SOURCE: Oja, Matt F. “Iurii Olesha's Zavist': Fantasy, Reality, and Split Personality.” Canadian Sylvanite Papers/Revue canadienne des slavists, 28, no. 1 (March 1986): 52-63.

[In the following essay, Oja argues that it is possible to separate fantasy and reality in the imaginative work Zavist', thereby providing clues to the thematic structure of the novel.]

Iurii Olesha's minor masterpiece Zavist' is a confusing and difficult novel because of its often fantastic atmosphere. The action takes place on a variety of levels of reality, ranging from the ordinary objective world through stages of fantasy to outright dreams. Because Olesha's transitions between these levels are abrupt and unannounced, it is often easy to miss them. Most criticism of the work simply accepts this confusion at face value: Zavist' is a fantastic novel, in which impossible events and incongruous or illogical connections do not require a logical explanation.¹ In this paper I shall suggest an alternative, essentially positivist approach: not only is it possible to distinguish between what is real and what is imagined by the characters, but moreover such an understanding goes far to clarify the thematic content of the work.

I

There are two keys which, once accepted, enable us to sift the reality from the fantasy. The first is a recognition that by the end of Part One Kavalerov's envy and frustration have driven him over the brink of actual madness, and that the Ivan Babichev whom he meets and befriends in front of the street mirror is not a real man, but only an imaginary alter ego, a splinter personality within his own troubled mind. The second key is a recognition that Olesha is using the “invisible world”² to mark transitions from one level of reality to another, as Kavalerov lapses into fantasy or returns to the real world.

Many critics have commented on Olesha's use of the technique of ostrannenie to make familiar objects and experiences seem new and interesting to the reader.³ This technique involves, by and large, Kavalerov's modes of perception. Kavalerov is, of course, a representative of the old romantic generation and much disposed towards flowery metaphor, and certainly one function of his peculiar vision is to establish his position in the generational conflict with Andrei. But as we shall see, his digressions into altered modes of perception involving fantastic similes, optical illusions, mirrors, coloured glass, etc. seem to coincide with scenes in which the action takes place on a fantastic rather than a real plane. Furthermore, Olesha often sets the fantasy apart by marking the transitions with references to sleep, dreams, or drunkenness, also modes of changing perception.

The central core of Zavist' is the conflict between Kavalerov, representing the old romantic generation, and Andrei Babichev, representing the new. Kavalerov considers Babichev a crass and shallow philistine even while he recognizes that in the new society Babichev has gained fame, power, respect, and huge personal satisfaction. Kavalerov is thus torn between disgust and admiration for him, and this inner conflict becomes the basis of his conflict with Andrei, the development and resolution of which provide the basic action of the novel.

The most critical aspect of this conflict is the drastic inequality of the combatants. Kavalerov is weak, indecisive, insecure, and thoroughly unable to act upon his own destiny. Andrei is strong, virile, confident, and in control of not only his own destiny but Kavalerov's as well. The function of Part One is to introduce this unequal conflict and reveal Kavalerov's frustration.

Chapters one through four describe the emergence of the conflict within Kavalerov's mind. From the very beginning, though, our hero admits to himself that he is too cowardly to confront Andrei forthrightly:

“I'm no stupider than you are.” That's how I should reply. But I don't have the courage. He smothers me.

(p. 10)⁴

In chapter five, Kavalerov finds out about ‘two secrets.’ The first is Volodia Makarov, described by Andrei as a remarkable, first-class soccer player—in other words, also active and successful. Volodia is, of course, an ally of Andrei in the developing war. The second ‘secret’ is Ivan Babichev, and the method of his introduction deserves careful attention. Kavalerov is engaged in a feeble attempt at insulting Andrei, which Andrei does not seem even to notice. At just this instant Ivan—the real Ivan, Andrei's brother and Valia's father—appears outside. With a word he elicits a thunderous response from Andrei—exactly the response Kavalerov had tried and failed to provoke. This brief appearance of Ivan makes a powerful impression on Kavalerov. It is a graphic illustration of his own pusillanimity, which prompts his musings in the following chapter about fame and suicide, and about the widow Anechka Prokopovich as “a symbol of my humbled masculinity” (p. 20).

