Chinese text in the short stories "The Concrete Ones" and "Lu" by Vladimir Sorokin

Yui Linghong ORCID: 0000-0003-2461-8318 Ph.D. student of Department of Russian and Foreign Literature, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) 117198, Russia, Moscow, Miklukho-Maklaya str., 6 yu_linghong@yahoo.com Other publications by this author

Vladimir Sorokin is one of the most famous writers in modern Russian literature. A prominent representative of conceptualism and postmodernism, he is known in his work for deconstructing various recognizable discourses and nauseating naturalistic descriptions. Meanwhile, he is a gourmet — cooking has a special meaning in Sorokin's works: "this is something, albeit implicitly, but stimulating to the author" ^[1]. So, in 2001, the writer published his collection "Feast", consisting of 13 short stories, where special attention is paid to the topic of food. In a conversation with Boris Sokolov, the writer noted: "I have always been interested in food, both as a physiological act that brings satisfaction, and as a language of communication that unites people" ^[2]. In another interview, he stated: "If we take the cuisines of different peoples, then these are, in fact, languages" ^[3]. In "Feast" Sorokin infuses his literary and linguistic experiments with gastronomic imagery, which attracted particular attention from critics. Sokolov points out in his article that "everything can become food, as well as its consumers, according to Sorokin. Plants, animals, fish, birds, people, things, words, letters, speeches, events, slogans, prayers, feelings, creepy products of genetic engineering in the society of the future, excrement and even emptiness" ^[4]. According to Lipovetsky: "Sorokin explores culinary imagery, presenting it as a process of literal absorption of culture (eventually turned into excrement)" ^[5].

In addition to the seemingly unnatural union of food and literature, it is shown that in this collection Sorokin finds his development of the New Russian language of the future, which was already traced in the previous novel "Blue Fat". It is noted that most of the neologisms in "Blue Fat" come from foreign words, including including an abundance of Sinoisms. Unlike other foreign-language words used in the novel, the writer uses Sinoisms as swear words and commits linguistic violence. According to the writer, he "had a fascination with China quite a long time ago and spontaneously" ^[6]. In addition, he argued that "China can be safely studied through Chinese cuisine" ^[7]. As can be seen from the above quotes, the analysis of the influence of Chinese culture on Sorokin through the prism of gastronomic imagery has the necessary grounds.

The story "Concretes" is written as a play and is based on a dialogue between three "Sinized" young people in the future Moscow. In this quasi-historical world, young people speak a hybrid New Russian language with an abundance of occasional and authorial neologisms, which is a direct continuation of the "linguistic" line originating in the "Blue Fat". Barbarisms, most of which are Sinoisms, Anglicisms and gallicisms, perform the function of phonetic abstraction in the story. Nevertheless, when it comes to Sinoisms, it can be noted that, compared with the large number of obscene vocabulary and obscene statements in "Blue Fat", in the story only one word — "wambadan" — ^[8] is used by Sorokin as a swear word, the rest of the words used are everyday expressions. Moreover, explanations of almost all borrowed Sinoisms can be found in the dictionary, which is placed at the end of the story, which makes the speech of young people in the story more accessible and understandable. Sinoisms here do not interfere with the perception of the text, but give the story a special comic effect and an exotic character due to their unusual pronunciation. As Sokolov points out: "Sorokin is able to give some kind of inner drama even to the notorious gibberish, so it reads just fascinating. <...> Poetics may not depend on the meaning of speech, Sorokin proves" ^[9].

Compared to "Blue Fat", there are more sentences in the story that consist entirely of transliteration of Chinese words. For example, there are such Chinese phrases as "Wo baole!" (I am full), "Wo ele!" (I am hungry), "Ni hedyan shenme?" (What will you drink?), "Ni jiao shenme?" (What is your name?) ^[10], etc. The use of exquisitely "rounded" phrases in Chinese in "Concretes" may to some extent be evidence of Sorokin's reflections on the fate of future Russia. The native language, often influenced by foreign languages and cultures, occupies a special place in the Russian mentality: "Language is the people, in our language these are synonyms, what a deep thought! Russian Russian national psychology and Russian literature have firmly established this identification of language and people" ^[11]. It is known that many Russian writers have called and are calling for the protection of the purity of the Russian language, but Sorokin's work tends to the opposite pole — not only in "Concretes", but also in his other works, the so-called "macaronic style" is often found.

