Article

Name: “All or Nothing”: The Motif of Inaction in the Artistic World of Yu. Olesha

Authors: Anna A. Kornienko, Alexander I. Kulyapin

Altai State Medical University, Barnaul, Russian Federation; Altai State Pedagogical University, Barnaul, Russian Federation

In the section Literary Life of the Plot

Abstract:

The article substantiates the importance of the motif of inaction in Yuri Olesha’s poetics and life work. The real world is meaningless to Olesha. The inner world becomes significant, a platform for realizing the unrealizable. It’s not surprising that the miracles the writer and his characters perform in the vacuum of their own world bear no relation to reality. The pursuit of perfection is hopeless; it only exacerbates Olesha’s already characteristic inferiority complex. His ubiquitous maximalism, idealism, and desire to do everything at once negatively impacted his writing. Olesha grasped at several ideas at once and rarely implemented them, jumping from plot to plot, from character to character. Many of Olesha’s characters, like Olesha himself, share a characteristic trait: promising much but delivering nothing, because these promises are fundamentally unrealizable. The paradoxical lack of willpower and passivity of Olesha’s characters can be explained by their maximalism, which conflicts with the impossibility of achieving their desires. For example, the miracle machine Ophelia, supposedly created by Ivan Babichev, the hero of the novel “Envy” (1927), is a figment of the imagination, as an omnipotent universal machine cannot exist in reality. Olesha concludes: if you can’t do everything at once, do nothing.

To overcome the fear of becoming nothing, you must become everything. The protagonist of Olesha’s play “List of Benefits” (1931) defiantly declares: “I’m the only one in the whole world, the only one. The whole world is me”. To achieve immortality and become everything, it is desirable to carry into eternity not only your inner world but also the real world, expanding to the scale of the universe and consuming everything, like a black hole.

The story “Liompa” (1927) features a similar attempt by the dying Ponomarev, who intends to “take everything with him.” Olesha fears nonexistence and calls art “a spell against the power of destruction.”

Keywords: Yu. Olesha, motive, plot, hero, conflict, character, psychotype

Bibliography:

Berkovskiy N. Ya. O prozaikakh [On prose writers]. In: Berkovskiy N. Ya. Mir, sozdavayemi literaturoi [The world created by literature]. Moscow, Sovetskii pisatel’, 1989, pp. 269–285. (in Russ.)

Gudkova V. Yuriy Olesha i Vsevolod Meyerkhol’d v rabote nad spektaklem “Spisok blagodeyanii” [Yuri Olesha and Vsevolod Meyerhold in their work on the play “The List of Benefits”]. Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2002, 608 p. (in Russ.)

Kasatkina K. V. Nikolay Kavalerov kak predstavitel’ tipa “podpol’nogo cheloveka” v russkoi literature [Nikolay Kavalerov as a representative of the “underground man” type in Russian literature]. Vestnik Rossiyskogo universiteta druzhby narodov. Seriya: Literaturovedeniye, zhurnalistika [Bulletin of the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia. Series: Literary Studies, Journalism]. 2015, no. 3, pp. 30–36. (in Russ.)

Khorni K. Samoanaliz [Introspection]. St. Petersburg, Piter, 2002, 224 p. (in Russ.)

Komiya M. Avtobiograficheskii mif v romane Yu. K. Oleshi “Zavist'” [The autobiographical myth in Yu. K. Olesha’s novel “Envy”]. Studia Litterarum, 2018, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 162–175. (in Russ.)

Markina P. V. K poetike rasskaza Yu. K. Oleshi “Liompa” [On the poetics of Yu. K. Olesha’s short story “Liompa”]. Mir nauki, kul’tury, obrazovaniya [The World of Science, Culture, Education], 2007, no. 4 (7), pp. 107–111. (in Russ.)

Vospominaniya o Yurii Oleshe [Memoirs of Yuri Olesha.]. Moscow, Sovetskii pisatel’, 1975, 304 p. (in Russ.)