Poetic and philosophical aspects of the embodiment of “virtual reality” in the novel “Generation 'P'” by Victor Pelevin Shulga Kirill Valerievich. Problems of the novel by Victor Pelevin "Generation "P"

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Shulga Kirill Valerievich. Poetic and philosophical aspects of the embodiment of “virtual reality” in the novel “Generation “P”” by Victor Pelevin: Dis. ...cand. Philol. Sciences: 10.01.01 Tambov, 2005 158 p. RSL OD, 61:05-10/1081

Introduction

Chapter I Ways to embody virtual reality phantoms in the novel “Generation “P”” Viktor Olegovich Pelevina 21

1 Polysemantics of the title of Victor Pelevin’s novel “Generation “P””. Definition of virtual reality

2 Simulacra: “creativity” and “creation” in V. Pelevin’s novel “Generation P” 44

3 Criticism of “positioning” as a philosophy of life in post-Soviet society 58

4 Mythopoetic aspect of the novel “Generation P” 73

Chapter II Artistic means of depicting virtual reality in Victor Pelevin’s novel “Generation P” 88

2 Functionality of the language game by Viktor Pelevin 102

3 Intertextual means of exposing simulacrum reality 115

4 Compositional techniques for creating an esoteric myth in Victor Pelevin’s novel “Generation P” 129

Conclusion 142

List of used literature 146

Introduction to the work

Victor Pelevin is one of the brightest artistic personalities in literary process 1990s - 2004s. The writer’s work fits organically into modern literature, which is determined by such a characteristic tendency as the synthesis of different styles.”

Viktor Olegovich Pelevin became one of the popular Russian writers in the early 1990s. His works were first published in magazines under the heading “Fiction”. These were the first stories (the fairy tale “The Sorcerer Ignat and the People” (1989), “The Reconstructor,” “The Prince of the State Planning Commission” (1991), “The Tambourine of the Upper World” (1993) and the stories “The Recluse and the Six-Fingered” (1990), “The Blue Lantern "(1992). The writer's novels "Omon Ra" (1993) and "Generation P" (1996) showed the author's clear desire to philosophically comprehend modernity, as they were distinguished by the freshness of their vision, wit and satirical focus of the image.

Most researchers declared the work of Viktor Pelevin to be postmodernist, although this modern prose writer, in our opinion, does not fit into the strict framework of only this direction.

Criticism defines the modern historical and cultural situation as “non-literature-centric,” since supposedly fiction in our time is no longer the main focus of ideas, hopes, hopes, ideological models, and the writer ceased to claim the role of a prophet and teacher at the beginning of the 21st century, when he arose a new term instead of “reader” is “consumer of literary products,” meaning a person with a different cultural experience and intellectual outlook. The modern “culture consumer”

1 Modern literature, according to most scientists, is in a “productive” crisis. Literary studies is also in crisis and is not getting help, to use the words of I.N. Dry, “support” methods and trends: postmodernism, post-realism, post-romanticism and others, since the essence of artistic processes lies in the synthesis of various trends observed

raised since childhood by audiovisual media of mass communication, unfortunately, will give preference to remakes rather than novels by Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky. One of the reasons for this is that the literature of the 19th century affirmed mainly the values ​​of humanitarian progress. This enlightenment faith in progress was lost by the end of the 20th century, like other traditional axiologies, so readers do not find the undeniably high values ​​of classical literature established in our reality. There have been significant shifts in the picture of the world, in the concept of man, in ideas about the role and tasks of the artist, which are reflected in the works of postmodernism.

“It cannot be said that Russian postmodernists do not dream of a national revival, but they consider its main condition to be the overcoming of authoritarianism of any kind, liberation from utopias - both social and transcendental, “postmodernization” of consciousness and the unconscious. They place their emphasis not on religion, but on culture. Postmodernists deconstruct the project of the Spirit (including the Christian metanarrative), which meets with the rejection of people with a worldview of the traditional religious type. But it is precisely the postmodern reorientation towards the cultural interpretation of the religious coding system, the rejection of the linear principle when approaching history, that serves as a known counterbalance to the growth of fundamentalism , which today is perhaps the main danger for humanity."

A researcher of modern literature must also take into account the fact that if realism and modernism were disdainful of the stereotypes of mass consciousness (defining them as vulgarity), then postmodernism discovered that it is these stereotypes that shape the reality in which we live. It is necessary to distinguish between mass “low”

words are everywhere among all artists.

literature that exploits these cultural and artistic stereotypes (and, at best, creates new combinations of them), and literature in the true sense of the word, which addresses the essential problems of existence. Victor Pelevin, whose work is not of equal value, in his best works strove for the same traditional goal of Russian literature - to develop a metaphysical plan. He “groped” for eternal values ​​in the elusive simulacrum reality, which the main character of the novel “Generation P” Vavilen Tatarsky doubted.

Postmodernism gave literature a new dimension, expanded its horizons, and at the same time confronted writers with extremely complex tasks: acquiring multidimensional, nonlinear artistic thinking on the scale of entire cultural and historical eras, mastering all types of style, combining an artist and a philosopher (historian) in one author , literary critic, cultural scientist, etc.), search for means to recreate the plurality of truth, modeling virtual worlds, a qualitative update of literature, the intellectual level of which must correspond to immeasurably more complex ideas about the world. Tasks that postmodernists have essentially just begun to implement and have not realized them in their entirety. Perhaps these are indeed tasks ahead for an entire cultural era, but the work of Viktor Olegovich Pelevin is most directly related to them.

The threat that could cause the “end of literature” is associated with the development of computer virtual reality technology, the capabilities of which leave cinema and television far behind and open up prospects for the creation of interactive art. The viewer, introduced into computer virtual reality, turns out to be a participant in the film, who watches, experiencing the same

6 experiences, as in life itself, chooses at its own discretion various options different scenes and thus creates new versions of the film. The impact of interactive art is enormous.

“Interactive art is wrapped in swaddling clothes,” but it is precisely this art that is being written about today as the art of the future. According to Viktor Erofeev, literature still has a chance to withstand this new competition: “The only way out for the continuation of literature is the creation of such a text when it is included in an interactive connection with the reader’s consciousness. The reader himself models the meaning of the text, starting from himself and in this modeling, revealing himself and exposing himself.<...>In fact, there is a splitting of the energy of the text, which is deprived of its one-dimensionality and survives due to fertilization in the reader’s consciousness.”

Literature will not survive if the main ethical and aesthetic categories are absorbed into the text as virtuality, that is, “never” realized, but a real possibility. Currently, literature continues to be in close contact with technology. As you can see, this process cannot be avoided: further computerization is expected, and the end of book culture is predicted.

Just as with the advent of the printing press, book products replaced handwritten texts, today the computer floppy disk has replaced the book. The computerization of literature undoubtedly affects both the nature of reading and the nature of creating works. The variability of different versions of the text being read increases an incalculable number of times. The text has lost all stability; it can be played out in a new way every time. IN to a greater extent Postmodernist literature is certainly ready for such a transition.

Much convinces us that postmodernism is not only

“noisy rain”, but also a bridge to the future. “We still have to “go forward from postmodernity, and not backward...”, states Viktor Erofeev.

Mikhail Epstein writes about postmodernism as a new phase in the development of literature, although starting from the previous one, but closely related to it: “Postmodernism was a reaction to utopianism - this intellectual disease of the future, which affected the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. The future was thought to be definite, achievable, feasible - it was assigned the attributes of the past. And so postmodernism, with its aversion to utopia, turned the signs upside down and rushed towards the past - but at the same time began to assign to it the attributes of the future: uncertainty, incomprehensibility, ambiguity, an ironic play of possibilities.” The work of Victor Pelevin is somewhat different from general postmodern trends, according to most researchers, in its affirming pathos.

Considering that among “today’s newest writers,” Pelevin has the greatest right to claim the role of, if not “ruler of thoughts,” then still a literary leader for his share of the “reader’s pie,” K. Kedrov, traveling “in the labyrinths of the latest prose,” singles out they contain Pelevin’s novel “Chapaev and Emptiness”. As a result, the researcher has the opinion that Pelevin, of course, will find understanding among readers. "Literary Gazette" called Pelevin a "popular writer", I. Rodnyanskaya - an "excellent writer." M. Lipovetsky puts Pelevin on a par with the authors of postmodern cultural and aesthetic orientation: D. Galkovsky, V. Sharov, Z. Gareev, A. Slapovsky, A. Korolev, the specificity of whose prose, according to the researcher, he defines as “artistry”. S. Kornev goes even further and places Pelevin in world literature next to H. L. Borges, J. Cortazar, C. Castaneda, partly F. Kafka and

G. Hesse: “This is accessible, fascinating and extremely clear philosophical prose with a touch of mysticism and otherworldliness, easy to understand and with concentrated content.”

The publication of the next work caused a large flow of articles of an evaluative nature. Let us note that this approach to Pelevin’s work was the most widespread before. An attempt at a deep analysis of Pelevin’s texts is carried out, perhaps, only by S. Kornev, but he also moves away from a specific analysis of the text and determines Pelevin’s place in the modern literary process and classifies his work as a special “school”: Russian Classical Post-Reflective Postmodernism. The researcher states that “nobody writes now the way Pelevin writes.” Not everyone agrees with the categorical nature of this statement, but one cannot help but pay attention to the obvious features of Pelevin’s prose, which allow us to speak of its vivid originality.

The need for a deep analysis of V. Pelevin’s prose is also indicated by another “loud” statement: L. Rubinstein writes about Pelevin’s claim “not to “good”, but to “new” prose, based on other, extra-literary technologies [software]. The same idea is confirmed by B. Dmitriev, who writes that “at the end of liberal reforms, real literature about modernity appears, strange and ambiguous, like our life.”

One can further quote the polar assessments “exposed” to Pelevin by critics, so that the conclusion about the absence of a single point of view would be even more convincing. There is only one certainty: huge interest in Pelevin’s prose. The popularity of this author among the mass reader is evidenced not only by the circulation of his books. Pelevin's novels and stories have been translated into many European languages, as well as Korean and Japanese. For his collection of short stories, The Blue Lantern, he was awarded the small Booker Prize in 1993. In 1997, the novel

“Chapaev and Emptiness” was also nominated for a major Booker Prize. In the same year, he brought the author the main domestic “fantasy” award “Wanderer”. In 1998, Pelevin appeared on the pages of The New Yorker magazine, one of the most authoritative publications in the world of literature, on the list of the six most promising writers in Europe. A. Genis writes that Pelevin is part of world literature“not as a Russian writer, but as a writer simply - this is the best that can be.” In 1999, they already talk about him as a performer (whether good or bad is another matter) of some cultural role.

