Chapaev and emptiness short. Chapaev and emptiness

program of essentially opposing world image disembodiment. But from the very start of his opposition to emptiness there appeared many signs showing that a conspirator against non-being did not seem so utterly devoted to the declared ideas as one might expect him to.

Key words: being, non-being, symbolism, acmeism, facets, stone, emptiness.

V. I. Demin

MYTH ABOUT CHAPAEV IN VIKTOR PELEVIN’S NOVEL “CHAPAEV”

AND THE EMPTINITY"

The article is devoted to the analysis of Victor Pelevin’s novels “Chapaev and Emptiness” and Dm. Furmanov "Chapaev". The author examines the key episodes of the myth about Chapaev in the experience of the socialist realist and postmodernist novel.

Key words: V. Pelevin, D. Furmanov, literary process of the 90s. XX century, Chapaev.

Victor Pelevin is one of the most discussed Russian writers; each of his new works gives rise to heated discussion - both among readers and among authorities literary critics. Many of them, however, are inclined to believe that the “Reut project”1 has exhausted itself. The relationship of the writer himself with criticism and critics speaking out against him is an issue that requires separate consideration. As M. Sverdlov noted in his article “Technology of Writer's Power (On the Last Two Novels of V. Pelevin),” “... Pelevin does not like assessments and classifications. Moreover, he does not like those who evaluate and classify - fellow writers and, of course, critics.”2 Not favoring criticism, Pelevin, however, himself creates texts that immanently contain a critical analysis of contemporary literature, becoming a kind of “barometer” of the current literary process. His works are filled with modern allusions and parallels, references to products of mass culture, without knowledge of which it is often difficult to understand this or that fragment of a novel or story (for example, fragments of the novel “Chapaev and Emptiness” will be difficult to understand without knowledge of the plot of “Terminator” or series "Simply Maria"). At the same time, Pelevin also updates other, by no means mass, layers of cultural and historical knowledge. One of these layers is the Buddhist one, which is constantly present in almost all of the writer’s works. As G. A. Sorokina notes, “...Buddhism became for the author a fruitful source of image-creation, realized on the basis of modern realities, represented

1 Shaitanov 2003, 3.

2 Sverdlov 2003, 33.

tions and sign systems. At the same time, there is a convergence of archaic symbolism and realities modern life, which should be considered as a bright, interesting literary, philosophical and cultural phenomenon”3. The esoteric nature of Pelevin’s texts allows us to compare his novels with the works American writer, anthropologist and ethnographer Carlos Castaneda, whose attentive but also ironic reader he is4. Another means of creating intertextual richness in Pelevin’s works is the use of fairy-tale plots. Mark Lipovetsky, analyzing the novel “The Sacred Book of the Werewolf,” identifies three main fairy tale plot present in this text: the tale of the Fox and the Wolf; allusions to “The Scarlet Flower”; references to “Little Khavroshechka”5.

In addition to the above three layers of intertextuality, one more can be distinguished: these are references to classical works of literature (Shakespeare, Calderon, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy). Constantly using materials from both mass and elite culture, Pelevin embeds quotes in a completely different context, thereby playing on the thematic and ideological field of the works from which they are borrowed. The writer also used the technique of intertextual parodic play in one of his most famous works, the novel “Chapaev and Emptiness”. This work is, in a way, a quotation mosaic made up of various fragments. In the preface, Pelevin refers the reader to Borges’s story “The Garden of Forking Paths” (in the novel “Chapaev and Emptiness” - “The Garden of Forking Paths Petek”; a kind of allusion to the mental state of Peter the Emptiness, but also to the “fractality”6 of Pelevin’s own novel) and to Nikolai Oleinikov’s poem “Donut” (in the novel - “Black Donut”). Pelevin mixes, albeit ironically, two layers: the layer of postmodern culture and the layer of Soviet culture - thereby equating them in the context of his work. Already here one can see the duality that is a property of novelistic reality: the action takes place in absolute Emptiness (here, probably, “Emptiness” acts both as an abstract philosophical concept and as a specific “topos” - the consciousness of a patient in the psychiatric hospital Peter the Emptiness), which splits into two temporary layers - revolutionary, after the overthrow of the tsar's power, and post-Soviet. The “modern” half of the novel is filled with allusions to post-Soviet reality. Pelevin refers to the James Cameron film “Terminator”, to the series “Simply Maria”, popular in Russia in 1993-1994, to the realities of the era of “initial accumulation of capital” (in Pelevin’s novel both unsuccessful entrepreneurs and “new Russians” appear). One of the most clearly present cultural artifacts in the text of the novel is the text of Dmitry Furmanov’s novel “Chapaev” (1923) and the film created by the Vasilyev brothers based on this work.

Chapaev is one of the most striking and attractive images for Soviet and post-Soviet culture. Such genuine interest is caused by

3 Sorokina 2007, 343.

4 Shokhina 2006.

5 Lipovetsky 2008, 650-652.

6 Pronina 2003, 5-30.

Most likely, because Chapaev represents an ambivalent image, a scheme, a matrix, which can be implemented in different ways - and at different cultural levels. If in the Soviet era Chapaev came to the reader primarily through Furmanov’s novel (1923) and the texts it generated1 and the Vasilyev brothers’ film (1934), today, when the socialist realist novel has lost its popularity, Chapaev becomes the hero of serial game quests. Soviet culture quite actively exploited the image of Chapaev, constantly multiplying semi-documentary stories for adult readers, adaptations of Chapaev's biography for children and adolescents. It is interesting to note that in Soviet culture and literature, in relation to Chapaev, a phenomenon arises that is more characteristic of mass culture and comics about superheroes - today we would call it a “prequel,” that is, a story about events preceding the main part. At the same time, there is no doubt that this entire official corpus of texts about Chapaev, the “Chapaev epic” is one of the means of ideological processing, while folk art, anecdotes, starting from the official dogma, created his own, unofficial story of the hero. However, neither the official nor the unofficial versions, of course, set themselves the task of clarifying the historical background, the motives for Chapaev’s actions - that is, everything that is the object of scientific, historical research.