On the one hand, borrowed Sinoisms and tracing paper from Chinese are an important element of Sorokin's artistic world — the use of a significant number of neologisms and occasionalisms created by the writer to convey the language of futurological Russia is considered a typical technique of postmodern collage and linguistic deconstruction. On the other hand, it can also be considered as Sorokin's method of thinking about the future relations between China and Russia. It is known that "macaronic works can be a reflection of the natural state in cultures with widespread bilingualism or strongly influenced by another language" ^[12]. Sorokin's art world describes the future of Russia, which has been strongly influenced by Chinese culture, which to some extent may indicate the writer's attraction to the idea of Russian-Chinese symbiosis. Sorokin himself has repeatedly mentioned his interest in China: "In China, the tremendous potency, purely physiological, is amazing. <...> They are completely different, which is why I am fascinated by the idea of Chinese hegemony. The idea of an alchemical marriage between China and Russia is fascinating. It seems to me that something great can come out of this."^[13]

In addition to Chinese inclusions in the New Russian language, there is another interesting nuance in the "Concretes", which is worth paying attention to. In the story, the characters go on literary and gastronomic trips to the "TRIP TAVERN" located between Vernadsky Street and Mao Zedong ^[14]. Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party and the first leader of the People's Republic of China, led the proletarian cultural revolution in the mid-1960s and became the sole idol of a billion Chinese. Accompanied by monstrous atrocities, the cultural revolution caused a wave of suicides among the intelligentsia and led to the decline of public life. As the researchers point out: "... his struggle against anti-socialism was more a struggle for personal power, for the unlimited assertion of his own political power against the background of total rejection of dissent and the suppression of any initiative in the process of socialist construction" ^[15]. This justifies the claim that Mao is a "Chinese Stalin" ^[16]. It can be considered that it is no coincidence that Sorokin chooses Mao Zedong Street instead of the really existing Leninsky Prospekt — in addition to the deliberate postmodern "manipulation" of the history of Russia and China, the writer thus deconstructs the cult of personality and totalitarian culture in general.

Concretes also reads a parody of the ideological context of Russia in the 1990s. In the wake of capitalist globalization and psychological confusion, the geopolitical ideology of "neo-Eurasianism" arose, trying to find ways to a decent existence for peoples and became one of the most popular ideological trends in the transition years. In addition to Mao Zedong Street, the writer purposely chooses a street (avenue) Vernadsky, named after V. I. Vernadsky, whose son, Georgy Vernandsky, was one of the leaders of the Eurasian movement, whose ideas were subsequently inherited by neo-Eurasianism ^[17]. T. Filimonova notes in her article: "In 1999, when the novel "Blue Fat" was published, neo-Eurasianism was often associated with the sinosphere in Russian politics. In the mass understanding of Eurasianism and neo-Eurasianism, new political ties between Russia and China were often emphasized" ^[18]. Considering the year of publication of "Blue Fat" (1999), we can assume that this statement also applies to the story "Concretes", published in 2001. A similar topic is raised in the work of B. Sokolov, who develops the idea that the plot of the intersection of Vernadsky and Mao Zedong streets in "Concrete" predicts "Chinese dominance" in the future ^[19]. Thus, the TRIP TAVERN, located between Vernadsky Street and Mao Zedong, is a kind of political parody-Sorokin's allegory of the idea of neo-Eurasianism.

If we talk about the story "Yu", in which the action is transferred to the future, then food is considered as a matter of national importance: "Chefs are the heart of the world" ^[20]. Sorokin himself claimed in his interview about the similarity of such different, at first glance, fields — cooking and literature: "Actually, cooking, cooking some kind of complex dish is, in general, a kind of plot. There is a lot of literature in the process itself" ^[21]. The whole story about chef Yu is based on the juxtaposition of natural and cloned food, the details describe the process of their preparation. In this fantastic world, they also speak a hybrid language with Chinese and English inclusions: "Sorokin, in the traditions of oriental cuisine, mixes, combines, makes attempts to disguise the ingredients of different languages, and at the exit receives a story "Yu" full of verbal monsters ready for direct "eating" by the reader" ^[22].

