Happy Moscow by Andrey Platonov

Thanks to Himadri of The Argumentative Old Git. This was one of his Bah-Humbook recommendations for me.

Happy Moscow by Andrey Platonov was written and is set in 1930’s Soviet Union. It manages to be both a dynamic and a somewhat hyperactive tale while at the same time delving into the depths of despair. Platonov’s short novel was not published until 1991. This is understandable, for had it been published during his lifetime in Stalin’s Soviet Union, it might have earned Platonov a trip to the Gulag.

The title character, Moscow Chestnova, is a young vibrant woman who becomes a parachutist in the Red Air Force. After being drummed out of military service when an unauthorized midair stunt almost kills her, she takes to hanging out with an assortment of Moscow intellectuals, artists, scientists and engineers. Among them is Dr. Sambikin, who is attempting to scientifically identify the human soul, and Sartorius, an engineer who falls deeply in love with Moscow.

After a night of passion Moscow leaves Sartorius to go explore the world. The remainder of the narrative explores the main characters’ descent into moral and psychological decay. Moscow, the once promising air force parachutist, becomes a laborer, loses her leg in an accident and eventually begins a liaison with Komyagin, another once promising individual whose life has fallen into meaninglessness and stagnation.

Sartorius falls deeper and deeper into a fugue and goes to work for the inglorious Department of Weights and Scales. Eventually losing that position also, he falls further and further. As blindness sets in he begins to lose even his identity and eventually marries an abusive woman.

This novel is full of symbolism and ideas. My version of the book was accompanied by a short but insightful summary of Happy Moscow’s themes by translator Robert Chandler.  Though Chandler sees the story as a balanced critique upon modernity, highlighting both the positive and negative aspects of the “New Humanity ”, I see this work as more of an indictment of a world going very wrong.

Moscow clearly represents the new age. She is initially filled with energy and optimism; she completely believes in the new industrial and scientific driven society and wants to protect and support it,

“What Moscow Chestnova wanted was not so much to experience this life as to safeguard it; she wanted to stand day and night by the brake lever of a locomotive taking people to meet one another; she wanted to repair water mains, to weigh out on pharmaceutical scales medicines for patients, to be a lamp that goes out at just the right moment, as others kiss, taking into itself the warmth that a moment before had been light.”

The narrative is filled with descriptions of busy industrial processes and amazing scientific discoveries. The scientist and engineers are franticly pushing the boundaries of knowledge as exemplified by Sambikin’s pursuit of the human soul; at one point he believes that he finds it in the intestines of a cadaver! People are seen to display a dynamic and hyperactive optimism.

But all is not well. Underneath it all there are still masses of people with barely enough food and who live in squalor. In addition, Moscow and her friends are losing their values and their souls. The new high technological and industrialized world is empty and wretched under the surface.

At one point Sartorius observes clothing on sale in the Krestov market,

“petty clothes prepared for infants who had been conceived, but then the mother must have thought twice about giving birth and had an abortion and now she was selling the tiny lamented – over garments of an unborn person along with a rattle purchased in advance”

In particular, Moscow and Sartorius go into a steep decline. In the end, all that they believed in is shown to be nothing and they both fall into a life of degeneration and despair.

Part of the problem is Socialism. This is illustrated in Sartorius’ loss of self as he begins to absorb the identity of people who he meets on the street. Eventually, he loses his entire identity. However, humankind’s relentless pursuit of science, industrialism, and mindless optimism are things that are also condemned here. I see Platonov’s criticism also applying to many aspects of our modern capitalistic industrial and post -industrial democracies.

The book displays many literary, mythological and philosophical influences, some that I picked up on myself and some pointed out in Chandler’s commentary. One inspiration not mentioned by Chandler that I found incredibly striking is that of D.H. Lawrence. My commentary of some of Lawrence’s ideas can be found in my posts on The Rainbow and Women in Love. In those pieces I described how Lawrence seemed to be presenting a warning about the ominous direction that humanity was moving in. Lawrence saw modernity, industrialism and collectivism as poisoning the human soul. A really interesting thing about Platonov’s book is that it seems to be an uncanny description of the nightmare future that Lawrence feared. I get the sense that if Lawrence could read Happy Moscow, written about seventeen years after the publication of The Rainbow, he would have said “I told you so.”

 

I cannot help to wonder what a conversation would be like between Moscow Chestnova and Lawrence’s heroine, Ursula Brangwen, who achieves what we would today call self-actualization when she frees herself from the pressures and concerns of conformity and modernity.