Kavalerov's discovery of the two secrets intensifies the conflict within his mind. On the one hand, Volodia's existence increases the threat which Andrei poses to Kavalerov's ego; on the other, Ivan represents a potential ally, obviously opposed to Andrei and his values, yet decisive and strong willed, unlike Kavalerov himself. Kavalerov, in his ‘declaration of war’ letter to Andrei, admits that he saw Ivan this way:

Your brother is an unusual man. He intrigues me. I don't understand him. There's a mystery here of which I know nothing. There's something strangely appealing about the name ‘Ophelia.’ And it seems to me that it frightens you.

(pp. 40-41)

Chapter seven contains the second and last appearance of the real Ivan. Kavalerov observes unseen as Ivan visits his daughter to beg her to return. She refuses, and he leaves. It is from these two brief encounters, and a few references by Andrei and Volodia, that Kavalerov fashions his imaginary version of Ivan. He knows only a handful of details about him: that he is short and fat, wears a bowler and carries a pillow, and that he can make Andrei furious by his very presence. Yet by chapter seven, Kavalerov has come to assume that Ivan shares his archaic poetic perspective:

“Doesn't the bird sound like one [a hair clipper]?” I almost exclaimed, certain that the same resemblance must have occurred to him.

(p. 23)

Kavalerov has no reason to be so certain.⁵ He has already begun to take the mysterious Ivan and embellish him, creating in his imagination an ally in the developing struggle with Andrei.

Chapters eight, nine, and ten—the salami, airport, and construction site scenes—illustrate the mounting humiliations, culminating in Volodia's arrival, which intensify Kavalerov's conflict. These episodes drive Kavalerov to the declaration of war in chapter eleven. As he writes the letter in the sanctuary of some beer hall, Kavalerov is firm and resolute; but naturally when he reaches Babichev's apartment he loses his nerve. He tries to back out, but takes the wrong letter by accident. After reading it he decides to return and fight, but he is of course too weak to carry through. When he re-enters the room, he is too afraid either to fall to his knees and grovel, as one part of his mind advises, or to tell Andrei what he really thinks. Eventually he insults Valia, and Volodia slaps him and throws him out of the door. This is the point at which he commits himself totally to the war:

“It's all over,” I said calmly as I got up. “Now I will kill you, Comrade Babichev.”

(p. 53)

At this point our hero goes for a stroll through the streets and enters the “invisible world,” which is signified by a profusion of extraordinary perceptual metaphors: a housewife like a pigeon, magnificent mothers with eyes like fish scales, a baby who looks like the pope, trumpets like elephants' ears, and so on. It is this chapter which contains Kavalerov's ruminations about the estranging effects of the invisible land:

[T]here is a mysterious world here where everything you have just seen is repeated with the stereoscopic clarity and neatness of outline one gets from looking through the wrong end of binoculars.

(p. 55)

This chapter represents a rather abrupt shift to a positively dreamlike, fantastic atmosphere. It is not unreasonable to suggest that Olesha intends this shift in tone as a clue that Kavalerov has left the world of ordinary reality and retreated into the fantastic world of his own mind. The immediate cause of this withdrawal appears to be his humiliation at the hands of Volodia and Andrei. On the one hand, his hatred and envy are so intense that he feels compelled to wage a war to the death against Andrei; but on the other, he recognizes that he is much too craven ever actually to confront him.

As a response to this psychological dilemma one part of Kavalerov's mind splits off and appears before him in the figure of Ivan. Having “walked himself into drunkenness,” Kavalerov ends up before a street mirror—clearly a mode of perceptual warping, representing a transition to fantasy—and notices a stranger's reflection in it. “Still thinking about optical illusions, about the mirror tricks,” he asks, “Which side did you come from? Where did you emerge?”

“Where from?” [Ivan] said. “Where from?” He looked at me with clear eyes. “I have invented me myself.”

(p. 56)

Kavalerov recognizes Ivan and immediately realizes, “here was my friend, my teacher, my consolation” (p. 57). This is a natural reaction, since Kavalerov has brought Ivan to life, out of his own reflection, for just these roles.

