Adamovich "Tolstoy as an artist"

George says that he was an artist and an enemy of art, the kind that justified itself for its own sake and was why T and Turgenev never got along. In his creative work he was essentially searching for pravda, translated as truth and justice. He tried to write without using a single word for adornment. He had a gift for detecting in others the desire to show off and it turned him off from others. 140 He felt an innate need to be truthful and to use the same basis with his characters. The motto of W and P is "there is no greatness with out simplicity , goodness and truth." he held the same view of literarure and even the idea of goodness is a prerequesite to beauty and perfection.
T never wrote "beautiful" or "musical" prose and if he ever did he would destoy it. He listened to the speech of simple folks who knew no grammar and found a freshness and expressiveness which he believed that educated people had lost. 141 T could turn trite literary devises into greatness. Anna's death symbolized with a candle is such and although old and tired sounds as if T were the first person to use it. 143 In What is Art, T treats all the other writes in it poorly and was unjust to those that could have been his allies. His search for truth made him short-sighted and his own mind full of his own impressions was not always open to others. 146

Baylen "A letter and K. Sonata"

K. Sonata is a work "exposing the conventional illusion of romantic love." T wanted to show how a marriage could be deprived of its "first condition" by "the substitution of romantic love, a fever born of carnal passion, for true Christian love, which is born of identity of sentiment, similarity of idea, and the friendship of the soul. "
Isabel Hapsgood was given permission to translate an abridged version of the sonata in April, 1890 - a year before it appeared in Russia. Despite the ban put on its publication there were endless copies of the novel circulated on lithograph. It was first published in Russia in 1891. Tolstaya reports that her father thought "the story is not at all fit to be read by young girls, although the chief idea of it is moral.

Tolstoy's "Confessions"

Chapter 1
He starts of with an examination of his own falling out of the christain faith and describes how it happens in his class of people. 20 T replaced his beliefs with a quest for perfection. 23
Chapter 2
He talks about wanting to be good and moral as a child, but being praised for his bad habits. His aunt wanted him to have an affair with a married woman. T lived this way for 10 years. He then became a member of the writers groups and took on the role of teacher and moralizer like other writers, but didn't know the answers any more than they did and took on too much pride.
Chapter 3
He lived this way for six more years until he was married. he traveled and followed the belief in Progress above all else. While abroad he saw a man executed and his own brother died leaving him scarred. He came back and opened schools for the peasants. However he was constantly fighting the belief that he was teaching, but didn't know what he was teaching. He became a father and continued writing, but left off the questions of the meaning of life until five years before he wrote this. They kept coming back up and became like a disease with him until he could solve these questions.
Chapter 4
He continues to struggle with these thoughts and has suicidal thoughts if he cannot solve his problems.
Chapter 5
He struggles more and delves into other great minds, but finds nothing or is just not satisfied. He ends up understanding that one of his questions is what is to come of his life? He brings scientific thoughts about the meaning of life and still comes up with nothing.
Chapter 6
T continues to the same search with philosophy and science. He brings in Socrates and questions of death as a way to understand life. And Solomon and and Indian writer and Buddha. Death is better than life.
Chapter 7
Four ways for people of his type to deal with the problems of finding out the answers to life's questions. 1 ignorance - obviously no good. 2 epicureanism - all of T's circle live this way, but they don't understand that it is an accident of fate that they have and others do not. 3 strength and energy - suicide. 4 weakness - waiting for something better out of life, although there is none. T could not make sense of it all, so he must in some way be mistaken about his theories.
Chapter 8
T realizes that he has forgotten all the other people that make up humanity and that he does not even know them. He understood that he had to come to know them and understand why they were still living, despite the poor conditions. He realizes that he must reject his reason and logic in order to understand the full meaning of humanity and life.
Chapter 9
Because science does not answer all the questions in life with reason there must be something else. The something else is God. God is the irrational idea that gives life meaning.
Chapter 10
T started to spend time with the poor peasants and found that their faith and religion was based on many superstitions, but they were less dissatisfied than the rich people of T's circle. He cast off the life of the rich people and took up the life of the peasant and understood it as truth.
Chapter 11
He came to realize that he was looking at all of his theories through himself and not through mankind. His examples of an evil life were not the same as those for all of mankind. Instead of questioning why God wants us to do something we should do it and move closer to his plan. Like the peasant with the master.
Chapter 12
T starts to pray and search for God as he feels a power over himself that he doesn't understand.
Chapter 13
T understands that he must live according to God's plan - to live otherwise is not to live. According to God's plan we are to live to save our soul. He starts to take on the faith in whole, but cannot understand everything and why it is done, but sees that his faith and reason can choose what parts of the rituals of faith to hold on to and which to discard.
Chapter 14
He cannot understand everything and understands that there are somethings that he doesn't believe and won't and this causes him some torment when he goes to communion. When he spoke with the lower classes he began to understand what it all meant.
Chapter 15
He noticed the Orthodox and other religions insistence that they were the one and only true church and that all others were heretics. Thus theology was driving people apart instead of together, the very thing it should be doing.
Chapter 16
He now sees truth in the teachings of all the churches, but not all the teachings. What he once saw as completely false he now seeks to find the truth in each and weed out the false. He has a dream.

Tolstoy's "Kreutzer Sonata"

