Laurynas Katkus, Laurynas Katkus - Grotesque Revisited - Grotesque and Satire in The Post - Modern Literature of Central and Eastern Europe (2013, Cambridge Scholars Publishing)

Grotesque Revisited
Grotesque Revisited:
Grotesque and Satire in the Post/Modern
Literature of Central and Eastern Europe
Edited by
Laurynas Katkus
Grotesque Revisited:
Grotesque and Satire in the Post/Modern Literature of Central and Eastern Europe,
Edited by Laurynas Katkus
This book first published 2013
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2013 by Laurynas Katkus and contributors
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
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ISBN (10): 1-4438-4864-6, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4864-0

The preparation of this volume was supported
by The Lithuanian Culture Support Foundation.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
The Gravity of the Grotesque: Bakhtin’s Dislocated Humanism

Galin Tihanov .............................................................................................. 5
Section I: Central European Monsters and Phantasmagorias
Of Satire and Satyrs: The Monstrous and the Third Reich in Postmodern
Culture About Eastern Europe
Peter Arnds ................................................................................................ 20
Hilarious Hell: Grotesque Phantasmagorias in Central and Eastern

European Prose of the Seventies and Eighties
Laurynas Katkus ........................................................................................ 31
The Revolution(s) of the Grotesque Body: Forms of Satirical

Demystification in the Post-Communist German and Romanian Novel
Roxana Ghita ............................................................................................. 46
Section II: Crossing, Mixing, Subverting
Hrabal’s Satirical Legacy in the Central European Autobiographical

Novel
Charles Sabatos ......................................................................................... 64
Forms of the Grotesque: Parallels and Intersections in Lithuanian

and Polish Literature
Algis Kalơda .............................................................................................. 74
Grotesque and Heteroglossia in George Tabori’s Works, or:

“Alle guten Geschichten enden mit dem Tod”
Johanna Öttl ............................................................................................... 86
The Grotesque and Gender in Nils Sakss’ Prose

KƗrlis VƝrdiƼš............................................................................................ 97
viii Introduction
The Creative Role of the Grotesque in the Moscow Section of Bulgokov’s

The Master and Margarita
Alexander Ivanitsky................................................................................. 106
Section III: Laughter and Carnival in Troubled Times
Parody, Satire, and Carnivalisation in Romanian Poetic Postmodernism:

A Communicative Approach
Carmen Popescu ...................................................................................... 124
Novel and Satire: Discrepancies between Theory and Practice in Milan

Kundera’s Works
Inga Vidugirytơ........................................................................................ 137
On the Background, Stains, and Dry Cleaning: Soviet Satire

as the Practice of Speech
Tomas Vaiseta ......................................................................................... 149
The Grotesque Dimension of Witold Gombrowicz’s Novel Ferdydurke

Maciej Piątek ........................................................................................... 167
The Grotesque and Memory in Contemporary Estonian Culture

Anneli Mihkelev ...................................................................................... 174
Contributors ............................................................................................. 185
Index ........................................................................................................ 189

INTRODUCTION
This collection of essays aims to recapitulate the state of grotesque

poetics in modern and postmodern writing. It concentrates on Central and
Eastern Europe, introducing the Western reader to the variety and
ingenuity of this region’s literary traditions, ranging from German and
Russian to Lithuanian and Romanian literatures. At the same time it seeks
to highlight the importance of the grotesque mode of writing in the region.
The historic scope of the volume ranges from the legacies of Nazi
dictatorship and exile to the post-communist times, but it is especially
focused on the Soviet era. Scholars, not only from Central and Eastern
Europe but also from Great Britain, Ireland, and Turkey, analyze the
literary devices of the grotesque, examining the relationship between
socio-political background and subversive representations of the
grotesque. Many studies take on a comparative and transnational approach.
Alternatively, some studies aim to present important and innovative
creators of grotesque texts in greater detail.
The concepts of the grotesque and Menippean satire have been
entrenched in contemporary literary theory by such scholars as Northrop
Frye, Wolfgang Kayser, and Mikhail Bakhtin. The enduring impact of
Bakhtin’s ideas in particular is the focus of this volume. Many contributors
to this book develop, expand, or polemicise using this Russian thinker’s
seminal studies on Rabelais and folk culture, and on Dostoyevsky.
For this reason it is logical that the introductory essay, titled “The
Gravity of the Grotesque: Bakhtin’s Dislocated Humanism”, is authored
by noted Bakhtin scholar Galin Tihanov. (He holds the George Steiner
Chair of Comparative Literature at Queen Mary School of Languages,
Linguistics, and Film at the University of London.) Tihanov proposes to
examine the notion of the grotesque body from the perspective of
Bakhtin’s other writings, most importantly through his works on Goethe
and on the novel, composed roughly at the same time. Tihanov asserts that
when read in parallel, these works transmit “with equal ardour, the
opposing values of modern individualism and pre-modern collectivism”.
Thus we arrive at a more nuanced view of Bakhtins’ position, who,
according to Tihanov, wishes to interpret “the history of human views of
the body as a timeless battle between two primordial principles: the
grotesque and the classical.” Bearing this in mind, we can speak of a
2 Introduction
particular strain of humanism, exposed in the Rabelais book and in his

other mature writings; a humanism:
[D]ecentred, seeking and celebrating alterity rather than otherness (in

Kristeva’s distinction), and revolving not around the individual but around
the generic abilities of the human species to resist and endure in the face of
natural cataclysms and in the face of ideological monopoly over truth.
One is tempted to believe Tihanov’s assertion that this particular brand of

humanism is one of the main reasons behind Bakhtin’s longevity on the
intellectual scene.
The first section of this volume is devoted to fantastic figures and
phantasmagorias. Peter Arnds (Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland) analyzes
works of fiction which deal with Nazi crimes and specifically with
experiences of the Holocaust, including Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum,
Michel Tournier’s The Ogre, Edgar Hilsenrath’s The Nazi and the Barber,
and others. He uncovers the centrality of the monster figures, which blur
the limits between human and nonhuman. These figures, which resonate
with the open body in Bakhtin’s theory, and with Giorgio Agamben’s
concept of homo sacer, are derived from classical fairy tales but are
drastically transposed and deformed. It is in such ways that the body of
these texts of “mythical-realism”, as Peter Arnds calls them, offer “the acts
of ‘translation’ from the real to the mythical in order to offer ways of
coming to terms with trauma.” Laurynas Katkus (Institute of Lithuanian
Literature and Folklore, Vilnius) interprets three fiction texts by authors
from Central and Eastern Europe (Venedikt Erofeev, Tadeusz Konwicki,
and Riþardas Gavelis), all written during the “stagnation” period, as
Menippean satires. According to Katkus, one of the central motifs in all
three texts is the Menippean motif of “the kingdom of the dead”, which
appears to represent Soviet society. On the other hand, this eccentric
vantage point allows the narrators to comment poignantly on political,
social, and cultural issues. Another important theme in the texts is the
relativity of reality, which is reflected on the narrative level as well.
Drawing on the ideas of Hannah Arendt, Katkus comes to the conclusion
that this concept of relative reality is connected with the functioning of the
totalitarian state and its propaganda apparatus. Roxanna Ghita (University
of Craiova, Romania) turns her attention to post-communist literature,
reflecting on the grotesque elements that shape the vision of the final years
of Communist rule, and its demise in the revolutions of 1989. She
examines two German and Romanian novels: Heroes like Us, by Thomas
Brussig, and Glaring, by Mircea Cărtărescu (specifically, the last volume
Grotesque Revisited 3
in this trilogy). In both novels hyperbolical deformations of the body play

a crucial role.
The second section, “Crossing, mixing, subverting”, strives to reveal
the intertextual, border-crossing, and subversive qualities of the grotesque
and satire. The section begins with an essay by Charles Sabatos (Yeditepe
University, Istanbul, Turkey), on the satirical legacy in the Central
European postmodern novel of the great Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal.
Delving into the The Book of Hrabal, by Peter Esterházy, and Mercedes
Benz: Letters to Hrabal, by Paweá Huelle, Sabatos shows that through
imitation, intertextuality, and parody “these works reflect the influence of
what Linda Hutcheon has termed ‘historiographic metafiction’”. They also
show how writers identified with the multicultural tradition found in
Central European literature. Algis Kalơda (Institute of Lithuanian
Literature and Folklore, Vilnius) offers a comparative survey of the uses of
the grotesque in Polish and Lithuanian drama, especially in the second half
of the 20th century, naming Juozas Grušas, Kazys Saja, Juozas Glinskis,
and Sáawomir MroĪek as his most prominent examples. Johanna Öttl
(University of Salzburg, Austria) reflects on George Tabori’s texts on the
Holocaust, which contain grotesque, satirical, and iconoclastic elements.
According to Öttl, “Tabori deliberately breaks the sacred aura that has
been created around artistic representations of the Shoah. These aesthetics
do not play down the dimension of the Shoah but stress its absurdity”.
KƗrlis VƝrdiƼš (University of Latvia, Riga) offers a case study of
contemporary young Latvian prose writer Nils Sakss, who exploits
grotesque poetics and scandalous themes to attract attention. The section
closes with the detailed interpretation of one of the classic works of fiction
of the 20th century, The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov,
authored by Bulgakov expert Alexander Ivanitsky (Russian State
University of Humanities, Moscow). In conclusion, Ivanitsky states:
Carnival grotesque allows Woland to rehabilitate the supernatural and

provides a homeopathic cure for the vulgar evils of Moscow, including
holding up a mirror to Muscovites. At the same time as the carnival
grotesque, when used as a source of entertainment for Woland, diminishes
in its demonism, it also serves as a catharsis.
The last section of the book is devoted to forms of laughter and the
carnivalesque. Carmen Popescu (University of Craiova, Romania) offers
interesting insight into how Romanian postmodernist authors employ
parody and satire to address post-communist political and social realities.
Concerning the role of satire and parody in contemporary society, Popescu
observes:
4 Introduction
The postmodern parodist and satirist accept the convention of the genre,
assuming the persona of the “licensed fool”, risking misunderstanding and
even emotional reactions from their human targets who might feel
offended by the slanderous descriptions. However, in today’s polite society
there is another possible reaction to satiric aggression […] That is to ignore
it, to pretend that nothing has happened, or that the work is just artistic
play, just entertainment.
Inga Vidugirytơ’s (Vilnius University, Lithuania) essay, devoted to the

novels of Milan Kundera and to his theory of the novel, examines the
Czech novelist’s views on satire and other forms of laughter and shows
how it is indebted to Bakhtinian thought, but also where it differs and
diverges. The essay by Tomas Vaiseta (Vilnius University, Lithuania)
stands out from other texts in the volume because its subject is not literary
texts but the institutionalized journalistic satire of the Soviet regime.
Taking as his example the specialized Soviet Lithuanian satire magazine
Šluota (Broom), Vaiseta shows how this kind of satire, through mocking a
limited set of social vices and misbehaving individuals and by satirizing
the “enemies of socialism”, served the ideological discourse while at the
same time managed to attract and entertain a number of readers. Maciej
Piątek (Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland) comments on the
grotesque dimension of Witold Gombrowicz’s novel Ferdydurke. Written
in a lively, witty style, this essay argues that the grotesque imagery in the
novel can be interpreted, using the framework of psychoanalytic theory, as
an attempt “to show this trauma of identity formation in slow motion.”
This section (and the book) closes with an essay by Anneli Mihkelev
(Tallinn University, Estonia) which explores the grotesque tradition in
Estonian literature, emphasizing its romantic heritage, which is reflected
both in the literature of the Soviet era and in contemporary Estonian
writing.
The original impetus for this volume arose out of an international
conference hosted by the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore
and generously supported by the Lithuanian Research Council. The
preparation of this volume was funded by the Lithuanian Culture Support
Foundation. I would like to express my gratitude to these institutions, as
well as to Prof. Galin Tihanov, Prof. Aušra Jurgutienơ, and Dr. Mindaugas
Kvietkauskas, who supported the idea for the creation of this book and
provided valuable advice. The editing process was carried out by editor
Medeine Tribinevicius, and by the editorial team at the publishing
department of the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore. My
thanks go out to them all.
THE GRAVITY OF THE GROTESQUE:
BAKHTIN’S DISLOCATED HUMANISM
GALIN TIHANOV
In this article I propose to take the grotesque as a point of departure to

comment more widely on Bakhtin’s book on Rabelais (Rabelais and His
World) and its significance for current debates on subjectivity. Bakhtin’s
essays on the novel and his book on Rabelais, both written largely during
the 1930s (with work on the Rabelais book continuing into the mid-
1960s), articulate two recognizably dissimilar positions: the essays insist
on the incompatibility between the epic and the novel and valorise the
novelistic at the expense of the epic, while the book on Rabelais charts a
gradual rapprochement and synthesis of the two. Within his concept of
carnival the epic reverberates in humanity’s boundless memory “of cosmic
perturbations in the distant past”, while the novelistic lives in the
grotesque fluctuation and removal of distance and in the irreverent and
joyful celebration of resilience through laughter. Like the epic, carnival is
about the maintenance of traditional practices, only in an open and
charitably insecure “novelistic” way.1 The book on Rabelais seems to be
the point where, upon reconciling and synthesizing culture and life in the
acts of the human body, reworking and redrawing the boundaries of
cultural taboos, and championing a symbiosis between the epic and the
novelistic, Bakhtin sponsors a new sense of tradition inscribed onto the
irreverent life of folk (community) culture.
This celebration of the people re-opens the vexing question of the
political implications of Bakhtin’s pronouncements on the epic and the
novelistic, on communitarian and individual culture, and on their desired
synthesis. But it also enables us to locate Bakhtin’s style of thinking and
his specific brand of decentred, indeed dislocated, humanism. In light of
all this, the problematic of the grotesque reveals its larger significance,
hence the title of my paper: “The Gravity of the Grotesue”. To examine
this “gravity” I explore the dynamics of Bakhtin’s idea of the human body
as a cultural value, as found in the essay “Author and Hero in Aesthetic
1
For more on this topic see in my article “Bakhtin, Joyce, and Carnival: Towards
the Synthesis of Epic and Novel in Rabelais”, Paragraph 24:1 (2001): 66-83.
6 The Gravity of the Grotesque: Bakhtin’s Dislocated Humanism
Activity” and through the ideas in his work Rabelais and His World. I also
outline some of the most relevant sources for Bakhtin’s interest in this
problem and reflect on how Bakhtin’s treatment of it influenced ideas
about history in his writings.
I
I will begin by briefly examining Bakhtin’s essay “Author and Hero in
Aesthetic Activity”, written in the first half (or perhaps even in the middle)
of the 1920s.2 Here, for the first time, Bakhtin seriously poses the problem
of the cultural value of the body. Bakhtin’s treatise analyses the individual
human body, the body of a certain “I”. “Author and Hero” seeks to outline
the boundaries of this individual body; the spatial boundaries of my own
body, however, turn out to be inaccessible to myself. The radical shift in
Bakhtin’s interpretation of the body lies in his contention that it is not a
unitary entity; it is neither “so single”, nor “so my own” (or as Bakhtin’s
contemporary Osip Mandelstam would have it in his poem, written in
1909: “I have been given a body”), for it subsists on the experience of
estrangement and self-alienation. The unitary body of Acmeist poetry is
split into an “inner” and an “outward” body. The inner body, Bakhtin says,
is “my body as a moment in my self-consciousness”. It represents “the
sum total of inner organic sensations, needs, and desires that are unified
around an inner centre”. It is the inner body that is accessible to and
controllable by me. But there is also the outward body, which is given to
me only in a fragmentary fashion and to which I cannot react in an
2
The precise dating of “Author and Hero” remains an open issue. Nikolai
Nikolaev submits that both Toward a Philosophy of the Act and “Author and Hero”
were written between the summer of 1922 and the spring of 1924 (see “Publishing
Bakhtin: A Philological Problem (Two Reviews)”, Dialogism 4 (2000): 70-71).
Brian Poole, on the other hand, suggests that in 1926 both the texts of Toward a
Philosophy of the Act and “Author and Hero” were still being revised by Bakhtin
(see B. Poole, “Bakhtin’s Phenomenology of Discourse”, unpublished paper read
at the Eighth International Conference on Mikhail Bakhtin, Calgary (1997): 2); in a
later essay, Poole claims that Bakhtin’s “early works” cannot be dated earlier than
1924 and “were written perhaps as late as 1927” (see “From Phenomenology to
Dialogue: Max Scheler’s Phenomenological Tradition and Mikhail Bakhtin’s
Development from Toward a Philosophy of the Act to his Study of Dostoevsky”, in
Bakhtin and Cultural Theory, edited by K. Hirschkop and D. Shepherd
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001; 2nd edition), 125).
Galin Tihanov 7
“unmediated way”.3 The external body is the mode of existence of our

bodies that bestows on us the feeling of wholeness; we feel complete and
integral only through the life of our external bodies. The problem is that no
one can produce and consummate this sense of wholeness alone. As
Bakhtin puts it, “the value of my external body [...] has a borrowed
character: it is constructed by me, but is not experienced by me in any
unmediated way”. 4 Bakhtin’s division of the body into internal and
external originates in Max Scheler’s phenomenology. Scheler speaks of
the “animate” body (Leib) and the “physical” body (Körper) to suggest—
similarly to Bakhtin—that it is someone else’s feeling of sympathy
directed towards my physical body that endows me with the sense of
wholeness and with the gratifying experiencing of the boundaries of my
body as a whole.5 Bakhtin’s term sochuvstvie is a precise rendition of
Scheler’s Sympathie. We hear the echo of this significant concept in
Bakhtin’s contention that “I myself cannot be the author of my own value,
just as I cannot lift myself by my own hair. The biological life of an
organism becomes a value only in another’s sympathy and compassion
[sostradanie] with that life”.6 Thus, with Mandelstam’s agenda in mind,
Bakhtin arrives at a dramatically different solution. The body, he
concludes, “is not something self-sufficient: it needs the other, needs his
recognition and his form-giving activity”.7 In a recognizably neo-Kantian
distinction between given (gegeben) and posited (aufgegeben), Bakhtin
claims that only the inner body, or in his parlance, “the body experienced
as heavy” is given to a human being himself; the outer body, that which
“encloses the inner body” and shapes its otherwise inarticulate mass into a
whole, is “set as a task” for someone else to complete.8 In short, the giver
and the receiver of the blessed sensation of entirety are separated in
Bakhtin’s essay, and this separation becomes the prerequisite for a
desirable human existence in which the body assumes cultural value. The
numerous references to the gratuitous character of the form-bestowing act
and its interpretation by Bakhtin as a gift from the other bespeak the
overtones of ethical harmony between the one who gives and the one who
3
M. M. Bakhtin. “Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity”, in Art and Answerability,
ed. M. Holquist and V. Liapunov; trans. by V. Liapunov and K. Brostrom (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1990), 47.
4
Ibid., 48-49.
5
See M. Scheler, Wesen und Formen der Sympathie (Bonn: Friedrich Cohen, 3rd
edition, 1931), 260.
6
Bakhtin, “Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity”, 55.
7
Ibid., 51.
8
Ibid., 51; 61.
receives, between the shaper and the shaped in the process of aesthetic
activity. Neither the practice of philosophizing nor that of sexual love or
religious communication could unfailingly generate this gift. In an utterly
ascetic spirit—compatible with his lifestyle such as Georgii Gachev
portrayed it in his recollections—Bakhtin sees in art the only human
activity which can fully realize the generous act of creating for the other a
sense of his/her entirety. Thus Bakhtin’s treatise is about the ultimate
coincidence of the ethical and the aesthetic in the imaginary act of artistic
creation. Being detached from life this act becomes suspiciously pure; in
art, the artist does not have the other in front of him or herself in the same
insurmountable way, in all their graphic presence as in life, for that which
is created as the fruit of one’s imagination does not, after all, stand a very
good chance of posing a threat of resistance. It is only in aesthetic activity
that we can simultaneously produce something as concretely given and
embody in it its own meaningfulness, which would have otherwise
remained un-embodied, to haunt us as a challenging task and to confront
us with the dire world of reified existence, or, in Bakhtin’s words
(borrowed from Simmel) with the realm of “objective culture”.9
II
In the 1930s Bakhtin, under the influence of contemporary physiology
and biology (exerted by Ukhtomsky’s lectures)10 and of his friendship with
Kanaev, turned to a different idea of the human body. In his book on
Rabelais, written in the latter half of the 1930s and in the 1940s, Bakhtin
analyses the collective body, whose identity is shaped not by drawing a
boundary between the self and the other but through the experience of
transgressive togetherness.
The whole of the Rabelais book can be said to be centred on the
problem of those human features, which, while exclusively human, still
manifest themselves without tragically separating humans from the totality
9
M. M. Bakhtin, Toward a Philosophy of the Act, ed. V. Liapunov and M.
Holquist; trans. by V. Liapunov (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993), 56.
10
For an overview of Bakhtin’s interest in biology see “Bakhtin and the Body” by
M. Holquist in M. Díaz-Diocaretz (ed.) The Bakhtin Circle Today (Critical Studies
1.2, 1989), 19-42; on Bakhtin and Ukhtomskii see “Michail Bachtin e Aleksej
Uchtomskij” by N. Marcialis in Bachtin, teorico del dialog o, ed. F. Corona
(Milan: Angeli, 1986), 79-91. For a provocative interpretation of Bakhtin,
medicine, and the problem of the body, see P. Hitchcock’s “The Grotesque of the
Body Electric” in M. Bell and M. Gardiner ed. Bakhtin and the Human Sciences
(London: Sage Publications, 1998), 78-94.
Galin Tihanov 9
of the universe and without dissevering their ties and unity with nature.
For Bakhtin it is the laughing human body that becomes the emblem for
this longed-for harmony between culture and nature.
The theme of laughter resounds with its original meaning, which can
be found in Bergson’s well known eponymous book. Bakhtin’s interest in
the human body and its cultural value seems to have been considerably
spurred by reading Bergson, whose complete works appeared in Russian
between 1910 and 1914, and to whom Bakhtin referred in the early 1920s
in his own philosophical treatises Toward a Philosophy of the Act and
“Author and Hero”.11 For Bergson, laughter is the embodiment of
suppleness in a society and a punishment to those who ossify in their
habits, reactions, and attitudes and therefore cease to perform sufficiently
well. But Bakhtin also modifies Bergson in that he frees his conception of
laughter from its punitive elements by stressing the liberating and joyful
experience of laughing.
For Bakhtin, laughter is an organic blend of physicality and spirit,
proof of the essential unity of nature and culture. Indebted to Nietzsche’s
“The Birth of Tragedy” and to the neo-Kantian tradition of theorizing
laughter, drawing heavily as it does on experimental psychology12, in
Rabelais Bakhtin believes that laughter, being a product of the body,
generates cultural values (e.g. courage at the thought of the inevitability of
death) while still preserving its conspicuously physiological identity. It is
precisely this view of laughter as a kind of symbolic form poised between
its bodily origins and its status as a cultural form that enables Bakhtin to
attempt, in Rabelais, a history of laughter as a form of Weltanschauung.
If it is legitimate to describe Bakhtin’s notion of laughter as generated
at the intersection point of Spirit and body, the history of laughter should
appear closely interwoven with the history of the body. Laughter thrives in
a time when the so-called non-classical bodily canon reigns. The non-
classical body is protean and supple, exemplifying the will for constant
11
On Bergson and Bakhtin, see L. Rudova’s “Bergsonism in Russia: The Case of
Bakhtin”, Neophilologus, 80 (1996), 175-88; see also the broader perspective in
Frances Nethercott’s Une rencontre philosophique: Bergson en Russie, 1907-1917
(Paris: L’Harmattan, 1995), and Hilary Fink, Bergson and Russian Modernism,
1900–1930 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999).
12
See, above all, two works by T. Lipps, known to Bakhtin: Grundtatsachen des
Seelenlebens and Grundlegung der Aesthetik, in which Lipps advances a
psychological re-formulation of Kant’s understanding of laughter and the comic;
for more on Nietzsche’s and Lipps’s impact see G. Tihanov’s The Master and the
Slave: Lukács, Bakhtin, and the Ideas of Their Time (Oxford and New York:
Oxford University Press, 2000), 266-67.
and unlimited change. This ever-evolving and open body gradually

degenerates into a neatly delineated classical body in the post-Renaissance
epoch. Bakhtin laments this change because it denies the body a direct
connection with the universe and closes it off from nature. Bakhtin’s
fascination with the grotesque body in Rabelais work bespeaks his
profound reluctance to follow the modern project of historicist linearity
and progressivism. The way in which bodily functions are treated in
Rabelais provides a perfect example of Bakhtin’s phenomenological
reductionism. One also encounters this specific feature of Bakhtin’s
thinking in his text on Goethe, where he attempts to substitute the
omnipotence and infallibility of seeing for the appropriation of reality
through labour and production. Similarly, in Rabelais Bakhtin strives to
“stabilize” the variety of human activities around the basic acts of eating,
drinking and copulating. If we recall Bakhtin’s celebration of the eye in
his analysis of Goethe in his text on the Bildungsroman, we will be
surprised to find that in the book on Rabelais the eyes are, at best, an
immaterial detail of the human body, and at worst a hindrance to the
affirmation of the grotesque ideal of the body. The eyes “express a purely
individual, so to speak, self-sufficient inward human life”13 and for this
reason cannot be of any use in grotesque realism. Thus Bakhtin did not
hesitate to sacrifice the divine gift of seeing to the desired unity with
nature. (Characteristically here, too, the reader of Bakhtin’s book can find
a striking parallel to Mandelstam’s 1932 poem “Lamarck” which describes
the preparedness of the hero to give up the gift of seeing in order to join
the lower ranks of life.) He came to recognize the human eye as an
obstacle on the road to the complete fusion with the primordial element of
Being.
Bakhtin’s Rabelais is rather controversial in its suggestions and
philosophical orientation. The temporal contiguity of the texts on Goethe
and Rabelais is one of the most striking examples of simultaneous
accommodation and expression in Bakhtin’s opus of irreconcilable values.
The championing of contradictory ideals of social development in this
period of his work is consistently premised on phenomenological
reductionism. The text on the Bildungsroman seems from this point of
view to be only one step on the road to this reductionism. Here Bakhtin
13
M. M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1984), 316. I have slightly modified the existing English
translation which omits the words “purely” and “inward” and does not reproduce
Bakhtin’s emphases. See the original in Russian: Tvorchestvo Fransua Rable i
narodnaia kul´tura srednevekovía i Renessansa (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia
literatura, 1965), 343. Hereafter referred to as Rabelais.
Galin Tihanov 11
still lingers on the power and the art of seeing as a distinctly individual
human gift. In Rabelais, he abandons this humanistic notion of man and
gladly descends the ladder of organic life only to stop at the basic
functions of the body, which make it indiscernible among other bodies.
The deeper man sinks into the abyss of the organic, the brighter the
redemptive star of utopia shines above him; deprived of individual dignity,
he appears to be granted in exchange a guarantee that his every breath and
every muscle movement will inevitably produce culture and freedom in
the warm embrace of community. Thus we can see Bakhtin’s readings of
Goethe and Rabelais as transmitting, with equal ardour, the opposing
values of modern individualism and pre-modern collectivism, always with
the serious belief that culture springs without any tension from the
essentially physical nature of man and is the subject of constant
construction and destruction in the process of his organic existence.
These observations lead us to differentiate between three conditions in
which Bakhtin theorizes the body: first, the individual body endowed with
sight and speech; second, a communal body (the body of the people)
marked by overwhelming vitality, enhanced appetite and reproductive
desire; and third, the pale image of the “body of the species”, an explicitly
Hegelian metaphor for humankind rather than a palpable reality. Of these
conditions, only the last two are thematized in Rabelais. In Rabelais,
Bakhtin posits as the main object of his reflections the collective body of
the people, which never comes to know the split into interior and exterior.
In his early work (“Author and Hero”), the body is a phenomena that
directs attention towards the problem of boundaries; Rabelais celebrates
the boundless body; that which lives, in Bakhtin’s own terms, in the non-
classical canon of free transition and transgression.
All these crucial changes, for which Bakhtin’s immersion in Hegel’s
philosophy in the 1930s is one of the main factors, can be better
appreciated if we recall one more text written in the milieu of the Bakhtin
Circle. In Voloshinov’s Marxism and the Philosophy of Language the
body is problematised for the first time in the light of broader social
concerns. Voloshinov poses the question of the capacity of the body to
serve as a social sign.
He answers this question in the negative. The body cannot be the
source of social symbolization for it “equals itself, so to speak; it does not
signify anything but wholly coincides with its particular, given nature”.14
Such being the case, the body cannot be utilized as a sign and therefore
14
V.N. Voloshinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. L. Matejka
and I. Titunik (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1986), 9.
cannot partake of ideology. In Rabelais, on the contrary, Bakhtin affirms

the power of the body as an expressly social phenomenon. The body is an
autonomous entity, but it does not coincide with itself because its mode of
being has already grown essentially different. The non-classical canon
encourages an ever-changing body, one that has no primordial image to fit,
and no state of perfection to reach. No longer a singular organism,
possessor of a “particular” (edinichnaia) nature, Bakhtin’s body in
Rabelais is poised, much like Hegel’s objective Spirit, between the
materialization (objectification) of self-sufficient acts of abundantly
physical character and the condition of an abstract identity which is
revelatory of powers of a higher order: immortality, endless regeneration,
limitless “courage” in the face of nature and death. In Rabelais, the body is
already a symbol; it stands on its own, performing the reassuringly healthy
functions of every body, but it also points to a transcendental togetherness
of bodies which constitutes a Body that not only copulates, eats, or fasts,
but also abides in the opposite state of solemnity and spiritual elevation, as
if it had never committed the transitory acts of copulation, feasting, and
fasting. Thus Bakhtin endows the concept of body with two different
meanings: the first represents its verifiable physicality, while still shunning
the condition of singularity as seen in “Author and Hero”; the other looks
out over a state of collectivity where the bodily eventually comes to
represent the spiritual.
The representation of the body as a collective spiritual entity is itself of
Hegelian provenance. The objective Spirit—we will recall—seeks to
liberate itself from naïve subjectivity (singularity). In this process it gives
rise to collective formations, such as the nation and the state, which Hegel
considers to be advanced forms of historical self-reflection on the part of
the Spirit. In Bakhtin, however, we witness a regressive embodiment: the
Spirit materializes itself in the anachronistic and idyllic body of a socially
homogenized and emphatically primitive community. The Spirit
objectifies itself in the body of the undifferentiated people to bestow on it
the gifts of animation. Accordingly, this body assumes wide-ranging
faculties. All functions of the singular physical body—from generation to
urination (to recall the Phenomenology)—are now sublated in the
controversial gesture of preservation through erasure. They are brought
closer to a pervasive spiritualization, and their effects are seen to endorse
the unearthly reward of immortality.
If it is legitimate to describe Bakhtin’s notion of laughter as being
generated at the intersection point of Spirit and body, then the history of
laughter and the body should duplicate the irreversible upward movement
of the Spirit. But this is not what one finds in Rabelais. Bakhtin’s history
Galin Tihanov 13
of laughter and body incorporates the double perspective of growth and

decline, of progress and decomposition. Characteristically, the
degeneration of laughter in post-Renaissance culture is measured by how it
sinks to the level of addressing private vices rather than conveying
universal outlooks. Laughter ceases to be associated with the collective
embodiments of the Spirit; it no longer originates in them, nor does it
serve to strengthen their vitality. Referring to one of the key concepts of
Hegel’s Phenomenology, “the universal individuality”, Bakhtin concludes,
in a resigned fashion: “The historical universal individuality ceases to be
the object of laughter”.15
It is at the juncture of this transition to degenerated laughter, paralleled
and supported by the transition to the classical bodily canon, that
Bakhtin’s historicist adventure suffers its most ostensible drawback. Faced
with the need to explain away the presence of “grotesque anatomy” in the
ancient and medieval epics (Bakhtin’s examples are Homer, Virgil, and
Ronsard) he diminishes its value by having recourse to reasons that fly in
the face of his general scheme. “The grotesque anatomization of the body
in the epic,” Bakhtin claims, “is rather numb, for here the body is too
individualized and closed. In the epic, there are only relics of the grotesque
conception which has already been overpowered by the new [classical]
canon of body”.16 At first glance, one might find this to be a plausible
reinforcement of Bakhtin’s established preference for the novelistic over
the epic. In this reading the epic should be declared, by its very nature, an
enemy of the grotesque canon and it lends itself to being accused of
bluntly precluding the depiction of an ever-evolving decentred and open
body. There are two obstacles to this reading, however. The first is the fact
that Bakhtin’s tone is not one of invective; rather, he regrets the dissipated
and weakened presence of grotesque elements in the epic. The epic, he
implies, did not engender the classical bodily canon. Instead, this new
canon eliminated the residual elements of the grotesque lingering in the
epic. (Effacing the difference between the novel and epic, at an earlier
point Bakhtin even reproaches Hugo for never understanding “the epic
quality [epichnost] of Rabelaisian laughter”.17) This being the case, it
remains unclear where the origins of the problem should be sought. The
second point, which makes one cautious about writing everything off at
the expense of the epic, is Bakhtin’s mention of Homer. If the flourishing
of the non-classical (grotesque) canon is located in the 16th century, in the
15
Bakhtin, Rabelais, 127. (Translation amended).
16
These two sentences are absent from the published English translation; they are
found on p. 385 of the Russian edition. The word in square brackets is my addition.
17
Bakhtin, Rabelais, 140.
novel of Rabelais, how is it possible for earlier forms to have already been
conquered by the classical canon, especially given the impossibility that
this role could ever have been performed by the epic? Moreover, what
literary forms can be accepted as having been in existence prior to Homer?
This patent incongruence in Bakhtin’s narrative may suggest that he
considers the Renaissance to be an exception, a solitary island in the
predominantly non-grotesque history of the human body. But this clearly
contradicts his assertion that “the grotesque mode of representing the body
and bodily life prevailed in art and creative forms of speech over
thousands of years”.18 The other possibility is that Bakhtin regards the
Renaissance as the peak in a cyclically revolving process, one that
transforms the classical body into a grotesque one and then re-canonizes it
back to classical order and closure. If this version is taken to hold true one
will be struck by how non-Hegelian Bakhtin’s attempt at historicizing the
idea of the human body is. Bakhtin’s fascination with the grotesque body
in Rabelais’s work bespeaks his profound reluctance to follow the modern
project of historicist linearity and continuity. The past, in turn, is only
selectively praised as the beneficial ground on which the “germs and
shoots” of the future are grown. The indisputably grotesque elements of
the ancient and the medieval epic are left out as unsublatable; they are
undone before the opportunity arises for their redemption in the non-
classical canon of the Renaissance. Thus Bakhtin’s endorsement of
Hegel’s progressivist historicism in the description of Renaissance
laughter as a new stage in the rise of consciousness is eroded and betrayed
by his inconclusive historical accounts of the representation of the body.
This rupture in Bakhtin’s “will to history” invites an even more radical
interpretation of his strategy. It uncovers Bakhtin’s desire to enact the
history of human views of the body as a timeless battle between two
primordial principles: the grotesque and the classical. Placed in
succession, the former being obviously older than the latter, they are
nevertheless endowed with the status of eternal organizing forms. This is a
powerful way of reading the above passage, with Bakhtin’s implicit
assumption that the start and the first successes of the grotesque canon
should be sought in the time before Homer. Folklore, as is the norm in
literary and cultural theory after German Romanticism, is used as an
omnipotent alibi for ahistorical arguments. Bakhtin’s vision of the origins
of the grotesque imagines them as disappearing in a remote unrecorded
(and unrecordable) past. History, then, is reshaped into the struggle of two
constantly acting principles. The impression of peaks and troughs is no
18
Ibid., 345.
Galin Tihanov 15
more than a camouflage for an equilibrium sustained by means of tension

and competition. The brilliant, yet controversial, rhetoric of Bakhtin’s
narrative depicting the gigantic clash between the grotesque and the
classical suppresses and de-emphasizes his own occasional points as a
historian. The reader is invited to forget that the classical canon “never
prevailed in antique literature” and that “in the official literature of
European peoples it has become wholly dominant only in the last four
hundred years”.19 Rather, as the text presents and amplifies the evidence
for the outstanding domination of the grotesque in the Renaissance, it
encourages the belief that the grotesque view of the body had a potent
enemy all along (from Homer to Virgil to Ronsard, as we have seen).
It would be fair to argue in conclusion that, while bound together by
the centrality of the body as a philosophical problem, Bakhtin’s significant
works “Author and Hero” and Rabelais stand for two strongly divergent
positions: the earlier one searching for the limits of privacy and identity in
the exchange with others; the later one cherishing the abolition of these
limits, the removal of every boundary separating one human body from the
other, the activation of a grotesque mode of existence that thrives on
disproportion, deliberate distortion, and rejection of the sense of
proportion. These changing trajectories of Bakhtin’s thought, as well as his
passionate search for the cultural value of the primitive, the organic, and
the natural, could partly account for the fascinating richness and
suppleness of his thought. But they also exhibit his dramatic swinging
between a joyful appreciation of historical detail and particularity, and an
essentialist belief in the inalterability of human nature.
All this appears to be suggestive of the wider significance of the
grotesque in Bakhtin’s writings, of its theoretical gravity as not just as an
aesthetic category but also as a more encompassing mode of conceiving
and interpreting the world. The grotesque becomes, for Bakhtin, a vantage
point from which a different conception of the human arises, a humanism
that is no longer bound to a belief in the individual and is no longer
underpinned by an embrace and promotion of the virtues of measure,
proportion, or reason. It is a humanism that manages to incorporate and
process the “darker side” of humanity20 and the sometimes aggressive and
unpredictable mode of action that carnival poses. The grotesque, in other
words, sponsors in Bakhtin a different kind of humanism. Bakhtin’s
19
Ibid., 346. (Translation amended.) Note: the English translation does not
preserve the italics of the Russian ofitsialńoi, and it renders stal vpolne
gospodstvuiushchim simply as “existed”.
20
I paraphrase here the titles of Walter Mignolo’s well-known books The Darker
Side of the Renaissance (1994) and The Darker Side of Western Modernity (2011).
intellectual brand, that which he did better than most, was the gradual
forging of a theoretical platform informed by what I would call humanism
without subjectivity (or at least without subjectivity understood in the
classic identitarian sense). In the mature and late writings we find an odd
Bakhtinian humanism, decentred, seeking and celebrating alterity rather
than otherness (in Kristeva’s distinction), and revolving not around the
individual but around the generic abilities of the human species to resist
and endure in the face of natural cataclysms and in the face of ideological
monopoly over truth. Bakhtin is probably the single most gifted and
persuasive exponent in the 20th century of that particular strain of
humanism without belief in the individual human being at its core, a
distant cosmic love for humanity as the great survivor and the producer of
abiding and recurring meaning that celebrates its eventual homecoming in
the bosom of great time. In Rabelais this new decentred humanism takes
on the form of a seemingly more solidified cult of the people, but even
there it rests on an ever changing, protean existence of the human masses
that transgresses the boundaries between bodies and style registers and
refuses their members stable identifications other than with the utopian
body of the people and of humanity at large. This new brand of decentred,
indeed dislocated, humanism without subjectivity is Bakhtin’s greatest
discovery as a thinker and the source, it seems to me, of his longevity on
the intellectual scene where he ushers out vogue after vogue, staging for
each new generation of readers the magic of witnessing the birth of
proximity without empathy, of optimism without promise or closure21.
Bibliography
Bakhtin, Mikhail “Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity.” In Art and
Answerability, edited by M. Holquist and V. Liapunov, translated by
V. Liapunov and K. Brostrom, 4–256. Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1990.
—. Rabelais and his World. Translated by Hélène Iswolsky. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1984.
—. Toward a Philosophy of the Act. Edited by V. Liapunov and M.
Holquist, translated by V. Liapunov. Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1993.
—. Tvorchestvo Fransua Rable i narodnaia kul´tura srednevekovía i
Renessansa. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1965.
21
For more on this topic see in my article “Mikhail Bakhtin: Multiple Discoveries
and Cultural Transfers,” Wiener Sawistischer Almanach, 78 (2010), 45-58.
Galin Tihanov 17
Fink, Hillary. Bergson and Russian Modernism, 1900–1930. Evanston, IL:

Northwestern University Press, 1999.
Hitchcock, P. “The Grotesque of the Body Electric.” In Bakhtin and the
Human Sciences, edited by M. Bell and M. Gardiner. London: Sage
Publications, 1998.
Holquist, M. “Bakhtin and the Body.” In The Bakhtin Circle Today, edited
by M. Díaz-Diocaretz, 19–42. Critical Studies 1.2, 1989.
Marcialis, N. “Michail Bachtin e Aleksej Uchtomskij.” In Bachtin, teorico
del dialog o, edited by F. Corona. Milan: Angeli, 1986.
Mignolo, Walter. The Darker Side of the Renaissance. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1994.
—. The Darker Side of Western Modernity. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2011.
Nethercott, Frances. Une rencontre philosophique: Bergson en Russie,
1907–1917. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1995.
Nikolaev, Nikolai. “Publishing Bakhtin: A Philological Problem (Two
Reviews).” Dialogism 4 (2000): 70–71.
Poole, Brian. “Bakhtin’s Phenomenology of Discourse.” Unpublished
paper read at the Eighth International Conference on Mikhail Bakhtin,
Calgary (1997).
—. “From Phenomenology to Dialogue: Max Scheler’s Phenomenological
Tradition and Mikhail Bakhtin’s Development from Toward a
Philosophy of the Act to his Study of Dostoevsky.” In Bakhtin and
Cultural Theory, edited by K. Hirschkop and D. Shepherd.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001; 2nd edition.
Rudova, L. “Bergsonism in Russia: The Case of Bakhtin.” Neophilologus,
80 (1996), 175–88.
Scheler, M. Wesen und Formen der Sympathie. Bonn: Friedrich Cohen,
3rd edition, 1931.
Tihanov, Galin. “Bakhtin, Joyce, and Carnival: Towards the Synthesis of
Epic and Novel in Rabelais”. Paragraph 24:1 (2001): 66–83.
—. “Mikhail Bakhtin: Multiple Discoveries and Cultural Transfers”.
Wiener Sawistischer Almanach, 78 (2010): 45–58.
—. The Master and the Slave: Lukács, Bakhtin, and the Ideas of Their
Time. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Voloshinov, V. N. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. Translated
by L. Matejka and I. Titunik. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard
University Press, 1986.
SECTION I
CENTRAL EUROPEAN MONSTERS

AND PHANTASMAGORIAS
OF SATIRE AND SATYRS:
THE MONSTROUS AND THE THIRD REICH
IN POSTMODERN CULTURE
ABOUT EASTERN EUROPE
PETER ARNDS
Günter Grass’s novel The Tin Drum (1959) contains a satirical moment
in which the contours of the erect Aryan body, arm out stretched at a 45-
degree angle in the Hitler salute, is carnivalised (in the Bakhtinian sense of
the term) by Oskar Matzerath, and the classical, closed body is broken
down into the grotesque, open body. Oskar is a postmodern fairy tale
dwarf character based on texts by the Grimm Brothers and Wilhelm Hauff.
The motif of the fluid, transgressive body expressed in his hump and the
outstretched arm, denotes the liminality between the human and the non-
human that appears so frequently in literature dealing with the fascist
period. This paper will highlight key moments of such beastliness from
Grass’s The Tin Drum (1959), Michel Tournier’s The Ogre (1979), Jerzy
Kosinski’s The Painted Bird (1965), and Edgar Hilsenrath’s The Nazi and
the Barber (1977). These texts, and many others, examine Nazi crimes in
the context of, and drawing satirically from, fairy tales by the Grimm
Brothers: the Tom Thumb Tales, Hänsel and Gretel, and Mother Hulda.
In these novels the intertextual use of folktale and myth can be read as
politically subversive, as in the case of Grass and Hilsenrath with their
blurring of the delineation between human and animal, human and
machine, and life and death. In particular, images of physical excess and
transgression are artistic ways of protesting against the physical and
mental docility prescribed by rationalizing societies in the name of utility
and public health. By engaging in a comparative cross-reading of these
literary texts this paper draws on a set of cultural theory paradigms that
complement each other, specifically those found between Mikhail
Bakhtin’s grotesque versus classical body, Michel Foucault’s docile body,
and Giorgio Agamben’s homo sacer as wolf-man.
Peter Arnds 21
In his book Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Agamben
discusses the wolf-man as a mythical figure located at the interstices
between power and persecution, sovereignty and bare life. Agamben’s
wolf-man is a key figure in novels and memoirs dealing with genocide, in
particular the Holocaust. The wolf-man is the medieval expellee, the
friedlos bandit roaming, without peace, outside of the city. He is without
peace because anyone is allowed to kill him without legal repercussion.
These were, and are, humans who the machinery of biopolitics prevents
from attaining “good dwelling” in the Heideggerian sense. According to
Heidegger the fundamental characteristic of peaceful dwelling is the
feeling of being cared for, or Schonung,1 of sparing or being spared, and
homo sacer is located well outside of this dwelling. As historical fact,
Friedlosigkeit (restlessness or outlaw status) has its beginnings in the
ancient Germanic custom of excluding criminals and other undesirables
from the community. By denying these outcasts access to the polis, the
community reduced them to what Agamben call nuda vita—bare life.
Nuda vita resonates with mythical manifestations of hybridity between
human and animal and between human and non-human, echoing the
Foucaultian concepts of abnormality and monstrosity: “From the Middle
Ages to the 18th century [...] the monster is essentially a mixture [...] of
two realms, the animal and the human. [...] It is the mixture of two
individuals [...] of two sexes [...] of life and death.”2 Forced into a zone of
indeterminacy between the human and the animal, these so-called wolf-
men, men banished from their cities because of their crimes, roamed the
countryside without peace because anyone was allowed to kill them.3
Undoubtedly, the medieval exclusion practice, in which men were
abandoned and turned into creatures resembling animals, impacted the
emergence of subsequent myths and folk culture. The werewolf, and
various other manifestations of the wolf in folk culture such as the fairy
1
Martin Heidegger, Vorträge und Aufsätze (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann,
2000), 1501. In this 1951 essay on the paucity of housing after World War II,
Heidegger discusses the term “contentment” in relation to dwelling, freedom, and
peace, and makes an argument that is significant for the racist treatment of Kiza.
Heidegger derives the German wohnen etymologically from the Gothic word
wunian: “Wunian heißt zufrieden sein, zum Frieden gebracht, in ihm bleiben. Das
Wort Friede meint das Freie, das Frye, und fry bedeutet: bewahrt vor Schaden und
Bedrohung [...] geschont. Freien bedeutet eigentlich schonen.”
2
Michel Foucault, Abnormal. Lectures at the Collège de France 1974-1975
(London, New York: Verso, 2003), 63.
3
Giorgio Agamben, Homo sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel
Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998), 104.
22 Of Satire and Satyrs
tale wolf but also the demonization of the Pied Piper of Hamelin as a
figure of the Wild Hunt complex, are likely to have emerged from this
practice of expulsion and persecution, with the werewolf possibly being
folk culture’s most transparent reflection of a custom that casts
undesirables back into a state of nature. In the political arena, this state of
nature is a state of exception that applies to both persecuted minorities and
the ruler, since both find themselves in a state of lawlessness, a zone in
which human rights have no validity. For the abandoned, it is through their
complete loss of peace, and for the tyrant, it is through his supreme power.
In this state of exception both are transformed into monsters. This
ambivalence of the monstrous as pertaining to both victim and perpetrator
is at the heart of some of the literature about Nazi crimes, and can
particularly be found in Grass’s Tin Drum, Tournier’s The Ogre, and
Hilsenrath’s The Nazi and the Barber. These three texts are of particular
interest to the region of East-Central Europe.
In The Tin Drum, Oskar Matzerath is the one who protests against the
adult world. In Peter Pan fashion he decides at age three not to grow any
more. He is a picaro who metaphorically stands in for a range of
persecuted minorities in the Third Reich and who, due to his mental and
physical disability, the text clearly marks as a potential candidate for Nazi
euthanasia and thus as one of Hitler’s abducted children. A potential
victim of Nazi persecution, Oskar is also capable of great mischief and
evil. He is responsible for the deaths of several people within his family
and becomes an accomplice to the Nazis while at the same time
mischievously subverts their activities. His drumming itself is duplicitous:
he is drumming like Hitler, der Trommler, but he is also drumming up
resistance against the Nazis. Oskar’s duplicity aligns him with a host of
mythological relatives of the Pied Piper as a manifestation of the trickster
archetype; in particular the folktale Tom Thumb, the courtly fool (as an
entertainer to the Nazis), the Neapolitan harlequin, and the Nordic Erlking,
or Alder King.
In one key chapter Oskar’s drumming disrupts the marching music
during a Nazi Party rally. He sits in the very spot that the harlequin used to
occupy in the medieval mystery play—centrally, under the stage, in this
case a bandstand—a position from which he can act and subvert. This is
one of many allusions to Oskar’s beastliness and satanic nature. In what is
one of the most memorable scenes in Volker Schlöndorff’s film, one
political piper or drummer, Hitler, is outwitted by another piper or
drummer, Oskar. The scene contains a moment in which the contours of
the erect Aryan body, its arm outstretched in the Hitler salute, are
dissolved. By drumming out of rhythm Oskar dissolves the rigor of the
Peter Arnds 23
marching music that is accompanied by a host of stiff arms raised in the

Nazi salute. In Bakhtinian terms he carnivalises the Sieg Heil by breaking
down the stiffness of the arms, which begin to wave to his beat. The
paradigms of the carnival described by Mikhail Bakhtin in his work
Rabelais and His World as a covert criticism of the rigors and monolithic
ideology of Stalinism can be applied to this moment of carnivalisation, one
of many, in Grass’s novel. Bakhtin’s discussion of the body becomes
especially interesting in this context: his dichotomy of the closed, classical
body (in this case the Nazi salute), which is subverted by the grotesque
open body (in this case Oskar, a fairy tale dwarf, and his profane
disruption of the sacred salute).4 There exist some artists who tampered
with the Sieg Heil salute during the fascist period but, understandably,
more of these actions occurred after the end of fascism. (For example
Anselm Kiefer, Charlie Chaplin, Agniezska Holland’s Europa Europa,
Mel Brooks’ Springtime for Hitler, and others.)
These images of the open, grotesque body carnivalise the ideal of the
erect body, the body that Foucault calls docile, which was an ideal that
arose with the Enlightenment and the emergence of the bourgeois class in
its attempt to distance itself from the working classes and thus be more
civilized, more human, less like bent over animals. Images that carnivalise
the classically erect body à la Bakhtin, on the other hand, resonate with
political-philosophical theories of hybridity, with Foucault’s definition of
the monstrous body as one that is open and hybrid. These images resonate
with Agamben’s concept of the wolf-man as yet another manifestation of
the open body, the body in transformation. They further resonate with
what Eric Santner has described as “creaturely life” in the work of Rainer
Maria Rilke, Walter Benjamin, and W.G. Sebald.5 Creaturely life,
according to Santner’s argument, manifests above all in Benjamin’s image
of the hunchback, the bucklichtMännlein, which he sees everywhere in the
work of Kafka, many of whose figures are “bent over, contracted, distorted
(Benjamin’s word is entstellt)”.6 I would add that this is also a key image
that expresses the liminality between the human and the non-human
frequent found in the literature of mythical realism, drawing on the
grotesque from folklore and fairy tales.
Another example of this type of literature is Michel Tournier’s novel
Le Roi des Aulnes (The Ogre), yet another novel about children during
4
Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, trans. by Hélène Iswolsky
(Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1984).
5
Eric L. Santner, On Creaturely Life: Rilke, Benjamin, Sebald (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2006).
6
Ibid., 24.
World War II. The disproportioned protagonist Abel Tiffauges, a French

prisoner-of-war in Nazi occupied northeastern Poland, is a monster similar
to Oskar Matzerath—both victim and perpetrator. In Tournier’s novel the
Nazis and their racist ideology are contextualized even more intensely in
connection to the Pied Piper legend and its correlative, the Erlking (or
Alder King) myth. Abel Tiffauges is imprisoned by the Nazis but during
the course of his confinement in he discovers his love for Nazi Germany
and becomes a passionate defender of the cause without understanding the
broader scope of its policies. A giant of a man who snatches children from
their parents, Abel is a hybrid creature, uniting in himself the Piper, the
ogre, and the Erlking. The novel makes no secret of its subtexts. It
explicitly mentions Charles Perrault’s Le Petit Poucet and Goethe’s poem
Der Erlkönig, thus blending the French fairy tale tradition with Germanic
literature and myth. In his monstrous sensuality and subscription to Nazi
values Abel Tiffauges becomes a cultural hybrid of Germanic and French
folklore. As a hybrid monster he destabilizes any stereotypes one may
have about either culture and is a representation of the internationalism of
fascism, a fact that renders this novel extremely controversial. Oskar
Matzerath and Abel Tiffauges are mythological hybrids who, in their
Bakhtinian grotesqueness, exist in a grey zone between the human and the
non-human, and thus qualify as literary monsters.
Abel’s job is to abduct boys of a suitable age and superior race so that
they can be turned into soldiers at a paramilitary school that prepares the
so-called Jungmannen for the war on the Eastern Front. The fear parent’s
feel towards him is reflected in a pamphlet posted across the land:
BEWARE OF THE OGRE OF KALTENBORN! He is after your children.