The first question Kavalerov asks after recognizing him concerns Ophelia. This is another clue to link the whole scene with madness, and indeed it is one of Ivan's leitmotifs. Kavalerov asks this question and waits longingly for the reply. The suspense is considerable, as Olesha has inserted three chapters into this mirror scene in order to provide some information about Ivan. In the first we discover that he has always had a fertile imagination and has been connected with various fantastic occurrences. The second describes his drunken proclivities, high romantic ideals, and messianic delusions. The third combines these traits: we learn that people have created a miracle worker out of Ivan, a man who can turn wine into water. This creation of a mythical character by embellishing a real one is exactly what Kavalerov has done in his desperation—and so, having provided the information necessary to make this connection, Olesha resumes the mirror scene.

At the same time, he has shifted narrative focus. Part One has been narrated entirely by Kavalerov in the first person. Part Two switches to an anonymous third-person narrator who intrudes as little as possible into the story. Thus he offers his information not on his own authority, but as stories told by Ivan to his drinking buddies. In this way he gives the general impression of incredibility or unreality to everything Ivan says or does.

Particularly revealing is the GPU interrogation of Ivan at the end of chapter three. It is clearly not a real event—what investigator would allow Ivan to ramble on the way he does?—but rather an expression of Kavalerov's hostility to Andrei and all he represents, issuing from the mouth of Ivan. The fact that Ivan finishes by naming Kavalerov as his “genie of envy,” even though the real Ivan has never met or heard of Kavalerov, is another hint that this is not the real Ivan but rather an imaginary one whom Kavalerov has imbued with all of his own feelings. In this way Olesha has imperceptibly shifted back to Kavalerov's perspective, even if not to his first person narrative. In all their succeeding conversations we are constantly told what Kavalerov thinks and feels, though he says very little, but are never told what Ivan thinks or feels, though he says a great deal. We are listening to these conversations from a vantage point within Kavalerov's mind—for indeed, it is here that they are taking place.⁶

In chapter four we return to the world of fantastic imagery: the day wheeling in the brass bowl on a gypsy's back, women's eyes the colour of beer, the voices of the violins, the god of music rapping with his fist, the city cut out of Cardiff coal, and so on. Now, however, these metaphors—previously Kavalerov's trademark—are given to Ivan. Similarly, Ivan in his long soliloquies expresses sentiments which are almost exact echoes of those which Kavalerov has expressed earlier. For instance, Ivan expresses an attitude towards women which resembles Kavalerov's “bough full of flowers and leaves” image of Valia; his advice on fame—“go out with a bang”—echoes Kavalerov's ruminations in chapter six about “doing some loathsome, odious thing” to become famous; and his recommendation that Kavalerov take revenge on Andrei and on life on general is just a reiteration of Kavalerov's vow in chapter fourteen. Kavalerov himself notices these coincidences: “He is reading my thoughts.”⁷

Chapter five represents a shift back to the real world, which Olesha has marked by a reference to sleep: Volodia awakes from a slumber, asking, “What are you laughing about? Do you think I'm sleepy?” (p. 82). Like a closing parenthesis, such a reference indicates that we are making a transition from one level of reality to another. In much the same way Gogol', in “Zapiski sumasshedshego,” introduces the more outlandish mental wanderings of his hero by references to sleep: “Most of the time, I lay on my bed” or “After dinner, mostly lay on my bed.”

Another example introduces Kavalerov's next adventure with Ivan. Kavalerov is musing about Anechka's bed, and how it would seem to him as a child.⁸ He would climb all over its fretwork, play imaginary games, and “go off on fantastic journeys.”

Then, from the last arch, from a dizzying height, I would have slithered down the terrifying precipice, onto the icy whiteness of the pillows.

(p. 87)

The very next moment Ivan is leading Kavalerov along a green bank, on a fantastic journey to see Ophelia. We see all sorts of dreamlike circumstances: Kavalerov is confused: “even when he sees the Krestovsky towers ahead, he isn't certain where he is”; he muses, “everything is possible” (p. 87). Ivan gives him constant reminders:

Here, pinch yourself, like that … that's right … again … once more … See, it's not a dream. No. Remember: you weren't asleep.

(p. 87)

We begin to suspect that a tiny portion of Kavalerov's mind recognizes that it is all a fantasy, and that this is the rest of his mind's resistance to that recognition. When Kavalerov says, “I am in possession of all my mental faculties” (p. 88), we may suspect that Olesha intends us to take the words ironically.

