Ethnofuturism in the Udmurt Literature
Viktor Shibanov
Udmurt State University, Izhevsk
In the end of 1980's and the beginning of 1990's, Udmurtia
woke up from the extended Soviet utopian dream and entered
the reality. An impressive and absurd picture full of stunning
combinations of incompatible things opened to the eyes of
the young generation of Udmurts. The landscape included
the impassable dirt of village tracks accompanied by most
advanced military and nuclear technologies, the abundance
of petroleum and wood, the production of Kalashnikov machine
guns, the terrifying poverty of common people, and the futile
hopes for subsidies from Moscow. There were primeval bounties
of the nature and there were ancient layers of musical and
mythological culture. It was the land of great Pyotr Tchaikovsky
and the cemetery of chemical weapons. And what is also important,
the Finno-Ugrian world appeared to have been dissolved in
the Slavic and Turkic worlds. Internal borders between the
east and the west, between the forest areas and the steppe
were missing. The absence of borderlines has turned to be
critical for many people of culture.
New literature did not, certainly, appear from nothing
but had its predecessors. Remarkable in this regard is the
poetry by Flor Vasilyev (1934-78) and Vladimir Romanov (1943-89):
in the Soviet period it needed courage to turn to your ethnic
roots and to discover a pagan inside yourself.
The first messengers of the new perception of reality were
the short novel by Lidia Nyankina Au-au! Yake inbamys
gozhyos ("Ho! Ho! or Zigzags In the Sky",
1993) and the Sergei Matveyev's novel Shuzi ("A
Fool", 1993, published in 1995). In these two books
the features of the new quest were manifested most clearly.
In an attempt to elucidate the new phenomenon critics turned
first to the Russian literary experience - however, none
of its popular terms (conceptualism, socialist realism,
"metametaforism", "metabolism", etc.)
did adequately reflect the essence of processes that took
place in the deep layer of people's culture. It seems that
ethnofuturism is the only term to come closely to the essence
of experiments by Udmurts authors like S. Matveyev, L. Nyankina
and others. This term won recognition after a conference
on ethnofuturist held in Estonia. Still, one must not forget
that a theory is always poorer compared with real processes
in literature. Somewhat later it became apparent that features
of this new style are in works of other Udmurt authors as
well. Good examples are the poetry by Mikhail Fedotov, Rafit
Minnekuzin, Erik Batuyev, Tatyana Tchernova, the prose by
Oleg Chetkarev, Vyacheslav Ar-Sergi, dramatic compositions
by Pyotr Zakharov. The same tendency can be observed in
painting (Valentin Belykh, Vasily Mustayev, Yuri Lobanov),
in music (Ivan Grigoryevykh, Nadezhda Utkina), in theatre
(Olga Aleksandrova) and elsewhere.
What is ethnofuturism? How do I understand this phenomenon?
Ethnofuturism is just like a bird with two wings. Ethnic
points at the connection with original folk and traditional
mythology, while futurism means searching for a place in
the contemporary postmodern world and the aspiration to
be competitive. The two components put together suggest
the transfer of either a modern message in the archaic form
or of an archaic message in the modern form. Either way
this means the struggle for the future. One of the wings
in the patriarchal village and the other is in the industrial
town. The former means folklore and myths, the latter means
modern and postmodern culture. The former points at the
past, the latter points at the future. At the junction of
these two elements élan vital is formed, as it has been
correctly pointed by the Estonian authors in ethnofuturism
M. Pärl-Lõhmus, Kauksi Ülle, Andres Heinapuu and Sven Kivisildnik
in the Finnish magazine Synteesi (1994, No. 4). Finnish
professor of literature Kari Sallamaa has observed that
ethnofuturism is mostly typical to "small" literatures
that have liberated from the yoke of totalitarian ideology
and from the big brother's trusteeship. Above all, ethnofuturism
is in need among the young urban Udmurts.
In theoretical form, I have already singled out some features
of ethnofuturism in my article Ethnofuturism in Udmurtia.
Here I would only briefly review these features.
Firstly, the modern world is pictured as absurd (nonsensical
and turned inside out). The world is disorganised and the
chaos prevails. The action mostly takes place in a "horrible
town" (L. Nyankina, O. Tchetkarev), for example in
a hostel, and the mythological evil from beyond rushes the
world (R. Minnekuzin, M. Fedotov). The chaos seems to be
a norm, yet there is some notion of the ideal order. The
character perceives freedom as distressing. Thus in the
short novel by L. Nyankina Au-au! Yake inbamys gozhyos,
the main character drops in an erotic restaurant to find
that the waiter is a three-eyed creature who gives the guest
a wink, etc.
Secondly, the text is regarded as a "waste-paper basket"
to collect miscellaneous casual stuff and virtually everything
that comes into the author's mind. Modern science refers
us in such occasions to intertextuality or polystylistics
(pointing at the abundance of styles and the multitude of
discourses in the same text). This technique of connecting
incompatible into a whole allows the author to treat, in
a short text, virtually everything including politics, ancient
myths, sensuality and the self-perception of a human as
the centre of the universe. Particularly remarkable in this
regard is the layer of quotations from literature found
in S. Matveyev's novel and poetry. The positive side of
intertextuality and of connecting the incompatible is that
young Udmurt authors boldly treat mythology, thus "snatching"
this area from the exclusive possession of academic ethnographers
and mythologists.
Thirdly, the main character (mostly a narrator in the first
person) tends to be a person of strange and peculiar kind
defined as the schizonarcissic type (see: I. P. Smirnov.
Psychodiachronology. - Moscow, 1994. - p. 338-347). Many
a Udmurt reader find it difficult to grasp that depicting
a schizonarcissist is just a technique, and therefore ascribe
the character's streaks to the "mean author".
The most severe criticism was directed against S. Matveyev
in relation to his novel Shuzi ("A Fool";
the Udmurt word shuzi sounds similar to "schizo").
The sexual adventures of his main character were interpreted
only as an imitation of Vladimir Nabokov's Humbert Humbert,
while the point was missed that the seven women in liaison
with this "Don Juan" were a symbol of the bygone
harmony. In our times, this harmony collapsed like a broken
mirror and is now scattered over different characters. All
attempts by the character to restore it are in vain.
Hence, if we view ethnofuturism as an option in the literary
process, by applying communicative analysis we can single
out the following notions and symbols that make up the structure
of the text: (1) the myth in the kingdom of chaos, (2) fragmentary
thinking, (3) perception of the world as a text, (4) the
schizo-narcissist complex.
