REVIEW-ESSAYS
BOOKS IN REVIEW
Elana Gomel
Escape from Science Fiction
Yvonne Howell. Apocalyptic
Realism: The Science Fiction of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Russian and
East European Studies in Aesthetics and Philosophy of Culture 1. Peter Lang
Publishing (212-764-1471), 1994. 184pp. $47.95.
Yvonne Howell's book begins with a praiseworthy declaration of intent: to
"approach the Strugatskys' work from within the history and evolution of mainstream
Russian literature... [to] seek to define the Strugatskys' place in the context of already
established, native Russian literary and cultural traditions" (4). She, thus,
promises to solve the paradox of the Strugatskys' disparate reception in their native
country and in the West. While translated into several languages, the Strugatskys' work
has never enjoyed any prominent commercial success outside the bounds of the former Soviet
Union. There, on the other hand, their status is of cultural heroes-cum-prophets. Their
popularity transcends the Western distinction between the elite writer read by the chosen
few and the entertainer pandering to the masses. Though written in the popular idiom of
sf, the Strugatskys' novels are prominently featured in every Russian intellectual's
book-case. Several generations of the Soviet intelligentsia have been brought up on their
work. At the same time, they have created their own fandom. What other writers could boast
of encountering their fantastic characters in real life as did the Strugatskys who were
feted by the group calling themselves the "ludens" (after a secret society of
supermen in the Strugastkys' 1985 novel The Waves Still the Wind)? The group is
still active nowadays.
Obviously, such a reception gap calls for an explanation located less in the
intratextual dynamics of the works themselves than in their intertextual relations to the
rest of Soviet/Russian culture. Howell does, indeed, attempt to unravel the web of these
relations, tracing, sometimes with great subtlety, a pattern of allusions, influences,
narrative paradigms and ideological continuities linking the Strugatskys' oeuvre with
what she considers their real point of origin: the Russian "Silver Age" of
modernism, brutally interrupted by the Revolution and the Terror. It is in the work of
Bely, Sologub, Bryusov, Blok and others that the Strugatskys' literary roots lie.
This approach, undoubtedly, has the advantage of novelty: previous criticism of the
Strugatskys (including Lem's seminal essay on Roadside Picnic) treated their work
as sf first and foremost and often attempted to analyze it cross-culturally by comparing
the Russian writers with their Anglo-American peers. Howell introduces the term
"apocalyptic realism" to describe the unique quality of the Strugatskys' writing
that distinguishes it from Western sf and presumably (though she never says so) from
run-of-the-mill Soviet sf. Apocalyptic realism focuses on a set of issues central (though
hardly unique) to Russian culture: East versus West, humanism versus utopia, individual
versus state, past versus future. All these issues are given a particular slant by
vicissitudes of Russia's twentieth-century history: the massive social upheaval of the
Revolution; Stalinism with its cultural amnesia and falsification of tradition; the
crushing power of the State over any form of creativity, expressed in the institution of
censorship with which the Strugatskys had to contend throughout their joint career; the
sixties "thaw"; and finally (though Howell hardly deals with it) the perestroika
and the downfall of communism. These events and their social and cultural implications
constitute both the external environment and the hidden content of the Strugatskys' books;
their sf form is more or less incidental. Thus, despite the subtitle of her book, Howell
relates the Strugatskys to what she calls "a distinguished line of Russian
'realisms'" rather than to the generic tradition of sf (15).
The fact remains, though, that the overwhelming majority of the Strugatskys' works are
generically sf, with some admixture of other "popular" genres, such as the
detective story and the thriller. The closest Howell comes to explaining this fact is by
suggesting that the writers use what she calls "the conventional binary structure of
science fiction" to inscribe the binary structure of "Russian cultural myths
about Russian national identity." In other words, sf is no more than a disguise for
the Strugatskys' project "to reexamine the philosophical, religious, and cultural
heritage of Russia's modernist period" (17).