He roves through our country stealing children. If you have any, never
forget the Ogre—he never forgets them! Don’t let them go out alone.
Teach them to run away and hide if they see a giant on a blue horse with a
pack of black hounds. If he comes to see you, don’t yield to his threats,
don’t be taken in by his promises. All mothers should be guided by one
certainty: If the Ogre takes your child, you will NEVER see him again!7
This passage evokes both the Erlking myth and the Pied Piper legend
and these two figures have other relatives around Europe. A close
Mediterranean relative is the arlecchino, the harlequin of the commedia
dell’arte, a figure who appears in a piebald costume and exhibits a similar
7
Michel Tournier, The Ogre, trans. Barbara Bray (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1997), 294. Subsequent references appear as Ogre with page
number.
Peter Arnds 25
duplicity of character, shifting quickly from amiability to malignancy.

Etymologically, the harlequin also seems to point to the Old English Herla
Cyning, who is widely associated with Odin or Wotan, the storm god of
Nordic mythology. The Erlking’s abduction of children is, of course, the
central motif in Goethe’s famous poem Der Erlkönig, where a child is
snatched away from his father as he is riding through the nightly storm. As
a nocturnal spirit, the Erlking is traditionally associated with the so-called
Wild Hunt, a cavalcade of the dead led through the forests by a mythical
figure riding a horse, sometimes identified as Wotan or Odin.
While densely referential to the Erlking myth and Perrault’s Tom
Thumb fairy tale, Tournier’s novel carries within it another sinister piece
of French history, one that has been transformed into a folktale: the story
of Bluebeard. The surname Tiffauges, Abel’s horse Barbe Bleue, and
Abel’s voracious appetite for children all allude to the mid-15th century
figure of Maréchal Gilles de Retz who was associated with the
disappearance and murder of hundreds of children from villages in
southern France, including Tiffauges. Tournier uses several details from
the story of Gilles de Retz: while on trial, de Retz insisted that he knew
nothing of the disappearance of the children, arguing that he is not their
keeper, referencing Cain’s words about his brother, Abel. De Retz also
allegedly bathed in the blood of his victims, which is reminiscent of a
motif in Tournier’s novel which sees Abel Tiffauges sleeping on a
mattress made of the hair of the shorn Jungmannen before emptying the
contents into a fish pool and swimming in it. The idea of recruitment
associated with the Piper legend also appears in connection with the
disappearance of children in France, the notion that some of the children
were “transformed into the English”.8 That the tale of Bluebeard may have
roots in the figure of de Retz may stem from the fact that during the trial it
was observed that in a certain light de Retz’s beard had a blue hue. It was
in this way that de Retz was given the nickname Bluebeard.9 Apparently
his servant Henriette collected children for his master and was present
when he massacred them in a special room at Machecoul, before bathing
in their blood. Designating one room for massacre also corresponds to the
detail found in the Bluebeard myth and in Charles Perrault’s fairy tale. In
these ways the Bluebeard story shows us how history can be transformed
into oral folk culture before finding its way into literature.
Tournier’s duplicitous Abel is thus a monster composed of historical
and mythical material. He is also an apt embodiment of the Agambian
8
Sabine Baring-Gould, The Book of Werewolves (Dublin: Nonsuch, 2007), 144.
(Originally published 1865.)
9
Ibid., 151.
wolf-man in the double sense of being, on the one hand, expelled from the
French community, imprisoned by the Nazis and then roaming the East
Prussian wilds. On the other hand, he is the wolf-man as tyrant, through
his complicity with the top dogs of the Nazi Party, including Hermann
Goering, and through his task of harvesting children for the front. Tournier
and Grass meet in their collusion of the folklore motifs of monstrosity and
the abduction of children with the ideas of Nazi eugenics. Everything Abel
does during his career as an ogre he does out of love for children. He is not
aware of the sinister nature of his work and carries it out with extreme joy;
during the act of carrying away children for racial selection he even
compares himself with St. Christopher carrying Jesus across the river. In
the final scenes where he meets the little Jewish boy Ephraim, who has
survived Auschwitz, Abel’s dream world is suddenly shattered when he
realizes his own complicity in the Nazi crimes. Whereas Abel’s life in the
Eastern European forests, surrounded by the boys of Kaltenborn, had been
the realization of a childhood dream about the cold expanses of the
Canadian north, “Canada”, Ephraim tells him, was also the name given to
the treasure house in Auschwitz in which the possessions of the dead were
stored. All of a sudden Abel understands that while he was euphorically
stuffing his mattress with boys’ hair, this was in fact a reflection of the
grim reality in the death camps where the hair of the victims was recycled
for a variety of purposes.
It is in these final scenes that Abel morphs from a fairy tale monster
into a human being who loses his political naïveté. He grows beyond
himself by carrying the messianic child to safety, an act that evokes Saint
Christopher and the Benjaminian hump. This metamorphosis from
monster to saint is, of course, not without irony and reminds us of the
insane image Oskar Matzerath has of himself as Jesus and the saviour of
the Germans at the end of The Tin Drum. The silhouette of Abel walking
through the swamps of eastern Poland with the child on his shoulders, this
opening of the contours of his body as a token of creatureliness,
nonetheless in final analysis makes him a bit more of a man.10 The burden
of history on Abel’s back is a burden not limited to Germany but also
extends to France.
By way of transition to Hilsenrath, I want to briefly bring in Jerzy
Kosinski’s The Painted Bird (1965), a controversial text that describes the
wanderings of an abandoned boy through the forests of Eastern Europe
during the Nazi occupation. Based in part on the Hänsel and Gretel tale,
10
The word ogre is an etymologically contested word and may have as much to do
with “Hungarian”, the Etruscan augur, the morpheme gargas in Gargantua, or the
Latin orcus, the realm of the dead.
Peter Arnds 27
this novel goes far beyond the fairy tale context by drawing its grotesque
content largely from the superstitious environment of the peasant
population of eastern Poland. The boy is an Agambian homo sacer in the
sense that he “roam[s] the countryside freely” (78), where anyone can kill
him. He is the friedlos/vogelfrei in the perfect sense of Agamben’s
definition of this figure.
This image of the homo sacer roaming through the forests of Poland is
also a motif in Edgar Hilsenrath’s The Nazi and the Barber, where Max
Schulz, a Nazi mass murderer, changes identities and recreates himself as
a Jewish victim. The text is full of the Bakhtinian grotesque in the context
of the Holocaust and shape shifting of Jewish/Nazi identity. During his
escape from the advancing Russian army through the Polish forest, Max
Schulz is a homo sacer at the mercy of Veronya, who shares much with
the Hänsel and Gretel witch. He ends up killing her and then, once back in
Germany, encounters Frau (Mother) Holle, whom Hilsenrath has turned
from an archetypal mother figure into a prostitute.
Hilsenrath completely destabilizes the sacrosanct nature of the fairy
tales. During the Nazi period they were considered untouchable, in part
due to their typically Germanic themes, but they became equally important
after the war as part of “the healing process necessary for the rebuilding of
a humanist culture.”11 While one can still see The Tin Drum and its fairy
tale subtexts drawn from Tom Thumb and the dwarf tales of Wilhelm
Hauff as a contribution to this reconstruction of a humanist culture,
Hilsenrath’s novel is possibly one of the strongest satires of the Grimm
folktales, and as such eludes this process of rebuilding. By transmogrifying
Mother Holle into a prostitute, The Nazi and the Barber becomes a
reaction to the Nazi perception of Mother Holle as a symbol of fertility in
Germanic mythology and an archetypal figure to be emulated by all
German women. Furthermore, Hilsenrath places the Hänsel and Gretel tale
within the context of genocide. Despite all the debunking of fairy tales in
Germany after 1968, this sort of transgression of limits of representation
was ahead of its time.
While in Grass’s appropriation of the fairy tale it becomes a weapon of
a left-wing liberal, Hilsenrath's parody of the German fairy tale tradition
stems from his desire, as Jennifer Taylor has argued, “to assert his claim to
his own German cultural past, as well as to redefine his post-war identity
as a Jew. Writing is for him an act of assertion or even of revenge which
11
Jack Zipes, “The Struggle for the Grimms’ Throne: The Legacy of the Grimms’
Tales in the FRG and GDR since 1945”, 167-206 in The Reception of Grimms
Fairy Tales: Responses, Reactions, Revisions, edited by Donald Haase (Detroit:
Wayne State University Press, 1993), 170.
allows him to reclaim some of the German cultural inheritance taken from
all German Jews by the Nazis.”12 Taylor is referring to the German high
culture that Hilsenrath’s use of the grotesque transforms into a sort of
Unterkultur. He does so by displacing the Brothers Grimm tales with his
own versions and, similarly to what Grass does in The Tin Drum, by
parodying the Goethean Bildungsroman. Hilsenrath’s principle technique
is one of carnivalesque inversion. As he inverts high culture into low
culture, he inverts the positions of Übermensch and Untermensch. Max
Schulz, a non-Jew who looks like a Jew, is one of these lowly creatures
raped by his stepfather (another representation of Bakhtin’s grotesque
body) when he is only seven weeks old and becomes a mass murderer in a
concentration camp. After the war he recreates himself as his former
Jewish neighbour and Holocaust victim, Itzig Finkelstein, goes to Tel
Aviv, and becomes a well-respected barber. The two main fairy tales that
intertextually pervade the structure of the first half of this novel are
Mother Holle and Hänsel and Gretel. Hilsenrath's Mother Holle has little
in common with the benevolent woman of the original tale who was
considered a role model for all women in the Third Reich. Within the
figure of Mother Holle we transcend the boundaries of folklore and enter
the realm of Germanic mythology. As an archetypal figure of Germanic
mythology that has survived in the folktale she was of particular interest to
the Nazis.13 No doubt Hilsenrath’s Mother Holle is inspired by the Nazi
obsession with her origins in Norse mythology and her function as a
model for the good mother and Hausfrau. The Norse goddess Hel was a
figure associated with death and rebirth, which we see reflected in the
fairy tale’s image of the well through which the two daughters enter and
exit Mother Holle’s underworld.14 In his parody of Mother Holle,
12
Jennifer Taylor, “Writing as Revenge: Reading Edgar Hilsenrath’s ‘Der Nazi &
der Friseur’ as a ‘Shoah’ Survivor’s Fantasy”, in History of European Ideas 20:1-3
(1995): 439.
13
It was primarily Maria Führer who tried to show the connection between the
German folktales and the Germanic myths behind them. See Maria Führer
NordgermanischeGötterüberlieferung und deutschesVolksmärchen: 80 Märchen
der Brüder Grimm vomMythus her beleuchtet, (München: NeuerFilser-Verlag,
1938). While she identifies Frau Holle as typically Germanic because of the Norse
myths behind this tale (80, 91), she has almost nothing to say about the Tom
Thumb figure (71). In reading this work it becomes obvious that due to their
connection with Germanic myths some tales were more useful to the education of
German youth than others.
14
Führer says of the Norse goddess that she: “nahmzwar die Verstorbenen in Empfang und
hieltsiestrenggefangen und verhüllt in den TiefenihresunterirdischenReiches;
siebargaberauch die Lebenskeime in ihremmütterlichnährendenSchoß” (82).
Peter Arnds 29
Hilsenrath works two functions: that of guardian of the dead and that of
the archetype of the life-giving mother. Her nurturing womb, the
mütterlichnährendeSchoß, is perverted into that of a prostitute. That she
has only one real leg makes her the object of sexual desire for an
American major who is incapable of making love to two-legged women
and ends up making love to her wooden, non-Aryan leg. After he dies
from too much sex with the wooden leg, Mother Holle guards his dead
body in her underworld, her bombed-out basement apartment. Particularly
through the revisionist tendencies of his Mother Holle, to whom six
million dead Jews are nothing but a lie, Hilsenrath alludes to the
ideological abuse by the Nazis of this tale and their appropriation of what,
for them, was a typically Germanic myth.15
My central argument is that their recourse to some of the fairy tales by
the Grimm Brothers is closely linked to the limits of representation of such
historically limited events as the Holocaust and Nazi euthanasia. Some of
the literature dealing with Nazi crimes, and specifically with the
experience of the Holocaust, displays these acts of “translation” from the
real to the mythical in order to offer ways of coming to terms with trauma.
This is a transnational phenomenon as evidenced by the body of texts
drawn into comparison in this study. The representation of diverse aspects
of Nazi crimes in these texts through a series of key mythical images
enriches our understanding of trauma, but also of historiography. Hayden
White’s argument that all historiography is ultimately fictional is taken a
step further in this study in the sense that, in comparison with other forms
of historically more realistic documentations, representations of the
Holocaust drawing on myths and fairy tales, especially where there is a
multiplicity of mythical layers within a given text, offer alternatives for
expressing the hyper-reality of the camp experience, for approaching
historical truth, and for individual attempts to work through trauma
(especially in the case of Edgar Hilsenrath). The Holocaust is an
experience that transcends the limits of what is endurable, and calls for
forms of representation that transcend the limits of what is conventionally
15
Edgar Hilsenrath, Der Nazi & der Friseur (München: Piper, 1990), 64:
“IchkennekeineJuden,” sagte Frau Holle. Frau Hollewollteweitergehen, aber der
Jungesagtedannnoch: “Die kommendochjetztaus den Lagernzurück!” “Du meinst -
die - die noch da sind?” sagte FrauHolle. “Ja,” sagte der Junge, “—habenSie die
Zeitunggelesen?” “Ich lese keineZeitungen,” sagte Frau Holle. “Istsowiesoalles
Schwindel.” “6 MillionenermorderterJuden,” sagte der Junge. “AllesSchwindel,
Willi,” sagte Frau Holle.
This was possibly a key passage in contributing to the publishers' rejection of the
book. References are to this edition from here on.
perceived as real. The genre of magical-realism, or as I prefer to call it

mythical-realism, blends the real and surreal and then steeps it in myth and
folklore, therefore lending itself to literary representations of these limit
experiences.
Bibliography
Agamben, Giorgio. Homo sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life.
Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and his World. Translated by Hélène Iswolsky.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984.
Baring-Gould, Sabine. The Book of Werewolves. Original 1865. Dublin:
Nonsuch, 2007.
Foucault, Michel. Abnormal. Lectures at the Collège de France 1974–
1975. London, New York: Verso, 2003.
Grass, Gunter. The Tin Drum. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Germany:
Luchterhand, 1961.
Heidegger, Martin. Vorträge und Aufsätze. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio
Klostermann, 2000.
Hilsenrath, Edgar. Der Nazi & der Friseur. München: Piper, 1990.
—. The Nazi and the Barber. New York: Doubleday, 1971 (first published
in Germany 1977).
Kosinski, Jerzy. The Painted Bird. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965.
Santner, Eric L. On Creaturely Life: Rilke, Benjamin, Sebald. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2006.
Tournier, Michel. The Ogre. Translated by Barbara Bray. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1997.
Taylor, Jennifer. “Writing as Revenge: Reading Edgar Hilsenrath's ‘Der
Nazi & der Friseur’ as a ‘Shoah’ Survivor’s Fantasy.” History of
European Ideas 20:1–3 (1995).
Zipes, Jack. “The Struggle for the Grimms’ Throne: The Legacy of the
Grimms’ Tales in the FRG and GDR ͒since 1945”, 167–206. In The
Reception of Grimms Fairy Tales: Responses, Reactions, Revisions.
Edited by Donald Haase. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993.
HILARIOUS HELL:
GROTESQUE PHANTASMAGORIAS IN CENTRAL
AND EASTERN EUROPEAN PROSE
OF THE SEVENTIES AND EIGHTIES
LAURYNAS KATKUS
I
Towards the end of Moskva-Petushki (Moscow to the End of Line), by
Russian writer Venedikt Erofeev, the protagonist Venichka sees the giant
Worker and Kolkhoz woman from the famous Soviet sculpture by Vera
Mukhina approaching him; they beat him on his head and the lower parts
of his body with the hammer and sickle they are holding in their hands.1 It
is a nightmare the hero wakes from, but the fit of physical convulsions
continues even after he awakes. No doubt it is a bad omen, pointing to the
misfortunes that await him. At the same time, one cannot but admire the
wittiness of the episode: not only does it convey the aggression of the state
against a person, but it extends it ad absurdum.
Soviet society was riddled with acute tensions and contradictions. It
was a society where the official image of itself as “the best of all worlds”
clashed with the suppressed reality of violence and repression; where
absurd formulas and rituals existed side by side with ingenious popular
tactics of survival. It was a society where most individuals were forced to
resort to mimicry and to adapt a schizophrenic attitude (the various forms
of which were given perceptive analysis by Czesáaw Miáosz in The
Captive Mind, under the concept of “ketman”). This became strongly
evident during the period of stagnation—a period of stability on the
surface, but crisis in the depths. As British historian Tony Judt asserts: “In
the East as in the West, the Seventies and Eighties were a time of
cynicism. The energies of the Sixties had dissipated, their political ideals
1
Venedikt Erofeev, Moscow to the End of Line (Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1994), 153.
32 Hilarious Hell
had lost moral credibility, and engagement in the public interest had given
way to calculations of private advantage”.2 In this “lost time”3, according
to Wolfgang Emmerich, author of a literary history of the German
Democratic Republic (GDR), “the gap between utopia and history was
constantly widening”.4 From 1973, “the economies of Eastern Europe
were falling sharply behind even Western Europe’s reduced growth
rates”5, the existing system fostered “not just stagnation and inefficiency,
but a permanent cycle of corruption and alcoholism”.6 Lithuanian literary
critic Vytautas Kubilius, reflecting on the stagnation era in one particular
nation of the Soviet Bloc—Soviet Lithuania—also diagnoses a deep moral
crisis:
The conformist behaviour (just do not make the status quo worse), which
only covered the illegal business, bribery and ruthless social-climbing, was
accepted as a norm of pragmatic behaviour. New social classes, already
separated in school from Lithuanian history and ideologically brainwashed
[...] were Sovietised to an ever greater extent. Double-dealing and fear,
civic indifference and resignation (one can’t do anything ), careless
working habits and a carpe diem attitude [...], moral deafness and cruel
behaviour, which transferred from the Soviet army and concentration
camps, the psychology of dependence and an inferiority complex—these
typical traits of homo sovieticus have become part of Lithuanian psyche as
well.7
A number of literary historians stress that there is a connection

between social conflicts and crises and grotesque poetics. The Estonian
critic Yuri Talvet, drawing on Yury Lotman’s theory of semiosphere,
maintains that the grotesque appears in periods when there is an
“explosion” ripening in the cultural system and the relations between the
centre and periphery are especially wrought with tension.8 The English
literary scholar Lee Byron Jennings opines that the grotesque is a certain
2
Tony Judt, Postwar. A History of Europe since 1945 (New York: Penguin, 2005),
577.
3
Wolfgang Emmerich, Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR (Berlin: Aufbau,
2005), 515. [The translations of quotes from texts in languages other than English
are mine—L.K.]
4
Ibid., 271.
5
Judt, 577.
6
Ibid., 579, 560.
7
Kubilius, Vytautas, XX amžiaus literatǌra: lietuviǐ literatǌros istorija (Vilnius:
Lietuviǐ literatǌros ir tautosakos institutas, 1996), 511.
8
Yuri Talvet, “The Polyglot Grotesque,” in Interlitteraria, 1992, No. 2 (Tartu:
Tartu University Press), 52,54.
Laurynas Katkus 33
kind of “secret language” which expresses the negative tendencies of the

time.9 The German critic Carl Pietzeker also asserts that the grotesque
“can surface where previous ideological orientations decompose—or start
to decompose—but they are not yet replaced by new ones”.10
In his study on the tendency towards the grotesque in the literature of
Central Europe of the 1960s, the Hungarian comparatist Tamas Berkes
notes that, on the one hand, in the post-Stalinist era the external terror has
weakened, “the freedom of the press increased and the inner cohesion of
literature was partly re-established”, but on the other hand, “partial
solutions to social problems triggered the feeling of transience and
relativity”; since “literatures of our region are closely related to politics,
they succumbed to the tendency of the grotesque.”11 Wolfgang Emmerich
singles out “extended realism"12, which appropriates the fantastic and the
grotesque, as one of the distinct strains of the GDR literature of the 1970s
and 1980s. A quick glimpse at Russian literature of the same period
reveals a similar situation: the grotesque, used already in the 1920s and
1930s in Heart of a Dog and later The Master and Margarita by Mikhail
Bulgakov, or Kotlovan (Foundation Pit) by Andrei Platonov, was
creatively developed in such significant works of fiction as Kangaroo by
Yuz Aleshkovsky, or The Burn by Vassily Aksyonov13, among others.
In this study I will attempt to show how the grotesque enables the
creation of a complex representation of political, social, and moral
tensions of the Soviet system; it conveys its menacing side while at the
same time acting as a harsh satire. I will also highlight a couple of
important traits of the grotesque mode of representation. Firstly, according
to the German literary theorist Peter Fuss‚ “grotesque is a part of the order,
the immanent decomposition of which it pursues”14; in other words, it
shows the fallacies of the system not by taking an open, oppositional
9
Maria E. Tewordt, Das Groteske im Romanwerk Saul Bellows (Hamburg
University Disssertation, 1984), 12.
10
Barbara Sinic, Die sozialkritische Funktion des Grotesken: analysiert anhand
der Romane von Vonnegut, Irving, Boyle, Grass, Rosendorfer und Widmer
(Frankfurt, Vienna: Lang, 2003), 96.
11
Tamas Berkes, “Kierunek groteskowy w literaturach Europy Ğrodkowej i
wschodnej lat szeĞüdziesiątych” in: Studia Slavica Hungarica 50/3-4 (Budapest:
Akademiai Kiado, 2005), 327.
12
Emmerich, 288.
13
Cynthia Simmons, Their Father’s Voice, Vassily Aksyonov, Venedikt Erofeev,
Eduard Limonov, and Sasha Sokolov (New York, Bern, Berlin, Frankfurt, Paris,
Vienna: Lang, 1993), 42-57.
14
Peter Fuss, Das Groteske: ein Medium des kulturellen Wandels (Köln: Böhlau,
2001), 14.
34 Hilarious Hell
stance, but by seeming to accept the official language and imagery.

Secondly, as Mikhail Bakhtin asserts in his study on Dostoevsky, the real
impetus of this genre, notwithstanding its shocking, picaresque, comic, or
journalistic elements, is a concern with the “ultimate questions” a search
“for the truth, its provocation, and, most importantly, its testing”.15 I will
try to show that grotesque texts attempt not only to represent political and
social problems, no matter how pressing they might be, but to tackle their
ideological or mythical foundations as well.
I believe this is one of the reasons why grotesque works of fiction
appear, for the contemporary reader, by and large less steeped in Soviet
history than many other examples of nonconformist literature of the time,
which are often burdened with the detailed registration of suppressed facts
and events, or by wide-ranging critiques that adhere to official ideology.
Another reason of the “freshness” of grotesque texts is, of course, due to
their satirical nature. Thus, interpreting the steep turns of “ironic
fantasies”16 I will refer to the tradition of Menippean satire, which is
described in the studies of Bakhtin and the German literary historian
Werner von Koppenfels. Throughout this study I will use the terms
grotesque and Menippean satire as synonyms. The first, a somewhat more
popular term, is understood as applying not only in the field of literature
but also as a broader aesthetic phenomenon, and the second is understood
as denoting an incarnation of grotesque aesthetics in the literary sphere.
II
The prose texts I have chosen for closer analysis reveal striking
similarities, although they were written in different languages and within
the time frame of roughly a decade. Besides the already mentioned
Moscow to the End of Line by Venedikt Erofeev, this study will look at
Mala Apokalypsa (A Minor Apocalypse), by the Polish writer and
filmmaker Tadeusz Konwicki, and Vilniaus Pokeris (Vilnius Poker), by
the Lithuanian novelist and short story writer Riþardas Gavelis. In addition
to their textual correspondences these works share circumstances of
production: they were not written for official, state-sanctioned publication.
Erofeev’s “poem”, as he himself called it, a short novel completed in 1969
or 1970, had long circulated underground before it was published in the
15
Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota, 1984), 110, 94.
16
Werner von Koppenfels, Der andere Blick oder Das Vermächtnis des Menippos:
paradoxe Perspektiven in der europäischen Literatur (München: Beck, 2007), 9.
Laurynas Katkus 35
West. Its debut in the Soviet Union happened only in the late 1980s;
grotesque enough, it was a journal devoted to issues of temperance that
dared to publish it. Konwicki was one of the first authors in socialist
Poland who consciously wrote for underground publication; A Minor
Apocalypse was published in 1979. Gavelis worked in secret on his
magnum opus throughout most of the 1980s, and when he completed
Vilnius Poker in 1987 the perestroika movement in the Soviet Union had
advanced far enough for Gavelis to envisage its official publication. From
today’s perspective, Vilnius Poker is an outstanding example of unofficial
Lithuanian literature, literature “for the drawer”, as it is called. I believe
these circumstances make these novels more authentic representatives of
the socio-cultural background of the time. At any rate, questions about
internal and external censorship, about the usage of allegories and
“Aesopian language”, which are important, if not crucial, when examining
the majority of officially published works, do not apply in these cases.
From the stock of grotesque motifs in the texts I would like to dwell on
three interconnected topoi: the theme of entropy and (self) destruction; the
satire of social and political life; and the theme of an elusive, distorted
reality.
***
In the opening chapters of Moscow to the End of Line, Venichka
observes the eyes of the crowd in a suburban train. He ironically compares
them with the eyes of the people “where everything is bought and sold”. In
the capitalist world “people look at you distrustfully, with restless anxiety
and torment”; whereas here “they’re constantly bulging with no tension of
any kind in them. There’s a complete lack of any sense” in them. “In this
lies the strength of my nation”17, exclaims the protagonist, but one clearly
senses not only irony, but also anxiety here.
The suggestion that people living in “real socialism” have developed
into a specific anthropological variety is present in the other two novels as
well. The protagonist of Konwicki’s novel observes the crowd gathered on
the occasion of a socialist celebration:
Here, on every side, a stream of disagreeable faces, if they can be called

faces. Mean, sloppy, branded with hereditary and irreversible ugliness.
Occasionally, the oval, melon-like head of a state or Party apparatchik
would flash past among them. They can be distinguished by a certain
alcoholic puffiness, their thin, ugly hair forming nasty locks on their
17
Erofeev, 28.
36 Hilarious Hell
sweaty skulls. They can be recognized by their small, quick, suspicious

eyes, their plump, spongy cheeks, and the absence of mouth, replaced by
an aperture for issuing reports. Jesus God, when did some evil witch
punish this society by turning it into a great herd of Neanderthals.18
Gavelis adds a touch of mystery and horror to this. His protagonist,

Vargalys, is convinced that the totalitarian oppression is emanating from
THEM, a kind of emissary of evil, determined to steal everyone’s soul.
The most telling sign that somebody has succumbed to THEM is—
again—the dead “stare of the void”.19 Their bodies change, too: when this
happens to the wife of Vargalys he starts feeling that at night her body
turns fat, ugly, and doll-like. Their dog no longer recognizes her scent.20 In
another chapter, Gavelis presents a discursive equivalent of these images.
Martynas Poška tries to define homo lituanicus, a distinct variety of homo
sovieticus (this term, which is used in the earlier quote by Vytautas
Kubilius, was coined by the Russian writer Alexander Zinovyev). In his
novel Konwicki also sarcastically mentions “a small, slender, haggard”
race, born in socialism.21
In this situation something strange happens not only to human
appearance and mentality, but also to the life lived, to time. In A Minor
Apocolypse nobody can tell what day, season (on the same day in Warsaw
one can witness snow and summer heat22), or even what year it really is:
the most probable time is the year 1979, the 35th year of Socialist Poland,
but as the plot progresses the protagonist sees signs glorifying the 40th
(this would be the year 1984, a clear allusion to Orwell’s famous
dystopia), the 50th, and even the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic.23
At some point an old party member, Kobialka, explains that in the vein of
competition with the West, the Party decided that “if we don’t overtake
capitalism, then capitalism will wait for us”, so all the calendars were
classified and obfuscated. And now, the senile Kobialka triumphantly
exclaims, the West, too, does not know the exact date and is muddled up
and demoralized.24 In Moscow to the End of Line halted time is
represented by the circular narrative, which ends in the same place it
18
Tadeusz Konwicki, A Minor Apocalypse (London, Boston: Faber and Faber,
1983), 102.
19
Riþardas Gavelis, Vilnius Poker (Rochester: Open Letter, 2009), 48.
20
Ibid, 101.
21
Konwicki, 47.
22
Judith Arlt, Tadeusz Konwickis Prosawerk von Rojsty bis BohiĔ (Bern: Peter
Lang, 1997), 384-385.
23
Ibid, 376-380.
24
Konwicki, 124.
Laurynas Katkus 37
begins. In an alcoholic delirium Venichka sees himself staging an uprising

by local drunkards, who immediately nationalize all vodka stocks in the
local shops and declare war on Norway. Discussing the revolutionary
theses and “decrees”, Venichka and his friend muse over the question
whether they should start counting the years anew (the reference to the
French Revolution is obvious here), but finally decide to leave it as it is on
the grounds that if you “don’t poke around in shit, you don’t smell it”.25 In
other words, time does not bring any change, let alone renewal; it is
incorporated futility and emptiness.
Gavelis expresses this idea through a most plastic metaphor:
wandering through the city, Vargalys suddenly realises that everything has
stopped moving, the river, traffic, dust, scent and taste, animals and
people: “Two pigeons hang in the air next to the highest cross of the
church... they hang helplessly, as if they had stumbled into a giant
invisible cobweb”.26 Vargalys goes into a house, opens the door, and sees
a couple halted in the middle of a sex act: “looking straight at me is a girl’s
distorted face, covered in sweat and pale as if strewn with chalk dust [...]
she’s alive and isn’t about to die, but she looks like an embalmed
corpse”.27 Suddenly it all starts moving again but Vargalys is convinced
that the poisoned blood from the heart of the mythical beast basilisk has
turned the city into a necropolis and he sets out to discover where it is
hiding and to overcome it.28
What started as a description of a type of people living in “real
socialism” is transformed into a mythical narrative. I believe that the
authors’ recourse here is the topos of “a kingdom of the dead”, which, as
Bakhtin asserts, occupies an important place in the history of Menippean
satire.29 What we are confronted with is, of course, not a poetic or heroic
descent to Hades, as we know it from the Orphic myths or the Odyssey.
Nor is it the motif of the “living dead”, which is popular in modern
discourse, because, in the first place, it does not preserve a serious or
menacing tone but is at least partly satirical. The heroes come to
understand that “death has undone so many” (as T.S.Eliot writes in The
Wasteland) not by virtue of detached contemplation or moral excellence;
on the contrary, they are deeply immersed in the contemporary situation.
In the Soviet context perhaps the most apt expression for this gradual,
but unstoppable, entropy is drinking. It is an important motif in the other
25
Erofeev, 123.
26
Gavelis, 273.
27
Ibid., 277.
28
Ibid., 282-83.
29
Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, 118.
38 Hilarious Hell
two novels as well but Erofeev deals with it in a most exhaustive way. On
the one hand, the theme of drinking is a mimesis of social reality: in
Russia, as well as in other socialist countries, excessive and health
damaging consumption of alcohol was a widespread phenomenon (it is not
a coincidence that Gorbachev’s perestroika, a failed movement to reform
the Soviet Union, started with an anti-alcohol campaign). The main
reasons for drinking are widely known. It allowed an individual to, if not
free themselves from the grim reality of a totalitarian society, then at least
to forget it. It enabled uninhibited and sincere contact between people,
regardless of their status. This effect of alcohol became increasingly
valuable in a state marked by constant surveillance, distrust, and stiff
solemnity. According to Pyotr Vail and Alexander Genis, the authors of
the cultural history The Sixties: The World of the Soviet Man, “alcohol has
finally abolished the remains of dogmatic worldview. [...] Alcohol is a
means of sharpening the carnavalesque feeling. With every glass the duty
against the society disappears one after another—the table considers the
drinking mate to be just the human—human, who is devoid of any social
role”.30 It is Venichka’s suitcase full of alcohol which rallies together very
different individuals travelling on the suburban train.31
On the other hand, the novels do not conceal the fact that alcohol is not
only an agent of universal brotherhood and the “global feast” (ɩɢɪ ɧɚ ɜɟɫɶ
ɦɢɪ)“32, but it also has destructive consequences. Gavelis’ hero Vargalys
engages in bouts of drinking by which “destroing myself”, he tries to
“search for an answer”33—in vain, as it appears. Moscow to the End of
Line also shows the consequences of drinking on Venichka’s life. It is by
and large alcohol which forces him, a talented storyteller and polymath, to
lead the life of an unskilled day-labourer. It is alcohol which makes
Venichka endure jeering and humiliation, hangovers and nightmares, and,
finally, makes him miss the Petushki stop, miss his beloved and his son,
and return to Moscow, where he is chased by a gang of strangers.
Although these heroes are conscious of the proximity of death, they
still embrace it. Thus the hero of A Minor Apocolypse agrees to burn
himself in the centre of Warsaw; thus Vargalys—in fact, all four main
characters of Vilnius Poker—after losing to THEM, die or commit suicide.
Furthermore, at the end of all three novels we find a device which could be
30
ɉɟɬɪ ȼɚɣɥɶ, Ⱥɥɟɤɫɚɧɞɪ Ƚɟɧɢɫ, 60-e: ɦɢɪ ɫɨɜɟɬɫɤɨɝɨ ɱɟɥɨɜɟɤɚ (Moskva:
Novoe literaturnoe obozrenije, 1998), 71.
31
Erofeev, 75.
32
Ɇ.Ɇ.Ȼɚɯɬɢɧ, Ɍɜɨɪɱɟɫɬɜɨ Ɏɪɚɧɫɭɚ Ɋɚɛɥɟ ɢ ɧɚɪɨɞɧɚɹ ɤɭɥɬɭɪɚ cɪɟɞɧɟɜɟɤɨɜɶɹ
ɢ Ɋɟɧɟɫɚɧɫɚ (Moskva: Chudožestvennaja literatura, 1990), 92.
33
Gavelis, 94.
Laurynas Katkus 39
called a narrative oxymoron: it appears that the protagonists who narrated

the histories in the first person are already dead. According to von
Koppenfels, the Menippean satire favours an unusual perspective, “for
example from the atop, which radically changes the proportions of the
observed phenomena of life”.34 In this repect “the otherwordly point of
vantage” is the most eccentric perspective possible, which conditions that
the dimensions of the “normality” are wittily and drastically transposed.35
From this perspective our authors comment satirically on Soviet
society which reveals itself as a kind of hilarious hell. They take on
official legends, propaganda apparatus, and political figures. I have
already mentioned the travesty of the October revolution in Moscow to the
End of the Line, and in A Minor Apocalypse a running gag is the slogan
“We have built socialism”, which appears in the strangest places: made of
balloons, candles, or broken plastic baths.
They also attack official culture. Venichka is constantly ridiculing the
exalted images of popular poetry and other arts; his irony reaches perhaps
its highest point in his crazy story told to the fellow travellers in the train,
about how he crossed all the Western world and, for example, did not find
any blacks in the United States, because all the blacks are in Siberia,
whereas in Paris “everybody is scurrying from brothel to the clinic, from
the clinic and back to brothel”36; it is a witty parody of both travelogues of
official writers and journalists and of fantastic popular imagination of what
exists in the inaccessible part of the world.
An inexhaustible source of wit is the Soviet economy, where work is
constantly simulated, where basic goods are lacking, but absurd
regulations and prohibitions are abundant. Vargalys works in a unit of the
National Library which is working to create a digital catalogue. However,
the unit lacks computers because nobody is allowed to have them before
the indefinite time when the Central Library in Moscow will get one.37
Venichka’s team digs a trench and puts in a telephone cable in the
morning, and in the evening, after a day of playing cards and drinking,
they pull it out and throw it away.38 In Warsaw, the tram cannot reach the
end of the line because of the discontinuous supply of electricity.39
However, the satirical gaze also examines spheres less ideologically
contaminated. It seems that te national character of respective peoples
34
von Koppenfels, 92.
35
Ibid., 67.
36
Erofeev, 101, 104.
37
Gavelis, 307.
38
Erofeev, 36.
39
Konwicki, 183.
40 Hilarious Hell
attracts particular attention. True to his theme, Erofeev satirizes the

popular belief that the Russians have a special vocation in this world,
declaring that the “Russian idea” is, in fact, the exploration of drunk
hiccupping, the regularities of which even the omniscient Marx and Engels
were unable to determine.40 Gavelis’s book is full of sarcastic invectives
against conformist and hypocritical Lithuanian society, which would not
stand up against Sovietisation and Russification as it once did. He mocks
their self-justification that they obey all orders of the regime only to show
their absurdity, and thus they work for the collapse of the regime: “if
everyone would act this way, the system would crumble immediately”.41
According to the character Martynas Poška, the officially recognized
artists “sigh because the censor’s framework is suffocating them. They
sigh in an apartment with a custom kitchen, custom bath, and custom toilet
provided by those setting the censorship framework”.42 A similar sharp
note is heard in the A Minor Apocalypse, where the protagonist attacks not
only the liberal artists and nomenclatura (the former Minister of Culture,
who “had spent all his entire professional life making artists rot in jail and
hounding poor art, and now that he was retired, he had suddenly begun to
envy his victims and had taken up the painting himself”43, stages a
vernissage of his own soft-porn paintings, which attracts all the elite), but
also the dissident movement, accusing it of fanaticism and narrow-
mindedness (however, it is their proposal that he set himself on fire that he
agrees with). Perhaps the most impressive feature of this plethora of wit
are the moments of self-irony, when, for example, Konwicki lets a dubious
character quote lofty phrases from his own earlier works, or when
Venichka makes fun of his own addiction, which turns every event, feeling
or state into a pretext to drink (“You’ve got class, Venia. Drink the rest of
the Kubanskaya to the fact, you’ve got class.”44)
Wit and satire reveal the nature of the Soviet system and ideology.
However, the texts do not stop at this point. All three novels contain an
attempt to delineate a “program of behaviour”, to use Yuri Lotman’s term,
which would provide an alternative to the prevailing state of affairs. Here,
the strategies are far from identical: Erofeev models his protagonist on the
figure of the “holy fool” (yurodivy), rooted in the Russian Orthodox
40
Erofeev, 64.
41
Gavelis, 312.
42
Ibid., 74.
43
Konwicki, 86.
44
Erofeev, 142.
Laurynas Katkus 41
tradition45; for Konwicki, it is the knightly code of honour and stoicism,

which he finds in the history of rebellions and resistance movements in
Poland. (“What I miss is men, real men with honour and dignity. Self-
controlled, brave, ascetic, chivalrous”, says the protagonist, at another
point telling the representative of the dissidents: “Be like the old
conspirators. Society remembers those archetypes in its unconscious. They
are part of our collective memory.”46) The positions of Gavelis’s heroes
include the inner exile (Martynas Poška), the individual attempting to live
while ignoring restrictions as much as possible (Gediminas Riauba), and
the hero attempting to understand the nature of THEY, and perhaps to
overcome them (Vytautas Vargalys)—the last position being the most
important. Here, the comic tone recedes or disappears completely; instead,
the mythical or religious narratives once again come into the foreground.
Gavelis invokes the myth of the heroic dragonslayer; Konwicki’s hero’s
last day is full of allusions to the road to Calvary47, and even Venichka
engages in intimate discourses with God and his angels, and compares his
drunk sufferings to the stigmata of St. Teresa.48
Of course, resistance to the system can only be an individual
endeavour—no surprise, if we bear in mind the way ordinary people are
portrayed. In his inquiry into the activities of THEM, which he traces
through the history of Western civilisation, from its very beginning,
Vargalys is convinced that anyone who has tried to warn humanity (such
as Socrates, Nietzsche, and Roman Polansky, among others) was silenced
in a most cruel or brutal way. Even “Mr. Everybody” Venichka, who
seems to be the perfect embodiment of the spirit of Bakhtinian carnival,
stresses, in several significant places, his otherness from the collective
“body of people”, confessing that he cannot overcome the instinct towards
intimacy, even when blind drunk.49
The loneliness and isolation of these heroes is expressed through the
theme of the son or the heir. According to philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas,
the relationship between father and son can be treated as a metaphor for
the authentic transpersonal relationship50; in our context it also signifies
45
See Natalia Ottovordemgentschenfelde, Jurodstvo: eine Studie zur Phänomenologie
und Typologie des “Narren in Christo”: Jurodivyj in der postmodernen russischen
Kunst; Venedikt Erofeevs “Die Reise nach Petuški”, Aktionismus Aleksandr
Breners und Oleg Kuliks (Frankfurt: Lang, 2004).
46
Konwicki, 95, 138.
47
Arlt, 391-402.
48
Erofeev, 16-18, 27.
49
Ibid., 32.
50
Emmanuel Lévinas, Etika ir begalybơ (Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1994), 70.
42 Hilarious Hell
the possibility of the transmission of an alternative “program of

behaviour” to another person. Venitchka travels to Petushki not only to see
his beloved, but also his three year old son, whom he adorns with angelic
traits: “everything they say—the eternally living angels and eternally
dying children—is so important that I feel I should write down the words
in flowing longhand”.51 In A Minor Apocalypse the hero is approached by
an ardent fan, a young man from the provinces who swears that he will
follow in his footsteps, write a masterpiece, “finish your work”, and
“avenge us both”.52 However, it appears that Tadzio is not only absolutely
devoid of talent but is also a long-time agent of the secret service who
betrays the protagonist, among others.53 In the last episode of his book,
Erofeev no less radically deconstructs the angelic image of children
(though not of his son). The isolation of the hero upon his approaching
death is highlighted by the laughter of angels, which is compared to the
cruel laughter of children over the body of a dead man who was run over
by the train.54 In Gavelis’s novel a similar exhortation is repeated several
times: do not have children, because “THEY will instantly devour”55 them.
Martynas Poška is the only hero who has a son who in public life is an
activist for the Communist Youth, while in his private life, he is a sadistic
rapist.
Such double, false identities, unexpected twists and revelations are an
important feature both of the heroes and of the plot of the texts. Erofeev’s
Venichka travels with a creepy company of strangers, who have a strange
resemblance to each other56, and in the end even the angels take off their
masks and show themselves as demonic creatures. In A Minor Apocalypse
the secret service men who arrest and extract a confession out of the
protagonist maintain that they, in fact, belong to the opposition, just a
more advanced one which has outwitted even the Russians; they beat him
very softly, only so they can photograph it because they, too, get
checked.57 Two irreconcilable opponents who symbolise the divided
society of the Socialist Poland—the dissident writer Rysio and the Marxist
philosopher Edek—are brothers. Moreover (according to his brother),
51
Erofeev, 50.
52
Konwicki, 177.
53
Ibid., 205.
54
Erofeev, 163.
55
Gavelis, 193, also 48, 230.
56
Erofeev, 72-76.
57
Konwicki, 117.
Laurynas Katkus 43
Rysio is living from the royalties of a Soviet book, which he wrote in his
youth, meanwhile Edek (according to his brother) is a devout Catholic.58
In Vilnius Poker, the phenomenon of things not being what they seem
at first glance is connected with the totalitarian state and its propaganda
apparatus. Two characters accidentally find themselves in the middle of a
kind of Potemkin village, hastily arranged on the occasion of a visit of the
Party leader Suslov, with an abundance of goods in the shops and happy,
shiny people all around. However, immediately after the departure of the
boss everything is removed and even the precious pineapple, which Poška
has bought, is confiscated.59 The relativity of reality is engrained in the
world governed by THEM. This notion is reiterated in the composition of
the novel through the use of an unreliable narrator: Vilnius Poker consists
of four stories told by four people about the same events, but all they all
contradict at crucial moments. In this way, Gavelis manages to leave open
the question whether the desperate quest of Vargalys for THEM and the
basilisk was real, or just a product of his paranoid imagination.
III
I believe that this discourse of universal skepticism, which manifests
itself to a stronger extent in the novels written later (in Konwicki’s it is
stronger than in Erofeev’s; in Gavelis’ it is stronger than in Konwicki’s), is
an important characteristic of late Soviet mentality. In a system where the
authorities could fabricate the past and the present by creating or erasing
the “facts” at will, the suspicion that everything is distorted, concealed,
and mystified was a basic feeling. By the 1970s and 1980s, any credibility
the official ideology once had was gone, but the ideology was,
nevertheless, still ubiquitous and compulsory. Under such conditions of
ideological monopoly every fact and interpretation came to be understood
as fallacious and usurping and for a thinking individual is was natural to
cling to the relativity of truth and the absurdity of reality.
One of the most insightful analysts of modern totalitarianism, Hannah
Arendt, asserts this is encoded in the ideocratic nature of the system:
The totalitarian systems tend to demonstrate that action can be based on any
hypothesis and that, in the course of consistently guided action, the particular
hypothesis will become true, will become actual, factual reality. The assumption
58
Konwicki, 159, 161.
59
Gavelis, 177-182.
44 Hilarious Hell
which underlies consistent action can be as mad as it pleases; it will always

end in producing facts which are “objectively” true. 60
I believe this nexus between relativist notions and the sociopolitical

milieu in Eastern and Central Europe has often been overlooked. The wave
of postmodernist fiction and theory which swept through the region in the
1990s after the breakdown of the Soviet bloc, was by and large attributed
to an opening towards the influence of Western culture. However, if we
consider that the common notions of the relativity of reality and the
elusiveness of truth in the East was the result of different inner premises
(and which was present, as the texts examined here show, at least as a
nucleus in the literature of the Soviet era in the 1970s and 1980s), we
arrive at a more multifaceted view of recent literary development.
In my opinion, these works of fiction are important to contemporary
cultural history in yet another respect. The famous dictum of Walter
Benjamin asserts that:
Every epoch not only dreams the next, but also, in dreaming, strives
toward the moment of waking. It bears its end in itself and unfolds it—as
Hegel already saw—with ruse. In the convulsions of the commodity
economy we begin to recognize the monuments of the bourgeoisie as ruins
even before they have crumbled.61
I believe that by creatively choosing certain thematic and

compositional devices of the grotesque tradition in their novels, Erofeev,
Konwicki, and Gavelis depict Soviet monuments as ruins before their
actual ruination, and reveal that the nightmarish, deadly, but also dead-
funny dream was dreamt until its end.
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60
Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future (New York: Viking, 1969), 88.
61
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Böhlau, 2001.
Gavelis, Riþardas. Vilnius Poker. Translated by Elizabeth Novickas.
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Judt, Tony. Postwar. A History of Europe since 1945. New York: Penguin,
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Konwicki, Tadeusz. A Minor Apocalypse. Translated by Richard Lourie.
London, Boston: Faber and Faber, 1983.
von Koppenfels, Werner. Der Andere Blick oder das Vermächtnis des
Menippos. München: C.H. Beck, 2007.
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Vilnius: Lietuviǐ literatǌros ir tautosakos institutas, 1996.
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Ottovordemgentschenfelde, Natalia. Jurodstvo: eine Studie zur
Phänomenologie und Typologie des “Narren in Christo”: Jurodivyj in
der postmodernen russischen Kunst; Venedikt Erofeevs “Die Reise
nach Petushki”, Aktionismus Aleksandr Breners und Oleg Kuliks.
Frankfurt: Lang, 2004.
Simmons, Cynthia. Their Father‘s Voice, Vassily Aksyonov, Venedikt
Erofeev, Eduard Limonov, and Sasha Sokolov. New York, Bern,
Berlin, Frankfurt, Paris, Vienna: Lang Verlag, 1993.
Sinic, Barbara. Die sozialkritische Funktion des Grotesken: analysiert
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THE REVOLUTION(S)
OF THE GROTESQUE BODY:
FORMS OF SATIRICAL DEMYSTIFICATION
IN THE POST-COMMUNIST GERMAN
AND ROMANIAN NOVEL
ROXANA GHITA
After the fall of Communism in 1989, the former totalitarian countries

of Eastern Europe entered a period of rapid and dramatic social change
that was met with both exhilaration and fear. While opening up the road
for a different future, the historical turning point of 1989, as aptly
expressed by the German word Wende, also left people facing a new and
uncertain present and the collapse of national and individual identity
among the ruins of a shattered past. As literature took up the task of
responding to this historical change a similar literary phenomenon can be
observed in both Germany and Romania: a new generation of writers has
emerged who have constantly used the tools of humour and irony to
confront the double and often contradictory challenge of registering
collective memory in order to preserve the rapidly vanishing past and,
simultaneously, of struggling to come to terms with the dark heritage of
the totalitarian era.
The aim of this paper is to address, from a comparative perspective, the
grotesque elements lying at the core of the satirical representation of
history in two post-communist novels: Helden wie wir (Heroes like Us,
1995) by Thomas Brussig and the last volume of the trilogy Orbitor
(Glaring, 1996, 2002, and 2007) by Mircea Cărtărescu. My choice of these
two texts is motivated by a number of similarities, both on the narrative
level of story and plot as well as on the level of reception. Thus, both
novels represent fictional autobiographies concerned not only with the
telling of an individual story (the life of the protagonist), but also with a
detailed portrayal of collective life under the totalitarian regimes of the
German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Socialist Republic of
Romania. Furthermore, they both end with an account of the decline of the
Roxana Ghita 47
communist regime, offering a fictional depiction of historical events

marking its sudden collapse: the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Romanian
Revolution (from this perspective, they both exhibit traits of the alternate
history genre). Moreover, they both have met with much public and
critical acclaim. Brussig’s novel was generally viewed as the long-awaited
Wenderoman1 and considered by many a landmark in post-communist
German literature, while also being a highly successful bestseller and
producing equally popular theatrical and cinematic adaptations.
Cărtărescu’s trilogy has been hailed as the most important accomplishment
in contemporary Romanian fiction. Last but not least, and certainly the
most important aspect for this case, both works make ample use of satire
and parody in order to demystify collective images of the past and history
and to deconstruct long established narratives of national identity.
1. History in the Guise of the Grotesque

