Four Demons of Valentin Kataev

Slavic Review ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 647-662 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dodona Kiziria
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Soviet Literature ◽  
New Social Order ◽  
The Revolution

“Revolution itself commanded men's lives in those days.”Valentin Kataev, The Grass of OblivionThe Grass of Oblivion, a novel by Valentin Kataev, is a tribute to the Russian writers who were forced to choose their path during the revolution and the civil war. The theme may seem outdated, but the approach to the theme and its literary treatment are amazingly original and modern. In all of Soviet literature it would be difficult to find tragic images comparable to the two poets in this narrative (Bunin and Maiakovskii) who are compelled, finally and irrevocably, either to accept or reject the role offered to them by the new social order. Yet these images are outlined with such grace and elegance, and so tempered with irony, that an ambivalence, an almost diabolic duality is etched into the characters and events. Even the character of the narrator appears split, further complicating the multileveled narrative structure of the novel in which reality is so densely interwoven with fantasy that a third, synthesizing plane of meaning emerges.

scholarly journals Nikolai Mikhailovich Aristov (Nik. Arens) and His Siberian Pinkerton

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 254-268
Author(s):  
Yu. P. Zarodova
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Soviet Literature ◽  
The City

Based on the study of inaccessible archival sources, the article reconstructs the biographical details of the life of the forgotten poet and prose writer Nikolai Mikhailovich Aristov (Nik. Arens). An overview of the “сinematic novel” by N. Arens “The Adventures of Evgeny Stal”, which was published in Omsk in 1924, is unfamiliar to modern researchers. The adven- ture novel about the adventures of a red scout in the White Guard rear is set in 1919 in Sibe- ria, which was engulfed in the Civil War. A separate issue reliably tells about the events that took place in the city of Omsk, at that time the capital of “white” Russia. The novel was written as an example of new Soviet literature, which met the ideological order for a mass book formulated in 1923 by N. I. Bukharin in an article on Red Pinkerton.

scholarly journals The Image of the Russian Revolution as the Embodiment of the Author's Understanding of History in "The Nomadism to Death" by Vladimir Maksimov

2018 ◽  
pp. 223-230
Author(s):  
L. S. Starikova
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Real ◽  
Artistic Conception ◽  
The Revolution

The study features the image of the revolution in the novel by  V. Maksimov "The Nomadism to Death". The research employed the cultural-historical and mythopoetic methods, as well as the method of motivational analysis. Since the novel has a complex multistage structure, the image of the revolution is considered according to the levels of the text: 1. The real layer of time, featuring the generation of fathers, who participated in the revolution and civil war. For them, revolution is significant: this is what they lived, killed and died for. The image of revolution evokes respect and worship, as well as regret about its incomplete. On this level, the revolution is closely connected with the time of the Civil War, which became its continuation. 2. The metatext level (the level of the explicit author-narrator Mikhail Barmin) unites the metatextual construction of the novel (which includes the present, Barmin’s past and "a novel inside the novel" about the time of the revolution and the civil war) and fits into the artistic conception of the writer's time: Maksimov depicts the time as a deadly chaotic circle, guiding the destinies of his characters and the land that repeats its history again and again, and in the whole of humanity as a whole. 3. Author's point of view (implicit author) – the revolution appears in the form of chthonic creatures, monsters devouring their children, demanding blood sacrifices and human lives.

scholarly journals Evolution of Women in Manju Kapur’s ‘Home’

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 11
Author(s):  
B. Lalitha Bai
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
New Woman ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Real ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
Real Picture ◽  
New Social Order

Manju Kapur’s women are the personification of ‘New Woman’ representing the new voice of new social order. Casting aside the burden of inhibition since ages, they now want to breathe the air freedom and assert a position of respectability. The present paper discusses how Kapur’s Home successfully presents the real picture of a woman in a male-dominated society. Here the protagonists are tossed in the struggle between tradition and modernity, conservationism and newness, and call of conscience and the demand of tradition. The tension between these notions of identity and the desire for personal fulfilment forms the thematic foundation of the novel.

