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Zamiatin's We
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The Unified State and the Unified Mind: Social and Moral Utopia in Zamiatin's We and Plato's Republic
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Scholars have often attempted to determine the objects of Zamiatin's satire in his dystopian novel We as well as the model on which he based the structure of his Edinoe Gosudarstvo. This article argues that in order to find the model that Zamiatin used, we should look to the exemplar of utopia itself, Plato's Republic. Plato's vision of the ideal social structure is meant to serve as an allegory for the ideal individual as well as an allegory for morality. Both the collective body and the individual mind are supremely moral, in Plato's view, when all irrational parts are subjugated to reason and rationality and marked by total unity. This article traces debates about Plato's Republic by Russian thinkers in the period just before and immediately after the Revolution, i.e., prior to the period when Zamiatin wrote We, in order to argue for the relevance of Plato in Russian society of the time. In many of these writings, Plato is identified as an ancient source of the ideals of socialism and communism. The close textual parallels between Republic and We are examined, from the broadest level of social organization to the appropriation of Plato's famous images of the Sun, the Line, and the Cave. In his novel, Zamiatin seems to question not only Plato's political vision, but his conceptions of truth, justice, and morality.
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We E. Zamyatin, or the integrity of the mystery
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This essay attempts to analize Zamiatin's We as an aesthetic whole in which, pace Yuri Tynianov, antiutopia is organically combined with “a fantastic adventure novel.” With this aim in mind We is read not only in its literary context but also in a historical-poetologic perspective, ranging from Hellenistic love/adventure novels to Andrei Belyi's Silver Dove. Following in Belyi's footsteps, Zamiatin develops a Dionysian theme according to the interpretation proposed by Viacheslav Ivanov's interpretation (his conception of the divine unity of existence), making the myth of Dionysus the subject of an aesthetic experiment in the tradition of Mennipian satire. The author of We, to what extent the protagonist-narrator can be associated with his creator, is concerned with the fate of “the whole” not less than with the fate of individual. He is confronted with an unresolved conflict in terms of atheistic consciousness, bearing not only personal and socio-political consequences, but ontological as well.
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Descartes Meets Edgar Rice Burroughs: Beating the Rationalist Equations in Zamiatin's We
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Zamiatin's We presents a totalitarian world founded on an extreme application of the quantifying logic of Western rationalism. Everywhere in the rhetoric of D-503, spokesman for the One State, we hear echoes of Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Pascal. Even so, from his very first utterances we see mind unable to control passions, to separate itself from the res extensa relegated beyond the Green Wall. In this “war of rhetorics” for the narrator's soul, we recognize the reason's antagonist to be pulp science fiction – the lurid purple prose and “pink Venusians” displayed on the covers of pulp SF magazines current in France and England at the time of World War I, unruly visions inspired by Verne and the American dime novel. From the evidence in his text, Zamiatin knew these magazines from his stay in England. Irrational numbers are not enough to break down the dreaded equations of rational control. For D-503, the square root of -1 is the unruly forces of pulp prose and images, the way in which mind and body free themselves to explore the “irrational” world of material phenomena, worlds of imagination without end. Pulp becomes Zamiatin's “Dionysian” element. In using it as such, however, Zamiatin makes an important connection. For science fiction itself is a literature born of Descartes's call for mind to master nature, of Pascal's claim that human reason in unique, and alone, in his infinite spaces. But since its own rationalist origins, science fiction itself has struggled against rationalist closure, seeking ways to free mind and body – science and the human condition – for open-ended exploration of worlds beyond logic.
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Russian myth and the Communist Utopia (novel M N in the context of creativity Zamyatin)
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In Russia after 'Perestroika' Zamiatin's We was often published in collections with Huxley and Orwell's novels, all of them banned in the Soviet period and generically related as anti-utopian. Though thus situated in the broad context of world literature, We remains unexplained in Russian literary tradition where Zamiatin's work belongs to the line of Gogol, Leskov, Remizov, i.e. those prose writers who were steeped in the Russian myth and whose verbal richness and variety of colloquial tone called forth a special critical term – skaz. How could it be that one of them wrote a novel about the future separated from Russian roots and in a language unified to the point of obliteration? In his earlier stories Zamiatin explored traditional life as he knew it from his own experience (A Provincial Tale, A Godforsaken Hole); even then he preferred not to describe but to distort reality, to make it speak up for itself. In Alatyr' Zamiatin made a decisive step towards a new manner when he challenged the Russian myth with a utopian dream of the bright and universally happy future. We came out as another experiment in mass consciousness, but this time inspired by the writer's response to the new revolutionary reality.
