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Self-Portrait on a
Timeless Background:
Transformations of
the Autobiographical
Mode in Russian
Postmodernism
a
Mark Lipovetsky
a
Illinois Wesleyan University
Published online: 03 Jun 2014.

To cite this article: Mark Lipovetsky (1996) Self-Portrait on a Timeless

Background: Transformations of the Autobiographical Mode in Russian
Postmodernism, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 11:2, 140-162

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 Self-Portrait on a Timeless Background:
Transformations of the Autobiographical
Mode in Russian Postmodemism

By Mark Lipovetsky

When we enter the territory of postmodernist autobiography, we find our-

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selves in a unique Hall of Mirrors. After Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard,
discussions of the "disappearance of the subject" and the simulation of subjec-
tivity have become almost a truism. These ideas have been successfully formu-
lated as applied to autobiography by James J. Dowd, who in the article "Aporias
of the Self' speaks about the dramatization of the "I" in postmodernist culture:
"It encourages instead a recognition or reappreciation of the once remarkable
notion that the self is an image we construct from the material at hand. In a
sense, a self resembles a wardrobe: we pick up bits and pieces of identity along
the way and, as long as these elements fit and are suitably stylish. we will wear
them for the time being .... The effect of this development has been to trans-
form personality from a congeries of lived experience into a form of style" (Dowd
246.352).
But if the "1" is created like a composition out of already known but most
importantly "other" elements, if self-identity becomes to a great extent a ques-
tion of style, then what is postmodernist autobiography about? Modernist
metaprose portrayed the process of creation as a metaphor for life: each person
writes his own fate just as an author builds the novel that you are now reading.
Postmodernist autobiography turns out to be the inversion of modernist metaprose:
revealing the artificiality and tendency toward quotation of the elements out of
which the "unique" "I" is composed, postmodernist autobiography turns the his-
tory of the "I" into a metaphor of the very process of creation--chiefly
postmodernist creation, with its quotations and self-referentiality. Here the rela-
tionship between the "signifier" and the "signified" is not merely reversed. In
fact, here the boundary is erased between these categories-the story of an indi-
vidual "signifies" creation in general, but this creation is addressed to the con-
struction of the "I" by the laws of the literary text; that is, it also performs the
role of the "signified."
Postmodernist autobiography distinctly-especially thanks to its parodistic
"laying bare of the device"-finds and exposes the basically new correlation
 Self-Portrait on a Timeless Background 141

between the macro- and micro-processes in culture. This corre,lation may be

explained by the analogy with theories of chaos of the natural sciences or. more
precisely. with the concepts of complex dynamic systems. One of the most im-
portant ideas of this theoretical methodology. which has spread to many fields
of study in the course of the past decade. is the discovery of the fact that un-
stable. random. turbulent-in brief. chaotic-processes are internally organized
with some patterns of irregularity-the "strange attractors." These structures of
order within chaos are themselves built on the principle of the "matryoshka"
(the Russian dolls that fit inside of each other). which consists of a repeated
structure of progressivel y smaller scale. Mathematicians have begun to say that
recursive and self-referential functions are possible. with the most brilliant ex-
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ample of these functions being the "fractals" of Benoit Mandelbrot. the founder
of a new geometry of the figure. which allow one to descri be phenomena as far
from each other as the structure of galaxies. a drawing of a shore line and a map
of human blood vessels. On one hand. the "principle of self-similarity at differ-
ent scales" is active everywhere. while on the other hand. "no part of the set
exactly resembles any other part. at any magnification" (Gleick 22-8).
Postmodernism with its chronic emphasis on crisis may be considered with-
out any exaggeration to be the analogy of a "far-from-equilibrium" or a chaotic
system. It might be suggested that in it arises a "holographic effect" analogical
to that described above. when the hierarchical correlation between part and whole
disappears-in particular. between the micro world of a person and the macro-
- structures of the cultural context. The autobiographical genre on the strength of
its orientation toward investigating precisely these links acquires in
postmodernism the significance of an experimental form. whose semantics is
much wider than the traditional history of the I.One cannot disagree with Leigh
Gilmore, who in the foreword to Autobiography and Postmodernism writes: "The
mark of 'postmodernist' autobiography is a discursive effect. an effect of read-
ing in relation to certain discourse. defined through the simultaneous assem-
bling and disassembling of other discourses and genres. Thus, the mark of auto-
biography creates the enlivening instability in both text and context" (7).
As strange as it may seem. many of these characteristics are completely
applicable to Russian postmodernism and Russian postmodernist autobiogra-
phy in spite of the fact that the historical background upon which these literary
phenomena were formulated differed substantially from western "postindustrial"
society.
The period that began in Russian literature after the final defeat of the ''Thaw''
experiments in modernizing the communist utopia (that is after 1964-68) earned
many unflattering epithets. It is true that the majority of them. as usual. were
taken directly from the sphere of political economy. such as zastoy ("stagna-
 142 alb: Auto/Biography Studies

tion"). The Russian cultural tradition knows a different term: bezvremen' e (liter-
ally: "period without time"). Despite the negative connotation. it possesses a
certain heuristic preciseness-in similar periods the inertia of time's flow some-
how weakens; various epochs and styles "crowd in" on top of each other, creat-
ing an unpredicted combination of discourses and styles. And the artist becomes
aware of the fictionality or more precisely of the multiple meanings of the maxim
"a captive of time" (u vremeni v plenu). Looking back at the bezvremen' e of the
1840s or the 1880s or recalling that Blok used this word to name what later
entered the history of 20th century literature as "the 191Os" (desiatye gody), one
cannot help seeing that it is precisely in these periods that the most intense search
for new artistic principles takes place. This process moves in various directions
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by the method of risky experiments and tragic mistakes. However it is exactly in