Furmanov's novel was one of the iconic works of its era. This is probably due to the implementation in the text of the work of ideological guidelines implanted by the party apparatus. American Slavist Katherine Clark, based on “official speeches delivered at congresses of Soviet writers”7, compiled the “Official List of Exemplary Novels” of Socialist Realism, which, in addition to the works of Fyodor Gladkov, Maxim Gorky, Nikolai Ostrovsky and many others, included “Chapaev” by Furmanov . Considering this work in the context of the era of socialist realism, Clark, using modern analytical tools, notes that “socialist realist novels gravitate towards the forms of popular literature and, like most similar literary formations, towards formulaicity. This makes it expedient to compare them with such types of formulaic literature as detective stories or novels with sequels”8. The Soviet novel, according to Clarke, is a “repository of myths”9 and ritual10, and participates in the creation of Bolshevik ideology. Among the fundamental features of the novel of the era of socialist realism, Clark identifies another important feature: hagiography, which goes back to the previous literary tradition. Establishing direct genealogical connections between Christian and Soviet literature is a topic for a separate study, says Clark, but it should be noted that there are certain similarities between both of these literatures: clichés, cliches, formulas. Thus, “if real historical figures are chosen as the subject of the image, the details of their lives are simplified, embellished, or even ignored in order to embellish

7 Clark 2002, 223.

8 Ibid., 9.

9 Ibid., 19.

10 Ibid., 23.

bring the hero closer to the ideal"11. Such a “simplification”, schematization as storylines, and the motives of the characters’ behavior allows us to actualize mythological consciousness. Chapaev in Furmanov’s novel is an initially given actant, a hero, which the author constantly mentions on the pages of the book: he is the bearer of a “magical, amazing name”12, personifying “everything uncontrollable, spontaneous, angry protesting”13, a hero about whom “enthusiastic people sang.” hymns, burned incense, talked about his own Chapaev’s invincibility”14. One of the key words in Furmanov’s novel is the word “campaign,” which refers the reader to chivalric romance, Chronicles of the Crusade; Furmanov writes about his heroes: “They fought like heroes, they died like red knights”15. The goal of the campaign of Chapaev and his comrades is to gain a new kingdom: “One felt the approach of a whole era, a new era, big day, from which a new, great reckoning will begin...”16, and the main question becomes: “...to be or not to be Soviet Russia then?”17. Chapaev’s speech and the effect it produces on the listeners deserve special attention in Furmanov’s novel. The division commander’s speech is filled with an implicit, sacred meaning, which is not always possible to grasp, but the heroes of the novel know for certain that it exists: “Explorators,” Chapaev said with difficulty... “Weapons are weapons,” Chapaev shook his head, “ Yes, it’s difficult to fight, and what would it be... - Fyodor didn’t understand why Chapai said this, but he felt that something special should be understood by these words”18 and further: “Here and there he made “speeches” . Effect and success were ensured: it was not a matter of speeches, but of Chapaev’s name. This name had magical power - it made it clear that behind the “speeches,” perhaps meaningless and meaningless, significant, great deeds were hidden.”19. Chapaev's speech, dark and incomprehensible, is the speech of an oracle, a conductor of higher powers, subject to many interpretations, the speech of power. Considering Viktor Pelevin’s novel in relation to Furmanov’s “Chapaev,” we can say that Pelevin equates the discourse of power with the hallucinatory delirium of Grigory Kotovsky, another mythological character of the civil war. Chapaev in Furmanov’s novel is a largely mythological character, redeeming the formation new government, a new kingdom by his sacrifice; It is noteworthy that he dies in the river, a kind of mythological space. Willingly or unwittingly, Furmanov actualizes the mythological matrix in the minds of the Soviet reader, legitimizing the formation of a new state with the death of Chapaev.

Pelevin in his novel relies on the key episodes of Furmanov’s novel, incorporates them practically without changes into his text, thereby playing up

11 Ibid., 49.

12 Furmanov 1985, 25.

13 Ibid., 57.

14 Furmanov 1985, 93-94.

15 Ibid., 165.

16 Ibid., 118.

17 Ibid., 124.

18 Ibid., 62.

19 Ibid., 101.

The scene at the station, before the train departs, in both novels is noteworthy. From Furmanov we read: “I’ll tell you goodbye, comrades, that we will be the front, and you, for example, will be the rear, but as it is, one cannot stand without the other. Revenue, our revenue - that is the main task now (...) And if you have jelly here, what kind of war will it be?”20. This fragment is written almost verbatim by Pelevin: “How one can eat without the other can’t resist. And if your jelly goes bad, what kind of war will it be?”21. In this scene, Pelevin introduces the author of the novel “Chapaev” Dmitry Furmanov:

“Someone tugged at my sleeve. Feeling cold, I turned around and saw a short young man with a thin mustache, a face pink from the frost and tenacious eyes the color of drunken tea.

F-fu, he said.

What? - I asked again.

