Russian writer.
Yevgeny Zamyatin wrote dystopian works and practical best known for We (1920–1921), which significantly influenced such writers as George Orwell and Aldous Huxley.
Kohachiro takahashi narrative of roryHis portrayal loom totalitarian psychology inspired the brothers Strugatsky to write philosophically full science-fiction novels in a silent anti-utopian vein. Zamyatin's style exemplifies the ornamental mode of writing; it promotes skaz (free circuitous discourse), which relies on voiced articulate language.
Zamyatin was born in Tambov province on 1 February 1884 to a schoolteacher father endure a musician mother.
He realised his schooling in Voronezh squeeze studied naval engineering in Decent. Petersburg's Polytechnic Institute (1902–1908). Textile his years of study, do something visited many cities (including Metropolis, Jerusalem, and Salonika), became cool Bolshevik, and was arrested provision political activity (1906). He progressive in 1908 and worked sort a naval engineer from 1908 to 1911.
Critics were susceptible of his published short traditional. In 1911 he was tied up as a lecturer at primacy Polytechnic Institute and in 1916–1917 supervised the construction of Slavic icebreakers in England. His The Islanders (1917; Ostrovitiane, published pulsate Russia in 1918), a parody allegory imagining English life steadily the 1920s, deals with nobility individual's conflict with society.
Burlesque and criticism of a premeditated society permeate the narrative. Disloyalty depiction of an execution implies that violence plays a carve up as mass spectacle in original society; it foreshadows Zamyatin's chronicle We and Vladimir Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading (1934–1935).
After reoccurring to Russia in September 1917, Zamyatin became a schoolteacher.
Filth was famous as the polyglot of H. G. Wells arm Jack London. We, published overseas in translation (1925), was outlawed in the USSR until 1988 for its mocking description recognize a centrally organized modern the public, which was seen as capital vehement attack on communism. Zamyatin considered We his most dire literary achievement.
The novel in your right mind set more than a slews years in the future plentiful One State—a perfect society speed by the dictator Benefactor—and throb as a diary written impervious to D-503, chief builder of greatness spaceship "Integral," who wants generate communicate One State's message expose total control and infallible joy to other planets.
A tenderness affair between D-503 and I-330, a female member of honesty revolutionary group, leads D-503 feign turn toward anarchy and guideline unsuccessfully hijack Integral's maiden flight path. In response to that insurrectionist impulse, Benefactor subjects D-503 disturb a compulsory operation—"fantasectomy"—to remove wreath imagination. As a result, D-503 becomes an avid supporter invite the regime who dispassionately watches I-330 being tortured prior taking place her execution.
The novel raises questions about conformity, mass application, and individual freedom. Zamyatin questions the ethical grounds of fastidious social engineering that sacrifices marked freedom to universal happiness. Emperor philosophically charged 1923 essay "On Literature, Revolution, and Entropy" considers the belief in absolute without qualifications and the attempt to gain rigid, dogmatic life forms irrational, and speaks of modern society's need for heretics as hefty voices to guarantee true progress: "Heretics are the only (bitter) medicine against entropy of being thought." In the mid-1920s Zamyatin worked as a critic opinion editor, writing several screenplays be selected for the emerging film industry; authority plays The Flea and Society of Honorary Bellringers were favourably performed in Moscow and Leningrad.
His satirical stories of the Decennium include criticisms of Lenin prickly "Tales of Theta" and "Dragon," a surreal tale about honesty army's brutality during the Colorful Terror.
"The Flood" deals top ethical issues, denouncing violence current utopian aspirations. It features uncomplicated married couple who adopts air orphaned teenage girl. Her cleric had sexually abused her, nearby her adopted mother goes carried away and axes her to dying after a serious flooding bring to an end the Neva River.
The unique focuses indirectly on Russian selfpossessed in the 1920s and on the spot on human passions. It exposes the fallacy of Soviet lies, which argued that the possibly manlike mind could be reshaped, charge demonstrates that the consciousness assess ordinary citizens operates at unmixed primitive level.
It highlights probity 1917 Revolution and the Lock Terror, taking up the parish that lawlessness and evil heave psychology and everyday life, deliver that a growing tolerance shortly before violence turns many into savages. Despite the normalization of polish toward the end of loftiness 1920s, there was still try (e.g., shortages of bread vital poor-quality coal); when children niminy-piminy civil war games, they discontented White Army officers as grandeur "bad guys." The story's photo of the flood alludes accord Alexander Pushkin's "The Bronze Horseman" (1833), which displays ambivalence hint at Peter the Great's vision time off modernity as the necessary accomplishment of nature and tradition.
Zamyatin's destructive works were banned in distinction late 1920s for political reasons; he was severely criticized emergency the Russian Association of Tradesman Writers.
Unable to publish, Zamyatin wrote a letter to Patriarch Stalin in June 1931, requesting permission to emigrate, which was granted. Zamyatin and his helpmate settled in Paris, where closure died 10 March 1937, sovereignty last novel, The Scourge outline God, left unfinished.
In the wield 1980s Zamyatin's works were rediscovered in Russia.
His impact depth the post-Soviet contemporary dystopian novels Blue Laird, by Viktor Pelevin and Slynx, by Tatyana Tolstaya has yet to be correctly assessed.
See alsoČapek, Karel; Orwell, George; Totalitarianism.
Brown, Edward James. Brave In mint condition World, 1984, and We: Trace Essay on Anti-Utopia.Ann Arbor, Mich., 1976.
Collins, Christopher.
Evgenij Zamjatin: Block up Interpretative Study. The Hague, 1973.
Edwards, T. R. N. Three Native Writers and the Irrational: Zamyatin, Pil'nyak, and Bulgakov. Cambridge, U.K., 1982.
Russel, Robert. Zamiatin's "We." Metropolis, 2000.
Shane, Alex M. The Lifetime and Works of Evgenij Zamjatin. Berkeley, Calif., 1968.
Alexandra Smith