But popularity, as we know, cannot always be the reason, much less the justification, of scientific interest. Pelevin's popularity is not limited to the mass reader; he is also not spared the attention of the so-called “elite reader”. Such “diversified” popularity indicates the demand for cultural phenomena of this kind at the end of the century and requires serious scientific study and, therefore, an explanation of the origins of such a phenomenon.

Although V. Pelevin became known in the early 1990s as the author of science fiction works that evoked many critical responses, basically the reviews boiled down to a reaction to the extraliterary aspects of the writer’s work and his behavioral strategy. Among such reviews, it is worth highlighting the more “aesthetic” reviews of R. Arbitman, D. Bavilsky, A. Nemzer on the novels “Omon Ra” (1992) and “The Life of Insects” (1993). " According to researchers, early stories, novels, novels demonstrated the main trends in the development of this author’s prose and made clear his desire to create a number of paintings with varying degrees of authenticity modern life and consciousness. At the same time, the writer postulated

1 Arbitman, R. Victor Pelevin. Omon Ra. Tale. Banner. 1992. No. 5 / R. Arbitman // Lit. newspaper. -1992. - No. 35 (August 26) - P.4; Bavilsky, D. School of the new novel / D. Bavilsky // Nezavisimaya Gazeta. - 1996. - September 7. - P.7; Nemzer, A. Mr. Lomonosov’s objections to entomological

variability of views on the surrounding reality.

Reviews of the novel Chapaev and Emptiness, which appeared in 1996, turned out to be more mixed. A. Genis described him as literary work, widely popularizing the Buddhist worldview, correlated the conflict of the novel with a system of archetypal images and mythological motifs, I. Rodnyanskaya, V. Kuritsyn, S. Kornev, D. Bykov 1 noted the freshness of the writer’s approach to influential modern dichotomies and myths, the fascination of the plot, the courage in handling some literary conventions. In turn, S. Kuznetsov, P. Basinsky, A. Arkhangelsky, N. Alexandrov developed the thesis about the failure of V. Pelevin as a prose writer due to the low quality and obvious opportunism of his texts.

The writer’s novel “Generation P” (1996) aroused particularly high reader interest and for this reason the maximum number of publications appeared in periodicals. I. Rodnyanskaya, S. Kostyrko, A. Roiphe defended the merits of this work by V. Pelevin, pointing to its innovation as the reason for its rejection by most critics. However, even A. Genis and V. Kuritsyn admitted the “underdevelopment” of the novel and the author’s excessive focus on the reader’s tastes. Perhaps there were almost no neutral points of view, with the exception of the position of L. Pirogov, repeatedly reproduced in his publications, including those dedicated to V. Pelevin.

A. Genis considered Pelevin the best “singer of virtual reality”: “Pelevin is a poet, philosopher and writer of everyday life of the border zone. He inhabits the junctions between realities. At the place where they meet, vivid artistic effects arise - one picture of the world,

Mr. Pelevin's studies: Victor Pelevin. Life of insects. “Banner”, 1993. No. 4. - P. 16. 1 Rodnyanskaya, I. This world was not invented by us / I. Rodnyanskaya // New World. - 1999. - No. 8. - P. 39; Kuritsyn, V. Russian literary postmodernism / V. Kuritsyn - M.: 2000. - P.25; Kornev, S. Clash of voids: can postmodernism be Russian and classical / S. Kornev // New lit. review. - 1997. -№28. - pp. 244-259; Bykov, D. “Blue Lantern” under Booker’s eye: [About V.’s prose

11, superimposed on another, creates a third, different from the first two. A writer living at the turn of the era, he populates his stories with heroes living in two worlds at once.”

Sergei Kornev, in a lengthy review “The Clash of Emptiness: Can Postmodernism Be Russian and Classical,” notes that although “formally, Pelevin is a postmodernist, and a classical postmodernist not only in terms of form, but in content...”.

In another article “Guardians of Dichotomies. Who and why doesn’t like Pelevin among us?” S. Kornev emphasizes, “that Pelevin’s pain points are the same as those of the Russian classics, except that they are packaged somewhat differently, in relation to another cultural environment. The main theme of Pelevin’s work is the hero’s self-knowledge in a situation of “bad reality”, when there are social storms and cataclysms around or the dominance of sleepy, dead souls" And this problem is solved entirely in a classical manner: through the primacy of spirit over matter, transcendental values ​​over the lures of material existence. What is it that adherents of classics and high spirituality don’t like? Only that Pelevin is relevant, that the sermon that is in his books is addressed specifically to the conscience of our contemporaries, and not to the conscience of Pushkin’s contemporaries. S. Kornev emphasized: “However, if we ignore the Buddhist and virtual exoticism, the main ethical idea of ​​Pelevin’s texts is the same one that Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and after them, many thinkers of the beginning of the century unsuccessfully tried to convey to their contemporaries. This is the idea that the source of all troubles is not social disorder, but moral inferiority, underdevelopment of the personal principle, inability to live a full inner life, - the inevitable consequence of which, in turn, is

Pelevin] / D. Bykov // Capital.-1994. - No. 7. - pp. 57-59.

general social disorder."

For Sergei Kornev, Viktor Pelevin is a mystic, a Buddhist, opposed to Christian ideology.

Social satire for Pelevin is only an auxiliary means, since he is against “reality” in general, and not just against Soviet/post-Soviet reality. He needs the latter only as a source illustrative examples, cases when the general illusory and absurd nature of this world is revealed without any embellishment. That is why Pelevin seizes on any glimpses of absurdity and nonsense in the world around him, finds them even where others do not notice them, and brings them to complete grotesqueness in his texts. For Pelevin, as a mystic and Buddhist, the elements of absurdity and insanity in Western, late Soviet and current Russian reality are not a perversion of the “normal reality” that is still believed in the West, but, on the contrary, the most genuine, unadorned cross-section “ reality" when it is exposed in all its illusoryness and emptiness.

The researcher believes that the socio-critical, feuilleton aspect of literature itself worries Pelevin least of all - this is what, for example, is connected with the choice (in “Omon of Ra”) of such an ungrateful object from the point of view of satire as the USSR space program, which was like times the most real, exemplary section of Soviet reality. It is clear that there is no “current satire” (“revelation”, “exposure”) in this case - it would hardly occur to anyone that our space program was fabricated, just as the American “flights to the Moon” were fabricated in Hollywood "in the 70s. Pelevin's satire unfolds on a different, more fundamental level. In both this and other Pelevin texts, its object is “life for show,” which dominates modern world social practice

self-hypnosis, when the entire life of people is subordinated to the acquisition of attributes of prestige and well-being, causing envy and respect in others, but no true meaning not having.

The novel “Omon Ra” (1993) brought fame to Viktor Pelevin,
because the plot of the novel is scandalously provocative, Soviet
space program, is presented here as a total
organized fiction serving ideological purposes
propaganda, its “real” meaning is the commission of bloody
sacrifices that feed the magical structure

socialist state, caused a negative effect. “The novel was perceived as an evil satire on the total deception of Soviet propaganda, and only a few paid attention to the unexpected solipsistic ending of Omona Ra, in which it turns out that no rockets even thought of flying anywhere, and all this happened only in the minds of those doomed to death.” cosmonauts,” since “one pure and honest soul is enough for a red banner to rise on the distant Moon.” The novel “Generation P” (1998) received an even higher reader rating, but was judged even more strictly than the prose writer’s previous works. A. Genis and V. Kuritsyn considered it unsuccessful, “underdeveloped” and overly focused on reader tastes. Despite the apparent abundance of responses, only in Lately A trend towards a thorough scientific understanding of the work of Viktor Pelevin began to take shape. In 2002, the first dissertation of A.V. appeared. Dmitriev “Neo-mythologism in the structure of V. Pelevin’s novels”, which provides a scientific analysis of the writer’s works from the point of view of the use of mythopoetics in them. Fairly noting that “neo-mythological consciousness” is a property of the cultural mentality of the entire 20th century, and mythological stories, motives, structures are actively used in the creation of artistic representations, the author of the dissertation believes that myth

begins to be perceived as existing not only in an archaic version, but also as a property of human consciousness in Victor Pelevin’s novels “Chapaev and Emptiness” and “Generation P”.

Indeed, the work of V. Pelevin is characterized by neo-mythologism as a special kind of poetics, structurally oriented towards the plot-figurative system of myth, a kind of intertextuality, which is defined (accepting the definition of I.P. Smirnov) as “<...>broad term generic concept, so to speak, intertextuality, meaning that the meaning of a work of art is formed in whole or in part by reference to another text that is found in the work of the same author, in related art, in related discourse or in previous literature."

The researcher is right that the varied themes of Victor Pelevin’s stories organically include mythological plots based on material national life and revealing the deep essence of social processes. This primarily concerns the novel “Generation P” and “Chapaev and Emptiness”. The realities of the surrounding world interest the writer as an auxiliary background for displaying human spirituality.

Analysis of neo-mythologism as main feature The poetics of V. Pelevin’s novels is updated by A. V. Dmitriev, since it is the mythologems that take an active part in structuring the artistic world of most of the writer’s works, being an active element of his poetic system. The researcher rightfully proves that neo-mythologism can be called one of the most important features of the plot structure of V. Pelevin’s prose and one of the main means of demonstrating the author’s presence in the text. Indeed, the artistic specificity of the novel as a genre as a whole creates the most acceptable conditions for productive

use of neomythologism. This is especially characteristic of a novel created in the bosom of postmodernist poetics. One can completely agree with the research of A.V. Dmitriev, since postmodernism, by definition, is characterized by an interest in myth mainly in the latter sense. Theorists of the movement justifiably introduce the concept of postmodern sensitivity as an awareness of the deliberate unjustification of any hierarchies that claim to be absolute systems of priorities, the impossibility of the existence of any authentic picture of the world, the mythological nature of any authoritative “view of the world” (C.-G. Jung). From the mythologemes perceived as such, V. Pelevin undoubtedly creates art world of your texts.

Although the work of Victor Pelevin that interests us is touched upon by A.V. Dmitriev in his dissertation, but the analysis is carried out only from the standpoint of the functioning of modern mythologies in the structure of the novels “Omon Ra” and “Generation P”. To fully understand the place of the last novel in the writer’s work and in modern literature in general, this research is clearly not enough. Outside of the dissertation work of A.V. Dmitriev remains such important problems of Pelevin’s artistic discourse as methods of consciousness of virtual reality.