Depravity is freeing yourself from the restraint you have with women. 18 The man fell because he followed what he was told by the rest of society and that society felt that what he was doing with women was the natural thing to do. He did not even realize that he had had a fall. 21 A man shows he is a libertine by the way that he looks at a woman, and so he became a libertine. 22 had the man only been eating what he should have he would not have had all the impulses to act as he did with women. It is from a result of the extra calories and energy that he took in and could not use up that he needed to use it with women. 29 The problems in the world all stem from the dominant power of women in the world, despite their lack of formal rights. 31 The strongest passion in life is sexual. It serves as the safety valve. 39 The man with whom his wife had the affair was a musician, but not professional. 69 The man and his wife are in a series of arguements daily when the musician comes to them. The man plays the violin, but badly and the wife still plays and well. The musician and the wife began to talk of music and they made plans to play together. They started to flirt with each other and make as if all they wanted was music. 78 The man could have spoken so that the musician never would have come back again, but instead he made it look as if he was not afraid of the musicaian and invited him over the next day to play. 79 They play together and all this makes the man more jealous and petty becuase he knows the game they are playing because it is the fame he used to play when he was a bachelor. They cannot determine what music to play and so ask him. 82 Especially because of music and the proximity that people must be to each other, men and women, that there is the greatest adultery in the world. One must not be jealous of people when they stand that close to eahother, but...83 They get really mad at each other and he appologizes to her and he tells her that he is jeaolous of the musician, but she tells him that she is only interested in his music. The man sees through her and sees that she is putting on a show of being indignant at the thought and telling that he is nothing. He says that everything went against her including the music. 88 The musician and the wife got together for the show that they were to put on and they played Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata. 89 He tells that people state that music elevates people, but he doesn't believe this. He states that music makes him do and be and feel unnaturally and that this is a bad thing. 90 Music of many kinds has a purpose, in church, miltary, etc., but Beethoven has no purpose and so you don't know what to do with it and the feelings that it brings up. 90 Music is too powerful to put in the hands of anyone, maybe immoral, that will wield it. 91 The man went away on business, but upon hearing that the musician dropped off some music with his wife while he was away, he became incensed and went back home. All the trip he was a rising anger and then when delayed he fortified himself with vodka. He knew what he was going to do and assumed that his wife was having an affair. 101 He comes home and finds that the musician is there and his wife is with him. He gives voice to all of his rage and feels relief from the knowledge that he will be free from her forever. 105 He runs through all possibilities. Are his kids his own? Is she doing it in sight of the children, have they been doing it all along? Is she trying to kill him? 107 He took off his shoes and grabbed a knife and when he caught them sitting close to each other, he gave vent to all his anger that had built up since the last fight they had. He attacked her, but the musician kept him off her, he ran for the M, but she kept him back. He would have run after the M if her were not in his socks - he didn't want to look ridiculous. 110 His madness was reaching a similar crescendo as a song. 111 He chocked, then stabbed her. 111 He went to his study to shoot himself, but fell asleep. Then her sister came and he almost went to her, but he felt foolish because of not having shoes on. 115 He still feels that she is to blame and that she will ask his forgiveness, but doesn't. He wants to ask her forgiveness, but is too cowardly, but does so in the end. Only at the funeral does he understand that he has killed her and that he is wrong. Not wrong to have killed her necessarily, but wrong in having married her or anyone. 118

Emerson "What Is Infection..."

Art must be infectious says Tolstoy. 102 It must be immediate and whole and cannot segregate based on intelligence and education. 103 The goal of art is brotherly union. Emerson goes through the aestheticians opinion on Tolstoy, then Bakhtinian, Dostoevskian. 103 She then goes into the problems people find with thoughts and feelings that T talks about. Then about the various other problems that scholars have come up with when refuting t. 103 Then about the questions that come up with T's three criteria for ideally infectious art: Individuality, clarity and sincerity. Some of these may not lead to brotherhood. 105 Emerson aims to add on to Silbajoris and Morson who have done some revisionist writing on Tolstoy to bring him back to his aesthetics. 106 She wants to focus on the interaction between expression and infection. 106 Infection takes place immediately. 107 T's ideas on expression are more vague. Where there is honest feelings then it should be able to be transmitted to the person receiving it without problem. Emotions that are not immediate or are hard to determine are not real in terms of art. 107 Practice and teachers and anything that delays the individual espression of the soul is not real art even if through the years of practice and teachers the individual creates something of the soul that has all more impact to the listener because of its perfection. It is fake. 108 What does it mean in the face of T that himself had to practice his craft to reach the best examples? Does it fly in the face of his other writing that exclaim that with prolonged attempts to be conscientious we may attain grace - just not in art? 108 For T, only the folk arts that are simply and small are real art 109 Emerson then goes on to discuss the previous versions of the same treatise and to compare how they allow for greater process. 110 T has a different set of three criteria for determining art in his earlier drafts. 110 He allows for the work of making art to play a role in the artistic interpretation. T also does not insist on the brotherhood of man to take over as strongly. 112 T rails against Wagner as the end of art in Europe. 112 T also comments on the art of teacher and pupil. 113 Why? T may have been trying to make himself like Mozart and to show the simplicity of beauty as if it came easily. 113 T had too much going on around him and could only do with renouncing to make the space calmer. 114

Tolstoy's "What is Art"

