Victor Shklovsky and his 'making strange'

Victor Borisovich Shklovsky and his Technique of ‘Making Strange’

-A.Charumati Ramdas

The Russian formalism finds its origin in the emergence of two groups of scholars – the Moscow Linguistic Circle (which was founded by a group of students of Moscow University in 1915) and OPOYAZ (Society for the study of Poetic Language) in 1916. These two centres of formalist movement were at first simply small discussion groups, where young philologists exchanged ideas on fundamental problems of literary theory in an atmosphere free from official restrictions.

The driving force behind the Moscow Linguistic Circle was Roman Jakobson. His book “Modern Russian Poetry” (1921) contains the early Formalist notion of poetry and literary studies. While the Moscow Linguistic Circle represented the linguists’ collective venture into poetics, their counterparts in Petersburg, ‘Opoyaz’, attempted to solve the basic problems of their discipline by making use of modern linguistics. ‘Opoyaz’ was a sort of coalition of two distinct groups : the professional students of language, such as Lev Jakubinsky and E.D. Polivanov, and literary theorists like Victor Shklovsky, Boris Ejxenbaum and S.I. Bernstein.

The Opoyaz Studies in the “Theory of Poetic Language”, along with Roman Jakobson’s “Modern Russian Poetry” represent a comprehensive statement of the early Formalist position. Formalists believed that the literary scholar should address himself to the actual works of imaginative literature rather that to the external circumstances (social, religious, philosophical, political etc.) in which the literature was produced. Victor Shklovsky even said that ‘Art was always free from life and its colour never reflected the colours of the flag that waved over the fortress of the city.’ Roman Jakobson complains in the same tone : ‘Why should a poet have more responsibility for a conflict of ideas than for a battle with swords or pistols?’ According to Roman Jakobson ideas in literature are like colours on a canvas, means towards an end. The usual confusion of life and art, he says, turns us “into a medieval audience which wants to beat up the actor who played Judas.” “The subject of literary scholarship”, says Jakobson, “is not literature in its totality, but literariness, i.e. what makes a work literary.”

Jakobson (1876 – 1982) left Russia in 1920 and his pamphlet “Noveishaya Russkaya Poeziya” (Modern Russian Poetry, 1921) was published in Prague and the little treatise ‘O Cheshskom stikhe’ (Czech Versification, 1923) which proved important for comparative metrics was published in Berlin. Most of his later writings were in Czech, French and German. He is widely known in the West, but his contemporary Victor Borisovich Shklovsky (1893 – 1984), who did not migrate during the turbulent post-Revolution years is comparatively less known outside the Soviet Union. Jakobson in advancing his theory of communication was primarily concerned with an analysis of the formal features which can be isolated in a “speech event”, literary as well as non-literary; for Shklovsky, however, the unique nature of literary language was self-evident, hence his analysis of the devices employed in a text that make it literary.       

In this paper, an attempt is being made to discuss Shklovsky’s technique of ‘Making Strange’ and its application. First, a little information about Shklovsky. Victor Borisovich Shklovsky – literary scholar, essayist and novelist – was born into the family of a mathematics teacher. He studied philology at the university of Petersburg. In 1916, he co-founded the ‘Opoyaz’ which, as is seen earlier, developed into a Formalist movement. In 1920 and 1921 he taught creative writing at the Institute of Art History in Petersburg. In his capacity as a specialist in literary craft, he was informally associated with the Serapion Brothers and with the Futurist poets of the LEF group. The years 1922 and 1923 Shklovsky spent in Berlin where he published his two most successful novels: “Zoo or Letters about love” (1923) and “A Sentimental Journey: Memoirs 1917-1922.”

In the late 1920’s Shklovsky dissociated himself from the formalist movement to the point of recanting his former views in ‘Literaturnaya Gazeta’ in 1930. In post-Stalinist era, however, he returned to these views in a series of articles, and books. He obviously followed the approved path of scholarship during the years of repression and worked creatively in the period of ‘The Thaw.’

Shklovsky’s most important work is ‘On the Theory of Prose’ (1925). In this book Shklovsky puts forward his theories on literature and analyses them on the basis of individual works of different well known authors. His literary ideas are grounded in the belief that presentation of ‘real life’ in literature is not accomplished through the so-called content but through form. The formal aspect of literary work consists of such devices such as zatrudneniye ‘defacilitation, ostraneniye ‘defamiliarisation’ or ‘making strange’, zamedleniye ‘retardation’, parallelism, contrast and many others. In the opening essay of the collection ‘On the Theory of Prose’ Shklovsky declared that all works of art are merely sum totals of the devices used in them. Subsequent essays examined the ‘stringing together’ of literary devices in novels and stories.

The first essay, ‘Art as Technique’, begins with refuting Alexander Potebnya’s views that ‘Art is thinking in images…without imagery there is no art, and in particular no poetry…Poetry as well as prose, is mainly a well-known way of thinking and knowing.” Shklovsky thinks that the definition “Art is thinking in images” – which implies that art creates symbols – has survived the downfall of the theories of symbolism, on which it was based. Many who still share Potebnya’s views should have believed that the history of this ‘imagery art’ is nothing but the history of changes in images. But it seems that the images are stationary. They are conveyed from century to century, from nation to nation, from poet to poet, without the slightest change. Images are ‘no one’s’, they are ‘God’s’. The more one understand an era, the more convinced one is that the images, considered to be created by a particular poet and used by him, were taken almost unchanged from another poet. In fact, the whole work of poetic schools leads to accumulating and revealing the new techniques and developing the literary material, specially the images, rather than creating them. The images are already given and in poetry there is more of their recollection, than creation.

