a0beskompromissnaia pogonia po zhi<\/em>v<\/em>omu sledu\u00a0<\/em>after the object of rape, in which\u00a0opredelenno e<\/em>s<\/em>t’ chto-to o<\/em>t<\/em>\u00a0simvolistskoi estetiki<\/em>\u00a0(p. 215). In this last <\/a>example the ‘uncompromising’ attitude is akin to the other totalizing epithets (see note 81), while the Symbolist aesthetics may refer to the treatment of the Actaeon and Atalanta myth; cf. two Pasternak poems: ‘Zapleti etot liven’ … ” (“Razryv”,\u00a05<\/em>) and “Vo vsem mne khochetsia doiti … ;” the latter has the line\u00a0Begakh, pogoniakh\u00a0<\/em>and belongs to the same cycle (“Kogda razguliaetsia”) as “Byt’ znamenitym nekrasivo … ” with its\u00a0Drugie po zhi<\/em>v<\/em>omu sledu … .<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>83<\/a>. For a discussion of Pasternak’ aesthetic “compromise” with Soviet discourse see Alexander Zholkovsky, “The ‘Sinister’ in the Poetic World of Pasternak,”,\u00a0International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics,\u00a0<\/em>29 (1984), 124-31, and “Mekhanizmy vtorogo rozhdeniia: O stikhotvorenii Pasternaka “Mne khochetsia domoi, v ogromnost…”, Sintaksis 14, (1985), 77-97.<\/p>\n

84<\/a>. Also: Brezhneva’s reluctance\u00a0zatevat’<\/em>…<\/em>prestupnuiu\u00a0s<\/em>viaz’ s\u00a0<\/em>kakim\u00adnibud’<\/em>telokhranitelem,\u00a0<\/em>something she will do after her affair with Palisander (as pointed out in the commentary to the episode:\u00a0Rasskazyvaia etu razviaznuiu kavalergardskuiu byl’,\u00a0<\/em>v<\/em>zor Oresta gorel\u00a0<\/em>kh<\/em>oroshim kazarmennym iumorom);\u00a0<\/em>the extended replay of a girl’s love affair with the\u00a0proezzhii\u00a0<\/em>kornet; the <\/a>inevitable discussion of the size of Peter the Great’s phallus; Orest’s\u00a0kazennaia uchtivost’\u00a0<\/em>towards Brezhneva and his wild fantasies about her (which later come true); and the concept of straightforward no-frills sex happening\u00a0nakorotke, po-tiuremnomu.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>85<\/a>. Remarkably, Ostap Bender quotes the same Romantic line as he picks up Zosia in the “military” context of the gas-refuge (cf. Note 49).<\/p>\n

<\/a>86<\/a>. Also Palisander’s\u00a0takticheskie pobedy nad vertikaliami,\u00a0<\/em>where lovemaking on vacant pedestals in crypts, which in itself combines locker-roomsexual mythology with graveyard romanticism, is described in terms of military tactics.<\/p>\n

87<\/a>. Also <\/a>the\u00a0pokhabstvennye\u00a0<\/em>associations evoked by the game of billiards (again a neo-archaism),\u00a0lozhesna ee zudeli\u00a0<\/em>(the pointedly archaic word for thighs is conjoined with crude itching); and a Prutkovian-Stalinist definition of thesexual act:poeliku koitus e<\/em>s<\/em>t’ ne tol’ko edinstvo, no i borenie protivopolozhnostei.<\/em><\/p>\n

88<\/a>. No\u00a0d<\/em><\/a>v<\/em>azhdy blazhen derznovennyi uznik, kotoryi posil’no otmstil poznavshemu predmet ego voskhishcheniia funktsioneru, poznav<\/em>…\u00a0<\/em>suprugu<\/em>poslednego,\u00a0<\/em>in which the “real-life” triangle is portrayed as both manly vengeance and perverse emotional set-up, couched in epic-romantic terms.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

89<\/a>. On similar techniques in Limonov see Alexander Zholkovskii, “The Beauty Mark and the “I”s of the Beholder. Limonov’s Narcissistic Poem ‘Is v mysliakh poderzhu drugogo cheloveka . . . ,’” in\u00a0Russian Literature and Psychoanalysis,\u00a0<\/em>ed. Daniel Rancour-Laferriere (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, forthcoming).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>90<\/a>. The split is already there beween the epic, which is supposed to glorify the third-person hero, and the lyrical, which focuses on the first person.<\/p>\n