these years that the foundations of the most "far-playing" aesthetic traditions
are laid down. the potential of which traditions exceeds the capability of a single
generation-such were the Gogolian (1840s) and Chekhovian (1880s) traditions;
so also was the experiment of Acmeism (the 1910s). It was not in vain that Iurii
Tynianov in his well-known article, "The Interval" [Promezhutok] (l927}-the
very name is clearly synonymous to the category of bezvremen' e-defined such
a period as a time of disintegration of literary schools, as a complex process of
crystallization not so much of new ideas as of "a new vision," a new artistic
optics.
It is very probable that in the case of the Russian literature of the 1970s and
1980s, which today is viewed almost uniformly both in Russia and in the West
as archaic and not relevant to current times,' the more distant it becomes, the
more it will attract the attention of literary historians precisely by its quality of
bezvremen' e or promezhutok; without the study of which it is impossible to un-
derstand the meaning and genesis of new artistic phenomena. It is precisely this
period that coincides with the contemporary ascent of the autobiographical genre
in general? and of postmodernist autobiography in particular.
Already in the very early texts of Russian postmodernism the need to
return to the autobiographical mode can be distinctly sensed. Thus. for ex-
ample. in the evolution of Nabokov-who built a connecting bridge be-
tween Russian modernism and world postmodernism over which several
generations of writers later passed-the novels clearly stand out which ex-
hibit the most radical displacements of modernist philosophy of the indi-
vidual. all of them constructed as fictional autobiography: First and fore-
most is The Gift [Dar] (a unique metaprosaic epilogue of Russian modern-
ism-1938). The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (an experiment in dialogic
autobiography-1943), and finally Lolita. (the autobiography of Humbert
as the first appearance of the truly postmodernist "1"-1955). Also con-
 Self-Portrait on a Timeless Background 143

structed as a confession is Venedikt Erofeev's Moskva-Petushki, a key work

of Russian postmodernism. The full coinciding of the first name and sur.
name of the hero with the first name and surname of the author orients us
here toward the tradition of autobiography. Simultaneously one of the main
conditions of autobiographical narrative is violated: the impossibility of a
story about one's own death, the impossibility of a statement of the type "I
died"3-while the autobiography of Venichka Erofeev concludes with the
words: "since that time I have not regained consciousness, and I never will"
(Venedikt Erofeev 136).
The combination of blatant traditionalism with an equally blatant skew-
ing of genre norms in general is highly characteristic of postmodernist (quasi)
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autobiography. The fixation on dynamic contradictions and dialogical op-

positions lying at the foundation of this discourse has become the constant
motif of modern research devoted to autobiography. Above all, this is a
contradiction between the author and the autobiographical hero-in accor-
dance with Philippe Lejeune's idea of the "autobiographical pact" they are
identical, but their structure and function in the text are directly opposed.
This is the source of many other contradictions:

between the individual protagonist and the impersonal author-narrator;"

between the "I" as subject (author) and the "I" as object, as The Other (the
~ protagonist);'

between the distancing of the author. which guarantees his omniscience and
the corresponding capacity for interpretation, and the involvement of the pro-
tagonist in the course of concrete events, which limits his intellectual horizon;

between the complete, given nature of the author's point of view and the
incompleteness and changeability of the autobiographical hero's personality
which creates havoc in the text;

between the "I" that is realized as a result of the timeless and immortal
space of language, and the "I" that belongs to the sphere of "life"-which means
the sphere of time and death."

Each of the forms of autobiographical narrative solves or, at least. smooths over
these contradictions in its own way. But how does the postmodernist autobio-
graphical text overcome them? It is impossible to avoid these contradictions
since the semantics of the autobiographical genre in general and in Russian
 144 alb: Auto/Biography Studies

postmodemism of the last decade in particular depends on the concrete means of

their solution.
Postmodemist autobiography fulfills a paradoxical function: it brings about
a self-representation through demonstrating the impossibility and absurdity of
its own unnamed but generally known and accepted conditions and conventions.
One might suggest from this that the very turning by authors of the postmodemist
orientation toward autobiographical models is dictated by two tasks: first. it is
through the autobiographical genre that we get the most distinct expression of
Michel Foucault's dispersed subject-the disintegration of the models of per-
sonality that are rooted in different cultural traditions of integrity. a process that
characterizes the postmodemist consciousness as such; secondly. free play with
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traditional models of self-identity and self-representation or rather free floating

among the ruins of these models creates the optimal conditions for the search for
non-classical and non-hierarchical forms of self-organization of the personal ity,
Inconnection with the last statement. the analogy with the theories of chaos
in the natural sciences undoubtedly suggests itself again. theories in which far-
from-equilibrium conditions. in classical systems understood as a state of chaos
and entropy. are regarded as conditions for forming fluid and clear models of the
whole. the so-called "dissipative structures." The application of these theories
to the sphere of humanities has already raised the question of the "chaosmic
self': "The chaosmic self. as a term. designates the principle of subjectivity no
longer strictly punctual. expressive. or interior. The chaosmic self. as an aspect
of self-organization. organic process, is expressed at different levels of refer-
ence and within different temporalities by corresponding contexts ... this 'self'
is the expression of a series of interinvolved. temporally and spatially imbri-
cated environments" (Kuberski 139). It appears that precisely the artistic-philo-
sophical process of forming the "chaosmic self' also determines the semantics
and dynamics of postmodernist autobiography in Russian literature of recent
years.

The novella by Evgenii Popov The Soul of a Patriot. or Various Messages

to Ferfichkin (written in 1982. first published in 1988) parodistically refers to
the confessionality (shestidesiatniki) of the writers of the 1960s and to the mod-
ernist autobiography of the late Valentin Kataev ("mauvizm"), and in it the theme
of a search for roots characteristic of the Village Writers (derevenshchtkii is
called to mind. while at the same time we are seeing the last chapter of Brezhnev's
biography-his funeral. In the novella, such well-known figures as D. A. Prigov.
Viktor Erofeev, Bella Akhmadulina, Boris Messerer, Liudmila Petrushevskaia,
 Self-Portrait on a Timeless Background 145

and many others appear under their own names. All this, of course, is oriented
on autobiographical models. But again the novella is constructed ott a blatant
flouting of one of the main conditions of autobiography: the temporal distance
between the narrator and the autobiographical protagonist. In Popov's novella
this distance is abbreviated before our eyes (all the more because in the text the
rift between the time of the writing and the time of the described events is scru-
pulously fixed and discussed). and in the denouement the writing and the event
coincide completely: E. A. Popov as a witness of History simply preserves ev-
erything that is synchronically happening on the television screen transmitting
the funeral of Brezhnev ("He Who Was").
In general the central paradox of the novella is linked with the category
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of time. On one hand. we have the search for historicity. for personal con-
tact of the autobiographical "I" with history: at first through the description
of his pedigree and the fates of his relatives. who personally experienced
many troubles of the Soviet epoch. then through a detailed account of the
funeral of Brezhnev and of the "historical wanderings" of E. A. Popov and
D. A. Prigov in the environs of this funeral. But history in the lives of grand-
mothers and grandfathers-with all its changes-represents an alien. de-
structive primordial force. Thus the narrative about ancestors is felt as a
sort of double alogicality: first. historical reality itself is alogical, and sec-
ondly. the perception of the descendant. E. A. Popov. constantly striving
irrelevantly to make bad jokes on someone's grave, is also alogical. The
"dearh of He Who Was is the culmination of this absurd story. Telling about
the state mourning and accompanying rumors. trying to preserve the sol-
emn-historic intonation and constantly breaking away into farcical notes.
taking great pains over meaningless trifles, mocking. chuckling. mimick-
ing. Popov recreates the stream of consciousness of his autobiographical
hero as a "historical phenomenon"-as a snapshot of the history of the ab-
surd. which arrived at 1982 and then proceeded on; of the absurd in which
everything is nonsense. everything is unimportant. including life. death,
and blood.
On the other hand. the whole poetics of this novella affirms the possi-
bility of only one type of time-extra-historical. right-now. haphazardly
taken down in shorthand by a jesting author. His slogan is sly: "don't waste
TIME. describe what STILL EXISTS ... " (Popov 56). But what STILL
EXISTS? The very process of writing exists. but-as opposed to the auto-
biographical metaprose of Mandel 'stam ("The Egyptian Stamp." "The Noise
of Time." "Fourth Prose") or Nabokov-this process is actually concen-
trated on the absence of any serious justification for itself aside from a
personal "planned economy" with a "premium" from God and comic calcu-
 146 alb: Auto/Biography Studies