Shklovsky thinks that there exist two types of images: image as a practical means of thinking, a means of placing objects in categories; and the poetic image, which serves as a means of creating a powerful impact. He explains this by giving a small example: “I walk along a street and see that a person in hat, going ahead of me, has dropped his packet. I shout: “Hey, hat, you dropped your packet!” This is an example of an image – a clearly prosaic trope. Another example: “A a few people are standing in a queue. The supervisor, having noticed that one of them stands badly (not in order) – (not like a man) tells him: Hey, hat (colloquial for clod, duffer), how are you standing!” The image here is a poetic trope (In the first example ‘hat’ is metonymic, while in the second it is metaphor).

Poetic image, according to Shklovsky, is a means of creating the strongest possible impression. As a technique, it is equivalent, in function, to other poetic techniques such as simple and negative parallelism, comparison, repetition, symmetry, hyperbole etc.; prose imagery, on the other hand, is a means of abstraction.

Shklovsky approaches the idea of defamiliarisation or making strange through the Law of economy of creative effort. He considers the expression of maximum ideas in minimum words as the merit of the style. The laws of expenditure and economy are different both for prose and poetry. He argues that an examination of laws of perception shows that as perception becomes habitual, it becomes automatic. Thus, for example, all of our habits retreat into the area of unconsciously-automatic; this will be borne out if one remembers the feeling one had while holding the pen for the first time or speaking the first words of a foreign language and compares that feeling at performing the action for the ten-thousandth time. Such habituation explains the principles by which, in ordinary speech people leave phrases unfinished and words half expressed. This process is ideally represented in Algebra, where objects are expressed by symbols. In rapid speech words are not pronounced completely, their initial sounds are barely perceived. Alexander Pogodin offers the example of a boy considering the sentence ‘The Swiss mountains are beautuful’ in the form of a series of letters: T S m,a,b.’

This quality of thinking not only suggests the method of Algebra, but even prompts the choice of symbols (letters, especially the initial ones). By this algebraic method of thinking objects are apprehended only as shapes with imprecise extensions; they are not seen in their entirety but recognized rather by their main characteristics. They seem to be enveloped in a sack. One knows what the object is by its configuration, but hardly sees its silhouette. The object perceived in this manner fades and does not leave even a first impression; ultimately even the essence of what it was is forgotten. Such perception explains why a prose word is not often heard clearly and, hence (along with other slips of the tongue) not pronounced properly. The process of ‘algebraisation’, or the over automation of an object, permits the greatest economy of perceptive effort. The objects are assigned only one proper feature – a number, for example – or else they function by formula and do not even appear in cognition.              

Here, to elaborate the idea further, Shklovsky quotes an example from the diary of L.N.Tolstoy:

“I was cleaning a room and, meandering about, approached the divan and couldn’t remember whether I had dusted it or not. Since these movements are habitual and unconscious, I felt that it was impossible to remember. If I had dusted it and forgot – i.e., had acted unconsciously, then it was as good as not having done it. If some conscious person had been watching, the fact could be established. If, however, no one was looking, or looking unconsciously, then their existence has no meaning.”

And thus life is reckoned as nothing. Automatisation gobbles up objects, dress, furniture, wife and the fear of war.

And in order to restore the sensation of life, to make one feel  objects, to make stone stony, exists art. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are seen and not as they are known. The technique implied puts stress on making object ‘strange’, ‘unfamiliar’ and to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception, because the process of perception is an aim in itself and it should be prolonged as much as possible: “art is a way of experiencing the process of creation of objects, finished product is not important in art.”

After an object is seen several times, one begins to recognize it. The object is in front of the person and he knows about it, but does not seem to see it. Hence nothing significant can be said about it. Shklovsky stresses that Art removes objects from the automatism of perception in several ways. He illustrates the technique of ‘making strange’ used often by Leo Tolastoy, who presents things as if he himself saw them, in their entirety, and did not alter them.

“Tolstoy makes the familiar seem strange by not naming the familiar object. He describes the object as if he is seeing it for the first time. In describing something he avoids the accepted names of its parts and instead names corresponding parts of other objects. Tolstoy uses this technique of defamiliarisation or making strange (kholstomer), the narrator appears to be a horse, and the objects are defamiliarised not in our perception, but in the horse’s. Here is how the horse understands the institution of private property (vol. III, 1886, 547).

 I understand well what they said about whipping and Christianity. But I was then completely in the dark about the meaning of words ‘his own’, ‘his colt’. From these phrases I saw that people suggested some sort of connection between me and the stable. At the time I simply could not understand that connection. Only much later when they separated me from the other horses, did I begin to understand. But even then I simply could not see what it meant when they called me ‘man’s property’. The words ‘my horse’ referred to me, a living horse and seemed as strange to me as the words ‘my land’, ‘my air’, ‘my water’.

