Gabriel Genesis

Ms. Alexandra Cohl

FIQWS 10105 HA10

October 29, 2018

National Archetype

Russian history comprises more, than one thousand years of existence and has come through various changes and cultural transformations. According to the Jeremiah Curtin (1908), author of “Mongols in Russia” one of the biggest cultural transformations began after the Mongol Invasion in 13th century, when the entire country turned into a subjugation under the Mongol Empire. The period, which is commonly known to be one of the darkest ones in the Russian history, radically shaped the nature of the country with the inclusion of eastern traditions into the culture. The second massive change happened with the process, known as “westernization”, started by Peter the Great at the border of the 17th and 18th centuries. Marc Raeff (1963) in a book “Peter the Great, reformer or revolutionary?” sufficiently describes massive changes made by Peter the Great inside Russia. New European traditions, technologies, music, art, and literature, which eventually evolved into standalone unique genres, radically changed Russian culture for the second time. Nevertheless, the consequences of the eastern past didn’t disappear anywhere. New reforms and traditions were still existing within a censored unitarian totalitarian state with an institutionalized slavery of its own population. That incompatible combination of eastern and western civilizations led to the creation of what we know today as Russian culture. And one of the aspects regarding this cultural controversy found its representation in the Russian literature archetype ‘superfluous man’.

‘Superfluous man’ is a vast and complex character type, which cannot be explained in one sentence. Built on the nuances of the Russian culture of the 19th century it has gone through the literary works of many Russian writers shaping its aspects. The term itself takes its origin from Ivan Turgenev’s (1850) “The Diary of a Superfluous Man”. The novella is written from the perspective of the main character, who finds out, that he will not survive till the next spring. Preparing for the death, Tchulkaturin decides to start a diary. Since the diary he writes consists of his biography, depressive life, reflections on the Russian society and self-criticism it specifies many aspects of the ‘superfluous man’ views, struggles and positions. For example, a tendency to self-neglecting, which Tchulkaturin does write about, while experiencing gradual social degradation, “I had absolutely lost all sense of personal dignity, and could not tear myself away from the spectacle of my own misery” (Turgenev 29). The main character is full of complexes, the only person he falls in love with doesn’t answer back, and even though he is not a fool nobody cares about him or his thoughts, “I sometimes even have ideas come into my head that are amusing, not absolutely commonplace” (11). The tragedy of Tchulkaturin lays in his inability to find his place in existing rigid social construct. This tragedy and feeling of non-requirement for the society lead him to thinking, that “there’s nothing else one can say about me; I’m superfluous and nothing more” (10). “To other people that term is not applicable…. People are bad, or good, clever, stupid, pleasant, and disagreeable; but superfluous … no” (9).

Despite the fact, that the term ‘superfluous man’ was finally established in “A Diary of A Superfluous Man” it started applying not only to Tchulkaturin, but to set of other different characters in the Russian literature. For example, Mikhail Lermontov (1840), creates ‘superfluous man’ even before Turgenev in a novel “A Hero of Our Time”. The main character of the novel also keeps a diary where, as he briefly notices, he tries to analyze and understand himself. Being one of the first psychological novels in Russian literature, the prose deeply analyzed the conflict between the ‘superfluous men’ and Russian nobility class, which Pechorin calls a ‘watery society’, “They drink – but not water, they walk little, they flirt only in passing, they gamble and complain of ennui. They are dandies…” (Lermontov 83). The main character perfectly understands people, around him, their motives and actions. Pechorin himself is a manipulative, cynical, but at the same time self-critical person with a sick soul, “I feel, in my soul boundless strength. But I did not divine that destination” (145). And as Tchulkaturin he cannot find his purpose, and considers the life around him to be boring and grey. “For what purpose was I born?”, he asks himself in the diary. Being unable to answer that question, conflicting with the society turns his life into some kind of experimentation of his destiny, “breaking bad”, just to create at least some kind of purpose.