Chapter 1
There is a lot of money spent by people just jumping and twisting and such and money could be used more usefully elsewhere. Who can all of this please and who is it for?
Chapter 2
Is art worth the cost and the sacrifice of so many people that have no access to art? Is art worth anything especially if it is harmful? What is art and what is good art? He looks at other authors that claim that all the senses are subject to art and aesthetics. What does beauty have to do with it and is it all? Beauty does not equal good.
Chapter 3
T goes through all philosophy on the subject author by author.
Chapter 4
From all the philosophy he shows that there are two definitions of beauty. 1 approaching perfection, 2 it pleases. However these two ideas are essentially the same thing. and there is no objective idea of beauty, so it is all moot. It makes it all very elite too. We like a certain type of art and thus create a definition to include it rather than the other way around. Thus pleasure cannot be a rule for beauty.
Chapter 5
The problem with all the precious definitions of art is that they attempt to answer incompletely the question of pleasure without looking at the question of purpose. Art is a part of life and as such must be looked at as a means of intercourse between men - the one who made it and the one that takes it in. In art he transmits his feelings, like with words he transmits thoughts. It is the capacity of man to receive the feelings that make something art. Infection of the feeling transmitted is the activity of art. Without the ability to convey and receive art we would be like beasts.
Chapter 6
He starts on good art and bad art. Art that elevates the soul is good art. Art that strengthens only the body's passions is bad art. Good and bad is defined by religion, thus religion decides what is good or bad art.
Chapter 7
Beauty and good are not equal. He brings the ancient Greeks into it.
Chapter 8
One of the problems with defining art is that every culture believes they have universal art and it is not true. The art we have now is genteel art and not universal. 2/3 of the world dies without knowing it and if they had it they wouldn't know what to do with it. It is not the ordering of society, it is the type of art. it is done by rich people as a hobby and not as work. If art is that important as religion, then it should be accessible to everyone.
Chapter 9
Art has been perverted and nearly destroyed. First it lost its religiousness proper to it. Then the small group of people for which it is made and by whom perverted its form and made it obscure then it became not-natural and brain-spun. A true work of art is that that transmits a new feeling, however small the feeling may be. Enjoyment is hackneyed, but religious feeling is always fresh because it has no boundaries. Art is made for and by the upper classes, but their lives are far less broad than the life of a worker. Pride, sexuality and weariness of life took over all art of the upper class.
Chapter 10
Art became more exclusive and obscure. all art forms are working in this fashion. It cannot be that T or the other people that do not enjoy it are simply not enlightened enough. The art must be bad. "Good art always pleases everyone." The bible, folk tales and parables are understood and are the best art. Art make sense of things that cannot be understood with words. To understand bad art one must habituate oneself to it, thus it is bad. "The aim of art is to infect people with the emotion of the artist has experienced how can one talk of not understanding?"
Chapter 11
Universal art exists when someone of the people has an emotion and seeks to transmit it to others. A work of art is not if it is simply poetic, realistic, striking or interesting. There are conditions for a man to produce a work of art. He should stand on the highest life-conception for his time, he should experience feeling and want to transmit it to others, and he should have a talent for one of the art forms.
Chapter 12
The counterfeiting of art happens all the time and is what separates the upper class art from the worker class. There are three things that ensure counterfeiting of art. 1 payment for this art. 2 art criticism. 3 art schools. Universal art has a must - religious perception. Criticism is for those that cannot write and they interpret wrongly. Art cannot be taught because it is the transmission of feeling. In order to infect music must do three things. Exact pitch, time and strength needed for the particular music. Art in all forms only exists when the artist finds the infinitely minute degrees where it is perfect. Impossible to teach, can only be felt.
Chapter 13
All art is mutually exclusive of others. If two or more are combined, then one submits to the other for art. In a musical play either the music or the drama will be art, but not both. Wagner is the worst of these. He is so successful because he is able to use all the methods of counterfeiting available to someone with unlimited resources.
Chapter 14
The trouble with non-art is that it cheats and perverts and tricks people into believing it is art. One problem is that externally non-art and art might be almost the same and the non-art might even be more convincing because it uses the tricks of counterfeiting.
Chapter 15
The degree of infection is also the measure of art's worth. The stronger the infection, the better the art. The degree depends on three conditions. 1 the individuality of the feeling transmitted. 2 the clearness of the transmission. 3 sincerity of the artist. The mental condition of the artist infects the receiver. sincerity is the most important.
Chapter 16
Art serves a similar function as speech and that is of progress. To replace the old with the new and evolve towards an ever better and kinder society. The more if fulfills this need the better the art and the less, the worse. The appraisal of this feeling is religion. Religion represents the highest level of understanding of the meaning of life in any society and so it is the arbiter of what is good and what is bad. If people do not see a religious perception in society today it is because they are not looking properly, not because it is not there. If people deny what they see as religion, because they say it is outdated, then that too acknowledges the existence of perception. We should reject anything that does not go with the perception. All art unites people, they unite with the feelings of the artist and with all others that feel the same feeling. Christian art is universal because it does not exclude. It must not exclude anyone and if it is good art it will not. There are two feelings that unite all men. 1 Our sonship with God and the brotherhood of man 2 simple feelings of common life. Art should exclude any art that does not unite. Even when the subject matter is good art often is filled with ornamentation and becomes exclusive to only a few people.
Chapter 17
The consequences of bad art: 1 Money wasted in working hours. Children spend too many hours doing these things and become physically and mentally deformed and morally and incapable of doing anything good for mankind. They get praised for contributing to and assessing counterfeit art and inflate their own vanity. 2 The wealthy that spend their lives with such distractions should realize the waste of their lives and do something good. A false life. 3 the minds of the weak, poor and young are perverted and confused with the hero worship of artists. 4 Beauty gets put before good by the upper classes. 5 European art makes people think of superstition, patriotism and sensuality.
Chapter 18
Art and society is starting to move in the right direction, but not yet. People just need to consciously acknowledge that religious art is the perception that moves their lives and thus should their art for it to replace the art made now.
Chapter 19
Art of the future will be good art from religious perception that infects all people, not just certain people from certain classes. It will not be taught in schools and will not be made by professional artists. Job security and wealth are injurious to artists because they take away his ability to struggle with nature for the maintenance of his life and others. Artists will work another menial jog and be paid in the pride of helping mankind.
Chapter 20
Science and art should work together better. Science finds truth and art transmits it to emotion.

Rousseau "confessions"