Dissertation research by Kwon Zheng Im “Modern Russian postmodern prose: Venedikt Erofeev and Sasha Sokolov”, Bugoslavskoy O.V. “Postmodernist novel: principles of literary interpretation (“Novel” by V. Sorokin and “The Last Dream of Reason” by D. Lipskerov), Zharinova O.V. “The poetic and philosophical aspect of Victor Pelevin’s works “Omon Ra” and “Generation P””; Azeeva I.V. “Game discourse of Russian culture of the late 20th century: Sasha Sokolov, Victor Pelevin”, although they do not touch upon the problem of virtual reality in Victor’s work

16 Pelevin, but allow us to see similar artistic processes in the field of plotting and creating an image of the world and personality in postmodernist works of writers.

A review of articles and reviews, as well as dissertation research available to literary studies today, allows us to establish the low degree of elaboration of the problem of philosophical and poetic discourse that interests us in Victor Pelevin’s novel “Generation.” P".

The relevance of research is determined by the need for a general synthesis of the poetic and philosophical features of Viktor Pelevin’s work using the example of one of his most controversial and complex novels “Generation P”, which allows us to gain a deeper understanding of the logic of the development of Viktor Pelevin’s work in the 1990s, which, in turn, coincides with the priorities today's science of literature - a study of the problems of the poetics of the modern literary process.

Object of study is Victor Pelevin’s novel “Generation P” in the aspect of identifying ways to model virtual reality in it.

Subject of study becomes the ideological, philosophical and poetic basis of Victor Pelevin’s novel “Generation P”.

Objectives of the study: to determine ways of embodying the poetic and philosophical features of the virtual information technogenic society in Victor Pelevin’s novel “Generation P”, its destructive impact on the consciousness and subconscious of modern man.

Study the poetic and philosophical structure of the novel “Generation P”;

analyze the artistic means of creating “virtual” space and time in the novel by Victor Pelevin;

identify the genre-forming components of the work;

determine the place of the novel “Generation P” in the work of Victor Pelevin.

Research methods: a combination of hermeneutic and historical-functional approaches to the study of works of art.

The dissertation research is based on working hypothesis: the image of a society of high computer and information technologies, the study of the phenomenon of the impact of virtual reality on the consciousness and subconscious of modern humanity allows Victor Pelevin to create an original poetic and philosophical image of a “shortened universe”, a vivid symbolic image of the modern world.

Scientific novelty of the dissertation is that it provides a holistic, generalized analysis of the most complex and controversial work of the talented representative of modern literature, Viktor Pelevin. An idea is given of the novel “Generation P” as a landmark phenomenon of Russian postmodern literature. The subject of a special monographic study is the axiological and poetic aspects of Victor Pelevin’s prose. Main provisions submitted for defense:

The novel “Generation P” by Victor Pelevin is a landmark work that determined the peculiarities of the worldview of the “Next” generation, along with the works of other bright writers of our time (T. Tolstoy, L. Ulitskaya, V. Sorokin, A. Slapovsky, V. Tuchkov, M. Paley, D. Lipskerov).

Closely related to the problem of meaning human existence, problem

The virtualization of reality was embodied in the novel “Generation P” in the multiple meanings of the novel’s title, its epigraph and dedication to the “middle class,” which does not exist. The novel transfers the post-perestroika generation in the space of the former USSR from the real dimension to the mode of virtual simulation, defining generation “P”: as the generation that chose the “abroad Pepsi” (although in fact there was no choice); as the generation of the end (which is symbolized by the ancient folklore “dog P...ts”); as a generation “producing a rumbling and motley void” - a simulacrum information world that has become a spiritual sphere Russian people; and also as the generation of Pelevin, an artist who conceptualizes virtual reality.

Depicting destinies central characters, Victor Pelevin emphasizes that virtual reality created by cybernetic information system, threatens the individual, as there is a total replacement of God's creation - with artificial robots. And simulacra, conceived as a sign system, absorb the very life of the human individual, narrowing the sphere of the spiritual to catastrophic proportions. This process is shown especially clearly in the example of the transformation of the concept of “creativity” into “creational agency.”

The grotesque exaggeration of the impact of the Western way of life - “positioning” as a philosophy of existence in modern Russian society allows the artist to recreate a terrifying picture of the degeneration of humanity, the transformation of people into “oranuses”, primitive products of a world where the cult of consumption reigns. In modeling the simulacrum world image in the novel “Generation P”, the writer successfully uses current neomythologems depicting the cult of Baal - the Dollar, with the help of which the total

manipulation of society. At the same time, Victor Pelevin, satirically

exposing the essence of ideological manipulation, expresses an obvious

reality.

5. Characteristic means of artistic representation,

widely used in the myth of the “new Russian”, diverse

techniques of language play with Anglicisms as hybrids of modern

consciousness, as well as varying the intertexts of folklore,

biblical symbols and images of world literature.

Methodological and theoretical basis dissertation

research is an integrated approach to the phenomena of literary

base created by M.M. Bakhtin, Yu.M. Lotman, E.M. Meletinsky,

B.A. Uspensky, R. Barthes, J. Derrida, J. Genette, as well as

postmodern theorists I.L. Ilyin, M.N. Lipovetsky, M.B.

Epstein, V.N. Kuritsin, N.N. Mankovskaya.

Theoretical significance The work is that the dissertation contributes to a deeper understanding of the theoretical aspects of the postmodern novel, in particular the ways of embodying simulacrum reality through satirical means. Practical use

The results of scientific research can be used in developing methods for interpreting postmodern prose in lecture courses on the history of Russian literature of the 20th century, and when delivering special courses on the problems of modern literature.

Approbation of dissertation research

The main provisions and individual problems of the study were discussed many times at meetings of the Department of Russian Philology

Tambov State Technical University, were presented at International scientific conferences in 2003, 2004, 2005. in higher educational institutions of Ukraine: the cities of Kharkov and Lugansk, as well as at the Scientific Conference of Young Scientists of the TSTU in Tambov.

Structure and scope of work

The work consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion, notes and a list of references.

Introduction includes justification of the topic, relevance and novelty of the study, review critical literature, and also determine the research methodology, its goals and objectives.

The first chapter, “Methods of embodying virtual reality phantoms in the novel “Generation TG” by Viktor Olegovich Pelevin,” is devoted to the analysis of the mythopoetic structure of the work, the problems of replacing creativity with “creative”, exposing the lack of spirituality of life: “positioning” a person with the help of advertising slogans, identifying the functionality of biblical symbolism as the main way of depicting the author's consciousness.

Chapter two, “Artistic means of depicting virtual reality in the novel “Generation P”,” analyzes techniques for comparing esoteric mythology with the modern “simulation” of reality; exposing the substitution of the spiritual for the material through the satirization of advertising slogans; features of the plot; as well as artistic techniques of language play and intertextual ways of depicting the phantomism and chaos of the surrounding world.

The conclusion contains conclusions on all sections of the dissertation research. Main content of the work presented on 158 pages. The list of used literature includes 139 titles.

Polysemantics of the title of Victor Pelevin's novel "Generation "P"". Definition of virtual reality

The novel “Generation P” created a sensation primarily among the multimillion-dollar Internet users. As D. Golinko-Wolfson testifies, “on the global Internet, Pelevin’s novel has received nationwide – or rather all-user – fame: it is linked to almost every high-status cultural site; in Internet periodicals there is an overabundance of blitz polls about the title of the novel; Interactive remarks about it are periodically published by critics who have placed their bets on the cultivation of cyberspace, for example, S. Kornev, S. Kuznetsov or V. Kuritsyn.”

The fact that the novel was widely in demand precisely by the electronic media audience testifies to its relevance and the fact that the aesthetic tastes of young people are affected. From Pelevin, by the vocation of Internet criticism, they expected cutting-edge literature - in the likeness of the replicated “Chapaev and Emptiness”; We were expecting another folklore-matryoshka mix of Hollywood action films, Mexican soap operas, Soviet psychiatric stories and Jewish jokes. And they saw in the novel “Generation P” endowed with high literary merits “an entertaining pamphlet portrait of the Moscow middle class, enterprising unfortunate workaholics of middle age and average skill. Their life views, as well as the stylistic foundation of the novel, are the legacy of Hemingway’s intellectual romance, Salinger’s adapted Buddhism, the Aesopian futurology of the Strugatsky brothers with the addition of Castaneda’s psychedelia and the broken ecstasy of Irvine Welsh.” But this time Pelevin offered the reader not ordinary literature, but “rather, a polyphonic Internet Chat imitating printed fiction (literally “chatter,” i.e., an instant exchange of opinions in real time). Among the heterogeneous information content of this chat there is also a package developed by the author software to write a modern, too modern, novel, the entire set of software necessary for this. Instead of the expected literary burlesque, Pelevin designed a computer-programmed matrix of a modern novel, disguised as a topical social feuilleton. “The author himself turns into a much more conventional figure than Eikhenbaum’s storyteller: he serves as the “hardware” that provides the entire writing technology, or hard drive, where the databases necessary for varying the plot are accumulated. This is, apparently, what a novel-browser consisting of digital arabesques should look like in the modern cybernetic era, as advanced “Internet critics” note.

Modeled by the standards of cyberspace, Pelevin’s new novel seems to scan the history of the generation that made and was made by the nineties, transferring it from the real dimension to the mode of virtual simulation. “It is listed under the heading “Generation P” - among the astronomical number of printed and online interpretations of this term, “Pepsi generation” or “Pelevin generation” predominate. This is a generation of thirty-year-olds, who, since Brezhnev’s childhood, have been addicted to foreign “Pepsi” in bottles produced in Novorossiysk. Twenty years later, it continues to consume the dupes and remnants of someone else’s Western experience (albeit in domestic packaging), having failed to adapt hastily imported goods and LV (liberal values) to the New Russian confusion.”

This above-mentioned view of the novel “from within” the Pepsi generation clarifies a lot in the writer’s artistic concept: indeed, the tendency to model a new reality for Russia in which modern humanity lives, to define new spiritual guidelines is included in the ideological and thematic setting of Victor Pelevin’s novel.

“In the end, Generation P is a production novel. Only, unlike classic industrial novels telling about cement-ties-space stations, the theme of this book is the production of that rumbling and motley emptiness in which our lives pass,” admitted Victor Pelevin.