 It seems to me that both Platonov and Lawrence had some brilliant insights. We would still do very well to heed some of their warnings. However, both authors are too hard on the modern world. Moral degeneracy, dissociation from the positive aspects of nature, vacuity of self, etc. are not as new to recent times as these authors’ worldviews would lead one to believe. In many ways, an individual has more freedoms to resist such things in our world than they ever did in centuries past. I cut Platonov a lot more slack, as he lived in what was a brutal dictatorship. Surprisingly, however, for the most part his characters do not seem to be very oppressed by the government and seem to be living very free lifestyles of their choice. This may have been to protect himself, as Chandler indicates that Platonov actually hoped to get this book published. However, it seems to me that the story of an oppressive dictatorship was just not the one that Platonov was looking to tell in this novel.

Happy Moscow is considered unfinished. As per Chandler, it is likely mostly finished and Platonov just wanted to complete some minor revisions and touch ups. Yet this work does seem to be underdeveloped to me. I wanted to learn and experience more from the characters. I think that thematically Platonov could also have filled in a much clearer picture as to what exactly the problem was with the twentieth century. Basically the book was too short. Despite its flaws however, this is an extraordinary imaginative novel full of compelling characters and ideas.

Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence

Women in Love is D. H. Lawrence’s sequel to The Rainbow. My commentary on The Rainbow is here. Set in the early years of the twentieth century, this novel begins a few years after the events of The Rainbow. The plot primarily concerns Ursula Brangwen’s affair and eventual marriage to Rupert Birkin, as well as her sister Gudrun’s affair with wealthy industrialist Gerald Crich. Like its predecessor, this work is packed with philosophical meanderings on the meaning of life, the Universe and human relationships. Once again there is so much to this book in terms of philosophies, characterizations and writing style of which I could easily devote scores and scores of pages to discussion.

Basically, the novel analyzes the relationships between all four main characters. In doing so it expands upon Lawrence’s grand theory of humanity. Ursula, having undergone a major epiphany in the previous book, and Birkin, who seems to be philosophizing many of Lawrence’s own ideas, have, in the author’s eyes, reached an ideal. They are mostly unaffected by the opinions of other social conventions, etc. They are very much in touch with nature, their true selves, and their own inner beings. Gudrun is an artist who is self confident and very much associated with what, at the time, was chic modernity. Though not portrayed as a monster, Gerold is the driven and willful owner of a mining empire.

Birkin sums up what seems to be Lawrence’s worldview around the middle of the book. Humanity’s history as well as its future seems to have been, and be headed down three potential paths. First there is the cold and mechanistic will of the European man. This tendency is bringing the world into destructive industrialism and modernity. Gerald is the representation of this aspect,

“Birkin thought of Gerald. He was one of these strange white wonderful demons from the north, fulfilled in the destructive frost mystery. And was he fated to pass away in this knowledge, this one process of frost-knowledge, death by perfect cold? Was he a messenger, an omen of the universal dissolution into whiteness and snow?”

Lawrence contrasts this with the drive towards the sensual and artistic. The text connects this tendency with dark and primal urges and with feminine sexuality. This is also a path of discovery and Lawrence references it in connection with Eve’s discovery of knowledge when she ate the apple.  Lawrence shows a tendency towards stereotypical, but not hateful, thought by tying these drives with the people of Africa. The author does show a degree of respect for those who take this road however. Birken again ponders,

“He realised that there were great mysteries to be unsealed, sensual, mindless, dreadful mysteries, far beyond the phallic cult. How far, in their inverted culture, had these West Africans gone beyond phallic knowledge? Very, very far. Birkin recalled again the female figure: the elongated, long, long body, the curious unexpected heavy buttocks, the long, imprisoned neck, the face with tiny features like a beetle's. This was far beyond any phallic knowledge, sensual subtle realities far beyond the scope of phallic investigation.” 

Gudrun, as well as a Loerke, a German sculptor that she befriends and flirts with, seem to embody the above tendencies.

Birkin eventually concludes that there is a better alternative to both of the above paths. 

“There was the other way, the remaining way.” 

There are multiple references in the text to the fact that this third path is so revolutionary and beyond what mankind has realized in the past that it is not expressible in words. Lawrence spends much of the book attempting to paint a picture of this alternative. It is a seemingly contradictory combination of never surrendering one’s individuality to another person or to society. At the same time, the individual finds a way to completely touch one’s core self with the core self of another person or persons without actually surrendering any bit of the self. Of course, the individual very much remains attached to the natural world.

All relations, with one exception, depicted in both books seem to involve a struggle for dominance between couples and other pairs of people. One or both members of the relationships eventually cede part or all of their identity to the other member. The one couple that avoids this struggle is Ursula and Birkin. These two idealized people seem to reach a state beyond that of traditional love where their inner beings touch. In another way, their relationship is less than a traditional marriage as they avoid the power struggle and thus do not surrender any of themselves to each other.

This is work of extreme philosophical complexity. In an attempt at getting at some of the basic meanings here, the above is a somewhat of an oversimplification as to what goes on in this book.

