DARIUSZ TOLCZYK
... the new social attitude towards the world is, in its purest sense, a
human attitude. The world with its grass, dawns and colors is beau–
tiful, and it was corrupted by the power of money, the power of one
man over another. This world under the power of money was fantas–
tic and false. Now, for the first time in the history of culture, it has
become real and just.
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Olesha also had personal reasons for his faith in an alliance between
the artist and history, even in 1934, that were not atypical for writers of
his generation. Born in 1899, he matured just at the time of World War
One and the Revolution. His literary beginnings can be dated to 1918
when, with other writers such as Eduard Bagritsky, Valentin Kataev, Zi':'
naida Shishova, and Semen Kirsanov, he established a group in Odessa
called the Green Lamp. The group was originally interested in purely
aesthetic problems and paid no attention to the events of the Revolu–
tion. But soon after moving to Moscow, Olesha found himself in the
new company of lIya IIf, Evgeny Petrov, Mikhail Bulgakov, and others.
He began to write agitational poems for the proletarian newspaper,
Gu–
dok (The Whistle).
In
his new role, he almost immediately became a star,
and his fame spread beyond the enthusiasm of his fellow writers to the
masses. Barely twenty years old, he was known and admired as "Zubilo."
The critic Elizabeth Beaujour observed of this time in Olesha's life:
The "Gudok" period held the same privileged position in Olesha's
memory as battlefield fellowship often does for others. Olesha rode
the open platforms of trains in snow storms and recalled feeling
warm inside because engineers and bearded men in sheepskins called
him "friend." Banal as it may sound, it was extremely important to
Olesha, especially in retrospect. For a brief time he was successfully
integrated into a revolutionary collective which embraced but did not
stifle him. "Zubilo" and Olesha the artist were complementary and
interdependent, not mutually exclusive. It would seem that Olesha
had no need then to use his writings as a weapon to assert his
individual existence. For a moment, he realized his ambition to be
one with the Revolution and the workers: "Everything was one there,
my youth, and the youth of my Soviet Homeland, and the youth of
our press, our journalism" - Olesha wrote later.
A writer who has experienced something close to the fulfillment of
the crucial dream of the Russian intelligentsia, to be with the people in
their march for progress, does not easily denounce his intimate relation–
ship with history. Soon, however, a growing split between comrade
Zubilo, freshly married to history, and Yuri Olesha the artist (a lover of