But the words made strong impression on me. I thought about them constantly, and only after the most diverse experience with people did I understand, finally what they meant. They meant like this: In life people are guided by words, not by deeds. It’s not so much that they love the possibility of speaking with words ‘my’ and ‘mine’, which they apply to different things, creatures, objects and even to land, people and horses. They agree that only one may say ‘mine’ about this, that or the other thing, and the one who says ‘mine’ about the greatest number of things is, according to the game which they have agreed to among themselves, the one they consider most happy. I don’t know the point of all this, but it’s true. For a long time I tried to explain it to myself in terms of some kind of real gain, but I had to reject that explanation because it was wrong.

Many of those, for instance, who called me their own never rode on me – although others did. And so with those who fed me. Then again the coachman, the veterinarians, and the outsiders in general treated me kindly, yet those who called me their own did not. In due time, having widened the scope of my observations, I satisfied myself that the notion ‘my’, not only in relation to us horses, has no other basis than a narrow human instinct which is called a sense of or right to private property. A man says ‘this house is mine’ and never lives in it; he only worries about its construction and upkeep. A merchant says ‘my shop’. ‘my dry goods shop’, for instance, and does not even wear clothes made from the better cloth he keeps in his own shop.

There are people who call a tract of land their own, but they never set eyes on it and never take a stroll on it. There are people who call others their own, yet never see them. And the whole relationship between them is that the so-called ‘owners’ treat the others unjustly.

There are people who call women their own, or their ‘wives’, but their women live with other men. And people strive not for the good in life, but for objects they can call their own.

I am now convinced that this is the essential difference between people and ourselves. And therefore, not even considering the other ways in which we are superior, but considering just this one virtue, we can bravely claim to stand higher than men on the ladder of living creatures. The actions of men, at least those with whom I have had dealings, are guided by words – ours by deeds.

The horse is killed before the end of the story, but the manner of the narrative, its technique does not change:

“Much later they put Serpukhovsky’s body, which had experienced the world, which had eaten and drunk, into the ground. They could profitably send neither his hide, nor his flesh, nor his bones anywhere.

But since his dead body, which had gone about in the world for twenty years, was a great burden to everyone, its burial was only a superfluous embarrassment for the people; for a long time no one had needed him; for a long time he had been a burden on all. But nevertheless, the dead who buried the dead found it necessary to dress this bloated body, which immediately began to rot, in a good uniform and good boots, to lay it in a good new coffin with new tassels at the four corners, then to place this new coffin in another of lead and ship it to Moscow; there to exhume ancient bones and at just that spot, to hid this putrefying body, swarming with maggots, in its new uniform and clean boots, and to cover it over completely with dirt.”

Thus we see that at the end of the story Tolstoy continues to use the technique of defamiliarisation though the reason for its use exists no more.

In ‘War and Peace’ Tolstoy uses the same technique in describing whole battles as if battles were something new. These descriptions are too long to quote; it will mean extracting considerable part of the four-volume novel. But Tolstoy uses the same method in describing the drawing room and the theatre:

The middle of the stage consisted of flat boards; by the sides stood painted pictures representing trees, and at the back a linen cloth was stretched down to the floor boards. Maidens in red blouses and white skirts sat on the middle of the stage. One, very fat, in a white silk dress sat apart on a narrow bench to which a green pasteboard box was glued from behind. They were all singing something. When they had finished, the maiden in the white approached the prompter’s box. A man in silk with tight fitting pants on his fat legs approached her with a plume and began to sing and spread his arms in dismay. The man in the tight pants finished his song alone, then the girl sang. After that both remained silent as the music resounded; and the man, obviously waiting to begin singing his part with her again, began to run his fingers on the hand of the girl, in white dress. They finished their song together and everyone in the theatre began to clap and shout. But the men and women on stage, who represented lovers, started to bow, smiling and raising their hands.

In the second act there were pictures representing monuments and openings in the linen cloth representing the moonlight, and they raised lamp shades on a frame. As the musicians started to play the bass horn and counter bass, a large number of people in black mantles poured onto the stage from right and left. The people, with something like daggers in their hands, stared to wave their arms. Then still more people came running out and began to drag away the maiden who had been wearing a white dress but who now wore one sky blue. They did not drag her off immediately, but sang with her for a long time before dragging her away. Three times they struck on something metallic behind the side scenes, and everyone got down on his knees and began to chant a prayer. Several times all of this activity was interrupted by enthusiastic shouts from the spectators.

In ‘Resurrection’ Tolstoy describes the city and the court in the same way. He uses similar technique in ‘Kreutzer Sonata’ when he describes a marriage. Anyone who knows Tolstoy can find several hundred such passages in his works.

