Writing in riddles: Too much metaphor has restricted post-Soviet literature

ONE OF THE most famous metaphors in Russian literature is the blizzard. Nearly all great Russian writers have, at least once, described these sudden snowstorms, when in the middle of Russia’s immense empty spaces, a wayfarer or a carriage loses its way, is taken hostage by “white devil’s dance”, and ends up in an unintended place and situation. Russian writers love metaphor. It’s easy to see why. During the Soviet era, Leonid Brezhnev’s clique found itself failing to change the world, and began to change the words instead – renaming places, recreating history, creating new simulacra, and all to make people believe that they were living in a perfect socialist world. Writers opposing the regime responded by creating a coded literature, full of hints, allusions and metaphors, leaving perceptive readers to find the real meaning between the lines. Today, even though the break-up of the Soviet Union and the short period of reigning liberalism in Russia has led to many changes, literature has stayed the same. Editors of literary magazines, publishers, critics and, consequently, the writers themselves have become so accustomed to this type of overly coded literature that it has never gone away. The “best” of the living Russian novelists, the ones who win awards and literary acclaim, are still obsessed with intellectual jigsaws, enigmatic parables and high-brow exercises. Their way of reflecting the current reality of Russia is expressed through Buddhist philosophy (Victor Pelevin’s Omon Ra or Chapayev and Void), historical parallels with medieval Russia (Vladimir Sorokin’s Day of the Oprichnik, Eugene Vodolazkin’s Laurus) or utopian or dystopian narratives (Mikhail Shishkin’s Letter Book or Dmitry Bykov’s Jewhad). This leaves straightforward prose to journalists, from the late Anna Politkovskaya [see page 69] to Arkady Babchenko, a soldier-turned-war correspondent who wrote a book about war in Chechnya. Or to non-fiction writers, such as the winner of the latest Nobel prize for literature, Svetlana Alexievich from Belarus. Though political art exists, it tends to come in other forms, from pop-punk group Pussy Riot and their protest performance in an Orthodox cathedral, to artist Pyotr Pavlensky, who sewed his mouth shut and nailed himself to the Red Square. (In June, Pavlensky was charged with vandalism and fined for setting fire to the door of Russia’s security service headquarters in protest.) Switching to writing manifestos, social pamphlets or “realist” literature isn’t the answer. But in Russia and many post-Soviet countries, the oblique, jigsaw-like canon of fiction writing has gained undue prominence at the expense of other, more direct styles IN FOCUS