| The works of Nikolai Gogol (1809-52) were indisputably important in the development of realist writing in nineteenth-century Russia, but it has been clear to readers and critics for quite some time that they are not in themselves "realistic." This essay proposes the creation of a new category called Unrealism as more descriptive of certain works by Gogol (especially "The Nose" and "The Overcoat") than previous labels such as Naturalism and Romantic Realism. Unrealism in some ways resembles Victorian British nonsense and is greatly indebted to the narrative techniques of E. T. A. Hoffmann. It is characterized by a preoccupation with the themes of myopia, confusion and detachment. The Unrealist works of Gogol and others nearly always feature as heroes (or anti-heroes) members of Russia's civil service bureaucracy, from petty clerks to high-ranking V.I.P.'s, as near-perfect exemplars of these themes. The ironic exploitation of the bureaucratic point of view foregrounds the distortion to which it subjects reality: Unrealist narrative holds a funhouse mirror up to nature.This essay includes analyses of works in the Unrealist tradition by Gogol, V. F. Odoevskii, A. V. Sukhovo-Kobylin, N. S. Leskov, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin and A. P. Chekhov, contrasting them with works such as Fedor Dostoevskii's Poor Folk, seen as a polemic against Gogol's Unrealism in "The Overcoat," and Lev Tolstoi's "The Death of Ivan Il'ich." It ends with a brief discussion of the continuing importance of Unrealism for early twentieth-century Russian authors such as Fedor Sologub and Andrei Bely, as well as many writers of the Soviet period. |