Howell's approach, however, risks a pitfall, similar to the one she rightly discerns in
the critical attitude that sees in the Strugatskys a Slavic equivalent of Asimov,
Heinlein, or Van Vogt. Whether the Strugatskys are perceived as cryptic (post)modernists,
producing esoteric meditations on gnosticism and cultural apocalypse or as slightly
incoherent spinners of adventure yarns, the choice of one of these hermeneutical options
misses the essential duality of the Strugatskys' position both within Soviet culture and
within their chosen genre of sf. It is at the intersection between the specifically
Russian tradition of quasi-allegorical and eschatological writing and the largely imported
sf paradigm that the Strugatskys' work can best be situated. And the secret of their
astonishing and widespread appeal (from schoolchildren to members of the Academy of
Science) lies precisely in the writers' skillful manipulation and interweaving of these
two generic strands.
It is characteristic of Apocalyptic Realism that it focuses on the Strugatskys' late work, particularly The Doomed City (1988; though written much earlier)
and Burdened with Evil (1988)--the books that veer away from sf in their adoption
of an oracular style, oneiric structure, and portentous philosophy of history. Burdened
with Evil is heavily influenced by Master and Margarita, yet falls short of
Bulgakov's playful masterpiece both artistically and intellectually. These novels,
however, justify Howell's contention in their explicit concern with eschatology,
mysticism, and the supreme irrationality of Russian history. But she has surprisingly
little to say about what is, arguably, the Strugatskys' best novel--Roadside Picnic
(1972). Perhaps the reason is that, while indeed dealing with a utopian problematic, Roadside
Picnic cannot be reduced to a network of covert allusions to Russia's failed
millenarian dreams (which is not to say that such allusions play no role in the text).
Rather, the novel operates simultaneously as an sf analysis of the nature of alienness and
as an eschatological fable. These two levels constantly interact, creating a text of
consider able complexity. But the sf elements--the Zone, the alien artefacts, the strange invasion-- cannot be merely discarded as so much window-dressing for religious and
philosophical ruminations on Russia's destiny. Regardless of the authors' intentions,
their generic framework of sf, with its ideological baggage of rationalistic speculation
on the one hand, popular entertainment on the other, mitigates against all those
heavyweight mystical concerns that Howell sees as central to the Strugatskys' oeuvre.
Disregard for the sf aspect of the Strugatskys' work peculiarly distorts Howell's
reading of the two last volumes in their "future history" series: The Beetle
in the Anthill (1979) and The Waves Still the Wind (1985). For one thing,
the "future history" itself is a well-known sf sub-genre and the pleasure that
the Strugatskys' Russian fans derive from tracing the intricate chronology of their novels
and compiling the biographies of the major characters is no different from that of their
Anglo-American counterparts arguing over the history of the Star Trek universe. But even
taken separately, The Beetle in the Anthill and The Waves Still the Wind
deal with traditional sf themes--the alien invasion and the advent of supermen--and in a
fairly traditional sf idiom, spiced with elements of the spy thriller. Howell discusses
both of them in terms of what she calls "plot prefiguration"--the patterning of
the plot by the imposition of some kind of archetypal narrative. In The Beetle
the main prefigurative pattern, according to Howell, is the legend of the Pied Piper; in The
Waves, the canonical life of Christ. Without denying that both narratives might have
been instrumental in shaping the plot structure in the books, one cannot, surely, ignore
the more immediately obvious influence of other sf texts, both home-grown and imported. By
seeing the protagonist of The Waves as a Christ-figure, one risks obscuring his
less elevated origin in the twentieth-century pop-mythology of Superman-- the mythology
Howell herself refers to when she lists Ian Fleming as one of the sources of intertextual
allusions in the book. The paradox is that this mythology might be more relevant to the
political subtext of the two novels--their denunciation of Stalinism, fascism and
antisemitism--than the Book of Revelation.
This is not to say that intertextual allusions of the kind Howell finds are imaginary;
nor are they necessarily unimportant. But her methodology poses the question of the limits
and nature of intertextuality itself. First, the circle of intertextuality can be
broadened almost indefinitely. Howell meticulously traces the semantic lines that bind the
Strugatskys to the Silver Age, yet disregards other possible--and perhaps, equally
important--sources of influence, including, for example, old Japanese literature. The late
Arkady Strugatsky was a professional translator from Japanese and those in the know claim
to see a variety of Japanese motives in Hard to Be a God. With sufficient
ingenuity, one can link together any two texts. Intertextuality in its widest sense is the
basic condition of existence of literature and culture in general. Howell herself points
out that it "is not always possible, or indeed necessary, to pinpoint the source of a
motif to a specific text, especially in times when certain ideas are in the air, and
freely used in many different contexts" (19). If so, the origin of a motif--whether
in the Silver Age or elsewhere--is less important than its particular deployment. A good
example is Howell's discussion of the influence of the Russian philosopher Nikolai
Fyodorov on the Strugatskys. Fyodorov's philosophy is highly idiosyncratic, yet it seems
to be refracted in the Strugatskys' texts only in the form of clichés about humanity's
conquest of Nature and evolution of man into superman that are a staple of sf in general.
