Vladimir Sorokin

El presente trabajo es una reflexión sobre el totalitarismo en la actualidad tomando como base el estudio de la filósofa Hannah Arendt que en su ensayo sobre “Los orígenes del totalitarismo” describió los elementos más importantes en la construcción del estado totalitario. Luego se presenta como ejemplo totalitario de nuestros días la Federación Rusa, desde la postura del escritor ruso Vladimir Sorokin que describe en su libro “El día del oprichnik” la transformación que ocurre en su país que se encamina hacia un estado absolutista, recordando a los zares de la época imperial.Finalmente se muestra desde el populismo, la llegada del totalitarismo a Latinoamérica, mostrando particularmente el ejemplo de Venezuela que, desde el análisis realizado, se encamina a ser un régimen totalitario.


The present work is a reflection on totalitarianism today, based on the study of the philosopher Hannah Arendt, who in her essay on "The origins of totalitarianism" described the most important elements in the construction of the totalitarian state. Then comes the Russian Federation as a totalitarian example, from the position of the Russian writer Vladimir Sorokin, who describes in his book "The day of the oprichnik" the transformation that takes place in his country that is headed towards an absolutist state, reminding the Czar of the imperial era. Finally, from the point of view of populism, the arrival of totalitarianism in Latin America, showing in particular the example of Venezuela that, from the analysis carried out, is aimed at being a totalitarian regime.

«Литература в нашей стране умерла», — воодушевленно настаивал Владимир Сорокин в 1997 году в интервью журналу «Киносценарии», а потому — «перспективны только визуальные жанры». Именно кино, по мнению писателя, могло «выделить некий новый постсоветский московский стиль жизни», давая возможность задокументировать или, по крайней мере, представить в образах этот «особый стиль бытия».

Когда через девять лет журнал «Искусство кино» опубликовал еще одно «кинематографическое» интервью с Сорокиным, от былого оптимизма писателя по поводу перспективности визуальных жанров практически ничего не осталось. «Увы, — отмечал Соро-
кин в 2006 году, — наша страна раздавлена литературой, и наше кино в первую очередь раздавлено литературой: звуковая дорожка подавляет изображение. <…> люди боятся увидеть действительность как чисто визуальный феномен».

Связав основную причину кинематографической «раздавленности» со стремлением зрителя «держаться за слова, за смысл», Сорокин тут же перевел эту историческую специфику визуального восприятия на язык внеисторической оптической обреченности нации в целом: «Россия некинематографична с визуальной точки зрения».

В статье предлагаются новые подходы к творчеству Владимира Сорокина. Анализируется знаменитый рассказ «Месяц в Дахау» и демонстрируется близость его поэтики к принципам метарелятивизма, сочетающим в заведомо противоречивом единстве релятивистское начало и «завершающие», аукториальные интенции. Выявлены генезис и основные возможности метарелятивистской поэтики. Показано, что традиционная постмодернистская оптика, при помощи которой обычно рассматривают творчество Сорокина, выводит за рамки рассмотрения множество важных аспектов в художественных текстах писателя. Метарелятивизм рассматривается как элемент метамодернистской поэтики Сорокина, сохраняющей связь с постмодернизмом, но при этом снимающей множество постмодернистских теоретических запретов и ограничений. По-новому осмысливается и соотношение бинарных и тернарных этических оппозиций. В рассказе «Месяц в Дахау» выявлена зеркальная трансформация классического топоса путешествия
из ада сквозь чистилище в рай: в этом произведении ад и рай функционально меняются местами, а роль чистилища выполняют камеры нацистского концлагеря Дахау, используемые для подготовки героя к будущему сверхчеловеческому преображению. Детально рассмотрено изображение метафорического людоедства, которое в рассказе осмысливается как инструмент для радикального преобразования человеческой природы и
приобщения к нацистской античеловеческой (сверхчеловеческой) системе мышления и мировосприятия. Подробно проанализирован трагический финал рассказа, в котором прослеживается выход за рамки тернарности, связанный с самоубийственным, но неизбежным для героя разрывом с прежде желанным для него нечеловеческим раем. Показано как метарелятивистская свобода позволяет ощутить парадоксальную глубину и трагический смысл изображаемого.

