68
PARTISAN REVIEW
pared by his prosecutors as a chief piece of courtroom evidence;
finally he is sentenced (in a huge show trial which is only a slight
caricature of the Moscow trials in the 1930s), sent to a special camp
for the most distinguished old Bolsheviks, and released only in the
years of the "thaw." There is no shortage of fantastic ramifications in
the plot (among other things, the hero contributes personally, by
stealing Hitler's wallet in 1929, to the birth of Nazism; later, he is
able to witness - from a rather strange vantage point - the secret
proceedings at the Yalta conference) but, on the whole, one is struck
by the paralyzing logic rather than imaginary character of the plot's
development. Everything that happens here is just a caricatured
hyperbole of what could have happened in the Stalinist reality; in
fact, even the charge of raping a kangaroo is not very far from the
preposterous accusations which could be heard in the real-life show
trials.
But
Kangaroo
is much more than just a convex mirror which
magnifies the absurdities of the Soviet system; in the original, and
also to a large extent in Tamara Glenny's excellent translation, it is
an orgy of linguistic mockery . The language of the monologue is a
hysterically funny result of the clash between official Soviet
phraseology and the monologist's own nonconformist style formed in
prisons and interrogation rooms (for instance: "I told him if you sub–
tract the enthusiasm of the twenties from the enthusiasm of the thir–
ties, all that's left is ten years for counter-revolutionary agitation and
propaganda"); thus, it provides its own, independent commentary
on the nature of Soviet reality.
It
defines this reality as shaped not
only by events and facts but also by ubiquitous
signs-
from propa–
ganda slogans to films or portraits of the leaders - from which there
is no escape; the only way for a free mind to cope with this perma–
nent pressure is through parody, through linguistic violence,
through such an abuse of official language which will overpower it
and thus defeat it. Aleshkovsky's narrator may not have raped a
kangaroo, but he did rape the Soviet language . His creator's offense
is as serious as his artistic victory is total.