Still more curious is the dream within a dream, “The Tale of the Meeting of Two Brothers.” It is interesting to note that Ivan urges Kavalerov to order more beer at precisely the point at which the latter is seriously questioning the reality of the whole experience:

Are you trying to fool me and yourself? Of course there isn't any such machine. It's all delirium. Why are you lying to us both?

(p. 92)

This, again, seems to be evidence of Kavalerov's continuing uncertainty whether to accept or reject the fantasy world. Of course, the fantasy wins as he sits and drinks himself into a still deeper level of unreality. Olesha again intensifies the hazy atmosphere of the scene with fantastic metaphors: scaffolding like a guitar or arithmetic or the siege of Troy; lanterns swinging like the darkness raising and lowering its eyebrows; the Quarter setting sail like a galleon. It is here in Ivan's fairy tale that Kavalerov's war is won: he (or Ivan) stands up to Andrei, challenges him, and exposes his evil intentions—and all in front of a huge crowd of Andrei's admirers. Kavalerov wins total victory for the values of his generation as the Quarter collapses and Andrei admits, “Let me put my head on your pillow, brother. I want to die on the pillow. You win, Ivan, I give up” (p. 99). Needless to say, this is very different from the actual outcome of the war.

The following chapter, seven, is the last of the three fantastic sojourns taken by Kavalerov and his alter ego. We enter the invisible world again, on a walk that “could best be described as enchanting”: effects of light and shadow, dust like waves in the ether, reflections of the sky in broken windowpanes, the reference to white rabbits, Kavalerov's fascination with the green lawn and his bird's eye view. Again, we are told all of Kavalerov's impressions but none of Ivan's. Kavalerov is afraid of being caught like a peeping tom because that is exactly what he is. As soon as he catches sight of Andrei (significantly, as an optical illusion reflected in the windows of the porch), Kavalerov, true to form, panics: “It's time to flee.” The panic seems to produce a shock which places a strain on Kavalerov's fantasy. Ivan proposes to climb over the wall: the next thing we see is Valia sitting on the wall. Not the real Valia, however: for if she had actually spotted these two characters spying on her a confrontation involving Volodia and Andrei would surely have ensued. By this time we seem to have retreated entirely into Kavalerov's imagination.

At this point a conflict erupts between Kavalerov and Ivan, which causes the fantasy to unravel further. Ivan suddenly loses faith in Kavalerov's ideas and admits that love, devotion, and tenderness do indeed exist in the new society. His conspiracy of feelings and Ophelia are exposed as a hoax, and so Ivan as an ally, a proxy warrior, is lost to Kavalerov. That is why he must vow to resolve the battle himself at the soccer match.

The two chapters of the soccer match represent the anticlimax and resolution of Kavalerov's inner war. Moreover, as a conflict pitting individual glory against team effort and the old Getzke against the young Makarov, the game is a symbolic microcosm of much of the substance of the generational conflict which is the central theme of Zavist'. Throughout the novel, Olesha's sympathies lie with the old values and with Kavalerov, even though he realizes that they are pathetic and doomed.⁹ Similarly, he leaves the game with the Germans ahead at the half, while making it clear that the Soviet style of mechanical teamwork will inexorably grind the Germans down in the end. He suggests that “the Germans would be completely routed in the second half, when Getzke had exhausted himself and the Russians had the wind in their backs” (p. 109). However, Olesha also suggests that the Soviet society, like the Soviet team, is not as impersonal or mechanical as Volodia would have us believe: there is still room for heroic individuals, whether they be goalies or sausage makers.

The soccer match is the final demonstration of Kavalerov's desperate inability even to challenge Andrei, much less to defeat him. In his fantasy of the previous chapter he had promised to kill Andrei, but just as earlier when he returned to Andrei's apartment to fight, in reality he has no intention of even trying. His complete impotence is symbolized by his inability to pick up the stray ball and throw it out onto the field (Andrei must do it for him) and by his inability not only to win Valia's pity, but even to make her hear his plea. This harsh return to reality¹⁰ finally compels Kavalerov to accept his defeat. Since he has abandoned the crutch of his imaginary ally, the war is senseless. And so he gives up, gets drunk, and escapes into the fantasy world offered by Anechka's bed.