Starts with intro about how he is great for offering this confession and that even god should feel that it is true. However we are meant to doubt this since no man can be entirely the condemned, judge and jury. He goes on to talk of how his parents met and how he was born in a poor family and with his birth came his mother's death. He started to read at an early age with his father and started with the romances that his mother loved. This started his love affair with Romanticism, but as they ran out of books they moved on to other religious and classic literature and history. He takes great pains to write out his transgressions on all topics mundane and serious. The most serious at this point is simply having been born and taking all the time and love from his father, which left little for his brother who grew up to be a libertine. 241
Father almost sent to prison gains banishment and so R is raised by uncle and stayed with cousin almost same age. became a very happy part of his childhood and he only wanted to do good for others, but says that he was not vain. 243 It appears that at the age of 8 he and his nurse miss lambercier age 30 had sexual relations of some sort and this was a great change in him. he didn't seek out other pleasures until he was an adult because everything reminded him of his nurse and he was sated with his memories. This stands as the most difficult part of his confessions and everything should come easier after. 245 He began to talk to girls and carry on romances with them, fight with his cousin against the kids in the town. Then he began to work as an apprentice in an engravers, but was given no liberty. He states that because the work was not bad, but the man was bad he too learned to lie and cheat and sites this as the moment when he became a degenerate. 253 he hates money because to use it means that you must exchange it and be cheated in the bargain. 257 When he became bored with his work because of the lack of freedom to do what he wanted even though he did as much as he could away from the eyes of his master he started to read again. 259 He states that his life was shaped by the master to whom he had to work. If chance had placed him with a better master he would have been contended to live his life as an engraver and probably been wealthy doing it, but alas he was not and so he suffered and lived a far more interesting life because of it. 262
BOOK II
He set off on foot away from the engraver and the town and somehow gained food and ended up in the salon of Madam de Warrens who told him to continue to do good works and to set off for Turin. 268 He had intended to take up a position as a minister and went there to be taught the ways of Catholocism. 270 However, he was not convinced he wanted to become a Catholic and tried to convert them to Protestantism. 271 In this he failed and they sent him into the streets after 2months. 273 He wandered until a pretty woman took him in. He fell something like in love with her and wanted to her with all his heart and body, but she found a place for him as a footman of an aristocrat. His trouble with women he states is that he loved them too well and this hindered his success. 276 When the woman died with whom he worked he stole a ribbon and was caught but lied and said another maid had given it to him. They were both sacked and his guilt from this is part of why he writes the story. there is no telling where she ended up, but perhaps not well since she was pretty and young. 281
BOOK III
He is given a position in a house as a footman, but is not treated like one and is given an education since he already knows a bit of somethings. He is also in a house that works for the King. He is abut 16 at this time. 283 He meets one of his old friends from the ministry, Bacle, and they take on the idea of going back to Geneva. R quits his favorable position with an insult and goes back to Geneva. He and Bacle separate. 287 He goes back to Madam de Warren and loves her like a mother, but sometimes he loves her like a woman. Because of his love for her he was chaste to loving anyone else and had no other relations. R ends up at the seminary to learn latin from the connections of the Madam. 294 He had no way to learn with a teacher and was forced to quit it, but was given a spot as a music student. 295 R was not a good music student and the teacher was drunk and he was sacked. R was sent to help him carry his stuff to Lyon. When they got there the music teacher had an epileptic fit and R ran away from the obligation and help the teacher needed. This is the third main confession he makes. 298 He sets out again for Madam De Warren, but she has left for Paris. R cannot think of anything happy that doesn't involve being near her. 298
BOOK IV
The music teacher lost his belongings and with it the work he had done since he was young and the ability to work to support himself in old age. R sets up with none of his acquaintances, but went to one of Madam's friends places. He was then set up to accompany one of their daughters to another town. They even slept in the same bed. 301 He is now 20, yet nothing happens between them. He is stuck in the town after his delivery and has no money. 303 R starts to live on a lie that he is a singer and a music teacher. 304 R moves towns and picks up with a wandering archimandrate from Jeruselum with whom he joins on a return trip to Jeruselum as his interpreter. 306 R is well received by some and taken in and so he quits the archimandrate. R is sent to Paris to do work and as he wishes to find Madam. He is as happy as he has ever been. 308 R quits paris when he finds that she had left as well. His imagination for what Paris should ahve been was too great and he was greatly dissapointed with Paris. He left on foot for Geneva or turin and found a friend of Madam's. She eventually wrote him. 312 She set him up under the employ of the king and had to work for the first real time in his life, but earned his pay. 314
BOOK V
He is now 21 years old. R soon gives up his government job and takes up music full time. he is still not very good, but all around him are bad. 320 R becomes enamoured with the stupid beauty of one of his students, but her mother loves him and see not his affair. R then comes into relations with Madam despite her relations with her footman Anet. 325 R passed 3 or 4 years this way until they moved. 330
BOOK VI
R takes ill, then reads a lot to is psychological worsening. He goes after his inheritance and finds little. 335 R goes to a cure, but finds only doctors that take money. 341 R comes back to Madam, but she now has another youth and R doesn't want to share Madam. She sets him up as a tutor with a wealthy family and he takes to it more or less. 346 It doesn't work out, so he goes back to Madam and his books. R takes up music again and comes up with a way to read that uses numbers and is bent on going to Paris to present it to the academy. 349
BOOK VII
He presented his treatise on music, but it was not taken well and so he worked on it alone. R was taken in by another woman and he became her pet for a while and made friends of others. 358 R takes on the office of attendant to the ambassador and does some gov. work. 364 He and a friend decide that they will buy a girl of 12 until she is old enough to be their concubine. They both end up loving her like a father, but the scandal gets out and he loses his job with the ambassador. 368 R focuses on his opera having no other occupation. he plays it to some people and at least one of these wants it played before the king. 374 Nothing happened with it and it was given up. he renewed his friendship with Diderot, but he was put in prison. 381
BOOK VIII
Diderot is out and R tries to help him. 383 R reads about the morality of man and how art might be involved in it and says that this treatise, which prompted him to write on the same subject ruined him. 384 He has an affair. 386 Theresa has her third child by R and they are all destitute and he leaves them to a public education. 387 He had 5 kids in all and they all went to the orphanage. 388 He writes and is well recieved 391. He takes on all of society and talks about dress. 394 He goes before the king after his first performance of his play and music. He is expected to get a stipend. 396 He refuses the stipend, but Diderot think he should take it to help others. 397 R writes with voltaire. 399
BOOK IX
He moves to the country and writes about the joys of being there although he was pulled back to the city. He also writes about the need to work, not create. 400 He retreats to the country for good and lives under the patronage of Madam d'Epinay. 404 R quits the house and moves into another supplied by a friend. R believes himself to be with few friends and is unhappy. 411
BOOK X
He is set against by some of his friends that feel that he has abandoned them and so he set himself to be a recluse, but is drawn back into the scene again. 412
BOOK XI
His book Eloise came out to some success, the best in Paris which he censured more than other places. 416 He talks of ailments and books published and that is about all. He is asked to serve again the parliament, but did it rudely and suffered. 419
BOOK XII
R writes of being hounded out of town and almost killed and being treated poorly because of what he wrote.

Tucker "Aginast the grain"

She talks about the definition of parody using Morson and Bakhtin. 1-4

Talks about the definitions of intertext and satire and how they are used by authors like Gogol and Dostoevsky and others. 1-19

Olesha's Babichev in his pince nez parodies Rodchnko and Osip Brik's art. 116

Kavelerov and Ivan parody the haves and have nots in the novel. 119

Babichev's sausage to be painted parodies the artist patron relationship in the west and the Soviet state-writer relationship. 120

Perpetual clash between verbal images and objects occur in Envy. Andrei is a lover of things (fat) and is good with objects and in life as opposed to Kavelerov who is not good at anything and "things hat him." 120

Worthless challenge to authority by Kavelerov as parody of literary conventions. 122

Ivan's ophelia challenges the soviet or avant garde's constructivist authority by echoing constructivist art like the worthlessness of Tatlin's monument. 126 All of the inventions parody revolt and even against Ivan. 127

Ivan spreads rumors like Christ parodying him. 127 he is even arrested and questioned similarly. 128

Ryan-Hayes "Contemp Russian Satire"

Satire is understood as a manner of writing, a mode rather than a genre. 1

Zoschenko innovations with skaz broke new ground in satiric characterization and pointed out the contradictions and the excesses of the NEP period. 2

One of the problems with determining Satire in the contemporary period is that the Russian and Soviet critics often conflate satire and humor and a distinction is seldom made. 3

Another problem is that the same critics tend to see it in a low status. The problem is that satire tends, unlike most other literature forms finds it objects ouside of art - society, politics, moral life of the culture. 3

Western critics often de-emphasize the didactic while the Russian used it as a standard by which to measure it. 3

One of the most prevalent ways in which satire is used is the paradying of genre conventions.4

It is also important to understand that parody and satire are not the same thing although they are also often conflated. 4

Parody is best also seen as a mode, not a genre. Parody aids satire often supporting the mockery and criticism, but doesn't have to - it is not subordinate to satire. 4

An important difference bewteeen satire and parody is that satire aims at exterior targets - politics, social mores, cultural institutions. 4

Parody refers to another artistic construct. 4

Satire aims at the exposure of or the improvement of a faulty set of parameters in life.

Parody is an aesthetic phenomenon. 5

Parody must be immatative and refer to another specific author or work and put the words or thtoughts to a new purpose. 5

According to the formalists Shklovsky and Tynanov Parody is the laying bare of the conventions of the cliches and the conventions and serves as a great evolutionary force in literature. 5

Bakhtin wrote that the parody involved two voices where the second is trying to discredit the first. It must be paired. 6

Gary Saul Morson wrote that it doesn't have to involve humor. 7

The belief that parody need be mockery, derision, or ridicule has been discredited and it need not even criticise the original by some critics. The need to modernize or reply to something is perhaps even stemming from admiration. 7 Others continue that true parody should have some sort of criticism, but sympathy or even love takes the sting out of it for the reader. 7

Satire doesn't question the moral ad ethical norms against which the target is measured. Instead, genre norms and individual texts are recast through parody so as to satirize social, political or moral aspects of contemporary culture. 8

In order to be effective, the reader must be able to decode the reference and understand with whom he is to agree. 8

Satiric tone can be gentle and mocking (Horatian) or caustic and harsh (Juvenalian).9

Livingstone "time in chevengur"

In Chevengur time has stopped. It is the end of time as the Marxist teleological end to all of humanity has reached its climax, so the inhabitants think, in Chevengur.803

She looks into Platonov's own beliefs on what time means in the philosophical sense.