The massive and striking presence of the grotesque in a considerable
number of post-communist literary works taking to task the social
mutations which occurred in 1989 and the subsequent “period of
transition” can be linked, as a first step, to the very nature of this special
historical time. In fact, instances of the grotesque seem to (re)surface in
epochs of intense and rapid social transformation in which opposite
systems, worldviews, institutional, and hierarchical structures clash in a
dramatic fashion.2 Philip Thomson stresses that the “grotesque mode in art
and literature tends to be prevalent in societies and eras marked by strife,
radical change or disorientation”.3 While analysing the grotesque in the
literary works produced during the periods of social change in Russia’s
history, Kevin M. F. Platt coined the term “revolutionary grotesque” to
define this specific type of literary response to historical revolutionary
times, when the:
1
A “novel about the turning-point”.
2
Cf. Ken Jowitt, “The Leninist Legacy”, in The Revolutions of 1989, edited by
Vladimir Tismaneanu (London: Routledge, 1999), 220: “And what one now sees
taking place in Eastern Europe is more the breakup of existing identities and
boundaries than a breakthrough to new ones. [...] Currently, the cleavages in
Eastern Europe are neither crosscutting nor superimposed. They are diffuse, poorly
articulated, psychological as much as political, and, because of that, remarkably
intense.”
3
Philip Thomson, The Grotesque, (London: Methuen, 1972), 11.
48 The Revolution(s) of the Grotesque Body
chaotic mix of divergent social worlds, possessing different values,

expectations, behaviours, and ways of using language, results in a loss of
social stability and of a stable ground for signification. People, signs, and
things that until recently appeared solidly obvious in shape and
significance fall subject to an impossible, doubled-over perspective where
back and front, top and bottom, left and right sides are somehow all visible
at once. Something of the increased sense of the contingency of all socially
constituted value during such times is captured in Bakhtin's concept of
“polyglossia”, a social-historical situation where competing languages and
modes of interpreting the world “peer into each other’s faces”.4
In Brussig’s and Cărtărescu’s novels, the specificity of the

“revolutionary grotesque”, to borrow Platt’s term, lies, to my eyes, in its
two-fold nature. On the one hand, the texts undertake an examination of
the communist past in which the grotesque is employed as a mode of
subverting the established social order. Thus, the grotesque becomes a
revolutionary device for exposing the inhumanity of the totalitarian
regime, their ideological discourses, and social practices. However, when
doing this from the perspective of the present the texts also explore the
mechanisms of individual and collective memory, and the liberating
laughter made possible by the grotesque proves to be a useful tool in
investigating and accepting one’s own life under the communist regime.
On the other hand, the novels register and respond to the age of
incongruity and violent transformation in which they are born—the post-
communist era—and are marked by a complex and contradictory mixture
of hope and enthusiasm, but also anxiety and a growing disillusionment
with the present. Revolutionary joy (Beethoven's Ode to Joy was played in
front of the Brandenburg Gate to celebrate the newly found freedom) is
gradually replaced with the bitter disappointment that the countries have
not undergone the expected process of confronting their dark past, that is,
asking, on both individual and collective levels, critical questions of one’s
heritage and facing up to the necessary ethical responsibility. Brussig
confesses in an interview that Heroes Like Us “is a book, which I wrote
out of anger and disappointment that the Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the
coming to terms with the past, hasn’t actually occurred”.5 While
Cărtărescu, in the last volume of his trilogy, depicts how the Romanian
Revolution has been “stolen” by the communist clique that has remained
in positions of political power.
4
Kevin M. F. Platt, History in a Grotesque Key: Russian Literature and the Idea of
Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 7.
5
Thomas Brussig, interview with Michael Neubauer, Gefeit vor Utopien, TAZ,
Oktober 5, 1998, 15.
Roxana Ghita 49
A strong emphasis on grotesque imagery of the human body is central

to both variants of the grotesque mode that I am discussing here, in the
vein of the aesthetics of Rabelais for which Bakhtin coined the term
“grotesque realism”. While up until now there has been no study linking
Cărtărescu’s grotesque to that of Rabelais, Brussig’s use of the grotesque
has been acknowledged as growing out of the Rabelaisian tradition6 with
Margrit Frölich’s article “Thomas Brussig’s Satire of Contemporary
History”7 being the most elaborate attempt at analyzing Brussig’s novel in
Bakhtinian terms. Her focus, however, lies on the comical devices of the
grotesque; the author is most interested in the production of subversive
laughter.
The detailed and exaggerated depiction of corporeality with its
contents related to “copulation, pregnancy, birth, growth, old age,
disintegration, [and] dismemberment”8 plays a crucial part in challenging
the authority of social norms enforced by the communist regime as it
offers, as Lyn Marven sums up in her study of the grotesque aesthetics of
body and narrative in contemporary German literature:
[O]ther representations of the body, ones which lay bare the state’s
symbolic discourse and which counter, undermine or subvert it. Images of
the body [...] challenge the body discourse of the hegemonic power—the
totalitarian state—by making its effects visible [...] or by representing the
body as uncontrollable and disruptive of cultural signification.9
In the following essay I will concentrate on a specific trope of the

grotesque body present in the novels, namely hypertrophy, or the
magnifying gaze, while stressing its interconnectedness with other topoi of
the grotesque such as the monstrous double or the reversal, and discuss
their role in the instrumentalisation of political satire.
6
For Stephen M. Brockmann, for example, Heroes Like Us is a “Rabelaisian
literary hit,” cf. his article “The Politics of German Comedy”, German Studies
Review, 23:1 (2000): 33-51.
7
Margrit Frölich, “Thomas Brussig’s Satire of Contemporary History,” GDR
Bulletin 25 Spring (1998): 21-30.
8
Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1984), 25.
9
Lyn Marven, Body and Narrative in Contemporary Literatures in German: Herta
Müller, Libuše Moníková, and Kerstin Hensel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005),
18, quoted in Jill E. Twark, Humor, satire, and identity: eastern German literature
in the 1990s (Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), 92-93.
2. Hypertrophy, or the Magnifying Gaze

Excess, uncontrollable growth, hypertrophy—all are directed against
the classical principles of harmony, induce both repulsion and laughter,
and are therefore key tropes of the grotesque imagery. While not
necessarily related to corporeality, when this type of magnifying gaze
focuses on the human body it leads either to figures characterized by their
hyperbolic dimensions, namely the traditional giant whose classical
embodiment is represented by Gargantua and Pantagruel, or in the
abnormal proliferation of one member/organ/part of the body which
consequently acquires monstrous features. The fact that this specific trope
has a privileged position in the two novels examine here can be related to
its presence and function in the official political imagery of all Eastern
Europe countries to varying degrees and in different shades. This all-
pervading rhetoric has its roots in the Soviet-imposed glorification of the
founding fathers of the communist doctrine: Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and
to whom Stalin’s figure as “liberator of people” was added during the
wave of Sovietisation after World War II. The communist leaders were
portrayed by Party propaganda as giants whose factual representation in
the form of huge statues was a common practice in all the states within the
Soviet sphere of influence.10
2.1. The Fall of the Berlin Wall, or the Triumph

of the Hypertrophic Penis
The protagonist of Brussig’s Heroes like Us, Klaus Uhltzscht, is caught
in a grotesque conflict between his sexual fantasies and a deep sense of
guilt arising from his adherence to the ideals of communist ideology. He
internalizes, from a tender age, the propagandistic constructs of the “giant
leader” and thus suffers from a distorted image of self and body. In fact,
the impact of the Lenin monument on his young mind is so important that
even as an adult (as the storytelling narrator of the book) he believes that
10
The beginnings of this practice date back already to the war years and Western
intellectuals are not alien to it; in fact they helped to construct the giant myth as
proved by the Stalin biography that French writer Henri Barbusse published in
1933, Stalin: A New World Seen Through One Man, trans. Vyvyan Holland (New
York: Macmillan 1935). In this work the second chapter, presenting Lenin, is
entitled The Giant, but as Robert C. Tucker points out in Stalin in Power: The
Revolution from Above, 1928-1941 (New York: Norton, 1992) “its key theme was
the formation of two giants’ fighting partnership in the years before, during, and
shortly after 1917” (336).
Roxana Ghita 51
this giant representation of the socialist thinker embodies the essence of

totalitarianism:
I would like to show you Lenin’s monument—unfortunately it has been

removed. At the base of this monument, the red scarf had been bound
around my neck, when I was 10 years old. If only you could feel that
impact today, you could at least get a notion of what else totalitarianism
means: everyone is only a dwarf in front of the giant who is standing there
looking into the horizon that he only can glimpse. How I accepted this size
difference as a matter of course! To someone like this every one of those
insignificant little men at the base of the pedestal must of course sacrifice
his insignificant life.11
This dedication, born out of his naïve understanding of Marxist

teachings, which the state forced unto children through indoctrination both
at home and in school, leads Klaus to identify himself with the “small
trumpeter”, a figure from a communist tale of exemplary self-abnegation,
who, as a bodyguard, was said to have sacrificed himself to save the life of
an important Communist leader, Ernst Thälmann. The metonymical
transfer which enables him to see himself as the small trumpeter’s
reincarnation is made possible by Klaus’s conviction that his penis was the
smallest in the world: “To the small trumpeter also belonged a small
trumpet—and I had the smallest trumpet ever”.12
Brussig portrays Klaus as an outcast in the tradition of picaresque
novels: his naïveté, hilarious misunderstanding, and grotesque misuse of
the socialist norms and ideals that he aims to serve through his sexual
perversions allow him to expose the absurdity of the totalitarian system,
culminating in the most striking exploit, that of bringing down the Berlin
Wall with his penis. One can easily recognize in this technique the
carnival’s master trope of the mundus inversus: the wall, the most
prominent and ominous symbol of the regime’s power, is brought down by
the ridiculous appendage of the enthusiastic regime’s servant, the small
trumpeter. However, this inversion is prepared by another grotesque
reversal. Following a burlesque injury during the demonstrations in East
Berlin in November 1918, Klaus’s genitalia are damaged like a “squashed
frog,” yet their plastic reconstruction yields an unexpected result, as his
penis becomes monstrously huge: “Between my legs there was something
like an animal, rolled-up and peaceful. Was this really...? Just imagine,
11
Thomas Brussig, Helden wie wir (Frankfurt: Fischer Verlag, 1995), 100.
Translation of Brussig is mine—RG.
12
Ibid., 101.
you wake up one day and instead of your usual thing, you find between
your legs the biggest member that you have ever seen”.13 Revealing what
really happened on the evening of November 9th, as thousands of people
took to the streets following Schabowski’s press conference, Klaus aims to
dissipate the myths surrounding the famous historical event of tearing
down the Wall, namely that the peaceful East Germans, in an
unprecedented act of courage, brought down the Wall, or in his own
words, “the People-Force-Open-the-Wall-Legend.” Klaus’s motivation for
this revisionist account is, of course, rooted in his megalomania, but it also
grows out of a post-unification disillusionment which is, in fact, that of
Brussig himself: the disillusionment with the passivity and compliance of
the East German people. Before and after the collapse of Communism:
before, as they passively accepted and even collaborated with the regime;
after, as they were reluctant to take up responsibility for their collective
compliance with the regime and meekly accepted all the legal unification
processes that were carried out by West German politicians and their
consequences. As Klaus puts it, “As long as millions of losers don’t face
up to their failure, they will remain losers.”14
Klaus’s personal take on the night the Wall fell is a biting satire of the
peaceful civilian revolution carried out with the same discipline and
compliance that characterized the citizens of the GDR. Yet the events of
that historical night had been prepared in advance and, as one has already
learned to expect according to the tradition of the picaro, Klaus is once
again the disturbing element interfering with the established order of
things. The grotesque topos that Brussig uses in this case touches upon the
figure of the monstrous double and implies the “fusion of different
realms,” as the foremost theoretician of the grotesque, Wolfgang Kayser,
put it in his groundbreaking study of the grotesque in art and literature.15
In their effort to save Honecker’s life, which is threatened by cancer, the
doctors select Klaus as the only possible candidate for the necessary
transfusion, since his blood had developed unique properties thanks to his
life-long practice of reducing his fluid intake in order to achieve control
over his erections. Through this medical procedure, which Klaus calls
“Perversenbluttherapy” (therapy by means of the blood of a pervert),16
13
Ibid., 300.
14
Ibid., 312.
15
Wolfgang Kayser, The Grotesque in Art and Literature (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1981), 185.
16
The recourse to the archetypical image of blood as a source of life, concentrating
the vital force of the individual is another satirical take on German history, since
the Nazi propaganda was built around an ideology of “blood and soil”.
Roxana Ghita 53
that which is most incongruent, irreconcilable, the lowest (the most

perverted, sick and ugly) and the highest (as the great “strategist” of the
party, Honecker embodies the purest ideals of socialism) is combined. As
a result, Honecker—whose portrayal as a senile old man, unable to utter a
word and only interested in his Mikado game, is sufficiently grotesque in
itself—becomes a kind of monstrous double of Klaus and thus able to
commit atrocious acts of cruelty towards even his own people: “After the
therapy by means of the perverted blood, he had stopped being harmless”,
giving the order to close the only border still open, to load and point the
guns. As Klaus rightly stresses, the inhumanity of the regime goes beyond
simple criminal acts, and their unethical scope cannot be assessed other
than by recurring to such explanations as grotesque perversion: “To incite
protests is mostly tactical thinking, to brutally suppress protests is mostly a
crime, yet to incite protests in order to brutally suppress them is
perversion.”17
Klaus’s self-representation as the main hidden and unaccounted for
force behind the collapse of the regime provides logical explanations for
the well-known historical facts, thus exposing the self-indulgent dominant
narratives of the time, yet they remain rooted in that distorted logic which
is his alone and which imitates that of the socialist ideology. The East
Germans couldn’t possibly be the heroes of the Wall’s fall on the night of
November 9th, as they stood there frightened, held back by only a dozen or
so border guards: “take it from one who knows: people of that kind have
undersized pricks!”18 What was missing, explains Klaus, was the
explosion of people’s justified anger, and it was he, the sexually repressed
anti-hero who had become an obsessed perpetrator in his role as a Stasi
agent, the constantly oppressed and unsuccessful picaro, who ultimately
and ironically brought the regime to its downfall. “No one who dismisses
my story can possibly understand what is wrong with Germany. Why not?
Because nothing makes sense without me—because I’m the missing link in
Germany’s recent history,” warns Klaus on the last page of the book.19
Klaus’s personal victory is, however, an ambivalent one. He prevails in
front of the oppressive regime only by becoming a monster, by taking the
system’s own perversity to the extreme: on the psychological level, he has
become a sexual psychopath, on the physical level, he has become a
deformed curiosity, like those displayed in the collection of pathological
17
Brussig, Helden wie wir, 276.
18
Ibid., 316.
19
Ibid., 323.
specimens in Berlin’s Charité-Museum.20 Relevant to the narrative of this

convoluted reversal of the established order is the scene where his own
mother runs away from his hospital room, seized by horror upon having
glimpsed his gigantic genitalia. Klaus’s first and last victory over his
mother (who has constantly subjected her son to the tyranny of the
socialist norms of sexual repression, thus being the main culprit in the
evolution of his distorted sexuality) occurs shortly before his final and
complete liberation through the bringing down of the wall. It is no less
important as it points to another important theme of Brussig’s satire: the
criticism of East German intellectuals and specifically the “generation of
the mothers” represented here by the most prominent figure of East
German literature, Christa Wolf, who herself was accused of supporting
and complying with an inhuman regime.
2.2. The Romanian Revolution or the Victorious Rape

of the Giant
The sanctification of the communist leaders in the form of would be
eternal colossi plays an equally important role in Mircea Cărtărescu’s
reconstruction of the political past. Keeping in line with the explanatory
theories of the established historiography, the Romanian writer takes the
dictator’s visit to North Korea in the summer of 1971 as a turning point in
his state policy. What so deeply influenced Nicolae Ceauúescu during that
ill-boding Korean stay was the (until then) inconceivable dimension of the
personality cult fostered by Kim Il-Sung, which took the concrete shape of
colossal statues: “Ceauúescu hadn’t been able to look at the sky, during the
course of his visit, without seeing, on hills and mountains, the stone face
of the new Buddha [...] nor to take a piss without looking into the wise
man’s seductive eyes”.21 Immediately upon his return, Ceauúescu decides
to initiate a similar personality cult aiming at equalling and even
surpassing his rival on the megalomania scale of history. At the terrible
price of generalized poverty paid by the population, he assumes the role of
20
In the chapter “Bodies and Borders: the Monsters of Berlin” of her book Writing
the New Berlin: the German Capital in Post-Wall Literature (Rochester: Camden
House, 2008), Katharina Gerstenberger analyses the ways in which many post-
unification texts draw upon the grotesque imagery of the Charité Museum’s
collection of curiosities, reopened for the public in 1998, to explore their
“meanings for Berlin after its defining border disappeared in its physical
manifestation but not as a mental construct” (52).
21
Mircea Cărtărescu, Orbitor, vol. 3 (Bucureúti: Humanitas, 2007), 272-273. All
translations from Romanian are mine—RG.
Roxana Ghita 55
a godlike “architect” and dictates the building of the People’s House, a

palace designed to be the seat of political and administrative power,
registered in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s second largest
administrative building after the Pentagon. The grotesqueness of the site is
summed up by architects and historians alike:
The palace is presented as a Medusa-like monster which serves to petrify

the people through the wonder at its sheer scale. For Petrescu [N.B.
architect and Reader in Architecture at the University of Sheffield],
Ceauúescu was caught up in a psychotic delirium for architecture, an
“architecturomania”. This psychosis allowed him to attempt to replace
reality by the product of his own monstrous architectural hallucination. Yet
the monster is etymologically linked to the wonder. Monsters both terrify
and awaken the spirit with their sphinx-like provocation. And in this
awakening, they offer a glimpse of hope. Understood dialectically, the
People’s House anticipates its own reversal, and in so doing “it marks the
crisis and the imminence of change”.22
As a dual symbol of both the epitome of power and its collapse, the
palace has an important function in the narrative structure of Orbitor (an
entire chapter is devoted to its description), taking on mythological traits:
“Actually, the People’s House wasn’t a building, it was all buildings put
together, from all times and all continents”.23 Cărtărescu’s depiction
repeatedly underlines its grotesque features (enormous proliferation,
ornamental hyperbole, monstrous imagery), presenting it as a double of the
Domus Aurea, Nero’s famous palace to which rediscovery the etymology
of the word “grotesque” itself is linked. The dictator himself is presented
as Nero’s modern ghost, for, as Ralf Remshardt asserts, “these ornaments
are connected to the name of Nero, who stands as a grotesque parody of
the Augustan emperors in the period of Rome’s accelerated decline,
himself embodying the excesses and vacillations of a time out of joint”.24
The image of the dictatorial couple, Elena and Nicolae, threatened to be
engulfed by the uncontrollable growth of the gigantesque objects, almost
reduced to dwarfs behind their “sculpted desks, huge as tanks”25 already
heralds the topos of the mundus inversus, concretized in the revolutionary
upheavals of December 1989.
22
Neil Leach, Architecture and Revolution: Contemporary Perspectives on
Central and Eastern Europe (London: Routledge, 1999), 9.
23
Cărtărescu, Orbitor, 3, 477.
24
Ralf Remshardt, Staging the Savage God: The Grotesque in Performance
(Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004), 6.
25
Taking up quite literally the Rabelaisian tradition of grotesque realism,

Cărtărescu personifies the Romanian Revolution as a feminine giant
whose traits reflect those found in the painting Revolutionary Romania, a
famous work celebrating the Romanian nation during the 1848 revolution
in the form of a beautiful woman in Romanian folk costume.26 When the
10 metre tall girl first appears on the Bucharest streets crowded with
protesters, people’s initial reaction is to imagine she is one of the huge
statues Ceauúescu was so fond of, destined to be placed on top of the
People’s House as an allegoric representation of the country or a defiant
reply to the capitalist Statue of Liberty: “They could have pinched
themselves, thinking they were dreaming, but no [...], if this were a dream,
then it was the eyes wide-open dream of the brave Romanian nation who,
lo’ and behold, had finally marched in the steps of others and now lived to
see its hour of awakening”.27 As a gust of wind suddenly made her
traditionally embroidered skirts swirl about, “the ones close to her could
catch a glimpse of her black lace stockings and the fiery red chiffon garter
belt tightening on the sultry girl’s thigh; a unanimous erection thus spread
throughout the vast square.”28 Rising to new heights, the tension is
condensed in the vital and self-evident question agitating the crowd: whom
will she choose among the yearning grooms to engage in a freedom orgy,
each of them “hoping to be the chosen one, each of them carrying in his
pants a marshal’s baton, hardened by this glorious day of the wedding with
History”.29
It is important to notice the similarities and differences between
Cărtărescu’s and Brussig’s counterfactual stories of the fall. In both cases,
all the grotesque tropes in use are woven into a narrative whose nexus
engages both a crude depiction of sexual processes and a sexual level of
symbolism: the uncontrollable nature of erection mirrors the
unpredictability of history, which, contradicting the historical materialist
historiography, is not deterministic but rather chaotic, governed by
26
The painting is the work of Constantin Daniel Rosenthal and portrays Maria
Rosetti; both the painter and model were famous revolutionary figures of the 1848
revolution. Having come to symbolize the beauty of Romanian women and the
glory of the Romanian nation alike, the painting holds an important place in the
nationalistic and xenophobic imagery of the country, which Cărtărescu attacks by
pointing out that, ironically, neither the painter (born in Budapest to Jewish
parents) nor the model (the English-born Mary Grant, wife of the radical leader C.
A. Rosetti) were in fact Romanians.
27
28
Ibid., 245.
29
Ibid., 245.
Roxana Ghita 57
chance.30 The erect phallus becomes a symbol of the free will of the
individual who finally asserts his will against the oppressive system.
However, if Klaus’s account constantly posits a self-glorifying gap between
himself as the liberator and the passive onlookers, which ultimately
amounts to a story of individual success typical for the capitalist discourse
of the West, Cărtărescu chooses to remain here in the proximity of the
carnivalesque pattern which, in Bakhtin’s view, not only implies an
inversion of the hierarchical order, but also the momentary instauration of
an egalitarian stance:
The suspension of all hierarchical precedence during the carnivals was of

particular importance [...] all were considered equal during the carnival.
[...] These truly human relations were not only a fruit of imagination or
abstract thought; they were experienced. The utopian ideal and the realistic
merged in this carnival experience, unique of its kind.31
For that one magical moment of collective erection in front of the

gigantesque Revolution (and Cărtărescu’s writing can undoubtedly be
discussed within the categorical framework of magical realism), the vast
square in front of the Central Committee Building32 had become an
egalitarian arena, whereupon each citizen’s utopia of freedom and self-
fulfilment seemed to have miraculously come alive. This democratic
dream proves nevertheless to be short-lived, and here Cărtărescu’s
alternate history departs both from Bakhtin’s carnivalesque paradigm and
the official version of the revolution upheld by the power discourse ever
since: the apparent free choice of the beautiful giant, who selects a number
of men from the crowd, lifting and placing them in the same balcony from
which the dictator had just left, turns out to be just a scheme in a well-
planned manoeuvre of a coup d’état under the appearance of a true
revolutionary upheaval. The usurpers, with allegorical names in the
tradition of the mediaeval farce and morality play,33 are in fact the freaks,
30
See also Rachel J. Halverson’s “Comedic Bestseller or Insightful Satire: Taking
the Interview and Autobiography to Task in Thomas Brussig's Helden wie wir,” in
Textual Responses to German Unification. Processing Historical and Social
Change in Literature and Film, ed. Carol-Anne Costabile-Heming, Rachel J.
Halverson, and Kristie A. Foell (Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2001), 101.
31
Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 10.
32
It is from the balcony of this building that Ceauúescu gave his final speech on
December 21, 1989, after which he was forced by a booing crowd to flee by
helicopter from the rooftop.
33
These names allude to popular nicknames of the real members of the National
Salvation Front who assumed political control over the country, and often reveal
prodigies, or marvels of nature exhibited by the State Circus for their

shows—and therein emerges a “rational” explanation for the Revolution’s
gigantesque body as well—who had long conspired to overthrow the
dictators and assume power (in reality, an underground organization
within the Communist Party called the National Salvation Front, who then
became the first political party in Romania). The self-appointed leaders
decide to murder the captured dictatorial couple after a mock show trial
and, spreading fictional terrorism scenarios in order to assure the
legitimacy of their seizure of power, give the order for the protesters to be
fired upon. What follows can only be described as an epitome of grotesque
realism (albeit without any redemptive feature), a macabre farce in which
the moral vulgarity of the protagonists is expressed through the perversity
of their unleashed instincts. In the very same building of the People’s
House, hidden from the public’s view, the Circus clique displays its
unrestrained egregious sexual and gastronomic appetites that in fact only
reveal one thing, namely their pathological hunger for power. After a
gastronomic orgy in which they gorge themselves on the thousands of
oranges discovered in the virtually infinite rooms of the Palace (the orange
was, next to the banana, the forbidden fruit symbolizing the mythological
luxury of the rotten West in the popular imagination), they set about
raping the innocently sleeping Revolution. In a final inversion, Cărtărescu
masterfully depicts the new great men of the country as dwarves
grotesquely climbing and ejaculating over the huge body helplessly
delivered to them:
For hours on end the dwarfish drones ravished the giant queen, whilst
buzzing around her flower of flesh and honey, driven by a boundless will
of maculation. Growing impatient, they broke their lines and crept upon
her, clinging to her blouse, her jewels, her skirt, leaving their stains upon
her breasts and neck, drenching her clothes in their spit and cum. They
reached high under her puffed sleeves and the dizzying musk-scented
sweat of her armpits, where her hot and soft skin folded, made them faint.
They crept under the rough fabric of her blouse to find, embrace and bite
her erect, mulberry-like nipples.34
moral judgments on the figures. For example, Ion Iliescu, the president of Romania
for a total period of eight years, becomes the “Two-Faced-Man” which points to
his double status as prominent member of the Communist party and KGB agent, as
well as to his later outwardly democratic discourse with the same socialist core.
34
Roxana Ghita 59
This scene of defilement parallels another instance of historical

grotesque. (At least the timely coincidence between the execution of the
Ceauúescues and the date of Christmas is not a literary device brought
forth by the writer’s imagination, but a by-product of a cosmic irony of
fate.) Cărtărescu’s magnifying gaze accompanies, with the same
fascination for exact anatomical detail that has constantly disconcerted
Rabelais’s readers, the penetration of the dictators’ bodies by the bullets of
the executioners (this slow-motion rendering of perception has come to be
known as the cinematic “bullet time” effect, after the science-fiction film
The Matrix featured the technique for the first time enhanced by the use of
computer visual and interpolation software):
What a wonder! It was precisely on the birthday of our Lord that the
bronze bullets found their way stealthily to the old man and woman from
the fairy tale, slowly penetrated their heavy overcoats, penetrated their
chests and skulls, tore their throats and nerves open, spilled their bladders,
splattered their brains onto the wall, shattered their teeth and severed their
gullets, smashed their eyes and tore out a tuft of their bloody hair, it was
precisely on His birthday that the wall behind the barracks remained blood-
splattered, sporting a gay and festive look, like a Rorschach board in the
glaring sun of early spring.35
The grotesque realism of the depiction now aims at horrifying, by

transgressing the comical scope. Yet the satirical focus in a postmodern
key is never far from view: history is labelled a bloody “fairy tale,”
narratives of collective identity (the nationalist orthodoxy as the vital pillar
of the state)36 are ruthlessly exposed.
To sum up: the counterfactual accounts of the two revolutions, the
German Peaceful Revolution and the Romanian Revolution, that Brussig’s
and Cărtărescu’s novels offer in the form of a satirical grotesque rewriting
of the historical facts, aim to demystify the recent past and deconstruct the
established historical interpretations of the fall of Communism. A striking
feature of these fictional stories about the main events of the year 1989 is
their ability to use the grotesque as a revolutionary tool to destabilize the
35
Ibid., 461.
36
Post-communist Romania takes pride in presenting itself as a highly orthodox
nation, with the church as a self-appointed leader at “the forefront of the national
revival movement,” cf. Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu “Politics, National
Symbols and the Romanian Orthodox Cathedral,” Europe-Asia Studies 58:7
(2006): 1119.
established social order, as well as to portray the liberating revolutions

themselves as grotesque historical farces.
Acknowledgments
This paper is supported by the Sectorial Operational Programme Human
Resources Development (SOP HRD), financed from the European Social
Fund and by the Romanian Government under the contract number SOP
HRD/89/1.5/S/59758.
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Brussig, Thomas. Helden wie wir. Frankfurt: Fischer Verlag, 1995.
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Neubauer, Michael. Interview with Thomas Brussig. Gefeit vor Utopien,
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Roxana Ghita 61
Platt, Kevin M. F. History in a Grotesque Key: Russian Literature and the

Idea of Revolution. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.
Remshardt, Ralf. Staging the Savage God: The Grotesque in Performance.
Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004.
Stan, Lavinia and Turcescu, Lucian. “Politics, National Symbols and the
Romanian Orthodox Cathedral.” Europe-Asia Studies 58:7 (2006):
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Thomson, Philip. The Grotesque. London: Methuen, 1972.
Tismaneanu, Vladimir, ed. The Revolutions of 1989. London: Routledge,
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Tucker, Robert C. Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–
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SECTION II
CROSSING, MIXING, SUBVERTING

HRABAL’S SATIRICAL LEGACY
IN THE CENTRAL EUROPEAN
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL
CHARLES SABATOS
Bohumil Hrabal is viewed by many Czech readers and critics as their

greatest post-war novelist. His writing employs a deceptively colloquial
yet highly poetic language that brings together Jaroslav Hašek’s satirical
earthiness with Franz Kafka’s eye for the grotesque absurdity of the
modern world. Like the Kafkaesque and the Švejkian, Hrabal’s name has
lent itself to a distinct style of narration, Hrabalovština in Czech, which as
Robert Porter suggests “addresses the horror of the modern world, as well
as the comedy, absurdity and insanity that occur when lofty aspirations
collide with mundane reality.”1 Hrabal first emerged as a major voice in
Czech literature in the 1960s, around the same time as the rise of the
young generation of filmmakers who created the Czech New Wave. His
novel OstĜe sledované vlaky (Closely Watched Trains, 1964) was adapted
into a film version by JiĜí Menzel, and won the Oscar for Best Foreign
Film in 1967. A number of Hrabal’s other works have also been made into
films, which increased his popularity among the general Czech public. His
popularity also reached across national boundaries and he became
particularly successful in other Central European countries.
The appeal of Hrabal’s work across Central Europe is partly due to his
identification with its multicultural traditions, which date back to the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. In one interview he declared that “apart from
Prague, he could conceive of living only in Lemberg [Lviv], Cracow,
Vienna, or Budapest.”2 His fiction has inspired other self-consciously
“Central European” writers, who not only evoke Hrabal’s style, but in two
cases even allude to him in the titles of their novels. Peter Esterházy’s
1
Robert Porter, An Introduction to Twentieth-century Czech Fiction (Brighton:
Sussex Academic Press, 2001), 57.
2
Csaba G. Kiss, “Central European Writers on Central Europe,” in In Search of
Central Europe, ed. George Schoplin and Nancy Wood (London, Polity Press,
1989), 127.
Charles Sabatos 65
novel Hrabal könyve (The Book of Hrabal, 1990) uses Budapest as a

landscape for representing the absurdity of life in the late Communist
period, but also includes fantastic elements, such as a conversation
between God and Hrabal, in Czech. Paweá Huelle’s novel Mercedes Benz:
Z Listów do Hrabala (Mercedes Benz: Letters to Hrabal, 2001) is set in
contemporary Gdansk and juxtaposes the narrator’s family anecdotes
about interwar Lviv (then the Polish Lwów). Both works cross not only
national but also linguistic boundaries, incorporating passages in Czech
(taken from or inspired by Hrabal) into the text. With their use of
intertextuality and parody, these works reflect the influence of what Linda
Hutcheon has termed “historiographic metafiction,” with “its theoretical
self-awareness of history and fiction as human constructs”.3
The Slovak theorist Tibor Žilka has distinguished between two types of
postmodernism in Central European literature. The first is the “existential
form”, represented by such writers as Hrabal and Milan Kundera, which
draws on such philosophers as Sartre and Heidegger in its exploration of
human existence. The second, which includes such novelists as the Slovak
Pavel Vilikovský and the Slovak-Hungarian Lajos Grendel, is the
“palimpsest form” characterized by intertextuality.4 This contrast echoes
Mikhail Bakhtin’s distinction between “the people’s festive laughter” and
modern satire: “The satirist whose laughter is negative places himself
above the object of his mockery, he is opposed to it [...] The people’s
ambivalent laughter, on the other hand, expresses the point of view of the
whole world; he who is laughing also belongs to it.”5 Yet Linda Hutcheon
has argued against this negative view of contemporary satire and critics
who reject intertextuality as distanced from historical experience:
[H]istoriographic metafiction’s parody and self-reflexivity function both as

markers of the literary and as challenges to its limitations. Its contradictory
“contamination” of the self-consciously literary with the verifiably
historical and referential challenges the borders we accept as existing
between literature and the extra-literary narrative that surrounds it: history,
biography, autobiography.6
Hrabal’s work draws on autobiographical elements to satirize the

historical forces that swept across Central Europe, shaping and often
crushing individual lives. Most of his protagonists are powerless
3
Linda Hutcheon, The Poetics of Postmodernism (London: Routledge, 1988), 5.
4
Tibor Žilka, “Existenciálná a palimpsestová próza,” Tvar, No. 4 (2000): 24.
5
Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968), 11-12.
6
Hutcheon, Poetics of Postmodernism, 224.
66 Hrabal’s Satirical Legacy
individuals, reflecting a Czech and Central European view of history as an

inevitable force beyond human control. While Closely Watched Trains
remains Hrabal’s most famous work internationally, his later novels
Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále (I Served the King of England) and
PĜílis hluþná samota (Too Loud a Solitude) are perhaps his most critically
acclaimed: both were written in the 1970s, but not officially published in
Czechoslovakia until 1989. Closely Watched Trains is set at a provincial
train station in the final months of Nazi-controlled Bohemia, but its
protagonist Miloš Hrma is primarily concerned with sexual, rather than
political, problems. Its most famous scene (which in the novel is only
reported to Miloš by the station-master) satirizes the bureaucratic banality
of power by turning an official stamp into an erotic toy:
Dispatcher Hubiþka [...] printed all our station stamps, one after another,
all over our telegraphist’s backside. Even the date-stamp he stuck on her
there! But in the morning, when [she] got home, her mother read all those
stamps printed on her, and came running here immediately, threatening to
complain to the Gestapo!7
A later, darker scene exposes human cruelty to animals being transported

to the slaughter, with an obvious allusion to the trains transporting
prisoners to the Nazi death camps: “Out of the wagons jutted the horns of
cattle, and several heads reared up and turned their eyes towards the
platform, and they were great, cows’ eyes, full of curiosity and grief.”8
The wartime train station becomes a site both of human resistance and
individual helplessness in the face of totalitarian dictatorship. In Too Loud
a Solitude, Hrabal’s narrator HaĖĢa (based on a friend of the author) works
at a plant where books are reprocessed as scrap paper. This novel is set
approximately a decade later, during the Stalinist period, and because it
satirizes Communist rather than Nazi oppression it was censored until
1989. The narrator’s thoughts on the books he is forced to destroy
constitute a final reflection on the accumulated wisdom of Judeo-Christian
and non-Western civilization as it is devoured and forgotten by modern
society.
It is in his autobiographical trilogy—Svatby v domČ (In-House
Weddings, 1987), Vita nuova (1986), and Proluky (Vacant Lots, 1987)—
that Hrabal sticks most closely to the facts of his life while distancing
himself from it by narrating it from the perspective of his wife Eliška
7
Bohumil Hrabal, Closely Watched Trains, trans. Edith Pargeter (London: Cape,
1968), 19.
8
Ibid., 40.
Charles Sabatos 67
(nicknamed Pipsi). The everyday struggles of life in 1950s Prague are

revealed ironically and unsentimentally, but it is Pipsi herself who
symbolizes society’s impact on the destiny of the individual. Coming from
a bourgeois family of German origin, she is doubly marginalized in the
Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. In-House Weddings also displays an
intertextuality with Hrabal’s own works, revealing the inspiration behind
some of his better-known novels. In one chapter, Hrabal and Pipsi go to
see the train station where he worked during the war (like Miloš in Closely
Watched Trains), in another they visit HaĖĢa in the paper processing plant
(from Too Loud a Solitude) where Hrabal also worked in the post-war
period. At the end of his long analysis of the social upheaval in
Czechoslovakia at the end of the war, which he ultimately blames on the
emperor Charles IV, HaĖĢa tells Pipsi a grotesquely ironic anecdote about
the arrival of the Red Army, officially celebrated in Eastern Europe as the
liberation from fascism. The Russian soldiers see a cherry tree and tear off
whole branches, until the painter who owns the orchard “explained to them
how much work it had taken to raise the cherries [...] [he] described how a
tree like that grows, and the soldiers stopped eating and almost burst into
tears [...] before leaving, they promised the painter they were going to
make it up to him.” Two weeks later, a soldier comes and brings the
painter a package wrapped in newspaper, then laughs and rides away:
“And the painter, when he unwrapped that newspaper out there in the
sunshine, what did he see but blood-stained ears with diamond earrings,
women’s ears, a true treasure, because those ears were six in all.”9 This
anecdote reflects the discourse of a civilized and rational Central Europe
in contrast to the Eastern barbarity of Russia, which was popularized in the
1980s by such writers as Milan Kundera and György Konrád.
In his essay from this period, the Czech critic Josef Kroutvor
emphasizes the “common fate” of the Czechs and the Hungarians:
“History flows through Central Europe, but it makes no difference to a
man from Prague or Budapest… One spends the evening at home reading
profound treatises about improving the world, while another one sits in a
pub and makes jokes. Yet both of them were born here and live in the
same city.”10 While other Slavic literatures were more accessible to Czech
critics due to linguistic similarities, Kroutvor points out that “Hungarian
literature has the same Central European features, perhaps even more
striking. Unfortunately, the language barrier has concealed from us, that
the Hungarians, just like the Czechs, have a strong sense for grotesque
9
Bohumil Hrabal, In-House Weddings, trans. Tony Liman (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 2007), 95.
10
Josef Kroutvor, Potíže s dƟjinami (Prague: Prostor, 1990), 63.
banality, absurdity, and humour.”11 Peter Esterházy echoes this assertion

with his claim that “to be born a Hungarian [...] is a piece of bad luck. But
according to this man Hrabal [...] it was downright tragic [...] even worse,
it was comic [...] This was why the Danube was so close to heaven.”12
Even before the appearance of The Book of Hrabal, Esterházy wrote a
story in honour of the Czech writer’s 75th birthday in 1989. The
intertextuality of the piece began immediately with its title, “Want to See
Golden Budapest?”, inspired by a story of Hrabal’s from the 1960s: “Want
to See Golden Prague?” In this short work, the narrator and his family are
having lunch at a beer garden (a typical setting in Hrabal’s work) when the
conversation between their two waiters begins to parody the debate among
Central European intellectuals on the meaning of national identity. The
older waiter asks his younger assistant: “Would you like to be a Czech
here in Budapest? A man of culture? Well, you’re right. This is the place
to be a Czech.” He continues: “The civilized West is at least aware that
there is a great hole between them and the Russians. A black hole.” The
older waiter suggests filling this black hole with Central European writers
such as Witold Gombrowicz and Danilo Kiš: “If all goes well, they can
shout passages from their novels at each other.” The younger waiter
replies: “And their emblem would be the Danube!” But the older waiter
contradicts him: “The Danube’s too big. At least for Prague. Can you
picture the Danube under the Charles Bridge? No, that’s going too far.”13
By pointing out that the quintessentially Central European Prague lies on
the smaller Vltava, Esterházy parodies the suggestion that the Danube
serve as a symbol for Central European identity.
In The Book of Hrabal, the central character is an unnamed Hungarian
author who is writing an essay in honour of Bohumil Hrabal’s 75th
birthday. The novel is set in 1988, where no one seems to believe in the
soon-to-fall Communist regime, but it was published in 1990, when the
Budapest of just two years earlier was already a vanished society. Like In-
House Weddings, Part Two of The Book of Hrabal is narrated by the
author’s wife, in this case to Hrabal himself. To escape from her marital
and family troubles, Anna imagines going to Prague to visit Hrabal: “I
wouldn’t give a damn about Prague, ‘the golden Prague of enchantment,
the Queen of Cities, the quaint quarters, the narrow streets leading into the
11
Ibid., 102.
12
Peter Esterházy, The Book of Hrabal, trans. Judith Sollosy (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1994), 11-12.
13
Peter Esterházy, “Would You Like to See Golden Budapest?” Cross Currents 9
(1990): 419.
Charles Sabatos 69
past,’ I would only care about you.”14 Anna tells Hrabal that for him,
“Prague is a real city, I can see that. For me, Budapest is not.” She
fantasizes of escaping from the falseness of contemporary Budapest by
imagining that the Danube has become an ocean:
Budapest is situated along the shore of the ocean named after her, a
fisherman’s paradise renowned for its crayfish, which the Hungarians call
goulash. We’d eat crayfish there with light but cold white wines, though
sometimes we’d eat stew and something or other with semolina dumplings,
vepĜove, knedlik, zeli, God forbid people should think we’re devoid of the
proper national sentiment.15
By turning the Danube and goulash (two of the most potent symbols of
Hungarian national identity) into an ocean and a seafood dish, Esterházy
creates what Michel Foucault has called a “heterotopia”, defined by Brian
McHale as a “zone [which] juxtaposes worlds of incompatible structure.”16
By having Anna and Hrabal eat the Czech national dish of pork, cabbage
and dumplings on the banks of this imaginary sea, he ironically reunifies
Central Europe through an imaginary and platonic romance. Esterházy’s
postmodern use of intertextuality then goes beyond Hrabal’s work and
alludes to his own “Golden Budapest” story. “For instance,” Anna tells
Hrabal, echoing the older waiter in the previous story, “the bridges would
get all mixed up [...] but we wouldn’t force the Danube under Charles
Bridge, we wouldn’t go that far [...] the Danube for this purpose is too big,
but the ocean I’ve created [...] would serve the purpose [...] being infinite,
it’s flowing along behind our house.”17 Later in her imaginary letter, Anna
again contemplates leaving Budapest: “If I were twenty years younger or
twenty years older, I’d leave everything behind, and move to Prague,
temporarily, into some ulice or other, maybe I’d rent a small apartment on
some namesti overlooking some mosts, and you would come over every
afternoon [...] [and] read to me what you had written that day, then leave.”
By using the Czech words for city landmarks (streets, squares and bridges)
in his Hungarian text, Esterházy again blurs the boundary between Prague
and Budapest. Since the common “zone” of Austro-Hungarian culture has
been cut in half by the Iron Curtain, Esterházy is free to create a fictional
urban space in which the Danube becomes an imaginary ocean, bringing
14
Esterházy, Book of Hrabal, 85.
15
Ibid., 101.
16
Brian McHale, Postmodernist Fiction (London: Routledge, 1987), 163.
17
Esterházy, Book of Hrabal, 103.
together cities and cultures that have been separated by politics and
language.
Like Esterházy’s “Golden Budapest,” Paweá Huelle’s novel Mercedes
Benz: Letters to Hrabal is an intertextual response to a short story by
Hrabal, in this case, “Veþerní kurz” (“The Evening Lesson”, 1963), in
which the narrator is learning how to drive a motorcycle while telling his
instructor stories about his stepfather’s love of driving. According to
Adam Thirlwell, the lesson is a recurring theme in Hrabal’s fiction: “The
lesson, for Hrabal, is the epitome of seriousness, and therefore the epitome
of comedy [...] Because in Hrabal’s stories, lessons are always given to
people who cannot be taught, by people who have no authority to teach.”18
In Mercedes Benz the narrator is taking driving lessons around Gdansk in
his female instructor’s modest Polish Fiat and starts telling her stories
about his family’s cars in the more prosperous interwar period. Huelle
begins the novel with a sentence in Czech:
Milý pane Bohušku, a tak zase život udČlal mimoĜádnou smyþku—My dear
Mr Hrabal, once again life has turned an extraordinary circle, for as I
remember that evening in May, when for the first time I sat in a state of
terror behind the wheel of Miss Ciwle’s tiny Fiat [...] when I stalled at the
very centre of that crossroads, I thought of you and those charming
motorcycling lessons of yours [...] and the whole time, without ever
stopping, as if inspired by the Muse of Motorisation, you told the instructor
about those wonderful vehicles of bygone days, on which your stepfather
had so many fantastic crashes and smashes.19
Huelle’s autobiographical narrator consciously imitates Hrabal’s

rambling style, telling his family’s story through its cars. One stalls in the
path of an oncoming express train and is crushed; another plunges into the
river. These mishaps are minor, however, compared to his grandfather’s
experience immediately after the Soviet invasion, when he travels to
Lwów (Lviv) with secret official documents:
[T]he Red Army men spurred on their horses and surrounded the
Mercedes, while their commanding officer, a lieutenant with a pockmarked
face [...] shouted at my grandfather in Russian: “Get out, you swine!” So
just imagine [...] that lieutenant wrote out a requisition receipt and said,
“Here’s a document for the Polack so he won’t go round telling tales about
18
Adam Thirlwell, Miss Herbert (London: Vintage, 2009), 210.
19
Paweá Huelle, Mercedes Benz: Letters to Hrabal, trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones
(London: Serpent’s Tail, 2005), 1.
Charles Sabatos 71
our army stealing,” then smiled and clapped my grandfather on the

shoulder, saying: “We know what your hostile propaganda is like.”20
When he does arrive in Lwów, the narrator’s grandfather finds the