But he does not give in utterly; not yet. In the morning he rebels and beats the widow; he is deeply disgusted and hates himself. Though he has given up his own battle against Andrei, there still remains the resolution of Ivan's half of the battle. (After all, Ivan was not ‘present’ at the soccer game.) In the fever dream of chapter eleven Andrei gains control of Ophelia and directs her to turn on Ivan. In this way the other warrior—the only ‘real’ warrior—within Kavalerov is also vanquished, and the surrender is complete. Now he can return to the degradation of the widow's room, where he and his alter ego can take turns in Anechka's bed.¹¹

II

The interpretation outlined above leads, naturally enough, to the question of Olesha's intentions. The evidence in support of a split personality reading seems too strong to be coincidental. But can the author really have intended the reader to draw such a sharp distinction between what seems to be happening and what is ‘really’ happening? Isn't he employing all the fantasy precisely to blur the lines? I would agree that he is indeed: that is the reason for the defamiliarized perceptions, the flights into the invisible world, and the shifting planes of reality. But at the same time he consistently indicates the occasions on which the line between them is crossed.

Since throughout Zavist' we view the world from Kavalerov's point of view, we often get only an estranged image from which we can, if we like, extrapolate the ordinary image. For example, when Kavalerov gives us his own peculiar observation,

Things don't like me. Furniture tries to trip me up. Once the sharp corner of some polished thing literally bit me.

(p. 2)

we are able to translate it, as it were, into an ordinary observation: Kavalerov is a clumsy man who bumps into furniture. In this way it is possible to step back out of the invisible world, undo much of the ostrannenie, and separate what is happening from what only seems to be happening.

The point is that, although many of Kavalerov's perceptions appear incomprehensible and fantastic, they are based on reality; and, moreover, Olesha usually gives us enough clues to enable us to recognize that reality. At times Kavalerov himself draws attention to the discrepancy between reality and his perceptions of it. For instance, at the construction site he sees a weird vision of Andrei's nostrils flying overhead like those of a huge statue, but later realizes:

A technical device, a crane. A platform of girders, crossed girders. It was through the spaces between the girders that I had seen his nostrils.

(p. 37)

And at the end of Part One, when he sees Valia in Andrei's apartment and compares her to spherical lightning:

But I was the only one to be struck by her presence. Actually, everything was very simple: a friend had come back and his friends had hurried over to see him. Possibly Babichev had picked up Valia on his way there, since she must have been waiting so eagerly for this day. Everything is simple. As for me, I must be sent to a special institution to be treated by hypnosis, to cure me of thinking in images, of ascribing to a girl the effects of spherical lightning.

(pp. 52-53)

It does not seem unreasonable to suggest that Olesha's fantastic images bear a distinct relationship to reality. And if this is so in individual cases why could it not also apply to the whole storyline of the novel?

The question remains, however, whether Olesha has simply offered this as one among many potential readings, or really intended the novel to be interpreted in this positivist fashion. I would say that he has provided us with the clues which enable us to do so if we like, but—and this really goes without saying—it is not essential that we do so. Having said this, I would like to offer several ways in which the split personality reading is helpful in understanding the novel.

First, such a reading is not only consistent with the thematic interpretations which are commonly made of Zavist', but indeed clarifies and strengthens them. The substance and action of the story are, after all, quite simple; but they are obscured by the author's juxtapositions of fantasy and reality. By getting a firmer grip on what is going on, we can better understand the simple storyline, which in turn clarifies the thematic content. Moreover, Olesha's themes are made more forceful when we adopt a split personality reading: a recognition of the real extent of Kavalerov's mental instability brings with it a more complete appreciation of the emotional and psychological tensions which the generational conflict generates.

Second, a split personality reading is highly compatible with a ‘Freudian’ reading.¹² Olesha has introduced so many sexual sub-themes—sterility, castration fears, latent homosexuality, etc.—and such complex sexual symbolism that he cannot but have anticipated various Freudian interpretations. These take an approach which is quite similar to the split personality reading, insofar as they look sceptically at the actions and observations as reported, i.e., ‘what seems to be,’ and attempt to extrapolate ‘what really is.’

The split personality reading, moreover, offers a solution to an intriguing question which has received practically no attention in the critical literature: Just why, exactly, does Olesha split the novel into two parts, and why does he change voice half way through? In what way does this structural device relate to the thematic content? It is clear to me that the break in the structure of the novel coincides exactly with—and indeed, may have been intended as a clue to—the break within Kavalerov's mind. The shift from an internal focus on himself to a dissociated focus on Ivan is an indication of the way he has adopted the fantasy Ivan as his “consolation,” his proxy in the war with Andrei.