In the novel most of the questions are either poorly answered by people not capable of answering well or just not answered. Zakhar is trying to figure out the answer to a number of different problems and one of these is time. 807-8

Kopyenkin too 809

Druzhbya bednyaki group is Platonov's satirization of the excesses of communists. They want the meetings to be everyday or twice a day so the important events don't float away without being given proper attention.

The chevengurians are the absolute satire where they want to do nothing in the quest for communism except stop time in the moment when they have produced commraderie. 810

They are satirized in the fact that they take the stopping of time before the eternal communism and literally stay up all night waiting for the dawn of the new day when communism will be reached. 815

Chepurnyi has a sadness for the life that he lived during time before the end of time. He is sad for all the memories that were before. 815

Borenstein "Men without Women"

Bits of introduction to the lack of women and who are the few women in Chevengur, Envy. 2-3

Fellow Travelors - popoutchiki - those that accepted the soviet union, but could not produce works that it demanded. Olesha and Babel fit this. 5 They had other problems that had to do with sexulaity and identity that were not shared by their characters in this period, though much of the confussion they felt in the period is what they felt themselves. 5

The period of War communism last 3 years longer in Russian than it did in Europe after WWi. Before the civil war there was a heady revolution of social mores that tended to promiscuity. War Communism took care of it however. 6

After the war there was another sexual revolution in the period of NEP. 7

Attempts to transform reallife according to a prepackaged plan is somehting the writers of this period did, incuding Platonov. 9

Socialist Struggle against nature as it relates to Chevengur. 16

Comradship in the period and Olesha's Kavelerov's evny of Makarov's ability to blend and build ties. K disowns any need for the group, but feels compelled by it. 31

Comradship was something that came out of being in the trech together with one's fellow man. Once the war was over and War Communism was replaced with NEP many of the men that fought on the front lines and felt that the WC was the best manifestation of the era felt betrayed by the loosening of form and the rejection of what they had experienced. 34

The period of the 1920s was hard for people. They had to work for the future knowing that communism was a long way off and that the old structures were obsolite. There was little but eachother to cling to. 37

Olesha and Platonov on the question of building a society of men without women. they and babel do it best. 39 Each of these worlds that rests on a lack of women and work is doomed to fail. Nature cannot be replaced with culture. 41

The period of NEP in the 20s was highlighted by an androgenousization of the population. Women were engaged in work that once was just for men. It is highlighted by the sheer lack of women as revolutionaries in Chevengur and by the way the doctor treats the NKVD rep that was a woman in Sobachii Serdste. 45

The marriage of Makaraov and his Vera in Envy makes fun of the new forms in the NEP period. They plan to marry years from now. 46

Rosa Luxumberg as the ideal Socialist woman dead and distant. 48

Chevengur and the prostitutes and men traveling together. 50

The literary reaction to the civil war introduced many narratives that dealt with the bonds and the horrors of comradship since the war set comrad against one another. 61

The war's culture of violence was brought back to the civilian world in NEP where rape where introduced was given in a bad light and was also this way in real world too. 68 Reference to men's love in Chevengur's of dead RLux.

Fears of homosexuality in Chevengur and need for women, but only if they are comrades. 69

private property comes into play in Chev only after the women arrive. 70

In Olesha's envy the issues of father and son that had plagued all time before were fixed as father and son were now working for the same future. The father and son alliance is not a blood tie, but one where men choose each other as father and son. 126

Kavelerov has a hard time getting along with the younger generation and has not found a father in the old gerneration. He is outside all of the new structures being forged and fails like Ivan because of this. 126

The revolution disrupts the transition from father to son in Olesha and Platonov. 133

Chevengur's Dvanov's lost father and returns to grave. 133

The soviet ideology stated that the bourgeoise family with the father at the head must be erraticated in the new world. Kavelerov has problems stemming from his lack of father and need to find a new one, yet never wanting to engage in relations that will make him a father. Even with women they must not result in fatherhood. 135-6

Babichev wants to free the family and fathers from blood ties to children and prefers to give birth to kitchens and sausages and take care of adult children that he chooses. 161

Idoltry of the feminine, yet the world is androgenous. 163

He seems to say that Olesha's world in envy is not one based on greed and and he doesn't touch the satirical elements of the story. The story is bases on male comraderie and who is a part of it and who is not. Even when women show up they are used not to pit the men against eachother as in a traditional tale, but they serve to bring the men together. Kovalerov is an exception and Ivan doesn' t get invited to the party either, but they are brought together in their attempts to play at the same games as the others. 172

Love triangles 176-183

Chevengur is haunted by the two things that it tried to live without: desire and femininity. 191

Utopia as satire. 192

He seems to build a fratriarchy with a complete disdain for sexuality in the first part of the decade, then comes back and makes his peace with it in the second and into the future in the 1930s. 193

Kopyonkin strives for both being a knight and for the love of Rlux. it is the exact opposite thing that the chevengurians live for. They have a disdain for love and don't do anything in their communist community. 203

Chevengur is not the "History of one town" that SS wrote. It has irony in Zakhar Pavlovich in the beginning and with the Chevengurians at the end and it is not the same utopian type novel that he wrote earlier in his career, though there are utopian images. The characters are too real and simple to gain the distance between reader and character that you usually get in satire. 226

The characters are too uneducated and foolish to really evaluate what they do. They just took the theory and made it real without asking if they should have made it in the first place.226

Chevingur in 2 pages: 227-228

Kopyonkin's "greed of friendship" for Dvanov is the tie that binds them together - comraderie. 230

When the men live in poverty they have comraderie and seek out each other. When the miscellaneus come and force them to get things and make their lives more stable then they have no need of eachother. 240 It cannot be called greed to not want to live in poverty, but it is interesting that the accumulation of physical things makes them less socialized.