Shklovsky feels that ‘defamiliarisation’ or ‘making strange’ is found everywhere where there is an image. Purpose of the image is not to make us perceive its meaning, but to create a special perception of the object – to create a vision of the object rather than its understanding. He not only tries to locate this technique in the works of other authors, but applies it to his own works as well. Shklovsky’s biographies and novels are attempts to put into practice the principles to which he adhered as critic. Most striking example of this is his novel in letters “Zoo or Letters not about love” – a collection of thirty letters exchanged between an autobiographical character (probably Shklovsky himself) and one Alya (Elsa Triolet). It offers virtually no plot but provides fragmentary insights into the moods and thoughts of the author. A lot can be read between the lines, which throws light on the contemporary socio-political atmosphere of Revolutionary Russia. The author is in love with Alya, who has no time for him and who prohibits him to write about love. So the letters speak about nature, legends, contemporary literary figures, the aspiration towards freedom of expression, about Berlin, about old friends, floods etc. Nowhere can one find a single line wherein the author expresses his love for Alya. He prefers short paragraphs, sometimes consisting of only one sentence, amply uses asides and shifts of subject matter. On the whole these letters can be formed as practical application of Shklovsky’s principle of ‘defamiliarisation’, ‘defacilitation, and ‘retardation’. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss all the three of his principles and to quote examples showing their application. We will confine ourselves here to one of the techniques, that of ‘defamiliarisation’ or ‘making strange’ and quote a few examples from “Zoo or Letters not about love” to show how Shklovsky himself uses the technique.

Letter No. 22, which consists of three parts, stresses that women in the night clubs of Berlin can hold a fork:

Strange are the night clubs in Berlin. I found myself in Nachtlokal.

Room is ordinary, there are photographs on the wall.

It smells of kitchen. Piano is drowning all other sounds. Violinist is scraping a strange violin with engraved soundboards. The public is calmly drunk. A nude woman, wearing only black stockings comes out and dances, throwing her hands out in a haphazard manner; then comes out another without stockings.

I didn’t know who else is sitting in the room. Violinist goes around the tables, collects money. He approaches a gloomy drunkard sitting in a corner. That one tells him something.

Violinist takes his bosomless violin and a thin ‘God save the king’ hangs over in the air. It’s a long time since I have heard that hymn.

The woman danced out, put on a quite pretty dress and sits at the neighbouring table, eats something.

‘Look, she can hold the fork,’ told me Bogatyriev. The art of eating was a fashionable thing for us.

We left for home. In the lounge same woman gives us back our overcoats. While showing her the token I threw a glance at her. It was the same woman, who had danced in the stockings. Everything here seems to be going on in a harmonious fashion. ..There is probably no debauchery. There are people with and without words. People with words don’t go away, and believe me, I spent my life quite happily.

You can’t get anything from the bottom with words.

Many examples can be quoted from the novel, but that will make the paper unwieldy. But the interesting point may be that by analyzing his own narrative devices Shklovsky formulated his notion of ‘making strange’ and then, as a literary theorist, he discovered that such a technique is omnipresent in literary texts, especially in those of Tolstoy. It could well be that in his engagement as a formalist critic with the works of creative writers, he learnt the technique of ‘defamiliarisation’ and then applied it to his own practice. In either case, there is a remarkable integrity between Shklovsky the creative writer and Shklovsky the literary theorist.

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Victor Shklovsky's Device of 'Retardation'....

Victor Shklovsky’s Device of ‘Retardation’ and Indian Folk Tales

-A.Charumati Ramdas

Victor Borisovich Shklovsky (1893-1984), one of the founder members of Russian Formalism, in his famous work “On the Theory of Prose” put forward his theories of literature. Shklovsky believes that presentation of life in literature is not accomplished through ‘content’ but through ‘form’. The formal aspect of literary work consists of such devices , among others, such as Затруднение (defecilitation), Отстранение  (defamiliarisation or making strange), Замедление ( retardation), parallelism, contrast and many others. Shklovsky declared that all works of art are merely sum total of the devices in them. He also examined how these devices are stringed together in literary works of various authors.

In this paper, we want to discuss Shklovsky’s technique of ‘retardation’ and examine some Indian folk tales in the light of this technique.

“Why walk on a rope, and rest after every four steps?” asked Saltykov Schedrin about poetry. Anyone who looks at a work of art as an organized piece can understand it. One can also understand why King Lear does not recognize Kent? Why Kent and Lear do not recognize Edgar? He also understands why in Indian films the mystery of two estranged brothers is solved only at the end, why the hero has to leave the scene while someone else is narrating facts.

This is the way the art takes – curved, full of obstacles, often taking one backwards. There is no short and straight way to the goal. The goal of a work of art is to convince or to generalize something. To achieve this goal, sometimes a work of art has to be divided into miniature parts so that its construction acquires a ladder-like appearance. This ladder-like composition consists of such elements as – recurrence, tautological parallelism, psychological parallelism, retardation, epic repetitions etc.

One frequently comes across repetition of same or similar words in Russian folk songs: (Чудным чудно, Дивным дивно);sometimes the prepositions are repeated(Во славном во городе во Киеве; Кто бы нам сказал / про старое, про  старое, про бывалое, про того ли Илью/ про Муромца? ).  Sometimes the same word is repeated in two adjacent lines of a poetic stanza:

Того ли соболя заморского,

Заморского соболя ушистого,

Ушистого соболя пушистого.

There are many other incidents of repetition found in literary works. Sometimes repetition is materialized through negation:

“She took a direct way, not a zigzag one”,

Sometimes synonyms are repeated.

But the aim of this device is to obtain a ladder like, slow, retarded form.