Blackism and Pan-Africanism in Post-Colonial African Literature: A Reading of Femi Osofisan’s Plays

Imbizo ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Clement Olujide Ajidahun
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Black People ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
African Renaissance ◽  
Pan Africanism ◽  
New Social Order

This article is a thematic study of Femi Osofisan’s plays that explicitly capture the essence of blackism, nationalism and pan-Africanism as a depiction of the playwright’s ideology and his total commitment to the evolution of a new social order for black people. The article critically discusses the concepts of blackism and pan-Africanism as impelling revolutionary tools that seek to re-establish and reaffirm the primacy, identity, and personality of black people in Africa and in the diaspora. It also discusses blackism as an African renaissance ideology that campaigns for the total emancipation of black people and a convulsive rejection of all forms of colonialism, neo-colonialism, Eurocentrism, nepotism and ethnic chauvinism, while advocating an acceptance of Afrocentrism, unity and oneness of blacks as indispensable tools needed for the dethronement of all forms of racism, discrimination, oppression and dehumanisation of black people. The article hinges the underdevelopment of the black continent on the deliberate attempt of the imperialists and their black cronies who rule with iron hands to keep blacks in perpetual slavery. It countenances Femi Osofisan’s call for unity and solidarity among all blacks as central to the upliftment of Africans. The article recognises Femi Osofisan as a strong, committed and formidable African playwright who utilises theatre as a veritable and radical platform to fight and advocate for the liberation of black people by arousing their revolutionary consciousness and by calling on them to hold their destinies in their hands if they are to be emancipated from the shackles of oppression.

ABCs of the Revolution

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 278-291
Author(s):  
Egor A. Yesyunin
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Special Significance ◽  
Development History ◽  
The People ◽  
Red Army ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Revolution

The article is devoted to the satirical agitation ABCs that appeared during the Civil War, which have never previously been identified by researchers as a separate type of agitation art. The ABCs, which used to have the narrow purpose of teaching children to read and write before, became a form of agitation art in the hands of artists and writers. This was facilitated by the fact that ABCs, in contrast to primers, are less loaded with educational material and, accordingly, they have more space for illustrations. The article presents the development history of the agitation ABCs, focusing in detail on four of them: V.V. Mayakovsky’s “Soviet ABC”, D.S. Moor’s “Red Army Soldier’s ABC”, A.I. Strakhov’s “ABC of the Revolution”, and M.M. Cheremnykh’s “Anti-Religious ABC”. There is also briefly considered “Our ABC”: the “TASS Posters” created by various artists during the Second World War. The article highlights the special significance of V.V. Mayakovsky’s first agitation ABC, which later became a reference point for many artists. The authors of the first satirical ABCs of the Civil War period consciously used the traditional form of popular prints, as well as ditties and sayings, in order to create images close to the people. The article focuses on the iconographic connections between the ABCs and posters in the works of D.S. Moor and M.M. Cheremnykh, who transferred their solutions from the posters to the ABCs.

A Compact Embodiment of Pluralities and Denial of Origins: Atwood’s The Year of The Flood

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 141
Author(s):  
Rana Sağıroğlu
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
Narrative Techniques ◽  
Why Questions ◽  
Near Future

Margaret Atwood, one of the most spectacular authors of postmodern movement, achieved to unite debatable and in demand critical points of 21st century such as science fiction, postmodernism and ecocriticism in the novel The Year of The Flood written in 2009. The novel could be regarded as an ecocritical manifesto and a dystopic mirror against today’s degenerated world, tending to a superficial base to keep the already order in use, by moving away from the fundamental solution of all humanity: nature. Although Atwood does not want her works to be called science fiction, it is obvious that science fiction plays an introductory role and gives the novel a ground explaining all ‘why’ questions of the novel. However, Atwood is not unjust while claiming that her works are not science fiction because of the inevitable rapid change of 21st century world becoming addicted to technology, especially Internet. It is easily observed by the reader that what she fictionalises throughout the novel is quite close to possibility, and the world may witness in the near future what she creates in the novel as science fiction. Additionally, postmodernism serves to the novel as the answerer of ‘how’ questions: How the world embraces pluralities, how heterogeneous social order is needed, and how impossible to run the world by dichotomies of patriarchal social order anymore. And lastly, ecocriticism gives the answers of ‘why’ questions of the novel: Why humanity is in chaos, why humanity has organized the world according to its own needs as if there were no living creatures apart from humanity. Therefore, The Year of The Flood meets the reader as a compact embodiment of science fiction, postmodernism and ecocriticism not only with its theme, but also with its narrative techniques.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document