He says that the appropriation of the community by the micellaneus women and the way of life that the men are dragged into is the same counter-revolutionary path that the leaders of NEP have been dragged into with their concessions. 241

Sinyavsky "Soviet civilization"

He looks at the revoution and as the manifestation of elemental forces. 28

The soviet union once created is based on an idea and according to them the most logical and best idea in the world - a utopia. Utopias in Russia are looked down upon since they suppose that it exists somewhere else and is something in the future. In the soviet union, they are already living the utopia and are the heirs of all history. 28

He states that Lenin put the NEP into effect in order to appease the peasants and the farm workers. When it was put into action the period of War communism that preceded it came to be a bit of a utopia. it was viewed originally that all they had to do was to have the peasants take the grain away from the aristocrats and then the peasants would feed everyone and it would make it to the factories and then they would have communist production and distribution. This was not a realistic view of how it worked out and thus a utopia. 61

In order to postpone the war with the peasants and to make War communism work it had to be ammended and the program of NEP had to be added. 62

Description of 1922: NEP is in full swing, the height of soviet democracy and freedom. Mass executions without trial, investigations and tribunals are giving way to soviet diplomacy and procefure. In this period is also soviet legalized terror. 63

NEP was Lenin's pragmatism, not a utopia. If anything it might be the anti-utopia since it was done with calculated means. 64

Lenin worked hard and everything came through him, but it was an unweildy mess. In order to fix the bureacratic-ness he needed to create new bureaucratic processes and get rid of those that were't working. 71

Summing up 72 Socialism was already in place during NEP as the limited freedoms that the consumer and seller had were regimented by the gov and tolerated it only for a short period of time. 72

The intellectuals were some of the first to be called the enemies of the state and they felt that they did not have the freedom to work as they wanted in the new system. 73

Sinyavsky uses annecdotes and literature, primarily Blok, Dostoevsky and Mayakovsky, to discuss what he saw and belived about the Soviet Union. It is an excellent look from inside, but is neither a history textbook, nor a treatise on the Soviet Union. It is more of a cultural look at the history through the eyes of an author that rambles and digresses as he explains. Insightful.

Master and Margarita 105 a product of Stalin's problems, but not confined to them. Woland plays with and tolerates the Master in the same way that Stalin tolerated Bulgakov. Had S known about M and M Bulgakov surely would have been shot. The black ball is an allegory of the concentration of villains that congregate with Stalin. 105-108

Heart of a dog as the new man. 147-151

Avins " Border Crossings"

Master and Margarita as a link to the west. Woland is from the Germany as Faust's mephistophiles. 186

Jeruselum is foreign to moscow as if the eventst that take place there could not take place in Moscow. 187

There is not much in this book that refers to NEP or satire. It works mostly with the East and West question and has a very short bit on Bulgakov.

Chapple "Soviet Satire of the 1920s"

Wants to categorize the factors that lead to Soviet satire in the 1920s and how it develped from the revolution to the introduction of Socialist Realism. v

Influence on the 1920s came from Gogol and SShchedrin. 2

Different groups of satirists - War communism, NEP and first 5 year plan. 2

The period of NEP especially did not focus in on utopias and WE is a notable exception. The felling is that the reception of WE discouraged some writers and the chaos of the revolution and the time was enough and better fodder than looking ahead.

Fellow Travelor and Emigres satirists and defined 3

The archetypes of satire were largely already in existance from the past satire. 6 There were some dos and don'ts despite the relative freedom after years of censorship from the tsar. he makes a list of the apporoprite vices in socity to satyrize. they tended to be generalized to a type rather than specificly at a person. 6

Satire from names was common as in Bulgakov. 7 physicality too. Very Gogolian

Moral standards and truth seekers are often involved. 8

Living conditions were commonly used 9

Soviet terms started to be used as early as War com. 10

Satire from Gogol's time was interested in the social question.12

The groundwork that started during War communism is what flourished during NEP13

Longer works started to replace the shorter ones. 14

Writers started concerning themselves with the contmeporry world and less with the past in NEP. 15Focus on the contemp showed that people were coming to grips with the lack of utopia that was promised and they saw it for what it was. 15

Soviet satire could not exist as the decade wore on because their must be an antagonist and there was no class antagonism then it was defunt. 16

Bulgakov as fellwo travelor and Dog's heart on the revolution. 23

Bitterness in satire started to replace the humor. 24

The revolution's effect on the people and society in satire. 25

Difference between the proregime satirists and the fellow travelors and emegres. 28 The FT claimed that the people didn't know what was happening and they rarely saw a difference. 29

They said that things did not change and that the people would not change either. 30

Connections between Gogol and Bulgakov in Chichikov. 32

Poverty remained as a symbol that not much had changed. 33

FT on War communism and deprivation 34 Proregime satirists were harder on the Whites and the old power structures. 34

Mayakovsky was a big one for satirizing the Whites and the Entente nations. 40

Satire on Communism tended to include stereotypes, not people. 40

The iron communist even started to be a caricature in a leather jacket-olesha. 42 but the zamyatin machine is also common. 43

Conclusion - Satire of the revolution was crude and Bulgakov and Zamyatin are best examples of good satire. 50

Satirists mocked those that emigrated for following their cozy exploitative ways to paris. 51

After 1924-25 the most written about theme switched from the revolution to everyday life. 59

The housing shortage was common. 60, 63 Zoschenko wrote much on this.

Bulgakov wrote from the otherside of this by exposing the rich that held on to their apts. 61

Zoikina Kvartira Bulgakov 63

Lack of money, inflation and Zoschenko. 65

Poor quality of goods. 66

Theft and Hoologanism 67

Zoschenko and bathhouses 68

Renaming of streets for Revolutionary names and soviet vocab 70

Marriage houses and Zoschenko 71

The theater as mixing of classes 71

Red Tape 71, 72,73

Employment and Red tape 74

Purges and self criticism as a way to save yourself 75

Embezzelers 76

Bureacrat 77

NEP bureaucrat 78, and Zoikina 79

NEP 82 Zosch, Mayako 83,84

Nepman and speculation 85

Philistinism as an extention of gogol or as always having been there, but simply not given enough room in War communism. He prospered in NEP because the conditions were ripe.

Englishmen and the english 87 imperialism 88, 89

capitalists 90

Toward the French 91-94

America and capitalist 95-99

Mayakovsky and America 99

Other nations 100

Religion 104

New religion of Science and Mayakov 107-111

Hooliganism as a result of nep 112

Drinking and the illiterate and the antisemite 114,115

satirizing the other literary camps 116

the proletarian poem 120

Satire of censorship 123

of Gorky 126

Overly ornate and incomprehensible theater for the masses. Meyerhold, the futurist were ridiculed by Ilf and petrov. Mayakov was spared, but not futurist. 128

Into the 1930s. 129

Government involvement in the arts and the first 5 year plan are the end of Satire 129

Union of Soviet Writers gets rid of FT. 130

Master and M 133, 134, 139-142 and religion

Ilf and P and the west and America 135, 137

Klanderud "Ilf and Petrov's poetic world"

K looks at the Soviet world at this time as a question of involvement or noninvolvement in the new society as a sort of "with us or against us"

He leads a discussion on the use of language -particularly the bureaucratic language and Soviet Newspeak - as leading to man's dehumanization and to transformation to a non-thinking automoton. I and P use this language to emasculate and parody.

the language doesn't reflect the reality as much as it replaces it. Words replace deeds once people give it undue authority. 444

I and P lay bare the cliches and the official language. Compared to Zoschenko, whose characters use the new terms incorrectly and with humor. I and P show the new forms for all their ostantatiousness, but emptyness. they apply a sort of "defamiliarization" to the words that make up the new Soviety reality. They show how the language became a part of people's lives, yet didn't make them any more meaningful and were lost on emigres. 445

I and P were pointing out the distortions in a system that they belived in at least on the idea level. 446

They took what could have been found in any Pravda and turned it upside down. They change the conent of the structure and parody the meaning in such phrases.