Hotel Georges, the site of some of his fondest memories, full of drunk
Russian soldiers, and he walks away:
[…] feeling crushed and downcast, not so much by the sudden occupation
and the loss of the Mercedes—after all, in Central Europe such events are
nothing out of the ordinary, being as it were the natural outward state of
affairs—but by the fact that this dark and ominous force had unexpectedly
invaded a sphere that had never been subject to annexation or incursion
before, and so had seemed safest of all.
He realizes “that all his memories of the Hotel Georges [...] would now be
completely different, filled for ever with the singing and toasts of the
Soviet officers [...] and as if that were not enough, somewhere near the
Sobieski monument Grandfather noticed a Mercedes-Benz speeding down
the far side of the avenue.”21 A man following the narrator’s grandfather
warns him not to stare at the Mercedes-Benz, and adds, “I’ll tell you who’s
riding in it—that’s Commissar Khrushchev, we’ll be hearing plenty more
about him, but a propos, have you got the papers with you?”22 The brief
reference to the future Soviet leader as an ordinary car thief gives this
metafictional text a historiographic element that “challenges the borders”
of the autobiographical novel.
The novel’s sharpest satire, however, is reserved not for the brutalities
of the past but for the excesses of unrestrained capitalism in the early post-
communist period. The narrator learns that his teacher, Miss Ciwle, has
been reduced to poverty because of the greed of a well-respected
physician; she sold everything in order to pay for an operation to treat her
brother’s medical condition. While driving, the narrator realizes:
the Nazi parades used to march along this avenue between the ancient lime
trees from the Opera to the Town Centre, and so did the May Day
processions from the Town Centre to the Opera; somewhere within the
invisible current of time, all those brass bands, swastikas, hammers and
sickles got mixed up together [...] for if after the thesis of the torchlight
parades and the antithesis of the communist marches had come and gone
[...] the moment of synthesis had arrived, the era of unimpeded creative
20
Ibid., 90-91.
21
Ibid., 93-94.
22
Ibid., 95.
activity and the arithmetic of pure profit, washed clean of all the stains of
nowadays superfluous ideals.23
Lenka Vítová describes Mercedes-Benz as “undoubtedly the most

valuable text reflecting Hrabal’s links with Polish culture,” explaining that
Huelle “has composed his book as a specific tribute to the work and style
of the Czech writer.”24 Toward the end of the novel, like the wife-narrator
in Esterházy’s novel, Huelle’s narrator evokes the urban landscape of
Prague from Hrabal’s fiction:
I felt terribly jealous, my dear Mr Hrabal, of those driving lessons of yours

on the Java motorbike, because you and your instructor had gone gliding
through all the finest places on earth: I began to think of Kampa, Mala
Strana, Hradþany, the Old Town, Josefov and Vinohrady, those wonderful
pub and beer-cellar gardens.25
Thus both Esterházy and Huelle’s novels reflect the palimpsest form of
postmodernism in their autobiographical intertextuality with Hrabal.
After the publication of The Book of Hrabal, Peter Esterházy went to
Prague to meet Hrabal in person for the first time, and they sat together at
one of Hrabal’s favorite pubs. As Esterházy relates, it was not until Hrabal
began to read the section of The Book of Hrabal that Esterházy had written
in Czech that a true understanding was established between the two
writers, with Hrabal giving his Hungarian counterpart his symbolic
blessing: “When he had reached the end, he lifted his hand and put it on
the top of my head.”26 Unlike Esterházy’s novel Huelle’s “letters” were
dedicated to Hrabal only in spirit, since Mercedes-Benz ends with the news
of the Czech author’s death in 1997: “By writing all those books that had
done more than any others to help us survive the very worst years—they
had consoled us selflessly, given us inspiration and wiped away our tears.
At once we ordered some beer and the usual gathering turned into a wake,
an ancient ritual to call up the spirits.”27 If Bohumil Hrabal is the high
priest of Central European autobiographical fiction, his disciples Peter
23
Ibid., 73-74.
24
Lenka Vítová, “Recepce a pĜeklady Hrabalova díla v polské literatuĜe,” Otázky
þeského kánonu, ed. by Stanislava Fedrová (Prague: Ústav pro þeskou literaturu,
2006), 202.
25
Huelle, Mercedes Benz, 141-42.
26
Marianna D. Birnbaum, “The Concealed Eye/The Elusive ‘I’, An Update on
Peter Esterházy,” Cross Currents 11 (1992): 167.
27
Huelle, Mercedes Benz, 146.
Charles Sabatos 73
Esterházy and Paweá Huelle have continued his legacy with their
contributions to the genre of post-communist satire.
Bibliography
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968.
Birnbaum, Marianna D. “The Concealed Eye/The Elusive ‘I’, An Update
on Peter Esterházy.” Cross Currents 11 (1992): 163–68.
Esterházy, Peter. The Book of Hrabal. Translated by Judith Sollosy.
Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1994.
—. “Would You Like to See Golden Budapest?” Cross Currents 9
(1990): 413–23.
Hrabal, Bohumil. Closely Watched Trains. Translated by Edith Pargeter.
London: Cape, 1968.
—. In-House Weddings. Translated by Tony Liman. Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 2007.
Huelle, Paweá. Mercedes Benz: Letters to Hrabal. Translated by Antonia
Lloyd-Jones. London: Serpent’s Tail, 2005.
Hutcheon, Linda. The Poetics of Postmodernism. London: Routledge,
1988.
Kiss, Csaba G. “Central European Writers on Central Europe.” In In
Search of Central Europe, edited by George Schoplin and Nancy
Wood, 125–36. London, Polity Press, 1989.
Kroutvor, Josef. Potíže s dƟjinami. Prague: Prostor, 1990.
McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. London: Routledge, 1987.
Porter, Robert. An Introduction to Twentieth-century Czech Fiction:
Comedies of Defiance. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2001.
Thirlwell, Adam. Miss Herbert. London: Vintage, 2009.
Vítová, Lenka. “Recepce a pĜeklady Hrabalova díla v polské literatuĜe.” In
Otázky þeského kánonu, edited by Stanislava Fedrová, 202–14. Prague:
Ústav pro þeskou literaturu, 2006.
Žilka, Tibor. “Existenciálná a palimpsestová próza.” Tvar 11:5 (2000).
FORMS OF THE GROTESQUE:
PARALLELS AND INTERSECTIONS
IN LITHUANIAN AND POLISH LITERATURE
ALGIS KALƠDA
I
It is impossible to discuss, let alone fully examine, such an extensive
field of interlacing phenomena collectively known as representations of
the grotesque in a single article or paper. Therefore, I will instead try to
address the contours of the theme outlined in the title of this paper and
attempt to highlight several leitmotif paradigms I consider important. First,
however, a few general thoughts on the source of theoretical assumptions
related to this phenomenon.
The poetics of the grotesque are not compact or defined by singular
signs. Dictionaries of literary terminology, encyclopaedias, academic
works, and textbooks provide many varied definitions and descriptions of
the concept. For example: the grotesque is “a combination of comic
origins with terrifying elements of mystery and tragedy—an expression of
the disorder of the metaphysical world and the irrationality of existence”1;
the grotesque is an aesthetic category present in works of literature, art,
music, in film and theatre.2 It is also a “unique comical expression” 3 and
“a principle that forms a view of the world with the ability to link
unrelated elements.”4
1
Vytautas Kubilius, Vytautas Rakauskas, Vytautas Vanagas, eds., Lietuviǐ
literatǌros enciklopedija (Vilnius: LLTI, 2001), 168. [All translations by the
author, unless otherwise noted—Ed. note.]
2
Janusz SáawiĔski, ed., Sáownik terminów literackich (Wrocáaw: Ossolineum,
1976), 147.
3
Krystyna Damm, Margarita Kardasz, eds., Encyklopedia szkolna. Literatura i
nauka o jĊzyku (Warsaw: PWN, 2003), 158.
4
Dieter Borchmeyer, Viktor Žmegaþ, eds., Pagrindinơs moderniosios literatǌros
sąvokos (Vilnius: Tyto Alba, 2000), 133.
Algis Kalơda 75
On the other hand, within these fairly varied, though still similar,
definitions and identifications a common conceptual field is revealed: a
concentration of related concepts that interweave and interlock. This also
allows researchers to converse and rather clearly define the scope of the
phenomenon. In this case, certain generalized, constant elements emerge.
One of the essential features of the grotesque is a certain aesthetic,
ontological, and axiological confusion that is formed from the union of
opposing connections. The contradictory union of the grotesque is
comprised of a plethora of incongruous, heterogeneous elements: real and
fantastic, tragedy and comedy, adoration and insult, vitality and
martyrdom, beauty and disgust, creation and destruction, honour and
deception, and so forth. The grotesque encompasses and integrates many
varied incoherent traditional forms of artistic expression such as satire,
parable, irony, parody, caricature, burlesque, libel, feuilleton, artistic
deformation, poetics of turpitude, nonsense, humour of the absurd, and
hyperbole.
Nearly all scholars emphasize that the source and objective of
portrayals of the grotesque are associated with a unique form of laughter.
Mikhail Bakhtin’s famous work on François Rabelais situates the
organizational centre of the grotesque in the history of laughter, describing
the grotesque as laughing truth. Another scholar, Wolfgang Kayser, calls
attention to the therapeutic function of the grotesque. This idea coincides
with Bakhtin’s assertion that grotesque laughter is an expression of the
feeling of victory in overcoming fear. Johan Huizinga, who conceived of
the influential concept of homo ludens, also stresses the importance of
laughter. As we are well aware, there are emotional variants that exist in
the space of the comical: according to Vladimir Propp, author of the study
On the Comic and Laughter, “we can discern mocking laughter, good
laughter, cynical laughter, easy laughter, even ritual-magic laughter.” 5
The tradition stemming from Aristotle, by which homo ridens is regarded
as one of the essential features of humanity, helped to determine the
functions of the grotesque. It was most often expressed in the liberating
temperament of the carnivalesque, in the horror of fantasy tales, or in
hyperbolized reflections on human weakness and physical power (as in
Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel).
In the 20th century the grotesque was often interpreted as an individual
and communal expression of fears and phobias, reduced to a tool for
showing just how strange and frightening the world was. Undoubtedly,
5
ȼɥɚɞɢɦɢɪ ɉɪɨɩɩ, ɉɪɨɛɥɟɦɵ ɤɨɦɢɡɦɚ ɢ ɫɦɟɯɚ (Ɇɨɫɤɜɚ: ɂɫɤɭɫɫɬɜɨ, 1976),
135.
76 Forms of the Grotesque
writers and artists were influenced by the ideas of philosophers

(particularly Oswald Spengler and José Ortega y Gasset) who viewed the
future of culture with a grim pessimism. These types of apocalyptic
expressions created a common intellectual environment that artists (such
as the “ĩagary” poetry group with Czesáaw Miáosz at the fore) and
thinkers and scholars (such as Marian Zdziechowski) were a part of in pre-
war Vilnius.
The grotesque world, which changed significantly after World War I,
found specific ways to integrate more universal variations of public and
personal phenomena and experiences. This belied the popularity of the
transformed genres of utopia, parable, the absurd, and others that
presented multifaceted revelations. These artistic forms suited the work of
George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, Eugène
Ionesco, Witold Gombrowicz, and other modernists and literary avant-
garde luminaries who examined the broadest universal visions of the
existence of humanity to the deepest phantasmagorical wells of the
individual subconscious. The grotesque becomes an author’s means of
self-expression, self-knowledge, and self-determination. Witkacy (Stanisáaw
Ignacy Witkiewicz), the most significant representative of Polish
grotesque, often portrayed various absurd incidents with distorted
sensations and his own subconscious feelings and before World War II
was beset upon by catastrophic visions which he wrote about and analyzed
in contemplative philosophical studies. At the very start of the war, unable
to endure the inescapable “realization of those visions,” when both Hitler
and the Soviet Union drowned Poland in an ocean of blood in 1939, he
committed suicide in the Polesia wetlands.
In art, axiological and aesthetic deformity is manifested consciously.
Often, though, expressions of the grotesque can be interpreted as a result
of an unconscious or even morbid pathology. Various forms of the
grotesque have been present in art, literature, and culture from ancient
times, though they rose to popularity in the 20th century, especially in the
work of representatives of avant-garde movements. Each field of art
utilized a distinctive form of expression: visual artists created works with
distorted proportions, portraits of deformed creatures (for example,
Šarǌnas Sauka and Rimantas Sližys). Cinematographers and musicians
applied similar principles to their works.
The poetics of the grotesque manifested in many literary genres but
most compellingly and concretely in drama, especially works involving
multiple stages and extending to multiple levels. This is an important
distinction because drama is a text not intended for reading. The audience
is alone with a world imparted by vocalization. Dramatic works are
Algis Kalơda 77
usually created with their performative possibilities in mind. Therefore,

the a priori has an encoded “live” goal of actualization, the expected
verbal but also visual and acoustic interpretation. The performance
becomes a synthetic aesthetic phenomenon with a very complex
communication structure. The subjects of its semantic influences are the
author, the producer, the actors, the audience, as well as the artists,
composers, and the arsenal of technical tools used in the production.
For these reasons the author’s intention becomes very important in the
interpretation of individual works—what is the author’s goal in using the
grotesque?—as is the correlation, configuration, concrete content, and
achieved function of these semantic elements. It must be noted that in the
heterogeneous world of grotesque, works usually do not have a single,
focused meaning. The semantic structure of the work tears apart and
moves in two directions. This strategy of discourse often confounds the
audience and forces them to constantly change codes of comprehension;
they, as the expression goes, don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
II
Grotesque expressions in various forms and even the choice of said
form by the author depends, of course, on many factors: the author’s
talent, psychological bent, intention, aesthetic conception, and the
influence of the literary scene as well as other non-literary factors such as
social environment and political climate. Referring to 20th century
Lithuanian and Polish dramatic works I would like to briefly review some
of the more representative uses of the grotesque, highlighting their
functional and historical context. What factors were most essential in the
development of the grotesque in both literatures? What meaning is
presented in the range of grotesque poetics found in the works of the most
renowned writers, the representative portrayals of the grotesque?
Thirty years ago Vytautas Kubilius wrote: “The use of the grotesque in
our art is like a strange ‘shock therapy’ which shakes up established
relationships and values, but in no way destroys them. Sarcastic, brutal,
and full of illogical elements, grotesque poetics emerge in our art like a
shattering antipode to shiny paint.”6 Kubilius, defending the artist’s right
to speak his mind irrespective of socio-realistic rhetoric, also stated the
following: “the grotesque enters Soviet literature like a rumpled ball of
objections, one which is difficult to unravel with a sound mind.” No doubt
we now understand that this statement was determined primarily by
6
Vytautas Kubilius, Žanrǐ kaita ir sintezơ (Vilnius: Vaga, 1986), 174.
external circumstances: in those days, people could not speak directly. So

let us draw our attention to the spacious and ambivalent criteria of a
“sound mind”, which basically purports that this grotesque, falsified way
of life could not possibly be depicted in any other way. I think that even
during the Soviet period it was clearly understood that authors treated the
grotesque as a form of opposition to the proposed canons of social realism
and their mandatory ideological search for good; their use of the form was
an attempt to eschew the tired poetics of the popular official style. There
are several individual cases that help to demonstrate this.
In his work, Juozas Grušas7 is inclined to moralizing generalizations;
he often depicts the fight between Good and Evil. For him the grotesque,
sarcasm, and irony are a means of demonstrating conflict between the
individual and the surrounding world. Grušas moved gradually toward this
type of artistic expression. In his earlier work he often identified similar
“Grušas-esque” psychological interpretations of moral collisions using
intellectual discourse or observation. According to Jonas Lankutis:
[W]hile writing Love, Jazz, and the Devil (Meilơ džiazas ir velnias), Grušas
was already searching for more varied forms of expression—he connected
tragedy and comedy, combined psychology with the expressive dynamics
of external action and the routine with visions of the unconscious. [...]
Here, it is as if reality dreams itself. The grotesque logic of the absurd is
activated in artistic thought. This allows the author to further develop the
central idea, to place additional emphasis. In the “visions”, deformed
reflections and shadows constantly appear and their play occurs. 8
However this play is dominated by a strange hybridity: the artistic

world is segmented according to principles of ambivalence (dark/light,
love/hate, demonic/pure, ugly/beautiful). The directed level of ideas is
dominated not by the grotesque logic of the absurd but by an intellectual
understanding of the eternal dualism of humans, which demonstrates the
opposition between the sacred and the spiritual, and the animalistic
systemic origins.
In this respect the world of Circus is more cohesive and in my view
this is mostly determined by the defined space of the circus, which enables
it to operate in different scenes that are interconnected without the use of
strict logic. This comes about because in the circus arena performance
7
Three plays by Juozas Grušas: Meilơ džiazas ir velnias (Love, Jazz, and the
Devil) (Vilnius: Vaga, 1967); Pijus nebuvo protingas (Pijus Was Not Smart)
(Vilnius: Vaga, 1976); Cirkas (Circus) (Vilnius: Vaga 1976).
8
Jonas Lankutis, Lietuviǐ tarybinơ dramaturgija (Vilnius: Vaga, 1983), 156-158.
Algis Kalơda 79
everything is allowed; as one of the characters, the circus director, says:

“we are acting an intellectual entrée”. Incidentally, the author himself has
stated the following: “Everything here is recreated [...] the truth of the
world and humanity is very generalized, while fantasy, the grotesque, and
paradox are used in the search for its depths”.9 The language of the play is
also unique, created through a mosaic of objectivistic theses, intellectual
reasoning, domestic colloquialisms, and emotionally expressive retorts.
In a certain respect the space created in Mammoth Hunt by Kazys
Saja10 is similarly marked by early intellectual and semantic attitudes.
Here, the characters’ behaviour validates and creates a carnival
atmosphere with its own rules, or rather the absence of rules, and through
a search for an inexistent Fiesta directed by an unknown someone. The
audience, of course, understands the ambiguity of this type of
representation and the Aesopian nature of the work. In this instance the
grotesque becomes a mode of expressing moral attitudes and social
dispositions within a certain concrete historical period, under the
conditions of rampant party and ideological censorship.
In Saja’s other well-known works, particularly in the trilogy of novels
Orator, Maniac, and The Prophet John (all published in 1966–67),
universal parables and the realities of the present are connected. Using
stereotypical behavioural models and mythological or folkloric images the
author attempts to verify the existence and reliability of reality—the here
and now. The resulting effect is a poly-semantic narrative: the audience
hopes for—waits for—the maniac to be captured and identified as a cruel
criminal but also sees the portrayal of a manipulated society. The model of
society described is both concrete and aspiring to the universal. It is as
though the author is asserting that a weak-willed society can always be
misled and deceived. The merchant Smerdizas in The Prophet John
constantly repeats the phrase: “There is nothing new at all under the sun.”
He is aware of and instilled with fatalism about the world. The works
contain generalized symbols—Leviathan, the Prophet, and pirates, for
example—which, when put together, form a reflection of a variety of
psychological-emotional hypostases. In principle they cannot be singularly
identified but at the same time they encompass many different meaningful
references and allusions. Still, in his plays that originate in the fantastical,
Saja’s grotesque is less commanding and tends toward more abstracted
vices and the representation of evil through the use of innovative plots. It
seems that these works possess echoes of the goals of violent, grotesque
9
Ibid., 160.
10
Kazys Saja, Mamutǐ medžioklơ (Vilnius: Vaga, 1969).
folk tales, as well as a certain concealed didacticism. Together, the

suggestibility of the grotesque in this author’s work is suppressed by an
aspiration towards effectiveness as seen in, for example, the high level of
stylization.
Jonas Lankutis described the plays of Juozas Glinskis as a theatre of
violence, having in mind works such as Grasos namai (Home of Violence,
1970) and Kingas (King, 1981). Indeed, within these works oppositional
emotional images are bound together to reveal the extreme state of the
characters. At the same time as seeming drastic they also appear
suspicious, as though the ideas of Antonio Artaud, so clearly strange to the
system, are imported into another (social realist) context. As in the case of
Saja, critics have not explicitly identified the author’s opposing ambitions
for the grotesque, but they are undoubtedly there.
In Glinskis’s repertoire we can discern a fixed circle of themes and
characters that generally delineate the different levels of existence in the
social strata. The grotesque unfolds and flourishes within these strata quite
naturally because life is, in fact, full of elements of the grotesque. The
constraining atmospheres of a prison and an insane asylum are
suggestively created in the plays Mơnesiena (Moonlight, 1990) and
Šokantys berniukai (Dancing Boys, 1990). Here, grotesque deformation
produces, supplements, and accentuates the reality of distorted, damaged
souls. The playwright constructs an original piece of drama in Nelabǐjǐ
raisto repeticija (Rehearsal of Devils in the Swamp, 1990), in which he
uses stylization, travesti (in the introduction of the character Vincas
Dovinơ, for example, the wood carver of sacred statues developed by
Kazys Boruta), and folk fantasy. In this work, Glinskis creates an “anti-
utopian” form, as he calls it, and presents the relationships, coexistence,
and juncture of humanity and the miraculous world.
III
In Polish drama the origins of contemporary grotesque are connected
to the crisis of a traditionally rational worldview in the first half of the 20th
century. The crisis manifested in the disillusionment in mankind’s spiritual
ability to control base instincts, as highlighted by the horrors of World
War I. It is understandable that the thirst for new artistic horizons and the
literature of neighbouring countries (in particular Germany) played an
important role in this development. Furthermore, the flood of modes of
grotesque expression and the emphasis on irrational aesthetic origins
stands in curious opposition to the programs proposed by futurists,
progressives, constructivists, and other admirers of “mechanical civilization”.
Algis Kalơda 81
Radosáaw Okulicz-Kozaryn writes extensively about the emergence of

these new modes of expression in Poland in his monograph Gest
piĊknoducha. Roman Jaworski i jego estetyka brzydoty (Gestures of
Dandy: Roman Jaworski and his Aesthetics of Ugliness). Witkacy, an
artist, playwright, and philosopher and one of the main theoreticians of the
movement is credited with the formulation of the important principle of
“pure form”, the concept of “construction” (which is popular among
futurist), and highlighted the specificity of a work’s genesis. As Okulicz-
Kozaryn writes:
Witkacy connected the concept of construction with metaphysical

meaning, spurned by progressives, with a bright shade of irrationality. A
pure work of art should act as a narcotic or a “strange dream”. The artist
usually conceals the process of creation in a cloak of secrecy [...] thought it
usually is reminiscent of the structure in the dream’s reality.11
Witkacy, in his many plays, including Tumor Mózgowicz (Tumor

Brainiowicz, 1921), Kurka wodna (The Water Hen, 1922), W maáym
dworku (At the Manor, 1923), Janulka, córka Fizdejki (Janulka, daughter
of Fizdejko, 1923), Matka (Mother, 1924), Szewcy (Shoemakers, 1934) and
others, employs surrealistic elements and portrays total chaos. He depicts a
world full of absurdity and creates characters balanced on the edge of
insanity, full of maniacal desires, and plagued by insurmountable
complexes. It is a space of total fatalism, which cannot be changed or
replaced by any advances of a sound mind. However, this space is not
created by external social forces but rather it is the result of distinct
psychological impulses and feelings which are manipulated by various
intoxicants or narcotics. We can assume that Witkacy’s dramatic world is
created through identifying unconscious impulses and combining them
with real experiences and feelings. Renowned Polish literary scholar Jan
BáoĔski confirms:
All of Witkacy’s plays are written with mocking tone, making use of the
grotesque and parody. The behaviour of the characters, which likely reflect
the author’s attitudes, is treated as caricature and is ridiculed from the very
start. [...] Therefore, we must view Witkacy’s theatre not as a role-play of
life, but as a ridiculing of the collapse of that role-play. 12
11
Radosáaw Okulicz-Kozaryn, Gest piĊknoducha. Roman Jaworski i jego estetyka
brzydoty, (Warsaw: IBL, 2003), 305.
12
Jan BáoĔski, “WstĊp”, in Dramaty wybrane, ed. Stanisáaw Ignacy Witkiewicz,
(Kraków: Universitas, 1997), 46.
One of the most famous Polish writers to employ the grotesque, both in
the pre-war and post-war period, is Witold Gombrowicz. In his plays
Iwona, ksiĊĪniczka Burgunda (Iwona, Princess of Burgundia, 1938), ĝlub
(The Marriage, 1946), and Operetka (Operetta, 1966), he creates grotesque
spaces full of travesti, ironic stylization, mocking parables, and stylized
national details. Intertextual associations and cultural layers serve an
important function in his work. Gombrowicz uses these elements in a
grotesque manner, mixing incredibly varied motifs with established
symbols and myths. His work engages social and political reality in
precise instances, viewing reality through the veil of stereotypical
behaviour and thought, mocking those stereotypes.
Central to the work of both Witkacy and Gombrowicz is an internal
structure that does not display an obvious focus on social phenomena.
However, after World War II the grotesque in Polish drama (and similarly
in Lithuanian drama) became an important means of preserving spiritual
autonomy and expressing opposition to the socialist regime. A great
number of playwrights wrote, and continue to write, grotesque plays,
among them: Miron Biaáoszewski, Jerzy Broszkiewicz, Stanisáaw
Grochowiak, Janusz KrasiĔski, Tymoteusz Karpowicz, Jarosáaw Marek
Rymkiewicz, and Janusz Gáowacki.
The most prominent among these is Sáawomir MroĪek who often uses
absurd poetics in his work and parodies stereotypical thought and
behaviour. However, though there are many similarities between these two
writers, unlike Saja he rarely uses so-called conditional conventions and
elements of the fantastic. Without engaging in a detailed analysis I would
like to note that MroĪek’s work often contains elements of lesdrama, most
apparent in the broad, sometimes explicitly detailed remarks.
For example, MroĪek’s Tango (1965) opens with a broad and detailed
description of the stage, props, and characters’ appearance—it is almost
two pages long. This is how the author presents the opening scene:
A velvet tablecloth covers half of the table as three people sit at the bare
end of the tabletop. Asaba, thus far referred to as Grandmother, is elderly,
but solid and agile and only rarely suffers from exhaustion due to old age.
She wears a long dress with a train that drags along the ground. It is very
bright, with large flowers. On her feet—sneakers. [...] The old man is gray,
well-mannered, with think gold-rimmed glasses, but shabby clothes, dust-
covered and timid [...] he wears a very wide tie and a pearl tie clip, though
Algis Kalơda 83
on the bottom half—he wears khaki coloured shorts that reach to his
knees.13
This description clearly demonstrates the contrast between the external

and internal lives of the characters, which further reflects their duality in
both the spiritual and domestic realms; it also reveals the perversity of
their system of values. In another of MroĪek’s plays, Drugie danie (Main
Dish, 1973), his extensive remarks include instructions for the director and
descriptions of the staging:
GHOST is of an unidentified age, but still quite mature. [...] The

FATHER’S costume befits his character and its elements serve a strictly
defined function. The decorations must be realistic, starting with “real” tree
branches behind the window. The more realistic the branches, the better.
[...] A large room with three walls. Two symmetrically placed windows in
front.14
I would venture to say that MroĪek explicitly composes a domestic,

everyday environment, emphasizing the details of the character’s clothing,
in order to urgently present a genuine, realistic version of an absurd
situation. The kaleidoscope of the grotesque includes banality, greyness,
and pettiness. In many of his other plays the author similarly dismantles
characters, and classifies characters, scenes, and dialogue.
It seems that this type of careful attention given to space, setting
description, and character depiction is generally characteristic of grotesque
drama, most likely because this type of information is impossible to
convey through dialogue and therefore authors feel they must include it in
their remarks. In a sense, the playwright becomes a director, set designer,
and even a musician.
Glinskis also uses extensive remarks in his folkloric “dramatic anti-
utopia” Rehearsal of Devils in the Swamp. However his approach is
different from MroĪek in that he is more open in drawing the audience’s
attention to the grotesquely comic elements of the characters and their
situation, all with a tone of melancholic and often ridiculously heavy-
handed theatricality. I quote:
The face of Archinelab freezes in a wide, lifeless grin. With the opposite
hand he grabs something that resembles a goat’s shinbone and blows. For a
few moments, everything is frozen. Suddenly the old fairies jumped up,
13
Sáawomir MroĪek, Utwory sceniczne, t. 2 (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie,
1973), 30.
14
Ibid., 145-146.
bleated, the hefty men howled, began shaking, and the boisterous dance of
the devils and witches began. “Dance, Casmir, dance!” Little Casmir self-
consciously slid away from the circle of dancers.15 [...] Little Casmir, all
pale, kneels, stretches out his hands and tries to pray [...] Little Casmir
gnashes his teeth, swallows a hiccup, stands up and quietly howls [...] A
lifeless Satanic smile.16
Of course, the concrete nature of the text and its stylistic expression
depends a great deal on the subject, the author’s consciously formulated
objectives, the surrealistic visions brought on by dreams or the
unconscious, and finally, the individuality of the playwright. It is clear that
the suggestive nature of the grotesque is quite enchanting.
The parallels between Lithuanian and Polish drama present interesting
material for interpreting expressions of the grotesque on a theoretical level
and showing the diverse artistic repertoire and great aesthetic evocation
possible in the genre. They also present an opportunity to reconstruct, with
a wider visual field, the literary, cultural, and social contexts of the
development of grotesque works.
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Okulicz-Kozaryn, Radosáaw. Gest piĊknoducha. Roman Jaworski i jego
estetyka brzydoty. Warsaw: IBL, 2003.
ɉɪɨɩɩ, ȼɥɚɞɢɦɢɪ, ɉɪɨɛɥɟɦɵ ɤɨɦɢɡɦɚ ɢ ɫɦɟɯɚ. Ɇɨɫɤɜɚ: ɂɫɤɭɫɫɬɜɨ,
1976.
15
Juozas Glinskis, Mơnesienoje (Vilnius: Vaga, 1990), 107.
16
Ibid., 110.
Algis Kalơda 85
SáawiĔski, Janusz, ed., Sáownik terminów literackich. Wrocáaw:

Ossolineum, 1976.
GROTESQUE AND HETEROGLOSSIA
IN GEORGE TABORI’S WORKS, OR:
“ALLE GUTEN GESCHICHTEN
ENDEN MIT DEM TOD”
JOHANNA ÖTTL
George Tabori’s Mein Kampf, set on the eve of World War II, ends
with a dialogue between Miss Death and the Jewish character Schlomo; in
this dialogue Miss Death states that “Alle guten Geschichten enden mit
dem Tod.”1 This quotation sheds light on George Tabori’s aesthetic
approach to a topic at the core of ongoing debates on the artistic
representation of the National Socialists’ genocide of the European Jews.
In many cases these disputes do not refrain from including moralistic
arguments in their discussions, as the reception history of T.W. Adorno’s
1951 dictum regarding art after Auschwitz reflects. With a rapid decrease
in the number of eyewitnesses to the Shoah, both history and art face an
inevitable paradigm shift in the culture of memory and its possible
representations. In the face of their fundamentally different biographies,
writers such as Imre Kertész and Primo Levi bore witness to the Shoah
and found ways of assimilating the past by the application of completely
different aesthetic strategies which reflect their different experiences with
the Shoah. Those writers who did not live through the Shoah to the same
extent, either because they spent the Nazi era in exile or because they were
born during or after the war, bear the burden of, firstly, finding an
“adequate” representation of the past, and secondly, of defining the notion
of adequacy in order not to make themselves vulnerable to criticism. In the
search for possible forms of expression, literary text and literary strategies
have undergone the following stages: the silence of the 1950s regarding
1
“All great stories end in death.” George Tabori, Mein Kampf (Leipzig: Klett,
2004), 83. English translations by Johanna Öttl.
Johanna Öttl 87
the National Socialists’ genocide of European Jews,2 philosemitic and

often sentimentalized representations of the victims3—the most famous
example being The Diary of Anne Frank—followed by a change in the
representation of mass murder as initiated by the arrest of Adolf Eichmann
in 1960 and his subsequent trial in 1961,4 as well as the Frankfurt
Auschwitz Trials of 1963–1968.5
The multifaceted discussions around possible forms of artistic
representation of the Shoah have at times evoked a quasi-sacred aura
around literary representation of both events and victims; also, the
question of whether or not this is a satisfactory response to the
predicament of artistic representation of the Shoah has been elicited.
Alongside this perspective a second component at the core of the
discussions has been the question of whether the creation of art on this
subject somehow attributes sense to the Shoah through its artistic
representation6 and thus gives meaning to nonsensical mass murder. In
opposition to this perception, historians and writers such as Saul
Friedländer stress the importance of artistic representations of the Shoah
by arguing that no matter how difficult writing about the Shoah is—
2
A number of young post-war writers of the later 1940s were predominantly
concerned with a basic mistrust of the German language after it had been used by
the National Socialists and were thus searching for new ways of expression.
Writers affiliated with the “Gruppe 47” rejected the political ideologies of the Nazi
era and thus defined democracy as their core concern. Both their aesthetics and
their political concerns were very heterogeneous as an individual approach to
literature was important to them. Even though this might reflect their rejection of
National Socialist uniformity, debates on political principles were not permitted.
The writers of the “Wiener Gruppe”, for instance, did not address the genocide
either—they had an explicitly avant-garde agenda, rejecting traditional values in
literature. In interaction with the changes and developments in society during the
1960s both literature and society started to integrate the confrontation with the
Shoah on a broader scale. (Cf. Heinz Ludwig Arnold, Die Gruppe 47 (Reinbeck:
Rowolth, 2004), 55-58.)
3
Frank Stern, “Von der Bühne auf die Straße. Der schwierige Umgang mit dem
deutschen Antisemitismus in der politischen Kultur 1945 bis 1990—Eine Skizze,”
Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 1 (1992): 44.
4
Markus Roth, Theater nach Auschwitz (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2003), 48.
5
Witnessing these trials, Peter Weiss was heavily influenced by them; he
published Die Ermittlung in 1965, which was one of the first plays addressing
Fascism. Alongside Rolf Hochhuth’s Der Stellvertreter, Weiss’ play came to be
one of the most famous representatives of “documentary theatre”. This genre was a
first step towards an artistic representation of the Holocaust, even tough the focus
of Die Ermittlung lies not on the representation on the Shoah itself.
6
Roth, Theater nach Auschwitz, 15.
88 Grotesque and Heteroglossia in George Tabori’s Works
Friedländer reminds us of the topos of the “unspeakable”7—remaining

silent about it is the worst possible reaction to the past. Silence signifies a
retrospective legitimisation of the perpetrators’ perspective by denying the
victims a voice to speak about their pain and humiliation. This leads to a
dialectical problem: on the one hand, writers feel the urge to write about
the Shoah, but on the other hand, they face the danger of retrospectively
legitimising the Shoah, which might lead to a rejection of artistic
representations of the Shoah altogether.
George Tabori does not, of course, solve these problems but he does
find his own approach to this dialectic. By applying textual strategies such
as alienation and absurdity,8 satire, and grotesque, he reveals the
senselessness of the Shoah and thus cannot be accused of attributing
meaning to it. Additionally, Tabori counteracts the sacredness of the
Shoah by using two textual strategies that bear resemblance to alienation:
rather than confirming the sacredness of religious and political discourses,
he combines sacrosanct texts such as the Bible and texts of the German
cultural canon with profane and grotesque textual elements; and rather
than attempting to mimetically represent the cruelties of the Shoah, Tabori
uses strategies of iconoclasm to challenge his reader to create an
individual meaning from his textual signifiers.
These textual strategies will be located in texts that are not primarily
set during the Third Reich even though the topic of Tabori’s texts is the
Shoah: Mein Kampf9 is based in Vienna before the Nazi Party’s rise to
power. It is set in a refuge for the homeless where Adolf Hitler—who has
not yet achieved any political success but is already an anti-Semite—lives
with Schlomo Herzl, a Jew. Schlomo willingly cares for a rather rude
Hitler and also tells him about his novel, Mein Kampf, which he, Schlomo,
7
Ruth Klüger referred to labels such as “unspeakable” as kitsch-words that eschew
the cruel reality of the Holocaust rather than addressing it. (Cf. Ruth Klüger,
“Mißbrauch der Erinnerung. KZ-Kitsch” in Gelesene Wirklichkeit. Fakten und
Fiktionen in der Literatur (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006), 55.)
8
Throughout Tabori’s career as a director, Samuel Beckett is a constant
companion; Tabori compiled Beckett-evening 1 (Munich, 1980) and Beckett-
evening 2 (Bochum, Cologne, and Berlin, 1981) and directed Der Verwaiser
(Cologne, 1981), Waiting for Godot (Munich, 1984) and Happy Days (Munich,
1986). (Cf. Gundula Ohngemach, George Tabori (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1989), 148.)
A number of intertextual references to Beckett can be found in Jubiläum and have
been pointed out by Marcus Sander. (Cf. Marcus Sander, “Friedhofs-Monologe.
George Taboris Jubiläum,” in Theater gegen das Vergessen. Bühnenarbeit und
Drama bei George Tabori, ed. Hans-Peter Bayerdörfer and Jörg Schönert
(Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1997), 183-217.)
9
This paper examines the prose version of 1986, which precedes the drama version.
Johanna Öttl 89
is about to write. As Hitler is anxious that Mein Kampf might contain

unpleasant anecdotes about himself, he and some of his friends—one of
them, who goes by the name of Himmlisch, alludes to the notorious
Heinrich Himmler—break into Schlomo’s bedroom and threaten the Jew.
Schlomo’s narrow escape is only possible because Miss Death interrupts
the proceedings with the purpose of recruiting Hitler as her future
labourer. In Jubliäum (Jubilee, 1983)10, Tabori uses a similar strategy.
Even though the Shoah is the core topic of the play it is set in 1983,
decades after the Shoah, in a cemetery. The dead characters represent
eternal victims, un-dead inhabitants of a cemetery who are “verurteilt [...],
sich dessen zu erinnern, was sie lieber vergessen würden, nämlich den
achten Kreis der Hölle.”11 They are Jewish, homosexual, or disabled and
thus represent the victims of the Shoah, yet their suffering is eternal, as the
reference to Dante’s Divina Commedia anticipates at the beginning of the
play. While in Dante’s Divina Commedia the eighth circle of hell is home
to swindlers who have to atone for their sins, Tabori’s characters represent
those who have been deceived by the National Socialist era and were
murdered in their millions. They are not atoning for their own sins but for
the sins committed during the Third Reich; their fate represents the
continuity of racism and anti-Semitism in analogy to the continuity of
suffering in Dante’s Inferno.
As neither of these two Shoah-texts is set between 1940 and 1945
Tabori can use forms of representation that do not bear the burden of
attempting to represent the reality of the Shoah. Rather, the author can
allude to the cruelties of the Shoah using different modes of
representation. Central to both texts is Tabori’s use of grotesque and
satirical elements. Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the carnival of the
Medieval Ages and the Renaissance, as introduced in Rabelais and His
World, can be a helpful tool to locate grotesque elements and alternative
modes of representation and to describe Tabori’s textual strategies and
aesthetics. At the centre of Bakhtin’s interpretation of the carnival is his
perception of the topsy-turvy of established rules of society: in everyday
life laughing and jokes are banned by the ruling power and one way of
escaping everyday seriousness and the laws and restrictions of the
authorities is located in the carnival.12 During the carnival period13 the
10
George Tabori, Jubliäum, in Theaterstücke II (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1994). English
title: Jubilee. English translations by Johanna Öttl.
11
Ibid., 51. (They are “damned to remember what they would rather forget: the
eighth circle of hell.”)
12
Michail Bachtin (Mikhail Bakhtin), Rabelais und seine Welt. Volkskultur als
Gegenkultur (Suhrkamp: Frankfurt, 1998.), 123 (further referred to as Rabelais).
authorities of the church and the state permit things that are normally
banned, including parody, grotesque and obscenity.14 Even though Bakhtin
bases his research on texts from the Medieval and Renaissance periods
some of his ideas can be connected with the poetics of Tabori’s Shoah-
texts, as will be demonstrated. As I pointed out earlier, German-language
literature about the Shoah refrained from satirical, ironic, or comic
representations of the Shoah in the 1950s and 1960s.15 Tabori was one of
the first writers to break this taboo with his first Shoah play, Die
Kannibalen (The Cannibals, 1969), and he continued to integrate similar
aesthetics in later texts. His aesthetics permit an integration of elements of
Bakhtin’s carnival, as seen in Mein Kampf and Jubilee; there he alludes to
the Shoah but at the same time introduces textual elements of alienation
that result in a certain distance from the reality of the Shoah.
Similarities between the Bakhtinian concept of the carnival and Tabori’s
texts can be seen on different levels, such as the content and Tabori’s
poetological and aesthetic approach to representing the Shoah. Concerning
the content, Bakhtin’s principle is reflected in the carnivalisation of the
National Socialist ideology of the Aryan body through the de-mystification
and profanisation of Hitler: unlike in National Socialist propaganda, he is not
presented as a godlike “Führer” but flatulates and urinates repeatedly and also
suffers from constipation. Furthermore, Schlomo’s hypothetical genealogy of
Hitler’s Jewish roots turns the dichotomy between Jews and Aryans as
propagated during the Third Reich on its head. The topsy-turvy world
culminates at the end of the text: while trying to escape his perpetrators,
Schlomo briefly takes up Hitler’s identity and tells Hitler that Schlomo has
escaped through a window. Consequently, Hitler calls Schlomo-Hitler “Mein
Führer” and follows Schlomo’s alleged escape route. This climax of the role
reversal epitomises the Bakhtinian notion of the carnival. Additionally, the
carnivalesque concept of the grotesque body represents the opposite of the
National Socialist aesthetic which propagated a neo-classicistic image of the
13
Alexander Scheidweiler has pointed out Bakhtin’s ahistorical understanding of
the “carnival”, stating that what Bakhtin labels “carnival” and “carnival and similar
festivities” (Cf. Bachtin, Rabelais, 52) lacks precision. This problem, however,
will not be at the core of this paper. (Cf. Alexander Scheidweiler, Maler,
Monstren, Muschelwerk. Wandlungen des Grotesken in Literatur und Kunsttheorie
des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2009), 61.)
14
Bachtin, Rabelais, 124.
15
Parodistic, comic, and satirical representations of the Führer existed in the 1940s
(for example The Great Dictator, directed by Charlie Chaplin, 1940; To be or not
to be, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, 1942), but are restricted to representations of the
Führer himself and are not extended to the Shoah.
Johanna Öttl 91
body: beauty, health and strength were stressed while any sick or weak
elements were rejected. Especially after 1936, sculptors of the Third Reich
intensified the reception of sculptures of the Classical antiquity, which lead to
the depiction of bodies with a strong physical make up—sportsmen or the
idealised image of the mother who gives birth to Aryan children. These
aesthetics are also characterised by symmetry and concreteness and are, for
instance, represented by the works of Josef Thorak.16 Bakhtin’s conception of
the grotesque body is very different, favouring body parts and body actions
which were a taboo in National Socialist aesthetics: the mouth, anus, phallus,
sexuality, digestion, etc.17 The beauty of Miss Death with her Roman lips, her
perfect teeth and perfect profile is only superficial; under the surface she
suffers from bronchitis and varicose veins, coughs up phlegm, and smells like
a neglected fridge. This combination of National Socialist aesthetics and the
grotesque body parodies National Socialist aesthetics and dismantles their
absurdity and arbitrariness.18
What is articulated on the level of the content in the above example is
also applicable for the underlying aesthetics of the text: the pure, neat,
blond Gretchen is reminiscent of Goethe’s Faust and Goethe’s ideal of
(aesthetic) purity and humanity. Jubilee also includes an intertextual
reference to Goethe’s Faust, which epitomises the dialectical relationship
between National Socialist barbarism and German cultural achievement.19
In the text Otto reports a racist encroachment to an Arab boy who was
found in a puddle of blood and comments: “Das ist ein Teil der Kraft, die
stets das Gute will und stets das Böse schafft.”20 By inverting Mephisto’s
words,21 Tabori grotesquely addresses the National Socialist intentions and
16
Petsch, Joachim, “‘UNERSETZLICHE KÜNSTLER’ Malerei und Plastik im
Dritten ‘Reich’,” in Hitlers Künstler. Die Kultur im Dienst des Nationalsozialismus, ed.
Hans Sarkowicz (Frankfurt and Leipzig: Insel, 2004), 265.
17
Bachtin, Rabelais, 358.
18
A more detailed analysis of these strategies can also be found in Johanna Öttl’s
“‘Und wenn sie nicht gestorben sind, so leben sie noch heute’. Karnevaleske
Repräsentationsformen des Holocaust bei Edgar Hilsenrath und Georg Tabori,” in
Germanistische Mitteilungen, 37:2, 2011.
19
One of the earliest and most famous German language works of literature that
expresses this dialectical relationship is Paul Celan’s Todesfuge, which also
contains allusions to Goethe’s Faust.
20
Tabori, Jubiläum, 57. (“This is part of that power which would constantly do
good and constantly does evil.”)
21
In Goethe’s Faust Mephisto presents himself as “ein Teil von jener Kraft, / die
stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft” (he is “Part of that power which would
/ Do evil constantly, and constantly does good.”. (Cf. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
Faust I, in Goethes Werke Band III (Hamburg: Christian Wegner Verlag, 1972), 47.)
simultaneously articulates not only the absurd nature of the neo-classical

aesthetics of the body propagated by the National Socialists but also its
contradiction with the ideal of humanity which Weimar Classicism strove
to propagate.22 A similar strategy is applicable for the reference to Dante’s
Divina Commedia alongside repeated references to the Bible. Just like
Bakhtin mentions mockery of the Bible as one of the central elements of
the 15th century carnival,23 Tabori uses alienated elements of Biblical
discourse to articulate the dialectical relationship between fascist cruelties
and the humanitarian demands of the Bible, which supposedly constitute
part of the self-understanding of the Occident. The Jewish Lobkowitz-
God24 reinterprets the commandment “Thou shalt not commit adultery”
(Exodus 20: 14) in a more profane way, namely by referring to the
grotesque body: “Bevor du deines Nachbarn Weib begehrst, überzeuge
dich, dass sie keine behaarten Beine hat.”25 In this combination of the
sacred and the profane the grotesque body subverts the separation of the
sacred and the profane, the pure and the impure and of Aryans and Jews.
In other words, Tabori uses intertextual references to the Western
cultural tradition and combines them with references to National Socialist
terminology alongside metaphors and symbols of the Shoah discourse: the
semantic field of the oven and fire clearly evoke connotations of the
concentration camps. Equally, images of concentration camps are evoked
by the oven as a central piece of furniture in the refuge in Mein Kampf and
by Mitzi’s suicide in Jubilee—the disabled girl gases herself by putting
her head into an oven. Furthermore, Jürgen’s father, a former Nazi,
became a baker after the war and has to clean the ovens for his cakes. And
in yet another example, the un-dead can smell burnt leaves at the
22
In his study of the National Socialist reception of Faust, Thomas Zabka gives
several reasons why the National Socialists considered Goethe to be “volksfremd”
(alien to the German people and spirit) such as his sympathies for Napoleon; still,
Zabka gives a number of examples of National Socialist attempts to harmonise
Faust with the National Socialist mindset. Tabori’s distortion of Mephisto’s
statement and its combination with an account of racist attacks could be read as
Tabori’s criticism of National Socialist instrumentalization of the German literary
canon. (Cf. Thomas Zabka, “Vom ‘deutschen Mythus’ zum ‘Kriegshilfsdienst’:
Faust-Aneignungen im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland,” in Faust. Annäherungen
an einen Mythos, ed. Frank Möbus, Friederike Schmidt-Möbus and Gerd
Unverfehrt (Göttingen: Wallsein, 1996.), 313-331.)
23
Bachtin. Rabelais, 134.
24
Lobkowitz is a Jewish cook who takes up God’s identity and who has painted a
third eye onto his forehead, supposedly symbolizing God’s omnipotence.
25
Tabori, Mein Kampf, 6. (“Before committing adultery with your neighbour’s
wife, make sure that her legs are not hairy.”)
Johanna Öttl 93
cemetery, reminding them that “es ist schwer, Laub zu sein”,26 which
recalls the burning corpses in the concentration camps. Finally, the title
Mein Kampf and neologisms such as Endverstopfung (terminal/final
constipation),27 which combine Bakhtin’s concept of the grotesque body
with the National Socialist language, clearly stir up connotations of the
Shoah.
By inserting allusions to German high-culture and combining them
with National Socialist language and metaphors from the discourse on the
Shoah, Tabori combines different “semantic and axiological belief
systems”,28 to quote Bakhtin, and thus dismantles the absurd nature of the
Shoah without trying to mimetically represent it. Additionally, Tabori rids
the victims of the scared aura that has often been attributed to them after
1945. Philosemitism and a sentimentalised view of the victims of the
Shoah, and particularly Jews, often represented by a “single representative
martyr”29 are characteristic of the discourse on the Shoah in the early stages
of literary representation. In Jubilee Tabori breaks this taboo as well; the un-
dead inhabitants of the cemetery encompass the victims of the Shoah but
also bear elements of the grotesque body: “Dank dem Zahn der Zeit und
Gottes kleinen Kreaturen [befinden sie sich] in verschiedenen Stadien der
Zersetzung. Faulendes Fleisch, ein leeres Auge, eine fehlende Nase und so
weiter.”30 This slightly repulsive description takes away the sacred aura of
the victims and in this way Tabori adds a new tone to victims’ discourse.
Additionally, Jubilee is set long after the end of the Third Reich and thus
does not trigger one-dimensional feelings of compassion in the reader and
instead challenges intellectual reactions to the play.
Tabori’s aesthetics as they have been described above could, in a
Bakhtinian sense, be called “carnivalesque” since the combination of
references to the discourse on the Shoah and German high-culture renders
the text “heteroglottal” in character and, as Bakhtin puts it, creates a
26
Tabori, Jubiläum, 53. (“It is hard to be foliage.”)
27
Tabori, Mein Kampf, 67. The term “terminal/final constipation” alludes to the
Endlösung, the “final solution” which was the culmination point of the National
Socialists’ genocide of the European Jews during the Third Reich.
28
Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000), 304.
29
Anat Feinberg, “George Tabori’s mourning work in Jubiläum,” in Staging the
Holocaust. The Shoah in drama and performance, ed. Claude Schumacher
(Cambridge: University Press, 1998), 269.
30
Tabori, Jubiläum, 51. (“Thanks to the ravages of time and the small creatures
God created, [the] shape [of the characters] corresponds to different stages of
decomposition. Rotten parts of their body, an empty eye, a missing nose amongst
others.”)
textual character that combines “more than one consciousness”.31 In