Last, such a reading illuminates even more clearly Olesha's literary lineage to Dostoevskii. It is often noted that “an obvious kinship binds [Kavalerov] to Dostoyevsky's Man from the Underground.”¹³ The split personality interpretation, while by no means inconsistent with such an observation, serves to illustrate that Kavalerov is also a descendant of Goliadkin in Dvoinik. This last point, however, is one which I shall leave to be developed further in some future discussion which I hope the present paper will stimulate.

Notes

1. Gleb Struve, for example, writes, “This bizarre, backward, refracted vision of the world, in which normal rules of optics and geometry are violated and distorted, is the leitmotif of the whole work, in which the planes of reality and fantasy are displaced and interlocked and the border between waking and dreaming obliterated. We are not in the least surprised, therefore, when to Kavalerov's question about his sudden appearance out of nowhere, Ivan Babichev replies, ‘I invented myself’” [emphasis added]. Russian Literature Under Lenin and Stalin (Norman, Oklahoma, 1971), pp. 111-12.

2. Olesha illustrates the idea of the ‘invisible world’ most explicitly in Part One, chapter 15. For an excellent critical discussion, see Nils Ake Nilsson, “Through the Wrong End of Binoculars: An Introduction to Yuri Olesha,” in Edward J. Brown (Ed.), Major Soviet Writers: Essays in Criticism (New York, 1973).

3. See, for example, D. G. B. Piper, “Yuriy Olesha's Zavist': an Interpretation,” Sylvanite and East European Review, Vol. 48 (1970), pp. 29-30; Edward J. Brown, Russian Literature Since the Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), p. 72, and T. S. Berczynski, “Kavalerov's Monologue in Envy: a Baroque Soliloquy,” Russian Literature Triquarterly, No. 1 (Fall 1970), p. 375.

4. Parenthetical page references are to Andrew R. MacAndrew's translation in Envy and Other Works (New York, 1981).

5. He acknowledges this himself in the letter to Andrei: “Although I still don't know him [Ivan], I'm sure he is a genius. In what way, I don't know” (p. 41).

6. On this point I must take exception to the widely held opinion that Part Two is narrated from Ivan Babichev's point of view, as expressed, e.g., in Brown, Russian Literature Since the Revolution, p. 67, and by T. S. Berczynski in the introduction to his translation, Envy (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1975), p. viii. I would contend rather that Part Two involves a shift not from Kavalerov's to Ivan's perspective, but from Kavalerov's focus on himself to his focus on Ivan, his alter ego, but still from his own perspective.

7. Kavalerov had already admitted that mind reading by others is a characteristic of dreams: “As happens in dreams, she guesses my thoughts and says, ‘Don't worry … Just a quarter’” (p. 21).

8. This ‘child's eye view’ is itself one component of the invisible world. See Nilsson, “Through the Wrong End of Binoculars,” pp. 261-62.

9. The author's ambivalent attitude towards the old values is illustrated by the peculiarly pathetic kind of Christ figure that Babichev represents. As MacAndrew correctly notes, “Ivan is a caricature of a savior, and Olesha feels perhaps that this is all the old world deserves.” Envy and Other Works, p. xviii.

10. Note that Olesha has marked the transition from the previous fantasy by a reference to drunkenness. As chapter seven ends, Ivan slumps against the wall and says, “Let's drink, Kavalerov” (p. 104).

11. Note that this ultimate surrender to fantasy in the last two pages of the novel is marked by a positive saturation with references to both sleep and drunkenness.

12. The novel's abundant sexual symbolism and imagery are given a thoughtful discussion in William E. Harkins, “The Theme of Sterility in Olesha's Envy,” in Brown (Ed.), Major Soviet Writers. See also Robert A. Maguire, Red Virgin Soil, Soviet Literature in the 1920s (Princeton, N.J., 1968), pp. 338-39.

13. Struve, Russian Literature Under Lenin and Stalin, p. 109. See also N. Protopopov, “Zavist' kak khudozhestvennyi zamysel Iuriia Oleshi,” Russian Language Journal, XXII, no. 83 (October 1968), 15-16.