F-Furmanov,” he said and thrust his wide, short-fingered palm towards me.”22

Interesting is not only the fact of introducing this character into the novel, but also the presence

he has speech disorders, which disappear only when Furmanov begins to speak from the podium: “He no longer spoke stuttering, but smoothly and melodiously”23. Pelevinsky Chapaev, discussing with Peter about the meaning of his incomprehensible speech delivered from the podium, says: “You know, Peter, when you have to talk to the masses, it doesn’t matter at all whether you yourself understand the words being spoken. It is important that others understand them. You just need to reflect the desire of the crowd. Some achieve this by learning the language spoken by the masses, but I prefer to act directly. So, if you want to know what “zaruka” is, you need to ask not me, but those who are standing in the square now.”24

Thus, Pelevin discredits both the speech of Furmanov’s hero in particular, and the speech of the entire Soviet government as a whole, discredits speech as an instrument of power.

In the same episode, the impression from the crowd, the “revolutionary masses” is interesting: as enthusiastic as it is for Furmanov, it is just as depressing for Pelevin. From Furmanov, in the novel “Chapaev”: “Fyodor looked around and did not see the ends of the black mass - they, the ends, were somewhere behind the square, illuminated by gas jets. It seemed to him that behind these thousands that stood in his sight, closely adjacent, disappearing into the thick darkness, there were new ones, and behind those - new thousands, and so on endlessly. At that last minute, with acute pain, he suddenly felt how loved and dear the black crowd was to him, how hard it was to part with her.”25 From Pelevin: “It was hard to look at these people and imagine the gloomy routes of their destinies. They had been deceived since childhood, and, in essence, nothing had changed for them now due to the fact that now they were deceived in a different way, but the clumsiness, the mocking primitiveness of these deceptions - both old and new - was truly inhuman. The feelings and thoughts of those standing in the square were just as ugly,

20 Ibid., 10.

21 Pelevin 2003, 99.

22 Ibid., 98.

23 Ibid., 100.

24 Ibid., 101.

25 Furmanov 1985, 9.

like rags put on them, and they even left to die, accompanied by the stupid clownery of random people”26.

The second significant scene borrowed by Pelevin from Furmanov is the episode on the train. It is also subject to an ironic rethinking, highlighting the meaninglessness and ideological nature of Furman’s text. From Furmanov we read: “A book reading room is humming in the heated cars, studies are creaking unruly, spores are rushing about like a flock of jackdaws, and then suddenly a song bursts forth through the frosty purity - light, ringing, red-feathered:

We are blacksmiths - and our spirit is young, We forge the keys of happiness. Rise higher, our heavy hammer, Knock, knock, knock harder on the steel chest!

And at the snail’s pace of the carriage, alternating and defeating the rusty songs of the wheels, songs of struggle rush over the plains, covering the space with a victorious roar.”27

Pelevin wrote in a similar episode: “Indeed, quite beautiful and harmonious singing was breaking through the roar of the carriage wheels. After listening, I made out the words:

We are blacksmiths - and our spirit is Moloch, We forge the keys of happiness. Rise higher, our heavy hammer, Knock, knock, knock harder on the steel chest!

It’s strange,” I said, “why do they sing that they are blacksmiths if they are weavers?” And why is Moloch their spirit?

Not Moloch, but a hammer,” said Anna.

Hammer? - I asked again. - Oh, of course. Blacksmiths, that's why they have a hammer. That is, because they sing that they are blacksmiths, although in reality they are weavers. The devil knows what"28.

In this episode, Pelevin quotes not only Furmanov, but also his early self: “. the person is somewhat similar to this train. He is just as doomed to forever drag behind him from the past a chain of dark, terrible carriages inherited from no one knows who. And he calls the meaningless roar of this random combination of hopes, opinions and fears his life”29 - the quote refers simultaneously to the story “The Yellow Arrow” and to the short essay “The Bridge I Wanted to Cross.”

The journey of the heroes of Furmanov’s novel across the steppe is reflected in the short essay “Night Lights”. The atmosphere of mystery, “devilry,” and “enchantment” described here was used by Pelevin in his description of the journey of Baron Jungern and Peter the Void to Valhalla30.

An obvious echo of Furmanov’s novel is the episode with the performance. From Furmanov: “...invited to. play. Something unusual. The next day such a serious matter, there are enemy trenches nearby, and suddenly

26 Pelevin 2003, 99.

27 Furmanov 1985, 14.

28 Pelevin 2003, 109-110.

29 Ibid., 110.

30 Pelevin 2003, 267-268; Furmanov 1985, 248-250.

performance!”31. Pelevin: “Today there will be a kind of concert - you know, the fighters will show each other all sorts of... uh... things, who can do what”32. Furmanov’s enthusiastic attention in “Chapaev and Emptiness” gives way to irony and disgust: “A horse with two h... mi - that’s what. Now Private Straminsky will speak to you, who knows how to speak the words of the Russian language with his ass and before the liberation of the people he worked as an artist in the circus. He speaks quietly, so please be silent and not laugh.”33

The heroes of Furmanov's novel move from one steppe city to another; the route can be followed by the table of contents: many chapters are named after key points on the route of Chapaev and his division (“Uralsk”, “Alexandrov-Gai”, “To Bu-guruslan”, “To Belebey”, “Ufa”). In the novel “Chapaev and Emptiness,” Anna and Peter, sitting in the “Heart of Asia” cafe, discuss the situation at the front. Pelevin sneers:

“Tell me, Anna, what is the situation on the fronts now? I mean the general situation.

Honestly, I don't know. I don’t know how they started talking now. There are no newspapers here, but there are all kinds of rumors. And then, you know, I got tired of all this. They take and give away some strange cities with wild names - Buguruslan, Bugulma and also... what's his name... Belebey. And where is everyone, who takes, who gives, it’s not very clear and, most importantly, not particularly interesting”34.

