Problems of text and reception: Mixail Zoscenko.

Abstract

Mixail Zoscenko stands at the center of controversy. His critical reception in both the (former) Soviet Union and the West is dominated by incompatible images of author and work. He has been advanced as a pro-Soviet satirist, an anti-Soviet satirist, or an artist striving for maximum simplicity to meet the needs of the newly literate masses. Previous interpretations have generally promoted Zoscenko within one of these lines, seeking to define him through various political claims, yet it is my contention that this conflict is not primarily a question of literary politics. In my dissertation, I investigate how his texts' complexities and ambiguities generate this critical dissension. Given the noted indeterminacy of Zoscenko's texts--inconsistencies, contradictions and incongruencies on the linguistic and narrative planes--they resist/parody conventional strategies of semanticization. This tension compromises critical expectations that his work fulfills an essentially mimetic or "realistic" function as a "window" on early Soviet life and language. Two central elements of this ambiguity are his celebrated skaz, which complicates the normal procedures by which we may demarcate and hierarchize voices in a narrative, and the generic instability of his texts. By integrating analysis of these elements with examination of the numerous, yet relatively untouched, documents of his reception, I explore how his texts' value shifts within various critical paradigms. The dissension in his critical legacy constitutes a useful case study in order to examine the question of literary reception in the Soviet Union, a subject that rarely has been investigated outside of a political framework. My focus is on the reception of Zoscenko in the 1920s and 1930s, and, therefore, separate attention is devoted to two vital aspects of this question: the mass reader and the Socialist Realist context. However, reference is made to posthumous interpretations and to his legacy in the West in order to elucidate certain theoretical points. As a theoretical basis from which to understand the complexities of textual production and reception, I employ late formalist and Prague structuralist studies of the polysemic nature of the text, complemented by Mixail Baxtin's theories of double-voiced discourse.