A Return to the World—On Dovlatov's Peter the Great and Dostoevsky's Christ

Sergei Dovlatov (1941-1990) found himself persecuted by the authorities in the USSR. His writing was banned. He had been actively circulating his critical and satirical work through samizdat (underground publications), and even managed to smuggle a number of writings into Western Europe. As a result of his 'subversive' activity, he was expulsed from the Union of Soviet Journalists in 1976. He finally decided to emigrate with his mother to the United States in 1979, where he joined his wife and daughter, who had previously fled to New York. Dovlatov would remain in New York until his death.

In The Suitcase (1986), Dovlatov recounts how he rediscovered the single, battered suitcase that he took with him to the United States many years ago. Finding the suitcase in his wardrobe one day prompts him to tell the story behind each of the eight items that it has held for all of these years. Through the items and their respective origin stories, Dovlatov reflects on the life and home in the USSR that he had little choice but to leave behind.

"So what had I acquired in all those years in my homeland? What had I earned? This pile of rubbish? A suitcase of memories?

I've been living in America for ten years. I have jeans, sneakers, moccasins, camouflage T-shirts from the Banana Republic. Enough clothing.

But the voyage isn't over. And at the end of my allotted time I will appear at another gate. And I will hear: 'What have you brought with you?'

'Here,' I'll say. 'Take a look.'

And I'll also say, 'There's a reason that every book, even one that isn't very serious, is shaped like a suitcase.'"¹

The stories are marked by distance. They take place in a world removed from Dovlatov in time and space. They are alive in his memory, but his memory has had to be stirred by an external, physical event—the dusty, neglected suitcase, which was tucked in the back of his wardrobe like his former life is now buried in the back of his mind. Through the act of writing—by voicing and embodying his vivid memories—Dovlatov shares another kind of suitcase with us. It is one that will persist after all materials have disintegrated, or so one hopes. If this sounds like it might be intolerably sentimental, it is not; the stories are mostly very funny. There is enough lightness and frivolity in the tales to balance out the heavier undertones that provide the larger frame for The Suitcase. As Dovlatov puts it: "Every work must have a minimal dose of the absurd."

I want to focus on one story in particular, in a chapter called The Driving Gloves. This story, like the others, is inspired by an item—a pair of driving gloves—that Dovlatov finds in his old suitcase. Dovlatov recalls that, one day, he was approached by a man named Yura Schlippenbach. The man wanted to know how tall Dovlatov was. Six four, he told him (that is 194 centimeters—Dovlatov was a big man). This height turned out to be the perfect for a role as the protagonist in a film that Schlippenbach was making. This protagonist would be none other than Tsar Peter the Great, to be played by Dovlatov—who accepted the role. What follows is a series of scenes involving an awkwardly dressed Dovlatov/Tsar roaming the streets of St. Petersburg. I will not give away the story of the driving gloves. What I want to focus on is one of the main ideas of the story—and the film within the story—which is to have the Tsar suddnely return to St. Petersburg. The creator, the ideal—set against the present reality, to see what has become of it. According to Schlippenbach, the Tsar would be shocked and indignant by the ugliness of the city and its various denizens (particularly those who are tragically lining up in the street for a little bit of beer). The social and political criticism is thinly veiled, although in Dovlatov's story the emphasis is mostly on the humorous side—which is framed, of course, within the larger story of the suitcase. One can only guess at what ultimately becomes of Schlippenbach's film; we are privy to the clumsy filming of several scenes, but we are told no more about it by the end of the story.

This inclusion of a historical person in a work of fiction reminded me of Fyodor Dostoevsky's chapter on The Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov. How could it not? It is one of the most prominent cases of a historical figure—Jesus Christ—returning to the world as a character, from one of the most memorable passages in all of literature. As Sigmund Freud put it, "The Brothers Karamazov is the most significant novel ever written: the episode of the Grand Inquisitor, one of the peaks in the literature of the world, can hardly be valued too highly."² Whatever you may think of Freud, the man knew his literature. Dovlatov surely read The Brothers Karamazov—he mentions Dostoevsky in The Suitcase—and Alexander the Great's farcical return to St. Petersburg was perhaps inspired by it.