Advertising and the process of its creation are “a lens through which the stereotype and conventions of human consumption become more monstrous than in reality” (M. Grymzov), therefore this sphere of life in the post-communist space was chosen by the writer to recreate and deconstruct a simulacrum virtual reality that has become spiritual sphere of new generations of Russian people. M. Lipovetsky is right when he asserts that “the new novel was born from the sad discovery of the fact that this fundamentally individual strategy of freedom easily turns into a total manipulation of the tops: simulacra turn into reality en masse, in an industrial order. Each advertising clip is actually a simulacrum of happiness and freedom, clothed in the virtual flesh of quasi-reality: “Freedom begins to be symbolized by an iron, a sanitary pad with wings, or lemonade. This is what we get paid for. We sell it to them from the screen, and then they sell it to each other, and to us, the authors, it’s like radioactive contamination, when it doesn’t matter who detonated the bomb.” In this situation, there is not so much difference between the creator of illusions and their consumer. With “mass reproduction” the creator is replaced by the creator, and Peter the Void is replaced by Vavilen Tatarsky. “Pelevin could not help but think when he wrote this novel, who, during the period of “weighty reproduction of simulacra,” will replace him, Viktor Pelevin, or more precisely, how much will remain of Pelevin if he wants to hold on longer to the role of the cult writer of the “P” generation?” Further, the researcher notes that over Pelevin’s novel, of course, the shadow of Jean Baudrillard hovers. It is with light hand this philosopher's concept of “simulacra and simulation; - became the banner of postmodernism. It was he who was the first to talk about the fact that TV, and primarily advertising, blurs the boundary between the real and the illusory, creating a massive flow of images of power and lust (respectively, anal and oral wow factors, as Pelevin calls it). These images may be related to reality, or they may be a more or less skillful illusion of reality; their main function is not reflection, but in modeling the real and the consciousness and behavior of the consumer.

By destroying any correspondence with reality, simulacra, according to Baudrillard, blur any purpose of human activity, which in turn “makes the distinction between truth and falsehood, good and evil, uncertain, and ultimately establishes a radical law of equivalence and exchange, the iron law of power.” Naturally, according to Baudrillard, power itself, becoming dependent on the hyperreality of simulacra, is replaced by a system of fictions. Those who read Pelevin’s novel remember that it ends with the August crisis, which, according to Pelevin, arose due to the overproduction of simulacra: the chief programmer was selling “black PR” to the left, i.e. hidden advertising of certain goods, contrary to concluded contracts for hidden advertising of completely different goods. Unmasked, he took posthumous revenge with a virus built into the system that wiped out the entire virtual government.

Simulacra: “creativity” and “creation” in V. Pelevin’s novel “Generation P”

The depiction of reality as a simulacrum (a copy without the original) is characteristic of many writers of the new generation who turned to postmodernism (D. Galkovsky, E. Radov, Y. Buida, M. Shishkin, I. Yarkevich). Their intellectual and philosophical foundation consists of ideas and concepts equivalent to the concepts of “the world as text”, “the world as chaos”, “pluralism of truth”, “anti-logocentrism”, “language game”, etc.

Victor Pelevin in his stories “The Recluse and the Six-Fingered” (1990), “The Prince of the State Planning Commission” (1991), “The Tambourine of the Upper World” (1993), “Omon Ra” (1993), “Zombification” (1995) implements all the principles of Russian postmodernism , making an attempt to characterize the Russian national character in modern conditions: in conditions of totalitarian substitution. Even the very title of the novel, “Generation P,” contains a “shimmering simulacrum”: it contains many meanings that touch each other at “one semantic point.”

Anna Narinskaya, deciphering the title of the novel, reasons as follows: “Pelevin’s new novel is called “Generation P” - “Generation P” (that is, “Pepsi”, as it turns out on the first page). As one of my acquaintances, a computer expert (or rather, computer keyboard), the name itself is a kind of charade: the English G and Russian P are on the same key. So “Generation P” is the same as “Generation G”. Perhaps this will explain something to someone.”

The interpretation of the simulacrum of existence is contained both in the text of the novel itself and in the writer’s interview. Everywhere the importance of the problem of “profanation”, the substitution of truth felt by new generations, is emphasized.

The interviewer asked a question: “In “Chapaev and Emptiness,” although not without puns and irony, they directly talked about “the most important things,” for example, about death and the future life. In “Generation P” you profane these “most important things”. Does this mean that you, like many writers of the new generation, believe that it is impossible to talk about anything seriously in our time?” Victor Pelevin replied: “The most important questions are beyond the reach of profanity. Try to profane, for example, the fact of death. It turns out, as in a pair of English graffiti: “God is dead. Nietzsche. - Nietzsche died. God". But in “Generation P,” it seems to me, nothing is profaned, except, perhaps, various ideologies, which I would not classify as “the most important things,” at least in my life. Indeed, by showing “the simulacrum of ideologies, the writer is searching for an alternative reality” in which there is no deception. Further to the question: “Your book plays on the idea that the world is ruled by a “secret lodge” of advertisers. Do you really see new folklore or even a new Bible in advertising?” - the author of “Generation P” emphasized the following: “Unfortunately, I am increasingly inclined to the conclusion that the world is ruled not by a secret lodge, but by an obvious mess. By the way, a book was written about this. The fact that advertising has become a source of new folklore has long been obvious. But I prefer to see the Bible in the Bible."

Viktor Pelevin’s answer to the following question is also significant: “The attack on the media, accusing them of manipulating society is ubiquitous today. Hollywood makes big-budget films about the evil media - Truman's Show, Wag the Dog. Do you feel yourself in this stream?” Victor Pelevin replied: “The very idea of ​​a “clash on the media” is a kind of oxymoron, because this attack can be carried out seriously only through the media themselves. Most media doesn't really remind me of the non-commissioned officer's widow. I don't think the media manipulates society because it is impossible to manipulate an abstract concept. But the media certainly manipulates consciousness. This is their only purpose. For this to become clear, it is enough to think at least once about what so-called information is and what its substance is. It's not even a matter of what line the media draw and whose interests they reflect - it's their very nature. Marshall McLuhan compressed the whole problem into a great aphorism: The medium is the message. (“The medium is the message.” - “Expert”) Best translation in Russian the words media (plural of medium) - “mediums”, something like spiritualists, are a very respectable company. As for the “jet” - I don’t know. Andrei Voznesensky urged us to avoid getting caught in the jet. All I can say is that I really like Wag the Dog, but I think the problem we're talking about is reflected more clearly in Dark City. (Wag the Dog is a film by Barry Levinson about the media manipulating society, Dark City is a film by Alex Proyas about the labyrinths of the subconscious. - “The Expert”).

From the writer’s statements it is clear that Victor Pelevin is looking for “ national idea”, dissolved in the virtual reality of the post-Soviet period, devoting his works to exposing the widespread ideological “substitution”. One of the important aspects of the simulacrum of reality is the replacement of creativity with “creation”.

“Producing emptiness” is the replacement true creativity what advertisers call “creation”. Viktor Pelevin emphasized the authenticity and reliability of the processes depicted in the novel in his interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda: “A writer must write good books, the rest is a matter of taste. For example, politics is of little interest to me. And what’s going on with the government is written in detail in the second part of “Generation II.” By the way, it’s even amazing how much everything coincides with the text - it feels like it’s being used as a script.

The hybrid Russian-American name “Generation P” reflects the same reality that exists, but is perceived as relative, since modern media can put any simulacra into people’s minds. Boris Tuch wrote about this: “For readers (including those who suddenly recognized themselves in the heroes of “Generation P”), it was a shock that Pelevin describes not the distant or recent past (the break with which was ideologically declared), but the late Deltsin (smoothly transitioning into early Putin's Russia. Moreover distinctive feature the world of denotation, as structuralist philologists say (that is, the nature from which pictures are written), is the ultimate indistinguishability of the real and the virtual.”

Advertising slogans as a form of expression of the author’s consciousness in the novel “Generation P”

The novel “Generation P” is a sharply satirical work, revealing the extraordinary talent of a satirist in its author. As evidenced by the analysis of the literary text, the following author’s idea is affirmed in “Generation P”: the consciousness of modern man is determined by neo-mythology, and more specifically: by the mythologemes imposed by the mass media, from which it is structured. Even the consciousness of modern man, freed as much as possible from the influence of easily ignored mythologies, still does not avoid their influence. Unlike other works, for the first time in the novel “Generation P”, V. Pelevin’s hero does not strive to fully follow the logic of actions imposed by Sirruf and the spirit of Che Guevara (figures partly related to Dima from “The Life of Insects”, Chapaev from “Chapaev and Emptiness”: these are characters “correlated in function with figures of archaic myth, experiencing cultural hero), who adapt to the new reality, achieving “a kind of version of nirvana.”

Before the hero of the novel came to the top of the “ziggurat” of post-Soviet society, he created for himself the image of a “cool creator” with the help of scripts he wrote for advertising slogans and plots for video clips. The author of the novel, placing in his work many “products of the mind” of Babylen Tatarsky, satirically ridicules the main vices of modern society.

Sergei Kornev believed that the writer in “Generation P” sought first of all to destroy the complex of basic dichotomies supposedly characteristic of the consciousness of the modern, post-Soviet intellectual:

“In the world of Pelevin’s texts, not just individual cliches and stereotypes of the current intellectual consciousness are questioned, but the very basic binary oppositions on which it rests, which form its foundation - that is why Pelevin does not suit anyone, that is why the ostracism was so complete and harsh” .

S. Kornev’s rather harsh assessment in the article “Guardians of Dichotomy” is entirely devoted to the isolation of mythologies and a whole series of binary oppositions, which are first affirmed and then consistently exposed by V. Pelevin.

The intelligentsia, according to this researcher, has developed, among others, a mythology according to which - “We are good, but those cattle who read our books, watch our films, listen to our music - they only eat all sorts of nasty things, but from real art, from high, good and eternal refuses. Therefore, we either do nothing and take care of our crystal clear intellectual soul, or we engage in hack work to earn our daily bread.” ... The dichotomy underlying this compromise is “full-fledged, but that’s why no one the right creativity"- hack work, commercial rubbish or unprincipled agitprop - turned out to be a real find."

V. Pelevin, according to S. Kornev, destroys this mythology by the very fact of his creativity with the “double coding” technique. He does the same with another “basic dichotomy”: - S. Kornev names among the main critics of V. Pelevin’s work, those who did not accept it, intellectuals who occupy “the niche of defenders of high spirituality and national cultural heritage,” because “Pelevin destroyed the dichotomy that elevated their position as popularizers and commentators of the classics to the rank of a civil feat: the dichotomy of spiritualized cultural heritage / unspiritual modern culture.”

