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Larisa Rudova Reading Palisandria Of Menippean Satire and Sots-Art SINCE ITS PUBLICATION in 1985, Sasha Sokolov's novel Palisandria [Palisandriial has attracted a body ofadmiring and perceptive critics who have addressed its ideological (Dobrenko; Groys), thematic (Johnson, Slavic and East European Journal; Boguslawski), and intertextual (Matich; Zholkovsky) aspects. For most of them, Palisandria is a highly stylized "mock-epic" or "mock-memoir" of considerable complexity that deconstructs , in the tradition of sots-art, the official myth of Stalinist and postStalinist utopian society. The book fascinates the reader by its range of moods-from completely nonchalant to pensive, sarcastic, and grim; by its grotesque treatment of Soviet history; its speculative reflections on the nature of time and its relation to history; its kinky eroticism; and its rich and playful ornamental style. Yet Palisandria is a demanding and "forbiddingly 'ethnic' text" requiring from the reader familiarity with the Russian language and literary traditions, history, and culture (Zholkovsky 399). The reader also has to deal with a plethora of characters and detail, unexpected temporal shifts, and lack of logical transitions from one episode to another. To put it differently, Palisandria may well appear as a disordered agglomeration of formalistic devices and literary and historical allusions, but its intellectual reach goes far beyond a "self-reflexive text whose focus is language and literature " (Matich 426; see also McMillan 239). If we treat Sokolov's book as a novel, we are bound to read it as the account of an absurd and chaotic universe that lacks unity and humanistic values and conveys a sense of anxiety about the grim state of Soviet history. As a novel, Palisandria is a "socially responSible " book (Dobrenko 167), and its self-reflective sarcasm and dark laughter point to the author's desire to explore the nature of Soviet society. Only if we consider Palisandria as a form of fiction other than a traditional novel, however, will we be able to discover its true coherence and unity. In light of the fact that the author's choice of genre often becomes an expression ofhis political-aesthetic intentions, it is crucial'to reexamine Palisandria 's complex generic texture. In the course of a close reading with a generic focus we will discover a strong affinity with the old tradition of Menippean satire, or menippea (Frye 311). Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Rabelais's 211 Larisa Rudova Gargantua and Pantagruel, Voltaire's Candide, Huxley's Brave New World, and Sterne's Tristram Shandy are examples of this generic type. This essay undertakes to demonstrate how menippea indeed shapes the generics ofPalisandria , but also how sots-art puts a distinctive spin on the book's generic makeup. Northrop Frye describes the menippea as a form of fiction that "deals less with people as such than with mental attitudes" (309). Whereas the novel is naturalistic in its characterization, the menippea is stylized and "presents people as mouthpieces of the ideas they represent" (309). Frye maintains that the novelist sees evil and folly as social disease, but the Menippean satirist sees them as diseases of the intellect, as a kind of maddened pedantry which the philosophus gloriosus at once symbolizes and defines.... [The menippea1relies on the free play of intellectual fancy and the kind of humorous observation that produces caricature.... At its most concentrated the Menippean satire presents us with a vision of the world in terms of a Single intellectual pattern. The intellectual structure built up from the story makes for violent dislocations in the customary lOgiC of narrative, though the appearance of carelessness that results reflects only the carelessness of the reader or his tendency to judge by a novel-centered conception of fiction. (309-310) Frye observes that the word "satire" should be understood as a "structural prinCiple or attitude" that can be either fantastic or moral, or both (310). The "Menippean adventure" could be entirely fantastic, as in Lewis Carroll's books about Alice's adventures in Wonderland or Charles Kingsley'S The Water Babies, and it could present a moral picture of society "in a Single intellectual pattern, in other words a Utopia" (Frye 310). Regardless ofits fantastic or moral orientation, the Menippean satirist displays his "exuberance in intellectual ways, by piling up an enormous masS of erudition about his theme or in overwhelming his pedantic targets with an avalanche of their own jargon" (Frye 311). These features are clearly present in Palisandria. The book has also previously been placed into the context of the Sternian narrative tradition (Zholkovsky...

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