Cпор об образе Остапа Бендера в советской теории литературы

Abstract

The satirical novels by I. Ilf and E. Petrov exposed both the flaws of current affairs and the common lifestyle of the old regime, constructing modernity in order to make it the subject of a more complex satirical rebuke. This mechanics of timely discarding social constructivism was not always transparent to Soviet critics, as demonstrated by the dispute between two prominent scholars, V. Ya. Propp and Yu. B. Borev. Propp considered the novels about Ostap Bender an unsuccessful example of the comic, finding in them a mixture of genres, unmotivated intermediate denouements, stretching and implausibility. It is proved that Propp in many respects continued the aesthetics of Vladimir Soloviev, who in his struggle against Leo Tolstoy's positions brought the comic and the grotesque closer together. Borev, on the contrary, considers Ostap Bender almost as Tolstoy's character, comic in his misguided goal-setting, but not in his innermost features. The two scholars diverge in their understanding not of satire, but of humor and its position in the aesthetic construct. Interpreting this dispute is useful in specifying the relationship between ongoing social construal and habitual aesthetic experience in different types of humor.