creating this heteroglottal textual character, Tabori does not fall back on
well-established forms of representation but offers alternative ones. His
culture of memory refrains from mimetic representation and predictable
textual and linguistic structures. Rather, Tabori combines signifiers from
different discourses and subtexts and leaves it to his reader to create a new
signified out of them. By inserting grotesque, satirical, and iconoclastic
elements, Tabori deliberately breaks the sacred aura that has been created
around artistic representations of the Shoah. These aesthetics do not play
down the dimension of the Shoah but stress its absurdity by adding
elements of grotesque and alienation. His strategy of placing the action of
his plays after or before the Third Reich points to Tabori’s concept of
memory: the reader should perceive anti-Semitism and racism not as
characteristics of a restricted time period, but should view these
characteristics as having roots before the National Socialists’ rise to power
and thus having consequences in the present.
Finally, I would like to focus on one dimension of the carnival that has
been neglected in Bakhtin’s concept. As historical research on the nature
of the carnival of the Medieval Ages and the Renaissance shows the
authorities of the church and the state were sometimes forced to permit
carnivalesque festivities in order to grant an outlet for the people’s anger
or desires.32 Only by providing an officially sanctioned time period of
liberation—that sometimes added up to a quarter of the year in the
Medieval Ages33—could they protect themselves from uprisings or
rebellions and thus retain their power. The nature of the carnival is
temporal and restricted; it presupposes that law and order are to be
restored at the end of the carnival. By officially granting a period of
legitimized criticism and symbolic rebellion that will go unpunished the
institutionalised carnival helps to secure the political status quo. The
carnival thereby serves as an outlet for frustration or criticism and
potential threats to the leading powers are kept under control. The
structure of Tabori’s texts corresponds to this central element of the
31
Simon Dentith, Bakhtinian Thought: An Introductory Reader (London: Routledge,
1995), 196.
32
Rolf Johannsmeier, Spielmann, Schalk und Scharlatan. Die Welt als Karneval:
Volkskultur im späten Mittelalter (Reinbeck, Hamburg: Rowolth, 1984), 144.
33
Johannsmeier recounts that for seven weeks per year the only crimes to be
prosecuted were murder and manslaughter. In addition to these seven weeks, 14
main festivals, the turn of the year, the carnival, and other festivals were celebrated
where the festival character protected those who were ridiculing the authorities.
(Ibid., 141.)
Johanna Öttl 95
carnival. In Mein Kampf, Hitler and his grotesque body can be ridiculed
for a certain time period, but the text finishes with an apocalyptical vision
of what is to come after Hitler’s rise to power when Miss Death recruits
Hitler as her future labourer. Her grotesque metatextual comment that
“Alle guten Geschichten enden mit dem Tod”34 is combined with an
apocalyptical vision of the 1930s and 1940s: “Feuer, Feuer und Sie werden
die versengten Körper, wie den der Henne, beneiden, von den Flammen
verzehrt, die Ihr Zimmergenosse entzündet hat.”35 Similarly, in Jubilee the
witnesses and victims of anti-Semitism and racism are dead, their voices
will go unheard as the cemetery will be paved and a playground built on
top of it. The young and naïve Jürgen, the only character who is not dead
and who vandalizes the cemetery with anti-Semitic slogans, will go
unpunished and will continue his racist and anti-Semitic attacks as he
admits to being a Nazi simply because it is “fun”, as he puts it. At the end
of the carnival, the status quo is re-established; the realities of the Shoah
and its after-effects are not questioned. Tabori stresses the continuity of
racism and anti-Semitism through the true characteristics of the carnival.
The heteroglottal and grotesque character of his texts counteracts the idea
of a mimetic representation of the Shoah; rather, it evokes images of the
Shoah that differ from reader to reader and thereby provides an important
contribution to the individual’s confrontation with the National Socialist
past.
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Nationalsozialismus, edited by Hans Sarkowicz, 245–277. Frankfurt,
Leipzig: Insel, 2004.
Roth, Markus. Theater nach Auschwitz. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2003.
Sander, Marcus. “Friedhofs-Monologe. George Taboris Jubiläum,” in
Theater gegen das Vergessen. Bühnenarbeit und Drama bei George
Tabori, edited by Hans-Peter Bayerdörfer and Jörg Schönert, 183–217.
Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1997.
Scheidweiler, Alexander. Maler, Monstren, Muschelwerk. Wandlungen
des Grotesken in Literatur und Kunsttheorie des 18. und 19.
Jahrhunderts. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2009.
Stern, Frank. “Von der Bühne auf die Straße. Der schwierige Umgang mit
dem deutschen Antisemitismus in der politischen Kultur 1945 bis
1990—Eine Skizze.” Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 1 (1992):
42–76.
Tabori, George. Die Kannibalen. In Theaterstücke I, 1–74. Frankfurt:
Fischer, 1994.
—. Jubliäum. In Theaterstücke II, 49–86. Frankfurt: Fischer, 1994.
—. Mein Kampf. Leipzig: Klett, 2004.
Weiss, Peter. Die Ermittlung: Oratorium in 11 Gesängen. Frankfurt:
Surhkamp, 1991.
Zabka, Thomas. “Vom ‘deutschen Mythus’ zum ‘Kriegshilfsdienst’:
Faust-Aneignungen im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland.” In Faust.
Annäherungen an einen Mythos, edited by Frank Möbus, Friederike
Schmidt-Möbus and Gerd Unverfehrt, 313–331. Göttingen: Wallsein,
1996.
THE GROTESQUE AND GENDER
IN NILS SAKSS’ PROSE
KƖRLIS VƜRDIƻŠ
In 2008 a new Latvian prose writer made his debut, publishing two
books in the same year. His name was Nils Sakss and he announced that
his main themes were the Holocaust and paedophilia.1 His books were
published by the publishing house ¼ Satori, which also runs a website
well known as a forum for young writers and intellectuals. However, the
young writer did not become an overnight sensation and a wider audience
remained uninterested in his provocations. This paper will attempt to
describe the nature of Sakss’ work and how his presentation in his stories
of various phenomena in a grotesque manner reflects a concern with
gender issues.
Nils Sakss (real name Nils Konstantinovs) was born in 1983 in Riga.
According to his biography, as published on the Satori website in 2008,
after graduating from Riga State Gymnasium No. 1 he briefly attended
several universities including institutions in France and Russia, and tried
his hand at a variety of jobs in Latvia and abroad: he has worked as a
lifeguard, a hospital orderly, an investigative journalist at the largest
Latvian newspaper (Diena), and as a sports instructor for children.2
He gained some notoriety as the author of the scandalous blog-novel
NorakstƯtƗ, which was published on the Satori blog in the summer of
2006.3 The name of this work literally means The Written-Off One; it is
also a pun referencing well-known Latvian author Nora Ikstena who in the
novel experiences a car accident. Ikstena answered with a short story titled
1
KristƯne Melne, “Nils Sakss: manas tƝmas ir pedofilija un holokausts,” Delfi,
November 26, 2008, http://izklaide.delfi.lv/saturs/arhivs/nils-sakss-manas-temas-
ir-pedofilija-un-holokausts.m?id%20=%2022492301; See also: Valdis Felsbergs,
“CitplanƝtieša Saksa pedersvastiskais homokausts jeb Latviešu literatǌrƗ—droši kƗ
seifƗ,” a paper delivered at the international conference VƝrojuma telpas: attƝls,
skaƼa, performance, vƗrds, Riga, October 20, 2011.
2
“Nils Sakss,” ¼ Satori, 2008, www.satori.lv/autors/233/Nils_Sakss.
3
Anda Burve, “LecƯgie,” Diena, September 9, 2006, www.diena.lv/arhivs/lecigie-
12900128.
98 The Grotesque and Gender in Nils Sakss’ Prose
“Konstantinovs” in which she mocked her bold, fellow writer, depicting

him as a self-loving and perplexed person.4
In 2010 Sakss became editor-in-chief of the website of the pro-oligarch
party Par labu Latviju.5 In 2011, during the parliamentary election
campaign, he was one of the creators of the Internet tabloid Puaro which
published articles poking fun at parties whose platform was based on
waging war against pro-oligarch politics. In 2009, after an unsuccessful
collaboration with writer Kaspars Dimiters, Sakss sued Dimiters and the
Latvian National Theatre for fraudulently using his ideas in the libretto for
the musical Vadonis (The Leader) about authoritarian president KƗrlis
Ulmanis, who for some Latvians personifies “the good, old days”. A trial
court dismissed his suit in 2011 but he has appealed.6 Sakss is also
notorious for translating and publishing, in 2008, Anton Szandor LaVey’s
Satanic Bible.
Alongside all this Sakss is the author of a collection of short stories,
Nopietni nolǌki (Serious Intentions), and a novella, ParadƯze atnƗks Ɨrieša
izskatƗ (Paradise Will Come in the Appearance of an Aryan), both
published in 2008. A successful demagogue both in his articles and prose,
Sakss seems to have destroyed the ideological innocence of Latvian
contemporary prose. Writers and readers were accustomed to literature as
an honest self-expression of personality, a sharing of experience that was
easy to identify with. In Sakss’ case the reader is often confused by the
narrator’s attitude to the ethical issues surrounding his controversial
subjects, such as his depictions of incest, anti-Semitism, paedophilia,
homosexuality, misogyny, and Nazism. He deliberately avoids evaluating
these issues, permitting the reader to both support and reject the dangerous
desires that the characters in his stories succumb to.
The short story collection Serious Intentions is comprised of eight
stories on different subjects. Sakss tries to write provocative works that
quickly grab the attention of the reader, however the resulting works
appear to be merely postmodern constructions that do not correspond to
reality. In his prose collection Sakss employs a variety of genres including
utopia and dystopia, realistic prose, quasi-propaganda, as well as a variety
of viewpoints: his protagonists are representatives of a number of
4
Nora Ikstena, “Konstantinovs,” Diena, July 14, 2006; see also Normunds
Naumanis edited Hermanis. Naumanis. Latviešu stƗsti (RƯga: Dienas grƗmata,
2006).
5
Ilze ZƗlƯte, “Nils Sakss kƺuvis par kustƯbas ‘Par labu Latviju’ portƗla redaktoru,”
Diena, June 14, 2010.
6
[LETA], “Nils Sakss zaudƝ strƯdƗ par ‘VadoƼa’ autortiesƯbƗm,” Ir, March 15,
2011, www.ir.lv/2011/3/15/nils-sakss-zaude-strida-par-vadona-autortiesibam.
KƗrlis VƝrdiƼš 99
nationalities, genders, sexual orientations and preferences. His approach

draws the attention of the reader not to the plot of the story but rather to
the subject of his satire.
To clarify the grotesque nature of sexuality in Sakss’ prose it is helpful
to recall the definition of the grotesque in both visual arts and literature.
According to Frances S. Connelly, images are grotesque because they
“combine unlike things in order to challenge established realities or
construct new ones; those that deform or decompose things; and those that
are metamorphic”; and “their range of expression runs from the wondrous
to the monstrous to the ridiculous.”7 This could be done “to create the
misshapen, ugly, exaggerated, or even formless. This type runs the gamut
from the deliberate exaggerations of caricature, to the unintended
aberrations, accidents, and failures of the everyday world represented in
realist imagery, to the dissolution of bodies, forms and categories.”8 In
fiction, “literary works of mixed genre are occasionally termed grotesque,
as are ‘low’ or non-literary genres such as pantomime and farce”.9 Sakss’
works are sometimes classified as trash literature or pornography.10
Another important quality of the grotesque is that characters are usually
considered grotesque if they induce both empathy and disgust. There are
quite a few examples of such characters in Sakss’ stories, especially those
who engage in various sexual acts.
In Latvian literature the grotesque has been discerned as present in the
prose of MarƧeris ZariƼš (who wrote in Soviet Latvia) and in works by the
exile writer TƗlivaldis ƶiƷauka. JautrƯte SaliƼa defines prose that contains
elements of the grotesque as “macabre and comic, absurd and satiric at the
same time. The laughter aroused by them doesn’t liberate. The grotesque
doesn’t solve anything, its paradoxes just make senselessness concrete.”11
Sakss, a self-proclaimed misogynist, almost always chooses to depict
women as violent, cruel, or brainless creatures preoccupied with sex.12 In
“Serious Intentions”, the title story of Sakss’ debut, JustƯne, a young single
woman, longs for a relationship and tries to write a short advertisement
7
Frances S. Connelly, Modern Art and the Grotesque (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2009), 2.
8
Ibid., 2.
9
See Geoffrey Galt Harham, On the Grotesque (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1982).
10
Haralds Matulis, “Latvijas vƯriešu pornogrƗfiskƗ daiƺliteratǌra (E. FrƯdvalds, N.
Sakss),” ¼ Satori, May 28, 2008, www.satori.lv/raksts/2086.
11
JautrƯte SaliƼa, “PPP x 2 jeb Par grotesko TƗlivalža ƶiƷaukas un MarƧera ZariƼa
prozƗ,” JaunƗ Gaita, no. 118 (1978): 9.
12
Nils Sakss, “KƗpƝc mani kaitina sievietes?,” Santa, November 2008, 54.
presenting herself as an interesting and attractive partner. After composing

various drafts she understands that it is impossible to paint a serious
picture of her and interests within the limited number of characters of an
SMS and so she ends up with a simplified message full of abbreviations:
“Woman (28) with serious intentions looking for man (25 to 40) who likes
travel and reading. Reply to letters with photo 100% guaranteed.”13 After
completing the text and sending it, JustƯne feels satisfied and falls asleep
peacefully. The story portrays the woman as a shy and sentimental person
who is unable to communicate with men and who will likely spend her life
living in false hope.
A much more sarcastic portrayal of a woman can be observed in the
story “Letting the Bitch Out for a Run”. An amnesiac woman in her
thirties, dressed in a nightdress marked with a large X, finds herself
running through a futuristic town inhabited by men, most of them young
and sexy. It is gradually revealed that in the future the world is ruled and
inhabited exclusively by homosexual men who raise only sons and do all
required jobs themselves, except for giving birth—for that purpose they
have women locked up in maternity wards who are constantly impregnated
and giving birth.
In her short escape from the hospital the beautiful men treat Woman X
with disgust and arrogance; they call her “bitch” and order her to vanish
from their neighbourhood. However, Woman X feels excited looking at
the men and even starts to masturbate watching the male striptease at the
club she accidentally ends up in. The author has stripped his heroine of all
her traits except her biological need to copulate and give birth. The story
can be interpreted as a utopia or a dystopia, depending on the preferences
of the reader—it seems that Sakss is happy to incite both these
interpretations.
In Sakss’ prose, sexual acts are often performed in a repulsive way,
especially sex acts between the same sex. There are two stories where
same-sex relations play a crucial role. In the story “The Man Who Loved
With His Stomach” the action is set in a future where meat is prohibited;
people eat artificial food, work at home on their computers, and become
heavily overweight and increasingly immobile. After dreaming about sexy
Asian women and surfing for erotic pictures on the Internet the protagonist
named K decides to have real sex for the first time in his life. After placing
a sex advertisement he gets an answer from a stranger and invites her to
his place. It turns out his guest is also an overweight male who thought the
advertisement had been written by a woman. After a moment of confusion
13
Nils Sakss, Nopietni nolǌki (RƯga: ¼ Satori, 2008), 26.
both of them decide not to miss the opportunity to have sex. Their attempt
to have intercourse turns out to be too much for the guest and he suffers a
heart attack. After unsuccessful attempts to call the authorities to get rid of
the huge, fat body the protagonist decides to eat the obese man. In this
story homosexuality is a matter of choice, a miserable effort to break out
of estrangement, however, it is depicted in a grotesque manner alongside
episodes of sexual fantasies and masturbation.
Another story in the book, “The Desert”, is the only one that depicts
homosexuality as an integral trait of a person’s personality. The narrator of
the story is a young European who has settled in the United Arab Emirates
and makes his living in the illegal alcohol trade. He has moved into an
apartment where two rent boys, Rashid and Jesse, live. The narrator falls
in love with one of the boys and together they make plans for the future.
However, the two Arab boys get arrested and likely prosecuted—
homosexual relations are illegal in the country—while the European
manages to escape. This story is told from the viewpoint of the European,
a non-religious and deviant person who uses the local Christian church
only for alcohol trade and as a refuge from the strict Muslim rules.
Throughout the story, Christianity is likened to debauchery and the power
of money while Islam is represented by order and intolerance.
This is the only story by Sakss where homosexuality is endowed with
some positive qualities. Unlike the heroes of the other stories, the male
prostitutes of Sharjah are depicted as beautiful and capable of feeling love,
as evidenced in the love affair that forms between the narrator and Jesse.
However, the physical aspects of their relationship are reduced to one
tender embrace and a short flashback of their first meeting, involving a
clandestine sex act in a men’s toilet. During this act the narrator screams
out the name of Jesus, a homonym for Jesse: “Yes, Jesus, yes! Oh, Jesus,
and uh, Jesus, and I love you, Jesus! Call me Jesse! Ok, Jesse, whatever
you like.”14
The presence of religion in a homosexual act is seen again when the
narrator secretly witnesses sex between the other boy, Rashid, and his
client. This act is depicted in a grotesque manner—the fat Arab customer
tells Rashid to undress, to lie down and to read aloud from the Koran
while the client tops him gasping and moving his jellylike body faster and
faster. At the end of the story the narrator is overwhelmed by a sense of
decline: “Upon departing he gave Rashid a couple of bills. Greasy and
creased. Pretty much like himself, I thought at that moment.”15
14
Ibid., 195.
15
Ibid., 191.
These two episodes link sex and religion closely together—both sex
acts are illegal and reprehensible according to the standards of those
religions. The Muslim man wants to hear sutras from the Koran while
having sex with a male prostitute and the European enjoys calling his sex
partner Jesus. These acts of profanity reveal the depth of religious feeling
and the sense of guilt felt by the homosexual; same-sex acts are declared
to be an offence against God. This aspect of Sakss’ prose seems to come
into conflict with his provocateur pathos, which doesn’t seem to subject
itself to any authority.
In two other stories Sakss deals with imagined paedophilia. In the story
“Mother’s Burden” an overprotective mother suspects her babysitter of
abusing her son and orders her son to repeat all the imagined acts with her,
in that way actually seducing the boy in front of the shocked babysitter. In
another story, “Dance Macabre”, a father is arrested when his dear and
spoiled daughter tries to seduce a boy from her class. She is caught in the
act by her teacher who suspects that the girl’s early sexual interest in boys
is a result of sexual abuse by her father.
In his flirtation with trash literature Sakss doesn’t pay any attention to
the real problem of paedophilia in contemporary society. Instead he toys
with the idea of it and feasts his eyes on the miscomprehensions of the
grown-ups and their demoralized fantasies which make them permanently
suspicious. In both stories all of the evil and sexually obsessed
protagonists are women, which is characteristic of Sakss’ prose; men are
depicted as innocent and passive objects of their manipulations.
Paedophilia is one of the central motifs in Sakss’ book Paradise Will
Come in the Appearance of an Aryan. At the centre of this novella is
World War II, a period in Latvian history whose interpretation often gives
rise to controversy, both in Latvia and abroad. However, the events
depicted in the novella take place in an abstract village, probably
somewhere in Eastern Europe, whose few remaining inhabitants (women
and children) are of no specific nationality. Ongoing fighting between
German Nazis and Russian Communists, and the fact that the village has
been repeatedly occupied by both powers in turn, place the events in a
historical context. The villagers who survive are the ones skilful enough to
cooperate with both powers.
The social and political background of this story is the still painful
question of the presence of Latvians in the Nazi Army during World War
II, an issue that raises passionate debates in Latvia every year and is a
regular topic in Russian mass media. For some time now the occupations
by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany have been viewed by Latvian
historians as equally negative periods in Latvian history and culture.16

Sakss defiantly takes the position of being a quasi-admirer of Nazism.
However, his protagonist would be unacceptable for any true supporter of
neo-Nazism because of his homoerotic and incestuous drives.
Motifs of homoeroticism and paedophilia that are important to the
novella are reminiscent of the discourse on Nazis and homosexuality in
contemporary Europe and America. Historians and gay rights activists
commemorate the arrests of homosexuals in Nazi Germany and their
deaths in concentration camps.17 Still, there is ample evidence of
homosexual scandals within the Nazi regime, including in the SA and SS
forces (probably the best-known case is the arrest and execution of SA
leader Ernst Röhm).18 Some authors, speaking about contemporary
Russian gay culture, have also mentioned “the attraction of some highly
visible Russian ‘queers’ [...] to right-wing, nationalist discourse and fascist
aesthetics”.19
In his novella Sakss constructs an imaginary world which to some
degree resembles an unknown area in Eastern Europe during World War II
and serves as a backdrop for the passion and inner struggles of an
adolescent boy, Henry, an ardent admirer of the Nazi regime. Henry
idolizes and wants to emulate his older brother who left to fight with the
Nazis some years previous. Sakss does not attempt to reconstruct the
reality of the 1940s or explain the situation Latvian youth found
themselves in during those years. Instead, he creates his own reality,
hinting at the war through many deliberately provocative undertones. His
tactics are similar to English comedian Sasha Baron Cohen’s in his movies
Borat and Bruno, where the subject is both constructed and ridiculed by
the author and does not contain an expressly direct correspondence to a
real person of a particular background.
16
See, for example, two books published almost simultaneously in 2011: Nils
Muižnieks and Vita Zelþe ed. KarojošƗ piemiƼa: 16. marts un 9. maijs (RƯga:
ZinƗtne, 2011) and, by the same authors, (Divas) puses: latviešu kara stƗsti. Otrais
pasaules karš karavƯru dienasgrƗmatƗs (RƯga: Mansards, 2011).
17
Robert Gellately, Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe
(Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), published in Latvian as ƹeƼins, Staƺins un Hitlers:
SociƗlƗs katastrofas laikmets, trans. S. Rutmane (RƯga: Dienas grƗmata, 2008),
309.
18
See Guido Knopp, Die SS: Eine Warnung der Geschichte (München: C.
Bertelsmann Verlag, 2002), published in Latvian as SS vƝsture brƯdina, trans. A.
Lapsa (RƯga: Zvaigzne ABC, 2010).
19
Brian James Baer, Other Russias: Homosexuality and the Crisis of Post-Soviet
Identity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 38.
The most grotesque character in this work is a Jewish woman, Sara,

who has escaped from a concentration camp and has accidentally stumbled
across the village. Henry’s mother invites her to stay at their house despite
Henry’s protests. Sakss depicts Sara as a tortured and weak woman, but at
the same time she is intrusive and hungry for sex. She tries to seduce
Henry while bathing together with him in the kitchen.
The novella ends, unrealistically, with a double ending. The reader
understands that Henry has committed suicide by slitting his veins, but at
the same time we see Henry’s dream of his older brother returning home
on vacation and, after having sex with Henry, shooting Sara, and then
taking Henry away with him. The ending of story reads: “Henry gave all
of himself to the glimmering light and melted into it in a blink, becoming a
whole. Pure and untouched again, together with his brother he went off
into infinity.”20 The novella is written in a propaganda-like manner that
pays little attention to the characters’ psychological motivation or history
but rather aspires to catch the attention of a wide circle of readers through
shocking crimes, murders, and erotic scenes.
In Sakss’ stories sexual acts are usually depicted with a strong
presence of the grotesque. This technique allows the narrator to distance
himself from these acts and emphasizes their provocative nature. Although
young and beautiful bodies are the objects of desire in many of his stories,
Sakss is interested only in showing extreme or unusual attitudes toward
sexuality. Playing on people’s baser motives, Sakss creates a text that is at
the same time flat yet entertaining and multi-layered for the careful
reader’s imagination.
The most recent prose piece Sakss has published is an ironic short
story entitled “KƗ Hendersones jaunkundze iemƗcƯja mƯlƝt literatǌru”
(“How Miss Henderson Taught us to Love Literature”, 2010), about a
group of sexually awakened American Catholic schoolboys who desire
their literature teacher and attend her extracurricular literature class just to
be near her.21 It is likely that Nils Sakss’ truly shocking works are yet to
come.
20
Nils Sakss, ParadƯze atnƗks Ɨrieša izskatƗ (RƯga: ¼ Satori, 2008), 120.
21
Nils Sakss, “KƗ Hendersones jaunkundze iemƗcƯja mƯlƝt literatǌru,” ¼ Satori,
October 10, 2010, www.satori.lv/raksts/3537/Nils_Sakss.
Bibliography
Baer, Brian James. Other Russias: Homosexuality and the Crisis of Post-
Soviet Identity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Connelly, Frances S. Modern Art and the Grotesque. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Gellately, Robert. Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe.
New York: Knopf, 2007.
Harham, Geoffrey Galt. On the Grotesque. Princeton: Princeton
Knopp, Guido. Die SS: Eine Warnung der Geschichte. München: C.
Bertelsmann Verlag, 2002.
SaliƼa, JautrƯte. “PPP x 2 jeb Par grotesko TƗlivalža ƶiƷaukas un MarƧera
ZariƼa prozƗ.” JaunƗ Gaita, 118 (1978): 9–13.
THE CREATIVE ROLE OF THE GROTESQUE
IN THE MOSCOW SECTIONS OF MIKHAIL
BULGAKOV’S THE MASTER AND MARGARITA
ALEXANDER IVANITSKY
One of the most important themes associated with grotesque figures is

the transcendence of natural limitations, including those of the human
body. This theme can be realized through the combination of incompatible
things, such as the reanimation of the inanimate, or as a violation of
natural proportions. In his work Mikhail Bakhtin argues that it was
through the folk carnival that such violations were made humorous.1 The
grotesque appeared in the literature of late Middle Ages as part of the
heritage of the pagan mythology of the European folk, which was recast
by the church in the guise of evil spirits. In his work on the grotesque of
this period, Aaron Gurevitch has shown that the grotesque figure usually
combined fun, repulsion and horror.2
In the literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, the grotesque was often
set in opposition to the rhetorical fantasy of satire (as in Voltaire or Swift,
for example) and romantic fairytales. However, the grotesque always
indicates an invasion of the supernatural into the real world. In the novels
of E.T.A. Hoffmann (The Life and Opinions of Tomcat Murr, The News
About an Educated Young Man), Wilhelm Hauff (The Monkey as a Man),
Nikolai Gogol (The Papers of the Mad Man), and Franz Kafka (The
Report for the Academy) the grotesque exists within the false acquisition
of human abilities by animals (in these instances a monkey, a dog, and a
cat) and expresses the moral and spiritual failings of society and mankind.
Hoffmann called this “the angry principle”, and Gogol the “disorder of
nature”.
1
M.M. Bakhtin, Tvorchestvo Fransua Rable i narodno-smehovaja kultura
srednevekovja i Renessansa (Moskva: Hudozhestvennaja literatura, 1986), 270-
299.
2
A.J. Gurevitch, “K istorii groteska: O prirode komicheskogo v ‘Starshej Edde’,”
Izvestija Akademii Nauk SSSR. Seria literatyri i jazika 35, No. 4 (1976): 331-342.
Alexander Ivanitsky 107
Such type of grotesque appears in Mikhail Bulgakov’s novels of the

1920s, Fatal Eggs and Heart of a Dog. The grotesque plays an epic role as
it reflects the accession of the communist regime and its demonic
underpinnings. In Bulgakov’s best known work, The Master and
Margarita (1929–1940), the grotesque retains this epic scale. Traditionally
the part of the novel set in Moscow is understood as the profane form of
the part of the novel set in Jerusalem.3 However, Woland is the only
person who appears in the both parts of the novel. His invasion as an evil
spirit into the real world of Moscow is an example of the demonic roots of
the grotesque, though in this case it does not represent Communist power
but rather the fight against it. The entire grotesque theme in the novel is
embodied in Woland and his retinue, and several features common to
Woland appear as grotesque for the comic figures of Berlios and
Bezdomniy (in the beginning of the novel): “‘I just arrived in Moscow this
very minute,’ the professor said perplexedly, and only here did it occur to
the friends to take a good look in his eyes, at which they became
convinced that his left eye, the green one, was totally insane, while the
right one was empty, black and dead.”4 Woland’s eyes similarly fascinate
Margarita: “Two eyes were fixed on Margarita’s face. The right one with a
golden spark at its bottom, drilling anyone to the bottom of his soul, and
the left one empty and black, like the narrow eye of a needle, like the
entrance to the bottomless well of all darkness and shadow.”5
The characteristics of horror, fun, and disgust are distributed among
Woland’s three servants. The cat Behemoth embodies the key principle of
the grotesque: animal behaving as human. He drinks vodka in Stepan
Lihodeev’s flat, sends a telegram to the uncle of the deceased Michael
Berlioz on his behalf, inviting the uncle to Berlioz’s own funeral, and
picks up a Browning and returns fire when under attack by the NKVD.
Koroviev is the most “disgusting” character:
The ex-choirmaster was sitting in the very place where Ivan Nikolaevich
had sat just recently. Now the busybody had perched on his nose an
3
See for example L. Menglinova, “Grotesk v romane ‘Master and Margarita’” in
Tvorchestvo Mikhaila Bulgakova (Tomsk: Izd-vo Tomskogo universiteta, 1991),
49-78. Compare this with the opposite meaning found in Pavel Abraham’s
Roman "Master i Margarita" M.A. Bulgakova (Brno: Masarykova univerzita v
Brne, 1993), 143.
4
M. A. Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita, trans. R. Pevear and L.
Volochonsky (London: Penguin, 1997), Book I, 55. All references in this article
are to this edition.
5
Ibid. Book II, 266.
108 The Creative Role of the Grotesque in The Master and Margarita
obviously unnecessary pince-nez, in which one lens was missing altogether

and the other was cracked. This made the checkered citizen even more
repulsive than he had been when he showed Berlioz the way to the rails.6
Azazello, the killer, combines human and animal features, like

Behemoth, but is also repulsive, like Koroviev: “Straight from mirror
stepped a short but extraordinarily broad shouldered man, with [...] a fang
sticking out of his mouth, which made still uglier a physiognomy
unprecedentedly loathsome.”7
In the first draft of the novel, then titled The Great Chancellor (1934–
1936), Azazello appears dressed in the suit of a jester from the Middle
Ages with bells on his shoulders, elbows, and knees, further illustrating
the demonic roots of the grotesque carnival.
One of the functions of the grotesque is as a weapon that Woland
wields in his struggle against Soviet Moscow, and the weapon he uses is
mockery and jeering. This primarily manifests in two ways: mocking of
the non-believer, and jeering or mocking as a way of curing “like with
like”.
Mocking of the non-believer

The first target of Woland’s jeering is the official Soviet materialism
and disbelief in the supernatural, including God and Satan:
“And there’s no devil either?” the sick man suddenly inquired merrily of
Ivan Nikolaevich. [...] “[T]hat is positively interesting!” the professor said,
shaking with laughter. “What is it with you—no matter what one asks for,
there isn’t any!” He suddenly stopped laughing and, quite understandably
for a mentally ill person, fell into the opposite extreme after laughing,
became vexed and cried sternly: “So you mean there just simply isn’t
any?” And says direct to Berlioz: “But I implore you, before you go, at
least believe that the devil exists! [...] There exists a seventh proof of it, the
surest of all! And it is going to be presented to you right now!”8
The “seventh” proof that the devil exists is found in the absolutely
grotesque three-stage execution of Berlioz: at Patriarch’s Ponds he is
decapitated by a tram; then, on the night before the funeral Behemoth
steals his head out of his coffin as he lays in the Massolit-house; finally,
6
Ibid. Book I, 61.
7
Ibid. Book I, 96.
8
Ibid. Book I, 56.
during Satan’s Spring Ball, under a full moon, Woland eulogises his head,
giving him his due for his “atheistic faith”:
“Mikhail Alexandrovich,” Woland addressed the head in a low voice, and

[...] on the dead face Margarita saw [...] living eyes filled with thought and
suffering—”Everything came to pass, did it not?” Woland went on,
looking into the head’s eyes. “The head was cut off by a woman, the
meeting did not take place, and I am living in your apartment [...] You
have always been an ardent preacher of the theory that, on the cutting off
of his head, life ceases in a man, he turns to ashes and goes into non-being.
I have the pleasure of informing you, in the presence of my guests, though
they serve as proof of quite a different theory, that your theory is both solid
and clever. However, one theory is as good as another. There is also one
which holds that it will be given to each according to his faith. Let it come
true! You go into non-being, and from the cup into which you are to be
transformed, I will joyfully drink to being!”9
The three phases of the Berlioz’s execution have a comical interlude—

the similar execution of George Bengalsky, the emcee of the Variety
Theatre. This event occurs during Woland’s black magic session, at the
first culmination of the Moscow part of the novel. After the session,
Bengalsky demands that Woland expose his magic and show him the
slight of hand of his trick. In response Behemoth plays the role of a
clownish executor:
“This one, incidentally,” here Fagotto pointed to Bengalsky, “annoys me.

Keeps poking his nose where nobody’s asked him, spoils the session with
false observations! What’re we going to do with him?”
“Tear his head off!” someone up in the gallery said severely.
“What’s that you said? Eh? [...] There’s an idea! Behemoth!” he
shouted to the cat. “Go to it! Ein, zwei, drei!!”
[...] The fur bristled on the cat’s back, and he gave a rending miaow.
Then he compressed himself into a ball and shot like a panther straight at
Bengalsky’s chest, and from there on to his head. Growling, the cat sank
his plump paws into the skimpy hair of the master of ceremonies and in
two twists tore the head from the thick neck with a savage howl [...] Blood
spurted in fountains from the torn neck arteries and poured over the
shirtfront and tailcoat. The headless body paddled its feet somehow
absurdly and sat down on the floor.10
9
Ibid. Book II, 286.
10
Ibid. Book I, 136.
Bengalsky’s head stays alive, just like Berlioz’s does, but it is not tragic or
horrible but, rather, grotesque:
The cat handed the head to Fagotto, who lifted it up by the hair and showed
it to the audience, and the head cried desperately for all the theatre to hear:
“A doctor!”—“Will you pour out such drivel in the future?” Fagotto asked
the weeping head menacingly.—“Never again!” croaked the head.11
Staying alive after decapitation, Bengalsky, like Berlioz, is at the same

time the object and the recipient of a grotesque message from supernatural
forces. His clownish execution is reversible, and at last a comic
“resurrection” happens:
The cat, aiming accurately, planted the head on the neck, and it sat exactly
in its place, as if it had never gone anywhere. Above all, there was not even
any scar left on the neck. The cat brushed Bengalsky’s tailcoat and
shirtfront with his paws, and all traces of blood disappeared from them.
Fagotto got the sitting Bengalsky to his feet, stuck a packet of money into
his coat pocket, and sent him from the stage with the words: “Buzz off, it’s
more fun without you”!12
The magic session, in general, is also the punishment for those who
debunk magic only this time the punishment occurs over an extended
period of time. During the magic show Woland showers the spectators
with banknotes and the newest Parisian fashions, which are eagerly
accepted. In this way Woland and his company prove that Moscow people
were not waiting for him to expose the working of his magic, but rather
looking to be on the receiving end of it. At the end of the session his magic
is formally exposed, as are, in fact, its debunkers. Their new clothes
disappear and the ladies are left naked in the streets; the money they were
showered with transforms into slips of paper. It should be noted here that
having witnessed these fantasies the characters in the Moscow part of the
novel who are on the receiving end of Woland’s jeers attempt to reduce it
to his own delirium:
The [...] air thickened before Berlioz, and a transparent citizen with a
jeering physiognomy [...] wove himself out of it. The life of Berlioz had
taken such a course, that he was unaccustomed to extraordinary
11
Ibid, Book I, 137.
12
Ibid, Book I, 139.
phenomena. Turning paler still, he goggled his eyes and thought in

consternation: “This can’t be!”13
Having failed, the Soviet atheist feels horror and starts doubting the
authenticity of his own existence. Rimskiy, financial director of Variety
Theatre, cannot understand how Stepan Lichodeev could reach Yalta in
two hours and send the telegrams from there:
What remains, then? Hypnosis? There’s no hypnosis in the world that can
fling a man a thousand miles away! So he’s imagining that he’s in Yalta?
He may be imagining it, but are the Yalta investigators also imagining it?
No, no, sorry, that can’t be!… Yet they did telegraph from there? The fine
director’s face was literally dreadful.14
Therefore, the NCVD official investigation of Woland’s activity is aimed

first of all:
[N]ot only to catch the criminals, but to explain all their mischief. And it
all was explained. [...] / [...] There had been no cat on the chandelier [...]
the shooters had been aiming at an empty spot, while Koroviev, having
suggested that the cat was acting up on the chandelier, was free to stand
behind the shooters’ backs, mugging and enjoying his enormous, but
criminally employed, capacity for suggestion.15
Stravinsky, Professor of the madhouse, warns the poet Bezdomniy that

if he tells the police about the stranger, who had allegedly spoken with
Pontius Pilate, in two hours he would be returned to the madhouse.
Bezdomniy is the complete opposite of Berlioz's uncle, Maximilian
Andreevich Poplavskiy, who was driven by Behemoth and Azazello out of
his nephew’s apartment:
Perhaps Maximilian Andreevich was going to police, to complain about

the bandits who had perpetrated… violence upon him in broad daylight?
No, by no means… To go into a police station and tell them, look here, just
now a cat in eyeglasses read my passport, and then a man in tights, with a
knife [...] no, citizens, Maximilian Andreevich was indeed an intelligent
man.16
13
Ibid. Book I, 19-20.
14
Ibid. Book I, 121.
15
Ibid. Book II, 397.
16
Ibid. Book I, 50.
This example appears to illustrate one of the more prominent features

of the grotesque in the literature of last two centuries: the invasion of the
supernatural into a “non-fantasy” world, where supernatural activities are,
by definition, impossible. However, at the same time Woland is
recognized and acknowledged by the old-regime Muscovites, who were
educated by the church and fairy tales. The housemaid at Berlioz’s
apartment had no doubt that the devil had taken the tenants; the corrupt
chairman of Berlioz’s housing cooperative, Nicanor Bosoy, after his arrest
for the currency found in his WC (in fact placed there by Koroviev)
exclaims: “Comrades!... Catch them! There are unclean powers in our
house!”17 Sokov, the buffet manager at the Variety Theatre, immediately
and unconditionally believes in Woland’s prediction that he will contract
liver cancer and runs to professor Kuzmin: “‘Excuse me, I don’t
understand... you’ve, been to the doctor?’—‘Some doctor!... You
should’ve seen this doctor...’ the barman replied, and his teeth suddenly
began to chatter… ‘Believe him!... He knows!’”18 And finally, animals
sense the devil. When the detective dog Tuzbuben (“Ace of Diamonds”)
was brought to the Variety Theatre to investigate:
His behaviour amazed them all. The moment Ace of Diamonds ran into the
fine director’s office, he growled, baring his monstrous yellow fangs, then
crouched on his belly and, with some sort of look of anguish and at the
same time of rage in his eyes, crawled towards the broken window.
17
Ibid. Book I, 114.
18
Ibid. Book II, 223.
Furthermore, Professor Kuzmin himself is punished by Woland when he calls the
devil in absentia a “charlatan”:
The professor categorically maintained that presently [...] the barman had no
symptoms of cancer, but... since he… had been frightened by some charlatan,
he must perform all the tests [...] / [...] at the same moment a sparrow’s
chirping came from behind the professor’s back. He turned around and saw a
large sparrow hopping on his desk… The obnoxious little sparrow dipped on
its left leg, obviously clowning, dragging it, working it in syncopation—in
short, it was dancing the foxtrot to the sounds of the gramophone.
At first the professor also tries to find a rational explanation for what is happening:
“Kuzmin’s hand fell on the telephone, and he decided to call his old schoolmate
Bouret, to ask what such little sparrows might mean at the age of sixty, especially
when one’s head suddenly starts spinning?...” But this attempt also becomes the
object of jeering: “The sparrow meanwhile sat on the inkstand, shat in it (I’m not
joking!), then flew up… and only then flew out the window”. (Ibid. Book II, 223-
225.)
Overcoming his fear, he suddenly jumped up on the windowsill and,

throwing back his sharp muzzle, howled savagely and angrily.19
During the finale of the midnight race, the grotesque features of

Woland and his retinue are depicted as the temporary and subsidiary
masks of demonism:
Night thickened, flew alongside, caught at the riders’ cloaks and, tearing
them from their shoulders, exposed the deceptions [...] In place of
[Koroviev] [...] now rode [...] a dark-violet knight with a most gloomy and
never-smiling face. / [...] Night also tore off Behemoth’s [...] He who had
been a cat, entertaining the prince of darkness, now turned out to be a slim
youth, a demon-page, the best jester the world has ever seen [...] / The
moon also changed the face of Azazello. The absurd, ugly fang
disappeared without a trace, and the albugo on his eye proved false.
Azazello’s eyes were both the same, empty and black, and his face was
white and cold. Now Azazello flew in his true form, as the demon of the
waterless desert…20
In these ways the grotesque elements of the Moscow-based section of

The Master and Margarita reveal their connections with infernal (and
moreover, supernatural) forces and serve as punishment, in the form of
jeering, to those who do not believe in them.
Curing “like with like”

The second thread of Woland’s grotesque “mockery” in Moscow can
be seen as “homeopathic”. It is connected with a split in the concept of
evil in the novel. The guests at the Spring Ball, introduced one by one to
Margarita by Koroviev, are positioned as brave adventurers, fun and
frivolous sensualists of the European Modern Age. Their thieving and
fraud are all somehow linked to Eros, including the demonic ones:
Ah, here she is! Ah, what a wonderful brothel she ran in Strasbourg!... A
Moscow dressmaker, we all love her for her inexhaustible fantasy… She
kept a shop and invented a terribly funny trick: drilled two round holes in
the wall [...] This twenty-year-old boy was distinguished from childhood
by strange qualities, a dreamer and an eccentric. A girl fell in love with
him, and he went and sold her to a brothel [...] / [...] Robert… more
19
Ibid. Book I, 196-197.
20
Ibid. Book II, 389.
interesting as ever… this one was a queen’s lover and poisoned his wife. /
[...] Here’s the group of revellers from Brocken [...]21
There is a special category of offenders representing alchemy, an

adventurous pseudoscience of the late Middle Ages that combined greed
and black magic with imagination and scientific daring:
Monsieur Jacques... one of the most interesting of men. A confirmed

counterfeiter, a traitor to his government, but a rather good alchemist…
Look how handsome he is!... / [...] The emperor Rudolf—sorcerer and
alchemist... Another alchemist—got hanged.22
An interconnection between heroic adventure, demonism, and the

nobility is revealed. Before the ball, Koroviev tells Margarita that she was
chosen by Woland because of her resemblance to the Queen of French
Renaissance (16th century), noting that the “questions of blood are the
most important in the world”. The importance of this statement is proven
to Margarita literally: directly before the ball she is covered in blood in the
form of the demonic cream given to her by Azazello which makes her
younger and transforms her into a witch; the cream also enables her maid,
Natasha, to recognize Margarita as a “French Queen” (she cries out the
name, fascinated by Margarita).23
The mixture of nobility, demonism, heroic adventure, and epicureanism
is embodied in Woland, the patron of this world. This quality is revealed
during Sokov’s—the Variety Theatre’s barman—visit to Woland’s
Moscow apartment after the incident with the fake banknotes which he
received as payment after the magic session. The only tangible feature
indicating the presence of the devil in the flat is the description of the
21
Ibid. Book II, 282.
22
Ibid. Book II, 282.
23
It is noteworthy that the guests of the Spring Ball elicit Margarita’s sympathy.
She asks Woland to forgive Frieda and not put the handkerchief in front of her (it
was with this handkerchief that she has strangled her illegitimate child). Then she
sees herself as a possible client of the Neapolitan Madame Tofana:
“Madame Tofana. Extremely popular among young, lovely Neapolitans…

especially those of them who had grown weary of their husbands. It does
happen, Queen, that one grows weary of one’s husband...”
“Yes,” Margarita replied in a hollow voice…
“And so… Madame Tofana entered into the situation of these poor women and
sold them some sort of water in little vials… and a day later the lovely
Neapolitan… would be free as the spring breeze.” (Ibid. Book II, 279.)
abode as damp, and as a swamp. Woland is viewed as a nobleman of the

early Modern Europe (of the 16th and 17th centuries), renown for his
fencing epee: “[...] on the pier-glass table lay a long sword with a
gleaming gold hilt. Three swords with silver hilts stood in the corner like
mere umbrellas or canes.”24
The sword is always with Woland in Moscow. For example, directly
after the tram accident with Berlioz: “The street lights were already lit on
Bronnaya, and over the Ponds the golden moon shone, and in the ever-
deceptive light of the moon it seemed to Ivan Nikolaevich that [Woland]
stood holding a sword, not a walking stick, under his arm.”25
Also during the ball: “Woland had a sword, but he used this [...] sword
as a cane, leaning on it.” And the same sword appears as a magical
weapon of the final punishment of the already beheaded Berlioz: “Woland
raised his sword. Straight away the flesh of the head turned dark and
shrivelled, then fell off in pieces, the eyes disappeared, and soon Margarita
saw on the platter a yellowish skull with emerald eyes, pearl teeth and a
golden foot.”26 Furthermore, before the ball Azazello meets Margarita in
the cemetery, flying up to her riding an epee.
Woland’s apartment further contributes to the image of him as a
nobleman. The apartment is described as a hunting castle: “[...] on the
stag-horns hung berets with eagle feathers.”27 Hunting comes into the
community accompanied by military marches and robber, as noted by the
appearance of the same sword: “At the fireplace a small red-haired fellow
with a knife in his belt was roasting pieces of meat on a long steel
sword.”28
The war is connected with a love story. Woland tells Sokov: “Unless
memory deceives me, among people of your profession I had dealings
with only one sutler-woman, but that was long ago, when you were not yet
in this world.”29 The love develops into the description of an orgy: “The
door had been opened by a girl who was wearing nothing but a coquettish
little lacy apron [...] On her feet, however, she had golden slippers.” And
the orgy leads to Satanism:
There was a table at the sight of which the God-fearing barman gave a
start: the table was covered with church brocade. On the brocade tablecloth
24
Ibid. Book I, 215.
25
Ibid. Book I, 61.
26
Ibid. Book II, 286.
27
Ibid. Book I, 215.
28
Ibid. Book I, 216.
29
Ibid. Book I, 218.
stood a host of bottles—round-bellied, mouldy and dusty [...] / [...]

