DARIUSZ TOLCZYK
301
This kind of anxiety would be impossible in the world of Karamzin's
Liza. Shuvalov, however, like Turgenev's Bazarov, lives in a post–
Schopenhauerian world: there is nothing surprising in his fear of being
seduced by nature. If for Liza nature was a good mother who responded
to her feelings, Shuvalov is not sure whether nature is a mother or a
merciless stepmother who seduces him with her colors and beauty. Any–
one entering into an intimate relationship with this suspect nature is al–
ways alone. No one will either confirm or deny the veracity of his vi–
sion: contemplating reality involves a rejection of the organizing cate–
gories of practical reason and also the opportunity to verify and
communicate perceptions. And like a mystical experience, it can never be
shared. An artist, a lover, a child, a sick person - those holding keys to
the mysteries of nature - are the heroes in Olesha's writing. Olesha
himself belonged to that group of writers who tended to live in their
art. These writers could be thought of as either aristocrats of the spirit or
outcasts, depending upon how their audience treated them. Since no
objective verification of the artist's vision is possible, a writer's audience,
looking into his work for some notion of truth, must either take it on
faith or reject it.
Olesha's heroes constantly turn to other people, "normal" people,
for confirmation of their strange visions, and they are always rejected. "I
cannot write not having found an analogy between you and me," Olesha
confessed, while addressing his imaginary reader at the First Congress of
Soviet Writers in 1934. Loneliness and uncertainty seem to be inseparable
from the fate of the artist who cannot relinquish his visions, unless the
whole society turns to him and shares his vision.
This dream of recognition became one of the most powerful among
Russian artists, especially those in the avant-garde of the Revolution. As
history proved, the temptation of being aristocrats of the spirit was, for
many of them, so attractive that they eagerly forgot what it was that had
set them apart, that is, their very visions. Olesha was a peculiar case.
When his hero, Shuvalov, succumbing to the beauty of nature, says, "I
am living in Paradise," a man sitting nearby asks him, "Are you really a
Marxist?" When Shuvalov answers yes, the man retorts; "Then you can't
possibly be living in Paradise." Olesha tried to convince everyone, and
himself most of all, that it was indeed possible. In 1934, at the First
Congress of Soviet Writers, where socialist realism was irrevocably pro–
nounced the only correct way of writing in the Soviet Union and all
discussion were once and for
all
closed, Olesha spoke, " ... the relations
between an artist and nature are such that she reveals some of her secrets
to him, and she is more sociable with him than with others." He
sounded as if he sincerely believed in what he was saying. Furthermore,
he could present to the commissars and literary bosses his metaphors as