Tautological parallelism with repetition of strophe is called ‘retardation’. Here is an example from a song about Ilya Muromets: 

Выезжал Илья на высок бугор,

На высок бугор на раскатистый,

Расставлял шатер-полы ьелые,

Расставлял шатер, стал огонь сечи,

Высеча огонь, стал раскладывать,

Разложа огонь, стал кашу варить,

Сваря кашу, расхлебывать,

Расхлебав кашу, стал почив держать...

Such examples of retardation are scattered in folk songs, but the critics probably chose to find life, soul, philosophy in them and did not pay adequate attention to these incidents of ‘retardation’.

The reasons for such repetitions could be attributed to the fact that these folk songs were passed on from generation to generation. The initial work could be considered like an amoeba, to which over the centuries, were added repetitions from singer to singer.

One should take notice of the fact that during these ‘retardations’, the action does not freeze, but develops very slowly. Let us look at the following example:

“ My dear sister Anna, please climb up on the tower and see whether my brothers are coming: they have promised to come today; and if you see them, give them a signal so that they come fast.”

The sister climbed up on to the tower, and the poor girl shouted: “Anna, sister Anna, do you see anything?”

“I only see the dust shining in the Sun and the green grass.”

In between the Blue Beard, holding the kitchen knife in his hand shouted with all his might: “Come down, fast, or I’ll come up!”

“One minute, please,” answered the wife. And she said slowly to her sister:

“Anna, sister Anna, do you see anything?”

And the sister answered: “I see only the dust shining in the Sun and the shining grass.”

“Come down fast,” shouted the Blue Beard, “or I shall come up!”

“I am coming,” the wife answered again and then again shouted to the sister:

“Anna, sister Anna, do you see anything?”

“I see,” answered the sister, “a fast approaching cloud of dust.”

“They are my brothers?”

“Oh, no, sister. I see a herd of oxen.”

“Come down, at last,” shouted the Blue Beard.

“One more minute,” answered the wife and shouted to her sister:

“Anna, sister Anna, do you see anything?”

“Yes, I see,” replied she,” two riders, coming towards us, but they are still quite far.”

“Thank God,” she shouted after a minute, “these are our brothers. I shall give them signals, so that they come fast…”

This format is, by the way, quite common in folk tales of England.

It can be seen that the action develops like an arithmetic progression:

A + (a+a) + [a+ (a+a)] +……etc. the same elements are added to the previous elements and so on.

We probably remember the tale heard in the childhood, which is constructed along the same pattern:

“There was a cock. There was a sparrow. The cock had a house of cow dung, while the sparrow’s house was made of wax. Once it rained heavily in the evening, cock’s house was washed off.

The cock came to the sparrow and knocked: ‘Sparrow, sparrow, open the door!’

Came the answer, ‘ Wait, I am bathing the little one.’

The cock knocked again, ‘Sparrow, sparrow, open the door!’

Came the answer, ‘Wait, I am dressing the little one.’

The cock knocked again, ‘Sparrow, sparrow, open the door!’

Came the answer, ‘Wait, I am making the little one sleep.’

The cock knocked again, ‘Sparrow, sparrow, open the door!’

This time the sparrow opened the door…

There is one more pattern of constructing the plot i.e. according to the formula : a

This is very well demonstrated in the tale from The Panchatantra: Mouse-Maid  made Mouse.

“Once upon a time there lived a sage on the banks of a river. He and his wife did not have any children. One day when the sage was praying in the middle of the river, an eagle happened to pass by and the eagle dropped a female mouse in the hands of the sage. The sage found the mouse in his hands on opening his eyes, and took it home to his wife.

On reaching home, he talked to his wife about the mouse and they decided to convert the mouse into a young baby girl. The sage and his wife began to take care of the girl child and brought her up as their daughter. The child grew day by day to a beautiful maiden by the age of sixteen. At this age, the sage decided to find a match for the girl. He and his wife decided that the Sun God would be an ideal match for their girl.

So the sage prayed for the Sun God to appear, and once the sun god appeared asked him to marry his daughter. But his daughter said, "Sorry! I cannot marry the sun god because he is very intense and I will be reduced to ashes in his heat and light.". The sage was displeased and asked the sun god to suggest a possible groom. The sun god suggested the name of the Lord of the clouds. For, the cloud can easily stop the rays of the sun.

The sage then prayed for the lord of the clouds and once he appeared him took him to his daughter. The daughter once again decided not to accept him as his groom. She said, " I do not want to marry a person as dark as him. Moreover, I am afraid of the thunder he produces". The sage was dejected once again and asked the lord of clouds for a suitable groom. The lord of clouds suggested, " Why don't you try the lord of wind, for he can easily blow me away".

The sage then prayed for the lord of the wind. On the appearance of the wind-god, he took him to his daughter. His daughter rejected the groom saying that she cannot marry such a feeble person like the wind god who is always on the move. Dejected once again the sage asked the wind-god for a suggestion. The wind-god suggested the lord of the mountain which was rock solid and stopped the wind easily. So the sage then went to the mountain lord and requested him to marry his daughter. But the daughter once again rejected the mountain lord saying that he was too cold-hearted for her to marry and requested the sage to find somebody softer. The mountain god then suggested a mouse to him, because the mouse is soft and yet can easily make holes in the mountain.

