Russian novelist Yurii Olesha gives a satiric treatment of early Soviet society in his elaborately formalist work, ENVY. The central protagonist, Kavalerov, is caught up in the rivalry of two brothers. Andrei Babichev, a Soviet Bureaucrat of the "new socialist
world," is prominent for his founding of the "two-bit" food institution. He beneficently takes Kavalerov into his apartment after finding him derelict and lying in the street. Kavalerov should be grateful, but he knows he is only a temporary affection surrogate for Andrei Babichev''s absent ward, the star soccer player Volodya Makarov. Andrei''s brother Ivan Babichev is a dreamer who claims to have invented an anti-
machine machine named "Ophelia," with which he plans to kindle in the world a "conspiracy of human feelings" against the impersonal technocracy championed by his brother. Andrei lays claim to the beautiful Valya, Ivan''s
daughter, through her involvment with Volodya. Ivan, in response, enlists Kavalerov, who also falls in love with the oblivious Valya, into his effort to win his daughter back into the
personal values of the former (i.e. pre-Soviet) world. The effort fails, however, as "Ophelia" turns on Ivan and both he and Kavalerov wind up sharing a bed with the grossly obese widowed landlady, Annechka Prokopovich. The complex personal interrelationships in the plot suggest a variety of interpretational possibilities, involving both Freudian and Gogolian psychological themes. The constant innovative
imagery, especially the visual imagery, arrests the reader''s attention and reminds of the cinematic portrayals of Charlie Chaplin, then popular in the Soviet Union as in the rest of the world.
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