Abstract
In this chapter, Pałach-Rydzy presents the work of prose writer Anatoly Kim, whose Kazakh, Russian, and Korean roots offer inspiration for intertwining, hybrid themes. His experimental writing spans the Soviet and post-Soviet eras, and reflects the cultural and political currents within those historical shifts. Particularly notable are interacting themes from both European and Asian mythologies that infuse his work, contributing to a cultural hybridity in Russian literature. By analyzing the transitions in Kim’s writings across eras, Pałach-Rydzy offers insights into new developments in the publishing arena of fictional literature in Russia since 1991.
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Notes
- 1.
Anatoly Andreyevich Kim was born in 1939 in the village of Sergiyevka (Kazakhstan) to Korean parents. In 1947 his entire family moved to Sakhalin. Kim studied art, but chose to pursue a literary career, and in 1973 graduated from the Gorky Literary Institute. He debuted in 1973 with a set of short stories called Goluboy Ostrov (“Blue Island”). He is the author of poems and the following prose: Lukovoe pole (“Onion field”), 1976, Sobirateli Trav (“Herb Collectors”), 1980, Nefritovij Poyas (“The Jade Belt,”), 1981, Lotos (“Lotus” 1980), Otets-Les (“The Father-Forrest”), 1989, Belka (“The Squirrel”), 1985; theater plays such as Plach Kukushki (“The Cuckoo’s Cry”), 1984, Proshlo Dvesti Let (“Two Hundred Years has Passed”), 1986; and screenplays, such as Sestra Moya Lyusya (“My Sister Lyusya”), 1985, Vyiti iz Lesa na Polyanu (“Going Out from the Woods to a Clearing), 1988, and Mest (“Revenge”), 1989. He translates works of Kazakh writers into Russian, including Poslednij Dolg (“Last Duty”), 2000, by Abdizhamil Nurpeisov, and Put‘ Abaya (“Path of Abay”), 2007 by Muhtar Aujezov.
- 2.
Kim moved to Korea in 1991 and stayed abroad for three years—not for political reasons but to teach Russian at the University of Seoul. After returning from Korea, he worked with Andrei Bitov and Sergei Zalygin at Novy Mir magazine.
- 3.
Sakhalin Island is a large island in the north Pacific Ocean that has variously belonged to Japan and Russia (currently the latter) and home to several Asian indigenous societies.
The author “described the exotic Korean-Russian world with such force of lyricism that political attitudes of editors worked only in part – they instinctively did not want to publish these strange texts smelling of seaweed and wild wind of Sakhalin in the magazines, they felt something alien sensed, something that no one would articulate clearly. The material saved Kim from censorship of repression, his spicy worldview remained impenetrable to the vigilant editorial clearance. And, of course, the most important thing, the saving thing, was that Kim belonged in the category of ‘national frame’ of the Soviet literature thanks to the material, his name and origin” (Ivanova, 1996).
- 4.
As Natalya Ivanova notes, Kim’s exotic prose slipped from censorship’s obvious assessment. His spicy worldview remained impenetrable to the editorial clearance decision-makers. “And … the saving thing, was that Kim belonged in the category of ‘national frame’ of the Soviet literature thanks to the material, his name and origin” (Ivanova, 1996).
- 5.
This is an aesthetic writing style where the real facts are intertwined with illusionary magical, spiritual, and/or mythical elements. It can be found in literature, inter alia, as the possibility of a double understanding to fantastic stories, destroying the boundaries between reality and a dream and blending time levels. In Russia, magical realism first appeared in the prose of such nineteenth-century writers as Nikolai Gogol. See Kislitsyn (2011).
- 6.
In this paper, I use the term “chronotope” as defined by Mikhail Bakhtin: “(literally, ‘time space’)”; the term expresses the inseparability of space and time (time as the fourth dimension of space). The chronotope as a formally constitutive category determines, to a significant degree, the representation of the self in literature as well. For more information, see Bakhtin (1981).
- 7.
The use of multiple narrators, deriving from a “stream of consciousness,” and the non-chronological narrative, as well as a reliance on myth and literary allusion, began to appear in the novel in the last decades of the nineteenth century.
- 8.
Compare with Lipovetsky’s observation (Lipovetsky, 1999). “We already know that a transition from simulation to chaos is completely natural for postmodernism. But Sokolov goes one step further, identifying chaos with the monotonous eternity of timelessness, an image that, in turn, is an inextricable component of the novel’s (Astrophobia – MPR) style. […] artistic model of the world in ‘Astrophobia’ is inert, since all the transformation that occur change nothing: All conditions are equally simulative. The absence of Time is a metaphor for the impossibility of movement” (Lipovetsky, 1999, pp. 178–179).
- 9.
For more information see Popova (2012).
- 10.
For a theory of fantastic prose, see Renate Lachmann (2002).
- 11.
The idea that man is able to change the environment of his existence comes from Russian traditions and cosmological ideas of Nikolai Fiodorov, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, and Vasily Vernadsky.
- 12.
See the example of Viktor Pelevin, who is inspired by the culture of the Far East and the philosophy of Zen, Taoism, or Hinduism. He experiments with representations of reality and removes the distinction between the real and the fictional. Some of his characters have the ability to exist simultaneously in several worlds. Pelevin’s inspiration comes from such notions and categories as karma, Maya, reincarnation, and Nirvana. For more information, see Chebonenko (2011). See also Frumkin (1999).
- 13.
Writing this novel, Anatoliy Kim was inspired by the ideas of Nikolai Fedorov.
- 14.
The concept of constant travel and the cycle of rebirths present especially in Eastern religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism).
- 15.
Here, Kim clearly goes against the typical Russian approach to spaciousness. For commentary on the characteristics and the dominance of space in Russian literature, see, e.g., Ingold (2007).
- 16.
Kim uses character names as associations; he refers to existing real images that should be added to a character by a reader and thus creates an illusion of authenticity (Hodrová, 2001).
- 17.
See Kim’s comment of writers’ status in the interview for South Central Review: (…) writers – those who before were in the elite – no longer occupy that position. through our new work --we must define a new place in the literary process and in our literary society” (Rougle & Rich, 1995, p. 128).
- 18.
Kim translated Kazakh literature into the Russian language at the beginning of the twenty-first century, as the translations are paid—as Vladimir Bondarenko points out—at a much higher rate than his original Russian-language works. See Bondarenko (2015).
- 19.
According to Marsh, the post-Soviet period can be described as a period of “post-Soviet” pluralism. See Marsh (www.angloman.spb.ru/archiv/text4.doc).
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Pałach-Rydzy, M. (2021). Developments in Russian Literature: Examining the Pre- and Post-Soviet Prose of Kazakh-Russian Writer Anatoly Kim. In: Pearce, S.C., Sojka, E. (eds) Cultural Change in East-Central European and Eurasian Spaces. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63197-0_12
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