lations of proposed honoraria in case of publication and re-publication of

the present composition in "Novel-newspaper" (Roman-gazeta). That which
Roland Barthes called the geno-text-the metatext, describing its own birth-in
Popov looks roughly like this:

But I wonder when I will get fed up with stretching out rubber,
describing to nobody useless old grumblers and myself, practically
useless also? But then life interferes, suddenly everything will stop
... (23)
I am interrupting myself, like a dog who has had a tin can tied to
his tail by hooligans ... I, a trembling creature, is it possible that I
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HAVE THE RIGHT to write poorly and haphazardly, like Valentin

Kataev's MAUVIST, after all they don't pal no mAn! for scribbling
and even, on the contrary, they resent it, like nihilists do the holy
fool, while I really feel like reading to you, I really feel like it ....
Well, you have read to this point, Ferfichkin, so someone else would
have read also. (40--1)
However, New Year is really at hand, and there is no way I can
cross over the border from November 14, 1982! Should I decrease
the volume of my messages? Tear them out right away, on this very
line, this word, this lett ... (62)

The very process of writing-self-expression of the potential "I" which is

unrealizable in social and historical reality-is presented here as devalued, and
what devalues it is precisely the absence of time-the emptiness in which the
writing takes place and by which it is dictated. Popov's refrain is basically "no,
the wrong thing," "I am always talking about the wrong thing"-and it points to
this gaping emptiness of absolute timelessness tbez-vremen' e) beyond the writ-
ten text.
In this context, the absence of time, aside from the present moment of
chat, of the quickly disappearing and discredited chat of the following mo-
ment, turns out to be a maximally historical condition while the "capricious
delight of historicity," which is chased after by the protagonists of the story,
turns into the feeling of a vacuum. Thus, let us say that a Miracle, which
appears to them as a result of their "historical wanderings," consists of a
policeman who "DIDN'T LET THEM GO AS HE WAS LETTING THEM
GO. It seems he is just about to release them. But in fact. really. he com-
pletely didn't let them go as he was letting them go. that is-politely. al-
most condescendingly. What miracles! Truly, miracles. but in our example
it can be seen that one should not spoil the people" (68).
The absurdism of the autobiographical consciousness is accentuatedly rooted
in Soviet history and culture: the narrator's main complex is the desire for com-
 Self-Portrait on a TImeless Background 147

munity, for community with the reader (hence the familiar-ingratiating dialogue
with the faceless Ferfichkin), with the social ideology, with "the demands of
time," and with Great history. allegedly taking place beyond the circle of police
cordons.
The autobiographical hero-narrator creates the text of his "I" within Soviet
consciousness, not hiding but accentuating its chaotic logic. The absence of time
as a form of history; the fictitious nature of the brink of death, of government
mourning; emptiness as the meaning of literary writing-aJl these are not only
the oxymorons of chaos, but carnivalistic mesalliances which become for the
hero-narrator a source of special carnivalistic freedom. "[S]ometimes it seems
to me that it was precisely with this, that is with the struggle with laxity in the
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form of chaos. that I was occupied for my whole life, enduring one defeat after
another and retreating to previously prepared positions" (50)-this formulates
the autobiographical hero. That which seems a defeat in the face of the chaos of
the world creates an ironic program of personality, a method of self-identifica-
tion.
The autobiographical "I" with all its character of the Soviet "ordinary guy"
possesses in Popov a truly carnivalistic consciousness. dethroning all the super-
ficial, the stable, the firm. This is the same consciousness for which the world
fell apart into a multitude of equivalent theatrical masks and which turns out to
be maximally adequate for such conditions of culture, "when earlier forms of
life. moral codes and beliefs turned into 'rotting ropes,' and the formerly hidden
ambivalent and incomplete nature of human thought was revealed" (Bakhtin,
Problemy 287). If we look for the tradition to which the poetics of Popov 's prose
and the method of self-realization of his autobiographical hero goes back. then
this is probably the tradition of Russian jesting. D. S. Likhachev writes about
this:

"jesting work" has its inertia, too. He who is laughing is not disposed
to stop in his laughter. Characteristic in this regard is the typically
Russian form of laughter-jesting [balagurstvo] .... Jesting destroys
the meaning of words and mangles their outer form. The jester ex-
poses the absurdity in the structure of the words. gives an untrue
etymology or inappropriately emphasizes the etymological meaning
of the word, links words superficially similar in sounds, etc .... The
author builds his own work as an unending toppling of everything
real into the world of laughter, like an uninterrupted humorous dou-
bling of what is happening, what is being described or told about.
(21,36,37)
 148 alb: Auto/Biography Studies

