Trickster vs. Trickster: “Teachers” and “Students” in Ehrenburg, Olesha, Bulgakov and Babel Works

Abstract

The paper explores the fulfillment of the trickster trope in Soviet culture based on four works (The Heart of a Dog by M. Bulgakov, Envy by Yu. Olesha, Julio Jurenito by I. Ehrenburg and The Odessa Tales by I. Babel). The author defines the features of the Soviet trickster: the "integral" character, roguery are an illustration of its cynical philosophy, which is devoid of the pragmatism inherent in cynicism and tends to P. Sloterdijk’s estimation of cynicism — the selfless and shameless performative relegation and ragging of all reputable discourses and symbols. The author has also highlighted three features of the Soviet trickster as a character (Sharikov, Ivan Babichev, Julio Jurenito, Benya Crick): ambivalent, transgressive, and liminal states, thanks to which the trickster embodies dangerous freedom from social norms and boundaries and functions, at the same time, as a mediator; performativity, which turns any gesture and any utterance into a performance; a special bonds with the sacred. Notably, in the prose of the 1920s, the plot portraying the confrontation between fathers-children, students — teachers, puts forward the figure of the trickster as an essential component — as one of the central participants in the debate about a new man and a new world. There is evidence that all variations of the Soviet tricksters have a close linkage with the reception of Nietzscheanism. The analysis of each of the central characters of the works centers around the answer to the question: What does each of the trickster’s role say about the emerging Soviet modernity? The author interprets the two types of the trickster as evidence of the Soviet modernity’ splitting, that emerged in the 1920s. Julio Jurenito and Ivan Babichev represent the type of trickster teachers via whom the modernist concept of personality was adopted. The author offers the treatment of Sharikov and Benya Creek as a type of" plebeian modernity " (Ilya Gerasimov). All the analyzed texts indicate that trickster cynicism is becoming a social norm of the new world, and it is on this basis that the conflict between trickster fathers/teachers and their followers in the next generation breaks out.