MODERNISTIC CREATOR IN THE SPACE OF UTOPIA: YURI OLESHA AND VEN. EROFEEV

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the problem of the legitimacy of the modernist creator’s statement in the field of the closed discourse of the Soviet utopian project. The main feature of the text that exists in the utopian project is the consolidation of accepted attitudes and cultural values, which is not consistent with the strategies of the modernist text. The modernist claims the right to create his own unique reality rather than follow the requirements of the new art. Yu. Olesha’s novel Envy (1927) and Ven. Erofeev’s Moscow - Petushki are illustrative material. The choice of literary works is justified by three reasons. Firstly, by the similarity of the fates of the designated authors. Secondly, by the diachronic correlation of the main characters of the texts - Nikolai Kavalerov and Venichka - as creators in the space of two versions of utopia (flourishing and dying). Finally, by the similarity of the narrative structures of both works, which indicates the possibility to consider them as examples of modernist self-tale (about oneself and a subjective version of reality). The authors of the paper suggest that Moscow - Petushki is a response to Envy, because it continues the development of that novel’s main intention. This paper concludes that the settings of Kavalerov’s and Venichka’s creative statements demonstrate their alienation from the project of utopia and the impossibility of self-fulfillment in it. For this reason, both characters and their demiurges find themselves in the zone of the marginal and taboo, in the zone of distance from utopia. At the same time, Kavalerov as an active modernist of the 1920s tries to become part of the new century, while Venichka as a passive modernist of the 1960s no longer expresses any claim to a place in the Soviet world.