Why bring a long-dead person back into the world? Specially, why introduce such a person into the present (fictional) world? There is more to it than merely literary and aesthetic purposes, even if a historical person is always a potential source for literary material (whether treated within their own time or taken out of it). By bringing someone long gone into the present—either the present of a story, whenever it takes place, or the reader's present—offers a juxtaposition that can be richly rewarding. There is the out-of-placeness of the person in a different time, facing different customs, ideas, people, and so on. It is by nature an event likely to be both comic and tragic. We might imagine ourselves in the distant past or the far-off future. We would stumble around and probably be unhappy, uprooted from what we know and how we are used to living. It is an easy way to show our limitations as creatures, tied so closely and irrevocably to the time and space in which we happen to live. Taking a person out of their context can serve to highlight that context. When we travel, when we stay away from where we grew up, the meaning of home often clarifies and takes on greater meaning—our home with all of its limitations and advantages. We can also become alienated, of course. As Cesare Pavese puts it in The Moon and the Bonfire, "the more places you see, the less you belong to any of them."³ We can become lost, drifting, not fitting into our new surroundings. At the same time, as Chekhov warned in The Duel, "The man who seeks salvation in change of place like a migrating bird would find nothing anywhere, for all the world is alike to him." There is a delicate balance to be maintained between our lives and minds, between the external and internal.

There is deeper sense in which a historical figure brought back into the world might function. I already touched on the political and social criticism in Dovlatov's story—it was certainly Schlippenbach's idea to use the figure of the Tsar, the founder of the great city, to emphasize the decay of St. Petersburg in his film. We might call this sense ideological, broadly speaking. The reappearance of an important figure may serve as a criticism of political, cultural, or religious beliefs. Dovlatov does very little with the character of the Tsar in his story; it is not even really his Tsar, but rather Schlippenbach's. Dostoevsky, on the other hand, sets up one of the greatest ideological scenes in literature when he has Jesus Christ return to Earth in Seville during the time of the Inquisition.  

There is so much to say about the Grand Inquisitor chapter—I will only say a little here. The story of Christ's return is framed within the novel. It is told by Ivan to his younger brother Alyosha. Christ has returned to Earth! Anyone would expect the world to unequivocally embrace Him, right? In fact, after performing a number of miracles at the Seville Cathedral, the public quickly recognizes and adores Him. The same cannot be said of the authorities. Christ is soon arrested by the Inquisition leaders and sentenced to be burned to death the following day. While awaiting death (again) in His cell, Christ is visited by the Grand Inquisitor, who proceeds to explain to Him why the Church no longer needs Christ. The return of Christ would actually harm the mission of the Church. There are various reasons for this, turning on metaphysical and theological differences between the Church and Christ. I'll focus on one. According to the Grand Inquisitor, Christ was wrong to give human beings freedom of choice, because most people cannot tolerate such freedom, and are therefore doomed to suffer. Better to have the multitude be guided by the few who are strong enough to take on the burden of suffering—the leaders of the Church (who, it should be clear, are following Satan, even while under the structure and banner of the Church). Better for the masses to be ignorant and die happy in this ignorance. "The most tormenting secrets of their conscience---all, all they will bring to us, and we will decide all things, and they will joyfully believe our decision, because it will deliver them from their great care and their present terrible torments of personal and free decision. And everyone will be happy, all the millions of creatures, except for the hundred thousand of those who govern them. For only we, we who keep the mystery, only we shall be unhappy."

Christ remains silent throughout the Grand Inquisitor's disquisition. In the end, rather than speak, he kisses him on the lips—and this gesture is repeated in the novel when Alyosha, the novice monk, kisses his brother Ivan, the atheist. Not only does the character of Christ in Ivan's story to Alyosha serve the two of them within the novel, introducing and reiterating many themes, but it also serves Dostoevsky to work out his thoughts in particular on atheism. He was not quite sure whether he could fully, rationally repudiate his own youthful atheism—or whether he provided enough of a case against it by tracing the destructive consequences of embracing the belief in the novel. By returning Christ to the world and making him part of the story of The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky probably achieves more—aesthetically, dramatically, philosophically—than he would have by just speaking of Christ. Again, there is so much more to be said. I have to leave it for now. One last point that I want to make is that bringing a revered figure back to the world, and by imagining how others face them—especially those who proclaim to espouse their views and even to be directly inspired by them—is a highly effective way of revealing hypocrisy.    

The past will always provide material for the future. Taking someone out of it the mists of history can help raise important questions and set up a complex scene; one in which great ideological issues can be revealed and addressed, if not settled. We are in any case not so far removed from the dead, even the long-dead. As André Gide put it in Marshlands: "Can we never put anything outside of time—and not be forced to remake it again?"⁴

1. Antonina W. Bouis translation here and elsewhere.

2. From Freud's essay on Dostoevsky and Parricide.

3. Louise Sinclair translation.

4. Damion Searls translation.