Of course. Popov transforms this tradition rather deeply: in his work the
inertia of "laugh work" is displayed precisely in the fact that a sham is revealed
not only in the socialist mind or in history. but also in death. in creative work.
and in the reality of writing. Thus in the strength of the uninterrupted nature of
the laughing process. Popov's narrator simultaneously gives out (or tries to give
out) something simulated for something real. genuine. seriously tragic. And if
the stylistic game of jesting. according to Likhachev, forms the poetics of "anti-
works" of the medieval culture of jesting (of an anti-prayer. anti-doctor. anti-
judge list). then Popov creates on the foundation of jesting a style of "anti-litera-
ture." which fashions in its own substance not only the "destruction" of culture
but also its transformation into the habitual. everyday milieu ofliving. "the wheel
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of life" (to use the title of one of Popov's stories). Simultaneously this is also a
form of anti-autobiography: the crumbling of all possible versions of identity
acts as a process of incarnating the autobiographical "I."
Jesting. sparing nothing. even revealing the emptiness of the very process
of creative work-this form of carnivalistic consciousness and ambivalent free-
dom chosen by Popov is simultaneously debased. comic. but also the image of
the incomplete nature of human thought. The principally unfree Soviet con-
sciousness. made neurotic by the thirst for community with something supra-
personal. is sarcastically imprinted by Popov and turns out to be simultaneously
an absurd. chaotic consciousness-but chaos acts also as a condition for free-
dom and thus paradoxically undermines its own premises.
This path to self-identification of the (quasi-)autobiographical "I" turned
out to be quite productive for Russian postmodernism. The main trait of this
path consists of the fact that the acquisition of inner freedom by the autobio-
graphical hero-narrator through the carnivalistic experience of the illusory and
comical fictionality of everything that seems solid and tediously serious is paid
for by the consciousness of the inseparability of his "I" from the world of absur-
dity and disintegration. Thus freedom here is not opposed to disintegration. but
flows out of it. The various ways in which this concept of personality has been
brought to life may be found in such postmodernist (quasi)autobiographies as A
Russian Beauty by Viktor Erofeev, An Endless Dead End by Dmitrii Galkovskii,
The Last Hero by Aleksandr Kabakov. many novellas by Valeriia Narbikova.
and certain other works of recent years.
 Self-Portrait on a Timeless Background 149

However, this path has its conceptual limit, and most distinctly .of all it is
revealed in such a brilliant model of postmodernist fictional autobiography as
Sasha Sokolov's novel Paltsandriia (1985-Astrophobia in English translation).
If Evgenii Popov's novella rests on the popular model for Soviet culture of
the autobiography "about the time and about myself," the autobiography of the
private-person/witness of great historic events, then Sokolov parodistically re-
produces the opposing model, the autobiography of the "great person," the ac-
tive maker of historic events. As strange as it may seem, in a travestying version
Palisandriia recalls at the same time the autobiographies of Brezhnev (Small
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Land, Rebirth, Virgin Soil) and Solzhenitsyn (The Ca/fButted Against the Oak).
All the prerogatives of authorial power are given away in Sokolov to the
"unreliable narrator," the Autobiographer-a Kremlin Orphan, later ruler of
Russia, Palisandr Dal 'berg, who is writing his memoirs for grateful descendants.
Neither the parodic epigraph ("to whom it may concern"), nor the foreword of
the Biographer, written in the year 2757, falls out of the more than characteristic
stylistics of Palisandr himself. In Sokolov, on principle, the boundaries of the
autobiographical character-narrator's worldview are rubbed out: this worldview
is presented from the beginning as universal. Thus, already in the first pages of
this quasi-autobiography the contradiction is set up between the author as pow-
erful emissary from the magic space of language and the author as a character
living in concrete space and time.
The development of this contradiction in Sokolov proceeds along a para-
doxical path: by all accessible means Sokolov turns the "life" of the autobio-
graphical hero into a direct result of the author's linguistic game.
The autobiography of Palisandr models the idyllic semblance of Soviet his-
tory. In general the idyllic beginning passes through the whole tradition of Rus-
sian autobiography from Aksakov to Nabokov. The portrayal of childhood in
tones of an idyll is completely canonical. But the combination of this tradition
with the topos of bloody Soviet history calls up an unexpected aesthetic effect.
In Sokolov the Kremlin is endowed with the traits of a mythological continu-
ity--except for Beria, who hanged himself on the hands of the Spasskaia tower
clock. Here, in essence, no one dies-even the last tsar with his family. it turns
out, lived in the Kremlin under the name of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bulganin-
and all the details of Kremlin life-from childhood games to the Novodevichii
monastery, transformed into a government House of Massage, from the descrip-
tion of the verse improvisation competition in Georgievskii Hall to the touching
image of Andropov in a cap-bear witness to the idyllic eternity of Soviet his-
tory. Bakhtin notes: "Idyllic life and its events are inseparable from this concrete
 150 alb: Auto/Biography Studies

comer of space where fathers and grandfathers lived. where will live grandfa-
thers and grandsons .... The unity of place of the life of generations weakens
and softens all the temporal boundaries between individual lives and between
different phases of one and the same life. The unity of place brings close and
fuses the cradle and the grave ... childhood and old age" (Voprosy 374). This
characteristic of the idyllic chronotope explains not only the intentional anach-
ronisms of the autobiography of Palisandr, but also the fact that until his depar-
ture from the Kremlin he completely does not notice his "irretrievable years."
portraying himself as a youth of eighteen years (a softening of the boundaries
between "different phases of one and the same life"). In principle even the
gerontophilia of Palisandr is the utmost expression of the overcoming of time
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boundaries between generations. maximally (sometimes excessively) an expres-

sion of the close unity of youth and age. But again as soon as Palisandr leaves
the Kremlin. his sexuality is subjected to persecution and debasement. The simu-
lated character of this idyllic world is expressed primarily through style. And
here also the essential difference between Palisandriia and Lolita is striking.
If in Lolita (on which. as D. Barton Johnson bears witness, Sokolov con-
sciously was orienting himself while working on the novel [217]). there is a
complicated dramatic confrontation of modernist and mass-cultural codes. then
in Palisandriia besides these codes. as A. K. Zholkovsky observed. there are
clearly present dissident discourse. socialist realist stereotypes. many references
to Russian classics. and a stylized archaic courtesy ("Starring"). However. in
Sokolov's novel there does not arise even the smallest conflict among these
codes: they idyllically blend together into a semi-fantastic/semi-parodic style.
strikingly refined and at the same time invariable in the course of the 300-page
novel. The deepest variance of this stylistic scale from the inner dialogism of
Humbert's confession consists of the basic lack of conflict in the composition. In
the stylistic space of Palisandriia everything is united. and this indifferent unity
also possesses a flawless aesthetic regulation-it is not by chance that A. K.
Zholkovsky compares the stylistics of this novel with the flow of verse in prose.
But we emphasize that the variety of styles here does not become many voices;
indifference equalizes all codes in one essentially monological stream. The ar-
tistic philosophy of the "I" and self-identity in Palisandriia becomes the result
of style.
One of the recurring motifs of Palisandriia, which in general is characteris-
tic for postmodernist autobiography. is the motif of time or rather its disappear-
ance. Bezvremen' e sets in immediately after Uncle Beria hangs himself on the
clock hands. In addition. all the important Kremlin personages belong to the
secret society of watchmakers while Palisandr himself after becoming tsar ac-
quires the title "Your Eternity." It is true that the characteristics of bezvremen' e
 Self-Portrait on a Timeless Background 151