The key scene in all four literary texts dedicated to Chapaev is the episode of his death - Chapaev drowns in the Urals. In Furmanov's novel, a sign, a designation, a word is equal to the signified, the Ural is a river in which the division commander tragically drowns. Chapaev fulfilled his function. Pelevin plays up the motive for Chapaev's death. Firstly, for him the Urals are a “conditional river of absolute love” in which one can neither die nor drown. Pelevin changes the mode of narration; moreover, if Furmanov’s story ends with the death of the main character, then Pelevin’s novel continues.

If Furmanov’s novel is a myth, a mythological, “totalitarian legend”, in the words of Michal Glowinski35, then Victor Pelevin, using myths about Chapaev and about Soviet reality, incorporating fragments of a socialist realist work into his novel, creates both his own myth and an “anti-myth”, demythologizing the image of the legendary division commander Vasily Chapaev.

LITERATURE

Glowinski M. 1996: “Don’t let the past take its course.” “A Short Course of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)” as a mythical legend // UFO. 22, 142-160.

Clark K. 2002: The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual. Ekaterinburg.

Lipovetsky M. 2008: Paralogies: Transformations of (post)modernist discourse in Russian culture of the 1920-2000s. M.

Pelevin V. O. 2003: Chapaev and emptiness. M.

31 Furmanov 1985, 256.

32 Pelevin 2003, 337.

33 Ibid., 343.

34 Ibid., 154.

35 Glowinski 1996, 144.

Pronina E. 2003: Fractal logic of Viktor Pelevin // VL. 4, 5-30. Sverdlov M. 2003: Technology of writer's power (About the last two novels of V. Pelevin) // VL. 4, 31-47.

Sorokina G. A. 2007: Buddhist connotations in V. Pelevin’s story “The Yellow Arrow” // Literature of the 20th century: results and prospects for studying / N. N. Andreeva, N. A. Litvinenko, N. T. Pakhsaryan (eds. .). M., 337-344. Furmanov D. A. 1985: Chapaev. Mutiny. M. Shaitanov I. 2003: Project Re1eush // VL. 4, 3-4.

Shokhina V. 2006: Chapai, his team and a simple-minded student // NG-Ex ipb. M.

MYTH ABOUT CHAPAYEV IN V. PELEVIN'S NOVEL "CHAPAYEV

The article presents the analysis of two novels - Victor Pelevin's "Chapayev and the Void" and D. Furmanov's "Chapayev". The author considers key episodes of the myth about Chapayev in the light of socialist realism novel and postmodernism novel.

Key words: V Pelevin, D. Furmanov, literary process of the 1990s, Chapayev.

The story is told on behalf of one of the famous poets Petersburg Peter the Void.

First part

Winter 1918. In the center of post-revolutionary Moscow, Peter came across a former classmate and poet von Ernen. He now served in the Cheka and invited his old friend to his huge apartment, which had been confiscated from someone.

Peter admitted that three days ago in St. Petersburg people from the Cheka wanted to take him for an abstract poem, but he ran away from them, firing back. Von Ernen, who promised to help, decided to arrest him. At the point of a Mauser, Peter went out into the hallway, where he unexpectedly threw his coat over the scoundrel and strangled him.

Peter put on the security officer's leather jacket, reloaded the pistol and was about to leave. Suddenly a couple of sailors in pea coats burst into the apartment. Mistaking Peter for von Ernen, they gave him the order to “draw our line” in a literary cabaret, drank vodka with cocaine with him and went there together.

In the dimly lit cabaret hall, Peter met the gaze of a strange man with a strong-willed, calm face and a mustache curled upward.

I suddenly somehow realized that he knew everything about the death of von Ernen - and what’s more, he knew much more serious things about me.

Peter went up to the stage, read the verse he had just written, and after the line “we will answer the white bastard with revolutionary terror!” shot at the chandelier. The sailors accompanying him took up the shooting. In the hall they shouted and hid behind the columns, and only that mustachioed man sat calmly at his table.

Having stopped firing, the sailors and Peter went out through the back door and got into the car. On the way, Peter fell asleep.

Second part

Peter woke up in the mid-1990s in a psychiatric hospital.

Its head physician treated “split false personality” using his own method: a group of patients were immersed in the false reality of one of them, and at the end of the session they all returned to their usual manias.

And at this second the patient himself can feel the relativity of his painful ideas and stop identifying with them. And from this to recovery it is already very close.

Peter was injected with the drug and entered into a group hallucinatory session. He finds himself in the reality of a patient who believes he is simply Maria from a Mexican soap opera.

On the smoky embankment, Maria met her betrothed, Arnold Schwarzenegger. He took her to a vacant lot, to a military fighter, where their “alchemical marriage” was to take place. Having placed Maria on the fuselage, Arnold took off. The plane tilted, Maria rolled along the wing and caught her hood on the rocket. She shouted that she didn’t want to do this and she was in pain. Schwarzenegger fired a rocket, and Maria flew into the Ostankino TV tower with it. There was no merger between Russia and the West.

Having emerged from “not the most interesting vision in his life,” Peter fell asleep.

Third part

1918 Von Ernen's apartment. Peter woke up to music coming from the next room. This mustachioed man, whom he had seen in a cabaret, played the piano excellently.

“My last name is Chapaev,” the stranger introduced himself. He said that he was impressed by Peter’s campaigning and found him to invite him to be a commissar in his cavalry division. Peter agreed. They went out onto the frosty street, got into a long gray-green armored car and left for the station.

Behind the armored headquarters carriage, in which Peter and Chapaev were located, were attached carriages with a “red soldiery” and a regiment of weaving workers.

The man is somewhat similar to this train. He is just as doomed to forever drag behind him from the past a chain of dark, terrible carriages inherited from no one knows who.