V. Kuritsyn confirms the thought of S. Kornev, saying that the slogans in the novel “Generation P” are intended to “absurd” the special role of the intelligentsia in the affirmation of spirituality: “The history and culture of the New Age are driven by the idea of ​​​​the existence of a radical Other: the Enemy or Transcendence.”

Confirming the presence of revealing pathos in V. Pelevin’s texts, Boris Paramonov proves that “... his style, simply put: a pile of punning absurdity with a clearly emphasized parodic quotation.” “The presence of “pun absurdity” largely contributes to the debunking of the mythologies that the intelligentsia follows with the help of advertising texts that they believe.

The narrator in Victor Pelevin's novel structures puns in advertising texts using literary and generally general cultural reminiscences. This reveals a similarity between the styles of V. Pelevin and V. Sorokin, whose novel “Blue Lard” appeared simultaneously with “Generation P”. V. Sorokin’s famous pun: “You are not Goya. You are different."

Mark Lipovetsky in the article “Blue Fat of a Generation, or Two Myths about One Crisis,” comparing the novel by Vladimir Sorokin and Viktor Pelevin, declares these writers “literary leaders of postmodernism,” who embody in their works the objective disunity of the individual and society, the loss of faith in the possibility of restoration harmony in the surrounding reality.

Indeed, disunity, duality, splitting of the world and the consciousness that perceives it are already present in the very title of the work, combining the English word “generation” and the Russian “P”. Epigraphs following the title of the novel of poems by Leonard Cohen (on English language), bring a touch of drama from the awareness of the crisis of what is happening in their home country.

“I love the country, but I can’t stand what’s happening in it...” - this line of Cohen’s verse sets the tone of tragic criticism that permeates the entire novel.

Victor Pelevin depicts reality as an “overproduction” of simulacra (copies without originals). In this he is helped by a cross-cutting artistic device - “mixing languages”: the novel contains many Anglicisms and expressions in English. English, as the language of prosperity and economic well-being, is mixed with Russian. “This entire novel is written in a fantastic mixture of Russian and English, where the same text and even just a word is endowed with a dual meaning due to its dual status, that is, it becomes a metaphor on the fly.”

The confusion of languages ​​symbolizes the collapse of traditional thinking, spiritual mutation, as a result of which terrible hybrids of perverted consciousness arise. A “Tower of Babel” arises, which is being built by generation “P”, who cannot understand each other and live in a “virtual” simulacrum reality. All these processes lead, according to the writer, to “monkeyization”, to the primitivization of the spirit.

The functionality of the language game by Viktor Pelevin

One of the main, specially emphasized characteristics of Victor Pelevin’s poetics is its gaming mode, which is generally aimed at affirming the infinite variety of meanings of virtual reality, expression author's position on this occasion.

The concept of “virtual reality” is defined as: “Artificial realities: which arise due to the influence of a computer on consciousness.” In this case, consciousness is immersed in some fictitious, computer-generated possible world, in which he can move, see, hear and touch virtually. In a broad sense, virtual reality is any altered state of consciousness: psychological or schizophrenic delirium, dreams, drug or alcohol intoxication, a hypnotic state, for anyone who is somehow forcibly limited in space for a sufficiently long time. V. Rudnev notes that virtual reality is fraught with a paradox. The etymology of this word - truth (virtus) contradicts its meaning, which for the bearer ordinary consciousness synonymous with something like “imaginary, fictitious, illusory.”

The philosophy of the 20th century considers language, which is part of the “true” reality, to be a more “fundamental reality”, since in addition to the plan for expressing meaning and meaning (content), it also has a plan material form(expression). Reality is unthinkable outside of language. Hence the hypothesis of linguistic relativity, according to which it is not language that is oriented by reality, but reality by language, because each language expresses reality in its own way. To know reality, you need to know the language. Thus, any reality, except language, is virtual. And V. Pelevin’s novels, filled with language games, become video game scenarios that express virtual realities.

A. Antonov drew attention to the peculiar linguistic experiments of Viktor Pelevin, which he leads in two opposite directions, namely: “On the one hand, he,

It seems that he is striving to return the word to its pristine purity, to revive “dead” metaphors, that is, he is engaged in what Viktor Shklovsky called “detachment”, and George Orwell called “criminal translation from Newspeak to Oldspeak.” Therefore, many of his heroes are endowed with a keen sense of language and never spare time to stop and reflect on the meaning of a particular word or phrase... And at the same time - destroying the “good old” Newspeak, Pelevin immediately creates another “new” language , however, is not “universal”, but, so to speak, “disposable”, functioning only within the framework of a “separate” work. It would be natural to call such a language “internal.”

“Inner language” by Viktor Pelevin, according to A. Antonov, is focused not on truncation, but on increasing meanings. “All Pelevin’s linguistic constructions like “one of the same,” “May knows him,” “peace to your world,” or “May to your harvest” not only do not destroy the previous meaning of the word, but give it another, additional one. Therefore, “huge red words PEACE, LABOR, MAY” decorate the gray facades of Uran-Bator at the same time as Uran-Bator mothers scold their children in front of them for the “bad” word, “May bug”.

In the novel “Generation P,” as in many other works, the extensive literary intertext “no matter how it is played out (largely due to parodic and playful quotation), acts as a correlate of the grotesque.”

For example, citing political texts from the era of perestroika, Viktor Pelevin gives a murderously grotesque assessment of the political and economic processes of this time: “The USSR, which began to be updated and improved approximately at the same time when Tatarsky decided to change his profession, improved so much that it ceased to exist (if the state is capable to get to nirvana, it was just such a case).”

I. Rodnyanskaya rightly emphasizes the importance of the language game and notes: “Pelevin’s texts with their four times abused, and for me - language that corresponds to the internal task, calmly line up in this series of great, significant and simply noticeable works, with their special means - the means of modeling imagination - explaining “what is happening to us”.

By pumping and compressing “special” vocabulary, be it the vocabulary of Marxist-Leninist ideology (“Omon Ra”), a pre-perestroika slogan and poster (“Day of the Bulldozer Driver”) or the “language of science” (“Built-in Reminder”), and moving it into “alien sphere,” Pelevin achieves a kind of “qualitative leap”, after which the word is torn away from its direct meaning and, as it were, “translated” into another language.”

A. Antonov also draws attention to other transformations of the word, when “polysemy” turns into its opposite - “no-meaning at all”, the word becomes a sign of emptiness: “... main feature Victor Pelevin’s prose consists precisely in this instability, in the elusiveness of the flow of one world into another, in constant balancing on an almost indistinguishable border, in its continuous, “stalker-like” secretive transition.”

Researchers have focused on the predominance of playful aspects in Pelevin’s work: “The feeling of the illusory nature of Pelevin’s worlds is enhanced by their reminiscence, secondary nature, and literary nature... Pelevin prefers to deal not with the “immediately real”, but with already literary processed material, transforming it, contrasting it with the ordinary ghost world. It is parodic and allusive. And sometimes - openly, “in the forehead”.

Analysis of the novel “Generation P”

V. Pelevin’s novel “Generation “P””, the main pathos of which is the denial of the ideology of consumption, is of great interest in this sense. This is the story of the career growth of a graduate “unclaimed by the era” Literary Institute named Vavilen Tatarsky, who became an advertising worker - first a copywriter, then a creator. Then the creator of television reality, replacing the surrounding reality, and, finally - one step remains - a living god, the earthly husband of the goddess Ishtar. One of the important applied themes of the novel is humanistic and educational. Although most people already realize that advertising and politics (the boundaries between which are very vague) are essentially unscrupulous things and that chewing Tampax without sugar is not at all the highest happiness in life, Pelevin clearly and professionally, at the level of terminology and technical details, only slightly exaggerating, shows exactly how advertising and political lies are made. This novel touches on one of the nerve centers of modern life.