have a rather unexpected character in the novel: "The day before yesterday at
sixteen minutes to nine bezvremen' e set in-to dare time and to create" (57),
announces Andropov at the very beginning of the novel. Completely accepting
this definition, "daring and creating," Palisandr brings his own additional nu-
ances to the image of bezvremen' e.
Throughout the book, Palisandr's slogan (which he allegedly borrowed from
Berdy Kerbabaev) is: "There is no death!" (113, 131,233,259). But there is no
death precisely because there is no time. We find indirect evidence of this link-
ing of motifs in the denouement of the novel: Palisandr has to come to Russia
and announce the end of bezvremen' e, as the novel itself quickly ends, but the
epilogue begins with the words: "Life has been abruptly broken off. It was bro-
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ken off tastelessly and slowly. Just like a worthless boulevard novel that ends
with the bombastic death of the hero" (261). The epilogue, basically, is dedi-
cated to describing the process of death. On the other hand, Palisandr constantly
recalls his many incarnations, and there is no death for him because he lives
eternally, changing only his appearance. But the theme of incam ation is realized
in the plot through the condition of "alreadywas" (uzhebylo-deja vu) in which
Palisandr is submerged continually: "once the hour comes when all the frequently
reproduced instances of deja vu with all their variations flow together beyond
the deep perspective into a single alreadywas" (235). But how do all these in-
stances of "alreadywas" differ from the hero's timeless "recollections about the
future"? The narrator openly equalizes these concepts, adding to the equaliza-
tion the narrative style itself: "Bezvremen' e is harmful, destructive. It corrodes
the structures of narration to a dull unrecognizability. And together with Palisandr
himself, we stop understanding in which of his incarnations all this is happen-
ing" (236). In fact, in Palisandriia bezvremen' e and eternity act as synonyms,
and the style which smooths out the contradictions between the rather distant
stylistic elements incarnates in a plastic wayan image of timeless eternity
(bezvremennaia vechnost') that consists of undifferentiated instances of
"alreadywas".
The plot of the autobiography also models exactly that same image of eter-
nity. Palisandr succeeds in the course of one of his lives in uniting the polar
conditions through which the transformation of Palisandr acquires an ever more
universal character: a privileged Kremlin orphan, he becomes a dissident, mak-
ing an attempt on the life of the "placeholder" Brezhnev: a sexual robber-
gerontophile. he becomes a prostitute; a youth. he is simultaneously an old man;
finally, a male creature in all ways, he turns into an androgyne and changes the
pronoun form of his narration to the neuter "it" (ono). However. here the same
mechanism is achieved; as in the style of the novel and in the image of eternity!
betvremen' e. the erasing of differences between polar categories devalues and
 152 alb: Auto/Biography Studies

depletes them. In the final analysis, existence becomes indistinguishable from

non-existence: both of them are equally simulated. As Palisandr himself con-
fesses in the final chapters: "Don't cry; after all you don't exist. Just like me. We
don't exist. We have passed over. We have sickened out. ... Your fatherland is
Chaos" (254-8).
It is important to note that the artistic picture of the world inPalisandriia is
in principle unmovable, since all the transformations that occur change noth-
ing-they are of the same quality: all conditions are equally simulative. The
absence of time is a metaphor for the impossibility of movement. It is interest-
ing that Sasha Sokolov in his commentary to Palisandriia, titled "Palissandr-
c'est moi?" (264-9), rather insistently speaks of the loss of taste for a plot,
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although in this novel (if we compare it, for example, with Between the Dog and
the Wolf>not only is the overarching plot much more distinct, but it even has a
completely distinct story line. However, Sokolov is apparently right: both the
overall plot and the narrative line inPalisandriia are fictitious since in the gela-
tin-like eternity of deja vu nothing can happen: the gelatin just sways.
The stylistic play in Palisandriia finally turns into a mythological measur-
ing: a system of stylistic devices directly modeling absolute eternity. Here those
characteristics which Palisandr gives himself as fictitious author and consequently
as the source of this stylistic play are also important: "The whole world-every-
thing on earth from my point of view-or, if you wish, according to me-is a
rather multicolored medley. The whole universe is coarsely diffused. Figures
spring up, one after another ... " (85); "You were, my dearest, an old woman's
enchantment-death" (92). These accents merely emphasize that which is em-
bodied in the whole architectonics of the novel. Palisandr is absolutely restricted
to the world which he is describing, and therefore he becomes the personifica-
tion of mythological Chaos, its voice. Zholkovsky sees in Palisandriia clearly
expressed links with the myth of Narcissus (Bluthdaiushchie 226--9). It seems
that here a more difficult form of mythologism has arisen, turning as it were the
archetypes of classical myths inside out. In the mythological consciousness, as
is well-known, in principle the border between subject and object is absent. "Even
an enemy is a friend, I myself, even death-immortality" (Freidenberg, 115).
And Palisandr as if in special confirmation of this formula proves, by way of
illustration, that the Mazhoret mocking him is himself (230). But a completely
different logic is realized here. In myth, man is a part of the universal cycle of
life-death-birth; that is why he is even dissolved in the world, a participant in its
highest natural laws. But the eternity of Palisandriia countermands the category
of natural laws; this is an eternity of uniform repetitions, an eternity of
bezvremen' e, an eternity of deja vu, an eternity of the immovable idyll of sem-
blances, in which the differences are absent between executioner and victim.
 Self-Portrait on a Timeless Background 153