In the evening, over a light dinner with champagne, Chapaev introduced Peter to Anna, a beautiful, short-haired machine gunner. “By the way,” she said, “we completely forgot about the weavers.” Together they walked to the end of the moving train, and on Chapaev’s instructions, his assistant uncoupled the cars with the weavers. As if nothing had happened, Chapaev and Anna returned to the table.

Peter entered his compartment and collapsed on the bed.

Part four

He woke up in a tiled hospital room, in a cast-iron bathtub with cool water. In the adjacent bathtubs lay other patients from his room - Volodin, Serdyuk and the muscular young man Maria.

During a quiet hour, Peter secretly entered the head physician's office and found a thick folder with the history of his illness. His pathological deviations began at the age of fourteen: he moved away from family and friends, his performance at school decreased, and he began to intensively read philosophical literature about emptiness and nothingness.

He considers himself the only heir to the great philosophers of the past. He is not burdened by being placed in a psychiatric hospital, since he is confident that his “self-development” will follow the “right path” regardless of where he lives.

After a quiet hour, a quarrel occurred between Serdyuk and Maria. Peter tried to separate them and was hit on the head with a plaster bust of Aristotle.

Fifth part

Peter woke up in the summer in an unfamiliar room. Anna was sitting by his bed. She talked about the battle, during which Peter commanded a squadron, was shell-shocked and spent several months in a coma.

Without listening to any objections, Peter got up and decided to take a walk around the city. Anna took him to a restaurant, where she told him that Peter had become very close to Chapaev.

Chapaev is one of the most profound mystics I have ever known. I believe that in you he has found a grateful listener and, perhaps, a student.

Having learned that Chapaev was Anna's uncle, Peter tried to flirt with her. He decided that the girl was not indifferent to him, since she was on duty at his bed. To this Anna objected that she came to Peter’s room to listen to his picturesque nonsense. Peter was offended and quarreled with her.

White officers sitting at a nearby table intervened in the quarrel. The conflict grew, but then a man with a shaved head and two revolvers suddenly appeared in the restaurant and drove them away. He introduced himself as Kotovsky and took Anna, whom he had known for a long time, away in his wheelchair.

Peter thought that he had nothing that could attract a woman like Anna, and felt disgusted with himself.

Peter found Chapaev in an old bathhouse on the outskirts of the estate. He was upset to learn that Peter had really forgotten everything that he had managed to understand, and tried to explain to him that the entire surrounding reality was in his consciousness, and he himself was in emptiness. Chapaev flavored his explanations with generous portions of moonshine, and soon Peter was too drunk to understand anything.

Having reached his room, Peter fell asleep. He was woken up by Kotovsky, who came to talk about Russia and get some cocaine. Peter exchanged half of the jar, inherited from the murdered von Ernen, from Kotovsky for horses and a carriage, which he rode with Anna.

Sixth part

Peter found himself in Serdyuk's reality, in Moscow in the 1990s. He was on the subway. At his neighbor’s shop, Serdyuk noticed a brochure “Japanese Militarism” and thought that the Japanese remember their duty, that’s why they live normally.

Coming out of the metro, Serdyuk got very drunk out of boredom. On the newspaper in which the snack was wrapped, he saw an advertisement - the Moscow branch of a Japanese company was recruiting employees. He called.

The next day, together with the head of the branch, Kawabata, following centuries-old Japanese traditions, Serdyuk drank sake, talked poetically about life and had fun with Russian girls dressed as geishas.

This is how the “alchemical marriage of Russia and the East” took place, where Kawabata personified the East. Kawabata said that their company was more like a clan, and initiated Serdyuk into the samurai of this clan.

... and he sadly thought that Russia, in essence, is also the land of the rising sun - if only because it never truly rose over it.

Soon Serdyuk learned that the enemy clan had bought a controlling stake in their company, and now all samurai of the clan must commit seppuku. Serdyuk failed to escape. He remembered the previous night and realized that, unlike the world outside the office door, it was real. He didn’t want to betray all this, took a sword and ripped open his stomach. The alliance between Russia and the East did not last long.

Serdyuk woke up in a mental hospital. “That’s how they found you at the heater, with a rose in your hand. Who did you actually drink with, remember?” - asked the head physician.

Seventh part

Peter woke up in the headquarters room, where the day before he had traded cocaine for horses with Kotovsky.

Chapaev, wanting to demonstrate to Peter what mind, death and immortality are, took him to a meeting with the Black Baron, whom many considered the incarnation of the god of war. He took Peter to his mystical “camp” - the place where all soldiers go after death. Countless fires burned in the thick darkness, each of which had vague silhouettes of people visible.

Then they heard a scream and approached the fire, where four people were sitting. Having removed the ring from the lemon, the Baron threw it into the fire, and everything disappeared - both the fire and the four people. They were “a hooligan who ate shamanic mushrooms” and got here by mistake; they just needed to be “brought to their senses.”

The Baron explained to Peter that both the dream about the mental hospital and the reality with Chapaev are equivalent. He compared the world to a crowded room in which everyone is trying to win a chair. Outside the world, a throne of “endless freedom and happiness” awaits every person, which rightfully belongs to him, but it is impossible to ascend to it, since the throne stands in a place that does not exist. To find yourself in this emptiness, you need to realize that all worlds are equally illusory.

The Baron returned Peter to the steppe, where his dead fellow soldiers were sitting around the usual fire. The Baron taught them to see emptiness. Anyone who achieved the goal immediately received a personal elephant and departed for Inner Mongolia - the place where the person who ascended the throne ends up.

Inner Mongolia is not called that because it is inside Mongolia. It is inside the one who sees emptiness.

Peter suddenly found himself back at headquarters, as if he had never gone anywhere with Chapaev and he had not introduced him to the Black Baron. Arriving in his room, the stunned Peter lay down on the bed and fell asleep.