Through the stained glass of the big windows [...] poured an unusual,
church-like light [...] / [...] There was a smell not only of roasting meat, but
also of some very strong perfume and incense, and [...] the barman’s mind
[...] that this might be a church panikhida [...] served for Berlioz, which
thought he drove away at once as a priori absurd.30
A second love story associated with Woland is connected directly with

the German “satanic” culture of the 16th century. Woland states: “I
strongly suspect that this pain in my knee was left me as a souvenir by a
charming witch with whom I was closely knew in the year 1571, on Mount
Brocken, on the Devil’s Podium.”31
Woland’s demonism descends from the aristocratic, epicurean culture
of France and Germany of the 16th century and includes fighting, hunting,
games, love, eating and drinking, adventure, and black magic.32 Sokov’s
visit shows the main opposition of this world to the Soviet evil. Sokov
cannot accept or understand neither the nobility nor the epicureanism of
Woland’s world. When he leaves, Hella gives him a sword: “‘Not mine...’
the barman whispered, pushing the sword away and quickly putting on his
hat. ‘You came without a sword?’ Hella was surprised.”33.
As a plebeian, Sokov does not possess noble weaknesses or wishes and
therefore he rejects all entertainments suggested by Woland, one after the
next:
“A cup of wine? White, red? What country’s wine do you prefer at this
time of day?”—”My humble… I don’t drink...”—“A shame! What about a
game of dice, then? Or do you have some other favourite game?
Dominoes? Cards?”—“I don’t play games,” the already weary barman
30
Ibid. Book I, 214.
31
Ibid. Book I, 271.
32
Ivanshina interprets Woland’s Spring Ball as the synthesis of European cultural
memory, see E. Ivanshina, Metamorphosi kulturnoj pamjati v tvorchestve Mikhaila
Bulgakova (Voronesh: Nauchnaja kniga, 2010), 293.
33
Ibid. Book I, 221.
On Sokov’s head also appears the beret of a Renaissance nobleman, which he finds
equally unnerving, and he suspects it is a devil’s trick: “His head for some reason
felt uncomfortable and too warm in the hat. He took it off and, jumping from fear,
cried out softly: in his hands was a velvet beret with a disheveled cock’s feather.
The barman crossed himself.” Very quickly this association is confirmed: “[...] At
the same moment, the beret miaowed, turned into a black kitten and, springing
back on to Andrei Fokich’s head, sank all its claws into his bald spot.” (Ibid.) As a
direct opposite to Sokov, during the midnight race the master receives a plait from
the 18th century.
responded. “Altogether bad,” the host concluded. “As you will, but there’s
something not nice hidden in men who avoid wine, games, the society of
charming women, table talk. Such people are either gravely ill or secretly
hate everybody around them.”34
In the novel, after his arrest, Nikanor Bosoy realizes that over the
course of his life he hasn’t liked anything except herring with onion. The
cheerful and resourceful robbers of the past represent the disastrous
mechanism of history. Sokov, Varenukha, Lichodeev, and Aloisiy
Mogarych are all stupid and miserable Soviet swindlers who depict a
vulgar and poor Moscow, an evil mould on history that must be removed.
Azazello’s cream can be seen as delineating the border between “noble”
evil and Moscow’s “ragtag” evil. The cream turns Margarita’s neighbour
Nikolai Ivanovich, who tried to seduce her maid Natasha, into a hog and
he is unable to serve at the ball and must wait in the kitchen. This is one
example of the “split of evil” in the Moscow-based section of the novel. 35
34
Ibid. Book I, 229.
35
However, the border between Moscow and Woland’s world is permeable.
NKVD informer Meigel, executed after Berlioz at the Spring Ball, is a former
baron but he refused his nobility and became part of Moscow’s Soviet world. After
the adventurous Natasha risks going to the ball with Margarita, she decides to
become a witch. The manager of the Variety Theatre, Varenukha, who is turned,
forcibly, into a vampire by Hella asks Woland to change him back. A special place
in this permeable area belongs to Archibald Archibaldovich, the manager of the
restaurant at the writer’s union. He appears to be representative in the Moscow
world of the adventurous guests at Satan’s Ball:
[T]he mystics used to say, that there was a time when the handsome man wore
not a tailcoat but a wide leather belt with pistol butts sticking from it, and his
raven hair was tied with scarlet silk, and under his command a brig sailed the
Caribbean under a black death flag with a skull and crossbones.
In the end Archibald leaves his restaurant, crushed by Behemoth: “like a captain
who must be the last to leave his burning brig.” And then he suffers, because he
cannot believe in any other world but Moscow:
But no, no! The seductive mystics are lying, there are no Caribbean Seas in the
world, no [...] freebooters sail them, no corvette chases after them, no cannon
smoke drifts across the waves. There is nothing, and there was nothing! There
is that sickly linden over there, there is the cast-iron fence, and the boulevard
beyond it... And the ice is melting in the bowl, and at the next table you see
someone’s bloodshot, bovine eyes, and you’re afraid, afraid... Oh, my gods,
poison, bring me poison! (Book I, 74).
So, how does Woland go about removing the mould of Soviet

Moscow—with evil? We can find a key in Woland’s first visit to Berlioz’s
apartment, where he is intent on living. When he calls on Berlioz’s
neighbour Stepan Lichodeev he advises him on how to deal with his
hangover from the drinking of the day before; in this interaction Woland
lays down the principle of his own relations to the world he finds in
Moscow:
“My dear Stepan Bogdanovich,” the visitor said, with a perspicacious

smile, “no aspirin will help you. Follow the wise old rule—cure like with
like. The only thing that will bring you back to life is two glasses of vodka
with something pickled and hot to go with it.”36
This homeopathic principle of curing “like with like” is realized in the

complete assimilation of Woland and his company into the Moscow
masses. Woland and his companions imitate, in their speech and their
manners, Soviet life in the 1920s, the period of the formation of the Soviet
regime.
When he met Koroviev near that fatal turnstile, Berlioz was not
suspicions because Koroviev represented himself as a typical Moscow
drunkard:
“Looking for the turnstile, citizen?” the checkered type inquired in a

cracked tenor. “This way, please! Straight on and you’ll get where you’re
going. How about a little pint pot for my information [...] to set up an ex-
choirmaster!..” Mugging, the specimen swept his jockey’s cap from his
head.37
When he is punishing Bosoy, on the orders of Woland, Koroviev

imitates the voice and terminology that would have been norm for a
voluntary NKVD informer: “Hello! I consider it my duty to inform you
that the chairman of our tenants’ association at No. 502 on Sadovaya,
Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy is speculating in foreign currency.”38
Woland, bearing a drink for Lichodeev, appears even more dashing
than the director of the Variety Theatre as he doesn’t gulp his vodka but
The author needs poison, as does Pontius, and both belong to both worlds. In his
essay on ambiguity and meaning in Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, R.W.
Pope attributes this “symmetrical” position to Afranius, the chief of the Roman
secret police in Jerusalem.
36
Ibid. Book I, 91.
37
Ibid. Book I, 58.
38
Ibid. Book I, 113.
rather drinks it slowly; such speech and manners are connected with the
behaviour of Moscow bandits. Furthermore, during the pursuit of Woland
by Ivan Bezdomniy we already see the behaviour of bandits: “Besides, the
gang of villains decided to apply the favourite trick of bandits here: a
scattered getaway. The choirmaster [...] bored his way on to a bus
speeding towards the Arbat Square and slipped away.”39 Behemoth then
imitates the actions of a young homeless man (there were many of them in
Russia after World War I and the Civil War): “Letting all three cars go by,
the cat jumped on to the rear coupling-pin of the last one, wrapped its
paws around some hose sticking out of the side, and rode off, thus saving
himself ten kopecks.”40 Behemoth’s actions are acknowledged by the
crowd as those of a young, homeless man: “Neither the conductress nor
the passengers were struck by the essence of the matter: not just that a cat
was boarding a tram-car, which would have been good enough, but that he
was going to pay!”41
Another place this technique is found is after the controversial black
magic session at the variety show, when the crowd flees the site, naked,
victims of Koroviev’s tricks. Koroviev and Behemoth not only assimilate
the clownish rules of Soviet men but also begin to play by them. For
example, when Nikolay Ivanovich is taken to Satan’s Ball he requires a
certificate from Behemoth “For the purpose of presenting it to the police
and to my wife”:
[T]he naked Hella was sitting at a typewriter and the cat was dictating to
her. “It is hereby certified that the bearer, Nikolai Ivanovich, spent the said
night at Satan’s Ball, having been summoned there in the capacity of a
man’s transportation [...] make a parenthesis, Hella, in the parenthesis put
‘hog’. Signed—Behemoth.”[...] Then he got himself a stamp from
somewhere, breathed on it according to all the rules, stamped the word
“paid” on the paper, and handed it to Nikolai Ivanovich.42
This technique positions Woland in a place where he can directly

parody life in Moscow. The comedic telegram from the dead Berlioz to his
uncle in Kiev, including an invitation to his own funeral, anticipates the
very serious calls from his colleagues as they become aware of the
Berlioz’s death:
39
Ibid. Book I, 63.
40
Ibid.
41
Ibid.
42
Ibid. Book II, 303.
Someone fussed about, crying that it was necessary at once, straight away,
without leaving the spot, to compose some collective telegram and send it
off immediately. But what telegram, may we ask... And what… need for
any telegram can have someone, whose flattened pate is now clutched in
the dissector’s rubber hands, whose neck the professor is now piercing
with curved needles? He’s dead, and has no need of any telegrams. It’s all
over; let’s not burden the telegraph wires any more.43
Woland’s abductions of the tenants from Flat 50 are a parody of the

arrests and disappearances in the real Moscow at that time. When
Koroviev returns the apartment, currently occupied by Aloisij, back to the
Master, it is with the help of light magical “corrections” in the Soviet
bureaucracy:
“No papers, no person,” Koroviev said with satisfaction. “And this is your
landlord’s house register?.. Who is registered in it? Aloisij Mogarych?”
Koroviev blew on the page of the house register. “Hup, two! He’s not
there, and, I beg you to notice, never has been. And if this landlord gets
surprised, tell him he dreamed Aloisij up! Mogarych? What Mogarych?
There was never any Mogarych!” Here the loose-leafed book evaporated
from Koroviev’s hands. “And there it is, already back in the landlord’s
desk.”44
Thus, through grotesque literary techniques Woland and his retinue

represent the dirty side of the Soviet world and hold up a mirror for
Muscovites to view their present and their recent past.
The grotesque as the language of relations

between demons
In sending Master into the highest spheres Woland repeats the comic
teleportation of Lichodeev to Yalta. The competing whistle send-off
performed by Koroviev and Behemoth is another simulation, for the
enjoyment of Woland, by the pair of “Moscow Bandits” which also
provides a final farewell to Moscow for Margarita and the Master.
Behemoth’s main role in the story is not to struggle against Soviet
Moscow but to entertain Woland, the “Prince of Darkness”. In fact,
Satan’s Ball is the only event that occurs in Moscow that fully belongs to
Woland; all the other events are improvised—they are not a conscious
pursuit of the Soviet evil but rather a chain of improvisations freely
43
Ibid. Book I, 74.
44
Ibid. Book II, 317.
interacting with one another. For example, it is only when Berlioz’s

atheistic speech about Christ is overheard that he is sentenced to execution
under the tram; later, the final mortifying moments of his decapitated head
become the high point of the Spring Ball. In another episode, when
Woland decides to take the “bad” flat belonging to Berlioz, his answers to
the editor’s questions of where he is going to live take the form of
humorous improvisation which leads to the teleportation of the Berlioz’s
neighbour, Lihodeev, to Yalta, and so on, and so on.
Buffoonery is one expression of Woland’s existence. The principle
actor in Woland’s retinue participating in this clownish relationship is
revealed to be Koroviev; he is both formally the director-chief of
Woland’s jeering in Moscow while at the same time a recipient of said
jeering. As Woland explains to Margarita during the race from Moscow:
“This knight once made an unfortunate joke […] in a discussion about
light and darkness [...] And after that the knight had to go on joking a bit
more and longer than he supposed.”45 Therefore, his jeering is also a
forced amusement for Woland’s benefit. As choirmaster, Koroviev
demands the participants sing a Russian criminal song, “Glorious Sea,
Sacred Baikal”; in this way he recycles his own fate, re-translating his
forced buffoonery into a punishment for others.
In conclusion, we should distinguish the grotesque from other forms of
fantasy found in the Moscow section of The Master and Margarita.
Woland’s responses are not uniformly grotesque and often reflect the
epicurean culture of European (mainly French and German) nobility in
early Modern Europe. The supernatural affords this culture meaning
behind its passions, as the heroic and adventurous epicureanism drives
history. Carnival grotesque allows Woland to rehabilitate the supernatural
and provides a homeopathic cure for the vulgar evils of Moscow,
including holding up a mirror to Muscovites. At the same time as the
carnival grotesque, when used as a source of entertainment for Woland,
diminishes in its demonism, it also serves as a catharsis.
Bibliography
Abraham, Pavel. Roman "Master i Margarita" M.A. Bulgakova. Brno:
Masarykova univerzita v Brne, 1993.
Bakhtin, M. M. Tvorchestvo Fransua Rable i narodno-smehovaja kultura
srednevekovja i Renessansa. Moskva: Hudozhestvennaja literatura,
1986.
45
Ibid. Book II, 317.
Bulgakov, M. A. The Master and Margarita. Translated by R. Pevear and

L. Volochonsky. London: Penguin, 1997.
Gurevitch, A. J. “K istorii groteska: O prirode komicheskogo v ‘Starshej
Edde’.”Izvestija Akademii Nauk SSSR. Seria literatyri i jazika 35: 4
(1976): 331–342.
Ivanshina, E. Metamorphosi kulturnoj pamjati v tvorchestve Mikhaila
Bulgakova. Voronesh: Nauchnaja kniga, 2010.
Menglinova, L. “Grotesk v romane Master and Margarita.” In
Tvorchestvo Mikhaila Bulgakova, 49–78. Tomsk: Izd-vo Tomskogo
universiteta, 1991.
Pope, R. W. “Ambiguity and Meaning in Master and Margarita: The Rule
of Afranius.” Slavic Review, 36 (1977): 7–24.
SECTION III
LAUGHTER AND CARNIVAL

IN TROUBLED TIMES
PARODY, SATIRE, AND CARNIVALISATION
IN ROMANIAN POETIC POSTMODERNISM:
A COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH
CARMEN POPESCU
Introduction
Romanian poetic postmodernism has consistently resorted to intertextual
and hypertextual strategies (quotations, allusions, recycling, bricolage, and
so on), parody being among the most prevalent. The targets of ironic
rewriting are not limited to literary discourse but also involve meta-
discourses. The generation of the 1980s has followed closely and
sometimes even deconstructed recent theoretical trends in linguistics and
semiotics.1
Contemporary scholarship on parody insists on the ambiguous, even
paradoxical nature of the genre, which has an ambivalent relationship with
its own object.2 Postmodern literature resorts especially to the non-
ridiculing version of parody, although this type of palimpsest can serve the
role of an ideological critique, especially when it overlaps with satire. The
latter is nowadays seen as a complex discursive practice,3 although there
still is a widespread understanding that parody is more artistic and playful
while satire is more of a stern, ethical lesson.
The genre of satire might seem outdated, didactic, and ephemeral
because of the transitory nature of its target (especially in the case of
political satire), or even seem outside the realm of literariness.
Additionally, satire as an artistic option is often very problematic if we
take into account the current prevailing relativistic, and sometimes even
1
Emilia Parpală-Afana, Poezia semiotică. PromoĠia 80 (Craiova: Sitech, 1994).
2
Cf. Margaret Rose, Parody/Metafiction (London: Taylor & Francis, 1979), 35;
Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody. The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art
Forms (London: Methuen, 1985), and Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of
Postmodernism. History, Theory, Fiction (New York: Routledge, 1988), 11.
3
Paul Simpson, On the Discourse of Satire. Towards a Stylistic Model of Satirical
Humour (Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2003),
74-90.
Carmen Popescu 125
amoral, mentality. All these unfavourable premises, together with the fact
that there is, after all, such a thing as postmodern satire, could engender
the sort of cognitive aporia which might force us to reconsider the core
theories and definitions of satire. As a matter of fact, modern accounts of
the genre highlight its complexity and sophistication: “Satire is
problematic, open-ended, essayistic, ambiguous in its relationship to
history, uncertain in its political effect, resistant to formal closure, more
inclined to ask questions than to provide answers, and ambivalent about
the pleasures it offers.”4 In light of this, perhaps with so many other
categories and concepts within postmodernism, and particularly within
parody, there is not a single, trans-historical or trans-cultural definition of
satire that is universally valid.
For postmodernists, a powerful strategy for making satire more artistic
and more palatable for the contemporary taste is to make it inseparable
from parody. Thus, satire itself becomes intertextual, palimpsestic, a form
of “literature in the second degree.”5 The satirist’s voice is just one of the
masks that the postmodern writer can put on within a very rich and
heterogeneous multivocality. An important consequence of this particular
game is the conscious undermining of the satirist’s enunciative position,
while the satirical discourse per se retains part of its argumentative
function, despite its constitutive ambiguity. As the pragmatic contract and
the modes of addressivity have become increasingly complicated, the
reader’s prerogatives have increased. For this reason a pragmatic and
communicative framework provides an appropriate approach for studying
these forms in their contemporary guise.
The postmodern canonization of parody, satire, and carnivalisation
draws its arguments from Bakhtin: in his view, parody was primarily
dialogic representation, or one of the “most widespread forms for
representing the direct word of another”,6 whereas carnivalisation was
defined as the determining influence of carnival on literature.7 Despite the
vagueness of the terms, parody, carnival, and Menippean satire remain the
4
Dustin Griffin, Satire: A Critical Reintroduction (Lexington: University Press of
Kentucky, 1994), 5.
5
Gérard Genette, Palimpsestes ou la littérature au second degré (Paris: Seuil,
1982).
6
M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. by Caryl
Emerson (Austin: Texas University Press, 1981), 51.
7
M. M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1984), 122.
126 Parody, Satire and Carnivalisation in Romanian Poetic Postmodernism
most appropriate frames for approaching postmodern poetic subversion,

and are “immediately relevant to postmodern artistic practice”.8
I understand the term carnivalisation as the ambiguous subversion of
parody and satire, both on an aesthetic and an ideological level. Due to the
ontological and institutional status of the two genres, the polemic edge (in
communicative terms, the illocutionary force and the perlocutionary
effect) is attenuated or even disregarded, while the playful dimension is
emphasized. This type of cultural functioning evokes the authorized
transgression of Bakhtin’s carnival, which was semi-tolerated. During
Communism, censorship represented the “invisible” authority responsible
for the very establishment of pseudo-carnivalesque license. The so-called
“Aesopian language” relied on allusions, innuendos, semantic overload of
the literary text, puns, and jokes. Naturally, none of this would have been
possible without the complicity of censorship and the secret police. It was
a well-controlled strategy, of the same sort as was used by the masters of
slaves in the context of Saturnalia and by medieval authorities in Catholic
countries. Similarly, today’s commercial popular culture capitalizes on
unbridled, continuous entertainment, thus substituting subversion with
diversion; the logic of commodification hinders any attempt of configuring
an authentically subversive counter-culture.
The polemic edge is not totally absent from the postmodern way of
engaging with parody and satire, but the pragmatic ethos tends to be more
complicated, encompassing a range of attitudes. The anti-essentialist
orientation of postmodernism appears to significantly reduce the chances
of a specifically postmodern satire, precisely because the clear standards
(moral or otherwise) from where to judge the vices and follies of one’s
contemporaries are either lacking or questioned, and undermined by the
same postmodern mindset.
The serious game of satire: Augustin Pop’s

The TV News from Cluj
The preface (“Preliminaries”) of Augustin Pop’s poetry collection The
TV News from Cluj does not fundamentally differ from the rest of the
volume in its pervasive irony and the satirical-parodic method of borrowing
an authoritative voice and codified genre. Though the moralist’s stance
seems utterly inappropriate for this moment of history, nevertheless the
8
Barry Rutland, “Bakhtinian Categories and the Discourse of Postmodernism,” in
Mikhail Bakhtin and the Epistemology of Discourse, Critical Discourse, 2:1-2, ed.
Clive Thomson (Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi, 1990), 130.
Carmen Popescu 127
enunciative persona configured in the preface has the effect of encouraging

belief in the Enlightenment dream of reforming society; in other words, in
the very type of meta-narrative denounced by theoreticians of
postmodernism.9 In the book’s epigraph, Pop quotes from Kant’s An
Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? (1784), where Kant
defines Enlightenment as the opposite of immaturity.
Pop is very open about the ideology and poetics underlying his literary
experiment: his book is a “militant” one, setting as a goal to “offer some
supporting elements in order to find a new moral paradigm”.10 Although
every sentence is undermined by the overarching irony one can perceive a
genuine attempt at reconstructing ethics in the aftermath of postmodern
deconstruction.
The problematic literariness of satire is also addressed and the author
declares he is “delighted” when various critics assert that what he writes is
not really poetry. In fact, in the light of the present international situation,
all the theories that view poetry mainly as form, or as a game, or as music,
are “fairy tales to help semioticians sleep.”11 The ad hoc poetics of satire
sketched out in “Preliminaries” is of considerable interest to the theoretical
discussion of this genre. It alludes to Juvenal’s poetics of indignation
(“Facit indignatio versus”), combining a pragmatic dimension (the
reference to the emotional, aggressive features) and an aesthetic one.
Furthermore, through poetic codification, along with the indirection
provided by irony, the text provides a sort of catharsis, a sublimation for
impure pathos: “But the serenity of my texts is misleading. Usually,
despair, exasperation and revolt are what precede the poem. And generate
it. But they don’t go away. They are simply less aggressive and allow
themselves to be contemplated, just like painted tigers”.12
One of the poems, “The Unification of Transylvania with Japan”,
appears to be written in a state of deep despair. The result is absurd: all the
ethnic tension in Transylvania is expected to be resolved through the
unification of the Romanian province with... Japan. A series of rules is
enforced in this dystopia: the inhabitants of Transylvania will speak
Japanese, while in Japan the three official languages will be Romanian,
Hungarian and German. The clever, perceptive reader, explains the poet in
his preface, will be bewildered by the radicalism of this reductio ad
9
Cf. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (Manchester: Manchester
UP, 1984).
10
Augustin Pop, Telejurnalul de la Cluj (Piteúti: Editura Paralela 45, 2000), 7. My
translation, as in all subsequent examples—CP.
11
Ibid., 10.
12
Ibid., 11.
absurdum of the contemporary world. Should he have the curiosity and

patience to see “beyond this ironic-absurd appearance-essence”, he will
eventually notice that it is never about “pure gratuitousness” although “the
pleasure of the game is not absent”.13
Pop, in the typical postmodern manner of doubling discourse with
meta-discourse, explains his references to the non-literary genre of TV
news. He wants his book to be informative with respect to “some of the
main illusions and dangers of contemporary world”.14 He seems to envy
the ability of television to influence and manipulate. When the poet
appropriates the TV framework for his own writing, he is, of course,
ironic. But television played a very important part in the Romanian
Revolution of 1989 and the very first poem in the collection, dated June
21, 1990, is entitled “The Televised Revolution”:
Now we are going to make the transition from communism

to an original democracy.
We kindly ask you to think differently from now on.
And with this, dear viewers,
the revolution has ended.
Thank you for your attention.15
Both postmodern hyperreality and the ephemeral, carnivalesque nature of

revolutions are denounced.
Apart from intermediality, as in the text previously discussed, the
interdiscursive nature of satire is revealed in the poet’s choice to parody
one of the most serious texts imaginable—the constitution. The result is a
bitter description of the body politic, with certain insertions of
ethnopsychological evaluations, as found in the poem “The Romanian
State (After The Constitution of Romania, Bucharest, 1991)”:
Romania is a national and a rational state,

sovereign and independent,
unitary and unpredictable.
Romania is a legal state,
democratic, social, sociable and associable,
where the person’s dignity,
the citizens’ rights and liberties,
the free development of human personality,
righteousness and political pluralism
13
Ibid., 10.
14
Ibid., 11.
15
Ibid., 13.
Carmen Popescu 129
constitute supreme values

and are guaranteed. [...]
(Cluj, December 20, 1991)16
By quoting almost literally and by arranging “poetically” these

sentences from the constitution, the poet attributes ironic connotations to
them and invites the reader to contrast the “utopia” of legal discourse with
the disappointing reality of Romania’s so-called “original democracy”. In
the first lines, the distortion is quite blatant in the grafting of the satirist’s
voice onto the neutral, impersonal voice enunciating the text of the
constitution.
In the poem entitled “The four animals which have led and will lead
the minors”, the poet uses abusive language in the frame of syllogisms in
order to convey the particular logic of history he has in mind:
Ceauúescu’s regime
was imposed by rhinoceros.
Iliescu’s regime
was scrapped together by bisons.
Constantinescu’s regime
is being swamped by hippopotami. [...]
Children love
to play with animals.
The Romanian people
is a people of children. [...]
If they will not come out of the minor condition,
in the next regime,
the Romanian people will be led,
naturally, by horses.
Horses wear television glasses
and western glasses
and go straight ahead. [...].
(Oradea, 9 May 1997)17
The reference to rhinoceros might be an allusion to Eugène Ionesco’s

play Rhinoceros, where the characters’ metamorphosis has been interpreted
as an allegory for the conversion to totalitarian ideologies, either Nazism
or Communism. By literalizing Kant’s consideration about the “minor”
condition of humanity (the Romanian people as a people of children) the
poem illustrates the author’s commitment to the ideals of the
Enlightenment, as professed in the aforementioned epigraph.
16
Ibid., 27.
17
Ibid., 26.
Along with the grotesque, degrading metaphors (politicians as various

kinds of animals, and not the cutest ones), in his satirical rhetoric Pop
relies on the Swiftian method displayed in “The Modest Proposal”: the
flaunting of the maxim of quality, high seriousness, a neutral and allegedly
scientific tone paired with outrageous content. This reinforces the idea that
postmodern satire is a discursive practice that resorts to tongue-in-cheek
irony and the activation of implicatures. Mild humoristic effects are
achieved through the incongruity between the outward insults and the
calmness or coolness supposed by the strict line of argumentation. The
Cooperative Principle is suspended inasmuch as the Politeness Principle is
ignored.18 Strategic, deliberate impoliteness is a requirement of the genre.
The polyphonic satire: Magda Cârneci’s

“Political Canon. 1991–1994”
Linda Hutcheon makes a very insightful observation regarding the
conversion of moral categories into political ones in the context of
postmodernism.19 Magda Cârneci’s Political Poems acknowledge this
recodification of categories in Romanian public and private life, but
appears to deplore the conceptual and cognitive metamorphosis. At the
same time the work plays on the ambiguity of the term political, which can
mean “politicized”—caught into the mess of corruption and demagogy—
but also “civic” (related to the “polis”) or “patriotic”, and thus an instance
of engaged or committed poetry. She might seem naïvely utopian in this
view when seen among her playfully cynical contemporaries who
completely deny the possibility of engaged poetry, embracing instead a
pattern of carnivalised (that is, confined and limited) subversion.
In “The Political Canon. 1991–1994”, a section within the volume
Political Poems, we find a tragic satire devoid of humoristic elements,
rather gloomy and bitter, recalling Hugo’s Les Châtiments. The section
consists of a series of grotesque, violent diatribes, displaying a Jeremiad-
like rhetoric, only without the piety. However, there are some typically
postmodern features which undermine the poet’s engaged, moral(istic)
position. The most striking element in this respect is the polyphonic
composition of the canon. The poet stylizes the discourses of several
allegorical characters (The Poet, The Intellectual, The Woman, The
People) and juxtaposes their soliloquies. These personae each bring a
18
Geoffrey N. Leech, Principles of Pragmatics (London: Longman, 1983), 82.
19
Linda Hutcheon, “The Complex Functions of Irony,” Revista Canadiense de
Estudios Hispanicos, XVI: 2 (1992): 227.
Carmen Popescu 131
different perspective to the contemporary political situation and its

palimpsestic condition (the present includes the recent past as an obsession
and determining factor).
It would be very difficult to ascribe to any one of these characters the
enunciative role of a raisonneur: we would expect that she identifies with
The Intellectual, or perhaps to The Poet, or perhaps expect that she should
show particular empathy for The Woman or The People, but this does not
appear to happen. The Intellectual’s discourse is replete with grotesque,
repulsive imagery—to him, the body politic is a stinking dead body and
reality itself is a putrefying corpse.20 His third discourse, “Post-Utopianism”,
clearly reveals the irresponsibility and arrogance often attributed to the
“liberal” intelligentsia of Romania:
The outside world is, again, beyond transformation.

All of our ideas, once out in the world, have proven to be criminal.
Heaps of illusions and manifestoes are burning slowly in all corners. [...]
If we can no longer change the world, then the world must be stopped.21
Elsewhere (“The Mud”) he has the revelation that there are no revolutions,
just an “ancient, putrid, archaic mud sometimes springing to the surface”.22
However, this is in fact a fake polyphony. The difference between the
various perspectives is progressively blurred with the accumulations of
soliloquies. Though the enunciative agents appear to ignore one another,
the arguments and images flow between them until they cease to be
individualized, turning the multivocal mise-en-scène into a monologic
composition. For example, The Poet has the same epiphany as The
Intellectual (in “Political Art”): “there was no revolution”.23 On the other
hand, every utterance is impregnated with dissimulation and irony.
In this example parody is a significant tool for the satirist. Like other
poets of her generation, Cârneci targets not only recognizable genres of
discourse but also makes the parody into a tool to be used against cliché.
For example, this ruthless indictment uttered by The Woman is a harsh
diatribe against the “Fatherland”:
Nobody knows better than you, fatherland,

republic, great hearth, glorious country, holy earth etcetera
20
Magda Cârneci, Haosmos úi alte poeme. Antologie (Piteúti: Paralela 45, 2004),
179-180.
21
Ibid., 184.
22
Ibid., 187.
23
Ibid., 183.
how to change spilt blood into paint and wine into water
how to baptize the martyrs as hooligans [...]24
A string of pious clichés taken from Romanian patriotic poetry (“great

hearth”, “glorious country”, “holy earth”) are turned into scornful
accusations, but all this unfair attack against the abstraction called
“Fatherland” is attributed to another abstraction, “The Woman”. Hence, a
certain evasiveness, in terms of the communicational value of this satirical
opus, emerges.
The Mask of Genre, or the Satirist’s Persona:

Alexandru Muúina’s Personae
The poetry collection Personae, by Alexandru Muúina, one of the most
outstanding Romanian poets of the 1980s, is a powerful illustration of the
constitutive relationship between pastiche, parody (as palimpsest,
hypertextuality, ironic mimicry of a previous text, style, genre, and code)
and satire itself. The title alludes to Ezra Pound’s Personae (1909) and
somehow coerces the reader to engage in a palimpsestic form of
interpretation based on constant paralleling. However, the poems also
frustrate, to some extent, the expectation established by the title. The
reader must go beyond the reference to Pound and reflect on the various
nuances evoked by the term persona. It is there that the poet assumes the
mask of the satirical genre—the characteristic topoi, the peculiar voice,
even the Greco-Roman cultural frame of reference and background along
with somewhat bawdy imagery and a very nasty and vulgar tone, which is
part and parcel of the satirical code. In this work “Vlasinae”, “Silvanus”,
“Galina”, “Vegilamentes”, “Dobrogestes”, “Neolides”, and “Protynes” are
all typical of this kind of satirical composition. Here, satire itself is seen as
a mask, a ritualistic gesture.25 The use of the term persona suggests a
problematic of identity and otherness, dissimulation but also impersonation;
it involves borrowing a different personality, in this instance that of the
satirist.
The title could also be read as a play on words, conveying a direct
attack, ad personam, but in this case the texts would be lampoons. Some
of the victims, even in their Greek or Roman disguise, are obviously
public figures (some respected ones) or simply powerful intellectuals such
24
Ibid., 184.
25
For the ritualistic roots of satirical behaviour see George Austin Test, Satire:
Spirit and Art (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1991).
Carmen Popescu 133
as Lykianos, Manolides, and Blandinis. Regardless of how controversial

these figures may be in the present day the portraits presented are shocking
caricatures, which makes us wonder what exactly is the aim of this
experiment? Was it a stylistic challenge? Or perhaps a twisted and cynical
communicative test? Significantly, there are no critical reactions that
include referential keys which might assist in the decoding of these works.
Most reviews of the work focus on the textual and intertextual
performance in the work, or the artistic achievement of the volume and
remain silent in regards to the mimetic, realistic dimensions. One can infer
from this that the reception of satire can sometimes be surprising,
especially in a literary context such as post-totalitarian Romania, where
the prevailing assumption about literature is that it serves a self-referential
function.
At first glance we may be tempted to assume that Muúina uses the
architextual mask of notorious classic satirists as a self-legitimizing
strategy, or as a device for veiling in an aesthetic, acceptable way his
attack ad hominem. However, I want to draw attention to the poem
“Marcelinus” which shows, I think, Muúina’s lucid inclination to confuse
the reader by accumulating references and allusions to a concrete social
context:
The stoic Marcelinus, a mentor

Of the young nobles who are still dreaming
About ancestral virtues and the restoration of the
Republic, has written very hastily a subtle
Eulogy to art for Hadrianus the freedman,
A product of Cloaca maxima, the foulest
Adulator of the enemy of freedom,
The tyrant everyone fears.
And he was understood. Because, otherwise, the inheritance

Of the dignified Alcalinus, his rich uncle, who committed
suicide,
Would have been entirely lost, not just half of it,
As even the cruel law would have authorized him.26
There are too many parallels between Antiquity and present-day

Romania that must be taken into account and we soon give up, unable to
maintain the analogy. There is simply too much information to process and
in our final analysis we cannot put our finger on the vice or the immoral
behaviour being incriminated. The entire framework of satirical
26
Alexandru Muúina, Personae (Braúov: Aula, 2003), 31.
communicative interaction is being parodically distorted by the breach in

the pragmatic contract. I suppose we are thus invited to drop our
counterproductive, but historically sanctioned, way of reading satire either
as a very direct attack or as a sincere project aimed at moral reform.
One can see in Muúina’s Personae a definite carnivalisation of the least
artistic and indirect variety of satire—the lampoon. This is an effect of the
palimpsestic nature of the poems in this volume. The expressive strategy
proposed by Muúina is the perfect opposite of the parodic-satiric design
exploited by Pop and Cârneci, who have endeavoured to bring more
authenticity and personal engagement to the genre(s).
Conclusions
In communicative terms, parody and satire function both similarly and
differently. They are discursive practices which can be “formalized” up to
a certain point. The grotesque and the various forms of derision can also
be approached from a pragmatic framework of literary (im)politeness.
In the context of Romanian postmodernism, such that it has been split
in two by the anti-communist revolution, a very powerful nexus between
these two modes is precisely the phenomenon termed by Bakhtin as
carnivalisation, a notion that can indeed be extrapolated and applied to
contemporary society, but with some changes. The poststructuralist,
postmodern concept of deconstruction, in the sense of reading and
(re)writing “under erasure”, entails the same paradoxical mindset as
carnivalisation and employs the same Saturnalian logic. It is the logic of
reversal, of an upside-down world (a respectable topos in world literature).
The inferior element gets the upper hand—the slave commends his
master—but only for a limited time, inside a ritualistic niche which will
ultimately function to the benefit of the status quo. After the utopian
festivals things will go back to their “normal” state. Deconstruction does
not annul the previous meaning, it allows it to go on, to be readable,
although sous rature, under the reserve of irony, for example.
Augustin Pop and Magda Cârneci try to resist the process of
carnivalisation whereby the critical dimension is absorbed by mainstream
culture, while Alexandru Muúina works with this reality and plays on the
ambiguity for humorous and cognitive effects. In both varieties, parody
and satire are distinguished by their marked addressivity and
communicational value, primarily by their way of engaging with
metadiscourse and problematising the very status of the two genres/modes
in the light of the current all-encompassing, all-absorbing low-brow
entertainment.
Carmen Popescu 135
The energies of satire are exploited by many other Romanian poets

who made their debut in the 1990s or the 2000s: Cristian Popescu,
Ruxandra Novac, Marius Ianuú, and Elena Vlădăreanu, for example. These
writers occasionally use circus imagery to convey the commodified
rebellion of contemporary times and manifest themselves as “abject
heroes”, agents in a “bitter carnival”.27
The postmodern parodist and satirist accepts the convention of the
genre, assuming the persona of the “licensed fool”, risking
misunderstanding and even emotional reactions from their human targets
who might feel offended by the slanderous descriptions.28 However, in
today’s polite society there is another possible reaction to satiric
aggression, as we have seen in the case of Muúina’s Personae. That is to
ignore it, to pretend that nothing has happened, or that the work is just
artistic play, just entertainment. This might, in fact, be much more
effective than censorship outright because it denies satire a normal
communicative dimension by confining it to the realm of the literary
“what if”, a heterocosm with a special ontological condition. While
enhancing literariness in theoretical descriptions and in the actual poetic
practices might work to the advantage of parody, the same thing might not
be so beneficial for satire, whose perlocutionary effect has always been a
vital element in its poetics. These issues are addressed in a very subtle way
in Muúina’s Personae. However, carnivalisation can also mean that the
illocutionary force and the perlocutionary effect of the two discursive
practices are somehow debilitated in postmodernism by their being part of
a system which readily absorbs subversion, anarchy, rebellion, as well as
aesthetic novelty, avant-gardism, and literary experimentalism.
This paper is part of the research project CNCSIS-UEFISCSU, PNII-IDEI

number 757/19.01.2009, Romanian Poetic Postmodernism. 1980–2010. A
Semio-Pragmatic and Cognitive Approach.
27
Michael André Bernstein, Bitter Carnival. Ressentiment and the Abject Hero
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
28
“They [the rogue, the clown and the fool] grant the right [...] to parody others
while talking, the right not to be taken literally”, not “to be oneself [...] and finally,
the right to betray to the public a personal life, down to its most private and
prurient little secrets.” (M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 163).
Bibliography
Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination. Edited by Michael Holquist,
translated by Caryl Emerson. Austin: Texas University Press, 1981.
—. Rabelais and His World. Translated by Hélène Iswolsky.
Bernstein, Michael André. Bitter Carnival. Ressentiment and the Abject
Hero. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
Cârneci, Magda. Haosmos úi alte poeme. Antologie. Piteúti: Paralela 45,
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Genette, Gérard. Palimpsestes ou la littérature au second degré. Paris:
Seuil, 1982.
Griffin, Dustin. Satire: A Critical Reintroduction. Lexington: University
Press of Kentucky, 1994.
Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Parody. The Teachings of Twentieth-
Century Art Forms. New York: Methuen, 1985.
—. A Poetics of Postmodernism. History, Theory, Fiction. New York:
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—. “The Complex Functions of Irony.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios
Hispanicos XVI:2 (1992): 219–234.
Leech, Geoffrey N. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman, 1983.
Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition. Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1984.
Muúina, Alexandru. Personae. Braúov: Aula, 2003.
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Pop, Augustin. Telejurnalul de la Cluj. Piteúti: Paralela 45, 2000.
Rose, Margaret. Parody/Metafiction. London: Taylor & Francis, 1979.
Rutland, Barry. “Bakhtinian Categories and the Discourse of
Postmodernism.” In Mikhail Bakhtin and the Epistemology of
Discourse, edited by Clive Thomson, 123–136. Critical Discourse,
2:1-2. Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi, 1990.
Simpson, Paul. On the Discourse of Satire. Towards a Stylistic Model of
Satirical Humour. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2003.
Test, George Austin. Satire: Spirit and Art. Gainesville: University Press
of Florida, 1991.
NOVEL AND SATIRE: DISCREPANCIES
BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE
IN MILAN KUNDERA’S WORKS
INGA VIDUGIRYTƠ
Milan Kundera is a novelist as well as a theorist of the novel as a

literary genre. Since 1967 he has published nine novels (the last one,
Ignorance, in 2000), and four collections of essays—The Art of the Novel
(1986), The Testaments Betrayed (1993), The Curtain (2005), and Encounter
(2009)—in which he discusses various issues concerning the art of the
novel and also comments on his own works of fiction. Thus Kundera,
being one of the masters of the novel, establishes an integral system of
theory and practice that allows us to discuss the relationship between the
novel and satire from both inside and outside of a creative work.
Mikhail Bakhtin was the one who stated that definitions of the novel
declared by novelists “who produce a specific novel and then declare it the
only correct, necessary and authentic form of the novel” are of
considerably higher interest and consequence than those of theorists,
because they “deeply and faithfully reflect the novel’s struggle with other
genres and with itself,” and “come closer to the understanding of the
peculiar position of the novel in literature.”1 This is certainly the case with
Kundera who, in searching for a more precise definition of the genre on
the one hand compares the novel, or “great antilyrical poetry”,2 to lyric
poetry and on the other hand contrasts it with satire. Furthermore, Kundera
juxtaposes the novelist who is “an explorer feeling his way in an effort to
reveal some unknown aspect of existence”3 against the writer who “has
original ideas and an inimitable voice”.4 In an attempt to separate himself
1
Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, trans. Caryl Emerson
and Michael Holquist (Texas: University of Texas Press, 2004), 3.
2
Milan Kundera, The Curtain, trans. by Linda Asher (New York: Harper Collins,
2006), 51.
3
Milan Kundera, The Art of the Novel, trans. by Linda Asher (London, Boston:
Faber and Faber, 1988), 144.
4
Ibid., 143.
138 Novel and Satire
from the tradition of the novel, as well as from other forms of popular
fiction, Kundera, in Bakhtin’s terms, struggles not only for a particular
kind of novel but also for a certain system of values that are represented by
the novel as a genre. It is important to emphasize that in his
conceptualisation of the genre and in creating a hierarchy of values,
Kundera uses a set of concepts that characterize the “culture of laughter”,
as Bakhtin called it in his eminent book on Rabelais. These concepts are:
humour, irony, satire, the comic, and laughter.
Although satire is not a central concept for Kundera and he uses it
quite sparingly, it can nevertheless be seen as a significant feature of his
novels, especially when viewing them from an outside perspective. The
satirical aspects in his works are most prominent when examined in the
light of modern theories of satire, which emphasize its connection to
philosophy and argue that satire is an inquiry and provocation, a kind of
intellectual play which forces one to think.5 From this point of view it is
understandable why classical satire is not transparent or easily understood,
why its narrative is so ironic, and why it parodies, and sometimes even
annoys, readers. However, irony and parody, as well as open endings or
absence of final truths, are a part of the artistic play of satire and give
special pleasure to its readers.
If we were to view satire as a philosophical, critical, provocative and
formally sophisticated mode of literary discourse, then Kundera’s novels
could be seen as satires of the modern and postmodern age. Although
Kundera denies the philosophical nature of his fiction, he also asserts that
the novel is “the great prose form in which an author thoroughly explores,
by means of experimental selves (characters), some great themes of
existence”.6 The tradition in which he sees his own novels is the tradition
started by Rabelais and Cervantes, and continued by the greatest European
writers of the 18th and 19th centuries. It is the tradition that flourished in
the Central European novels written by Robert Musil, Hermann Broch,
Franz Kafka, and Witold Gombrowicz. These Central European writers, in
Kundera’s view, were obsessed with the form of the novel, whereas “[i]n
the art of the novel, existential discoveries are inseparable from the
transformation of form.”7 However, “formal richness” was an initial
feature of the genre that was found in the novel of Rabelais. Kundera
5
See Dustin H. Griffin, Satire: The Critical Reintroduction (Lexington, Kentucky:
University Press of Kentucky, 1994) and R. Bracht Branham, “Satire,” in The
Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Literature, ed. Richard Eldridge (Oxford,
New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 139–161.
6
Kundera, The Art of the Novel, 142.
7
Kundera, The Curtain, 12.
Inga Vidugirytơ 139
esteems this characteristic as the novel’s greatest, forgotten in its later

evolution, and “rediscovered only three centuries later, in James Joyce.”8
Formal richness means that Rabelais’s book “has everything: the plausible
and the implausible, allegory, satire, giants and ordinary men, anecdotes,
meditations, voyages real and fantastic, scholarly disputes, digressions of
pure verbal virtuosity.”9
In adding satire to the list, Kundera acknowledges that it is one of the
formal elements of the novel and he employs it in his own works of
fiction. More specifically, such features as open endings, the fantastic,
ironic play with different narrative forms, and the use of the discourse of
everyday can all be seen as satiric elements in Kundera’s works. For
example, his novel The Farewell Waltz (1972) has a clear satirical tone
stemming from its farcical nature. Meanwhile two of his other novels, The
Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979) and Immortality (1990), could
easily be discussed as harsh satires of contemporary consumer society or
as experimental novels based on musical compositions, a technique
Kundera is partial to. In Slowness (1995), the narrator acquires a position
from which he can display and then ridicule human stupidity, as was often
done in classic satire. Furthermore, when examining Kundera’s work in
the light of postmodern satire we can discuss his experiments as
overturning the customary ideas of European culture, as a refusal to
acknowledge any sort of ideology, instead viewing creative work as play
or intellectual amusement.10 His relativism and scepticism is well
illustrated in the following excerpt from an interview:
The great European novel started out as entertainment, and all real
novelists are nostalgic for it! And besides, entertainment doesn’t preclude
seriousness. [...] To bring together the extreme gravity of the question and
the extreme lightness of the form—that has always been my ambition. And
it’s not a matter of a purely artistic ambition. The union of a frivolous form
and a serious subject lays bare our dramas (those that occur in our beds as
well as those we play out on the great stage of History) in all their terrible
insignificance.11
8
Milan Kundera, Encounter, trans. Linda Asher (New York: Harper Collins,
2010), 64.
9
Milan Kundera, The Testaments Betrayed: An Essay in Nine Nine Parts, trans.
Linda Asher (New York: Harper Perennial, 1996), 203–4.
10
See Steven Weisenburger, Fables of Subversion: Satire and the American Novel,
1930-1980 (Athens, GA: Georgia University Press, 1995).
11
Kundera, The Art of the Novel, 95–96.
Twenty years later, he paraphrased himself: “[S]tupidity is present with

man always and everywhere: in the penumbra of bedrooms as well as on
the floodlit podiums of History.”12
Therefore, one may say that Kundera’s novels support the view that “in
the last two hundred years satire in the Western tradition is most
commonly found […] in the novel, […] which has proved extremely
hospitable to satire.”13 However, Kundera refuses to see satire in his own
creative work. His view of satire is different, and here, at first glance,
arises the conflict between his theory of the novel and his practice when
writing them. Let us take a closer look. As was mentioned before, Kundera
rather rarely discusses the issue of satire. His main point is that satire does
not match the nature of fictional ambivalence essential in the novel. In his
book Testaments Betrayed, Kundera recalls a case of misapprehension
when the words of one of the characters from The Book of Laughter and
Forgetting were misunderstood by one of the reviewers of the novel. The
words in question were interpreted as thoughts of the author’s alter ego,
while Kundera’s intentions were to ironize. He says that it is
understandable as to why the misunderstanding occurred: “I hadn’t set out
to ridicule Banaka and his professor friend. I had not made obvious my
reservation about them. On the contrary, I did all I could to conceal it, to
give their opinions the elegance of the intellectual discourse.”14 In this
case, the concept of satire helps Kundera explain his position: “If I had
made their talk ridiculous, I would have produced what is called satire.
Satire is a thesis art; sure of its own truth, it ridicules what it determines to
combat. The novelist’s relation to his characters is never satirical; it is
ironic.”15 In separating irony from satire as well as in bringing them
together, Kundera comes close to the contemporary discussion of the
relationship between the two concepts.16 However, when he refers to
“irony” Kundera does not mean a simple rhetorical device or literary
technique but rather an understanding that “none of the assertions found in
a novel can be taken by itself. […] Only a slow reading, twice and many
times over, can bring out all the ironic connections within a novel, without
which the novel remains uncomprehended.”17
12
13
Griffin, Satire, 3–4.
14
Kundera, Testaments Betrayed, 202.
15
Ibid., 202–3.
16
See Zoja Pavlovskis-Petit, “Irony and Satire,” in A Companion to Satire: Ancient
to Modern, ed. Ruben Quintero (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 510-
525.
17
As a case of a false (i.e., not ironic, but satiric) novel Kundera names
George Orwell’s 1984 (1949) which “reduces (and teaches others to
reduce) the life of a hated society to the simple listing of its crimes.”18 In
Kundera’s view 1984 is the book that will be used in the analysis of
totalitarianism for years to come, but it is not a novel. Any sort of novel,
even one like Kafka’s The Trial, with its dark, unpoetic world, is
characterized by poetry. In order to describe this idea Kundera chooses the
metaphor of windows: Kafka’s world contains windows through which
one can see another life (Kundera points to the final episode in The Trial)
whereas Orwell’s 1984 is a political idea disguised as a novel. The idea is
certainly true and clear, though distorted by the masquerade of the novel,
which makes it inaccurate and unclear since the novel renders everything
relative and thus distorts ideas and thoughts. Orwell should have just
written a pamphlet or an essay because this novelizing of ideas is as
useless as the sociology and politics employed in creating 1984, since they
do not reveal the secret of a human’s existential situations as a real novel
should. As an example of a bad novel this book might even seem
dangerous because it restricts reality to a political dimension. Though it
was not intentional, Orwell’s novel became an expression of the
totalitarian spirit. It is worth mentioning that the comic element in 1984
does not enter in any way into Kundera’s discussion, which can be seen as
symptomatic because, for him, the comic is an essential part of the art of
the novel.
In The Curtain, his third book of essays, Kundera reminds his readers
that Fielding called the novel “prosai-comi-epic writing” and, Kundera
continues, “it should be kept always in mind: the comic was one of the
three mythical fairies leaning over the cradle of the newborn novel.”19 In
the world of Rabelais, the founder of the genre, “the merry and the comic
were still one and the same.”20 However, they gradually started to diverge.
In his dictionary, “Sixty-three Words”, which appears in The Art of the
Novel, Kundera cites Ionesco: “there’s only a thin line between the
horrible and the comic.”21 This aspect of the comic can be revealed through
Kafka’s fiction, where the “dark depths of a joke”22 are uncovered.
Although our understanding of The Trial is inseparable from a sense of
horror, Kafka, reading its first chapter to his friends, made everyone laugh;
in Philip Roth’s imagined film version of The Castle the main roles had to
18
Ibid., 225.
19
20
21
Ibid., 136.
22
be played by great comedians—Groucho Marx as the Land-Surveyor K.,

and Chico and Harpo as the two assistants. Kundera claims that Roth was
quite right: “The comic is inseparable from the very essence of the
Kafkan.”23 This connection between the comic and horror is usually used
to describe the poetics of the grotesque; however, Kundera does not use
the concept of the grotesque and gives priority to the notion of the comic,
which he sees as an open parameter, inseparable from laughter. When the
comic acquires elements of horror, laughter decreases until it finally
ceases into silence: “With a heavy heart, I imagine the day when Panurge
no longer makes people laugh,”24 writes Kundera in his Testaments
Betrayed.
The set of concepts (the comic, laughter, and satire) that Kundera
employs in discussing issues of the novel, as well as his mode of
degrading the history of the comic and laughter that he traces, are highly
reminiscent of Bakhtin’s theory of the novel and laughter. Let us look at
the correlation between these theories from the point of satire. Bakhtin
explores this notion in his little known article “Satire” (1940), which was
written for a literary encyclopaedia but was not accepted by its editors; the
essay was published for the first time in 1996. The concept of satire also
appears later in Bakhtin’s book on Rabelais (written in the 1930s, but
published in 1965), in the second edition of Problems of Dostoyevsky’s
Poetics (1963), and in the article “Rabelais and Gogol” (1970). In the
encyclopaedia article, Bakhtin tries to “tame” the concept of satire by
extending its meaning at the expense of such concepts as parody and ritual
(carnival) laughter.25 He associates the concept of satire with three
separate phenomena: the lyric and epic genre in Roman literature,
Menippean satire, and a specific (usually negative) authorial view of the
reality portrayed, which in turn determines the choice of artistic tools. In
the latter case, satire can be embodied in any genre and represents the
“whole ocean of satirical work,” whereas Menippean and Roman satire are
small islands. As Bakhtin wrote in 1940 that while satire infiltrates a
genre, at the same time it revives it, connecting it to the present, and
imbues it with political and ideological relevance. It plays the same role in
the sphere of literary languages. However, Bakhtin adds that in order to
correctly evaluate the role of satire in the renewal of language and genres,
one must understand satire’s connection to parody. Satire is always linked
to the parodying and the travesty of obsolete genres, styles, and languages.
23
24
25
M. M. Bakhtin, “Satira,” in Sobranije sochinenij v 7 tomah, Vol. 5 (Moskva:
Russkiie slovari, 1997).
So the history of satire is comprised of the most important (“critical”)

