SoSe 15: Writing as the unhuman revolution
Viktor Jerofejew
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A writer is a permanent scandal. He/she sees the world and human beings as no one has seen them before. Let us take Dostoevsky with his Notes from the Underground, Tolstoj with the Death of Ivan Il'ich, Nabokov with Lolita, Kafka with The Castle, Joyce with Ulysses, or Andrej Bely with Petersburg.
From Flaubert to Marina Tzvetaeva and Majakovsky, from Andrej Platonov and Bruno Schultz to Jack Kerouac and Josef Brodsky the writer transforms tradition, if not - tradition transforms the writer. But who gave the writer the right to judge, to mock or to laugh? No one. Does the writer want to change the world or does he simply want to acquire fame, that is power? Who knows!
Who knows how th? writer becomes the writer. Is he/she born to be a writer or are there specific moments that give wax to a writer's life? This is the theme of the Nabokov's novel Gift. The writer betrays everybody and everything. The better a writer is the deeper he betrays all those around him/ her. The writer betrays his family, his colleagues, his supporters. He/she loves his/her enemies more than his friends. Good reviews are a bad sign for the true author, of course.
He/she goes against morals, conventional styles of life, against the gods people believe in. He/she betrays even him/herself as a social being. I think, Lermontov, Majakovsky, Celine and now Michel Houellebecq are good examples of the writer's un-human revolution.
Still we all need good writers who are terrible, who love the provocation, who are born to obliterate our illusions, to initiate the un-human revolution. We all need them - simply to be human, not to be living dead bodies. Are we crazy? What a terrible paradox!
Reading will include: Tolstoi, Death of Ivan Il'ich, Dostojewski, Notes from the Underground, Nabokov, The Gift, and Jerofejew, The good Stalin.
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