Eighth part

This time Peter found himself in the reality of Volodin, the “new Russian”. He, along with two bandits - his “roof” - arrived in a jeep in the forest. The companions lit a fire in the clearing, ate psychogenic mushrooms and waited for the arrival.

Volodin explained to his close-minded companions that “all the buzz in the world” is inside a person. It is locked, like in a safe, and in order to get the key to this safe, you have to give up everything. This is what they do in monasteries, where monks “throw away” around the clock from the feeling of world love.

Here - once it gets in, it will never let go. And there won’t be any need for a woman, there won’t be any hooking. There will be no withdrawal, no withdrawal symptoms. Just pray for pearl and pearl.

One of the friends was inspired by the idea of an eternal high, but Volodin disappointed him: “if it were so easy to get into it, now half of Moscow would be free.” Inside a person there are full of all sorts of hypostases: a defendant, a prosecutor, and a lawyer. But in order to catch the “worldwide buzz”, you need to “wipe away this whole line” and become a nobody.

The conversations were interrupted by a column of light that descended onto the fire and enveloped those sitting around. They saw the emptiness and tasted the eternal buzz. The two “poor in spirit” began to scream and shout. “Okay, let’s do the legs. Fast!" - Volodin said, seeing the Black Baron in the void, and the friends fled in all directions.

Having come to their senses, everyone gathered at Volodin’s jeep. On the way, he explained that they got into an eternal high illegally, and for this they could get tied up there. On the physical level they are taken to the madhouse, but where on the “subtle” level is a mystery. If his companions had not made a fuss, everything would have turned out fine.

Ninth part

Peter wrote down this strange dream and showed the manuscript to Chapaev. He, like the Black Baron, metaphorically advised him to “check out of the hospital,” meaning by this institution our mortal world.

Going down the street, Peter came across Anna in a black velvet dress, absurdly tried to confess his feelings to her and invited her to ride out of town on trotters in the evening. “What vulgarity!” - she said and walked past.

In the evening, the weavers gave a concert with incredibly obscene numbers. Peter went on stage and read his new proletarian verse, into which he wove a princess in a black dress and her naked friend. The hall exploded with applause, and Anna, who was sitting in the back row, walked away.

Peter returned to his room and lay down. Meanwhile, the weavers’ concert “turned into complete disgrace”—gunshots, drunken laughter and the sounds of a “languid fight” were heard from the yard.

Kotovsky came to Peter to say goodbye. He was going to disappear before the drunken weavers burned everything here, and advised Peter to do the same. He did not hope that Chapaev would restore order.

After seeing Kotovsky off, Peter went to Chapaev’s bathhouse, where he, habitually drinking moonshine, tried to make him understand that man is not a form, but a spirit.

It cannot be said about the soul that it is different for everyone, it cannot be said that it is the same for everyone. If you can say anything about her, it’s that she doesn’t exist either.

The rebellious weavers had already set fire to the estate and were walking toward the bathhouse, firing shots. Chapaev opened a hatch in the floor and, together with Peter, made his way through an underground passage to an armored car hidden in a haystack.

Chapaev started the engine, and Anna took her place in the machine-gun turret. The weavers surrounded the armored car. Chapaev ordered the clay machine gun to be uncovered. Anna silently circled the weapon, and all sounds disappeared.

Chapaev said that there once lived a Buddha who was so wise that things disappeared when he pointed at them with his little finger. Buddha pointed his little finger at himself and disappeared, but his finger remained. Wrapped in clay, it became a terrible weapon. Chapaev found it in a Mongolian monastery, attached a butt and turned it into a machine gun.

Coming out of the armored car, Peter found himself on a round patch of land, surrounded by an endless sparkling stream.

This rainbow flow was everything that I could only think or experience, everything that could be or not be.

Chapaev called the stream the Conditional River of Absolute Love, or Ural for short. People merge with it before taking any form. Anna and Chapaev rushed to the Urals and disappeared. Peter followed their example, saw the beginning of the stream and swam towards it. Peter's movement slowed down, the radiance of the Urals faded, and he woke up in the hospital. “Complete catharsis,” said the head physician. - Congratulations".

Tenth part

Peter was discharged and returned to the city. Sitting on the bench, Peter pondered what to do next. Then he remembered the literary cabaret and immediately knew what to do.

In the new reality, the cabaret has become a pub, but little has changed inside. Peter decided to repeat the actions that started it all: he sat down at a table, ordered a cocktail of vodka and ecstasy, and took out a pen he had stolen from the orderly before being discharged to write a poem. The pen turned out to be a miniature weapon with one bullet. Peter composed a verse, read it and shot at the chandelier. The lights in the hall went out, a shootout began, and Peter groped out of the pub through the back door.

Chapaev was waiting for Peter on the street in his armored car.

Chapaev has not changed at all, only his left hand hung on a black linen ribbon. The hand was bandaged, and in the place of the little finger, under layers of gauze, emptiness could be discerned.

The armored car set off, and “soon the sands were rustling all around and the waterfalls were rustling” in Inner Mongolia.

Summary Pelevin's novel "Chapaev and Emptiness"

Illustration by D. Kozlov

The narration is told on behalf of one of the most famous poets of St. Petersburg, Peter the Postota.

First part

In the dimly lit cabaret hall, Peter met the gaze of a strange man with a strong-willed, calm face and a mustache curled upward.

I suddenly somehow realized that he knew everything about the death of von Ernen - and what’s more, he knew much more serious things about me.

Having stopped firing, the sailors and Peter went out through the back door and got into the car. On the way, Peter fell asleep.

Second part

Peter woke up in the mid-1990s in a psychiatric hospital.