episodes in the history of other genres, especially the novel, which
stemmed from satire and then later was renewed by the elements of both
satire and parody. In arguing that the history and theory of satire was still
just developing, Bakhtin considered it most important to analyze the
folkloric roots of satire and explore the nature of satirical imagery in oral
folk tradition. Finally, looking at Schiller and expanding on his definition
of satire, Bakhtin argues that satire is the artistic negation of contemporary
reality, which must have in and of itself an element of asserting a better
reality.
After the rejection of the article, Bakhtin lost interest in arguing for the
positive elements of satire and in the second edition of Problems of
Dostoyevsky’s Poetics, he used only the concept of the Menippean satire,
which in his understanding stood alongside Socratic dialogue as the
origins of a novel. Furthermore, taking the notion of the Menippean satire
he negated the importance of satire as such by talking only about “the
Menippea” and eventually making it a concept on its own. Literary critic
Dustin H. Griffin argues that Marxist beliefs disposed Bakhtin to
idealizing the folk and all their ways, and did not allow him to see the
element of erudition that Northrop Frye found central or the tradition of
“learned wit.” In Griffin’s terms, Bakhtin’s “Menippea grows up from the
marketplace, not the study.”26 This is not surprising since in his work on
Rabelais Bakhtin sees Rabelais’ novel as a result of the long history of
festive (ritual, carnival) laughter. In his work, Bakhtin engages the notion
of satire only as an auxiliary in the specification of carnival laughter:
The satirist whose laughter is negative places himself above the object of
his mockery, he is opposed to it. The wholeness of the world’s comic
aspect is destroyed, and that which appears comic becomes a private
reaction. The people’s ambivalent laughter, on the other hand, expresses
the point of view of the whole world; he who is laughing also belongs to
them.27
It is worth noting that the most alien to the people’s ambivalent laughter is
the laughter of the negative, rhetorical satire of the 19th century, “a
laughter that does not laugh.”28 The same evaluation of 19th century laughter
26
Griffin, Satire, 33.
27
Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Izwolsky
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 12.
28
Ibid., 45.
is also presented in his article “Rabelais and Gogol”.29 Here Bakhtin states
that satiric laughter is related to the limited conceptions of the morality of
his time and arises from an indignation about reality. On the contrary,
Gogol’s laughter is universal and ambivalent. Portrayals and stories of
Russian serfdom have ended with that same serfdom, but the images of
Gogol’s Dead Souls are immortal. They belong to, in Bakhtin’s terms,
“Great Time”. In normal historic time, certain phenomena can simply be
denied and hated, but in Great Time all phenomena are ambivalent and
dear, because they are part of existence. The laughing satirist is not happy.
He is dejected and gloomy, meanwhile Gogol, also a writer of the 19th
century though not a satirist, laughed “like gods laugh”.30
Therefore, in Bakhtin’s work satire was removed from the circle of his
most important themes and he did not return to it. It seems that in his view
the customary use of satire was too anchored in the general circulation and
at the same time too narrow to include novelistic parody and ambivalence.
In the book of essays The Curtain, while meditating on the notion of
Weltliteratur and the limits of understanding literature within a national
context, Kundera writes: “Rabelais, ever undervalued by his compatriots,
was never better understood than by a Russian, Bakhtin.”31 Certainly,
Kundera—the novelist and admirer of Rabelais’ talent—should know
Bakhtin’s writings, and was constructing his own theory of the novel by
resorting to them. Kundera is similar to Bakhtin in the use of particular
motifs in the discourse of the novel, namely, ambivalence, laughter,
sexuality, “gay matter”32, existence, and humour. On the other hand, while
working with Bakhtinian notions of the novel, laughter, and satire,
Kundera combines them with an experience of the novel that was
unknown to Bakhtin, and discusses these issues from the perspective of
another time.
In his work “Epic and Novel”, Bakhtin connected the genre of the
novel with the idea of the diversity of the world, which entered the novel
after the collapse of epic distance, and thus highlighted its polyphonic
nature. In Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Poetics he argued that in
Dostoyevsky’s novels no one, not even the author, possesses the final
truth. Though, as Dostoyevsky scholars argue, Bakhtin’s statement is not
applicable to all Dostoyevsky’s novels; Kundera, in his reflections on the
29
M. M. Bakhtin, “Rabelais i Gogol,” in Tvorchestvo François Rabelais I
narodnaia kultura srednevekovia I Renessansa (Moskva: Khudozhestvennaia
literatura, 1990), 526–36.
30
Ibid., 531.
31
32
genre, continues to develop this idea of the relativism of all truths. He goes
even further, stating that the author, in the course of writing, is listening
“to another voice than that of his personal moral conviction.”33 He is
listening to “the wisdom of the novel”; “Every true novelist listens for that
suprapersonal wisdom, which explains why great novels are always a little
more intelligent than their authors.”34 Therefore, unlike Bakhtin, Kundera
does not think that Tolstoy’s world is monologic, when compared with
Dostoyevsky’s polyphony. In his view, Anna Karenina, as any real novel
does, contains a multitude of truths: that of Karenin, Anna, Levin, and so
on, irrespective of how the author wanted to evaluate those truths.
Considering the novel’s wisdom, Kundera goes further than Bakhtin
because his vision of the novel includes the possibility of getting to the
final truth. Inspired by the ancient Jewish proverb “Man thinks, God
laughs”, Kundera develops the idea that “the art of the novel came into the
world as the echo of God’s laughter.”35 He explains the proverb in the
following way: God laughs because man thinks and truth escapes him;
because the more men think, the more one man’s thought diverges from
another’s; and finally, because man is never what he thinks he is.
However, a novel, understanding the relativity of all final truths, has the
ability to express or render the echo of God’s all-knowing view. Certainly,
God’s laughter is a metaphor but it helps Kundera display and explain how
the meaning and sense in a novel is structured and revealed.
It should be noted that Kundera, when borrowing from Bakhtin,
extensively borrows from the book on Rabelais which was not dedicated
so much to the novel as a genre as to the roots of the novel or, in Bakhtin’s
words, the “culture of laughter”. The concept of satire, as well as laughter,
that Kundera employs come entirely from the book on Rabelais. He does
not use Bakhtin’s most popular concept—carnival—but instead replaces it
with the concept of the novel. The idea of satire helps us understand such a
replacement. As Bakhtin contrasts satiric, unhappy laughter with festive,
carnival laughter that is ambiguous and universal, Kundera opposes satire
with the novel, which, in his terms, was born in connection to another
invention of the modern spirit—humour.36 He describes humour by citing
Octavio Paz who claimed that the concept acquired shape only in
Cervantes, or in other words that humour is an invention of the modern
spirit. Kundera goes on and states: “Thus humour is not laughter, not
mockery, not satire, but a particular species of the comic, which, Paz says
33
34
Ibid.
35
Ibid.
36
Kundera, The Testaments Betrayed, 5.
(and this is the key to understanding humour’s essence), ‘renders

ambiguous everything it touches’.”37 Arguing the philosophical content of
the two bounded phenomena—humour and the novel—Kundera comes
very close to the Bakhtinian notion of the festive people’s laughter, which
has “special philosophical and utopian character” and “orientation toward
the highest spheres”, expressing “the point of view of the whole world.”38
The associations between Kundera’s and Bakhtin’s concepts stem from the
fact that, in Bakhtin’s words, “[T]he greatest writer to complete the cycle
of the people’s carnival laughter and bring it into world literature was
Rabelais.”39
While discussing humour, Kundera unexpectedly comes off as a strict
guardian of the norm. His final definition of humour has a tone of the
moral imperative: “the divine flash that reveals the world in its moral
ambiguity and man in his profound incompetence to judge others; humour:
the intoxicating relativity of human things; the strange pleasure that comes
of the certainty that there is no certainty.”40 The sudden dramatic tone
connects Kundera’s conception of humour with the carnival understanding
of the world which, in Bakhtin’s words, is under the heavy pressure of the
collapsing of the old world and the coming of a new one. Humour, as
Kundera is dealing with it, could be associated with Bakhtin’s Menippea,
or a set of serio-comical genres that fostered the birth of the novel.
To sum up these observations on the set of concepts which Kundera
employs in his theory of the novel and his relationship to the theoretical
apparatus of Bakhtin, it should be noted that Kundera does not employ
such important Bakhtinian concepts as the carnival or grotesque. The latter
is avoided even when discussing Kafka’s novels, where Kundera prefers to
use the notion of the “marriage of the comic and horror”. At the same time
one can assume that Kundera’s conception of the novel borrows
extensively from Bakhtin’s concept of the carnival, namely in the case of
such notions as ambivalence and laughter. Following Bakhtin, Kundera
uses the concept of satire only in the negative sense and to demonstrate a
contrast with the novel. On the other hand, in his meditations on the
technique of the novel, Kundera employs the idea of irony and sees it as
the device for expressing the ambiguity of the novel; Bakhtin was
indifferent to the notion, and did not care about its applicability. The
notions of irony and satire, which Kundera compares in his theory of the
novel, reveal his presence in the contemporary discussion concerning the
37
Ibid., 5-6.
38
39
Ibid.
40
Kundera, The Testaments Betrayed, 32-33.
two concepts where the popularity of satire as a means of rendering one’s

viewpoint is decreasing.41 Intersections between Kundera’s and Bakhtin’s
theories reveal that Kundera’s works stand not only in “the history of a
novel” (what he considers an indication of the proper novel) but also in the
history of the theory of the novel which he has developed while leaning on
the most prominent theorist of the genre.
Bibliography
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Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Texas: University of Texas
Press, 2004.
—. Rabelais and His World. Translated by Hélène Izwolsky.
—. “Rabelais i Gogol.” In Tvorchestvo François Rabelais i narodnaia
kultura srednevekovia I Renessansa, 526–36. Moskva: Khudozhestvennaia
literatura, 1990.
—. “Satira.” In Sobranije sochineniƱ v 7 tomakh. Vol. 5. Moskva: Russkie
slovari, 1997.
Branham, R. Bracht. “Satire.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and
Literature, edited by Richard Eldridge, 139–161. Oxford, New York:
Oxford University Press, 2009.
Cunningham, Valentine. “Twentieth-century Fictional Satire.” In A
Companion to Satire: Ancient to Modern, edited by Ruben Quintero,
400–434. Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007.
Griffin, Dustin H. Satire: The Critical Reintroduction. Lexington,
Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1994.
Kundera, Milan, The Art of the Novel. Translated by Linda Asher. London,
Boston: Faber and Faber, 1988.
—. The Curtain. Translated by Linda Asher. New York: Harper Collins,
2006.
—. Encounter. Translated by Linda Asher. New York: Harper Collins,
2010.
—. The Testaments Betrayed: An Essay in Nine Parts. Translated by Linda
Asher. New York: Harper Perennial, 1996.
41
Valentine Cunningham, “Twentieth-century Fictional Satire,” in A Companion
to Satire: Ancient to Modern, ed. Ruben Quintero (Malden, MA: Blackwell
Publishing, 2007), 400–434.
Pavlovskis-Petit, Zoja. “Irony and Satire.” In A Companion to Satire:

Ancient to Modern, edited by Ruben Quintero, 510–525. Malden, MA:
Blackwell Publishing, 2007.
Weisenburger, Steven. Fables of Subversion: Satire and the American
Novel, 1930–1980. Athens, GA: Georgia University Press, 1995.
ON THE BACKGROUND,
STAINS, AND DRY CLEANING:
SOVIET SATIRE AS THE PRACTICE OF SPEECH
TOMAS VAISETA
Soviet public space was usurped by the theories (Marxism-Leninism,

Socialist Realism), and practice (censorship) of Communist ideology, and
can be read as lacking meaning, especially ideological, as this meaning
was articulated in official texts, which had lost their importance to the
people. In general, the narratives produced focused on “building
Communism” featuring positive heroes and their behaviour, weltanschauung,
self-sacrifice for higher goals, and so on. In this light it is not surprising
that in the late Soviet period, from about the mid-1960s, irony became
more prevalent in literature, at least in the artistically inclined parts.1
Writers wanted to use irony to return meaningful speech into the public
arena—to use the same language as before but to convey different
meaning. For this reason irony is often defined as a form of social
criticism of Soviet reality in the historiography and literary study of
Soviet-era writing. It is also sometimes viewed as an Aesopian form of
resistance. In other words, although literary irony is much more subtle and
complicated than jokes or anekdoty, it belongs to the broader trend of
analysis of humour in late-Soviet society as a form of non-political
opposition to the regime or as a space for creative freedom. This trend is
apparent not only in literature but also in comedic films of the Soviet-era.
For example, Aleksandr Prokhorov asserts that in the 1960s “the dominant
impulse in film production shifted from education through satire to
1
For example: “The literature of the Baltic countries in the 1970s can be
characterized by two main keywords: irony and intimacy.” See Eva Eglaja-
Kristsone “Intimacy as a Hallmark of 1970s Baltic Poetry” in Elena Baliutytơ,
Donata Mitaitơ ed. Baltic Memory: Processes of Modernisation in Lithuanian,
Latvian and Estonians Literature of the Soviet Period (Vilnius: Institute of
Lithuanian Literature and Folklore, 2011), 145. See also Rimantas Kmita,
“Utopijos apvertimas: ironiškoji lietuviǐ poezija sovietmeþiu,” in Darbai ir dienos,
50 (2008), 229-259.
150 On the Background, Stains, and Dry Cleaning
entertainment via comedy”,2 and in this way artistic purposes overcame

purely ideological ones. Prokhorov describes how Leonid Gaidai’s
comedies “undermined Soviet cinema's narrative tradition”, and comes to
the conclusion that “Gaidai effectively tapped into those areas of culture
that were on the border of dissident discourse, transforming them into
popular entertainment”.3 Taking a more sophisticated view on Soviet
humour, Alexei Yurchak writes about a widespread culture of “dead
irony” in late Soviet society, but his analysis contradicts the idea of
humour as dissent. Yurchak argues that the role of anekdoty was
something different than that of resistance; it “balanced in the zone that
traversed boundaries between support and opposition”.4 But for us it is
enough to take note that in his analysis anekdoty still performed as a
“technique in the ongoing deterritorialisation of Soviet reality”,5 and in
this way they clearly do not belong to the authoritative discourse.
In his analysis of the modernization of Soviet poetry, which could be
placed in the above-mentioned historiographical tradition, Rimantas Kmita
used an interesting “factory” metaphor. He refers to the dominant
ideological discourse as a “drone” and calls poetry that moved away from
dominant ideological discourse, and towards modernity, “song”.6 This
song is viewed as a form of resistance against the dominant discourse,
while its works opposed the existent order.7 The objective of this paper is
not to discuss Kmita’s thesis but rather to call attention to one aspect,
namely that of one so-called aesthetic innovation of modern poetry—
irony—and its direct link to the opposition role played by the song to the
factory drone. Broadly speaking, irony can be found not only in modern
poetry but also in the dominant discourse. However, these two things
played opposing roles: if the first, as Kmita noted, deconstructed official
values and ideology and criticized the political and social situation, 8 then
the second, together with the entire genre of satire it was considered a part
of, was assigned a different role—to construct and support the existing
2
Aleksandr Prokhorov, “Cinema of Attractions versus Narrative Cinema: Leonid
Gaidai’s Comedies and El'dar Riazanov's Satires of the 1960s,” in Slavic Review,
62:3 (2003), 263.
3
Ibid., 472.
4
Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet
Generation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 238; 277.
5
Ibid., 280.
6
Rimantas Kmita, Ištrǌkimas iš fabriko (Vilnius: Lietuviǐ literatǌros ir tautosakos
institutas, 2009), 23.
7
Ibid., 30.
8
Ibid., 257.
Tomas Vaiseta 151
discourse, that is, the political order. However, despite this opposition the
two ironies share a socio-cultural bond. The existence of Soviet satire,
quite unexpectedly, aided in the formation and “legalization” of a
deconstructive irony. It is important to discuss this in terms of a
relationship more complex than simply opposition; literary scholarship has
until now focused on deconstructive irony, while ignoring the satire
invoked by the “drone”, or dominant discourse.
The Background: The features of Soviet satire

The disregard of official Soviet satire in the historiography does not
mean a lack of its study.9 What this paper refers to is a lack of
understanding of the role this humour played in the construction of
authoritative discourse, one which lasted throughout the Stalinist period
and well into the mid-1980s. Satire and irony, of course, are not
equivalents. For a long time in Lithuania, from the beginning of the Soviet
occupation, irony was only able to exist as a component of satire. As satire
became more literary it suppressed its more combative, fierce, mocking
nature and gave way to a gentle, more ambiguous tone of irony. Because
literary scholars have written much about the evolutionary stages of satire
during the Soviet period10 it will not be recapped here but what seems
essential to point out is that this evolution was not, and could not be,
addressed during the Soviet period; this will be discussed in the final part
of this paper. This paper will focus mostly on genres of Soviet satire
(feuilleton, pamphlets, etc.) not only because their relationship with irony
is interesting, but also because equally interesting is their relationship with
power and reality. Furthermore, Soviet satire cannot be limited to
examples found in literature or journalism. Satire became a unique
practice of speech used as a tool in a variety of everyday situations. For
example, vulgarized forms of satire were used to punish misconduct—
offenders were often written about in a mocking tone in the wall
newspapers or internal newspapers of collective farms, factories, and
institutions. The Soviet regime valued the power of public humiliation.
9
See Peter Henry ed. Modern Soviet Satire (Anthology of Soviet Satire, 2)
(London: Collet's Ltd., 1974); Richard L.Chapple, Soviet Satire of the Twenties
(Gainesville FL: University Presses of Florida, 1980); and Karen L.Ryan-Hayes,
Contemporary Russian Satire: A Genre Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1995).
10
See Algis Kalơda, Komizmas lietuviǐ tarybinơje prozoje (Vilnius: Vaga, 1984)
and Vytautas Kubilius, “Humoras, paradoksas, groteskas,” in Šiuolaikinơs prozos
problemos (Vilnius: Vaga, 1978).
The classic standard of Soviet satire was the Russian magazine

Ʉɪɨɤɨɞɢɥ (Crocodile), which had its equivalents in every Soviet republic.
They not only published shared materials but also had quite similar
content in general. In Soviet Lithuania Šluota (Broom) played the role of
local twin for Crocodile. In turn Šluota acted as a guidepost for the smaller
local satire sections in newspapers and wall newspapers. It even
periodically issued collections of caricatures to assist the local wall
newspapers. When reading Šluota, which was quite popular in Soviet
Lithuania, at first glance one might get the impression that freedom of
speech existed. In the publication various social vices are mocked and
criticized: drunkenness, freeloading, theft, bribery, bureaucracy, industrial
waste, negligence, and so on. It was not only ordinary people’s
indiscretions that were treated in this way, but also the actions of certain
officials. In this sense, it appears as though Soviet satire served a classic
purpose: “Satire attempts to create order in a fallen world by acutely
highlighting all of the perversions.”11
But in reality this was only on the surface, as Soviet satire was
characterized by specific features. First, its criticism asserted certain
values and ideals, though these were not universal ones—it subscribed to
communist ideology. That said, many common human vices, such as
stealing or laziness, could be transformed into ideological constructions
and criticized as remnants of bourgeois life. The constructed role of Soviet
satire was unique in that its criticism had to reveal not the systemic
depravity of the Soviet system, but its excellence. In other words, it acted
precisely in the opposite way to the definition of satire given by Peter
Sloterdijk: “In any case, it takes up a position against whatever might
loosely be called ‘high thinking’: idealism, dogmatics, grand theory,
weltanschauung, sublimity, ultimate foundations, and the show of order”.12
Not coincidentally, the Šluota Primary Party Organization meetings
resounded with assertions that the magazine was political and all of the
journalists were doing political work.13 Therefore, the shortcomings and
offences against the established order one encountered in reality were to
be understood not as the depravity of the system but as remnants of the
bourgeois period, or as the vices of individual people. The words used to
identify these shortcomings included: “exception”, “individual”,
“unintentional”, “leftover”, and so forth. This corresponded to the general
11
Matthijs van Boxsel, Kvailybơs enciklopedija (Vilnius: Aidai, 2005), 196.
12
Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason (London, New York: Verso, 1988),
288.
13
Šluotos redakcijos pirminơs partinơs organizacijos susirinkimas, 1972 08 28,
protokolas nr. 9/ LYA, f. 15020, ap. I, b. 10, l. 29.
Tomas Vaiseta 153
logic of “criticism” and “self-criticism” propagated during the Soviet

period and was best-expressed using adjectives in the comparative degree
(in Lithuanian, with the suffix “-esnis”; in English, this corresponds to the
suffix “-er”, or the word “more”). These adjectives had to describe the
duality of the current situation and its interim state: much was achieved on
the path to Communism, so progress was apparent. The current system
was better than the previous (bourgeois) one, and questioning this
fundamental assertion was forbidden. On the other hand, society was on
the road to Communism, therefore the current situation could not be
without deficiencies, and such obstacles were required to be identified and
corrected.
Secondly, Soviet satire did not evolve spontaneously. Usually it was
clearly organized, planned, and intentional—it had to perform specific
functions and provide certain results. Therefore, its relationship with
reality was proactive. For example, Šluota would construct “prospective
plans” that identified the themes to be covered in the feuilleton, pamphlets,
and caricatures. These plans were determined by the overall politics of the
regime, proposed campaigns, and political events. The editors or a Party
representative ensured that the publication was not limited to only pure
humour or themes with little ideological weight.
The third feature of Soviet satire, which was characteristic of all public
activities, was its limited freedom, a direct reflection of its relationship
with power. Even though certain genres of satire were allowed to target
reality there were firm boundaries in place. Archival documents show that
journalists, and sometimes editors, did not have a clear understanding of
where assertions of the system and where its negation began. The unique
nature of satire contributed to this. Humour is always ambiguous and full
of unexpected subtexts so those boundaries could have been crossed
inadvertently.
This paper will further discuss the relationship between Soviet satire,
reality, and power using archival material from the Primary Party
Organization and editorial board of the magazine Šluota, as well as
drawing from interviews conducted with journalists and writers.
On Dry Cleaning: The function of Soviet satire

Satire’s relationship with reality was largely defined by its prescribed
functions. The magazine’s popularity can probably be explained not only
by the appeal of humour to its readers but also by efforts to maintain the
impression that the facts published in the magazine were true. The chief
editor Juozas Bulota insisted that the presentation of factual material
increased readership.14 All this augmented the effectiveness of the

criticisms published in the magazine, which can be identified as the main
task of Šluota. Therefore, some of the functions of the magazine were
intended to increase the effectiveness of criticism, while others—to utilize
this effectiveness.
Pure humour as needed to attract readers and laughter for laughter’s
sake was understood and undisputed as essential. In this way we could
name the first function of Soviet satire entertainment. Still, Party control
did not allow the magazine to simply be a source of entertainment. Party
Secretary R. Tilvytis stated: “It must be the case that we sense in the
magazine not only humour, but also satire. There must be more of a
connection to life, ideological conflicts, a more acute ideological battle.”15
The function of humour most identified by the interviewees (ex-press
workers who were interviewed for this study) is to let off steam. One gets
the sense from their evaluations that attempts by the authorities to reduce
tensions and discontent were the all-encompassing function, a unique
meta-function, of humour. For instance, poet Alfonsas Bukontas, who
worked for the youth magazine Jaunimo gretos (in English Youth Ranks),
stated:
Well, the bosses of the Party probably also wanted to laugh, they had some
interests. [...] Could there be the regime without laughter? There must be...
they knew that the anecdotes were circulating among people. So it is much
better when it is written and controlled, and let them laugh at the things
that are allowed. It means people will be more happy to live and work. In
this way they are not dangerous.16
Yet we should not rush to give this function special status. First of all,
this is all rather hypothetical because this function is hard to identify,
though some hints can be found. For example, the chief editor of Šluota
asserted: “Laughter—this is also politics. If a person is laughing—he is
satisfied with our life, our system.”17 Secondly, it is unlikely that some of
the other functions identified and discussed later in this paper could be
14
Šluotos redakcijos atviras partinis susirinkimas, 1975 08 25, protokolas nr. 8/
LYA, f. 15020, ap. I, b. 11, l. 12.
15
Šluotos pirminơs partinơs organizacijos susirinkimas, 1973 03 26, protokolas nr.
6/ LYA, f. 15020, ap. I, b. 10, l. 75.
16
Conversation with Alfonsas Bukontas, October 4, 2011.
17
Šluotos redakcijos pirminơs partinơs organizacijos atviras susirinkimas, 1973 04
19, protokolas nr. 7/ LYA, f. 15020, ap. I, b. 10 l. 77.
Tomas Vaiseta 155
explained as simply letting off steam; the threat associated with laughter
must also be considered.18
The formal function of Soviet satire could be described as “eliminating
deficiencies”. This is embodied in the phrase “the fire of satire”, which
implies that all obstacles on the path to Communism must be destroyed.
The satirically publicized fact became a directive for the local authorities
to take action or a prophylactic warning to others. The editors of Šluota
were obliged not only to publish the facts of the misconduct, but also to
ensure further action in the process—to notify the accountable institutions
and to confirm their response and prescribed punishment. Therefore,
sometimes a column called “Atsirašinơtojǐ užpeþkis” (“Accountable
Institution Response Corner”) appeared in the pages of Šluota where the
names of institutions that were unresponsive or had only formally
responded were published. In other words, in “eliminating deficiencies”
the editors served not only as journalists but also performed a role in
monitoring the competence of other institutions.
Officially, the regime maintained that it was not tolerant of vices that
existed in everyday life (though the list of vices was finite) and there was
no leeway in crossing that particular line. Therefore, satire often
functioned in a closed circle of “deficiencies”. Already in 1967 A.
Pabijǌnas angrily wrote: “readers are sick and tired of all this exposing of
bureaucrats, thieves, and inadequate workers.”19 The recycling of the same
tired themes annoyed the editors and journalists as well. An employee of
the journal, when responding to an author about why his article was not
suited for Šluota, wrote the following in a letter: “The feuilleton is
interesting, the form is original. Unfortunately, it is too long for us.
18
This is likely why contradictions between “dangerous” and “helpful” laughter
exist. For instance, writer Kazys Saja recalls the reactions of officials after a
rehearsal of his satirical comedy Gaidžio pentinai (A Cock’s Spurs). The chief
editor of the official newspaper of the militia, Vilius Chadzeviþius, told him: “As a
man, as a common viewer I laughed very much, but as a representative of Ministry
of Interior Affairs I must say that a performance like this cannot be shown.” After
some time, during the 50th commemoration of the Soviet militia, there was a
desperate search for writers who had written about the “glorious work of the
militia”. At that time Chadzeviþius remembered the satirical comedy Gaidžio
pentinai. Someone reminded him that Saja had mocked the militia but at that time
Chadzeviþius answered: “But satire is not forbidden”. In Kazys Saja, Skudurơliǐ
takas: prisiminimai (apmatams), pamąstymai (ataudams) (Vilnius: Petro ofsetas,
2011), 59-60.
19
Algis Kalơda, Lietuviǐ tarybinơ satyra: meniškumo ir socialinio kryptingumo
klausimai (Medžiaga lektoriui) (Vilnius: Žinija, 1984), 10.
Besides, there is so much written already about all that alcoholism and
anti-alcoholism that I really just want to go out and get drunk.”20
As previously mentioned, public humiliation was considered an
effective form punishment in and of itself. This function of punishment
was similar to the role of eliminating deficiencies, though while the latter
was an impulse for punishment or a preventative measure after the
punishment, sometimes public humiliation was only punishment. It was
especially promoted locally—in comrade’s courts, work collectives, and
other places where people knew each other well. Information about the
“punished” people was almost always presented satirically in the wall
newspapers and internal newspaper of organizations. The mockery was
biting and not very forgiving. For example, the newspaper Ekranietis
(Screener), which started publication in 1970 at the factory Ekranas
(Screen) in Panevơžys, included a section on the last page entitled
“Termosmǌgis” (“Thermokick”). One example: “D. Petrulaitis, an
employee of the regeneration bar, decided to take preventative measures in
his own life. Well, who else should they apply to if not his own wife. He
beat her once, and that was all. As a future assurance. So she would
behave.”21 It really was no pleasure for the perpetrator to read such things.
Romuald Voronoviþ, an ex-worker at the factory Vingis (Curve) recalls
that one worker who found himself written up in the wall newspaper
Gơdos veidrodis (The Mirror of Shame) got so angry that he smashed a
glass.22 And yet even in the Republic-level magazine Šlouta we can find
articles and elements that appear to be punishment (most likely in addition
to those found in wall newspaper and the like) which also, undoubtedly,
served a preventative function: the magazine published photos of men who
ended up in the drunk tank23 and women who were arrested for
speculation.24 As Bulota said, “the very appearance of a piece in Šluota is
a painful blow.”25
Even though the entire function of the magazine was essentially
political sometimes the political element was especially evident. That is
why we can single out the function of the magazine in carrying out
political orders. For example, in the Soviet Union there were constant,
20
Žurnalo Šluota redakcija, Nepanaudotǐ žurnale literatǌriniǐ kǌriniǐ rankrašþiai
ir atsakymai jǐ autoriams, 1971, I knyga/ LMA, f. 361, ap. 2, b. 204, l. 159.
21
“Auklơtojas,” in Ekranietis, August 28, 1970, No. 7; 2.
22
Conversation with Romualdas Voronoviþ, November 21, 2011.
23
M. Porteris, “Tą subatos vakarơlƳ...,” in Šluota, 1972 07, No. 13, 6.
24
A. Lukša, “Ištikimos savo amatui,” in Šluota, 1972 09, No. 18, 6.
25
Šluotos redakcijos pirminơs partinơs organizacijos atviras partinis susirinkimas,
1971 06 07, protokolas nr. 8/ LYA, f. 15020, ap. I, b. 9, l. 101.
Tomas Vaiseta 157
relentless campaigns for or against something. During these campaigns

Šluota had to include more publications on that particular topic. The
magazine, in its own way, had to respond to and help solve issues tied to
political events. For instance, in May 1972, after the self-immolation of
Romas Kalanta and the unrest in Kaunas, at a Party meeting of the editors
of Šluota Bulota stated:
The press, and we too, have often ignored these elements roaming the
streets. This demonstrates that vestiges of the bourgeois still spring up.
Fighting against them is the business of all of the press, including Šluota.
[…] We must return, in the magazine, to the work of exposing the ulcers of
the bourgeois system and to remind today’s youth of those times.26
The role of the pamphlet, which was an official genre of political

satire, was officially contra-propaganda whose role was “exposing and
quelling of political enemies”27 but in reality its purpose was propaganda.
This is the sixth function discussed here. It is basically a clear function—
satire is directed against the imperialism of the Western world, the
subversive activities of the bourgeois émigré community, and the obscure
nature of clerics. It is interesting that even during the Cold War there were
changes at this most constant front that required the satirists to adapt. “Our
relationship with the United States was better, so we were essentially
stripped of our weapons,” writes satirist J. Sadaukynas in 1975. Later he
added that things were also unclear with regard to the Catholic Church: “A
new direction at this time with the Catholic camp: we have to develop
antireligious propaganda while explaining everything correctly.”28
When reading Šluota and the documents related to the publication, a
constant search for ways to enhance its effectiveness emerges. This was
part of satire’s function as “strengthening of the self”. One way of doing
this was to fight with the “atsirašinơtojai” (the responses from the
Institutions); another way was to work through letters, or in other words—
with complaints. The complaint letters department was strictly
controlled—each letter was required to be answered within a set period of
time so that the reader knew that he was not being ignored and that his
input was valued. Letters would to be copied and sent to the appropriate
26
31, protokolas nr. 7/ LYA, f. 15020, ap. I, b. 10, l. 23-24.
27
Jonas Bulota, “Politinơ satyra (Pamfleto žanro klausimu),” in Žurnalistika 74
(Vilnius: Mintis, 1976), 77.
28
Šluotos redakcijos pirminơs partinơs organizacijos ataskaitinis-rinkiminis
susirinkimas, 1975 09 22, protokolas/ LYA, f. 15020, ap. I, b. 11, l. 18.
institutions or the local “active members” to check facts. However, it is

most likely that the section found under the headline “Brǌkštelơjus”
(“Scribbles”) played the most important part in the function of satire in
“strengthening the self”. It was here that announcements about the
responses to the publicized information appeared and, more importantly,
information about the punishment and sanctions that awaited the criticized
person. In this way satire substantiated the results of its work; it was a
document of accountability not only for readers, but also for the
government. Ideologues of journalism were of the opinion that without
concrete results satire was unimportant: “If the feuilleton did not receive a
response [indicating] that the exposed transgressors were punished, then
we can bravely claim that the feuilleton did not accomplish the editor’s
task, wasted paper for no reason, and interfered in the reader’s attention by
abusing the favoured feuilleton rubric.”29
On Stains: The limits of critique

If the established functions of satire suppressed the “fire of satire” and
turned it in a clear direction then its relationship with power was central to
extinguishing that fire. So that we may understand what was allowed to be
criticized—what comprised the eliminated stains—let us take a look at
what was not considered a stain. These untouchable sources of power can
be divided into four categories:
(1) Ideal power. These include the foundational theses of communist
ideology and the symbols that embody them—Karl Marx, Friedrich
Engels, and most importantly, Lenin. Ideal power could not be mentioned
in any satirical context because humour, by nature, is ambiguous and
therefore any kind of mention risked unforeseen implications. An anecdote
from caricaturist and portrait artist Jonas Varnas illustrates just how
sensitive the government was in their view of symbols of the ideal.
According to Varnas there was a standard portrayal of Lenin and any
deviation from it was not tolerated. Once, he decided to draw a more
original portrait of Lenin, one that was popular in Cuba and that included
specific shadows and small blemishes. As the poster was being printed a
fingertip-sized dot disappeared from the ear of the drawing. Because the
appearance of the ear was different from the original, the run of the
posters, numbering several tens of thousands, was destroyed. 30
29
Jonas Bulota, “Beletristika ar publicistika? (Feljetono žanro klausimu),” in
Žurnalistika 72 (Vilnius: Lietuvos TSR žurnalistǐ sąjunga, 1973), 89.
30
Conversation with Jonas Varnas, October 10, 2011.
Tomas Vaiseta 159
On the other hand, Šluota was not exempt from the obligation of
participating in universal rituals in the form of marking holidays and
anniversaries. This was a huge challenge for the editors. How to mark the
100th year anniversary of Lenin’s birth in such a way that did not impart
any ambiguous meaning while ensuring that the material was not entirely
grim and discordant with the general tone of the publication? The 100th
anniversary was celebrated in 1970 and for the whole year previous there
were debates at Party meetings about how to go about commemorating it.
“We cannot limit ourselves to only boring pages. We need more ingenuity
and this is the responsibility of the entire collective,” urged the chief
editor.31 And still, the employees constantly complained about the
difficulty of finding an appropriate form and materials for a “special”
publication.32
The resolve to insert a mention of Lenin into a satiric publication was
truely a risky venture. Varnas spoke of bets among caricaturists in Estonia;
one of them claimed that he was going to get a caricature related to Lenin
into the satire magazine Piker. In the drawing he depicted a large family
and placed a medal around the neck of the head of the household which
read: “Otec molodec” (“Fine Father Fellow”, roughly). It was only after
the caricature was printed that the local Central Committee realized that
the silhouette of the family resembled the silhouette of a famous
photograph of Lenin’s family.33
(2) Nominal power. Just like ideal power the Soviet system, both the
facts of occupation and its attributes (Moscow, the Party, Communist
Youth), were not to be questioned. The problem was that in criticizing
individual deficiencies it was difficult to remain at the surface of
propaganda and not draw the reader’s attention to its systemic causes, that
is, the real reasons behind deficiencies. So editors had to know how to
uphold the system and not contradict it. Journalists felt insecure because of
this unclear boundary. The protocols of the Party and general meetings
include many discussions during which at certain points workers
encouraged one another while at other points they educated and instructed.
Here, for example, the managing secretary of the magazine Šluota, J.
Sadaukynas, notices that the publication is becoming dull and asks if this
is the result of a fear of “sullying Soviet life”. The senior editor replies: “I
take the blame for the directness that Sadaukynas spoke of—maybe I did
31
1969 01 21, protokolas nr. 3/ LYA, F. 15020, ap. I, b. 9, l. 2.
32
33
Conversation with Jonas Varnas, October 10, 2011.
really feel some sort of fear, but we need to give them harsher material.”34
In another instance, the correspondent M. Šlapakauskas criticized the
Communist Youth saying that the “Communist Youth are more active
with words,” that there are 29,000 Communist Youth in Panevơžys but no
cultural centre, but “if they had a good leader then each one of them would
carry a brick to [build] the culture centre”. At this point Bulota rushed to
correct his colleague saying that it was wrong to think of all of the
Communist Youth that way and that there were just a few “bad apples”
among them.35 The collective was not to blame, just individual elements.
Even critics of these types of phenomena agree that one had to be careful
ridiculing them so as not to touch the nominal power. For example, the
Lithuanian Communist Party Central Committee and agitation department
was irked by the caricature “Matrioškos” because it seemed to imply that
Russians drank the most.36
(3) Real power. The highest Party leadership and nomenclature usually
held the same inviolable status but when changes in this status occurred, or
on other rare occasions, the satiric function could be utilized. The
complexity of the boundaries of criticism increased because in theory all
officials could be criticized, all the way up to the highest echelons of the
leadership, but the actual power of the real government was constantly
changing so it was basically impossible to determine the real influence and
power of an individual. This is why meetings were full of brave
encouragement from the editor: “Give us strong material—we’ll publish it,
even if it involves a minister.”37 However, this resolve usually dissipated
when it met with real situations. The relationship between the Šluota
leadership and their direct Lithuanian Communist Party Central
Committee (LCPCC) supervisors could sometimes be described as
schizophrenic. In one meeting Bulota communicated the words of LCPCC
secretary Lionginas Šepetys, saying that the material in Šluota “did not
really move anyone” and only “slid along the surface.”38 But then right
away, at that same meeting, the journalists were beset on by the editors
34
Šluotos pirminơs partinơs organizacijos ataskaitinis-rinkiminis susirinkimas,
1974 10 23, protokolas/ LYA, f. 15020, ap. I, b. 10, l. 118-119.
35
36
Šluotos pirminơs partinơs organizacijos atviras susirinkimas, 1979 08 10,
37
29, protokolas nr. 3/ LYA, f. 15020, ap. I, b. 12, l. 2.
38
Tomas Vaiseta 161
because they wanted to write about the construction of the Mažeikiai

refinery which directly affected the interests of the LCPCC: “We—an
organ of the Central Committee—must be considerate of the opinion of
the deputy chief of the Central Committee construction division. […] We
took out this material. The construction is controlled by the Republic’s
prosecutors, led by Tiesa and Sovietskaja Litva, so Šluota really shouldn’t
give its own two cents,” Bulota argued.39 In other words, the ability to
criticize the highest leadership was rhetorical and a sham. This was also
undoubtedly determined by the fact that Šluota was held directly
accountable to the LCPCC, which is why it was able to strictly control the
situation. Because of this journalists who did not want any unpleasantness
respected their boundaries: “They need not be ministers, but we can find
bigger fish. But now we’re afraid to touch the chairman of a collective
farm.”40
(4) Hyper-real power. The relationship with the real authority taught
one to be careful, though this was most necessary when interacting with
the hyper-real authority—the lowest rungs of the Party and nomenclature
leadership, collective farm chairmen, factory administrators, and all of
those who in theory (and often in practice) could be criticized. The work
of these figures was often mocked but this did not mean everyone was
under threat of the “fire of satire”. Power was determined not only by
formally granted authority but also by informal connections. The
manifestation of this power was rarely predicted or predictable. The power
was apparent not in actions of omission—it was not that the Šluota editors
were not informed of the misconduct of one person or another—but when
the printing of the misconduct was forbidden even after the publication
was already finished. Gražina Arlickaitơ, who worked at Šluota, stated that
one of the central functions of the chief editor was to determine whether a
collective farm chairman who was to appear in the publication had
relatives or friends in the LCPCC.41 The protocols of the editorial
meetings indicate several instances where writing about the work of one or
another individual was hampered by the fact that they had someone
watching their back: “It’s sometimes difficult to criticize even just a
collective farm chairman who is ‘backed’ by someone in Vilnius. We are
affected by this sometimes, though really we should not have to consider
39
Ibid., l. 57-58.
40
Šluotos pirminơs partinơs organizacijos susirinkimas, 1975 04 28, protokolas/
LYA, f. 15020, ap. I, b. 11, l. 6.
41
Author’s conversation with Gražina Arlickaitơ, October 8, 2011.
this.”42 In reality, some authority figures overestimated their power and in

those instances their hyper-real power became surreal because their efforts
to block publication were futile.
Instead of a Conclusion: Returning Meaning,

or Removing the Background
In looking at resources related to the relationship between satire,
reality, and power we see that Soviet satire contributed to the construction
of ideological discourse while at the same time contributed to the
deprivation of its meaning. Soviet satire mocked anything that challenged
the ideal order but at the same time had to help establish this order.
However, the ideal order—communist ideology—lost its meaning and
people no longer believed in it so satire had nothing to lean on and
expanded the field of meaninglessness. It is interesting that Matthijs van
Boxsel predicted such a fate for satire: “In response to growing disorder
introduced by new dichotomies which only increased spiritual confusion.
[…] It was no longer possible to unite contrasting elements with the higher
truth. Satire lost its corrective function, because the standards it was based
on became ambivalent.”43 This ambivalence is intrinsic to humour. There
was only one thing that was needed to hatch it—talent. In Soviet Lithuania
writer Vytautơ Žilinskaitơ was the first to showcase her abilities in Soviet
satire. Her work reflects how literary satire, and later irony, matured in the
shade of Soviet journalistic satire. An ironic work still spoke the same
language but its ambiguity was so clear that it began to return meaning—
to speak about the things people really felt and saw.
Soviet satire was purely empirical in so much as it was based on
concrete facts. This was evidenced by its interaction with individual cases
of concrete misconduct, which could be caught out. Vytautas Kubilius
called this a humorous life “on the everyday empirical plane”.44 The form
of Soviet satire discussed in this paper remained active until the fall of the
Soviet Union. However, artistic satire slowly branched off as Soviet satire
moved away from concrete things to generalities; it became increasingly
difficult to control the function of satire when the whole, and not
individual elements, was the object of derision. This shift happened around
42
43
van Boxsel, 199.
44
Vytautas Kubilius, “Humoras, paradoksas, groteskas,” in Šiuolaikinơs prozos
problemos (Vilnius: Vaga, 1978), 156.
Tomas Vaiseta 163
1970 and Jonas Bulota’s45 text about the feuilleton perfectly evokes this
split. He noted that readers required feuilleton writers to write like
Žilinskaitơ, though this was a mistake, because Žilinskaitơ did not write
journalistic feuilleton but short, satiric prose.46 He explains this problem as
a lack of understanding of what a feuilleton is and an attempt to assign to
this genre themes which do not belong to it.47 But Bulota is likely
documenting a different phenomenon—how the artistic element of satire,
which developed in its journalistic state, tore away and began an
independent existence. Its deepening and ambiguity gave way to irony,
which drew in even more writers who saw it as a way to return meaningful
speech to the meaningless discourse. It is remarkable that in 1974
philosopher Romualdas Ozolas, writing in his diary about a new type of
satire orientated to the western style of humour, already mentioned the
“tradition of Žilinskaitơ”.48
What are the fruits of this offshoot of satire? If we look only at
Žilinskaitơ then we cannot consider her work merely as a part of the
history of the fight against “anomalous deficiencies” but also as an
anthropological study of Soviet society. We can find everything here, even
how Soviet satire, which was required to remove the stains, removed the
entire background:
Even though we don’t have a background institute or background

specialist, we should not be dejected: we have the actual background of our
lives—bright, equal and shiny like taffeta, which is no longer in fashion.
Though, there might even be stains on that taffeta. […] People like to say
that individual dark stains are even more noticeable on the bright
background of our lives… Though—we add—we shouldn’t intensify those
stains and look for them! It’s true—why look for them if they show up on
their own and solidify. We should ruthlessly eliminate those stains. This is
like making a whip, again it’s unclear: who should do what? It seems it is
time to establish, next to the Romanticism Institute, a Dry Cleaners which
would eliminate those stains from the bright background of our lives. The
cleaners would most likely eliminate the background together with the
stains. Then our lives would be without a background—life, institutes
would be left without romanticism—just institutes; just work, just people,
45
Jonas Bulota was the brother of Juozas Bulota, chief editor of Šluota.
46
Jonas Bulota, “Beletristika ar publicistika? (Feljetono žanro klausimu),” in
Žurnalistika 72 (Vilnius, Lietuvos TSR žurnalistǐ sąjunga, 1973), 86.
47
Ibid., 87.
48
Romualdas Ozolas, Atgimimo ištakose: 1970-1980 metǐ Lietuvos kultǌros
gyvenimo štrichai (Vilnius: Pradai, 1996), 327.
just friendship—just deception, just education, just philosophy and just

progress!
Just utopia, just…laughter.49
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THE GROTESQUE DIMENSION OF WITOLD
GOMBROWICZ’S NOVEL FERDYDURKE
MACIEJ PIĄTEK
Great discoveries are indispensable—

powerful blows struck by the soft human hand at
the steel armour of Form,
as well as unparalleled cunning and great integrity
of thought and an extreme sharpening of
intelligence—so that man may break loose from his
rigidity
and reconcile within himself form with the
formless, law with anarchy,
maturity with sacred and eternal immaturity. But
before this happens, tell me:
in your opinion, are Anjou pears better than Bosc
pears?1
—Witold Gombrowicz
1. Overture
Imagine the following situation: one totally unexceptional and ordinary
Tuesday you wake up at pale dawn, your little room still shrouded in a
foggy grey. A strange feeling comes over you. You stare at your foot
sticking out at the edge of the bed and you can’t help feeling weird about
this bizarre object, a beast of sorts that you hardly feel any connection
with; in fact, your whole body seems strangely disorganized, your arm
lying on your belly looks exceptionally alien and your head is a pain in the
neck.
You feel anxiety creeping up from your stomach, enmeshing your heart
and making your head spin. It is fear of disintegration, of being scattered
into parts, of de-parting. And when you finally make the decision to get up
and pull yourself together, physically and otherwise, you have a ridiculous
1
Witold Gombrowicz, Ferdydurke, trans. Danuta Borchardt (New Haven, London:
Yale University Press, 2000), 86. This translation is used throughout.
168 The Grotesque Dimension of Witold Gombrowicz’s Novel Ferdydurke
visitor. A professor, a personage who is part absurd and part demonic at

the same time, and who rushes through the door, kicks you out of bed and
despite the fact that you are already thirty years old, he puts you back into
school with a group of unruly adolescents who present the same degree of
temporary insanity and absurd foolishness as do all adolescents.
2. Where do we go from here?

This is the starting point of Ferdydurke, a novel by Witold
Gombrowicz, one of the most controversial, original, and groundbreaking
Polish writers of the 20th century. The novel was published in 1937 and
instantaneously became famous, or perhaps infamous depending on your
point of view. The book’s biting, merciless, and at times outrageous satire
of issues of education, social convention, and political ideology was
deemed highly subversive and dangerous by the Nazis in World War II
occupied Poland, as well as afterwards by the Stalinist and Communist
regime of the Polish People’s Republic. Ferdydurke was banned for
several decades but strangely enough, even after the collapse of the
totalitarian regime its subversive power can still be intensely felt.
Let me now go back for a moment to the beginning of the novel. Joey,
the narrator and protagonist, is forced back to school and to his utter
amazement no one seems to notice his unsuitable age. The school is
peopled with grotesque figures, both students and teachers. The students
are divided into two opposing camps: the lads, who hold on to high ideals,
and the guys, who want to be tough and rough and manly. The ongoing
war between the two groups leads to absurdity, freakishness, and
grotesqueness. All this is combined to create an oneiric, nightmarish
atmosphere. Joey feels as thought he is trapped in a dream and wants to do
something to counteract or prevent the ridiculous events from happening
but he cannot. As one often is in dreams, he is paralyzed.
The writing style is dreamlike and as such invites a psychoanalytic
reading, be it Freudian or Lacanian. The initial situation into which the
protagonist is (almost literally) thrown, and which brings to mind the
existential idea of Geworfenheit as described by Martin Heidegger in his
seminal Being and Time, could also be interpreted in light of Julia
Kristeva’s concept of the human subject as only actually being constituted
when facing a symbolic order.2 This symbolic order is a crucible of
language and culture where identities are forged; the experience of
2
Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, trans. M. Waller (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1984).
Maciej Piątek 169
entering the reign of the symbolic is in and of itself a deeply traumatic

experience. In Gombrowicz’s novel Joey relives this trauma. He is forced
back to his school years, a time when the formation of ones’ character
actually begins. At the beginning of the novel he feels indefinite,
immature, unshaped, and strangely in-different. He seems to be steeped in
what Kristeva refers to as the semiotic, a primal chaotic state in which
even body parts fail to organize into a systematic and working mechanism.
This peculiar corporeal disconnectedness represents a lack of stable
identity on the level of the psyche. You need the symbolic order to put all
the pieces together and form a body and a self. In fact, the body, as such, is
not so much a material object but a concept, a way of arranging the chaotic
raw material into an interconnected and working machinery. The way your
body functions (or better, the way you think about how it functions) is a
cultural conceptualization that is forced on you from the very moment
your mother teaches you that you should not eat your own faeces.
In the semiotic stage you are like a hard disk that cannot be accessed or
read by means of any available hardware or technology. This does not
mean you are empty and deprived of all signification; you are an
unreadable sign. The initial stage of entering the symbolic order can be
likened to disk formatting which renders a disk open for data recording
and connecting to a network. The school experience is like disk
formatting, with the transfer of data provided by a broadly understood
cultural network. This experience involves a radical change in the mode of
one’s existence—in its basic format—and as such results in a trauma that
cannot be forgotten, but is instantaneously repressed.
In Ferdydurke Gombrowicz attempts to show this trauma of identity
formation in slow motion; he presents Joey as subjected to forces that
claim him and make him into what he is to become. He is literally
subjected, that is made into a subject, an identity, a someone. The school
section of the book deals with the imposition of a face, the intuitive sign of
the irreducible uniqueness of each human being and a symbol of
personality. Gombrowicz shows how this face is not of our own making
but rather a product of the environment and circumstances into which we
are thrown. And it cannot be otherwise. In the semiotic stage we belong to
ourselves but we are not yet “one”, we are a no-one, a non-entity, a non-
identity. We require the symbolic order to become someone, but at that
point we no longer belong to ourselves. We are converted through the
binary system of culture into a bit of information based on two-value
logic: true or false, yes or no. We identify with this or that, we are opposed
to this or that, and thus we make our appearance in the world. We become
who we are.
One of the situations brimming with the grotesque that the narrator is
forced to participate in is a literature lesson that I will now quote in
extenso. It is, firstly, a bitter satire of the education system, but it also
reveals something that is at the core of the whole novel. The teacher
speaks:
“A great poet! Remember that, it’s important! And why do we love him?
Because he was a great poet. A great poet he was indeed! You laggards,
you ignoramuses, I’m trying to be calm and collected as I tell you this, get
it into your thick heads—so, I repeat once more, gentlemen: a great poet,
Juliusz Sáowacki, a great poet, we love Juliusz Sáowacki and admire his
poetry because he was a great poet. Please make note of the following
homework assignment: ‘What is the immortal beauty which abides in the
poetry of Juliusz Sáowacki and evokes our admiration?’”
At this point one of the students fidgeted and groaned:
“But I don’t admire it all! Not at all! It doesn’t interest me in the least!
I read two verses and I’m already bored. God help me, how am I supposed
to admire it when I don’t admire it?” His eyes popped, and he sat down,
thus sinking into a bottomless bit. The teacher choked on this naïve
confession.
“For God’s sake be quiet!” he hissed. “I’ll flunk you. Gaákiewicz, you
want to ruin me! You probably don’t realize what you’ve just said?”
“But I don’t understand it! I don’t understand how I can admire it when
I don’t admire it.”
“How can you not admire it, Gaákiewicz, when I told you a thousand
times that you do admire it.”
“Well, I don’t admire it.”
“That’s your private business. Obviously, Gaákiewicz, you lack the
intelligence. Others admire it.”
“Nobody admires it, I swear. How can anybody admire it when nobody
reads it besides us, schoolboys, and only because we’re forced to…” […]
“Listen, Gaákiewicz, I have a wife and a child! Have pity on the child
at least!”3
On one level the passage presents education in the down-to-earth

context of economy, of the teacher’s livelihood, of his wife and kids
whose very existence is threatened by the subversive resistance of the
student. But there is a deeper dimension emerging in this scene. You
surely noticed that what the teacher says is tautology, pure and simple. The
poet is great therefore we should admire him. But why is he great? Well,
because we admire him. So we admire him and therefore he is great and
for this very reason we should admire him. This vicious circle reveals that
3
Gombrowicz, Ferdydurke, 42-43.
Maciej Piątek 171
identities, values, and ideologies are created through relations. There is no

intrinsic value, only a nexus of relations that generates value. The identity
and the value of the poet is produced within a socio-cultural network of
opinions, ideologies, nationalities, and other forces that are constantly at
work.
3. Welcome to the (post)modern jungle!

