When Russia’s foremost iconoclast came over all committed, the results still resonate even more 14 years later.
Liberals differ from the lowly worm only in their mesmerising, witch brewed speechifying. Like venom and reeking pus, they spew it all about, poisoning God's very world, defiling its holy purity and simplicity, befouling it as far as the very bluest horizon of the heavenly vault with the reptilian drool of their mockery, jeers, derision, contempt,double-dealing, disbelief,distrust, envy, spite and shamelessness.
Welcome to the World According to Andrei Danilovich Komiaga – and there’s plenty more where that came from in DAY OF THE OPRICHNIK by the sixty-five year old Vladimir Georgevich Sorokin. This writer and artist has been baiting hidebound traditionalists with his installations, stories and novels for forty odd years now.
His work offers a challenging double-whammy of weird fiction and post-modernism making this Moscow dweller a bete noir of both Soviet and post-Soviet establishments. He has only just escaped from prosecution for obscenity, and that is despite being in receipt of prestigious awards such as the Maxim Gorky and Andrei Bely prizes.
Try reading, for example Four Stout Hearts (from Glas New Writing: Soviet Grotesque, 1991). This just defies description in the transgressiveness of its content.
Nevertheless, in writing such material, Sorokin himself maintained that he exemplified an Art for Art's Sake approach. All that was to change, though, when the author reached fifty and published DAY OF THE OPRICHNIK in 2006.
In this short novel, Sorokin keeps his scatological and obscurist tendencies (whilst still present) in abeyance and the tale is both coherent and entertaining. It functions as a cautionary black comedy about the Holy Triumvirate of autocratic state, orthodox religion and narrow nationalism.
The novel was unveiled to the Anglophone world courtesy of the discerning American translator Jamey Gambrell. It is with much sadness that I need to report that this contributor to East-West cultural understanding passed away earlier this year, way too young, at the age of 65.
Fly on the wall.
The reader is privy to a busy Day in the Life of an Oprichnik (the name refers to a resurrected member of the secret police from Ivan the Terrible’s reign) and in Komiaga we are treated to a great villain-as-narrator creation to trival that of Partrick Bateman in American Psycho.
The year is unclear – the book jacket says 2028 -but, anyway, this is the near future and Imperial Russia is back with a vengeance. A Czar sits in the Kremlin, which has been painted white to expunge the red troubles. There are public floggings in the squares of Moscow and the nation is encircled by a wall. The elite brotherhood of the Oprichnik are out and about to keep all this running smoothly.
Komiaga, driven by a mawkish sentimentalism, puts his heart and soul into a defence of His Majesty, who in turn represents the Motherland. We follow his career of executions, rapes, shady dealings and consultations on cultural censorship in a plotless sequence of events. The commentary hurtles along and is decked out with bawdy songs and poetry, and patriotic hymns.
Like all Monarchical societies, this one thrives on Pomp and Circumstance, which Sorokin itemises. For example, The Mercedov that Komiaga drives has to be decorated on the front with a real dog’s head, a new one being chosen each morning. (Sorokin has always been interested in ritual. Here, however, it makes complete sense in terms of realism).
There are some of Sorokin’s trademark surreal touches too. Komiaga purchases an aquarium containing gold sterlets. It turns out that these can enter people’s bloodstreams and create shared hallucinations. He and his comrades indulge this, creating a phantasmagoric diversion in the story.
Likewise, this future world introduces some science-fictional creations, such as the transparents, virtual computer generated assistants which can interact with humans with their encyclopedic knowledge.
The Future Now.
DAY OF THE OPRICHNIK takes existing trends to their conclusion: Putin has extended his rule to a potential date of 2034 and the bishop Patriarch Kirill has a major influence on affairs of state.
In the story, the sole kickback to the jackbooted new order comes from independent radio stations which indulge in obscure intellectualism. These carry so little punch that our narrator enjoys listening to these to pass the time inbetween his state duties.
A reader of dystopias may well be reminded of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953) – with its protagonist who is a henchman of the repressive government -or Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange (1962) – with its narrator who relishes in gang violence and uses his own argot to do so.
Character study.
Sorokin explores the psychology that lies behind this kind of society. He demonstrates how state sanctioned brutality is so often borne along by weepy romanticism.
Hypocrisy also plays a key role in this world and drives a lot of the (subtle) humour of the novel. For example, Komiaga implores his majesty to legalise certain drugs for the sole use of the Oprichniks so that they may buy them without hassle. His Majesty refuses this request on the grounds that everyone must be equal under the law – even though the Czar knows full well that his men are indugling in these drugs anyway!
This page turner is a hit, a palpable hit. It can take its place on the shelves alongside Zamyatin’s We and Voinovich’s Moscow 2042.
DAY OF THE OPRICHNIK by Vladimir Sorokin (translated by Jamey Gambrell) is out in Penguin Books/Random House, London, UK 2011.
Lead image: frommixcloud.com
Just got it along with the Ice Trilogy and Blizzard. Thanks for this!