Her head physician treated “false personality disorder” using his own method: a group of patients were immersed in the false reality of one of them, and at the end of the session they all returned to their usual manias.

And at this second the patient himself can feel the relativity of his painful ideas and stop identifying with them. And from this to recovery it is already very close.

Peter was injected with the drug and entered into a group hallucinatory session. He finds himself in the reality of a patient who believes he is simply Maria from a Mexican soap opera.

Having emerged from “not the most interesting vision in his life,” Peter fell asleep.

Third part

1918 Von Ernen's apartment. Peter woke up to music coming from the next room. This mustachioed man, whom he had seen in a cabaret, played the piano excellently.

Behind the armored headquarters carriage, in which Peter and Chapaev were located, were attached carriages with a “red soldier” and a regiment of weaving workers.

The man is somewhat similar to this train. He is just as doomed to forever drag behind him from the past a chain of dark, terrible carriages inherited from no one knows who.

Peter entered his compartment and fell onto the bed.

Part four

He woke up in a tiled hospital room, in a cast-iron bathtub with cool water. In the adjacent baths lay other patients from his room - Volodin, Serdyuk and the muscular young man Maria.

During a quiet hour, Peter secretly entered the head doctor’s office and found a thick folder with the history of his illness. His pathological deviations began at the age of fourteen: he moved away from family and friends, his performance at school decreased, and he began to intensively read philosophical literature about emptiness and nothingness.

He considers himself the only heir to the great philosophers of the past. He is not bothered by being placed in a psychiatric hospital, since he is confident that his “self-development” will go the “right way” regardless of where he lives.

After a quiet hour, a quarrel occurred between Serdyuk and Maria. Peter tried to separate them and was hit on the head with a plaster bust of Aristotle.

Fifth part

Without listening to any objections, Peter got up and decided to take a walk around the city. Anna brought him to a restaurant, where she told him that Peter had become very close to Chapaev.

Chapaev is one of the most profound mystics I have ever known. I believe that in you he has found a grateful listener and, perhaps, a student.

Having learned that Chapaev is Anna's uncle, Peter tried to flirt with her. He decided that the girl was not indifferent to him, since she was on duty at his bed. To this Anna objected that she came to Peter’s room to listen to his picturesque nonsense. Peter was offended and quarreled with her.

Peter thought that he had nothing that could attract a woman like Anna, and felt disgusted with himself.

Peter found Chapaev in an old bathhouse in the backyard of the estate. He was upset to learn that Peter had really forgotten everything he had managed to understand, and tried to explain to him that the entire surrounding reality was in his consciousness, and he himself was in emptiness. Chapaev flavored his explanations with generous portions of moonshine, and soon Peter was too drunk to understand anything.

Sixth part

Peter found himself in Serdyuk’s reality, in Moscow in the 1990s. He was on the subway. At his neighbor’s shop, Serdyuk noticed a brochure “Japanese Militarism” and thought that the Japanese remember their duty, that’s why they live normally.

... and he sadly thought that Russia, in essence, is also the land of the rising sun - if only because it never truly rose over it.

Serdyuk woke up in a mental hospital. “That’s how they found you at the heater, with a rose in your hand. Who did you actually drink with, remember?” - asked the head physician.

Seventh part

Peter woke up in the headquarters room, where the day before he had traded cocaine for horses with Kotovsky.

Chapaev, wanting to demonstrate to Peter what mind, death and immortality are, took him to a meeting with the Black Baron, whom many considered the incarnation of the god of war. He transferred Peter to his mystical “camp” - the place where all warriors go after death. Countless fires burned in the thick darkness, each of which had vague silhouettes of people visible.

The Baron returned Peter to the steppe, where his dead fellow soldiers were sitting around the usual fire. The Baron taught them to see emptiness. Anyone who reached the goal immediately received a personal elephant and departed for Inner Mongolia - the place where the person who ascended the throne ends up.

Inner Mongolia is not called that because it is inside Mongolia. It is inside the one who sees emptiness.

Peter suddenly found himself back at headquarters, as if he had never gone anywhere with Chapaev and he had not introduced him to the Black Baron. Arriving at his room, the stunned Peter lay down on the bed and fell asleep.

Eighth part

Volodin explained to his nearby companions that “all the buzz in the world” is inside a person. It is locked, like in a safe, and in order to get the key to this safe, you have to give up everything. This is what they do in monasteries, where monks “throw away” around the clock from the feeling of world love.

Here - once it gets in, it will never let go. And there won’t be any need for a woman, there won’t be any hooking. There will be no withdrawal, no withdrawal symptoms. Just keep praying for it to be better and better.

One of the friends was inspired by the idea of an eternal high, but Volodin disappointed him: “if it were so easy to get into it, now half of Moscow would be drinking for free.” Inside a person there are full of all sorts of hypostases: a defendant, a prosecutor, and a lawyer. But in order to catch the “worldwide buzz”, you need to “wipe away this whole line” and become a nobody.

Ninth part

Peter returned to his room and lay down. Meanwhile, the weavers' concert "turned into complete disgrace" - shots were heard from the yard, drunken cackling and the sounds of a "languid fight."

Kotovsky came to Peter to say goodbye. He was going to disappear before the drunken weavers burned everything here, and advised Peter to do the same. He did not hope that Chapaev would restore order.

After seeing Kotovsky off, Peter went to Chapaev’s bathhouse, where he, habitually drinking moonshine, tried to make him understand that man is not a form, but a spirit.

It cannot be said about the soul that it is different for everyone, it cannot be said that it is the same for everyone. If you can say anything about her, it’s that she doesn’t exist either.

Coming out of the armored car, Peter found himself on a round patch of earth, surrounded by an endless sparkling stream.