<\/a>91<\/a>. This is yet another example of the use of two manifestations of the ‘decadent’ pole as opposites, where the less dissolute one\u00a0(zd<\/em>o<\/em>ro<\/em>v<\/em>aia erotika)\u00a0<\/em>stands for the rough-shod ‘military’ pole.<\/p>\n

<\/a>92<\/a>. Another\u00a0type\u00a0<\/em>of parallel whimsically confers on the Prutkovian narrator the role of an imprisoned revolutionary; like a Chernyshevskii, Morozov, or Lenin, he uses his forced leisure for important work.<\/p>\n

93<\/a>. Note the amphibrachic sequences\u00a0Sprosil plastilinu i<\/em>gipsu\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0zdorouoi erotikoi fabul i form,\u00a0<\/em>the dactylic\u00a0Po okonchan’i use rozdal,\u00a0<\/em>and the alliterative clusters:\u00a0p<\/em>–<\/em>s-i(-1)\u00a0<\/em>in the first three words, then the two\u00a0g’s\u00a0<\/em>and later two\u00a0z<\/em>‘s in similar rhythmical postions, the\u00a0p<\/em><\/a>–<\/em>1\u00a0<\/em>in the four words beginning with\u00a0predavalsia,\u00a0<\/em>the\u00a0m-s\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0f\u00a0<\/em>in two subsequent pairs, the\u00a0shlzh\u00a0<\/em>in four words of the last sentence, and the triple stressed\u00a0u<\/em>‘s followed by three prominent\u00a0r<\/em>‘s in its conclusion, the two chains being linked by\u00a0ruki.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>94<\/a>. He notes the\u00a0delikatnost’ po krainei mere verbal’naia,\u00a0<\/em>which is characteristic of Mazhoret\u00a0pri vsei\u00a0<\/em>e<\/em>e polovoi raspushchennosti;\u00a0<\/em>cf. Note 63.<\/p>\n

<\/a>95<\/a>.\u00a0Ono ne oskvernit i mladencheskikh ust,\u00a0<\/em>borrowed as it is from baby-talk.<\/p>\n

<\/a>96<\/a>. Especially since the object is described as a tool for pleasing\u00a0zhenshchinu, rezhe<\/em>\u00a0–<\/em>–<\/em>muzhchinu, a v klinicheskikh sluchaiakh<\/em>\u00a0–<\/em>–<\/em>chetveronogogo druga.<\/em><\/p>\n

97<\/a>. An additional twist is added by the biographical context of the fragment. Zizi’s prototype, Evpraksiia (Zizi) <\/a>Vul’f, “was on the plump side” and “had the same waist measurements as Pushkin himself,” as the poet proudly mentioned in a letter to her brother, Aleksei Vul’f. Thus, “the comparison… to a slim wineglass is meant as a joke”\u00a0(Eugene Onegin,\u00a0<\/em>trans. and comm. by Vladimir Nabokov (New York: Bolingen Series\/Pantheon Books, [1964], II, 534-35), and the waist is in a sense, Pushkin’s own, i.e., sexually ambiguous. Pushkin did not become Zizi\u2019s lover until 1829, i.e., after publishing the “innocent verses”\u00a0(ibid, p.\u00a0<\/em>536).<\/p>\n

98<\/a>. Remember that the other significant reference to crystal in\u00a0Onegin\u00a0<\/em>is magicheskii <\/a>kristall,\u00a0<\/em>“the crystal ball” through which the poet discerns the outlines of his “free novel.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>99<\/a>.\u00a0Also muzhaites’\u00a0<\/em>(about books remaining unread),\u00a0bolee muzhest<\/em>v<\/em>ennoe naselenie\u00a0<\/em>(i. e. men),\u00a0litso polko<\/em>v<\/em>nika (Andropova)<\/em>…<\/em>.\u00a0<\/em>v<\/em>ozmuzhalo\u00a0<\/em>(as he answers a difficult question).<\/p>\n