It is worth noting that the proportion of Sinoisms in "Yu" is much lower than in the story "Concretes". Moreover, the vast majority of Chinese words are scattered in the story without further explanation — they are mainly used in the names of cook Yu's culinary masterpieces: "Emperor Tse-wang's Hunt for a boar", "Beautiful Xi Shi under a plum blossom", "Drunk Li Bo", "Geese over Huang He", "Cao Cao tortures a robber", "The Love of Tao Yuan-ming", "The Werewolf Fox" ^[23], etc. Analyzing a number of names of dishes, it can be noted that most of them are taken from Chinese history or are associated with ancient Chinese literature. In addition, Chinese names (Tian Hua, Shuicaihua, Liu Rex, Can Dai-zhu) and some ingredients of Chinese dishes (stuffed heads in Sichuan, Xianggu zhou) are also found on the pages of the story. Foreign-sounding Chinese names without further explanation not only create an oriental flavor in the story, but also prove once again that the phonetic appearance of Sinoisms is more important for Sorokin than their semantic meanings.

Unlike the direct transcription of everyday speech "Concretely", the story "Yu" uses a number of Chinese phraseological units translated by Sorokin into Russian. For example, "order the saliva to murmur" (kit.: 垂涎欲滴, thirst), "steal the bell, plugging your ears" (kit.: 掩耳盗铃, deceive yourself), "when a tree falls, the monkeys run away" (kit.: 树倒猢狲散, when the leader falls, all the assistants fall after him). Moreover, the writer creates many such pseudo-Chinese expressions as "sorting through invisible lentils" ^[24], "finding a pot of badger fat" ^[25], etc.

It is noted that "Yu" contains more elements of the Chinese cultural code than "Concrete" ones. In addition to the language strategy, in the story "Yu" there are also many other elements of Chinese culture that penetrate into the daily life of futurological Russia. Firstly, the buildings, which resemble Chinese characters in their outlines, are a Palace in the shape of the hieroglyph shun (prosperity). Secondly, household items that copy elements of Chinese culture are the "longevity castle" ^[26], which means an ornament in the form of an amulet castle, a blessing for a long life; a wide pipe made of split bamboo, a "bamboo wife"^[27], a kind of device for airing the room. Such a comprehensive cultural influence of China on Russia in the art world of Yu reflects the socio-psychological situation in Russia at the turn of the twentieth and twenty—first centuries: against the background of the economic crisis and tension in society, it became noticeable that after the introduction of a policy of reform and openness, China began to develop rapidly, and the strengthening and deepening of Russian-Chinese relations contributed to cultural the exchange and rapprochement of the two countries. In this regard, the image of China has proved to be an important element in modern Russian literature. Chinese researchers also drew attention to this: "It would be surprising if the works of modern Russian literature did not contain phenomena and aesthetic phenomena related to China. Both ancient and mysterious and modern China are used by writers as a means to attract the attention of Russian readers"^[28]. Thus, Sorokin in his text well illustrates the growing interest of Russians in the language and culture of China.

It should also be said separately about Chinese philosophy in "Yu". This is evidenced by the very name of the hero, whose pronunciation resembles the hieroglyph "Y", which means "present". "Yu" together with "Wu" (kit.无, "absent") constitute an antinomic pair in the Taoist system. Unlike the concepts of "being" and "non-being" in the ontological dualism of Western philosophy, there is no such contradiction between the Chinese "Yu" and "Wu". According to the founder of Taoism, Lao Tzu, they are conditional, transient and can change places. In the final part of the story, Chef Yu, originally created as a follower of the tradition of natural food, is inscribed in history as a "Guide-of-Nature-Reminding-Of-the-Power-of-the-Unnatural" ^[29]. The inability to awaken a taste for Nature in the Ruler of the World inevitably led to Yu's death, after which he was forever placed in the center of the Main Festive Kitchen as an edification to posterity — in case he tried to use natural products instead of cloned ones. Cook Yu is remembered forever after his death, which in a sense confirms the teachings of ancient Taoism: all things do not really deny, but complement each other. As Lao Tzu points out in the "Tao te Ching": "All things in the world come from the being [Yu], and the being comes from the carrier [Y]" ^[30]); "此两者,同出而异名" ("Both are jointly, but are called in different ways" ^[31]).

