Sector lagarto

Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.

William Somerset Maugham

As Schopenhauer pointed out in his Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life, it is obvious that a young man might have a natural tendency to imagine the world in much brighter colours than in fact turns out to be the case (Schopenhauer 1974:478-9). It is not necessary to share the German philosopher’s perennial pessimism to agree with this thought. People usually grow to understand this truth, as life provides them with more and more opportunities to learn of the imperfection of human nature and of life in general. The same natural inclination to idealise the nature of the world, and to build idyllic dreams, is even more likely to apply to a young man whose childhood has been spent in an isolated province far from the bustling city. An individual with the innate capability for creating original literary works will be even more predisposed to overrate the possibilities which

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seem to exist just beyond the horizon of the present. Such an imagination, once stimulated, knows no limits, and with its help it is all too easy to build castles in the air and impatiently anticipate the discovery of Arcadia. This is exactly the kind of imagination with which the young Aleksandr Grin was endowed.

From his early years the writer became engrossed in reading the great masters of adventure stories who portrayed brave captains, pirates and discoverers. The colourful, sparkling fictional worlds of Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas Mayne Reid were the everyday nourishment of his imagination, worlds which seemed so different from the grey reality of Russia at the turn of the century. But Grin did not have an easy childhood. Indeed, it would be hard to imagine harsher conditions for a child to grow up in than those in which Grin found himself. His mother died when he was 12, as already mentioned in the Introduction, and his father was an embittered drunkard. There was the cultural stagnation of a provincial town, teachers’ lack of understanding for an intelligent but stubborn boy, and finally a general lack of hope for the improvement of his situation in life – all this resulted in the future writer’s overwhelming desire to leave his native little Viatka for good. All these and subsequent experiences certainly had an influence on his fictional creations, where Grin presents a range of dreamers who bravely create their own ambitious, alternative visions of reality. Alye parusa is an exemplary work in this regard, one which depicts like no other a young idealistic heart. The tale describes a young hero and heroine’s dreams of wonderful adventures at sea, stimulated by the picture of a sailing ship (in the case of Gray) and by the fascinating story told by a strange bard (in the case of Assol), dreams which become a kind of charm or amulet which gives the strength to keep their visions alive and defend them against all manner of doubtful people. The main characters maintain their beliefs and dreams, even when they face incomprehension in those who are inimical towards such imaginings. The young heroes are portrayed by Grin with moral features more typical of adult persons. Both Assol and Gray are intolerant of the apathy and mediocrity around them, since they embody high commitment and faith in their own ideals. As a matter of fact, in the case of Alye parusa Gray and Assol do succeed in fulfilling their dreams, and it is mainly thanks to this story that Grin is so widely appreciated for creating one of the most charming ɮɟɟɪɢɢ in all of Russian literature.6 We

can see certain analogies with Grin’s own biography here, where dreams of a better life on the sea compel him to leave Viatka, almost against reason, since he was practically

6 _{The Russian term}

ɮɟɟɪɢɹ means ‘extravaganza, fantastic artistic production’. Grin used this word in subtitles in some of his works to denote a plot extraordinarily rich in fantastic elements.

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penniless and poorly educated. Unfortunately, the rest of the writer’s own life turned out very differently to the dreams he once had.

In the aforementioned biography of Grin, Luker (1980) convincingly describes the unlucky adventures of a young writer who tried to conquer the world, but met with painful disillusionment. Odessa enraptured him with its hubbub associated with a large port city, but from the very beginning – with his fight to gain a place on board ship – Grin faced one defeat after another. As it turned out, the greatest dreams of his life were never to come true. This significant episode had a strong psychological influence on Grin’s life and, in fact, on his writing as well.7 But the bitter collapse of his dream of becoming a sailor was just the first in a long series of misfortunes that would influence him in creating his Dreamers.

One of the main emotional disasters in that period of Grin’s life is described by him in the very short autobiographical work entitled ‘Po zakonu’. It is built around personal experience from the time of his life in Odessa. He witnessed a scene in a hospital where two sailors were being treated after a street fight. One of them was said to have stabbed the other with a knife. Grin felt that too much was made of this incident. A military officer asked the injured sailor to decide whether to file a charge or not; surprisingly, after some hesitation, the sailor agreed to do so. Lack of generosity here meant not only an inability to forgive, but rather outright hostility. This kind of revenge was absolutely irreconcilable with the idealistic image of sailors that Grin had always maintained. This brief and seemingly trite event had an enormous impact on his attitude to sailors and life at sea.

Grin’s harbour life was by all accounts very hard. During this difficult period the future writer was utterly penniless, often jobless, and suffered daily from hunger and humiliation. As time passed the pain of disappointment and the tragic end of radiant dreams became important themes in many of his works. The stories adopt two different stances in this regard: firstly, they describe the vain and fugitive nature of dreams, and secondly, they express an inner faith in the fact that even eventual defeat does not have to be seen as an unmitigated disaster.

A difficult life lead Grin also to disappointment and doubt regarding the veracity of human feelings which we find, for instance, in the story ‘Liubimyi’. Its eponymous hero is a newly-engaged bridegroom-to-be whose warm assurances of love for his future wife are put to an extreme test. This everyman figure (Grin does not give him any name or outward characteristics) is given an opportunity to demonstrate his moral fibre in a situation of

7 _{Unfulfilled dreams about sailing lie at the base of ‘Komendant porta’, ‘Golos sireny’ and the protagonist of}

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danger. This happens when a false fire alarm causes chaos in a theatre as people try to escape in blind panic. The protagonist reacts with truly inhuman indifference: fearing for his own life, he abandons the girl and darts away like a thoughtless animal. It is his friend who saves the woman, and he admits to being astonished at her fiancé’s pitiful behaviour. Such a pessimistic view of the feeling commonly described as “true love” is to be found in several of Grin’s works (e.g. ‘Kseniia Turpanova’, ‘Medvezhƍia okhota’ and Doroga nikuda).