This social non-requirement, and inability to find the purpose expresses even further by Alexander Pushkin (1833) in the novel in verse “Eugene Onegin”, where he creates even broader archetype of the ‘superfluous man’. The biggest achievement of the novel, aside from begin one of the foundational literary works of Russian literature, is that it not only portrays a ‘superfluous man’ but also connects it to the Russian intelligentsia class in general. Eugene Onegin is a complex collective image, which Pushkin built up out of, “the careless fruit of my amusements, / insomnias, light inspirations, / unripe and withered years, / the intellect’s cold observations, / and the heart’s sorrowful remarks” (Pushkin 116), as he describes in the preface. That resulted in the creation of the universal type of Russian protest nobility, which was struggling and fighting its social marginality throughout the 19th century. “Dressed like a London Dandy” (97), “with a toilette in the latest taste” (108), people who spent a lot of their life in joy and misery and eventually got bored by that, started seeking their purpose, to understand, what is next, what is beyond this primitive lifestyle. That is why many of such ‘superfluous’ people started turning their heads towards the government, which in their opinion was too unjust and obscurant.

Frank Friedeberg Seeley (1952) in the “The Heyday of the ‘Superfluous Man’ in Russia”, attempts to analyze that connection between the ‘superfluous man’ and the development and evolution of Russian intelligentsia. He points that “the history of the ‘superfluous man’ is coextensive with the history of Europeanisation of Russia” (Seeley 96). He writes, that Pushkin and other Russian classical writes in fact share “many aspects of their life” (96) with their characters, being in some way ‘superfluous’ people too. That is especially obvious considering, that such social-historical literature cannot be written by someone, who doesn’t have a strong connection to the psychology of the character. However, even though they do that, the actual archetype of the ‘superfluous man’ is even more exaggerated version of the problems happening in Russian culture. Censorship, Decembrists movements, “obscurantism of the central government” (95), and overall protest against the state of the country found its extravagant expression in the that character.

‘Superfluous man’ doesn’t end in the 19th century. It impacted and continued its exitance inside the Russian culture in other forms. For example, In Heather M. Campbell’s (2010) “The Britannica Guide to Political Science and Social Movements That Changed the Modern World” we can see that continuation in the description of the Soviet dissidents, such as Andrey Sakharov and his wife Yelena Bonner. Being a nuclear physicist and the inventor of the first hydrogen bomb Andrey Sakharov understood the dangerous consequences of the weaponry of mass destruction. And despite the massive repressions of totalitarian Soviet Union, he was desperate defender of the human rights, peace, and freedoms until his death. Even though that may not be obviously connected to the topic of the ‘superfluous man’, it still shares a lot of its characteristics, such as opposition to the existing government, being a part of the Soviet intelligentsia, social marginality and small quantity of such people.

‘Superfluous man’ archetype is one of the biggest achievements in the Russian literature so far. It is the topic, which managed to unite incompatible combination and problematic of the Russian culture in the set of views of a literary character. It appeared at the times of stagnation of the Russian totalitarian system and Tchulkaturin, Pechorin, Eugene Onegin and their analyses of society, human nature, life, purpose, moralities, and authorities created the precise social-historical snapshot of these times. The further development of the topic and its transformation showed, that ‘superfluous man’ is not only a temporary literary hero of the 19th century, existing in the minds of Russian progressive intelligentsia, but an essential part of the national archetype in general.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Curtin, Jeremiah. “The Mongols in Russia”. London, Sampson Low, Marston, 1908.

babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89056844954;view=1up;seq=15

Raeff, Marc. “Peter the Great, reformer or revolutionary?”. Boston, Heath, 1963.

books.google.com/books/about/Peter_the_Great.html?id=nnEaAAAAIAAJ

Turgenev, Ivan. “The diary of a superfluous man : and other stories”. Translated by Constance

Garnett, London, W. Heinemannm, 1906.

babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uva.x000988429;view=1up;seq=12

Lermontov, Mikhail. “A Hero of Our Time”. Translated by Vladimir Nabokov and Dmitri

Nabokov, Garden City, N.Y, Doubleday, 1958.

bbhosted.cuny.edu/webapps/blackboard/execute/content/file?cmd=view&content_id=_37582878_1&course_id=_1590978_1

Pushkin, Alexander. “Eugene Onegin”. Translated by Vladimir Nabokov, New York, Bollingen

Foundation, 1964.

www.amazon.com/Eugene-Onegin-Novel-Verse-Vol/dp/0691019053

Seeley, Frank Friedeberg. “The Heyday of the ‘Superfluous Man’ in Russia.” The Slavonic and

East European Review, vol. 31, no. 76, 1952, pp. 92–112. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4204406.

Britannica, Educational Publishing. Britannica Guide to Political Science and Social Movements

That Changed the Modern World, edited by Heather M. Campbell, Britannica

Educational Publishing, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ccny-ebooks/detail.action?docID=474424.