male and female. the youth and the old man. life and death. Precisely in the
strength of this uniformity and absence of boundaries. the autobiography of
Palisandr easily shapes eternity. and in the final analysis his "I" also is the whole
universe. the whole rotation of the earth. Nothing exists in the novel that. goes
beyond this limit, nor can it exit. Egocentric mythologism might be the name for
this worldview.
The nature of this worldview is linked to a much greater degree with mod-
ernism and the avant-garde than. properly speaking. with postmodernism. The
protagonist to whom all the prerogatives of the author's position are given in
fact achieves the maximum degree of modernist freedom-its monologic con-
sciousness swallows up the universe without a trace. But this freedom como.
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pletely revokes itself. In the uniform eternity of deja vu, in principle there can-
not be independent acts: everything has already happened-and each phenom-
enon here. as we have seen, easily flows over into its opposite. Not without
reason. having built his own individual eternity and thus having absolutely re-
alized his own freedom. does Palisandr in the novel's epilogue confess his de-
feat: "You were so carried away that sometimes it seemed to you that this text
would in no way be lost in the rotations of time and turbulence of relativity. You
were mistaken. Although all the literature that anticipated me is only a timid
trial of the pen, a clumsy cuneiform, a tribute to human lack of culture and
boorishness.-it is a given that every word becomes lost ... And-pay atten-
tion!-everything that happened. happened in vain and futilely" (261). Thus
the epilogue. formally ascribed to the hero, by virtue of its style stands out
against the general background. and the words, "The author has been eradi-
cated," refer not only to Palisandr, but also to the impersonal author-creator.
For behind every stylistic tonality sounding in the narration of Palisandr, there
stands a definite type of authorial position. Palisandr exhaustively takes each
one of them to the absurd: the position of the "Great Autobiographer" and im-
partial scribe. pornographer and epic-writer. the portrayer of morals and man-
ners and the pamphletistlwriter of exposes. It was not in vain that Sokolov
intended "to write a novel that could end the novel as a genre" (Johnson 217).
To a certain degree he succeeded in all this: all the possible authorial positions
and many typical forms of self-identification became imprinted through the
artistic style in an ego-mythological' immobility of eternity-bezvremen' e-in
this artistic context, the difference between them as well as the value of each of
them is annihilated. In the total worldview of the novel not even an aspect of
the deconstructive play with various languages of culture remains for the au-
thor-creator. The game presupposes freedom. but freedom does not exist with-
out the possibility of changes-a possibility excluded in the ego-myth of
Palisandriia.
 154 alb: Auto/Biography Studies

The fictional biographies presenting a unique solution to the stalemate that

arises are those of such relatively young authors as Sergei Gandlevskii (Trepa-
nation of the Skull, 1995), Mikhail Shishkin (One Night Awaits All, 1994),
Vladimir Sharov (Until and in TIme, 1993). Viktor Pelevin (Omon Ra, 1993).
Aleksandr Ivanchenko (The Monogram, 1992). and Aleksandr Vernikov (auto-
biographical short stories). As inSoul of a Patriot andPalisandriia. these works
develop the same characteristics of autobiographical consciousness and above
all the qualities of simulation, fragmentation, and camivalism. But the new au-
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tobiographical heroes do not remain fixated on these qualities and the corre-
sponding relations of the "I" with the world of culture and history. They take the
path reminiscent of the traditions of the Bildungsroman or Kunstlerroman narra-
tives. But as in American postmodernism. these traditions arise in a paradoxical
understanding. Following Susan Strehle. who analyzed contemporary American
"actualism," one might say of the Russian texts of this period: "none of them
achieves a harmonic accord with those forms [Bildungsroman or Kunstlerroman),
and in fact they become interesting, instead, for their divergence from the pat-
tern they use ... None of these protagonists is truly 'educable,' nor does their
environment provide the series of clear 'lessons' that would lead to 'illumina-
tion' and alignment with 'truth' " (231). The directions of the search for self-
identity here are in no way determined either by the past or present experience
of the hero and rather are even opposed to it. However, as a rule, the autobio-
graphical hero's finding of not so much a "life" as a literary shape becomes the
sum of such works: here the concentration on plot takes the place of fate. but the
rhythm that is found becomes the equivalent of personal integrity. If in Sokolov's
novel the playful style devalued all the possible existential meanings, then in the
works of this type. on the contrary. literary devices acquire an existential infla-
tion. In fact. here takes place an ostentatious imposition upon each other of two
different functions of the "I" in an autobiographical text: "I" as the subject of
narration. building the text, and "I" as the object of artistic analysis.
The character of such imposition can be observed most clearly of all not
even in prosaic text. but in poetic text-in the strength of the traditionaIIy el-
evated semantic weight of form in poetry. In this sense. the text of the weJl-
known conceptualist poet Lev Rubinstein with the expressive title "That's Me"
["Eto-ia") (from the publication titled "It is Impossible to Encompass Every-
thing that Exists" in Novyi mir) is instructive.
At first glance, this is a typical postmodernist enumeration, a "register" into
which enter, by means of a comma, both the important and unimportant: photo-
graphs from a family album, people's names, unconnected phrases, titles of books.
 Self-Portrait on a Timeless Background 155
inscriptions, short dialogues, stage directions-in essence, the way things al-
ways are in Rubinstein's work. The text itself as a whole may be taken as a
special kind of puzzle: why is this whole register or collection, in its mere ap-
pearance a heap of words and subjects-why "That 's Me"? In other words, pre-
cisely the visible unconnectedness of form raises the question of the link be-
tween seemingly arbitrarily elements of meaning and the most important se-
mantic problem of Rubinstein's poetic autobiography.
Andrei Zorin was the first to speak about the particular rhythmic quality of
Rubinstein's texts, where the flipping through of bibliographic cards on which
the author is writing forms a rhythm and where the card itself acts as a quantum
of rhythm and meaning (lOO). However within the given text-by definition
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autobiographical-the rhythm is created not only by equal alternation of the

cards. The whole text is divided into several local rhythmic and at the same time
semantic structures, which take each other's place in sequence.
The first part (from the first to the thirteenth card) is given order by the
mentions of snapshots where "I" was photographed: "6. Me with a sled .... 8.
Third from the left-me .... 13. And that's me in bathing shorts and a T-shirt"
(Rubinstein 69-70). The intervals between these cards are filled by naming
photographs of "others." "I" becomes a special kind of rhythm. emphasized in
the first three cards: "1. That's me. 2. That's me too. 3. And that's me" (69). Such
a structure acquires the meaning not only of a formal but also of a semantic
introduction: mentions of myself. the constant presence of "my" portrait allows
for placement in a single row of his parents. Misha with a ball. the market in
Ufa, dear Elochka, and the deaf seamstress Tat'iana in a swimsuit. It is signifi-
cant that the final card of the fragment strengthens the rhythmic role of mentions
of "I" with a metrical element: "And this is me in trunks and T-shirt" (A ao id v
trusakh i v maikey-.« fully accented iambic tetrameter.
The beginning of the following rhythmic fragment (cards 14-32) is desig-
nated as the beginning of a syntactical period: "14. Sitting." The rhythm of this
fragment creates an alternation of various names and meditative phrases: "15.
Lazutin Felix. 16. And someone's hand. writing something on a sheet of paper.
17. Golubovskii Arkadii L'vovich. 18. And a droplet of rain running down the
train window" (70). The degree of rhythmicality here is quite high since the
names are all given uneven cards and the meditations are given even ones. In
addition, the meditative phrases correspond to each other not only by means of
anaphora (which is often the case in Rubinstein) but also by means of the dis-
tinct syntactical parallelism. The meaning of this rhythmic structure is also illu-
minated by the play of "one's own" and "another's." At first glance, we have the
alternation of a person (a personal name) and an impersonal detail. But anaphora,
syntactical parallelisms. and the general expressiveness of the descriptions of
 156 alb: Auto/Biography Studies