Another example of strong disappointment at people’s lack of moral feeling can be found in the story ‘Na oblachnom beregu’. A young couple buy their first home in a distant land and use the services of an unknown vendor who turns out, alas, to be a fraudster. They lose all their savings. The emotional damage that they undergo changes their attitude towards people, and their natural faith in humankind is replaced with a much more distrustful attitude.

In turn, the author’s experiences in the army influenced a group of works which display the author’s deep concern for human beings who are under too much external control and are all too often subjected to humiliation. ‘Slon i Mosƍka’ and ‘Istoriia odnogo ubiistva’ address the problem of the unjust, inhumane treatment of soldiers by their superiors, who prove to be heartless oppressors rather than brothers-in-arms.

Many of Grin’s works, like Alye parusa, ‘Novyi tsirk’ and ‘Proisshestvie v ulitse Psa’, contrast individual behaviour with the cruelty of the crowd. The masses seem indifferent towards the dreams of the heroes. The experiences of some Grinian characters even prove that moral disappointment with other people may lead to misanthropy. On the other hand, damage inflicted by other people may often be cured by the influence of some beloved person.

In this context the motif of love in Grin’s oeuvre cannot be left unmentioned. According to Luker (1980:3) Grin experienced the dream of an idyllic life spent with a princess-like girl, which seems to have been inspired by the story entitled ‘Mila i Nolli’ by N.P. Wagner.8 However, this vision was brutally confronted by reality – Grin had to face unrequited love, his first marriage was by no means idyllic, and the second one not free from troubles either. These experiences are realised in a few profoundly moving works (e.g. ‘Apelƍsiny’, ‘Vetka omely’).

On the whole, from the moral point of view, Grin divides his female characters into two groups. The first and more numerous group consists of “angelic” women, like the most

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popular of all Grin’s feminine heroes, Assol in Alye parusa.9 Such characters seem relatively two-dimensional variations on the seraphic image of woman found in the above- mentioned Wagner story ‘Mili i Nolli’.

The second group consists of demonic women who are unable to change their innate instincts; they hurt the male hero or lead him astray, becoming the reason for depression and even suicide on his part.10 The motif of the “femme fatale”, so important in Russian symbolism, reappears in many of Grin stories like ‘Koloniia Lanfier’, ‘Medvezhƍia okhota’ and ‘Sto verst po reke’. In these works we may detect not only signs of Grin’s inclination towards a fashionable decadence, and a fascination for a Schopenhauerian11 (or even Weininger-like) understanding of the destructive role of women, but also elements of the author’s own life-experience. The plot of ‘Sto verst po reke’, for example, tells how the trampling of his dreams leads the main character to a situation of psychological impairment. Deeply hurt and betrayed by the woman he loves, he changes completely. Seeking comfort in philosophical pessimism, he turns away from people and becomes a mistrustful loner. His harsh and strikingly unpleasant response to the innocent girl travelling with him displays a deep and exaggerated misogyny.

In the extremely turbulent period between 1906 and 1910 Grin’s dreams concerning revolution, the future of Russia and his own personal life were seriously shaken. Grin, a born romantic and idealist, became disillusioned in his perception of the world and Russian reality in particular. He can then be said to have joined the metaphorical circle of his great Russian literary predecessors like Gogol, Dostoevsky and Tolstoi, who were tormented by a civilisation which they found increasingly devoid of spiritual meaning and comradely relations.12 Like his great literary predecessors, Grin, too, eventually overcame the crisis of broken illusions and tried to propose his solutions in his later work.

As Tarnas (1996:389) has put it, to some extent every romantic has to experience a brutal collision between the search for spiritual bliss and the dark reality of the twentieth century. Grin, a romantic dreamer by nature, looked upon it as another inevitably harsh lesson of real life: that this world does not adhere to logical and just rules. A person full of good intentions and acting without any harmful thoughts may find himself rewarded

9 _{Among many examples we might highlight Tavi in Blistaiushchii mir and Dzhessi in Dzhessi i Morgiana.} 10 _{Evil women characters have this type of negative impact on heroes in ‘Proisshestvie v ulitse Psa’,}

‘Prokhodnoi dvor’, ‘Seryi avtomobilƍ’ ‘Kolonia Lanfier’, ‘Sto verst po reke’, ‘Veselaia babochka’ and

‘Volshebnoe bezobrazie’.

11 _{On Schopenhauer’s understanding of the inferiority of woman, see his essay ‘On women’ (1851).} 12 _{For more discussion, see Clive (1972:99) and Jackson (1958:24).}

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unfairly. If we stick to some moral rules, and we fail to be appreciated for our pure intentions, then our unsuccessful results may be received with enmity and punished. Although this assumption is a truism, it must be noted as having strong consequences for Grin’s morality. Grin presents this striking (but very true) principle of life in a few stories, the most compelling of which is ‘Vor v lesu’, discussed in section 2.2. The risk of being misunderstood and hurt appears to be one of the reasons for seeking refuge from society in Grin’s work and can be found in ‘Ostrov Reno’ and ‘Koloniia Lanfier’. After all the bitter disillusionment (or even very painful defeats) Grin expresses his deep doubt in the possibility of building earthly utopia. Both his works ‘Uchenik charodeia’ and Blistaiushchii mir resemble Notes from Underground in their poignant pessimistic collapse of the utopianism of the main altruistic characters.