The dialogue between Yu and the other chefs before the Graduation Banquet is also filled with Taoist philosophy. It is Yu's statement that he does not want to become a court cook that shows his desire to receive this title.:

"Mine? – to want what you don't want. For example, the cap of the court cook.

– You don't want to become one?

– On the contrary. I + + don't want to become one, which means I WILL BECOME ONE!" ^[32]

Let us turn to the following phrase of Lao Tzu: "逝曰'远',远曰'反'" ("Always in motion" means "deleted without end", "deleted without end" means "returns" ^[33]). This phrase can be understood in this way: on the one hand, everything that exists is eternally moving and changing; on the other, it is in the cycle of being. Every thing has two sides, and these two sides can flow into each other. When a thing reaches its limit, it goes into the opposite — in other words, in each thing there is a prospect of mutual reversibility or mutual permeability. In Taoism, there is such a perfect state known as "Min" (Chinese: enlightenment), which implies awareness of the unchangeable laws governing the change of things. To achieve the state of enlightenment, it is necessary to know the laws of nature and observe them. If we talk about a certain general "rule" for a person, then it is as follows: "If a person wants to achieve something, he starts with the opposite, and if he wants to preserve something, he admits something opposite into it. Anyone who wants to be strong should start with the feeling that he is weak" ^[34].

A similar example demonstrating Sorokin's application of the Taoist thought of "turning into his own opposite" appears in another episode of the story: on the eve of the Graduation Banquet, chefs Yu, MUO MUO and Petroff did not sleep and meditated on balloons, after which MUO MUO admits that he is overcome with anxiety. According to Yu, "sweet-hearted MUO MUO is worried because + + He wants to [put on the yellow hat of the court chef]. But you need to want. Then everything will be gold" ^[35]. In addition to the above, the fact that Yu was eventually turned into his complete opposite is also about the Taoist philosophy of "turning into one's own opposite."

The idea of "passing into one's own opposite" as a way to achieve a state of enlightenment in Taoism to a certain extent echoes the aesthetics of the ugly in Sorokin's work: "Art, the author of The Feast convinces us, should just create an imperishable wonderful image, reflecting the reality of blood and feces" ^[36]. According to Sorokin himself, he is "interested in madness in literature: the more monstrous the texts, the better it is."^[37] In Sorokin's art world, the generally accepted norms and instillations of human society would seem inappropriate: the art world of "Yu", for example, consists of a large number of naturalistic sexual and bloody scenes, monstrous gluttony, acts of defecation, etc. From this point of view, the writer expresses his attitude to the traditional aesthetics based on the category of "beautiful", proving that in literature the beautiful and the ugly can merge into each other.

Both in "Blue Fat" and in the stories "Concretes" and "Yu" Sorokin, who is passionate about creating a futurological language, continues the linguistic experiment, creating a hybrid New Russian language with an abundance of Chinese inclusions. It was shown that Sorokin in his texts builds an original satirical model of the future based on the extreme mixing of different cultures, in particular, Chinese and Russian. Using the Rabelaisian gastronomic hyperbolization as the main "method", Sorokin depicts the clash and dialogue of two different cultural civilizations, trying to find a way out for the future of Russia. We have seen that Sorokin, on the one hand, accurately captures the "nerve nodes of society" ^[38] (it has already been mentioned that the geopolitical idea of Dugin's "neo-Eurasianism" of the 1990s and the growing interest of Russians in Chinese culture were reflected in his work), on the other hand, he is "fueled" by the philosophical ideas of the East.