The school is thus shown as an institution based on formative
mechanisms for producing identities, a factory of faces. But, as is seen
later in the novel, the school turns out to be a model for society at large,
for such spheres of life as family, social bonds, and politics.
In all those spheres a person is in fact a blank spot wherein the
conflicting forces of culture, society, language, and politics fight to
produce an identity. Our faces are at the hands of forces that we cannot
control. In fact, we—as we are now—emerge from all of this clashing,
combining, reorganizing, and mixing of forces. It seems that our face is
somehow not at our own disposal. What comes to mind as an instructive
illustration for this face-formatting trauma is the famous expressionist
painting by Edward Munch, The Scream, which you might interpret as a
forceful presentation of the face in the process of actually being formed. It
is a painful and traumatic process which makes the subject in statu
nascendi scream—a form of expression characteristic of and reserved for
the semiotic stage. I believe that it is perfectly justifiable to say that
Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke is also such an expressionist and dramatic
presentation of a major existential shift from the semiotic to the symbolic.
When Joey realizes this during a face-pulling duel between the lads
and the guys; he screams in despair: “Have pity on your faces, at least
have pity on mine, a face is not an object, a face is a subject, a subject, a
subject!”4 But this is wishful thinking on Joey’s part; the whole novel
shows that a face is indeed an object and not a subject, an object shaped by
the invisible hand of the socio-cultural network in which one lives. Thus
the Cartesian model of an autonomous subject is deconstructed; Gombrowicz
shows that it is not the subject that creates ideas, but the ideas that create
the subject, which thus becomes objectified. To quote one of the most
recent publications on Gombrowicz: “[…] even our feelings are
experienced in quotation marks,”5 in other words, through the mediation of
4
Gombrowicz, Ferdydurke, 63.
5
Michaá Paweá Markowski, Czarny nurt: Gombrowicz, Ğwiat, literature (Krakow:
Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2004), 56. (My translation—MP.)
others. And to quote Gombrowicz himself: “It is not we who say words,
but words that say us.”6
To conclude, what can you do when faced with this grotesque view of
reality in which nothing is your own, where the traditional true self
evaporates and what remains is a random compilation that forms you into
what you are? Here is Gombrowicz’s answer to this burning question:
We shall soon realize that the most important is not to die for ideas, styles,
theses, slogans, beliefs; and also not to solidify and enclose ourselves in
them; but something different, it is this: to step back a pace and secure a
distance from everything that unendingly happens to us. A Retreat. I have a
hunch […] that the time for Universal Retreat is at hand. The son of earth
will henceforth understand that he is not expressing himself in harmony
with his deepest being but always in accordance with some artificial form
painfully thrust upon him from without, either by people or by
circumstances. [...] And instead of roaring: “I believe in this—I feel it—
that’s how I am—I’m ready to defend it,” we will say in all humility:
“Maybe I believe in it—maybe I feel it—I happened to say it, to do it, or to
think it.”7
This understanding of the mode of existence of the “son of earth” is

strikingly close to the vision of human condition as can be derived from
chaos theory.8 When following the mechanics of the formation of the
human subject as presented in Ferdydurke, one inevitably notices the
stress on relativity and sensitivity to initial conditions; these concepts also
form the cornerstone of the modern chaos theory. Being is seen not so
much as a founding substance but as the effect of various kinds of
relations and the initial circumstances that create an environment for the
emergence of particular individualities. Thus, a person, as we understand
the term, can be perceived as a hub of intersecting cultural and historical
influences, sensitive to the initial conditions into which it is thrown like a
ball into a playing field of opposing, duelling forces that always remain
beyond its control and determine the future trajectories of its development.
It is therefore deterministic, and at the same time chaotic Weltanschaung,
and idea of free will is seen as wishful thinking. On the one hand, any
personality can be viewed as the effect of quasi-demonic possession.
However, the difference is that now the religious conception of devils and
gods playing with us for their sport is substituted with socio-cultural
6
Witold Gombrowicz, Dramaty (Krakow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1986), 163.
(My translation—MP.)
7
Gombrowicz, Ferdydurke, 85.
8
James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (New York: Penguin, 1987).
Maciej Piątek 173
influences that model the human clay quite arbitrarily. It is chaotic, and no
prediction is possible—too many factors intersect. The only thing you can
actually do is distance yourself from yourself; take a step back and look at
yourself from the side and burst out laughing at everything you say or do.
It seems that for Gombrowicz (especially in his later writing, for example
in the novel Trans-Atlantyk, but already in Ferdydurke) this self-irony as
expressed through laughter is a way, if only provisionally and momentarily,
of breaking free from the conditional bonds of identity generation. When
the face that is imposed on you cracks like a fake mask and you can laugh
and say: Maybe I believe in it—maybe I feel it—I happened to say it…
I happened to say it.
Bibliography
Gombrowicz, Witold. Dramaty. Krakow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1986.
—. Ferdydurke. Translated by Danuta Borchardt. New Haven, London:
Yale University Press, 2000.
Gleick, James. Chaos: Making a New Science. New York: Penguin, 1987.
Kristeva, Julia. Revolution in Poetic Language. Translated by M. Waller.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1984.
Markowski, Michaá Paweá. Czarny nurt: Gombrowicz, Ğwiat, literature.
Krakow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2004.
THE GROTESQUE AND MEMORY
IN CONTEMPORARY ESTONIAN CULTURE
ANNELI MIHKELEV
The grotesque is a phenomenon and aesthetic category that unites

things that seem impossible to unite: the comic and the horrible, the real
and the fantastic. The grotesque points to the deformations of the real
world and creates a new world with a deformed structure. The grotesque
not only deforms the real world, it also uses (cultural) memory and
deforms that memory. The grotesque is a tragic phenomenon, but it also
attempts to be comic resulting in the connection of laughter and tears: the
grotesque is laughter through tears. It can manifest in a variety of different
ways and may have different cultural aims in different periods. The
grotesque can be a literary genre, but it can also appear as a stylistic
element, a character, or a situation within a text. This article examines the
grotesque in Estonian contemporary culture, asking the question: why and
how does the grotesque exist in Estonian literature, and what is the
message portrayed by these literary works?
The grotesque and the romantic tradition

Mikhail Bakhtin asserts that the roots of the grotesque are found in a
very old folklore tradition. From this perspective the grotesque is actually
quite an old phenomenon or category and artists and writers have used it
over the ages with many different aims. In the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance the grotesque was seen as a game, but starting with
Romanticism, and especially in the case of romantic irony, the connection
of the comic and tragic aspects in the grotesque began to convey social
meaning. The Romantics synthesised fantasy and humour when they
wanted to negate something or indicate that something was monstrous.
The degradation of the comical aspects of the grotesque can be traced to
the Romantic period: “The human world is suddenly transformation into
an external world. What is customary and calming reveals its horrifying
face. […] The grotesque images of Romanticism are generally an
Anneli Mihkelev 175
expression of the fear the world inspires and they attempt to communicate
this fear to readers.”1 Vicente J. Benet further develops Bakhtin’s ideas:
[T]he grotesque is directly associated with popular culture and collective

laugher, which serves as a defence, in a prophylactic sense, against horror.
Therefore, we take it as given that pleasure, the carnivalesque, and the
ostentation of the body are all directly related to a feeling of group
membership, to the sensation that laugher is a powerful device which may
conquer horror and death in as much that it is shared and forms part of a
ritual of group participation. It is this group spirit which allows the limits
of the social order to be broken down, at least momentarily.2
This notion is very similar to Nietzsche’s Dionysiac philosophy and

worldview. For example, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, the horror stories of
Hoffmann and Poe, and Ukrainian-born writer Nikolai Gogol’s stories set
in St. Petersburg (“The Nose”, “The Overcoat”, and “Nevsky Prospect”)
found in the collection Arabesques (1835) are all connected through social
context and the reality existing around the text. Gogol used the grotesque
to represent bureaucracy in St. Petersburg. That bureaucracy was so strong
that it destroyed the common people, and real life in the city, and in Russia
as a whole, became absurd. Gogol’s grotesque expresses the emotions of
simple people who do not feel comfortable in their world, a world full of
lies and horror. Gogol’s fantasies (a nose which walks the streets and an
overcoat which causes much suffering) express the true reality, but also
deform that reality, implying that reality is more horrible than fantasy.
Gogol is a good example of Umberto Eco’s idea, as espoused in his work
Lector in fibula (1979), that fantasy is not independent of the real world or
reality. The fictional world depends on the real world as a cultural
construction.3
German researcher Renate Lachmann has explained Gogol’s grotesque
as follows:
In Gogol’s story, the phallic nose (the corresponding Russian word nos is
masculine) takes on the role of the other half; its reunification or
coniunctio with the lost body part is celebrated like a wedding. In addition,
one might say that Gogol displaces the process of fission from a sharply
demarcated opposition between concealed and revealed (inside and
outside) onto the axis of the body. […] In Gogol’s tale the brief foray into
1
Vicente J. Benet, “Horror and the Grotesque: Corporeal Landscapes of Violence,”
Interlitteraria 2 (1997): 251.
2
Ibid., 254.
3
Umberto Eco, Lector in fabula (Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 2005), 137-139.
176 The Grotesque and Memory in Contemporary Estonian Culture
the semantics of carnival contrasts with the more decisive treatment of the
literary tradition in which he is most engaged, particularly the Romantic
tradition. The Romantics’ use of mirror and shadow icons finds an ironic
counterpart in the usurpatory separation: the nose does not mirror identity
but usurps it. Gogol’s hypostatizing of externality, based on a negative
anthropology, obliterates the relationship of similarity between a person
and his or her double, thereby exposing their lack of essence.4
In my opinion the romantic tradition has also significantly influenced

Estonian literature, perhaps because the birth of Estonian literature is
connected with the Romanticism in the 19th century. The Estonian epic
Kalevipoeg, a collection of folk tales about Kalevipoeg, were gathered in
the early 19th century; they later formed the basis of the Estonian epic as
written by Freidrich Reinhold Kreutzwald. In this way oral myths and
literary myths are mixed together in the national epic, which we can read
today as written texts. Some of the best motifs for creating or inspiring
grotesque elements in literature and art are motifs of reproduction and
fertility (in this case drawn from, for example, the myth of Kalevipoeg’s
mother, Linda, as born from a black grouse egg, several visits to hell, etc.).
However, these motifs are not usually represented as grotesque in Kalevipoeg;
originally these folklore stories contained positive meaning related to
rebirth and nature, but the meaning of fertility has taken on a more
negative tone in contemporary history.5 These motifs and symbols have
changed in Estonian literature, but they appear in literary texts in different
ways and in different contexts again and again, for example in Enn
Vetemaa’s The Memoirs of Kalevpioeg (1971) and A Guide to the
Estonian Water Sprites (1980), and in the postmodernist works of the poet
Contra.
The grotesque in Estonian literature

The grotesque has been used in Estonian literature for a long time.
Writers including Friedebert Tuglas (1886–1971), August Gailit (1891–
1960), Albert Kivikas (1898–1978), Arvo Valton (b.1935), Enn Vetemaa
(b.1936), as well as our surrealists Ilmar Laaban (1921–2000), and Andres
Ehin (1940–2011) all utilized the technique, and it is still being used by
contemporary writers such as Ervin Õunapuu (b. 1956) and Mehis
4
Renate Lachmann, Memory and Literature. Intertextuality in Russian Modernism.
Theory and History of Literature, Volume 87 (Minneapolis, London: University of
Minnesota Press, 1997), 301-303.
5
Mikhail Bakhtin, Valitud töid (Tallinn: Eesti Raamat, 1987), 199.
Anneli Mihkelev 177
Heinsaar (b. 1973). Estonian scholar Rein Tootmaa has composed a list of
elements of the grotesque that are present in Arvo Valton’s and Vaino
Vahing’s works:
1. The grotesque of reality. The grotesque manifests itself in open and

hidden forms of reality.
2. The grotesque of mixed reality. The forms of reality are disordered:
times, spatial relations, etc. Real relations of time, space, order, cause,
consequence etc. are ignored by mixing up the forms of reality.
3. The grotesque of exaggeration. This is achieved by exaggerating
elements of reality, thus modifying it. There is no fantasy.
4. The fantastic grotesque. It is brought about by exaggerating elements of
reality into fantastic proportions or bringing in outside elements of
fantasy.6
Valton and Vahing wrote about Soviet reality; as Tootmaa writes:
In the work of these two writers, the grotesque as a literary phenomenon

serving comic, tragic or other aesthetic purposes has its origin mostly in
the society (as far as the human being is a social animal). It can be
experienced socially and it has a social meaning. Its function is usually
social criticism. Besides the social forms of the grotesque, we can observe
a playful-romantic type of the grotesque emanating from human nature and
universal human topics.7
Tootmaa is making it clear here that the grotesque in modern literature

expresses the struggle of the individual for his ideals.8
In the Soviet era, the grotesque as a literary element served comic,
tragic, social, political, and aesthetic purposes. The social meaning of the
grotesque connected it with the Romantic literary tradition as well as with
such authors as Swift, Hoffmann, and Poe. It is but one small step from
grotesque motifs and stylistic elements to surrealism, which is connected
more with language and language play. According to the French
psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, language expresses the structures of the
unconscious. Francis de Goya’s El sueĖo de la razón produce monstruos
(The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters) is a very good illustration of
Lacan’s ideas, as well as those of other surrealists; Goya’s work stresses
6
Rein Tootmaa, “Fixing Anti-Values and Creating Alienated Illusions,” Interlitteraria
2 (1997): 314.
7
Ibid., 326.
8
Ibid., 326.
“the obscure side of reality, where the human conscience is deeply

intertwined with the sexual and the telluric”.9
Ilmar Laaban was the first innovative and surrealist Estonian poet in
exile. Laaban’s surrealistic liberty gave freedom to poetic language and
metaphor. His surrealism was more of a liberation of language than a
liberation of the mind from logic. The influence of his poetry was very
strong in the homeland because its surrealist liberty brought metaphor and
freedom to poetic language. Laaban’s work expresses freedom on every
level, and when he uses grotesque, ugly or terrible images, they have a
comic and positive function. His surrealism works much like Bakhtin
describes the function of the grotesque in the medieval carnival.
For example, the poem “To Live Free or Die” (1945) is very
optimistic, exalting, and full of the pathos of freedom. There are not many
grotesque images and motifs in this poem, and those which may be
construed as grotesque are represented as an evil which has lost its
frightening aspect. The message of Laaban’s poem is that the evil has been
defeated and there is no need to fear it. The verses in the fourth strophe
depict grotesque images of decayed eyes, but the next verse connects the
image with hope: “To know that the decayed eyes of traitors / become the
spawn of the fish of hope”.10 And though the last stanza is about a
murderer’s grave, it is possible to live there: “To live as grass on the
murderer’s grave / to live a rock in one hand and joy in the other”. 11 In
this way the grotesque motifs and images exist with surrealistic liberty in
Estonian literature and give the works a more playful character,
representing the grotesque as a phenomenon of play.
The grotesque in recent Estonian culture

Andrus Kivirähk (b. 1970) is one of the most popular prose writers in
Estonia today. His novel Rehepapp ehk November (Old Barny or
November, 2000) is about Estonians and Estonian identity. It is a self-
ironic novel, but at the same time it works as a positive grotesque carnival.
Kivirähk uses “elements of folklore and mythology in his work, deforming
them into the absurd and grotesque”.12 In his work he combines different
9
Jüri Talvet, “The Polyglot Grotesque,” Interlitteraria 2 (1997): 51-63.
10
Ilmar Laaban, “To Live Free or Die,” Estonian Literary Magazine 8 (1999): 8-9.
(Translated by R. Adang and A. Ehin.)
11
Ibid.
12
Janika Kronberg, “Review of Andrus Kivirähk’s The Barn-keeper,” Estonian
Literary Magazine 12 (2001): 37.
Anneli Mihkelev 179
elements of national mythology and treats them playfully and freely.13 His
works delve into postmodernist play, but at the same time it is positive and
includes relieving laughter, which expresses the positive aspect of the
grotesque. It is also significant that Kivirähk writes about a non-specified
time when Estonians were controlled by foreign landlords. This historical
past is simpler to understand and interpret now, but at the same time
people recognize themselves in some ways in the text. This excerpt from
Old Barny provides a good example:
When Old Barny had arrived home, the ancient goblin Joosep offered
him warm gruel and asked:
“Well, what was wrong with that farm hand? Nightmares, or what?”
“Oh, what would that cockroach be doing having nightmares?” said
Old Barny shrugging his shoulders. “It’s the old, old story—he went over
to the manor and started tasting stuff, and gobbled up something he
shouldn’t have done. He ate some soap, the daft bugger!”
“Hi-hii!” chuckled the old goblin with his toothless mouth. “People
aren’t half gormless! I’ve seen them do a thing or two in my time! One day
I went to bring some wheat flour to the manor and there was a family from
the neighbouring village. Father, mother and six children. They were all
busy eating candles. The father was sitting on a barrel, knife in hand,
cutting up wax candles as you would a loaf of bread—a good chunk for
each member of his family. Funny, I thought, so I says to them: my dear
good Christians, you can’t eat candles! Please stop that now, or you’ll stop
up your bowels! But did they listen to Old Goblin? Did they heck. So I
took my flour and went on my way. Later, I heard they’d all died from
eating those candles. The Grim Reaper got a good harvest, he did! People
just don’t have any sense in their heads! As I’ve always said: don’t meddle
in things you don’t understand! Make yourself a goblin and let him make
your mistakes for you. A goblin won’t bring no rubbish home! But nobody
believes you, people think what goodies the goblin's leaving behind and
they go to fetch the goods themselves”.14
In this way, Kivirähk speaks through national mythology and history about
contemporary people in his literary works.
Ervin Õunapuu (b. 1956) is a prose writer and an artist well known for
his theatre design and surrealist watercolours. He published his first novel
Olivia meistriklass (Olivia’s Master Class) in 1996, and that novel
positioned him at the centre of the Estonian literary life. The titles of his
13
See Kronberg (Ibid.) and Piret Noorhani’s “Kivirähkiga imedemaal.
Groteskivõimalus,” Keel ja Kirjandus 4 (2002): 242-245.
14
Andrus Kivirähk, “The Old Barny,” Estonian Literary Magazine 14 (2002),
online at http://elm.estinst.ee/issue/14/old-barny/. (Translated by E. Dickens.)
other works are also significant, and occasionally grotesque: Teie

mälestuseks, kes iganes te olete ja kus asute (In Your Memory, Whoever
You Are and Wherever You Are, 1999), and Surmaminejad lasevad
tervitada (Suicides Send Their Greetings, 2000).
Õunapuu uses strong grotesque images in his short stories and his
stories contrast with traditional realism. He describes ugly events but his
work is very poetic, full of contrasts and impressive images. He uses
intertextual relations and combines verbal and pictorial images as well as
historical motifs from Estonian and European history. Religious motifs are
very important in his works; some of the key words characterising
Õunapuu’s work include archetype, myth, absurdity, and dislocation.15
The collection Eesti Gootika. Lauavestlused (Estonian Gothic. Table
Talks, 2010) is the final book in the Estonian Gothic series. The
protagonist of the book is Martin Maria Kull, a radical Christian and the
first administrator of the country which he has named The Land of Holy
Mary (in Latin, Terra Mariana). The protagonist’s first name suggests
Martin Luther, but the name Maria provides a connection to the European
Catholic tradition. The surname Kull is Estonian and it is significant that
the protagonist has changed his original German noble name von Habicht
to the Estonian name Kull (“hawk” in English). This is a reference to
Estonia in the 1930s, a time period when many people took new, more
Estonian names. Every sentence in Õunapuu’s text contains references to
history and religion.
The title Estonian Gothic. Table Talks alludes to Martin Luther’s
speeches. Luther was a reformist who protested against the claim that one
could purchase one’s freedom from God’s punishment for sin with money.
But Luther was also a man of contradictions; for example, in his later
years he became anti-Semitic. Martin Kull is not Luther but something
connects him with Luther and other rebels. The book is written as Martin
Kull’s diary and the beginning of the diary is reminiscent to the first
chapter of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word16, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). Martin Kull’s
diary begins: “In the beginning was the thought”.17 And he continues: “I
arrived today in the State which was named the Estonian Socialist
15
Rutt Hinrikus, “Review of Ervin Õunapuu’s Eesti gootika (Estonian Gothic),”
Estonian Literary Magazine 10 (2000): 42-43.
16
Logos in Latin.
17
Here and in the following the translation of Õunapuu’s text from Estonian is
mine.
Anneli Mihkelev 181
Republic this morning, but now it is changed. I made it thanks to God.”18

He then goes on to describe how he has renamed the state Terra Mariana.
This reveals that the only thing that has changed is the name of the State,
nothing more; all other things are the same. Soviet Estonia has a new
name, but the old content remains.
At the same time, the name Terra Mariana also refers to the old
official name for Medieval Livonia, given to the region by Bishop Albert
in 1201, and to the 13th century when the Teutonic Order conquered Latvia
and Estonia. In this way, the first page of Martin Kull’s diary refers to all
of Estonian history. The last sentence on this page is also significant: it is
the Gospel of Apostle Martin. He is a false prophet in the religious sense,
of course, but if we think about the literary and social contexts, the
message conveyed by this false prophet is very important and it is actually
a secular message, rather than a religious one.
Estonian Gothic. Table Talks contains more than written text; high-
quality photos illustrate the work and each image has its own meaning.
Under the portrait of Martin Kull it is written that he was born in Germany
in a nunnery, and that he is missing. The illustrative photo under the first
chapter is also significant and grotesque. In the image there are three
things side by side, none of which belong together: a crucifix, a Soviet
passport, and an American dollar. The Soviet passport is in the middle and
is a historical referent: Christianity was not accepted in the Soviet era, but
it is a well-known fact that many pastors also worked as KGB agents.
Religion and politics were connected and mixed in the Soviet era, as they
were in the Russian Empire. Perhaps this is one of the main reasons why
Õunapuu is very critical of the Church. The American dollar is also
significant. It is a currency that people admire, but in the Soviet context it
is the money of the enemy and it was forbidden for the common person to
possess it. These objects are highly symbolic and together they reflect
ideology, power, and politics. All these symbols also figure strongly in our
cultural collective memory as well as in our personal memories. Õunapuu
deforms the meanings associated with these symbols, demonstrating that
they are negative only if they are put into a negative context, or if they
represent a reality which is grotesque. However, on another page there is
an image of a crucifix alongside a ten-cent Euro coin in a small change
purse. Although ten cents is not much money and the cultural memory is
not very long in this context, that image points to the same combination as
18
Ervin Õunapuu, Eesti Gootika. Lauavestlused (Tallinn: Eesti Ajalookirjastus,
2010), 5.
the crucifix and dollar, but now it is not located in a Soviet context, but the
context of the European Union.
The last chapter of Õunapuu’s book is titled “Missing”. This title refers
to the first chapter, and to history; more precisely to Stalin’s acts of
repression in which many people went missing. The last chapter describes
the arrest of Martin Kull and it presents a scenario very similar to how the
KGB arrested people in the Stalin era. The men who come to arrest Martin
wear civilian clothes but they have military boots. Õunapuu’s text is
ambivalent; although he plays with tragic history and with religious motifs
(Judas and the Bible, which inspire the protagonist), there is still the
suspicion that Martin Kull is a criminal. He has not paid his taxes and he is
deeply in debt, according to the officers. This seems to be the reason for
his arrest. Martin Kull’s last words—“I have waited for this moment for
over fifty years”—are ambivalent, and significant. The question of who
Martin Kull is arises once again, and why has he been waiting for this
moment, the moment of arrest, for more than fifty years? Or perhaps he
has not been waiting for the moment of arrest, but for another moment, the
moment when he can disappear.
We can also read Õunapuu’s text as an optimistic text: Martin Kull as
the false prophet, as the lawyer, as a radical, and so on, disappears and
hopefully takes his hypocrisy, lies, and Soviet burden with him. The final
image is only a very strong light in the place where he stood before he
disappeared.
Mehis Heinsaar’s (b. 1973) stories are not as tragic as the previous
mentioned works and he uses many intertextual relations in his stories.
Janika Kronberg has written that Heinsaar’s stories are “light and airy,
with the imaginary dimension introduced in realistic scenes, sometimes in
an absurd or surrealist way”.19 The term “magical realism” characterizes
Heinsaar’s style very well. While Õunapuu’s stories use strong deformations
and include powerful social and critical messages, Heinsaar’s typical
character is a funny and kind-hearted man who does strange things, and
whose life is full of mystical adventures, which are melancholy and
humorous, not malevolent and ironic. Heinsaar’s typical character is often
a strange man with physical deformations and/or mystical abilities. Such
people are usually reclusive and other people shy away them because they
are very strange. A good example is the character Anselm in the story
“Butterfly Man” (2001), whose body gives off butterflies if he is excited:
“It’s always the same, every time I experience a strong emotion, these
19
Janika Kronberg, “Mehis Heinsaar,” in A Sharp Cut. Contemporary Estonian
Literature, (Tallinn: Estonian Literature Centre, 2005), 58.
Anneli Mihkelev 183
creatures start flying off my body. I was bullied at school for it, and my
relatives, even my parents, saw me as some kind of freak, although I’ve
always been of perfectly sound mind”.20 Anselm meets other people who
are similar to him; they are heroes in the circus, but freaks in real life:
[H]e saw a man with a transparent body surrounded by gorgeous women

with non-transparent bodies who seemed to form his harem; he saw an old
wrinkled woman with a long white horn growing out of her forehead and
whose sweet breath reminded Anselm of a long-forgotten world. Two
children with wings for arms were floating near the ceiling and their flight
resembled that of bats.21
The deformed body also makes an appearance at the end of Heinsaar’s

collection of short stories, Härra Pauli kroonikad (The Chronicles of Mr.
Paul, 2001). The last story in this collection is titled “A Bit of Time After
the End of the World”. In this story everyone else has left but the
protagonist Mr Paul remains; actually it is his shoe, mouth, and left eye
that remain and all these parts try to find each other and their
surroundings, but there is nothing there.
Conclusion
The grotesque can manifest in many different ways in literature. It can
be positive and comic word play, as it was in old cultural traditions and
medieval carnivals, or it can be used to convey social and political
meaning, as during the Romantic period and in the Soviet era. The literary
works of recent Estonian culture use very strong grotesque elements, as
well as surrealist and absurd images, as seen in the literary works of
Andrus Kivirähk, Ervin Õunapuu and Mehis Heinsaar. The grotesque can
be used to convey a strong social message, but it can also be used simply
as a game. Both Õunapuu and Heinsaar deform reality in their stories in
such a way that reality is sometimes more grotesque than the grotesque
images found in literature. Õunapuu also deforms historical memory, and
Heinsaar’s texts use many intertextual relations in ways similar to Kafka
and Bulgakov—he uses text memory, or his texts display memory well.
But the most important thing that grotesque images can tell us in our
contemporary times is that something is wrong, that people do not feel
comfortable in their situation. In this case the grotesque situation combines
20
Mehis Heinsaar, “Butterfly Man,” Estonian Literary Magazine, no 15 (2002): 27.
21
Ibid. 28.
tragedy and laughter, and laughter is good as long as you’re not the
laughing stock.
Bibliography
Bakhtin, Mihhail. Valitud töid. Tallinn: Eesti Raamat, 1987.
Benet, Vicente J. “Horror and the Grotesque: Corporeal Landscapes of
Violence.” Interlitteraria 2 (1997).
Eco, Umberto. Lector in fabula. Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 2005.
Heinsaar, Mehis. “Butterfly Man.” Estonian Literary Magazine 15 (2002).
Hinrikus, Rutt. “Review of Ervin Õunapuu’s Eesti gootika (Estonian
Gothic).” Estonian Literary Magazine 10 (2000).
Kivirähk, Andrus. “The Old Barny.” Estonian Literary Magazine 14
(2002). Online at http://elm.estinst.ee/issue/14/old-barny.
Kronberg, Janika. “Review of Andrus Kivirähk’s The Barn-keeper.”
Estonian Literary Magazine 12 (2001).
—. “Mehis Heinsaar.” In A Sharp Cut. Contemporary Estonian Literature.
Tallinn: Estonian Literature Centre, 2005.
Laaban, Ilmar. “To Live Free or Die.” Estonian Literary Magazine 8
(1999).
Lachmann, Renate. Memory and Literature. Intertextuality in Russian
Modernism. Theory and History of Literature, Volume 87.
Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
Noorhani, Piret. “Kivirähkiga imedemaal. Groteskivõimalus.” Keel ja
Kirjandus, 4 (2002).
Õunapuu, Ervin. Eesti Gootika. Lauavestlused. Tallinn: Eesti
Ajalookirjastus, 2010.
Talvet, Jüri. “The Polyglot Grotesque.” Interlitteraria 2 (1997).
Tootmaa, Rein. “Fixing Anti-Values and Creating Alienated Illusions.”
Interlitteraria 2 (1997).
CONTRIBUTORS
Professor Peter Arnds (PhD University of Toronto, 1995) is the Director

of Comparative Literature and the Centre of Literary Translation, and a
Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, where he also teaches in the German and
Italian departments. He was professor of German and Italian at Kansas
State University until 2008, and has held visiting positions at Colby
College, Middlebury College, the University of Kabul, and JNU Delhi.
His interests in literature and cultural studies are widespread and include
Sophie von La Roche, W.G. Sebald, post-Holocaust literature, magical
realism, the satirical visual arts, the wolf-man, travel literature, and
translation theory. His publications include two monographs—
Representation, Subversion, and Eugenics in Günter Grass’s The Tin
Drum (Camden House, 2004) and Wilhelm Raabe's Der Hungerpastor and
Charles Dickens's David Copperfield: Intertextuality of Two
Bildungsromane (Peter Lang, 1997)—nearly 50 peer-reviewed articles on
literary criticism, as well as numerous prose pieces and poems. His
translation of Patrick Boltshauser’s novel Stromschnellen will be
published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2014, and he is currently seeking
publishers for his novel Searching for Alice (forthcoming), and a
monograph entitled Homo Lupus and the Persecution of Undesirables: A
Literary History of the Wolf.
Dr. Roxana Ghita is Senior Lecturer at the University of Craiova,

Romania, where she teaches German literature. She was a DFG scholar at
the Universität der Künste, Berlin (2002–2003), and a visiting research
scholar at the Humboldt Universität, Berlin (2011, 2012) and the
University of Veliko Turnovo (2012). She was a postdoctoral fellow of the
Romanian Academy (2011-2013). She is the author of three books and
several articles published in Romanian, German, Swiss, French and
Canadian journals.
Alexander Ivanitsky is a leading researcher at the Russian State

University for Humanities (PhD RSUH, 1993). In 1994, 1995, and 2004-
2005 he lectured on Russian literature at Humboldt-University and
Technical University in Berlin. His interests in literature and cultural
studies are widespread, including Russian baroque poetry of the 18th
186 Contributors
century, Russian rococo poems, the poetry of Pushkin in Russian, German

literary relations from the 18th to 20th centuries (especially between E.T.A.
Hoffmann and Nikolai Gogol, and between Gogol and Franz Kafka) as
well as Romantic philosophy of culture in Bulgakov’s novels. His
publications include four monographs on Pushkin.
Laurynas Katkus studied Lithuanian and Comparative Literature in

Vilnius, Norwich, Leipzig, and Berlin and received his PhD from Vilnius
University in 2006. His publications include the study Between Arcadia
and Inferno: Exile in the Poetry of Alfonsas Nyka-Niliǌnas and Johannes
Bobrowski (2010) and a number of articles in academic journals. He was a
researcher at the Centre for Comparative Literature at Vytautas Magnus
University, Kaunas, and a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Lithuanian
Literature and Folklore, Vilnius. His areas of interest include the history of
ideas, Central-Eastern European literature of the Soviet period, poetry of
exile and emigration, and grotesque poetics. Katkus is also a translator and
the author of several books of poetry and essays.
Anneli Mihkelev completed her PhD in Semiotics and Cultural Studies at

the University of Tartu in 2005 with the monograph The Poetics of
Allusion. She works as an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature
at Tallinn University, and as a Senior Researcher at the Under and Tuglas
Literature Centre at the Estonian Academy of Sciences. Her fields of
research include Estonian literature, allusions in literature and culture, and
comparative literature (mainly Baltic literatures). She has published
articles on these themes in several international and Estonian publications.
She is also one of the editors of the reference guide to Baltic authors and
their works, 300 Baltic Writers: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (Vilnius,
2009), and the collections of articles We Have Something in Common: the
Baltic Memory (Tallinn, 2007), and Turns in the Centuries, Turns in
Literature (Tallinn, 2009).
Johanna Öttl (born 1983), completed her MPhil in German Studies and
English Studies at the University of Salzburg, the University of Liverpool,
and the University of Vienna. After graduation she taught at Trinity
College Dublin (ÖAD-Lektor) from 2008–2011. Currently she teaches
contemporary German and Austrian literature at the University of
Salzburg. Her main field of research is literature on the Shoah.
Maciej Piątek graduated from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków

(Poland) with the MA thesis on Shakespeare and translation. He also
studied philosophy for three years at the Jagiellonian University and the
University of Exxes (UK). He became a PhD candidate at the Philology
Department of the Jagiellonian University in 2009. His scholarly interests
include Shakespeare, the history of madness, the sacrum and insanity, and
deconstruction. He also works as a translator.
Carmen Popescu is currently a Senior Lecturer, PhD, at University of

Craiova, Romania, where she has been teaching since 1996. She has
published a book on parody in contemporary literature and various articles
on intertextuality and the comparative method. Her most recent writings
include the edited volume Comparatism, identitate, comunicare /
Comparativism, identity, communication (Universitaria, 2012) and the
articles “Ironic Palimpsests in the Romanian Poetry of the Nineties,”
published in Spaces of Polyphony (edited by Clara Ubaldina-Lorda and
Patrick Zabalbeascoa, 2012), “Dialogue Studies,” published by John
Benjamins, and “Romanian Postmodern Parody and the Deconstruction of
the Literary Canon(s),” in Interlitteraria (Tartu University Press).
Charles Sabatos is Assistant Professor of English Literature at Yeditepe

University in Istanbul. He completed his doctorate in Comparative
Literature at the University of Michigan. He has published a number of
articles on the Central and Eastern European novel, as well as literary
translations from Slovak and Czech. His current research is focused on the
image of the Turks in Central European literature.
Galin Tihanov is the George Steiner Professor and Chair of Comparative

Literature at Queen Mary, University of London. He is Honorary President
of the ICLA Committee on Literary Theory and a member of Academia
Europaea. He has held visiting professorships at Yale University and St.
Gallen University and was a Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt
Foundation, The Open Society Foundation, Collegium Budapest, and the
Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. Amongst his authored and edited books are
The Master and the Slave: Lukács, Bakhtin and the Ideas of Their Time
(2000; Polish ed. 2010; Brazilian ed. 2013) and Enlightenment
Cosmopolitanism (co-edited with D. Adams, 2011). In 2012, Tihanov
delivered the Mihály Babits Lectures.
Tomas Vaiseta was born in Vilnius, Lithuania in 1984. From 2006–2008

he studied at the Faculty of History at Vilnius University and graduated
with an MA in history. In 2012 he successfully defended his PhD thesis
“Society of Boredom: Lithuania in the late Soviet period (1964–1984).”
188 Contributors
He is currently working on a postdoctoral project in the field of soviet

psychiatry. His scientific research spans the history of Lithuania in the
Soviet period and his academic interests include the social and cultural
processes and phenomenon of the times. He has published articles
examining the ethics of Soviet labour and vagrancy, the Soviet public
sphere, and the politics of communication.
KƗrlis VƝrdiƼš is a researcher at the Institute of Literature, Folklore and

Art at the University of Latvia. He received his PhD from the University
of Latvia in 2009. He has published two monographs: The Social and
Political Dimensions of the Latvian Prose Poem (Pisa University Press,
2010), and Bastarda forma (ILFA, 2011). His research interests include
gender and queer studies and Latvian literature. He has also published
three volumes of poetry.
Inga Vidugirytơ received her PhD at Vilnius University where she is an

Associate Professor of Russian Literature and Intermediate Studies of
Literature. At the moment she directs a research team working on the topic
of the Geography of Literature. She has recently published a book, The
Culture of Laughter (Vilnius University Press, 2012).
INDEX
A C
Adorno, T.W., 86 Cârneci, Magda, 130, 134
Aesop, 35, 79, 126, 149 Cărtărescu, Mircea, 2, 46, 47,
Agamben, Giorgio, 2, 20, 21, 48, 49, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59
23, 25, 27 Ceauúescu, Nicolae, 54, 55, 56
Aksyonov, Vassily, 33 Cervantes, Miguel de, 138, 145
Aleshkovsky, Yuz, 33 Chaplin, Charlie, 23
Arendt, Hannah, 2, 43 Cohen, Sasha Baron, 103
Arnds, Peter, 2 Connelly, Frances S., 99
Aristotle, 75 Contra, 176
Arlickaitơ, Gražina, 161
Arnds, Peter, 2, 20 D
Artaud, Antonio, 80
Dante, 89, 92
B Dimiters, Kaspars, 98
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1, 142,
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 143, 144, 145
8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15,
16, 20, 23, 24, 27, 28, 34, 37, E
41, 48, 49, 57, 65, 75, 89, 90,
91, 92, 93, 94, 106, 125, 126, Eco, Umberto, 175
134, 137, 138, 142, 143, 144, Ehin, Andres, 176
145, 146, 147, 174, 175, 178 Eichmann, Adolf, 87
Beckett, Samuel, 76 Eliot, T.S., 37
Benet, Vincent J., 175 Emmerich, Wolfgang, 32, 33
Benjamin, Walter, 23, 26, 44 Engels, Friedrich, 40, 50, 158
Bergson, Henri, 9 Erofeev, Venedikt, 2, 31, 34, 38,
Berkes, Tamas, 33 40, 42, 43, 44
Biaáoszewski, Miron, 82 Esterházy, Peter, 68, 69, 70, 72,
BáoĔski, Jan, 81 73
Boruta, Kazys, 80
Broch, Hermann, 138 F
Brooks, Mel, 23
Fielding, Henry, 141
Broszkiewicz, Jerzy, 82
Foucault, Michel, 20, 21, 23, 69
Brussig, Thomas, 2, 46, 47, 48,
Freud, Sigmund, 168
49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 56, 59
Friedländer, Saul, 87, 88
Bukontas, Alfonsas, 154
Frölich, Margrit, 49
Bulgakov, Mikhail, 3, 33, 107,
Frye, Northrop, 1, 143
183
Fuss, Peter, 33
Bulota, Jonas, 160, 161, 163
Bulota, Juozas, 153
190 Index
G Hrabal, Bohumil, 3, 64, 65, 66,

67, 68, 69, 70, 72
Gachev, Georgii, 8 Huelle, Paweá, 3, 65, 70, 72, 73
Gaidai, Leonid, 150 Hugo, Victor, 13, 130
Gailit, August, 176 Huizinga, Johan, 75
Gavelis, Riþardas, 2, 34, 35, 36, Hutcheon, Linda, 3, 65, 130
37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44 Huxley, Aldous, 76
Genis, Alexander, 38
Ghita, Roxanna, 2, 46
Glinskis, Juozas, 3, 80, 83 I
Gáowacki, Janusz, 82 Ianuú, Marius, 135
Goering, Hermann, 26 Ikstena, Nora, 97
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Il-Sung, Kim, 54
1, 10, 11, 24, 25, 28, 91 Ionesco, Eugène, 76, 129, 141
Gogol, Nikolai, 106, 142, 144, Ivanitsky, Alexander, 3, 106
175, 176
Gombrowicz, Witold, 68, 76, J
82, 138, 167, 168, 169, 171,
172, 173 Jennings, Lee Byron, 32
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 38 Joyce, James, 139
Goya, Francis de, 177 Judt, Tony, 31
Grass, Günter, 2, 20, 22, 23, 26, Jurgutienơ, Aušra, 4
27, 28
Grendel, Lajos, 65 K
Griffin, Dustin H., 143
Grimm, Brothers, 20, 27, 28, 29 Kafka, Franz, 64, 76, 106, 138,
Grochowiak, Stanisáaw, 82 141, 146, 183
Grušas, Juozas, 3, 78 Kalanta, Romas, 157
Gurevitch, Aaron, 106 Kalơda, Algis, 3, 74
Kanaev, Ivan, 8
Kant, Immanuel, 7, 9, 127, 129
H
Karpowicz, Tymoteusz, 82
Hašek, Jaroslav, 64 Katkus, Laurynas, 2, 31
Hauff, Wilhelm, 20, 27, 106 Kayser, Wolfgang, 1, 52, 75
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Kertész, Imre, 86
Friedrich, 11, 12, 13, 14, 44 Khrushchev, Nikita, 71
Heidegger, Martin, 21, 65, 168 Kiefer, Anselm, 23
Heinsaar, Mehis, 177, 182, 183 ƶiƷauka, TƗlivaldis, 99
Hilsenrath, Edgar, 2, 20, 22, 26, Kiš, Danilo, 68
27, 28, 29 Kivikas, Albert, 176
Himmler, Heinrich, 89 Kivirähk, Andrus, 178, 179, 183
Hitler, Adolf, 76, 88, 89, 90, 95 Kmita, Rimantas, 150
Hoffmann, E.T.A., 106, 175, Konrád, György, 67
177 Konwicki, Tadeusz, 2, 34, 35,
Holland, Agniezska, 23 36, 40, 41, 43, 44
Homer, 13, 14, 15 Koppenfels, Werner von, 34, 39
Honecker, Erich, 52, 53 Kosinski, Jerzy, 20, 26
KrasiĔski, Janusz, 82 O
Kreutzwald, Freidrich Reinhold,
176 Okulicz-Kozaryn, Radosáaw, 81
Kristeva, Julia, 2, 16, 168, 169 Ortega y Gasset, José, 76
Kronberg, Janika, 182 Orwell, George, 36, 76, 141
Kroutvor, Josef, 67 Öttl, Johanna, 3, 86
Kubilius, Vytautas, 32, 36, 77, Õunapuu, Ervin, 176, 179, 180,
162 181, 182, 183
Kundera, Milan, 4, 65, 67, 137, Ozolas, Romualdas, 163
138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 144,
145, 146, 147 P
Kvietkauskas, Mindaugas, 4 Pabijǌnas, A., 155
Paz, Octavio, 145
L Perrault, Charles, 24, 25
Laaban, Ilmar, 176, 178 Piątek, Maciej, 4, 167
Lacan, Jacques, 168, 177 Pietzeker, Carl, 33
Lachmann, Renate, 175 Platonov, Andrei, 33
Lankutis, Jonas, 78, 80 Platt, Kevin M. F., 47, 48
LaVey, Anton Szandor, 98 Poe, Edgar Allan, 175, 177
Lenin, Vladimir I., 50, 51, 158, Polansky, Roman, 41
159 Pop, Augustin, 126, 127, 128,
Levi, Primo, 86 130, 134
Lévinas, Emmanuel, 41 Popescu, Carmen, 3, 124
Lotman, Yuri, 32, 40 Popescu, Cristian, 135
Luther, Martin, 180 Porter, Robert, 64
Pound, Ezra, 132
Prokhorov, Aleksandr, 149, 150
M Propp, Vladimir, 75
Mandelstam, Osip, 6, 7, 10
Marven, Lyn, 49 R
Marx, Karl, 40, 50, 51, 158
McHale, Brian, 69 Rabelais, François, 1, 2, 5, 6, 8,
Menzel, JiĜí, 64 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 23,
Mihkelev, Anneli, 4, 174 49, 56, 59, 75, 89, 138, 139,
Miáosz, Czesáaw, 31, 76 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146
MroĪek, Sáawomir, 3, 82, 83 Remshardt, Ralf, 55
Mukhina, Vera, 31 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 23
Munch, Edward, 171 Röhm, Ernst, 103
Musil, Robert, 138 Ronsard, Pierre de, 13, 15
Muúina, Alexandru, 132, 133, Roth, Philip, 141, 142
134, 135 Rymkiewicz, Jarosáaw Marek,
82
N
S
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 9, 41, 175
Novac, Ruxandra, 135 Sabatos, Charles, 3, 64
192 Index
Sadaukynas, J., 157, 159 U

Saja, Kazys, 3, 79, 80, 82
Sakss, Nils, 3, 97, 98, 99, 100, Ukhtomsky, Alexei, 8
101, 102, 103, 104 Ulmanis, KƗrlis, 98
SaliƼa, JautrƯte, 99
Santner, Eric, 23 V
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 65 Vahing, Vaino, 177
Sauka, Šarǌnas, 76 Vail, Pyotr, 38
Scheler, Max, 7 Vaiseta, Tomas, 4, 149
Schiller, Friedrich, 143 Valton, Arvo, 176, 177
Schlöndorff, Volker, 22 van Boxsel, Matthijs, 162
Sebald, W.G., 23 Varnas, Jonas, 158, 159
Šepetys, Lionginas, 160 VƝrdiƼš, KƗrlis, 3, 97
Simmel, Georg, 8 Vetemaa, Enn, 176
Šlapakauskas, M., 160 Vidugirytơ, Inga, 4, 137
Sližys, Rimantas, 76 Vilikovský, Pavel, 65
Sloterdijk, Peter, 152 Virgil, 13, 15
Socrates, 41, 143 Vítová, Lenka, 72
Spengler, Oswald, 76 Vlădăreanu, Elena, 135
Stalin, Joseph, 23, 33, 50, 66, Voloshinov, V.N., 11
151, 168, 182 Voltaire, 106
Swift, Jonathan, 106, 130, 175,
177
W
T White, Hayden, 29
Witkacy, Stanisáaw Ignacy, 76,
Tabori, George, 3, 86, 88, 89, 81, 82
90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95 Wolf, Christa, 54
Talvet, Yuri, 32
Taylor, Jennifer, 27, 28
Y
Thirlwell, Adam, 70
Thomson, Philip, 47 Yurchak, Alexei, 150
Thorak, Jossef, 91
Tihanov, Galin, 1, 2, 4, 5 Z
Tilvytis, R., 154
Tolstoy, Leo, 145 ZariƼš, MarƧeris, 99
Tootmaa, Rein, 177 Zdziechowski, Marian, 76
Tournier, Michel, 2, 20, 22, 23, Žilinskaitơ, Vytautơ, 162, 163
24, 25, 26 Žilka, Tibor, 65
Tuglas, Friedebert, 176 Zinovyev, Alexander, 36

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Grotesque Revisited

This book first published 2013

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Copyright © 2013 by Laurynas Katkus and contributors

ISBN (10): 1-4438-4864-6, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4864-0

The Gravity of the Grotesque: Bakhtin’s Dislocated Humanism

Section I: Central European Monsters and Phantasmagorias

Hilarious Hell: Grotesque Phantasmagorias in Central and Eastern

The Revolution(s) of the Grotesque Body: Forms of Satirical

Section II: Crossing, Mixing, Subverting

Hrabal’s Satirical Legacy in the Central European Autobiographical

Forms of the Grotesque: Parallels and Intersections in Lithuanian

Grotesque and Heteroglossia in George Tabori’s Works, or:

The Grotesque and Gender in Nils Sakss’ Prose

The Creative Role of the Grotesque in the Moscow Section of Bulgokov’s

Section III: Laughter and Carnival in Troubled Times

Parody, Satire, and Carnivalisation in Romanian Poetic Postmodernism:

Novel and Satire: Discrepancies between Theory and Practice in Milan

On the Background, Stains, and Dry Cleaning: Soviet Satire

The Grotesque Dimension of Witold Gombrowicz’s Novel Ferdydurke

The Grotesque and Memory in Contemporary Estonian Culture

Contributors ............................................................................................. 185

Index ........................................................................................................ 189

This collection of essays aims to recapitulate the state of grotesque

particular strain of humanism, exposed in the Rabelais book and in his

[D]ecentred, seeking and celebrating alterity rather than otherness (in

One is tempted to believe Tihanov’s assertion that this particular brand of

in this trilogy). In both novels hyperbolical deformations of the body play

Carnival grotesque allows Woland to rehabilitate the supernatural and

Inga Vidugirytơ’s (Vilnius University, Lithuania) essay, devoted to the

In this article I propose to take the grotesque as a point of departure to

“unmediated way”.3 The external body is the mode of existence of our

and unlimited change. This ever-evolving and open body gradually

cannot partake of ideology. In Rabelais, on the contrary, Bakhtin affirms

of laughter and body incorporates the double perspective of growth and

more than a camouflage for an equilibrium sustained by means of tension

Fink, Hillary. Bergson and Russian Modernism, 1900–1930. Evanston, IL:

CENTRAL EUROPEAN MONSTERS

marching music that is accompanied by a host of stiff arms raised in the

World War II. The disproportioned protagonist Abel Tiffauges, a French

BEWARE OF THE OGRE OF KALTENBORN! He is after your children.

duplicity of character, shifting quickly from amiability to malignancy.

perceived as real. The genre of magical-realism, or as I prefer to call it

A number of literary historians stress that there is a connection

kind of “secret language” which expresses the negative tendencies of the

stance, but by seeming to accept the official language and imagery.

Here, on every side, a stream of disagreeable faces, if they can be called

sweaty skulls. They can be recognized by their small, quick, suspicious

Gavelis adds a touch of mystery and horror to this. His protagonist,

begins. In an alcoholic delirium Venichka sees himself staging an uprising

called a narrative oxymoron: it appears that the protagonists who narrated

attracts particular attention. True to his theme, Erofeev satirizes the

tradition45; for Konwicki, it is the knightly code of honour and stoicism,

the possibility of the transmission of an alternative “program of

which underlies consistent action can be as mad as it pleases; it will always

I believe this nexus between relativist notions and the sociopolitical

I believe that by creatively choosing certain thematic and

Benjamin, Walter. Reflections. New York: Schocken Books, 1978.

After the fall of Communism in 1989, the former totalitarian countries

communist regime, offering a fictional depiction of historical events

1. History in the Guise of the Grotesque