Chapayev and Void
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''Chapayev and Pustota'' (russian: links=no, italics=yes, Чапаев и Пустота), known in the US as ''Buddha's Little Finger'' and in the UK as ''Clay Machine Gun'', is a novel by
Victor Pelevin Victor Olegovich Pelevin ( rus, Виктор Олегович Пелевин, p=ˈvʲiktər ɐˈlʲɛɡəvʲɪtɕ pʲɪˈlʲevʲɪn; born 22 November 1962) is a Russian fiction writer. His novels include ''Omon Ra'' (1992), ''The Life of Insects ...
first published in 1996. It follows the dreams of three Moscow mental patients in the early 1990s, with the main protagonist imagining flashbacks to the
Russian Civil War , date = October Revolution, 7 November 1917 – Yakut revolt, 16 June 1923{{Efn, The main phase ended on 25 October 1922. Revolt against the Bolsheviks continued Basmachi movement, in Central Asia and Tungus Republic, the Far East th ...
, in which he was enlisted by a legendary
Bolshevik The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
commander. ''Buddha's Little Finger'' has been compared to the works of
Nikolai Gogol Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol; uk, link=no, Мико́ла Васи́льович Го́голь, translit=Mykola Vasyliovych Hohol; (russian: Яновский; uk, Яновський, translit=Yanovskyi) ( – ) was a Russian novelist, ...
and
Mikhail Bulgakov Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov ( rus, links=no, Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков, p=mʲɪxɐˈil ɐfɐˈnasʲjɪvʲɪtɕ bʊlˈɡakəf; – 10 March 1940) was a Soviet writer, medical doctor, and playwright active in the fir ...
; it contains many satirical vignettes, and blurs the line between dream and reality. While the novel brought Pelevin fame, it divided literary critics. A film adaption, ''Buddha's Little Finger'' by Tony Pemberton, was released in 2015.


Plot summary

The novel is written as a first-person narrative of Peter Pustota (whose surname literally means "void") and in the introduction to this book it is claimed that unlike Dmitriy Furmanov's book ''Chapayev'', this book is the truth. The book is set in two different timesafter the
October Revolution The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key moment ...
and in modern Russia. In the post-revolutionary period, Peter Pustota is a poet who has fled from Saint Petersburg to Moscow and who takes up the identity of a Soviet political commissar and meets a strange man named Vasily Chapayev (loosely based on the real
Vasily Chapayev Vasily Ivanovich Chapayev or Chapaev (russian: link=no, Василий Иванович Чапаев; 5 September 1919) was a Russian soldier and Red Army commander during the Russian Civil War. Biography Chapayev was born into a poor peasan ...
) who is some sort of an army commander. He spends his days drinking samogon, taking drugs and talking about the meaning of life with Chapayev. Every night (according to his post-revolutionary life) Pustota has nightmares about him being locked up in a psychiatric hospital because of his beliefs of being a poet from the beginning of the century. He shares the room in the hospital with three other men, each with his very individual form of fake identity. Until the end of the book it isn't clear which of Peter's identities is the real one and whether there is such a thing as a real identity at all.


Characters


Revolutionary period


Peter

Peter is an unpolitical monarchist poet who is fleeing from the authorities. After murdering his former schoolmate chekist commander von Ernen he takes up von Ernen's checkist name Fanerny. Apartment he meets Chapayev and after a revolutionary performance which Peter does in a cabaret as Fanerny he is approached by Chapayev. Chapayev tells him that Peter (or Fanerny) is transferred to the Asian Cavalry division which is commanded by Chapayev. Everything that happens to him after boarding a train with Chapayev and his niece Anna is lost from Peter's memory after an injury he suffers in battle. Later he learns from other characters that he had become really close with Chapayev and had found answers to many questions. Peter falls in love with Anna who doesn't seem to find him attractive or interesting. He spends much time talking to Chapayev who is trying to explain the illusionary nature of the world to Peter. Peter's character is based on Pyotr Semenovich Isayev who was Chapayev's assistant in real life.


Modern Russia


Peter

In modern Russia Peter wakes up in a psychiatric hospital and has only Peter's memories from the times of the revolution. From his case in the hospital he learns to know that he has had psychological pathologies since the age of fourteen.


Serdyuk

Semen Serdyuk is an inmate of the 17th psychiatric hospital who shares the room with Peter. He claims that he has been put in the hospital after a misunderstanding he had with some policeman over the illusionarity of the world while lying drunk in some basement. When he is put in a state similar to hypnosis he tells a different storyabout himself applying for work in a Japanese firm and performing
seppuku , sometimes referred to as hara-kiri (, , a native Japanese kun reading), is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. It was originally reserved for samurai in their code of honour but was also practised by other Japanese people ...
when the company that has hired him becomes a subject of a
hostile takeover In business, a takeover is the purchase of one company (the ''target'') by another (the ''acquirer'' or ''bidder''). In the UK, the term refers to the acquisition of a public company whose shares are listed on a stock exchange, in contrast to ...
by an archrival company.


Volodin

Vladimir Volodin is a Russian gangster (so-called "
New Russian The New Russians (russian: link=no, новые русские ''novye russkie'') were a newly rich business class who made their fortune in the 1990s in post-Soviet Russia. It is perceived as a stereotype, stereotypical caricature. According to ...
") and Peter's fellow inmate. He and his two friends (or rather "business partners") had consumed numerous psychedelic mushrooms, which took them to a Valhalla-like place ruled by Baron Sternberg.


