Dreaming of space: a premonition of Ernest Hemingway

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article concentrates on the cultural mythology of Ernest Hemingway implicitly inscribed into Aleksei Uchitel’ and Aleksandr Mindadze’s Dreaming of Space (2005). This film offers a presentiment of Hemingway as a symbolic representative of the unattainable West and the life that existed just beyond the reach of most Soviet citizens. In so doing, it engages with the Soviet lost generation, those released from Soviet prison camps after Iosif Stalin’s death. Technological advancement would not result in a progressive, modern Soviet state and this lost generation remained, in the words of Nancy Condee, ‘somnambulants and post trauma casualties’ of Stalin’s terror. Ultimate freedom was only realised by leaving the USSR, a pursuit that had inherent risk. The premonition found in Dreaming of Space is not actually of Soviet scientific and cultural superiority, but of the desire for liberation from the USSR. Certainly, Hemingway was an important part of that counter-culture response.