Short Story Criticism | Olesha, Yuri - William E. Harkins (essay date 1966)

William E. Harkins (essay date 1966)

SOURCE: Harkins, William E. “The Philosophical Stories of Jurij Oleša.” In Orbis Scriptus, edited by Dmitrij Tschižewskij, pp. 349-54. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1966.

[In the following essay, Harkins explores a number of philosophical antitheses in Olesha's short stories.]

The early stories of Jurij Oleša, such as “Liompa” (1928), “The Cherry Stone” (“Višnevaja kostočka,” 1929), “Love” (“Ljubov,” 1929), “Aldebaran” (1931) and others, form a cycle of philosophical tales concerned with questions of epistemology and metaphysics. These stories are constructed on a number of antitheses: idealism vs. materialism, vitalism vs. mechanism, romanticism vs. realism, traditionalism vs. futurism. To a considerable degree these antitheses are treated by Oleša as one and the same, but each may also appear separately in the context of a single story or passage. We shall approach...

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