Of course in its totality Lawrence’s worldview is too contrived and farfetched for me to accept. However his ruminations are fascinating and he reveals a lot of useful and important insights. At one point, Gudrun and Loerke even predict how industrialism and militarism would one day become a threat to the existence of the human race.

The characters are also intricately and realistically drawn. They are extremely complex. There are no cartoon- like villains here. Even Gerald, who represents society’s headlong dangerous and poisonous rush into industrialism and modernity, is portrayed with sympathy and nuance.

I loved both of these books. Perhaps The Rainbow was a little more compelling as the portrait and transformation of Ursula in that work was magnificent. Nothing in Women in Love really compares to aesthetic beatify of that depiction. One should really read these two novels in order as they are, both in story and theme, sequential. 

For those who are interested in fictional works that center on relationships, deep characters and philosophic meditations on the meaning of it all, these two novels are must reads!

The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence

The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence is a big, brilliant novel that can be described as many things. First, it is a family saga covering three generations of the Brangwen clan. Next, it is a tale of romances as well as domestic strife centering upon the members of each of the generations. This is also a novel of astonishing thematic and philosophical complexity. There are a vast number of intellectual threads developed here. Scores and scores of pages are devoted to philosophical and psychological musings. Lawrence seems to be developing a “Theory of Everything” in this book that encompasses humankind, the universe and God. Finally, the story is filled with incredibly nuanced and complex characters.

The book opens in the middle of the nineteenth century. Tom Brangwen, a young English farmer, meets, courts and eventually marries Polish widow Lydia Lensky. The first third of the The Rainbow details the often tumultuous relationship between the two.

When Lydia’s daughter from her first marriage, Anna Lensky, comes of age, she in turn falls in love and marries Tom’s nephew, Will Brangwen. This next generation also experiences a stormy relationship during the early years of marriage.

Anna and Will’s youngest daughter Ursula Brangwen is the focus of the last third of the book. Ursula becomes involved in several relationships including one with another woman as well as another with young army officer Anton Skrebensky. I am in awe of Lawrence for what he has done with the character of Ursula, as I will elaborate on.

This summary sounds relatively simple. However, in the process of mapping out these relationships, Lawrence covers a great deal of ground. First, he describes the enormous passion and equally enormous strife that characterizes all of the romances and marriages. Lawrence devotes pages and pages to these internal battles as well as to detailed analysis of them. He devotes a huge number of words toward analyzing the psychology of these men and women, and even more verbiage digs into the philosophy behind both the relationships and the universe at large. There are so many directions taken here that I would not be exaggerating by saying that I could put up one blog post a week for at least a year dedicated to this book. Lawrence explores human connections, the duality inherent in the universe, the battle for dominance in relationships, varying metaphysical views of God and the Universe, the effects of modernity upon the human soul, the difference between intellectualism and practical happiness, the psychology of sex, and on and on and on!

The characters are complex and multifaceted. Strangely, at times they seem almost more complex than real people! Most possess a lot of admirable traits as well as dark sides to their personas that complement what seems to be a theme of universal dualism throughout the book.

While I stayed away from reading any criticism or analysis of this book up until now, I did read a bit about Lawrence’s personal beliefs and philosophies.  I found expressions of many of these ideas in this novel. However, I was surprised to learn that in his later writings many claim that Lawrence trended toward a pro fascist opinion. I found that set of beliefs to be uncharacteristic of this novel. Furthermore, many contend that Lawrence’s later works have misogynistic tendencies. This is shocking as The Rainbow contains several intelligent, strong, multifaceted and complex female characters. The novel also champions fairly strong feminist themes. If what I have read is accurate concerning the later works, then at some point Lawrence’s thinking took a radically different turn.

The philosophy and themes expressed in this book are indeed radical. This work is paradoxically an attack on both modernity and convention. First, industrialization is portrayed as horrendous evil. Again and again, mines, modern buildings, railroads, canals, etc. are portrayed as blights upon the beauty and the goodness of nature and poison to the human psyche.  Group thinking is excoriated. War, militarism and patriotism are painted as unnatural and harmful to humanity. Democracy and capitalism are also dismissed as being inferior to a system dominated by a landed aristocracy. A rural agrarian society is shown to be ideal.

The attack upon convention is exemplified by Lawrence’s, through his characters, criticism of institutions such as marriage as well as the trend of professionals and tradesman taking on the identity of their title or trade. Individuals who reject society’s restrictions and categories and who retain their natural states of being and thinking are shown to reach true happiness. The book strongly expounds the idea that humans can only reach an ideal if we return to nature and our animal selves and reject oppressive and overbearing modern societies. Lawrence also expresses elitist tendencies as his intelligent and sensitive characters are always keeping themselves apart from the masses and often represented as being unconcerned regarding what outsiders think of them.

