The other day, I was reading the first story in Boris Dralyuk‘s delightful translation of Mikhail Zoshchenko’s Sentimental Tales. One paragraph jumped out at me for intertextual reasons:

[Apollo Perepenchuk] lay in shrewd contemplation, subject to the same thoughts that had formerly troubled Fyodor Perepenchuk. And his other thoughts, in terms of force and depth, were in no way inferior to those of his considerable namesake. He contemplated human existence, the fact that man is as ridiculous and unnecessary as a beetle or a cuckoo, and that all people, the whole world over, must change their lives in order to find peace and happiness, in order to avoid the suffering that had befallen him. At one point it seemed to him that he had discovered, at long last, how man ought to live. Some thought touched his mind and disappeared again without quite taking shape. (p. 26)

The immediate referent for the “namesake” mentioned is Fyodor Perepenchuk. But as I read it, I was put in mind of another “namesake,” the Greek god Apollo as he appears in Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Archaic Torso of Apollo.” Here is the German text, followed by William Ruleman’s translation:

Archaischer Torso Apollos
  
Wir kannten nicht sein unerhörtes Haupt,
darin die Augenäpfel reiften. Aber
sein Torso glüht noch wie ein Kandelaber,
in dem sein Schauen, nur zurückgeschraubt,

sich hält und glänzt. Sonst könnte nicht der Bug
der Brust dich blenden, und im leisen Drehen
der Lenden könnte nicht ein Lächeln gehen
zu jener Mitte, die die Zeugung trug.

Sonst stünde dieser Stein entstellt und kurz
unter der Schultern durchsichtigem Sturz
und flimmerte nicht so wie Raubtierfelle;

und bräche nicht aus allen seinen Rändern
aus wie ein Stern: denn da ist keine Stelle,
die dich nicht sieht. Du mußt dein Leben ändern.

And in English:

The Archaic Torso of Apollo
  
We could not know his huge and noble head
With eyes grown apple-ripe. Yet even so,
His torso glows with a candelabrum’s glow
Wherein his gaze, though only faintly fed,
 
Is held and gleams. Or else that bulging breast
Could never blind you, nor a smile run there
In the tender twist of the loins to that center where
The spring of procreation hangs at rest.
 
Or else this stone would squat, disfigured, small,
Truncated under the shoulders’ lucid fall.
Nor would it shimmer like a wild beast’s hide--
 
Break forth at every point in star-sharp strife.
For there is no place here, on any side,
That does not see you. You must change your life.

Is this allusion present? If so, is it Zoshchenko’s, or the translator’s? Or is it a happy accident? Not knowing Russian, I can’t say. But if it is really present (and it would be great if it were), one wonders if we must read Rilke’s earnest advice ironically in this story. For, while the main character changes his life–he becomes a sort of checked-out gravedigger–after nearly killing himself, it is unclear that he discovers any purpose for the life he changes.

True, he finds the “thought” that he believes to be the key that unlocks everything (“People are good…People are good,” p. 31); it is not at all certain to me that this is the key he thinks it is. His love for Tamara remains unrequited. She finds someone else. Some time passes. Tamara dies in childbirth. Apollo dies, rather perfunctorily, a couple of days after she does; and he dies not even knowing of his one true love’s demise. Their lives just flicker out in isolation from each other, and what was it all for?

This prompts a second reading of the passage above and makes me wonder about a second allusion. Here is the paragraph again:

[Apollo Perepenchuk lay in shrewd contemplation, subject to the same thoughts that had formerly troubled Fyodor Perepenchuk. And his other thoughts, in terms of force and depth, were in no way inferior to those of his considerable namesake. He contemplated human existence, the fact that man is as ridiculous and unnecessary as a beetle or a cuckoo, and that all people, the whole world over, must change their lives in order to find peace and happiness, in order to avoid the suffering that had befallen him. At one point it seemed to him that he had discovered, at long last, how man ought to live. Some thought touched his mind and disappeared again without quite taking shape.

This second time, I am now put in mind of the famous opening of Franz Kafka’s Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis):

Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt.

In Ian Johnston’s translation:

One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug.

This sentence has caused a lot of debate. What kind of creature does Gregor become? An entire section of the Wikipedia article on The Metamorphosis is devoted to this question; 16 different possibilities for rendering “ungeheueren Ungeziefer” are given. Most suggestive for my purposes is the fact that Zoshchenko’s fellow Russian Vladimir Nabokov thought the term referred to–yes–a beetle.

Is there anything to this possible connection? Gregor, like Apollo, has money troubles.^[1] Gregor, like Apollo, is isolated from those he loves. Gregor, like Apollo, dies what appears to be a meaningless death. And though there is no romantic interest for the main character, there is for his sister, Grete, who, at the end of the story, can get married now that Gregor is gone.

I don’t know if either of these allusions is really “there.” However, from the reader’s standpoint–or, at least, from one aspect of the reader’s standpoint–I’m also not sure it matters all that much. The double allusion is thematically appropriate, and thematically enriching. It allows the reader to contemplate the possibility of Rilkan aspiration for meaning, and then of Kafkan satire, deflation, or ironizing–use whatever term you like–of that Rilkan aspiration. Thus, both the first and second readings are entirely fitting for the existential questions that the story raises.

And, in any case, whatever one makes of my suggestions here, the story is great. I highly recommend it.