Maria

Maria or Simply Maria (a male character) is another roommate of Peter's in the psychiatric hospital. After a head injury he has partly taken up the identity of "Simply Maria"a character played by
Victoria Ruffo María Victoria Eugenia Guadalupe Martínez del Río Moreno-Ruffo (born May 31, 1962) is a Mexican actress notable for her roles in telenovelas. Biography 1980s Ruffo began her acting career in 1980, starring in supporting roles in teleno ...
in the soap opera '' Simplemente María'' which was very popular in Russia in the 1990s. In his hallucinations he is a manly woman who meets
Arnold Schwarzenegger Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger (born July 30, 1947) is an Austrian and American actor, film producer, businessman, retired professional bodybuilder and politician who served as the 38th governor of California between 2003 and 2011. ''Time'' ...
and after flying together with him on a military airplane through Moscow Maria is hit by the Ostankino Tower. His fantasies are full of
phallic symbol A phallus is a penis (especially when erect), an object that resembles a penis, or a mimetic image of an erect penis. In art history a figure with an erect penis is described as ithyphallic. Any object that symbolically—or, more precisely ...
s.


Themes

Julia Vaingurt opposed the idea of multiple critics that the novel advocates
solipsism Solipsism (; ) is the philosophical idea that only one's mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known an ...
. She wrote that "while the protagonist’s search for authentic being and self-definition leads him to disregard the meaning others impose on his life, the novel recognizes the ethical problem of reducing the reality of others.


Buddhist motifs in the novel

The novel "Chapaev and Void" absorbed the entire cultural layer of
Buddhist religion Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...
. The work is built on the philosophy of
Zen Buddhism Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...
, according to which "active penetration into the nature of things means discovering a new world, and at the intuitive level. And this is facilitated by the koans (reasoning) that Pelevin uses in his texts as dialogues between the characters. In the novel the commander Vasily Ivanovich Chapayev appears as a Zen Buddhist Guru, a guru who instructs his pupil, Peter, opening for him the way to
Nirvana ( , , ; sa, निर्वाण} ''nirvāṇa'' ; Pali: ''nibbāna''; Prakrit: ''ṇivvāṇa''; literally, "blown out", as in an oil lampRichard Gombrich, ''Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benāres to Modern Colombo.' ...
. Emptiness (
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
" shunyata") is one of the basic concepts of Buddhism. Chapaev's armored car, in which Peter makes his escape into emptiness, has slits resembling "half-closed Buddha eyes" for a reason. And the escape itself "is nothing more than a variation on the theme of the Buddhist "liberation" from the world of suffering. Only by abandoning one's "illusory" self and belief in the reality of the world around us through "enlightenment" as "awareness of the absence of thought" can one achieve a "buddha state," i.e., nirvana. Nirvana is nothing and nowhere. Chapaev acts as a bodhisattva Guru for Peter, rejoicing when he answers the question "Who are you?" with "I don't know," and when asked "Where are we?""Nowhere." Awareness of oneself and the world as the Void is the last stage on the path to Nirvana, there is Nirvana itself, which cannot be described.


Reception

According to Vaingurt in 2018, many critics initially "accused the novel of advocating solipsism and radical disengagement." A reviewer for ''
Publishers Weekly ''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of B ...
'' was highly positive, writing that the work "will surely cement the reputation of Pelevin ..as one of contemporary Russia's leading writers." The reviewer argued that while the novel risks becoming a mess, the "loosely applied Buddhist principles" ultimately make it cohesive. In ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', Scott Bradfield argued that the satire is sometimes overkill, but claimed to admire the "genuine concern for the people who get lost in today's ideological battlefield". Bradfield wrote that "Pelevin has a gift for making complicated philosophical arguments feel both urgent and humane, and his translator, Andrew Bromfield, makes sure even the knottiest passages come through loud and clear." By 2000, ''
The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...
'' had listed ''Buddha's Little Finger'' among Pelevin's "acclaimed" novels. In 2000, a writer for ''
Kirkus Reviews ''Kirkus Reviews'' (or ''Kirkus Media'') is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fic ...
'' wrote that it is messier and more "self-indulgent" than other works by Pelevin, but is still quite compelling. The reviewer dismissed the satire on Western values as "clumsily transparent", but praised Pelevin's re-creation of Russia's early 20th-century literary culture. On
Salon.com ''Salon'' is an American politically progressive/ liberal news and opinion website created in 1995. It publishes articles on U.S. politics, culture, and current events. Content and coverage ''Salon'' covers a variety of topics, including re ...
, Craig Offman said that the work is " astounding as it is frustrating ..shabby, messy, but often visionary". He said the vignettes are "alternately biting and toothless", dismissing Maria's vision of the airplane piloted by
Arnold Schwarzenegger Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger (born July 30, 1947) is an Austrian and American actor, film producer, businessman, retired professional bodybuilder and politician who served as the 38th governor of California between 2003 and 2011. ''Time'' ...
while praising Serdyuk's vision of ''
seppuku , sometimes referred to as hara-kiri (, , a native Japanese kun reading), is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. It was originally reserved for samurai in their code of honour but was also practised by other Japanese people ...
'' with a Japanese businessman. Offman dismissed certain Buddhism-inspired passages, but praised Pelevin as skilled in description and metaphor. In 2017, scholar Sofya Khagi wrote that the novel is a "now-classic" work.


External links


The novel's first chapter

Full text in Russian


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chapayev And Void Novels by Victor Pelevin 1996 novels Novels set in Russia Russian novels adapted into films 20th-century Russian novels