This paper examines two novels from either side of the bipolar Cold War-Vladimir Sorokin's Blue Lard (Goluboe salo, 1999) and Don DeLillo's Underworld (1997)-and their approaches to narrative temporality and nuclear waste. Building upon interdisciplinary theories of nuclear fallout, climate change, the Anthropocene epoch, and narrative time, I argue that both novels struggle to dramatically expand their temporal structures to accommodate larger-than-human timescales, extending into the future as well as the past. The eponymous substance of Sorokin's novel, often connected and compared to nuclear byproduct, trans-gresses the boundaries of time, moving from the future to the past and back again. DeLillo's novel, by contrast, depicts a world that is at once saturated with wastes and deeply invested in concealing them from view. As with Blue Lard, the structure of the novel attempts to resolve this tension between "the two streams of history, weapons and waste". In my comparison of the two novels, I theorize a "byproduct temporality", which pulls the texts away from individual lifetimes or historical periods and toward toxic objects that transgress and problematize perceptual human time. Finally, both novels dramatize how societies try and inevitably fail to bury hazardous materials and, within the structures of the novels, unbury the nuclear detritus of our collective past.

Vladimir Sorokin’s novels Ochered' [The Queue] of 1983 and Den' oprichnika [The Day of the Oprichnik] of 2006 both share the use of spatial-temporal unity. The analysis proposed in this article shows how the writer uses the narrative continuity between the two novels to build a cyclic time characterized by a different repetition, rather than a real historical progression.
Ochered' is Sorokin’s first novel and it is a product of what Aleksei Yurchak has called late socialism. In those years the ideological discourse underlying the Soviet society was losing legitimacy, showing the discrepancy between goals and means inherent in the socialistic paradox. Sorokin rejects the pride showed by the Soviet world in its will to block the natural rhythm of time and, in an attempt to retrieve it, he highlights the historical immobility of the Brezhnev stagnation. Den' oprichnika, instead, is a dystopia set in a near future that merges elements from different epochs: the tsarist past, the Soviet times and the Putin present. The everyday deeds of Komiaga, an executive officer of the Russian tsar, are transcended in the sci-fi universe, transposed into an atemporal dimension where the individual becomes collective and the difference between the eras becomes inconsistent. The Russian present is depicted as a repetition of past and future totalitarian eras.
The comparison, originating in a shared narrative characteristic, finally highlights the way in which the Soviet atemporality has been broken to be embedded in a broader, profoundly Russian atemporality where a cyclic time takes shape.

An essay looking at the evolution of the power complex, dissent and religion in 20th century Russian literature, using four cultural works as examples; Master & Margarita (1940) by Mikhail Bulgakov, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Moscow-Petushki (1973) by Venedikt Yerofeev and Day of the Oprichnik (2006) by Vladimir Sorokin.

Andrei Platonov's novel Happy Moscow (1928) and Vladimir Sorokin's Norma (1982/2009) are dark satirical novels where the biological needs and desires of the human body create a tension with the politico-ideological reality of the time.  Through a comparative reading of the role of human waste in Andrei Platonov's Happy Moscow and Vladimir Sorokin's Norma, this paper examines how the entropy of the biological body, and in particular, the waste-product of the human digestive system, are absorbed into the ideological framework of the state. This paper examines how the reappropriation of human feces into the social fabric speaks to the dual desire of both the conquest of nature and fulfillment of human needs by socialism. There is a symbolic, historical affinity of shit to longevity and to the ritual of communion that this paper narrates, indirectly illuminating how the concept of shit has evolved through the grand political and moral disillusionment that was witnessed between Lenin's GOERLO plan and Andropov's tenure in KGB. This paper is in conversation with theoretical framework of Karl Marx, Alexander Bogdanov, Georges Bataille, Dominique Laponte; it draws from Boris Groys' seminar "Biocosmism" (NYU, Spring 2017).

Partendo da condizioni personali diverse e adottando modalità di scrittura diverse Sergej Dovlatov (1941-1990) e Vladimir Sorokin (1955) hanno descritto e raccontato l’Unione Sovietica post-staliniana, le sue contraddizioni e le sue assurdità ma anche il suo orgoglio e la sua peculiare forma di vita. In particolar modo, i due scrittori hanno proposto un affresco di quell’umanità così varia e divertente, grottesca e fatalista, a cui è stato dato il nome di homo sovieticus, come se fosse una tipologia umana altra e irripetibile. E lo hanno fatto anche ricorrendo alle armi della satira e dell’ironia, innervando le loro pagine di comicità più o meno
esplicita, di riso tanto pieno quanto amaro. Molteplici sono gli scopi e le forme dell’umorismo così come le ragioni dell’intento satirico, spesso ambigui e contraddittori, ma sempre volti a esplorare – e in molti casi a rovesciare – la dialettica fra società e individuo. Osteggiati prima e dopo l’esilio, Dovlatov e Sorokin hanno visto le loro opere avere successo all’estero e, clandestinamente, anche in patria; parallelamente hanno visto, loro malgrado o meno, la propria immagine pubblica e il proprio ruolo di scrittore sovrapporsi, fin quasi a coincidere, a quello di esule “politico” tout court.
Questo intervento ha l’obiettivo di indagare e analizzare i dispositivi ironici (e in molti casi autoironici) e satirici che i due scrittori hanno usato per parlare della Russia a loro contemporanea. In questo modo, attraverso la comparazione delle opere ritenute
maggiormente significative, sarà possibile mostrare il loro funzionamento, i loro effetti, e quindi la loro efficacia.