Main structural element"Generation P" is a trinity. It is formed by two groups of characters. Some of the characters in the novel are alternative mental states of the main character Tatarsky. At the moment of communication with Pugin and Khanin, Malyuta and Blo, Gireev and Azadovsky, he seems to split into two. Parts of his personality conduct a dialogue with each other. The other group consists of three - Gusein, Morkovin and Farseykin. They are needed to connect the plot. Morkovin acts as the main television presenter of the action unfolding in the novel. He completes all sorts of evolutions, having exhausted his function, at the very end of the story, when Tatarsky reaches the Golden Room, that is, the harmonious final state of the soul. It was at that moment that the role of presenter passes to Farseikin. Huseyn leads the hero's fate in the initial phase and tries to break into the narrative once again. But the road along which Hussein was going to lead Tatarsky was rejected both times. Thus, we see a combination in the form of a double trinity: three leading and three alternative pairs of states, from which the hero temporarily chooses one and then overcomes both. The first pair of possible states of Tatarsky are Pugin and Khanin. The taxi driver who returned from America and the Komsomol functionary, like intermediate dependent states, alternately die in the hero’s soul. Their physical death as a result of gang warfare is, of course, an allegory. “...This virtual Pugin, like a heavy metal from the end of the periodic table, existed in Tatarsky’s consciousness for a few seconds and disintegrated.” And Khanin stayed a little longer. Malyuta and Blo are the second pair of states. The west-oriented Blo and the soil-oriented Malyuta have similar features to the first pair (emigrant and official). They represent a longer lasting condition. At the very end, Malyuta is removed from the Beekeeping Institute. This is Pelevin’s choice, one must think. They say that the universal has triumphed over the national. “Kill the state within you.” "Enter the civilized family of nations." And other wonderful prospects, personified in the image of Blo. His brothers do business in coffins, the demand for which has increased due to banking squabbles ( Funeral service Debirsyan brothers). The third pair of states - Gireev and Azadovsky - symbolizes Tatarsky's social choice. The first personifies the free flight of the soul, which the main character has strived for all his life. But “traces of humiliating poverty” in Gireev’s clothes and apartment (holes in his pants, cheap vodka) stop Tatarsky’s movement towards this state. In addition, Gireev, despite his spirituality, finds himself completely captive to the television monster, succumbing to other people’s delusional advertising fantasies, which are created by the “Beekeeping Institute”. Azadovsky is a master of television nonsense himself. Azadovsky is a state worth striving for. And Tatarsky reaches him. True, Tatarsky does not repeat Azadovsky, but reaches a new state, comprehends the Self and turns into the husband of the goddess Ishtar, that is, he himself is deified. Reflection of symbolic existence in the novel Everything comes down to money, because money came up against itself a long time ago. V. Pelevin After the collapse of totalitarianism, the means of imitation cease to be obedient instruments of dictatorship, but do not disappear and acquire an autonomous existence. The main character of the novel, music video director Tatarsky, cannot help but assume that the “means of electronic communication” that control the state are still an instrument of some secret dictatorship, but, in the end, he is convinced that there is no dictatorship more powerful than the dictatorship of virtuality itself. Expressed in an interpolated treatise philosophical idea The novel is that since television is made by people, and people’s consciousness is formed by television, then the essence of modern sociality lies in the self-sufficient, looped existence of the television image. In the modern world there is no man, man is reduced to a television image, which - in fact, in the end - also does not exist, since it only depicts, copies reality, but there is no reality. Having gone from bottom to top in the media structure, the hero masters the goals and principles of operation of this structure, the goals and principles of creating false name-symbols. The principle of creating false symbols is based on the principle of pandemonium, that is, the mixing of everything: languages ​​(primarily Russian and English), cultures, religions, historical facts, personalities, etc. (here everything is indiscriminate: oriental symbols, Latin America with Che Guevara, Russian birches and kosovorotki, cowboys in jeans, medieval romance, Christian symbols, etc.). A giant of advertising thought is one who can rhyme pants with Shakespeare or Russian history. With the era of television comes an era of confusion of times and spaces, in which there is only one measure - money, and everything else is a commodity. Even space and time become commodities (they are rented out and sold). Symbols, being torn out of their cultural and historical paradigm, are deprived of their true content, as a result of which the possibility opens up to interpret them on the basis of any associations. So Prophetic Oleg, symbolizing national character, is interpreted as a symbol of materialism, and the slogan arises “How the Prophetic Oleg is now going to Constantinople for things. This is where the Russian land stood and stands.” Democracy (within the corporate line of television people) is interpreted as a demo version for the tops. False symbols give rise to false styles. Two main styles emerge - Western and false Slavic. The essence of the Western style is to promote, through Pepsi-Cola, the victory of the new over the old, the victory of everything “cool” and capable of moving ahead. The essence of the false Slavic style is a play on the feeling of philistine patriotism and adherence to “our” traditions; the set of images used here is primitive: birch trees, churches, bells, untucked red shirts, beards, sundresses, sunflowers, husks and some others like that. In general, all the heterogeneous and varied multitude of advertising images creates one single image - the image happy person(and happy in a primitive way - as a rule, this is bodily comfort, selfish security). Advertising shows people other people who have managed to be deceived and find happiness in the possession of material objects. She seeks to convince that consumption of the advertised product leads to a high and favorable rebirth, not after death, but immediately after the act of consumption.

In those days there was a lot of doubtful and strange things in language and in life in general. Take, for example, the very name “Babylen”, which was awarded to Tatarsky by his father, who united in his soul the faith in communism and the ideals of the sixties. It was composed of the words “Vasily Aksenov” and “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin”. Tatarsky’s father, apparently, could easily imagine a faithful Leninist, gratefully comprehending over Aksenov’s free page that Marxism originally stood for free love, or a jazz-obsessed esthete, whom a particularly drawn-out saxophone roulade would suddenly make him understand that communism would win. But this was not only Tatarsky’s father - this was the entire Soviet generation of the fifties and sixties, which gave the world an amateur song and ended up in the black void of space as the first satellite - a four-tailed spermatozoon of a future that never came.

Tatarsky was very shy about his name, introducing himself whenever possible as Vova. Then he began to lie to his friends that his father called him that because he was fond of Eastern mysticism and had in mind the ancient city of Babylon, the secret doctrine of which he, Babylen, would inherit. And my father created the fusion of Aksenov with Lenin because he was a follower of Manichaeism and natural philosophy and considered himself obliged to balance the light principle with the dark one.

Despite this brilliant development, at the age of eighteen Tatarsky happily lost his first passport, and received a second one for Vladimir.

After that, his life developed in the most ordinary way. He entered a technical institute - not because, of course, he loved technology (his specialty was some kind of electric melting furnaces), but because he did not want to join the army. But at twenty-one, something happened to him that decided his future fate.

In the summer, in the village, he read a small volume of Boris Pasternak. Poems, for which he had previously had no inclination, shocked him to such an extent that for several weeks he could not think about anything else, and then he began to write them himself. He forever remembered the rusty frame of the bus, which had grown obliquely into the ground at the edge of a forest near Moscow. Near this frame, the first line in his life came to his mind - “The sardines of the clouds are floating south” (later he began to find that this poem smelled of fish). In a word, the incident was completely typical and ended typically - Tatarsky entered the Literary Institute. True, he did not pass the poetry department - he had to be content with translations from the languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR. Tatarsky imagined his future something like this: during the day - an empty auditorium at the Literary Institute, interlinear writing from Uzbek or Kyrgyz, which needs to be rhymed for the next date, and in the evenings - works for eternity.

Then one important event for his future happened unnoticed. The USSR, which began to be updated and improved around the same time that Tatarsky decided to change his profession, improved so much that it ceased to exist (if a state is capable of getting to nirvana, this was just such a case).

Therefore, there could no longer be any talk of any translations from the languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR. It was a blow, but Tatarsky survived it. There was work left for eternity and that was enough.

And then the unexpected happened. Something also began to happen with eternity, to which Tatarsky decided to devote his work and days. Tatarsky could not understand this at all. After all, eternity - so, in any case, he always thought - was something unchangeable, indestructible and in no way dependent on fleeting earthly situations. If, for example, a small volume of Pasternak, which changed his life, had already fallen into this eternity, then there was no force capable of throwing it out of there.

It turned out that this is not entirely true. It turned out that eternity existed only as long as Tatarsky sincerely believed in it, and, in essence, it did not exist anywhere outside of this belief. In order to sincerely believe in eternity, it was necessary for this belief to be shared by others, because a belief that is not shared by anyone is called schizophrenia. And with others - including those who taught Tatarsky to keep alignment for eternity - something strange began to happen.

It’s not that they have changed their previous views, no. The very space where these previous glances were directed (the gaze is always directed somewhere) began to fold and disappear until all that remained of it was a microscopic speck on the windshield of the mind. Completely different landscapes flashed around.

Tatarsky tried to fight, pretending that nothing was really happening. At first it worked. Communicating closely with other people who also pretended that nothing was happening, one could believe it for a while. The end came unexpectedly.

One day, while walking, Tatarsky stopped at a shoe store that was closed for lunch. Behind his window floated in the summer heat a fat, pretty saleswoman, whom Tatarsky for some reason immediately called Manka to himself, and among the collapse of multi-colored Turkish handicrafts stood a pair of shoes undoubtedly of domestic production.

Tatarsky experienced a feeling of instant and piercing recognition. These were pointed high-heeled boots made of good leather.

Yellow-red in color, stitched with blue thread and decorated with large gold harp-shaped buckles, they were not simply tasteless or vulgar.

They clearly embodied what one drunken teacher of Soviet literature from the Literary Institute called “our gestalt,” and it was so pitiful, funny and touching (especially the harp buckles) that tears welled up in Tatarsky’s eyes. There was a thick layer of dust on the boots - they were clearly not in demand by the era.

Tatarsky knew that he, too, was not in demand by the era, but he managed to get used to this knowledge and even found in it some kind of bitter sweetness. It was deciphered for him by the words of Marina Tsvetaeva: “Scattered in the dust in stores (Where no one took them and does not take them!), My poems, like precious wines, will have their turn.” If there was something humiliating in this feeling, it was not for him - rather for the world around him. But, freezing in front of the display case, he suddenly realized that he was collecting dust under this sky not like a vessel with precious wine, but precisely like shoes with harp buckles. In addition, he realized one more thing: eternity, in which he had previously believed, could only exist on state subsidies - or, what is the same thing, as something prohibited by the state. Moreover, she could only exist as a half-conscious memory of some Manka from the shoe store. And to her, just like to him, this dubious eternity was simply inserted into her head in the same container with natural history and inorganic chemistry. Eternity was arbitrary - if, say, Stalin had not killed Trotsky, but on the contrary, it would have been inhabited by completely different people. But even this did not matter, because Tatarsky clearly understood: in any case, Manka simply does not care about eternity, and when she finally stops believing in it, there will be no more eternity, because where should she be then?

Money is the main mythology of the novel. Most of the other symbols are essentially just contextual metaphors for money. In my opinion, Pelevin’s novel “Generation P” well described the picture that emerged during the transition from socialist to democratic power. The psychological make-up of people of that time is well shown, which, in principle, remains almost unchanged in terms of symbolism. This novel became very educational for me, pointing out many shortcomings of the government, “holes” in people’s minds. All of Pelevin’s books are good in their own way, “Generation P” has absorbed some moments from his works that have already been published: A father calls his son a strange name associated with an ancient civilization - from the novel “Omon Ra”, the main character meets an old friend, also a writer, and this meeting takes the protagonist’s sad fate to a new stage - from the novel “Chapaev and Emptiness”, episodes “from the life of the cool”, a uniquely witty look at mechanisms Russian business- from the story “The History of Paintball in Russia”, and some more ideas successfully used in Pelevin’s works. But the book is still very interesting to read - as you read, you become immersed in the main character’s problems, understand their meaning, and everything falls into place. “Generation P” gives a clear idea of ​​how the human personality can degrade under external influence, turning into a puppet of advertising and the flow of the public, loss of individuality.

Image of a generation transition period in the novel by Victor Pelevin

"Generation "P"

Pomyalov Artem Viktorovich,

graduate student of Cherepovets State University.

The entire novel is a typical story of a “hero of our time.” The main character, a graduate of the Literary Institute Vavilen Tatarsky (like Pelevin himself), is not in demand by the era, since the profession for which he was trained simply ceased to exist: “True, he did not pass the poetry department - he had to be content with translations from the languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR. Then, unnoticed, one important event for his future happened. The USSR, which began to be updated and improved around the same time that Tatarsky decided to change his profession, improved so much that it ceased to exist (if a state is capable of reaching nirvana, this was just such a case). Therefore, there could no longer be any talk of any translations from the languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR.”

In general, “generational” themes are becoming the most popular in postmodern art. This is due to global changes in public life at the turn of the 90s of the last century. If in a static society the writer is interested in the difference between one group or class of people from another, then in the transition period communities that are large in historical scale come to the fore. In his interpretation of the concept of “generation,” Pelevin is guided by the “sociology of knowledge” of Karl Mannheim, who was one of the first to define the essence of generation and the boundaries of this concept.