these details affirm the opposite: in an item that is an object-whether a droplet

of rain, a piece torn from a photograph, or "an open umbrella, slowly floating
out from under a bridge" (28}-the reflection of the "I," the author-as-subject, is
felt while at the same time a person's name turns into a dry sign, an impersonal
index and, in essence, becomes disembodied.
The third rhythmical fragment (cards 29-55) begins by rhyming with the
beginning of the preceding fragment: "14. Sitting: ... 29. Standing" tsidiat ....
stoiaty (71). And even the structure of this part takes the form of a complicated
version of the preceding part's structure. The alternation of all this fragment's
elements of rhythmic structure is extremely even: in fact one and the same
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"stanza" is repeated seven times, consisting of name + phrase "And we see ... "
+ phrase. "And the inscription .... " A change takes place only in the finale of
the fragment where the three-line stanza is substituted for the two-line, instead
of "And we see ... " is heard "And we discern" (72), and in the place of the name
of the "other" the "I" appears again: "54. And we discern in the semi-darkness a
silhouette of a huge rat, sniffing around the face of a sleeping child. 55. That's
me" (72). The change of quite a steady rhythm is always a method of accentuat-
ing a semantically important point in the text. This holds true for Rubinstein.
The final card. "That's me," becomes a unique resume of the whole fragment:
all of this is me. Looking ahead, we will notice that the finale of the following
fragment will be precisely the same: "63. This is all me" (73). In other words,
the self-consciousness and self-awareness of the "I" arises through intersecting
with other people's names, the words of others supposedly said about oneself,
and the names of unknown others.
This conclusion we will apply in full to the fourth fragment (cards 56-63),
whose rhythm is formed by a repetition of intentionally bookish, almost quoted
phrases, beginning with: "And trembles ... (a duelling pistol; a French novel
opened to the middle; a silver snuff-box; a small tin cross; a silver samovar)." In
addition, this fragment begins with a phrase that clearly calls up an association
with the beginning of Eugene Onegin-"a large silver button on the traveling
cloak of a young man who is going to visit his dying relative"-and concludes
with a reference to "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe-"a brilliant beak of a
large black bird. unmovingly sitting on the head of a plaster bust of an ancient
goddess" (72). These are quotes, literary images of fates, among them the fates
mainly of the suffering and unfortunate-but all this is also "1".
The rhythm of the largest. penultimate. fifth fragment (cards 64-102) is
composed of such repeated elements as:

remarks of concrete characters. which gradually turn into small

scenes or dialogues of from one to three cards;
 Self-Portrait on a Timeless Background 1S7

the dividing stage direction "Exits," without fail heard after a

person's remark or at the end of a scene;

bibliographical information on scholarly articles and books with

complete data on the name of the author of the imprint, pages etc.

The main focus of this fragment consists of the fact that the names of all the
"speaking" personages and of all the authors of books and articles already men-
tioned and heard in the first and second parts of the text. Here purely rhythmic
links rise up, distanced repetitions semantically related among themselves ac-
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cording to the law of the subtext. There is a dual effect: first, that which seemed
an impersonal index of a person acquires a voice and speech; second, the titles
of books and articles sound like self-metadescriptions of the text itself-like
authorial attempts to define the essence of his composition: "The Current Laby-
rinth," "Season of Revelation," '~We're Having Fun! And You?"-A Repertoire
Collection ... for Those with Weak Hearing," "Formula of a Wheel," "Several
Questions of Unconventional Poetics ... " (73-4)
Yet another pivotal point is that all these names first appeared after "Sit-
ting" and "Standing." A certain group photograph from a family archive comes
to life before our eyes, and all its characters "e x it". In fact, "e x i t" becomes
the main condition of their life.
Here it would seem that autobiographically colored elements---cartiers of
the self-consciousness of "J"-are completely absent. But in fact the "I" here is
manifested indirectly-through "others". Only the consciousness and portrayal
of "I," continually rising up next to those of "Govendo T. Kh." and "the afore-
mentioned A. V. Sutiagin" unites for us these characters in the general space of
the text, in fact in a single scene of the text, from which they all gradually exit.
Thus the remarks which they pronounce may seem puzzling only outside the
general semantic field of the text. Thus A. P. Gavrilin says: "We, for example,
say: the wind is making noise. Right? ... But it is not the wind at all, but rather
that which falls in its path: tree branches, roofing tin. stove chimneys. The wind.
Liubochka. is not making noise. What can it make noise with?" (74). But this is
a direct answer to the question ofthe manifestation, the incarnation of the "I"; a
question which is constantly played up by the structure of the text. "I" is the
wind, incarnating itself only in something else or through others. but not re-
duced to roofs, chimneys. and trees. remaining in some way separate from them.
Not without reason in the finale. when everyone exits. the "I" nevertheless
does not disappear. The rhythm of the final part (cards 103-119) returns to the
rhythm of the first. beginning fragment. But the rhythmicality of the final frag-
 158 alb: Auto/Biography Studies

ment is much higher. Here the same phrase is distinctly repeated: "And that's
me "-whereas in the beginning the mention of "I" was given in variations. The
repeated maxim in its tum is anaphorically linked with phrases about others.
Here. too. these phrases shape a text with verse rhymes, but no longer tom apart
by the refrain "And that's me"; on the contrary. the refrain becomes an integral
part of the particular and tangible rhythmic design. We truly have an occurrence
of "I." dissolved in signs of the existence of others. And in the finale of the text
for the first time the phrase about "I" is unfolded-only about "I"-<:ompletely
adequate in itself although it exists in the words and images "of others":
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113. And that's me.