É com grande prazer que apresentamos ao nosso leitor esta edição Nº 17 da RUS – Revista de Literatura e Cultura Russa da USP. Além de um material diversificado, este número oferece o Dossiê “Tradução de literatura russa em perspectiva comparada”, organizado por Bruno Gomide. A série de artigos reunida no  Dossiê  representa  uma  amostra  exemplar  da  diversidade  dos trabalhos na área da teoria e prática da tradução literária desenvolvidos no Brasil e no exterior, revelando-a como uma fonte inesgotável de temas para pesquisas.
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The article is devoted to the analysis of metanarratives in contemporary art. Arguing with J.-F. Lyotard’s famous statement that Postmodern is defined as incredulity towards metanarratives, the author asserts that in the Postmodern age metanarratives have not become a thing of the past, but acquired new features, thus becoming an essential component of postmodern aesthetics. Old metanarratives, which invariably carried ideological implications and thereby lost their relevance, are now replaced with new ones, associated with contemporary problematics and a particularly postmodern reception of the tragic. The author emphasizes the crucial character of a total revision of the axiological bases of modern society, seen as a way of liberating the perception of present problems from the burden of the old, noncurrent approaches, and clearing the way for the new metanarratives, free of the prejudices of the past.
The methodology of the article is based on an interdisciplinary approach. It involves explora-tion of metanarratives, expressed not only in fiction, but also in Willy Decker’s staging of the opera “La Traviata,” shown at the 2005 Salzburger Festspiele. Particular attention is given to the problem of the empty metaphysical center, which itself can be a source of pluralistic metanarration, free from ideology.

In the post-Soviet period, discussions of “postmodernism” in Russian literature have proliferated. Based on close literary analysis of representative works of fiction by three post-Soviet Russian writers – Vladimir Sorokin, Vladimir Tuchkov and Aleksandr Khurgin – this book investigates the usefulness and accuracy of the notion of “postmodernism” in the post-Soviet context.

Classic Russian literature, renowned for its pursuit of aesthetic, moral and social values, and the modernism that succeeded it have often been seen as antipodes to postmodernist principles. The author wishes to dispute this polarity and proposes “post-Soviet neo-modernism” as an alternative concept. “Neo-modernism” embodies the notion that post-Soviet writers have redeemed the tendency of earlier literature to seek the meaning of human existence in a transcendent realm, as well as in the treasures of Russia’s cultural past.

Der Sammelband vereint russistische, polonistische und bohemistische Beiträge von Nachwuchswissenschaftlern zur slavischen Literatur. Sie basieren auf Forschungsarbeiten, die beim 8. Treffen des Jungen Forums Slavistische Literaturwissenschaft im März 2007 in Tübingen vorgestellt wurden.

This article is devoted to the concept of linguistic “norm negotiations” and how they manifest themselves in one particular area of post-Soviet Russian language debate. It sets out looking at the relationship between metalanguage and language norms, before it moves on to study a few examples of such norm negotiations in post-Soviet Russian literary criticism. Finally, the article focuses on how language is discussed in connection with the reception of literary fiction. The discussion is based on examples from literary reviews that discussed publications by Viktor Erofeev, Vladimir Sorokin and Viktor Pelevin in the 1990s.

Resumo: Este ensaio apresenta e discute algumas proposições teóricas a respeito da arte da tradução literária, tendo como enfoque a tradução da contemporaneidade russa e do romance "O dia de um oprítchnik" (Den' oprítchnika) de Vladímir Sorókin.

This book is about language. The importance of language to society can hardly be overestimated. Indeed, it is possible to claim that language creates society as we know it. The importance of this fine-tuned tool of communication in our daily lives is one obvious reason for its conspicuousness in public discourse, in what we could call the metadiscourse on language. Language is discussed in newspaper columns, on TV and radio shows, on a number of websites. In fact, there is reason to believe that talking about language is an integral and indispensable part of language’s existence in human society.

Language is also manifested in literature. At its best, literature is a proof of what human language is capable of communicating between people. As such, literary works are often singled out as shining examples of our achievements as human beings, or, as the quintessence of a given language. In this way literature plays an important part in how language is talked about. In addition, language frequently appears as a theme in literature. Some literary scholars, for example of the Prague School, have even claimed that literature is itself very much about language.

These two perspectives, the metadiscourse on language and the relationship between language and literature, form the framework for this monograph. Both are highly relevant to post-Soviet Russian society, where language as well as literature have been submitted to widespread public discussions. In this book I investigate what members of the post-Soviet Russian language community say about language, and its relationship to literature.