447

They recognize that their own sphere, writitng, has also been regimented and they play on this with Bender's "Ceremonial Set."449

They are most critical of those on the inside that cannot think for themselves - bureaucrats and other writers that used the lexical crutches of the new words. The characters in their novels end up speaking abou the revolution because of the words they are forced to use and cannot even comment on what is taking place around them - The train line.

Bender is a noninvolved person in the new society. He takes advantage of those that should be contributing to the new socity, but end up hindering it because they are slaves to the new forms. He does a good deed for socity by taking people to task for not thinking for themselves.451

3 stages of Bender's skill:

1. Recognition of the cliches that his new aquaintance represensts.

2. paraody and mimicry of the discourse and enthusiasm.

3. exploitation of the beliefs into B's own gain. 451

Bender is not meant as a positive hero, but he is the only one with the energy and initiative to make a difference as a new Soviet Man. He can be seen as rogue or as a warning against those that would succumb to linguistic dehumanization. I and P don't attack the system in this way, but only the distortions and the ideals when the system is run by lazy folk content to let the system rust. 453

Fitzpatrick "World of Ostap Bender"

Bender is the Soviet version of a confidence man. he is a sort of trickster of folklore origin subverting social comventions and authority. he makes people realize that the accepted pattern has no necissity. Everything that orders society is subjective and arbitrary. It also may have no other purpose, but to produce the thrill of freedom. 535

The classic Russian literary example is Gogol's Klestyakov from Revizor.

Shklovsky said that Bender came out of the picaresque trickster literature in Europe and America like Fielding's Tom Jones, Twian's Huck Finn. 537

B has the ability to switch personalities, get himself out of trouble using the materials at hand, win the confidence of the people looking for a return to the past. His great skill is in speaking Bolshevik with fluency in a way that threatens others because they cannot. He uses this skill to seem legitimate to gullible people.

Bender and the novels by I and P were not necessarily approved by the powers that be or the intelligentsia because they are seemingly light-minded and lack a moral stance. 537

The conman in society is a good social commentator. He must have a good hold on the bureaucratic organizations in order to inspire trust in the people he fools. B is able to manipulate the Soviet bureacracy. He knows how to get the good that are only available to the upper crust of society. He knows how good travel from the top to the bottom and how to get them and use Blat. 538

The fictional stories are influenced by the real life versions that existed and vice versa.

Revolutios are if nothing else a time when people need to reinvent themselves in a time of crisis. 539

Real frauds took many forms including: posing as an official with the Soviet language that intimidated people, Forging documents with letter-head.540 Or posing as an olf Bolshevik hero of the revolution or civil war - and other claims of official status. 542

Sometimes it involved the invention of entire government institutions with fancy acronyms, stamps, seals and paper. Inpersonating the NKVD/OGPU.

People claimed skills in order to get jobs in a field and learned on the job. Often conmen arrived in distant provincial towns, committed the act and got out of town. it was easier to get away with it in the country, but there was less money in it.

Like with Bender the connection of conmen and ethicity especially jewishness was common.

There was both overt and covert anti-semitism at the time. the official line was never so forward, but its actions towards the jews showed the opionion. Despite the dates of publication there is no conincidence of the rise in antisemitism and the novels of Bender - of Turkish origin, but read as a Jew. 546

The frauds were based on three circumstances: the need for documents in the new Soviet world, the credulousness of officials in the face of any document, the ease in which documents could be made. 540

Even honest people had to resort to this sort of thing because all their documents were destroyed in the war or to hide the fact that their family had been dekulakized.541

It was common for conment to pose as relatives of officials and important people than the actual people. 541

Bender had to pose as a journalist as did other real life conmen.

The official response to the novels is that they should not be published and there was a ban until 1956. they were seen as disrespctful toward soviet life. Bender was seen as "bold, resourceful, witty...and the people he meets are stupid." 555

Zholkovsky "' Electrician" or the complex theatrical mechanism"

Z believes that the writer should show both the general and the personal. Without the general and the historic lead up to what is in his psyche, one cannot hope to understand the personal. 47

Z uses the conflicts that arise from and support public humiliation in his works.

Also, the play within a play where the events on the stage echo the events that take place off stage. Sometimes the events on stage have nothing to do with the fighting off stage.

Light/Dark oppositions show up in several of his plays. In the Electrician they play against the opera by glinka and the tale by Pushkin.

Z had a problem with the immorality of the public, but was unappologetic in his own vices. he said "A satirist must be a morally pure man. (61)"

He wrote for an 'anti-cultural' simplicity and was able to do this by being stronger in the ownership over his own art. This ties in with the public humilatons and the conflicts he works up in his own characters. 57

Z also uses a "pride aping humility move" 60.

Milosz "The History of Polish Literature"

p. 281-321

The uprising of 1868 brought about the loss of the nobility as a class in Poland. Because the peasants were freed from their work for the nobility and the nobility was either deported, heavily taxed, and the confiscation of land for those that participated in the uprising. The autonomy of the Kingdom of Poland was gone and the Russians took over with Russian taught in all the schools. There was a mass move to the city from the country-side and the descendants of the gentry started joining civil society as either the intelligentsia or the working class. The petty gentry became leaders in the proletariat movements and in the factories. Poland was slowly becoming a capitalist country. 283

Because of the brutal treatment of people during the uprising and the violence involved bore the end of "Political Romanticism." Young people in Warsaw took up the name "positivists" from the term introduced by the French philosopher, Auguste Compte: Positivist Philosophy. Compte's work represents the height of the 19th century cult of science. In their thinking, Polish Positivists were less indebted to Compte than they were to English utilitarians, John Stewart Mill and Herbert Spencer.283

The fall of the old Republic was blamed on the the anarchy of the nobles, which contrasted with the romantic view that claimed that Poland was an innocent victim of a viscious neighbor. 284

Ronald LeBLanc "The Quest for nourishment in Sobache Serdtse"

