Marginalized Writing Of An Exiled Life

Dovtalov, the leading "third wave" Russian emigre writer, was well recognized for his prose. Similar to many "third wave" emigre writers, Dovlatov could not have his works published in his home country when he was alive but regained readers from his home country after the Soviet Union collapsed and the immigration literature became popular. Different from many Russian emigre writers, both he and his works drew a perfect curve from the peripheral to the center so that he did not become a tool in the political turbulence and his works became classics that would be read forever.In recent years, with the immigration literature attracting more and more attention and its significance being well recognized in the academic field, the call for the reconstruction of Russian literature history became a fact. However, very little has been done in the case study of emigre writers, especially the deep analysis of their literature creation. Therefore, it is a necessary and timely project to do research on the art of Russian emigre writers and Dovtalov in particular, a celebrated emigre writer. Targeted at the major novels of Dovtalov, this paper employed a combined method of summarization at the macro-level and detailed analysis at the micro-level to explore the characteristic of marginalization originated from Dovtalov's exiled life by setting the novels in their special social background.This paper was divided into four parts. Chapter one traced the exiled journey of Dovlatov and analyzed the various social, political, personal and literature reasons that led to his marginalization with an aim to find out the interior and exterior factors for his choice of the marginalized way of writing. Dovlatov was exiled all his life though in two different forms---domestic exile and foreign exile (political exile). Leningrad, Tallinn and New York were the three cities in his life where he resided. In his forty-nine-year life journey, he spent thirty-four years in Leningrad, three years in Tallinn and twelve years in New York. To Dovlatov, the three years'in Tallinn was a peep to the Western world, a brave leap before his immigration and another form of domestic exile---geographic exile. The major form of Dovlatov's domestic exile was the exile in his home city Leningrad where his works were rejected by publishers, and he himself was marginalized to the peripheral of the society. From Leningrad to Tallinn and then back to Leningrad, Dovlatov worked as a boxer, factory journalist, a tour guide in Pushkin reserve, and the literature secretary for the woman writer Panova, all of which proved to be a failure. The thirty-seven years he spent in his home country could be best summarized as a "hard journal" in his literature road when his life was a tragedy as he could not make his voice heard as a writer.Immigrating to the U.S, a common choice for the "third wave" Russian emigre writers, seemed to be always related to politics or dissidents. The immigration of Dovlatov, on the other hand, was different and not related to politics. His wife, who in his novel was depicted as "a silent and tame woman who was as calm as a dam", immigrated to the U.S decisively ahead of him. The hesitating Dovlatov who was unwilling to leave his home county had to leave Russia and went to the U.S. following his wife and children. It can be said that this absurdity of fate turned him to be a "dissident writer" who showed no interest in politics.Being marginalized seemed to be unavoidable for those in exile. Section Two in Chapter One expounded the various factors of the marginalization of Dovlatov in the large historical background. The author maintained that the Leningrad writers with Dovlatov as the representative were marginalized due to both geographic and time factors. Geographically, Leningrad was a marginalized city compared to Moscow the capital city. In history, Leningrad had always been a city full of absurdity, detachment, and exotic marginalization. Dovlatov started his literature journal in the 1960s and 1970s when Brezhnev was in administration. The government strengthened its control in the culture and ideology field and the polarization of literature went to extremes when all the other literatures than the mainstream literature---the socialism realism were resisted and oppressed. In the process of marginalization, Dovlatov learned how to choose and undertook the so called self-marginalization. The strategies of self-marginalization included the following: to seek for freedom and independence, to overthrow the image of official writers by adopting a unique way of life, to esteem American literature as the model, to break the traditional preaching and ideology in literature creation, to promote the literature that held different standards from those at that time such as avoiding the well-accepted themes as war, Russian countryside and industrial construction, rejecting the arrogant and unimaginative style, but choosing to narrative daily life and focus on the life of marginalized man, and to explore the individual spiritual world and human nature. All of Dovlatov's literature expression formed a deep contrast with the Soviet realism literature and dissident literature.Chapter two analyzed the various factors that influenced Dovlatov's literature creation, including his inheritance of Russian traditional literature and acceptance of American literature. Dovlatov appreciated and inherited the aesthetic school in Russian traditional literature represented by Pushkin and Chekhov but resisted writers who emphasized the social and education function of literature. Meanwhile, Dovlatov also actively borrowed, accepted and assimilated American literature. Hemingway was the role model of his life and literature creation when he was young. Although the influence of Salinger on Dovlatov was not very obvious, their literature creation coincided in essence. Due to his close connections with Russian literature and foreign literature both at his time and before his time and his superior understanding and grasp of