The End of the Human Document
: Georgij Ivanov's Raspad atoma
Leonid
Livak
Until today, Raspad atoma (1938) remains among Georgii
Ivanov's least known writings and one of the most obscure pages of
Russian émigré literature in the inter-war period. Few
émigré works provoked such contradictory responses as
this text. The flurry of critical opinions that appeared in the wake
of its publication soon gave way to a conspiracy of
silence
(Gul&soft;, Odvukon&soft;, 1973: 68-69),
whereby émigré critics boycotted Ivanov's text. I study
Raspad atoma from a literary-historical perspective. By
placing Ivanov's work in the context of the contemporary developments
in Russian émigré and French literatures one can reveal
the contradictory meanings this text had for its émigré
readers.
In 1919, Paul Valéry argued that the post-war intellectual
was a European Hamlet
in spiritual crisis (La
Crise de l'esprit, 1957: 992–993). Echoing
Valéry, Marcel Arland suggested in 1924 that young French
writers suffered from a new malady of the century
because the culture of positivism, which had hurried the death
of God,
was itself compromised by the war. They regarded
literature as a means for self-study; documentary
literature had to replace literary fiction
(Sur un nouveau Mal du siècle, 1952:
11-37). Many Russian émigrés agreed that old literature
had reached the limits of artificiality. In the early 1930s, Georgij
Adamovi&chachek;, Georgij Ivanov, and their artistic
associates—the Paris school
—elaborated
their own concept of the human document
as a
responsible literary form
(Fel&soft;zen,
Put&soft; pravyj, 1934: 285) in which the artist
wrote only about those things he had experienced (Janovskij,
Polja Elisejskie, 1983: 247, 277). But by 1939,
Adamovi&chachek; doubted the very possibility of
truthfulness
in literature. His doubts were brought
about by the fact that most émigré writers could now
easily write artistically convincing but similar
documents.
This development resonated loudly in
Raspad atoma. For Ivanov's protagonist,
estheticizing
art is no longer possible, but
anti-estheticizing
art is equally deceptive. Thus, he
indulges in the desperation of this vicious circle and writes literary
prose about the impossibility of literature.
Raspad atoma is open to several
interpretations. Xodasevi&chachek; and Nabokov classified it as a heap
of literary banalities that failed to produce the coveted effect of
the human document.
The second interpretation, aired in
Zlobin's and Gippius's critical opinions, envisions the text as a
successfully realized human document
that reflects the
deepening disintegration in the consciousness of the European
Hamlet.
But there is also another possible interpretation. One
can consider Raspad atoma as the gesture of an
agent-provocateur. By ridiculing the esthetics to which he himself
only recently subscribed, Ivanov turned his weapon upon himself and
his artistic oeuvre of the last ten years. The universal devilish
laughter of his narrator could be the best manifestation of a
European Hamlet's
complete spiritual
disintegration. Making the inner contradictions in the concept of
truthful
literature ever more evident, Raspad
atoma heralded the disenchantment of the Paris
school
writers with the human document
doctrine
and its vision of the relationship between art and reality.