B writing a satire of Homo Soveticus in the transformation gone awry of the dog Sharik to the quasi-man Sharikov. LeBlanc states that this is also the transformation of class. Sharik goes from a homeless dog to the comfort class. He shows that it is not just a political and social change, but one that also concerns food. B uses the gastronomic terms to describe the disgust he has with the new system. This is not new in literature and can be seen in Chekhov and Molier. The alignment of food and bodily sustinence with spiritual is well represented. B uses the same in M and M to discuss the members of the Dom Griboedov that take place in the "mushroom house" a place where minds are to be enhanced and grown, but really the house better known for the restaurant. B shows that too much concern for one's belly does not leave any room for thought or for the soul in metaphoric sense. 59

In SS he shows not how food represents the materialism, but to show the system that has produced a lack of food and rampant hunger for the people. 60 The novel opens with a defamiliarization from the pov of the dog that only wants food and shelter. He is not unlike the lower classes that are forced to root in the garbage and have no where to go. Physical demands have replaced any spiritual as a result of the War communism and NEP. The dichotomy of the social order places the wealthy at the top that can enjoy real food and the lower class on the bottom that have nothing. The typist woman is forced to eat bad soup and is on the same economic level as the dog as she is a working class person. She is made sick by the food she can afford in the cafeteria and yet she has nowhere else to go. She even succumbs to the level where she is willing to sleep with Sharikov just to get a decent meal. 62

Sharik the dog understands that when he first meets the professor that the professor is too well groomed to be eating sausage where he has bought it and had just as well give it to the dog. The people that the dog mostly comes in contact with are cooks. There are bad cooks that throw boiling water on dogs and there are good cooks that give you special food. It is the same difference for the people - there are some that are forced to cook at the terribel cafeteria and some that get to cook for the Tolstoy family. The mass population of the country of course eat like the lower end. The narrator asks if this is the nourishment she needs? What then is the saving class in the country? It is the gentry class, the one represented by the dr that is able to bring sausage to the people and help them out. However, the price of sustinece is your freedom.

The novel is as much a question of giving up one's freedom and rights for safety and food. Sharik becomes a gentle dog when he enteres the home of the dr. He even begins to take pride in the shackles, the collar and chain her wears, because the doorman and the other dogs know that in wearing these he has become a well fed, but kept dog. Giving up the spiritual side for comfort is selling out in the way of the dwindling upper class.

On the other hand when he is able to conquer his needs for food and shelter on the basic level he is freeer to look to the more civilized ways of life. He is now able to pleasure in the act of eating and gets fattened up at the drs. He eats now out of pleasure and is able to seek out other pleasures in life too. He has reached a new level of humanity. From necessity to desire. Sharik seems to live in a world where the immediate needs need to be fullfilled before the higher forms of art can be fulfilled. Dr. Bormental is similar to the dog. He was once a starving mediacal studen before the doctor brought him in and made a man and a dr out of him. All of this taken togetther sugess that the proletariaot cannot hope to find nourishment in the new Bolshevik Russia. Instead of giving food, they have taken it away, instead of giving high culture, they have put the vulgar and the philistine on the pedistal. 67

The moral center of the story is in the Dr., but this leads to some problems. He is a mad scientist, though he has fine manners and good tastes. he is also someone that has thrived in the NEP era because he questionably serves those that can afford him. The Dr serves as someone that has fed the poor dog, but also feeds off of him in a vampiric way. 68

Stephen Lovel "Bulgaokov as Soviet Culture"

The reception of culture for the works produced in the USSR after 1917 are difficult for the literary scholar. When many of the works came about in the thaws of the 1960s and 1980s the readers were not always ready for them but they were able to respond. M and M makes for a great study of this because it was released to the public later and it had such a great affect when it did surface. 28

When the work was released it was received into three different spheres of literature: It was criticized by the officials and made into a new classic in the Soviet mold, it was a classic in the intelligentsia sub-culture, and the same by the general population. 29 Twenty years after his death B's novels started to have a real, not just a proposed readership. He would read his works to friends in a sort of salon, but not to the public, however conscious of the potential readership. 29. The release of his works was gradual based on the party's hold on literature. In the 50s and 60s works by Bunin, Bulgakov and Tynianov were alloed publication.

When M and M was released it came out in the lit journal "Moskva" - a smaller publication and only the first part of the novel came out at first. It was cut for words too. The publication itself was a form of censorship - Moskva had a medium circulation and didn't sell that well in the provinces - or the copies were sent back to the publisher before the public could get them. Until the 1980s it was not released in any great numbers and far below the levels for other Soviet works and classics. 31

For those that got a hold of it it was hard to conceive, since they only knew B as a minor playwrite in the 20s and there was no criticism on his plays or short fiction. Readers had hard time dealing with the fantastic, the Christ images, the use of time and irony, levels and symbols.

Page 32 has a number of examples of the critics from the period and what they were able to write about its release. Talk also of how his biography was to be written and how much of his biography to include in the reception of his works. There was much debate about his siding with the Whites or with creating sympathy for him in the biography. The release of his official collected works was delayed under these pretexts and thus the public was given a taste a bit at a time. Thus the public was not given full access even at the time when the controls were lighted. 33

How did the intelligentsia receive it? It is difficult to discern because of the limited release and the inability of them to get ahold of a copy. However they did read each other's copies from Moskva and considered it a major event. In the 70s it was not official literature, but was not samizdat, though sort of and not dissidant lit either. The Intelligentsia viewed him as the torch bearer from Ilf and Petrov as the cult writer of the intelligentsia. They viewed his satire as not the same carefree satire as I and P and had a deeper moral componant. He was seen as the new Chekhov.

The theater reproductions give some light on how to view the reception of M and M. The theater had restricted audiences that gave them the feel of a small community that could communicate ideas between the ranks. In an attempt to keep the significance down the authorities gave the initial production no funds so they had to recycle props from other plays. This only served to underline the place the novel held in the minds of the intelligentsia - it became a part of their symbolic past, present and future. The production used the same actors in jeruselum as it did in Moskow which helped to underline the overall message of morality and power. In the 80s the audience included the general population, but the audience had not evolved with the ideas the novel was taking up in the productions. The idea the 'manuscripts don't burn' was huge in the late 70s, but by the 80s it came to be understood that it also came to mean that these great writers were largely forgotten and couldn't live out their normal lives in their times. 37

Sobache Serdtse was taken to the theaters immediately after it came out and some of the first people to interpret the novel were the theater directors in 1987. Sharikov was more menacing than humorous and played into the lives of the intelligentsia in the Soviet period. 38

The play of SS for the next few productions played into the current period and asked questions with the main idea looking back at the last 70 years and not just taking the novel as it was written. 38

The graffitti that appeared on the stairwell of B's old apt in moscow started in 1983. The grafitti numbered in the hundreds very quickly and despite being regualrly whitewashed were replaced. In the 1990s there was a slight backlash when people started questioning the religious aspects of satan and the bible being discussed so closely together.