Worlds Apart

by Alexander Levitsky

  1. Without entering into a lengthy elaboration of its possibly multiple and lengthy definitions, the term Science Fiction will be used here simply as a subgenre of literary Fantasy, which deals with an impact of imaginary or real science or technology upon an imagined society or an individual. As opposed to the unlimited worlds of imagination in Fantasy, perhaps best expressed by the Shakespeare passage quoted at the outset of this essay, all works termed science fiction in our volume will require some degree of plausibility with respect to empirical thought or technological progress. In spite of this limiting factor, Sci-Fi is regarded here as part the fantastic in literature, since it—just as fantasy—always relies on an element of dislocation regarding the expected time, place or a set of preconceived ideas, normative at the time of its writing. In this way, I agree with Philip K. Dick’s general belief that it is very hard to separate fantasy from science fiction, except in the degree of their respective plausibility from the vantage point of the general reader (cf. The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings. Ed. by Lawrence Sutin I. NY: Dutton, 1995, pp. 99-100).

  2. Howe, Irving. “Celine: The Sod Beneath the Skin—I.”The New Republic (July 20, 1963), 19-22.

  3. Although Fantasy and Utopia often overlap, they are in fact two antagonistic forms of the literary enterprise. Fantasy almost always involves movement—travel, heroic journey or quest—and consequent abrupt shifts in the narrative. Utopias are essentially static, needing no movement at all in the eternal bliss already achieved.

  4. Due to the ease with which this work can be acquired its text will not be included in this volume.

  5. Fantasy, as intimated earlier, is understood for the purposes of this publication to be a most inclusive term and to denote any genre characterized by an element of dislocation with respect to the time, place, or set of preconceived ideas, normative at the time of its creation. At its most minimal form, such as in poetry for instance, the fantastic may begin by any non-hackneyed use of rhyme, figure of speech, or even simple syntactic inversion. In its full-fledged guise, the term is used to denote the creation of any imaginative world other than tangible (uncharted shores in an epic, utopia, fairy-land, futuristic space-flight, dream, etc.) and synonymous with the Greek sense of phantasía, which is made “visible,” or “present” to the spectator’s (reader’s) mind by the artistry of the poet or the creator. Fantasy always involves imagination and depends on a shift of ground rules, which are in force for the reader or the general audience—even on such a basic mechanism of time displacement, as in most folk tales: “once upon the time….” Though some works may be deemed less fantastic in a sense that they involve such shifts more sparingly after the initial displacements in time or place are made (much of science-fiction) or highly fantastic (most dream journeys), no assumptions are made in this volume as to which are better. Thus, though I agree with Eric Rabkin that “a true Fantasy such as Alice continues to reverse its ground rules time and again,” (The Fantastic in Literature, 37), my agreement holds in the sense that is a more complex narrative than, let us say, an average fairy tale.

  6. The translation of Zhukovsky’s “Phantom of Phantasy,” and all other texts in the introduction are ours, A.L. & M.K.

  1. A semi-historical bard, presumably living during the reign of Yaroslav the Wise, the prince of Kiev from 1019 to 1054.

  2. Cf. Vladimir Nabokov’s translation of the full text in The Song of Igor’s Campaign (New York: Vintage Books, 1960)

  3. For example, The Psalter, indisputably a model many world cultures have emulated, does transform itself in many individual translations. Yet the translations themselves are rarely assumed to be exemplary carriers of literary value. Despite W. H. Auden’s claim that English literature would not exist without the rhymed translations of the Psalms, it is very rare that any particular translation of the Psalms by a known poet, from the Metaphysicals onwards, is assumed to be his or her principle contribution to the formation of the literary canon. Just as the celebrated King James translation of the Bible, the work of forty-nine individual contributors, is not assumed to be principally a literary monument as such, but rather a sacred text.

  4. Many are available to an English reader in Medieval Russia’s Epics, Chronicles, and Tales, Edited, Translated, and with an Introduction by Serge A. Zenkovsky (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1963; Revised and Enlarged Edition, 1974)

  5. Russia’s religious history is unique and quite distinct from that of western Europe. The familiar terms “reformation” and “counter-reformation”, for example cannot be applied here, even though the Russian Orthodox church also experienced a long period of dissent and unrest, culminating in a significant schism. Avvakum was a contemporary of John Bunyan and the west has often seen him as a Russian Protestant, although this is in many ways misleading. In the west, the intensely personal conversion narratives and spiritual autobiographies spawned by religious dissent had a significant effect on the development of the novel. Avvakum’s influence in Russia was much less pervasive until he was “discovered” in the nineteenth century. But there is an interesting correspondence to our grounding of Russian fantasy literature in Avvakum’s spiritual picaresque. Douglas Adams’ phenomenally successful scifi/fantasy series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979) chronicles the misadventures of one Arthur Dent, a reluctant traveler through space and time. Adam’s choice of name for his hero cannot have been accidental. One of John Bunyan’s own favorite books was: The Plain Man’s Path-way to Heaven: Wherein Every Man May Clearly See Whether He Shall Be Saved or Damned, Set Forth Dialogue-wise for the Better Understanding of the Simple, by Arthur Dent.