world art trend ahead of his time, Dovlatov formed a unique art style of his own in the clash of different cultures.Chapter three carried out a multifaceted investigation into the narrative art of Dovlatov's novels from the perspectives of traditional narrative theory, western modern narrative theory and post-modern narrative theory. "Serial" and "repetition" were the two outstanding characteristics of the structures of his novels. These two strategies of structure organization together with the use of the threading role could be traced back to Russian folk literature, which created a unified and harmonious art world of Dovlatov. On the other hand, language was the most attractive part in his novel. This section dwelled on his language features from the two aspects of "narrative language" and "character language" and showed evidence to his inherited language sensitivity.Meanwhile, superior modern narrative techniques were embedded in Dovlatov's simple and plain narrative style. This section also pinned down the modernism characteristics of Dovlatov's novels through the analysis of the use of narrative model of first person interior focus and the complex relation between the narrator and the hidden author.As a post-modernism writer, Dovlatov's post-modernism narrative both featured the domestic Soviet post-modernism and also manifested its uniqueness. His deconstruction and overthrow of the Soviet myth and grand narrative did not take place in harsh accusation or revelation but in sly humor. He employed his personal experiences as the raw materials in what is termed the "pseudo-realism" narrative and paid concrete and specific attention to the existing absurdity, which added a heavy touch of realism to his post-modern narrative. This section ended with a further exploration of the post-modern narrative features through the analysis of his representative work "The Zone". Dovlatov incorporated both tradition and modernism in narration and was ranked among the "classic writers" and "serious literary writers" and was recognized as the "most normal writer" in the 20th century Russia.Chapter four analyzed the images of characters in Dovlatov's novels from two perspectives, namely, the relation between characters and their prototypes and the characteristics of the "marginalized people". In his novel "I", the character named "Dovlatov" was the "double" of the author, whom readers can find in almost all of his novels. Sometimes this character resembled the author but sometimes he was very different from the author, which was a way in which Dovlatov created the main character and also a means of self-construction and self-pursuing.Relatives, friends, and his contemporary writers were the other type of characters in Dovlatov's works. These people often appeared in his novels in their real names, which made Dovlatov's novels sound like anecdotes of celebrities. However, in no time would readers find the "fabrication" under the veil of "reality" because the same sentence would be uttered by different characters and the same incident would happen to different characters. Even the date when Dovlatov immigrated and how he met his wife had several versions, which featured "Pseudo-realism" in Dovlatov's words. Therefore, the celebrity anecdotes were in reality varied, repetitive, and funny masquerades and the narration relating to his family events was full of legends and myths.His novel, like a distorting mirror, processed real figures and made either exaggerative or carton like or distorted changes to them. On the surface, they looked like real people and real events but in fact they were artistic fabrications. The processed and reformed characters were usually more lively and interesting than the prototypes and thus boring life could become more tolerable and even meaningful."Marginalization" was a common feature shared by all characters in Dovlatov's works. The mainstream Soviet literature had always advocated the submerge of "individual" into the "collective" and the main characters were usually heroes with positive images. By contrast, Dovlatov depicted in his novels mainly the wanderers, the drunk, the unfortunate and the unrecognized talents, to whom he belonged. The marginalized people inherited features of both the "small potatoes" and the "surplus men" in traditional Russian literature but differed from these two types of people in that they were the contemporary variations of them. Like the "cheaters, idiots and clowns" in Bakhtin's works, they were lazy, alcoholic, secluded, lonely, and ready to compromise. In literature creation, Dovlatov maintained an equal relation with the characters in his novels instead of a superior one and very seldom did he criticize their deeds directly.In his whole life, Dovlatov constructed his artistic world as a marginalized person. No matter in the context of social-realism or foreign culture where he was exiled to, he stuck to his way of writing and formed a unique artistic personality. Being able to face the unfavorable situations and gain the freedom of heart was the key to a successful life for the marginalized people. The fact that Dovlatov endeavored to become a famous writer from a rejected and marginalized nobody proved that the center could be replaced by margins and margins could turn to be the center.This paper addressed the ideological and artistic features of Russian emigre literature, a unique historic and culture phenomenon, through the aesthetic and historic analysis of Dovlatov's works. This paper not only provided new contents and examples to exile and marginalization, two worldwide social and cultural concepts in the 20th century, but also called attention to the 1960s and 1970s Leningrad literature, an often neglected literature field. The exploration of the various factors that brought Dovlatov from the margin to the center rendered us lessons as how to change our dichotomous way of thinking, to turn away from the way of thinking that establish an absolute contrast between "center" and "margin", and to adopt a multi-coexistence and dialogical context.