Human Nature in Utopia: Zamyatin's 'We' by Brett Cooke (review)

Abstract

558 Reviews Human Nature in Utopia: Zamyatin's 'We'. By Brett Cooke. Evanston, IL: North? western University Press. 2002. ix + 221 pp. ?59.50. ISBN 0-810-11873-4. In his new study of Zamiatin's We, Brett Cooke addresses through the prism of what he terms 'biopoetics' the novel's central concern, the human spirit's indomitable resis? tance to totalitarian ideology, and the manifestation of that spirit in the creation of art. Rationalizing utopian systems deny mankind's essential spirit, which can be defined according to sociobiology or evolutionary psychology as a dystopian impulse towards spontaneous gestures, manifested in the ways we treat food, sex, art, and so on. Cooke explores in successive chapters the ways in which these issues are raised in We. In Chapter 2 he considers how utopian schemes forthe consumption of food provoke dystopian resistance: the communal eating of the One State is contrasted with the spontaneous sharing of forbidden drinks and food outside the Green Wall. Chap? ter 3 comments on Zamyatin's prescience in foreseeing the rise of cults of personality within totalitarian ideologies. Chapter 4 develops an article on the mathematics of We which Cooke firstpublished in 1988 (in Zamyatin's 'We': A Collection of Critical Es? says, ed. by Gary Kern (Ardis: Ann Arbor)). Here he highlights some inaccuracies in the mathematical calculations made by D-503, in order to counter the prevalent crit? ical opinion that the Single State is based on perfect, rational mathematical precepts. Chapter 5 considers how our need forhumour and play confounds utopian schemes, and suggests that We is a deliberately playful text, designed to free the ludic spirit within the reader. Chapter 6 looks at the ways in which masochistic, self-destructive tendencies hinder attempts at rational social engineering, clearly following on from Dostoevskii's Underground Man. Cooke also argues here that the ending of We is deliberately ambiguous, and should not necessarily be read in an entirely pessimistic sense. Chapter 7 examines the familiar topic of the ways in which the Single State's attempts to regulate sexuality and reproduction are subverted by the erotic impulse. Chapter 8 returns to the subject of diet to consider the common human desire for variety in food, even where this can lead to nausea or revulsion. In the final chapter, Cooke considers how artistic creativity characterizes resistance to totalitarian regimes, as well as, in the case of We, providingthe fictional author with a form of psychotherapy which enables him to discover his true identity. The book suffers from a writing style which often distracts from the points that Cooke is raising about the novel. As we dart from topic to topic in what Cooke de? scribes as an 'island-hopping campaign through the cognitive structure of Zamyatin's We*(p. 22), the author constantly indulges in trivial asides: 'Someone probably paid forthe book you are now reading. Thank you, whoever you are' (p. 29); 'Stolichnaya, anyone?' (p. 33); 'We is software for the mind. [. . .] And truly,it is a game scholars love to play. Who needs Nintendo, now that we have We}' (p. 104). We are given trite reflections on child-rearing, Agassi on how to be successful at tennis, the Bobbit castration case, Colin Powell's possible candidacy for the American Presidency, and history's inflation of Columbus's status ('Zamyatin should have known better' (p. 50)). The Soviet system's defining characteristic is repeatedly described as 'sloppy thinking' (pp. 63, 78, 96, 165); better editing might have saved this potentially inter? esting book from the same fate, even in the land of the free. Wolfson College, Oxford Julie Curtis Keats and the Russian Poets. By Sonia I. Ketchian. (Birmingham Slavonic Monographs , 33) Birmingham: Birmingham University. 2001. vii+ 308 pp. ?25. ISBN 0-7044-2293-x; ISSN 0141-3805 (pbk). John Keats is among those major English poets who have gone relatively unappreciated in Russia. In Sonia Ketchian's view Keats has, however, been more readily ...