Lianozovo biographical myth in Vladimir Sorokin's novel “Blue Lard”

Abstract

The article examines one of the key episodes of V. Sorokin's novel “Blue Lard” (1999) from the perspective of the biographical myth. In the novel, some prominent representatives of Soviet uncensored art appear as characters. They are members of the Lianozovo group Evgeny Kropivnitsky, Oskar Rabin, Igor Kholin, Genrikh Sapgir, and Vsevolod Nekrasov. It is argued that the Lianozovian “biographical legend” cultivated in the work is formed on the basis of three equal and interrelated semes: “marginality”, “opposition to official art”, and “claims of aesthetic superiority”. The first seme “highlights” I. Holin's past as a prisoner and O. Rabin's complicated relationship with the law; the second emphasizes the opposition of underground art to any “permitted” forms of literature; the third absolutizes its artistic primacy and avant-garde character. The sources of the myth outlined in the novel are analyzed through the memoirs collected by V. Pivovarov in his album Holin and Sapgir jubilant, metapoetic texts by the Lianozovites featuring the literary life of the era (for example, V. Nekrasov's article “”) and their literary works (poems and paintings). V. Sorokin's myth-making strategy involves, on the one hand, reducing biographical images to a few of their most expressive qualities (which makes them one-dimensional) and, on the other hand, replacing conventional codes with occasional ones or “doubling” them (bringing them to their semantic limit).