  6. The coining of the word robot is, in fact, attributed to his brother-collaborator, Josef, who is supposed to have derived it from the Old Czech (Church Slavic) word robota, which meant menial or hard toil.

  7. The horse is in general an extremely important symbol in Slavic folklore, both as a totemic animal and the symbolic incarnation of celestial and atmospheric forces. In other tales Baba Yaga is depicted as the keeper of a herd of horses with special powers, one of which the hero must steal in order to fulfill his quest.

  8. Byliny were originally called stariny (tales of the old) before I. P. Strakhov coined in the 1830s the term bylina (tale that was), which remains in use to this day for classifying its generic appurtenance.

  9. In any discussion of byliny, a Western reader might be immediately tempted to draw an analogy between this relatively small body of surviving texts and “The Matter of Britain”—a term coined as early as the 13th century to describe the complex of narratives surrounding the semi-legendary King Arthur and his knights. In some aspects the analogy holds. The Kievan bylina cycle, containing what might be called “The Matter of Rus,” also centers around a royal figure: Vladimir, Grand Duke of Kiev. But whereas the search for evidence of a historical King Arthur reaches back into the fifth century and is speculative at best, “Vladimir the Fair Sun” is clearly an imaginative composite of Old Russia’s notable rulers-chiefly Vladimir I (d. 1015) and Vladimir II Monomakh (d. 1125). Like Arthur in his seat of Camelot, Vladimir Krasnoe Solntse (The Exquisite Sun) holds great feasts in his palace, and assigns various quests to his heroes. He too rewards success and punishes failure or bad faith. But unlike Arthur, whose tragic personal fate and messianic legend is integral to the Round Table stories, Vladimir himself is never the bylina’s focal point. Nor does the earthy Russian bogatyr much resemble a Lancelot or a Galahad. Bogatyrs like Ilyia of Murom and Aliosha Popovich protect Rus from foreign invaders and monsters, and occasionally from native enemies like robbers and brigands. In this they are motivated by a fierce innate love for Russia itself, and not by feudal ties to Vladimir—with whom they occasionally quarrel bitterly—nor by the desire to prove themselves worthy of a lady’s affection. The complete absence of courtly love is perhaps what most clearly distinguishes the Kievan from the Arthurian legends. The knight’s chaste worship of an inaccessible female to whom h
e dedicates his exploits reflects the form that Mariolatry typically assumed in the West, where youth and beauty were important attributes of the Virgin. In the Orthodox East it is above the maternal qualities of Mary which excite devotion. A bogatyr may have an occasional erotic adventure, but his heroic deeds are inspired by a devotion to Mother Russia and his strength is drawn from Mother Earth herself.

  1. All Derzhavin citations in this volume are taken from: G. R. Derzhavin: Poetic Works. A Bilingual Album. Brown Slavic Contributions v. XII, Ed. by A. Levitsky; Translated by A. Levitsky and M. T. Kitchen (Providence: Dept. of Slavic Languages, Brown U., 2001), xii + 590 pp.

  2. Bowring, J. Specimens of the Russian Poets. With Preliminary Remarks and Bibliographical Notices, 2nd edition with additions (London: 1821), xii-xiii.

  1. During his life and for a century after his death, Gogol’s Arabesques were erroneously seen as a shapeless miscellany of essays (cf. N. V. Gogol’, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii 14 vols. Moscow: AN SSSR, 1937-52, which is typical in this regard). Gogol’s title in fact alludes to an aesthetic function which underlies the design of the whole volume.

  1. First published in the Utrennjaja zarja almanac (St. Petersburg, 1840), 307-52. Relevant material to this story (as discussed below) was published earlier in excerpts under the title “Peterburgskija pis’ma” and signed by the pseudonym V. Bezglasnyj in Moskovskij nabljudatel’, part 1 (1835), 55-69.

  2. Indeed, 4338 was most often considered as just such an extension of his dreams for Russia, since Odoevsky portrays the world 2,500 years in the future as divided into only two hemispheres, the technologically advanced Russian and the more backward Chinese. Significantly, both are cultures of the East, while the West has simply ceased to exist. The meaning of the word “Germans,” for instance, is the subject of some controversial debates among scholars in the future with the obvious implications that the Germans disappeared as a nationality shortly after the time of Goethe.

  3. P. Ia. Chaadaev’s first and only Philosophical Letter (of eight) that was allowed to be published during his lifetime in Teleskop in 1836 produced such a negative reaction from the government that the authorities felt compelled to proclaim him insane and put him under house arrest. They reacted so forcefully on account of what they considered to be an outright slander on the Russian cultural tradition and the sheer provocation of an author who denigrated everything held sacrosanct by the Russian nation. To be sure, such statements as “we have something in our blood that drives off all true progress, or “we have nothing that is ours, on which to base our thinking,” or “we have turned to miserable, despised Byzantium for a moral code,” or the author’s repeated allusions to the “barbarism” of Russia’s past and the present, are statements in the extreme and can hardly be used in building any nationalistic utopia. But if Chaadaev’s letters were allowed to be published in full, they would have shown their author full of compassion for Russia, and resorting to statements like these in order to jolt his country from stagnation on a path to true reform for the well-being of its citizens.