This time the daughter was happy and agreed to marrying a he-mouse. So the sage said, "Look at what the destiny had to offer you. You started as a mouse, and were destined to marry a mouse in the end. So be it". He then converted her back to a she-mouse and got her married to a he-mouse.

     

As we see here, the pattern is like:

Sun, which is again achieved by repetition and retardation.

To preach the moral that ‘Nature is hard to beat’ the tale was constructed using the technique of ‘Retardation’.

Examples of ‘retardation’ can be observed in the Indian classical music too, when a singer renders different ‘Taans’ and comes back to the same line time and again till he goes to the next line of the classical composition.

The aim of ‘Retardation’ is to create a piece of art which a reader or a listener feels. The reader impatiently wants to go ahead and very often skips those places where the retardation occurs. ‘Retardation’ thus helps in sustaining the reader’s interest in the narration.

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Discussion on Master & Margarita - Epilogue

Chapter 33

Epilogue

Everything did not end with Woland’s departure from Moscow. He lived in public memory through various rumours. Rumours reached even the far flung areas of the country.

Many arrests were made. Those whose names started with Koro- and Wol- were invariably arrested: these included Nine Korovins, four Korovkins, two Korovaevs; also arrested were Wolman, Wolper, Volodins, Volokh, Wetchinkevich….this is not satire, this is how people of similar names were arrested so that a particular suspect does not escape.

Many cats were arrested…

They tried to explain about the happenings during those three days and explained that a very efficient gang of robbers had visited Moscow who knew special kind of hypnotizing tricks. Thus many things were explained….they had to admit that THERE WAS SOMEONE in Moscow who had masterminded these events: burning of Griboedov House, Murder of Berlioz and Count Michael could not be ignored, they said that Margarita and Natasha were kidnapped because of their beauty…what they could not explain was the strange disappearance of patient No 118 from Stravinsky’s clinic whose name too was not known.

Let’s take stock of things in Bulgakov’s own magical words:

     

“And so, almost everything was explained, and the investigation came to an end, as everything generally comes to an end.

Several years passed, and the citizens began to forget Woland, Koroviev and the rest. Many changes took place in the lives of those who suffered from Woland and his company, and however trifling and insignificant those changes are, they still ought to be noted.

Georges Bengalsky, for instance, after spending three months in the clinic, recovered and left it, but had to give up his work at the Variety, and that at the hottest time, when the public was flocking after tickets: the memory of black magic and its exposure proved very tenacious.

Bengalsky left the Variety, for he understood that to appear every night before two thousand people, to be inevitably recognized and endlessly subjected to jeering questions of how he liked it better, with or without his head, was much too painful.

And, besides that, the master of ceremonies had lost a considerable dose of his gaiety, which is so necessary in his profession. He remained with the unpleasant, burdensome habit of falling, every spring during the full moon, into a state of anxiety, suddenly clutching his neck, looking around fearfully and weeping. These fits would pass, but all the same, since he had them, he could not continue in his former occupation, and so the master of ceremonies retired and started living

on his savings, which, by his modest reckoning, were enough to last him fifteen years.

He left and never again met Varenukha, who has gained universal popularity and affection by his responsiveness and politeness, incredible even among theatre administrators. The free-pass seekers, for instance, never refer to him otherwise than as father-benefactor. One can call the Variety at any time and always hear in the receiver a soft but sad voice:

`May I help you?' And to the request that Varenukha be called to the phone, the same voice hastens to answer: 'At your service.' And, oh, how Ivan Savelyevich has suffered from his own politeness!

Styopa Likhodeev was to talk no more over the phone at the Variety. Immediately after his release from the clinic, where he spent eight days, Styopa was transferred to Rostov, taking up the position of manager of a large food store. Rumour has it that he has stopped drinking cheap wine altogether and drinks only vodka with blackcurrant buds, which has greatly improved his health.

They say he has become taciturn and keeps away from women.

The removal of Stepan Bogdanovich from the Variety did not bring Rimsky the joy of which he had been so greedily dreaming over the past several years. After the clinic and Kislovodsk, old, old as could be, his head wagging, the findirector submitted a request to be dismissed from the Variety. The interesting thing was that this request was brought to the Variety by Rimsky's wife.

Grigory Danilovich himself found it beyond his strength to visit, even during the daytime, the building where he had seen the cracked window-pane flooded with moonlight and the long arm making its way to the lower latch.

Having left the Variety, the findirector took a job with a children's marionette theatre in Zamoskvorechye. In this theatre he no longer had to run into the much-esteemed Arkady Apollonovich Semplevarov on matters of acoustics. The latter had been promptly transferred to Briansk and appointed manager of a mushroom cannery. The Muscovites now eat salted and pickled mushrooms and cannot praise them enough, and they rejoice exceedingly over this transfer. Since it is a bygone thing, we may now say that Arkady Apollonovich's relations with acoustics never worked out very well, and as they had been, so they remained, no matter how he

tried to improve them.

Among persons who have broken with the theatre, apart from Arkady Apollonovich, mention should be made of Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, though he had been connected with the theatre in no other way than by his love for free tickets. Nikanor Ivanovich not only goes to no sort of theatre, either paying or free, but even changes countenance at any theatrical conversation.