Whether the Strugatskys had or had not read Fyodorov ultimately matters little in
comparison with their specific use of these clichés.
The second problem relates to the issue of reception. Any text can be seen as a mosaic
of allusions, borrowings, adaptations. But which of these adaptations will be seen as
significant by the audience depends on the general cultural climate of the period. Howell
refers to the stylistic influence of Hemingway on the Strugatskys' early novels; but in
order to appreciate the ideological valency of this influence the critic has to be aware
of the fact that in the period of the "thaw" Hemingway became a symbol of
Western freedom for the Soviet intelligentsia. On the other hand, the femininization of
the Forest in The Snail on the Slope (1966) might indeed, as Howell claims, be
related to the gnostic doctrine of the fallen Sophia, the Wisdom of God, or to the
supposed "femininity" of the mystical Russian soul. But it is quite likely that
a sizeable portion of the Strugatskys' readership accepted their unflattering portrayal of
women as a matter of course, out of a pervasive, if largely unarticulated, misogyny that
was (and still is) widespread among Russian intellectuals.
An analysis of this kind, however, is ultimately sociological and not literary. Howell
is rightly concerned with the Strugatskys' texts as texts--literary artefacts that
function within a specific cultural configuration. Her stated purpose is twofold: to
elucidate the meaning of these artefacts to the Western reader unfamiliar with a specific
set of concerns they address and to unravel their inner logic through tracing of a series
of interlinked motifs. Even posing these goals is an important advance in the Strugatskys
scholarship. So is Howell's attempt to demonstrate the unity of plot, character and
setting in the Strugatskys' major novels within the parameters of their apocalyptic
vision. Her introduction of the term "apocalyptic realism" in order to
reclassify the Strugatskys' work is meant, on the one hand, to wrench the Strugatskys from
the "frivolous" matrix of sf and to situate them within the Russian mainstream;
and on the other hand, to stress the inner coherence of their thematics. Her book is far
more successful in pursuing the second goal than the first. However problematic the
Strugatskys' tie with the Silver Age, the importance of the apocalypse as both a
structuring device and a central ideological concern in their works is undeniable. But
Howell's attempt to address the philosophical, ideological, and cultural meanings of the
Strugatskys within the context of Russian and Soviet history paradoxically flounders on
the grounds of textual analysis. Her methodology is both too abstract and too concrete.
Howell discusses the Strugatskys' major texts in terms of traditional narratological
categories: plot, setting, characterization. She shows how each aspect of these texts is
shaped by the key concept of apocalypse: the plot that centers on the appearance of a
(false) messiah; the setting that is modeled after the Dantean circles of Hell, the
grotesque visions of Bosch, or some more generalized nightmare of the wasteland; and the
characteristic images of aliens/supermen that seem to incarnate the fear of an inhuman
millennium arising out of the ashes of an historical holocaust. Some of her suggestions as
to the sources of this pattern appear rather far-fetched (especially with regard to the
influence of Bosch) but the case for the pattern itself is a strong one. Nor is it
difficult to see why apocalyptic theme and imagery should hold a particular attraction for
the Russian audience. But what Howell's analysis overlooks is precisely this concrete
historical and ideological dimension of the apocalyptic idea. On the one hand, she narrows
it down to a set of borrowings from an obscure mystical tradition; on the other, she
elevates to an eternal supra-cultural myth. These two planes of analysis run in parallel;
their missing intersection is the site of ideology and history.