  4. While Odoevsky’s opposition to Chaadaev’s perception of the Russian cultural heritage is generally known, Odoevsky might have had at least three other Russian writers in mind when writing 4338. In its subtitle, Letters from Petersburg, Odoevsky’s work echoes Vil’gel’m Kjukhel’beker’s Letters from Europe (Evropejskija pis’ma), published in Nevskij zritel’ (February & April, 1820). Kjukhel’beker’s work is set only 700 years in the future and depicts the visit to a now backward Europe by an American traveler. Odoevsky did not share Kjukhel’beker’s rhapsodic perception of Americans, and instead had his Chinese visitor in futuristic Russia refer to them as “savage” in the very first letter of 4338. Moreover, Odoevsky’s work exhibits multiple similarities with the already cited Faddej Bulgarin’s Plausible Fantasies, or Travels around the World in the 29th Century (first published in the September, October and December issues of Literaturnyja listki, 1824), particularly in the description of aerostats and other machinery of the future. In addition, like Bulgarin, Odoevsky feels compelled to portray the limited knowledge that future historians and archeologists would profess when discussing artifacts well known in the nineteenth century. Finally, 4338 represents a curious transposition of Aleksandr Vel’tman’s title The Year MMMCDXLVIII [3448] or the Manuscript of Martyn Zadeka (3448 god ili rukopis’ Martyna Zadeki, Moscow, 1833), and its relation to Vel’tman’s deserves further study.

  5. P. N. Sakulin in his most impressive, detailed, and yet to be surpassed study, Iz istorii russkago idealizma. Knjaz’ V. F. Odoevsky, myslitel’ - pisatel’, vol. 1, part 2 (Moscow, 1913), 170-202, was the first to recognize 4338 as part of such a trilogy and describe its component parts in minutest particulars. Unfortunately, the former two parts do not substantially contribute to a fuller understanding of 4338, except in very general ways as discussed here. Incidentally, Sakulin lists several other possible sources for Odoevsky’s writing 4338, including L. Marcier’s L’an 2440, reve s’il en fut jamais and others.

  6. This prediction was made in the journal The Russian Disabled Veteran (Russkij invalid), Literaturnyja pribavlenija k Russkomu Invalidu, 23 (June 10, 1839), 499. Indeed, it could have been a perfect touch of irony first to describe a triumphant culture in all of its attainments and then have it replaced, not by a higher form evoked by the former, as Hegel’s postulates would suggest, but by the vacuum which would surely result after impact with the comet. However, Odoevsky did not employ such a scenario, ending the work on an ambiguous note.

  7. Cf. Sochineniia Kniazia V. F. Odoevskago, I, (St. Petersburg: 1844).

  8. Systemes des Transcendentalen Idealismus (Tübingen, 1804), §4. Schelling, whom he knew personally and to whom the novel is particularly indebted, held that Nature and Mind cannot be separated and that their Unity is found only in the Absolute; God, for him, takes part in that unfolding of the Absolute which we call History, the ultimate goal of which is reunification with the Absolute. This is, of course, a far cry from the Hegelian view of the Universe as a self-perpetuating creation in which Nature gains ascendancy from the lower into the more complex forms by the ever present process of cosmic dialectic, and where Mind is an independent faculty contemplating and registering such changes.

  9. Moskovskij vestnik IX, 14 (1828), 120-8.

  10. This particular story has an obvious bearing on the decoding of 4338 because it provides a concrete solution to virtually the same set of circumstances envisioned by the author. The fact that Odoevsky must have thought along the same lines in the 1830’s as in the 1820’s is evident in the first letter from the Chinese visitor which Odoevsky did not, for some reason, utilize in l840, but which has become part of the canonic text in modern Soviet editions of 4338. (Cf. the second Cekhnovitser edition of 4338 in V. F. Odoevskij. Romanticheskie povesti [Priboj, Leningrad 1929], p. 352). The letter ends with the following passage: “The thing is, my dear friend, that the fall of Halley’s Comet onto the Earth, or, if you wish, its union with Earth, is an inevitable matter …” Manifestly, Odoevsky envisions here two alternate solutions to end the society in 4338: either its ultimate destruction from the physical collision with the Comet, or precisely the scenario of Two Days which paradoxically ends in a union not with the Comet but with the Sun.

  11. Cf. F. M. Dostoevsky, Polnoe sobranie sochinenij v tridcati tomax, vols. XXI-XXVII. (Leningrad: Nauka. 1980-84).

  1. Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Robert Holdstock consultant ed., foreword by Isaac Asimov. Octopus Books: Baltimore, MD 1978.

 

 

 
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