First of all, in order to get a clear idea of ​​the basic structure of generations, it is necessary to explain the specific capabilities of the individuals who make up one generation. “A generation does not form a community through social ties of the type that lead to the formation of specific groups, although it may sometimes happen that a sense of unity is recognized as the basis for the creation of specific age groups, but in this case the groups are most often just cliques with the only distinctive feature: the formation of a group is based on the consciousness of belonging to one generation, and not on specific goals.”

To explain the specifics of a generation, Mannheim introduces the concept of “location”, understanding by it the common place of one generation in the social structure of society: “the unity of a generation is constituted mainly by the similar location of many individuals in social space.”

The thesis about the stereotyping of human thinking, which is characteristic of postmodern literature, is also considered in the sociology of knowledge through a “generational” prism, which brings this kind of sociology closer to the literary method itself. “The facts of belonging to the same class and to the same generation or age group have a common feature: in both cases, individuals are endowed with a position in the social and historical process; thus their potential experience is limited to a certain level, and they are inclined towards a specific way of thinking and a characteristic, historically appropriate course of action. If so, then a particular location excludes a wide variety of styles of thought, experience, feeling and action, and marks the limit for personal expression. However, this negative limit does not exhaust the essence of the matter. Each location, in a positive sense, has a tendency toward certain ways of behaving, feeling, and thinking."

We can conclude that “generation” is nothing more than a special type of location identity in the historical-social process of “age groups”. In modern sociology, there is the concept of a transitional generation, that is, a generation that has the features of the community that preceded it and that replaces it. It is this kind of generation that is the basis of post-Soviet society in the novel “ Generation "P". The generation of the transition period itself is heterogeneous in its structure - this is, on the one hand, the Soviet generation of the 50-60s, which is trying to find a place for its ideals in the new reality: “Tatarsky’s father, apparently, could easily imagine a faithful Leninist gratefully comprehending the free Aksenov’s page that Marxism initially stood for free love, or a jazz-obsessed esthete who was suddenly made to understand by a particularly drawn-out saxophone roll that communism would win. But this was not only Tatarsky’s father, this was the entire Soviet generation of the fifties and sixties, who gave the world an amateur song and ended up in the black void of space as the first satellite - a four-tailed sperm of a future that never came”; and on the other hand, the “new Russians” are a class of people who have earned quite a lot of money from very dubious transactions, often through criminal means.

Postmodernists record changes in the world and people through the mixing of different objects and objects of reality. Pelevin indicates the time of his appearance on stage " generation “P” as “the historical victory of red over red,” that is, we can argue that the author is not interested in external changes in the picture of the world, but in the internal essence of the events taking place - a change in human psychology, leading to the loss of any goals of existence, moral values ​​( “eternity has disappeared”), which is expressed in space as a blurring of boundaries between incompatible objects, a combination of antonymic concepts in all planes of the hero’s existence. “There was a strange uncertainty about everything.<…>This world was very strange. Outwardly, he changed little - except that there were more beggars on the streets, and everything around - houses, trees, benches on the streets - somehow immediately grew older and sank... On TV, meanwhile, they showed the same hari that made everyone sick the last time twenty years. Now they were saying exactly the same thing for which they had previously imprisoned others, only they were much bolder, firmer and more radical. Tatarsky often imagined Germany in 1946, where Dr. Goebbels was screaming hysterically on the radio about the abyss into which fascism had dragged the nation, the former commandant of Auschwitz headed a commission to catch Nazi criminals, SS generals spoke simply and intelligibly about liberal values, and the whole shop was headed by a man who had seen the light. finally the Gauleiter of East Prussia."

It is easy to see in this definition not only the irony characteristic of Pelevin, but also identification with real Russian politicians of the early 90s (for example, the Gauleiter of East Prussia - Boris Yeltsin, a native of the east of the country, from Yekaterinburg).

Now let’s try to identify the means Pelevin resorts to to create the image “ generation “P””, of course, in a postmodernist vein. To do this, we introduce the concept of “image”. M. N. Epstein writes: “The image as a reflection of reality is endowed with sensory authenticity, spatial extent, objective completeness and self-sufficiency…. Being an ideal object, an image has some properties of concepts, ideas, models and other mental constructs. The image not only reflects, but also generalizes reality, reveals the essential, eternal in the individual, transitory, accidental.”

In postmodernism, the image is determined by what the author creates, that is, it reflects the fictional world to a greater extent than the real one. “An image is the intersection of the objective and semantic series, the verbally designated and the implied.”

We will focus on the definition of the artistic image given by V. A. Skiba and L. V. Chernets in the article “Artistic Image,” where the specific features of this concept are most accurately expressed:

1) “an artistic image always carries a generalization, that is, it has a typical meaning”;

2) "maximum containment capacity";

3) “it is the form of content in art”;

4) “expresses the author’s ideological and emotional attitude to the subject.”

From this we must conclude that the artistic image as a means of comprehending and modeling reality is the only possible reality in a postmodern novel. A. Genis writes: “The images here are outlined roughly and sharply, like on candy wrappers. The author does not pursue the accuracy of detail, which is why the circumstances of place and time are erased to the point of serial universality.”

Vavilen Tatarsky acts as a sign of his generation; he is not a hero (in the classical sense of literary criticism), but a poster image, dissolved in typical content. This is a person who does not have his own face (about 27 years old, no portrait, etc.), he is initially virtual. Therefore, the heroes in the novel acquire their identity only when they “acquire things,” that is, Pelevin replaces the characterization of the hero with a list of objects, thereby confirming his idea that the main feature of modern ontology is virtualization. There is a loss of the human “I”, the transformation of the individual into a network of simulacra - a model where the final replacement of spiritual values ​​with material ones occurs. Following the physical, as Lev Rubinstein aptly defines it as “bodily or shell virtuality,” comes spiritual virtuality. “The next day, Morkovin arrived at Tatarsky’s house early. He brought with him a large bright yellow plastic bag. The package contained a burgundy jacket made of material similar to overcoat cloth. On his breast pocket flashed a complex crest, reminiscent of the emblem from a pack of Marlboros. Morkovin said that this jacket is a club jacket. Tatarsky didn’t understand, but obediently put it on. Morkovin also took out from the bag a foppish notebook with a leather cover, an incredibly thick pen with the inscription “ Z oo m "and a pager - then they just appeared in Moscow." It is this kind of (“club”) that allows a person to enter a new virtual reality, and, consequently, to finally replace all the differences between people with a set of things, marks and brands.

In the novel by Victor Pelevin, a tripartite division of characters characteristic of postmodern literature can be traced. Therefore, it should be recognized that the main structural element of the novel is the trinity. It is formed by the relationship of three groups of characters with the image of the main character of the work, Vavilen Tatarsky. Pugin and Khanin, Malyuta and Blo, Gireev and Azadovsky, according to by and large, are only states of Tatarsky’s psyche. Parts of his personality conduct a dialogue with each other. The hero temporarily chooses one of the oppositional states, but only in order to then overcome both. Thus, the generation of the transition period is a generation that has lost the worldview of the previous era and has not yet acquired the features of the coming one. It assimilates the features of both, but only on a superficial level, replacing the ideological basis with a purely material one. According to the writer, in a transitional era there can be no individualities; the same type of people-functions like Babylen Tatarsky come to the forefront of history.

Consequently, the author can, with the irony inherent in all postmodernists, move on from explaining what “ generation “P” to his definition, to the conclusion of the symbol of the era and generation as a whole: “If you think about it, even then you could understand that it was not about Pepsi-Cola, but about money, with which it was directly connected. ... The only important thing for us is that the final symbol of generation “P” was a monkey in a jeep.”

Literature

1. Genis A. Victor Pelevin: boundaries and metamorphoses // Banner. – 1995. - No. 12.

2. Mannheim K. Essays on the sociology of knowledge. – M., 1999.

3. Pelevin V. Generation "P". – M., 2003.

4. Epstein M. Artistic image // Literary encyclopedic dictionary / Under the general. Ed. V. M. Kozhevnikova, P. A. Nikolaeva. – M: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1987. – P. 253.

GENERATION "P"(Depth analysis)

“You, Vavan, don’t look for symbolic meaning in everything, otherwise you will find it.” - With these words Farseikin addresses the main character of the book, Tatarsky. Or, most likely, it is the author who turns to the critic, anticipating the revelation of the plan. But I didn’t heed the warning, I started looking and found it.

It was difficult to find - there was too much camouflage designed to disguise the main content of the novel. Well, it’s okay, I managed to get used to it. The plot of any of Pelevin’s works is always richly flavored with a variety of grotesque turns of phrase, strewn with intricate ideas and exotic scenes. There are also plenty of them here, and some of them can even be mistaken for the main content of the plot. It seems that this is the key to the whole composition. But no, that’s not it! Take, for example, the “Spanish collection of paintings.” Placed almost at the very end, this scene suggests that Pelevin devoted the entire book to one task - to draw a modern portrait of consumer society. A parallel with Herbert Marcuse’s “One-Dimensional Man” immediately emerges. Papers with stamps - instead of paintings and sculptures. The reader can only agree with Pelevin’s character Azadovsky: indeed, why post authentic paintings, because today’s participants in secular, near-cultural parties are still only interested in the price of a masterpiece in millions of dollars and the name of its current owner.

A wonderful translation of an ancient book.

Middlegame.

Initially, it seemed to me that this story was nothing more than a light joke, simple entertainment for the author, and at the same time for the reader. But, remembering that in Pelevin nothing happens for nothing, I began to look more closely at the text, trying to see the forest for the trees. But the forest stood there, rustling its leaves and wasn’t very upset that I didn’t notice it. Bah! “Here he is,” I cried, turning around and discovering that I had wandered into the thicket. The philosophical idea touched upon in this story turned out to be so fundamental, so deeply archetypal, that it is present in almost every work of a more or less decent writer (who writes decent prose). But Pelevin found an unexpected form to reveal the idea, which suited him perfectly. The fact is that the author dedicated the story to the Yang-Yin principle. The masculine, the light, the hard, and so on are opposed to the feminine, the dark, the soft in every pair of relationships that has ever arisen on Earth. But Pelevin chose the relationship not of two men and not of two women, but of two couples... as it is scientifically called... ugh! That's disgusting!