This rainbow flow was everything that I could only think or experience, everything that could be or not be.

Tenth part

Peter was discharged and returned to the city. Sitting on the bench, Peter pondered what to do next. Then he remembered the literary cabaret and immediately knew what to do.

In the new reality, the cabaret has become a pub, but little has changed inside. Peter decided to repeat the actions that started it all: he sat down at a table, ordered a cocktail of vodka and ecstasy, and took out a pen he had stolen from the orderly before being discharged to write a poem. The pen turned out to be a miniature weapon with one bullet. Peter composed a poem, read it and shot at the chandelier. The lights in the hall went out, a shootout began, and Peter groped out of the pub through the back door.

Chapaev was waiting for Peter on the street in his armored car.

Chapaev did not change at all, only his left hand hung on a black linen ribbon. The hand was bandaged, and in the place of the little finger, under layers of gauze, emptiness could be discerned.

The armored car set off, and “soon the sands were rustling all around and the waterfalls were rustling” in Inner Mongolia.

One of Pelevin's fundamental works is built around one of the most fundamental psychological images, around the quadric archetype. There are four patients in one ward of a psychiatric hospital. Each one in turn tells his story, or, more precisely, not a story, but describes his world. In one of the worlds, the corresponding character enters into an alchemical marriage with the West (mental patient Just Maria - with Schwarzenegger). In another - into an alchemical marriage with the East (Serdyuk - with the Japanese Kavibata). One of the worlds is the world of the main character, Peter the Void, who, together with Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev and Anna, is fighting on the Eastern Front (the central world of the story). The fourth world (the narrator is the crazy bandit Volodin) itself breaks down into four component parts of the narrator’s personality: the internal defendant, the internal prosecutor, the internal lawyer and “the one who enjoys the eternal high.” The repeated quaternity, as it were, strengthens the central symbolism of the work for those readers who did not understand it from the symbolic figure of four patients in one ward. The archetype of the quaternity, despite the formal simplicity of the plot (a madman is discharged from the hospital because he experiences an epiphany, although not the one the doctor expected, namely: the patient comes to the conclusion that this world is illusory), gives the work depth and versatility. The text also abundantly presents symbolism, so to speak, of the second row. For example, a fragment: “We found ourselves on a dirt road going uphill. A gentle cliff began on its left edge, and on the right stood a weathered stone wall of an amazingly beautiful pale lilac hue,” represents a chain of symbols that appear in dreams, which are called great dreams. The cliff on the left here means the unconscious of a person, the stone mountain on the right is consciousness. The rise symbolizes the difficulty of plunging into the unconscious (consciousness gets in the way). Of course, Pelevin himself does not come up with the entire philosophical background of his work. This is the same literary text. An obvious borrowing is Baron Yungern’s manipulations with Petka; they surprisingly accurately repeat the rituals of Don Juan, the teacher of Carlos Castaneda. As a parallel plot of the story, Pelevin deliberately takes the life and thoughts of Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev. Here the author combines the simplicity of anecdotal images worn to holes by popular rumor with philosophical depth and the sincerity of the conversations of these same characters in the book. This opposition prepares the reader to perceive the main conflict of the work, the conflict between reality and the idea of it. Does this world really exist? He is no more real than that Vasily Ivanovich who lives in jokes. If Aivazovsky signs on a piece of a mast dangling among the waves, then in Pelevin we find a unique signature, a description of the style of the writer’s work. In the scene of Peter the Void meeting his medical record, the author essentially says not about the character in the story, but about himself, that “his thought, “as if biting into the essence of this or that phenomenon.” Thanks to this feature of his thinking, he is able to “analyze every question asked, every word, every letter, sorting them into pieces.” The book “Chapaev and Emptiness” contains many interesting and moralizing passages. What I remember most is the author’s recommendation on how a writer should behave with certain critics: “Having been forced by the nature of my work to meet with many serious idiots from literary circles, I developed the ability to participate in their conversations without really thinking about what what is being said, but freely juggling with absurd words..."

The novel takes place in a psychiatric hospital. There are four patients in one ward. To have fun, each of them begins to describe to his neighbors the world in which he exists thanks to his sick psyche. Main character– Peter Void. He is able to be in two worlds - in Russia of the period civil war and in this psychiatric ward.

The hero is the famous Petka, a fellow soldier of Chapaev. Chapaev himself appears in the work as a certain Buddhist monk who has found nirvana

And he sincerely wants to help everyone else get to this blissful state. One of his roommates - just Maria - describes her life in the West and introduces Petka to the famous actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The second one, named Serdyuk, transports everyone with his illusions to the East, where he has a conversation with the wise Japanese Kavibata. The fourth narrator is the bandit Volodin. He is the strangest and most dangerous of all, because his fictional world falls apart into four completely different components. In each of them, he exists in a new guise - a defendant, a prosecutor, a lawyer and a drug addict, for whom life is seen as a continuous high.

Petka’s world is the eastern front, where he fights together with Chapaev, Anka and Commissar Kotovsky. During his story, the hero visits the mythical Valgulla, composes patriotic poems and performs in front of crowds of weavers. For his services he receives an order and dives into the deep Ural River. All this is accompanied by intimate conversations with Chapaev and tender, reverent scenes of love with Anka. The novel ends with Peter the Void having an epiphany in his head and his two worlds merging into the only possible one - the real one.

The doctor, with great surprise, releases the recovered Peter from the psychiatric hospital. Petka has one desire: to get to Mongolia as soon as possible. Hot sands, waterfalls and, of course, his beloved Anka await him there. Petka is going to cover the long journey in a very reliable vehicle – Chapaev’s own armored car.

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Summary of Chapaev and Emptiness Pelevin