114. And that's me in trunks and T-shirt.
115. And that's me in trunks and T-shirt with my head under the blan-
ket.
116. And that's me in trunks and T-shirt with my head under the blan-
ket running along a sunny lawn, and my marmot is with me.
117. And my marmot is with me.
118. Exits. (76)

The autobiographical "I" in Rubinstein. on one hand, is free of any concrete

individual biographical or even external characteristics. At the same time. the
"I" turns out to be a unique combination of alien and repeated elements of exist-
ence: from people and words to things and signs. The search for this combina-
tion. the working out of its design. is actually the meaning of life; the definitive
finding of "I" is the result of one's life. After this. one can only exit.
From this point of view. the very structure of the text. built as this kind of
combination, becomes a plastic model of the "1," a model of moving (self) con-
sciousness. Its rhythmic structure acquires here a special-philosophical- mean-
ing. The semantic parts of the text formed by a single rhythm realize certain, not
so much biographical. but metaphysical phases of the formation of the "I" and
act as essential aspects of the dynamic of self-knowledge. which in a constant
instability seeks its definition in the world of set (hence the metaphor of the
photo album) data about Others. The rhythmic organization turns this text into a
condensed synopsis of a bildungsroman. Therefore the construction of the text
as alternations of local rhythms plastically incarnates the authorial model of
self-identity and the process of its formation. The micro-orders that take each
other's places, which are built together into an arbitrary and, it seems. chaotic
listing of everything. and all the rhythmic systems in Rubinstein are interre-
lated. The autobiographical consciousness arises precisely at the point of their
mutual intersection. The concept of the autobiographical "I'' is born as a result
 Self-Portrait on a Timeless Background 159

of the attendant short-lived systems characterizing the unstable correlation of

the "I" and the Other. These unstable systems in turn arise from the stream of
alien forms of consciousness and soon go back into it. But the "I" is also a
dynamic unity of these unstable rhythms, which join "I" and the Other in such
diverse and contradictory ways. Truly, such a text should be called "That's Me."

Of course, the works that have been examined here do not exhaust the whole
spectrum of postmodernist transformations of the autobiographical mode in con-
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temporary Russian literature. In spite of the dissimilarity of the examples and of

the various aims of the tendencies underlying them, it is possible to separate out
several general traits of postmodernist autobiographical practice. The autobio-
graphical "I" arises here at the intersection of two vectors of the chronotope of
bezvremen' e that are opposed in influence. In this literature, bezvremen' estops
being considered as the space and time of a vacuum. On one hand, the weaken-
ing of the power of time creates the sense of a breakdown into eternity. of an exit
into a space of freedom. On the other hand. this chronotope, saturated with char-
acteristics of the autobiographical consciousness. appears as a materialization
of the private. very concrete, fragmented experience of a human being. The au-
tobiographical "I" in this context is built on the conjunction of incompatible
qualities: fragmentation and a supra-temporal scale, isolationism and polyphonic
openness, text and context. This oxymoronic "I" not only reveals the contradic-
tions of autobiographical discourse. but even to a certain degree "removes" them:
for it is precisely thanks to its contradictoriness that autobiographical discourse
also becomes an adequate form for self-expression of this new type of self-
identity.
Meanwhile, returning to the thought expressed in the beginning of this ar-
ticle about the isomorphic confluence of the artistic conception of the autobio-
graphical "I" with the postmodernist philosophy of creativity and culture as a
whole. we may see in various versions of autobiographical ism the reflection of
the most fundamental versions of creative work and creative self-knowledge.
which took shape in Russian literature in the un-ideal postmodernist era that was
also superimposed on such a prolonged bezvremen' e.
The first variation, presented by the parodic autobiography of Evgenii Popov.
may be conditionally called carnivalistic: in it the demythologizing play with
figures of emptiness, with semblances of history and government ideology, turns
out to be the only possible form of creative realization of the author, soberly
confessing his own inner unity with the fictional chronotope of bezvremen' e.
 160 alb: Auto/Biography Studies

This author clearly is close to the figure of the jester and the fool in Bakhtin's
typology: he brings into being his own creative freedom. ceaselessly undermin-
ing his own discursive power and tirelessly demonstrating the absence of his
personal identity by means of numerous textual roles and masks.
The second variant of the philosophy of creative work. expressed by Sasha
Sokolov in Palisandriia. perhaps can be designated "baroque." Here the sem-
blances of bezvremen' e. in contrast. are exaggerated into phantasmagoric gro-
tesques. and behind the figure of the monstrous autobiographer is felt above all
the magic power of language. creating a demonstratively and refinedly artifi-
cial but also absolutely convincing exotically beautiful. immovably museumlike
world of eternity. creating out of nothing-not even from signs. but from shades.
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echoes. from stylistic overtones and syntactic figures.

The third variant. which we analyzed in an example of text by Lev
Rubinstein. would best be called "prosaic." In this case we should be speaking
not so much of prose or prosaicness as of"prosaics". following Gary Saul Morson
and Caryl Emerson. of an artistic philosophy of everyday and chance-filled
existence. "Prosaics is the sort of worldview. to which disorder. lack of coordi-
nation and isolation are more inherent. than a system or a law" (130). "In the
center of attention in prosaics are everyday occurrences. which in principle
cannot be reduced to 'basic' laws or systems (34). Creative work in this con-
ception is aimed at a search for and creation of the smallest links between "I"
and the Other. These links are almost impossible to evaluate. but they remove
the opposition of "one's own" and "another's." principally important for the
"carnivalistic" (the bringing down of "one's own" to "another's") and the "ba-
roque" (the creation of "one's own" out of "another's"). It is the very process of
building these links (of rhythmic and semantic consonance, analogies. repeti-
tions) that structures the emptiness. turning human personality into a self-suffi-
cient "dissipative order"-incomplete and not reducible to abstract "totalities."
Proceeding from these brief and. of course. far from exhaustive character-
istics. it is not difficult to construct a typology of Russian postmodernism. Thus,
let us say, the "carnivalistic" variant was realized by. in addition to Evgenii
Popov, Viacheslav P'etsukh, Iuz Aleshkovskii, and to a certain degree VasiJii
Aksenov. The "baroque" structures are quite clearly visible in such dissimilar
authors as Tat'iana Tolstaia. Vladimir Sorokin, Vladimir Sharov and Viktor
Pelevin. The "prosaic" line is the most difficult and least explored, but it is
precisely to this line that the novelistic work of Sergei Dovlatov, Liudmila
Petrushevskaia, and Vladimir Makanin gravitates.

Illinois Wesleyan University

Translated by Diana Goldstaub

 Self-Portrait on a TImeless Background 161
Notes

1. See, for example, Viktor Erofeev.

2. See Balina.
3. See Folkenflik ("Introduction" 15).
4. See Freccero.
5. See Folkenflik ("Self" 215-34).
6. See de Man.
7. See Prigogine and Stengel'S (257-90).

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