Of course, I find these philosophies to be too monolithic. Lawrence practices a way of thinking that I often describe as turning insights into dogma. The modern world has enormous pitfalls and contains terrible strains of evil, but Lawrence fails to see its attributes. However, I believe that Lawrence’s insights, while not universal, are very, very important. The Rainbow was first published in 1915. In what seems like an eerie prescience, Lawrence seems to anticipate the hyper organized societies of Hitler and Stalin, global wars, genocides and mass slaughters of human beings that raged throughout the Twentieth Century. These man made catastrophes were at least partially attributed to the technology, mindless group thinking, militarism and nationalism that Lawrence warned about in this work. In additional he also was a very early voice of caution in regards to the environmental consequences of industrialization that now poses a threat to humans as a species. Lawrence does not directly predict these horrors, but throughout the book there is a sense that something poisonous is building up in our souls and this planet and that there will be terrible consequences for humanity.

I also do personally relate to and agree with some, but not all, of what Lawrence has to say. I, too, strongly distrust nationalism and militarism. Though a firm supporter of democracy, I also share a wariness of the unthinking and fickle masses as well as popular opinion. I am also aghast, as Lawrence was, as to what industrialism has done and continues to do to this planet.

In my opinion Lawrence achieves artistic magnificence when he weaves these themes into a character that is one of the most aesthetically brilliant literary creations of all time. I was not originally going to write much on Ursula in this blog entry, as she is also featured in The Rainbow’s sequel, Women in Love, which I plan to begin shortly. However, I have decided that Ursula is such a dynamic and richly pained character that I must discuss her a bit here. Born of Will and Anna Brangwen, Ursula is anything but simplistic or clichéd. One might expect her to start out as an innocent conformist. This is not the case. Early on she shows herself to be intelligent as well as independent. She fights society’s conventions and restrictions almost from the beginning. She is the first of the Brangwen women to lose her virginity before marriage and at one point takes on a female lover. She bristles at the restrictions that she suffers in a man’s world and sets out to enhance her education and build a career. Interestingly she loves Shakespeare’s “As You Like It”, a play that contains another incredibly dynamic and freethinking woman, Rosalind.

But Ursula struggles with herself as well as with society. For a time she works as a teacher under terribly oppressive and constraining conditions, surrounded by petty, mean and small-minded people. Though she attempts to keep her ties to nature, her true self and her soul intact, she feels the situation changing her,

“Yet gradually she felt the invincible iron closing upon her. The sun was being blocked out. Often when she went out at playtime and saw a luminous blue sky with changing clouds, it seemed just a fantasy, like a piece of painted scenery. Her heart was so black and tangled in the teaching, her personal self was shut in prison, abolished, she was subjugate to a bad, destructive will. How then could the sky be shining? There was no sky, there was no luminous atmosphere of out-of-doors. Only the inside of the school was real—hard, concrete, real and vicious. “

To Lawrence, modern society is the destroyer of souls.

 Ursula goes through several epiphanies, believing that she has broken through into a being not affected by the petty and malevolence of the world, only to find herself being pulled into old habits again. She is constantly attempting to fight the insidious effects of industrialism, institutions and conventions upon herself.

She takes Anton Skrebensky, a lover and eventual fiancé. Lawrence is so very nuanced here. He is no villain, as some writers would have portrayed such a character.  Though somewhat shallow, he is very sympathetic, he is kind, gentle and passionately in love with Ursula. However he is a man of the modern world and a danger to Ursula’s soul. He believes in democracy, patriotism and sacrifice in the name of national causes. He states simply,

"I belong to the nation and must do my duty by the nation." 

Ursula’s behavior toward her betrothed is horrendous. She is both passionately in love with him, yet feels the need to escape him and what he represents. She vacillates between intense passion and rejection and literally tortures Skrebensky with the hot and cold behavior.

Ursula eventually comes to what seems be enlightenment. She breaks all mental and spiritual ties with the corrupt and pernicious aspects of humanity and society. She completely realizes her natural and animalistic self. Lawrence often describes these tendencies in Anna as dark and associates them with moonlight.  This path to human renewal is a dark one. She becomes what for Lawrence is an ideal human being and there is a suggestion that she will lead the way for others. Both Ursula and her mother, Anna, see this perfect life and path for humanity as being symbolized by a rainbow, hence the title of the book.

Ursula is certainly a superb literary creation. Though I do not agree exactly where Lawrence has gone with her as well as where he has arrived at with his ideology, this novel is a brilliant achievement.

As I alluded to above, I will begin reading the sequel to this book, Women in Love. Though I have heard that it is a superb novel, I almost wish that it did not exist. The Rainbow is such an esthetically satisfying work that it seems complete. Ursula’s final epiphany is so very perfect that I feel that all that needs to be said about her has been said. We shall see what the sequel brings.