Besides the theatre, he has come to hate, not to a lesser but to a still greater degree, the poet Pushkin and the talented actor Sawa Potapovich Kurolesov. The latter to such a degree that last year, seeing a black-framed announcement in the newspaper that Sawa Potapovich had suffered a stroke in the full bloom of his career, Nikanor Ivanovich turned so purple that he almost followed after Sawa Potapovich, and bellowed: `Serves him right!'

Moreover, that same evening Nikanor Ivanovich, in whom the death of the popular actor had evoked a great many painful memories, alone, in the sole company of the full moon shining on Sadovaya, got terribly drunk. And with each drink, the cursed line of hateful figures got longer, and in this line were Dunchil, Sergei Gerardovich, and the beautiful Ida Herculanovna, and that red-haired owner of fighting geese, and the candid Kanavkin, Nikolai.

Well, and what on earth happened to them? Good heavens! Precisely nothing happened to them, or could happen, since they never actually existed, as that affable artiste, the master of ceremonies, never existed, nor the theatre itself, nor that old pinchfist of an aunt Porokhovnikova, who kept currency rotting in the cellar, and there certainly were no golden trumpets or impudent cooks. All this Nikanor Ivanovich merely dreamed under the influence of the nasty Koroviev. The

only living person to fly into this dream was precisely Sawa Potapovich, the actor, and he got mixed up in it only because he was ingrained in Nikanor Ivanovich's memory owing to his frequent performances on the radio. He existed, but the rest did not.

So, maybe Aloisy Mogarych did not exist either? Oh, no! He not only existed, but he exists even now and precisely in the post given up by Rimsky, that is, the post of findirector of the Variety.

Coming to his senses about twenty-four hours after his visit to Woland, on a train somewhere near Vyatka, Aloisy realized that, having for some reason left Moscow in a darkened state of mind, he had forgotten to put on his trousers, but instead had stolen, with an unknown purpose, the completely useless household register of the builder. Paying a colossal sum of money to the conductor, Aloisy acquired from him an old and greasy pair of pants, and in Vyatka he turned back.

But, alas, he did not find the builder's little house. The decrepit trash had been licked clean away by a fire. But Aloisy was an extremely enterprising man. Two weeks later he was living in a splendid room on Briusovsky Lane, and a few months later he was sitting in Rimsky's office. And as Rimsky had once suffered because of Styopa, so now Varenukha was tormented because of Aloisy.

Ivan Savelyevich's only dream is that this Aloisy should be removed somewhere out of sight, because, as Varenukha sometimes whispers in intimate company, he supposedly has never in his life met 'such scum as this Aloisy', and he supposedly expects anything you like from this Aloisy.

However, the administrator is perhaps prejudiced. Aloisy has not been known for any shady business, or for any business at all, unless of course we count his appointing someone else to replace the barman Sokov. For Andrei Fokich died of liver cancer in the clinic of the First MSU some ten months after Woland's appearance in Moscow.

Yes, several years have passed, and the events truthfully described in this book have healed over and faded from memory. But not for everyone, not for everyone.

Each year, with the festal spring full moon,' a man of about thirty or thirty-odd appears towards evening under the lindens at the Patriarch's Ponds. A reddish-haired, green-eyed, modestly dressed man. He is a researcher at the Institute of History and Philosophy, Professor Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev.

Coming under the lindens, he always sits down on the same bench on which he sat that evening when Berlioz, long forgotten by all, saw the moon breaking to pieces for the last time in his life. Whole now, white at the start of the evening, then gold with a dark horse-dragon, it floats over the former poet Ivan Nikolaevich and at the same time stays in place at its height.

Ivan Nikolaevich is aware of everything, he knows and understands everything. He knows that as a young man he fell victim to criminal hypnotists and was afterwards treated and cured. But he also knows that there are things he cannot manage. He cannot manage this spring full moon.

As soon as it begins to approach, as soon as the luminary that once hung higher than the two five-branched candlesticks begins to swell and fill with gold, Ivan Nikolaevich becomes anxious, nervous, he loses appetite and sleep, waiting till the moon ripens. And when the full moon comes, nothing can keep Ivan Nikolaevich at home. Towards evening he goes out and walks to the Patriarch's Ponds.

Sitting on the bench, Ivan Nikolaevich openly talks to himself, smokes, squints now at the moon, now at the memorable turnstile.

Ivan Nikolaevich spends an hour or two like this. Then he leaves his place and, always following the same itinerary, goes with empty and unseeing eyes through Spiridonovka to the lanes of the Arbat.

He passes the kerosene shop, turns by a lopsided old gaslight, and steals up to a fence, behind which he sees a luxuriant, though as yet unclothed, garden, and in it a Gothic mansion, moon- washed on the side with the triple bay window and dark on the other.

The professor does not know what draws him to the fence or who lives in the mansion, but he does know that there is no fighting with himself on the night of the full moon. Besides, he knows that he will inevitably see one and the same thing in the garden behind the fence.

He will see an elderly and respectable man with a little beard, wearing a pince-nez, and with slightly piggish features, sitting on a bench. Ivan Nikolaevich always finds this resident of the mansion in one and the same dreamy pose, his eyes turned towards the moon. It is known to Ivan Nikolaevich that, after admiring the moon, the seated man will unfailingly turn his gaze to the bay windows and fix it on them, as if expecting that they would presently be flung open and something extraordinary would appear on the window-sill. The whole sequel Ivan Nikolaevich knows by heart.

