Franz Kafka and Venedikt Erofeev: the case of (un)reading

Aleksandr Agapov

doi:10.5817/OS2024-2-6

Franz Kafka and Venedikt Erofeev: the case of (un)reading

Vol.34,No.2(2024)

Aleksandr Agapov

https://doi.org/10.5817/OS2024-2-6

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/digilib.81656

PDF (Russian)

Abstract

The paper deals with Venedikt Erofeev as a reader of Franz Kafka. Erofeev became acquainted with Kafka's work in 1967, when he read Kafka's one-volume collection of works published two years earlier. Everything we know about Erofeev's reading preferences suggests that Kafka should have interested him, but this apparently did not happen: Kafka left Erofeev indifferent. Perhaps this was due to the fact that Erofeev, for all his interest in modernist literature, was prejudiced against authors fashionable among the Soviet intelligentsia — as an example, we can mention Erofeev's extremely negative attitude to The Master and Margarita. If we talk about possible influence, for example, on the finale of Moscow—Petushki, then it was probably limited to a single borrowing from the short story "The Hunter Gracchus". Nevertheless, the case of Erofeev's (un)reading of Kafka serves as an interesting example of the reception of Kafka and European modernist literature in general in the Soviet Union in the 1960s.

Keywords:
Venedikt Erofeev; Franz Kafka; Soviet underground; 1960s; reception of Kafka in the Soviet Union

Pages:
37–46

References

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