Howell makes a rather startling claim that the Strugatskys "draw their images from
the metaphysical systems of the early Christian heresies and dualist cosmologies, and the
incorporation of these systems into the Russian modernist movement" (20). She does
manage to substantiate this claim, especially with regard to Burdened with Evil
and The Doomed City, with their obvious references to Bulgakov who, indeed,
self-consciously used Manichean motives in Master and Margarita. In other cases
the proposed connection appears to be rather dubious, as when the name of the cafe
"The Pearl Oyster" in A Lame Fate (1986) is related to the gnostic Hymn
of the Pearl. But reading the Strugatskys as gnostic writers begs the question of the
meaning of these "metaphysical systems" for their wide and varied readership
most of whom could hardly be suspected of burning with a scholarly interest in early
Christianity. Howell rightly notes that the Strugatskys provided their audience with
"a kind of cultural myth to live by" (26). If they do, in fact, rework gnostic
and Manichean motives, the results of this reworking might have less in common with their
esoteric originals than with the social and cultural ambience of Soviet society in decay.
It is not that Howell disregards the question of why a translation of the Hymn of
the Pearl should enjoy some vogue among the Russian intelligentsia. But her answers
are ultimately unsatisfactory: either she suggests a direct parallelism between the late
Roman Empire and the late Soviet Empire (a one-dimensional allegorical reading that hardly
requires a complex system of prefigurations and allusions), or she resorts to the abstract
concept of the "Russian idea," ultimately reducing it to a series of binary
dichotomies such as East/West, old/new etc. In terms of this idea the Strugatskys'
"apocalyptic realism" becomes a mere elaboration of age-old mythological
patterns which is not even particularly "Russian," in the sense that their
defining opposition between apocalypse and utopia is clearly central to the Western
thought in general.
Howell's methodology dismantles the text into allusions and hidden paradigms but
ignores its surface structure which is, precisely, its genre. In her discussion of The
Beetle in the Anthill and The Waves Still the Wind, she points out two
possible readings of the texts: as allegories of the "Jewish question" in Russia
and as variations on the prefigurative pattern of (false) prophecy. But what mediates
between these meanings is the science-fictional structure that allows the reader to pick
as much (or as little) as he or she chooses from the multiple possibilities of
interpretation inherent in the text, while at the same time enjoying the familiar
pleasures of an intellectual enigma coupled with a fast-paced thriller action. It is true
that in the Strugatskys' last works the science-fictional structure is aborted and the
text forces the reader into adopting the hermeneutics of allegory. But what made them so
popular was their original ability to cram a number of intellectually and politically
topical issues into a widely accepted generic form. It is not that the Strugatskys are
myth-makers providing their audience with a coherent, if esoteric, system of belief;
rather, they are uniquely gifted spokesmen of the Soviet intelligentsia, responding with a
firework of suggestive images to the cultural and ideological shifts in this group's
worldview.
The status of sf in the Soviet Union is an issue Howell does not deal with at all. And
yet this status has always been very high compared with the West. The representation of
the Strugatskys as "'serious writers' for the intelligentsia" does not
necessarily require severing their connection with sf. When the brothers began their
career in the late 50s and early 60s, it was their chosen genre that not only kept them out
of trouble with the censor but enhanced their prestige with their target audience: young
liberal Westernized scientists. The Strugatskys kept pace with the gradual change in the
mindset of this audience: from the optimism of the "thaw" to the darker mystical
speculations of the 70s and the 80s. But the generic form of sf was always of importance
to this mindset; not merely as a convenient disguise but also as an expression of liberal
and rationalistic aspirations. The Strugatskys' gradual abandonment of this form testifies
not to their growing "seriousness" as writers but rather to its incompatibility
with a quasi-religious ideology inscribed in their late work.
Howell's book ultimately does not answer the question implied in its title: what is the
relation between "apocalyptic realism" and "science fiction"? And yet,
it is an important study. For one thing, it surveys the Strugatskys' oeuvre as a coherent
whole, structured by a set of interlinked images and themes. The writers' stature in
Russia surely entitles them to a careful and sympathetic criticism; and this is what
Howell provides. And even if seeing the Strugatskys' as belated heirs of the Silver Age
limits their role in contemporary Russian culture (however much it might exalt them in the
eyes of the literary scholar), the necessity of placing them in some kind of indigenous
context is patent. In fact, most of Howell's conclusions about the Strugatskys' literary
and philosophical sources seem to be sound (or, at least, can be convincingly defended).
What is missing is the acknowledgement that sf, both Russian and Western, has its own
tradition which interacts with other influences that have shaped the Strugatskys' work;
and that in some cases the popularity of the genre does not detract from the popularity of
the author.
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