Here he must bury himself deeper behind the fence, for presently the seated man will begin to turn his head restlessly, to snatch at something in the air with a wandering gaze, to smile rapturously, and then he will suddenly clasp his hands in a sort of sweet anguish, and then he will murmur simply and rather loudly:

'Venus! Venus! ... Ah, fool that I am! ...'

'Gods, gods!' Ivan Nikolaevich will begin to whisper, hiding behind the fence and never taking his kindling eyes off the mysterious stranger. 'Here is one more of the moon's victims ... Yes, one more victim, like me...'

And the seated man will go on talking:

'Ah, fool that I am! Why, why didn't I fly off with her? What were you afraid of, old ass? Got yourself a certificate! Ah, suffer now, you old cretin! ...'

It will go on like this until a window in the dark part of the mansion bangs, something whitish appears in it, and an unpleasant female voice rings out:

'Nikolai Ivanovich, where are you? What is this fantasy? Want to catch malaria? Come and have tea!'

Here, of course, the seated man will recover his senses and reply in a lying voice:

'I wanted a breath of air, a breath of air, dearest! The air is so nice! ...'

And here he will get up from the bench, shake his fist on the sly at the closing ground-floor window, and trudge back to the house.

'Lying, he's lying! Oh, gods, how he's lying!' Ivan Nikolaevich mutters as he leaves the fence.

'It's not the air that draws him to the garden, he sees something at the time of this spring full moon, in the garden, up there! Ah, I'd pay dearly to penetrate his mystery, to know who this Venus is that he's lost and now fruitlessly feels for in the air, trying to catch her! ...'

And the professor returns home completely ill. His wife pretends not to notice his condition and urges him to go to bed. But she herself does not go to bed and sits by the lamp with a book, looking with grieving eyes at the sleeper. She knows that Ivan Nikolaevich will wake up at dawn with a painful cry, will begin to weep and thrash. Therefore there lies before her, prepared ahead of time, on the tablecloth, under the lamp, a syringe in alcohol and an ampoule of liquid the colour of dark tea.

The poor woman, tied to a gravely ill man, is now free and can sleep without apprehensions.

After the injection, Ivan Nikolaevich will sleep till morning with a blissful face, having sublime and blissful dreams unknown to her.

It is always one and the same thing that awakens the scholar and draws pitiful cries from him on the night of the full moon. He sees some unnatural, noseless executioner who, leaping up and hooting somehow with his voice, sticks his spear into the heart of Gestas, who is tied to a post and has gone insane. But it is not the executioner who is frightening so much as the unnatural lighting in this dream, caused by some dark cloud boiling and heaving itself upon the earth, as happens

only during world catastrophes.

After the injection, everything changes before the sleeping man. A broad path of moonlight stretches from his bed to the window, and a man in a white cloak with blood-red lining gets on to this path and begins to walk towards the moon. Beside him walks a young man in a torn chiton and with a disfigured face. The walkers talk heatedly about something, they argue, they want to reach some understanding.

'Gods, gods!' says that man in the cloak, turning his haughty face to his companion. `Such a banal execution! But, please,' here the face turns from haughty to imploring, `tell me it never happened! I implore you, tell me, it never happened?'

'Well, of course it never happened,' his companion replies in a hoarse voice, 'you imagined it.'

'And you can swear it to me?' the man in the cloak asks ingratiatingly.

`I swear it!' replies his companion, and his eyes smile for some reason.

'I need nothing more!' the man in the cloak exclaims in a husky voice and goes ever higher towards the moon, drawing his companion along. Behind them a gigantic, sharp-eared dog walks calmly and majestically.

Then the moonbeam boils up, a river of moonlight begins to gush from it and pours out in all directions. The moon rules and plays, the moon dances and frolics. Then a woman of boundless beauty forms herself in the stream, and by the hand she leads out to Ivan a man overgrown with beard who glances around fearfully. Ivan Nikolaevich recognizes him at once. It is number one-eighteen, his nocturnal guest. In his dream Ivan Nikolaevich reaches his arms out to him and asks greedily:

'So it ended with that?'

'It ended with that, my disciple,' answers number one-eighteen, and then the woman comes up to Ivan and says:

'Of course, with that. Everything has ended, and everything ends... And I will kiss you on the forehead, and everything with you will be as it should be ...'

She bends over Ivan and kisses him on the forehead, and Ivan reaches out to her and peers into her eyes, but she retreats, retreats, and together with her companion goes towards the moon...

Then the moon begins to rage, it pours streams of light down right on Ivan, it sprays light in all directions, a flood of moonlight engulfs the room, the light heaves, rises higher, drowns the bed. It is then that Ivan Nikolaevich sleeps with a blissful face.

The next morning he wakes up silent but perfectly calm and well. His needled memory grows quiet, and until the next full moon no one will trouble the professor - neither the nose less killer of Gestas, nor the cruel fifth procurator of Judea, the equestrian Pontius Pilate.”

     

Magnificently written epigraph….the crowning glory!

Bulgakov has summed up the fate of each and every character….the readers too are completely satisfied….