For some reason, few people wondered where the writer was when the scandal around Rozenthal's Children, the opera with his libretto at the Bolshoi, was unfolding. Sorokin was at the Paris book fair and was received by President Jacques Chirac along with other Russian celebrities. In an attempt to avoid the hacks, he is then believed to have gone to Germany where his earlier works are to be reprinted. Another theory is that he could immersed in producing a new novel, "in hiding" at his dacha far away from Moscow, which only a limited circle of his friends know.
I talked to Sorokin about his disappearance as a writer in Paris. Discussing the scandals around Sorokin, the press and critics failed to notice that the writer had broken with his previous works. He is no longer the Sorokin everybody knows, something he is trying to bring home to our minds, but in vain. Nobody seems to be listening.
"I am a metaphysician-Hegelian turned a metaphysician neo-Platonist," said Sorokin. What does this mean?
Hardly anyone remembers today that Sorokin (b.1955) began his artistic career as a graphic artist, a quite moderate book illustrator. At that time he hardly resembled a trailblazer in literature. Sorokin's literary debut was in 1972 when he published his poetry, not prose, in a newspaper entitled For Oil Producers (Za Kadry Neftyanikov). It was a rather uninteresting beginning.
However, after joining a group of writers comprising Yerofeyev, Prigov and himself (YePS), he changed his "line of business" evolving from a traditionalist artist into a literary monster. Sorokin stammered badly at the time, which complicated his transition into the new status, as he could not read his works in public, something Dmitry Prigov did for him. Few people remember this today.
Sorokin's works stood out against the literary background of that time, which quickly produced the halo of uniqueness around his name. His works began spreading around Moscow as self-printed editions. And they started coming out abroad. Sorokin's first collection of short stories was only published in Russia in 1992 after Gorbachev's perestroika.
Today, we can say that first thin collection of Sorokin's short stories published 13 years ago marked the end of Soviet literature, while its effect can be compared to the historic salvo from the Aurora that was a signal for Bolsheviks to storm the Winter Palace. The author looked at Soviet reality through an enormous magnifying glass, exposing the austere pomp of Communist Party literature and creating existential nightmares, rather than parodies.
One specific feature of Sorokin's prose surfaced with time: his books are impossible to reread. In a sense, they cannot be regarded as works of literature, but rather a series of experiments on people's minds. The author was not after a plot, but conducted experiments on readers. Sorokin aimed to shatter the moral basics of human existence, cause irreparable "breakdowns" in the unconscious. Clearly, this kind of literature could not but cause scandals. The unconscious abhors vivisection.
Walking along the grim road of denying ideals, Sorokin wrote a series of unsparing books: The Queue, The Norm, the Novel, The Hearts of Four, etc., that arouse suicidal thoughts.
This explained his love for Hegel, who set similar objectives in his philosophical works, i.e., to draw a line under the development of human thought, give answers to the main issues and thereby do away with cognition.
However, suddenly Sorokin's philosophy changed as if by magic.
Sorokin's latest novels, The Ice and Bro's Way, and the libretto toRozenthal's Children, are different. Sorokin said in those books he was apologizing for his denial of everything.
Attending the book fair, meeting readers, and in private conversations in Paris, Sorokin said he had become a neo-Platonist, whereas Plato is known to have worshiped man.
Sorokin believes the attacks on Rozenthal's Children will abate soon because "the opera is good stuff created by Leonid Desyatnikov and me, and is worthy of the Bolshoi and other theaters. I am positive normal people will enjoy it." The writer had not often used words like "normal people" before.
"Normal" was a corrupt notion for Sorokin, which he explored in his shocking novel, Norm. Today, Sorokin insists he has changed since then. However, the media would not notice that as they find profanities and necrophilia scenes in his novels more attractive. Moral guardians dubbed the Bolshoi production pornography without even hearing it. Rozenthal's Children is a sentimental story about cloned children who lost their father. This is a new Sorokin.
Will Sorokin be able to smoothly swap his image of an execrator for that of a "pious" man? Unlikely, given his reputation and previous works. In addition, his name, Sorokin, means a magpie in English. In some European countries, this bird symbolizes death. Can a magpie really become a nightingale?