In a pair of two men, one always plays the leading male role (Yang), and the other plays the female one (Yin). In a pair of women, one is always in the lead (Yang), and the second follows the first (Yin). Here the author not only showed the leadership within two pairs, but compared them to each other, having first turned them inside out.

Superimposed on the main structure of the story are background problems located within the couple conflicts, but going far beyond the couples themselves. Two prostitutes from Tverskaya turn out to be former men, and even employees of the district Komsomol committee (they were prostitutes, and still are, but for good money). Two naval officers from a submarine turned out to be former women... Well, fancy! However, I will not consider the second and third plans; I will limit myself to what has been said.

Novel "Generation P"

Generation P is a postmodern novel by Victor Pelevin, first published in 1999.

This is a novel about a generation of Russians who grew up and were formed during the political and economic reforms of the 1990s. The novel takes place in Moscow in the 1990s. The main character of the novel is Vavilen Tatarsky, an intelligent young man, a graduate of the Literary Institute, he received his unusual name from his father, an admirer of Vasily Aksenov and Vladimir Lenin. Tatar -- collective image“Generation P” - the generation of the seventies.

Thanks to chance, he gets into the world of advertising and discovers his talent - composing advertising slogans. Thus, he becomes first a copywriter, then a “creator”. Vavilen's task is to adapt advertising of foreign goods to the domestic mentality. Then Tatarsky becomes the creator of television reality, replacing the surrounding reality. Tatarsky participates in the creation of television images of government officials and the political life of the country itself with the help of computer technology. However, he is constantly tormented by “eternal questions” about who really controls this, and in the end he becomes a living god, the earthly husband of the goddess Ishtar.

Vavilen Tatarsky- a collective image that summarizes the generation of people of the 1990s. As a result, we understand the purpose of the hero and, together with him, the purpose of an entire generation - to give their lives to “the main myth of the consumer society: the myth of advertising, which determines the proper circulation of capitalism.” “He and the entire Generation P give their lives for money. Tatarsky became a victim of his own consciousness.”

The novel tells not about the evolution of the hero, but about the process of his self-penetration, finding himself in the world, recognizing his purpose, given initially. What is important is not so much the hero’s starting point and the final destination of his journey, but the gradual unfolding of the essence, the deepening of the character’s consciousness. Pelevin Roman Chapaev Emptiness

The main problem raised in V. O. Pelevin’s novel “Generation “P”” is the problem of the ideology of consumption that established in the country with the fall of the totalitarian regime and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Most researchers consider V. O. Pelevin’s novel “Generation “P”” in line with postmodernism. M. Knyazeva highlighted the following features of postmodernism in the novel: ambiguity in the interpretation of the title, mixing of genres within one work, multifaceted perception of the content, intertextuality, abundance of quotes from other works, deliberate inversion of the depicted world.

As for the meaning of the title of the novel, it should be noted that there are several options for its interpretation: Generation Pepsi, Generation P... (synonym for the end), Generation PR, Generation Py, Generation Pelevin, Generation Popsa, Generation Dog, Generation Postmodernism, Generation of Consumers, Generation of Intermediaries, Generation of Powder, Generation of Emptiness, Generation of Direct Hit; it’s just that the first letter of the word generation is located on the same key as the letter “P”.

Another distinctive feature of V. O. Pelevin’s novel “Generation “P”” is genre versatility. By genre we understand the stable form of a work, predetermined by its content. The genre of the analyzed work is difficult to determine: the author combines many different genre elements. Some researchers define the genre of the novel as mystery or drama, however, the most generally accepted point of view is to define the genre as “Generation “P””, as modern prose. According to V.V. Plyasova, the text contains elements of fantasy, mysticism, detective, action, drug romance and cyberpunk.

M. Knyazeva writes the following about the style of V. O. Pelevin: "Style of Victor Pelevin-a mixture of literary styles and forms, stylization and parody, collage and popular print, kaleidoscope and puzzle, a collection of aphorisms and anecdotes, irony.”

The next feature of postmodernism is versatility of content perception. The specificity of this work is that the realities of its text can be perceived from any angle, "Want-as deep esotericism, or as a brilliant desecration of advertising."

Also, one of the techniques of postmodernism, clearly represented by V. O. Pelevin, is intertextuality. Literally, intertextuality means the inclusion of one text within another.

Not everyone, even an educated person, is able to decipher all the intertextual codes in V. O. Pelevin’s novel “Generation “P””. “These are a variety of myths and archetypes, various religious traditions and philosophical systems, all kinds of mystical practices and magical techniques. It is also necessary to navigate the modern “drug mythology”.

The Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia also provides a list of various quotes in Generation P:

• · the song of the DDT group “What is autumn” (however, the quote from it is inaccurate: the line “What is autumn is leaves” is not in the song)
• · Leonard Cohen's song “Democracy” (...I"m sentimental, if you know what I mean...)
• · books by Al Ries: the real-life “Positioning: a battle for your mind” and the apparently fictional “ The Final Positioning"
• · "Star Wars"
• film "Starship Troopers"
• film "GoldenEye"
• · film “Kin-Dza-Dza!”
• · quotes from Griboedov's works
• · book “Confessions of an Advertising Man” by David Ogilvy
• · novel “1984” by George Orwell
• Shakespeare's works "The Tempest" and "Hamlet"
• novels by Harold Robbins
• · "Rose of the World"
• · Tyutchev’s poem (“You can’t understand Russia with your mind…”)
• · song Pet Shop Boys"Go West"
• · “Song about the prophetic Oleg”
• · film “Hellraiser” (“Hellraiser”)
• · film “The Deer Hunter”
• · film “Ben-Hur” (“Ben-Hur”)
• · book (collection) “Twilight of the Gods”
• · "Alice in Wonderland"
• · movie " Prisoner of the Caucasus»
• · parable “The Mirror and the Mask” by Jorge Luis Borges
• · poem “Rose” from the collection “Passion for Buenos Aires” by Jorge Luis Borges (“What rose of the Persians?.. Which Ariosto?..”)
• film “Un Chien Andalou” by Luis Buñuel
• · Dostoevsky’s book “Crime and Punishment”. Svidrigailov’s monologue about eternity (about the bathhouse with spiders) is almost completely retold.
• · Robert Pirsig’s book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” about the philosophy of the primacy of moral values.
• · Various brands and advertising slogans are often mentioned.

This list clearly emphasizes the intertextuality of V. Pelevin’s text.

Pelevin often uses other people's texts, which is very common in modern literature; he borrows them not because he lacks his own ideas - he complements and reinterprets other people's thoughts, deducing new concepts.

In the novel “Generation P” Pelevin sets out some social and philosophical concept, assessing the modern Western world and the ongoing Westernization of Russia.

The composition of the novel is characterized "multi-layered"

The freely fragmented composition of the novel made it possible to insert many witty reprises into the text. Many critics argue that the novel “Generation “P”” consists of a mixture of disparate anecdotes, urban folklore, American mass culture, and the language of the novel consists of gangster bullshit, youth slang, Volapuk terminology, advertising and PR. Pelevin is characterized by the image of the initiation of the simple-minded, when the path of the hero and the reader himself consists of transitions from ignorance to knowledge. The novel contains constant English inclusions in the text.

All narrative lines finally intersect in the finale (chapter “The Golden Room”), where the reader finds a detailed interpretation of the symbols that he periodically encountered while reading the novel.

All these symbolic images appear on the black basalt slab in Ishtar's Golden Chamber, drawing a schematic picture of the world. In fact, each of the symbols depicted on it was discussed in previous chapters of the novel, but it is here that they first appear together, their meaning is finally clarified in interaction. It is noteworthy that, in essence, the author exploits the detective construction.

One of the main themes of Pelevin's work is myth, taking into account all its forms, variations and transformations, from classical mythology to modern social and political mythology. The novel is a parody of dystopia with a description of numerous commercials and a depiction of a fictional reality. In the novel itself, Farseykin addresses the main character with the following words: “You, Vavan, don’t look for symbolic meaning in everything, otherwise you will find it.”, thus the author addresses critics and readers, expecting the revelation of the plan. Critics highlight the following main themes of the novel:

• · Sumerian-Akkadian mythology, esotericism and religious issues.
• · Advertising and marketing strategies, their impact on people, as well as the adaptation of foreign marketing strategies to the Russian mentality.
• · Faith in the media, domestic mentality and national idea.
• · Conspiracy theories (the book plays on the idea that the world is ruled by a “lodge of advertisers”).
• · The role of drugs in creativity. The theme of the influence of drugs on creativity is carried out by including descriptions of the delusional state of the main character after using drugs. The use of fly agarics causes speech dysfunction in the hero, which leads Tatarsky to the idea that “there is no absolute truth, it depends on the observer and witness of events.” In the episode of calling the spirit of Che Guevara, a person’s dependence on television and his transformation into a “virtual subject” are shown.

Pelevin said at one of the Internet conferences that in his novel “Generation P” there are no heroes, but only characters and characters. The characters are taken directly from life in Russia in the 1980s and 1990s. Here are the “new Russians” and the common people, bandits and the leadership elite, drug addicts, lumpen proletarians and cynical advertisers who control everything that happens. According to some critics, the heroes of the novel are divided into three groups of characters. To connect the plot, the author created a group of characters, which consists of Gusein, Morkovin and Farseikin. Another group of characters consists of Pugin, Khanin, Malyuta, Blo, Gireev, Azadovsky; at the moment of communication with them, Tatarsky’s personality seems to split into two, and parts of his personality conduct a dialogue with each other. Huseyn meets the main character in the initial phase and once again tries to break into the narrative. But their paths diverge both times.

The writer characterizes his characters through comparison. People are like pillars: “...Like a lamppost, he fell out of the field of perception due to complete visual lack of information,” and the pillars are for people: “Tatarsky waited for quite a long time for the continuation, until he realized that Huseyn--This is a pole with a nailed poster “No bonfires!”, hard to see in the semi-darkness.” The author does not describe the portrait of the heroes, because, in his opinion, they cannot have a “real appearance”. Pelevin depicts them schematically, without details: “His face was very intelligent”, “his facial features are quite intelligent.”

The author's task is not an image inner world, because the goal of the heroes’ spiritual quest is only money, characters, and their self-comprehension in the changed external world, so he uses standard clichés and dry language in their description “rage was already boiling in the shallow bottom of his eyes”; “his eyes were clouded with cold white rage”; “Azadovsky’s face was white with rage.”

Victor Pelevin is a bright writer with a unique vision of the world. And this is precisely what can both attract and repel his readers. But no one remains indifferent.