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Zamyatin's novel We, in the context of works and ideas Proletkult
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This article provides an analysis of the dystopia We by Zamyatin in the light of Proletcult writings, reading the novel as a parody on their poetry and prose. Zamyatin wisely predicted the future of the society that was the dream of Proletcult writers, who glorified a society of robots, happily and blindly fulfilling all the orders of their government. The “heretic” Zamyatin could foresee the similar development of Russia after the October Revolution, which deprived the Russian people of any individuality and human rights, and depicted the One State and its Benefactor, very much reminding the author of his motherland.
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Autism in Zamiatin's We
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Deficits in intersubjective interpretation are frequently observed in We. The Single State, a purported utopia, turns out to be predicated on notions of human nature more consistent with Asperger's Syndrome, a mild form of autism. D-503 and his fellow “numbers” exhibit such symptoms as inappropriate social responses, solipsism, lack of eye contact, repetitive behaviors, and lack of empathy. The text generally retraces steps in development of Theory of Mind, albeit the narrator usually lags behind the reader in grasping the intentions of other characters–seen here as the core function of fiction. Zamiatin thus imparts a sense of what normal consciousness should be, a subjectivity incompatible with social engineering. Faults may be discerned in Zamiatin's understanding of autism, a malady described only decades later. Nevertheless, We constitutes an unusual demonstration of how literary innovation may anticipate clinical science and, indeed, contribute to ongoing gene-cultural co-evolution by expanding our awareness of our psychological potential.
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A Typescript of We
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A document found in an Albany archive appears to be a typescript of We executed at least partly by Zamiatin; indeed, brief passages are written in his hand. More a fair copy than a draft of the text, this carbon copy provides some variant readings to the Chekhov edition, heretofore the sole commonly accepted version. Most, albeit not all, variant passages indicate a closer relationship with Gregory Zilboorg's English translation, the first publication of the novel - for which it might have provided the basis - than the posthumous Chekhov edition. It also provides a slightly fuller and in some respects corrected version of We.
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Second Thoughts on the End of Utopia? Zamiatin's Film Scenario, “D-503”
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Readings of the denouement of We differ sharply, with important consequences regarding the fate of utopian social construction. Many readers claim that the Single State crushes the MEPHI revolt. Others come to precisely the opposite conclusion. A third group argues that the battle is undecided. The film scenario Zamiatin developed and translated subsequent to his 1931 exile indicates the author opted for the second verdict, one indicating the fall of the regime. Written at least a decade after the novel, the Russian language scenario and its two English translations – published here – may only reflect his later opinions on the heretofore ambiguous ending of his novel.
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On the History of the Novel We, 1937–1952: Zamiatin's We and the Chekhov Publishing House
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When Zamiatin died in 1937, his novel We remained unpublished in Russian, although it was available in several languages. Eventually, it was published in its original language by the Chekhov Publishing House in 1952. So, what manuscript was the basis for the Chekhov Publishing House edition of We? At the death of Zamiatin, his widow, Liudmila Zamiatina had two galley proofs. When Mikhail Kaprpovich, editor-in-chief of New Journal, had an interest in publishing the novel in 1949, Liudmila sent the galley prood to Gleb Struve for the publication in New Journal. And, according to the correspondence of Gleb Struve and Vera Aleksandrova, editor-in-chief of the Chekhov Publishing House, she received this galley proof from Mikhail Karpovich. Very likely, The Chekhov Publishing House edition of We was based on this galley proof. Meanwhile, the Chekhov Publishing House was a branch of the East European Fund subsidized by the Ford Foundation. And the East European Fund assisted the Community Integration Program's efforts to help the refugees from Soviet Bloc nations to get settled in the United States and supported research programs on the U.S.S.R. This fact reminds us of the case of Animal Farm. As Orwell mentioned in 1948, the American authorities seized about half the copies of his book Animal Farm in Ukrainian edition and handed them over to the Soviet repatriation camp. A Ukrainian translation of Animal Farm was made by the D.P. historian, Ihor Ševčenko and distributed to Ukrainian readers in the camps.
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Secondary Sources on Zamiatin's We
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List of Contributors
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Books Received/Livres Reçus
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Index to Volume 45/Index du Volume 45
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