100<\/a>. Also Palisander’s\u00a0vozmuzhanie\u00a0<\/em>in the cells of the Novodevichii monastery, which is lamentably <\/a>unlike Brikabrakoffs Parisian sophistication in sexual mores; the still potent\u00a0muzhskoi pervichnyi priznak\u00a0<\/em>(of the otherwise senile Brezhnev); and another\u00a0pervichnvi priznak,\u00a0<\/em>this time Palisander’s own, administering its\u00a0muzhest<\/em>v<\/em>ennoe sostradanie\u00a0<\/em>to Brezhnev’s wife, with the “dissolute” element conveyed also by the highly metastylistic and preciously periphrastic rhetoric of the passage (which puns on the words for ‘sign, insignia, [sexual] characteristic, punctuation mark, interjection,’ and so on.:\u00a0v<\/em>osklitsatel’nyi znak moego otlichiia, pervichnyi priznak muzhest<\/em>v<\/em>ennogo sostradaniia… besposhchadno pronizhet… mezhdometie ee zhenstvennostii …\u00a0<\/em>(p. 179);\u00a0muzhikovat-s,\u00a0<\/em>Striutskii’s admission of his barracks-style way with women.<\/p>\n

101<\/a>. It also has military-revolutionary overtones: s\u00a0entuziazmom<\/em>muzhestuuia<\/em>\u00a0s<\/em>\u00a0nepogodoi, borias’ i shestvuia\u00a0<\/em>v<\/em>\u00a0edinom stroiu\u00a0<\/em>(p. 109). The “weathering” motif is a reference to the song, popular in revolutionary circles, set to the words of N. M. Iazykov’s poem “Plovets (Neliudimo nashe more …)”:\u00a0Budet buria,<\/em>\u00a0–<\/em>–<\/em>my posporim\/<\/em>I <\/a>pomuzhestvuem<\/em>\u00a0s<\/em>\u00a0nei.\/… \/Tam, za dal’iu nepogody.<\/em>..<\/em><\/p>\n

Also such further examples as\u00a0bole<\/em>e<\/em>\u00a0muzhestvennoe naselenie,\u00a0<\/em>which is pointedly deprived of sex because the wives prefer cavalrymen; Palisander’s\u00a0vozmuzhanie\u00a0<\/em>taking place amidst his childish games in the\u00a0No<\/em>v<\/em>odeuichii,\u00a0<\/em>or New Virgin Monastery.<\/p>\n

102<\/a>. Palisander <\/a>not only lays bare his subsequent use of the first-person neuter, but even points out metalinguistically an early foreshadowing of such a usage: his favorite, unobtrusively neuter self-reference\u00a0derzaiuschchee litso.\u00a0<\/em>One possible source of this profoundly uncertain “face” may be the\u00a0znachitel’noe litso\u00a0<\/em>in “Shinel’,” pointedly anonymous and also defaced in its first appearance as the face of a general on Petrovich’s snuff-box.<\/p>\n

<\/a>103<\/a>. Some of the relevant intertextual sources are Uncle Toby in\u00a0Tristram Shandy,\u00a0<\/em>Peter’s\u00a0pote<\/em>s<\/em>hnye voiska\u00a0<\/em>in A. N. Tolstoi’s\u00a0Petr Per<\/em>v<\/em>yi,\u00a0<\/em>Bulat Okudzhava’s “Bumazhnyi soldat,” and, perhaps, Il’ia Averbakh’s film “Monolog” (Lenfil’m,\u00a01972),\u00a0<\/em>where tin soldiers are a central theme.<\/p>\n

104<\/a>. SSome of the details exude macabre humor. Palisander’s remark that the actors\u00a0t<\/em>v<\/em>orili<\/em>…<\/em>\u00a0talantli<\/em>v<\/em>o,\u00a0<\/em>s<\/em>\u00a0ogon<\/em>‘<\/em>kom\u00a0<\/em>(p. 200) is a Soviet journalistic cliche reified by the action of the firing squad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":355,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-491","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTHE STYLISTIC ROOTS OF PALISANDRIIA - Alexander Zholkovsky<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/alexander-zholkovsky\/palissandria\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"THE STYLISTIC ROOTS OF PALISANDRIIA - 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