"We" is amazing. Have read it several times because there is so much to the text. Nothing is accidental, even down to the numbers he picks for the characters (many are related through mathematical formulas). I love gifting copies.
How Yevgeny Zamyatin shaped dystopian fiction
11–20 of 25 posts
Re: How Yevgeny Zamyatin shaped dystopian fiction
#12>While Wells, Huxley and Orwell invented flawed worlds, the Soviet writer was living in one. Forgive me if I am reading too much into this, but the tagline for this article feels weird to me. It feels weird because it implies that the "worlds" of Wells, Huxley, and Orwell were without flaw. Was western civilization in the early 20th century really without flaw? Isn't every great dystopian work essentially a thought e…
> Forgive me if I am reading too much into this, but the tagline for this article feels weird to me. It feels weird because it implies that the "worlds" of Wells, Huxley, and Orwell were without flaw.
Quite. Orwell was shot trying to save free Spain from a fascist dictatorship tacitly supported by the Western powers, lived through WW II, and before the rise of the modern welfare state experienced the poverty of being a waiter in Paris, and a tramp in England.
Re: How Yevgeny Zamyatin shaped dystopian fiction
#13>While Wells, Huxley and Orwell invented flawed worlds, the Soviet writer was living in one. Forgive me if I am reading too much into this, but the tagline for this article feels weird to me. It feels weird because it implies that the "worlds" of Wells, Huxley, and Orwell were without flaw. Was western civilization in the early 20th century really without flaw? Isn't every great dystopian work essentially a thought e…
I think a better way of phrasing this would be "While Wells, Huxley and Orwell invented totalitarian worlds, the Soviet writer was living in one." Of course Western society had flaws, and that was part of the point of Wells, Huxley, and Orwell writing their dystopias, but Zamyatin was living in the sort of society British authors could only imagine in their dystopias.
But that is a very simple-minded take. You just have to read "Down and out in Paris and London" to notice people suffered and suffer a lot in the "perfect" western world, so Orwell didnt have to "imagine" material to describe a dystopia, London, Paris or Moscow would have worked just the same, although for different reasons. Sometimes a soviet writer had a way better life than a worker in the west. Zamyatin was part of the soviet intelligentsia, and wrote "We" as a 36 year old writer in 1920 when the USSR was barely 3 years old. And yes he did it against what he perceived was an alarmingly increase in the totalitarianism of the new regime, but it is not like he had passed 10 years in the Gulag by then.
People in the west dont know how to calibrate the experience of people in other societies, for the man in the street what really sucked was the economy, not the totalitarianism, because an argument for the same lack of control of ACTUAL political and economical power can be made for the citizens in western countries.
By the way, Zamyatin also wrote "Islanders" where he satirized, and criticized all the hypocrisy, frivolities and arrogance of the English middle classes which he apparently detested, but you rarely see that work lionized in The Guardian or here, I wonder why.
Re: How Yevgeny Zamyatin shaped dystopian fiction
#14Does anyone know of a good Kindle version?
This one [1] purports to be the Clarence Brown translation. But it bears no semblance to Brown's translation published in paperback by Penguin [2], and looks in fact to be the old version by Zilboorg.
From what I can tell, the Brown version is much better. But it's not available on Kindle?
There's a whole bunch of Kindle versions that all have terrible typography (even worse than most Kindle books, I mean).
[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08CKCHMV6
[2] https://www.amazon.com/We-Yevgeny-Zamyatin/dp/0140185852
Re: How Yevgeny Zamyatin shaped dystopian fiction
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a better way of phrasing this would be "While Wells, Huxley and Orwell invented totalitarian worlds, the Soviet writer was living in one." Of course Western society had flaws, and that was part of the point of Wells, Huxley, and Orwell writing their dystopias, but Zamyatin was living in the sort of society British authors could only imagine in their dystopias.
But that is a very simple-minded take. You just have to read "Down and out in Paris and London" to notice people suffered and suffer a lot in the "perfect" western world, so Orwell didnt have to "imagine" material to describe a dystopia, London, Paris or Moscow would have worked just the same, although for different reasons. Sometimes a soviet writer had a way better life than a worker in the west. Zamyatin was part…
While Zamyatin satirized both sides, you seem to be quite certain of your ideology when you say that it's all about the economy and not totalitarianism. I guess you've never met high-ranking members of communist regimes who emigrated for ideological reasons, leaving behind relatively comfortable lives to start from scratch in the west. I'm sure you would twist their experience into a greed thing.
Re: How Yevgeny Zamyatin shaped dystopian fiction
#16Does anyone know of a good Kindle version? This one [1] purports to be the Clarence Brown translation. But it bears no semblance to Brown's translation published in paperback by Penguin [2], and looks in fact to be the old version by Zilboorg. From what I can tell, the Brown version is much better. But it's not available on Kindle? There's a whole bunch of Kindle versions that all have terrible typography (even worse…
Re: How Yevgeny Zamyatin shaped dystopian fiction
#17Does anyone know of a good Kindle version? This one [1] purports to be the Clarence Brown translation. But it bears no semblance to Brown's translation published in paperback by Penguin [2], and looks in fact to be the old version by Zilboorg. From what I can tell, the Brown version is much better. But it's not available on Kindle? There's a whole bunch of Kindle versions that all have terrible typography (even worse…
https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/yevgeny-zamyatin/we/gregor...
That's the public domain Zilboorg translation.
Re: How Yevgeny Zamyatin shaped dystopian fiction
#18"We" by Zamyatin is one of the best books I read all of last year. It's out of copy right, so freely downloadable too. Found it much more compelling than either a brave new world or 1984, even though both those books are also great. "We" seemed much more coherent and thought through. Reading his back story makes this even more interesting, given that he was living in a totalitarian state. I'd recommend reading his Wi…
In a nicely formatted version by Standard eBooks here:
https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/yevgeny-zamyatin/we/gregor...
Re: How Yevgeny Zamyatin shaped dystopian fiction
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a better way of phrasing this would be "While Wells, Huxley and Orwell invented totalitarian worlds, the Soviet writer was living in one." Of course Western society had flaws, and that was part of the point of Wells, Huxley, and Orwell writing their dystopias, but Zamyatin was living in the sort of society British authors could only imagine in their dystopias.
But that is a very simple-minded take. You just have to read "Down and out in Paris and London" to notice people suffered and suffer a lot in the "perfect" western world, so Orwell didnt have to "imagine" material to describe a dystopia, London, Paris or Moscow would have worked just the same, although for different reasons. Sometimes a soviet writer had a way better life than a worker in the west. Zamyatin was part…
In the West people suffered from their peers' indifference, in Stalin's USSR they suffered because it was the plan.
I wouldn't like to starve to death, but if I had to choose, I'd rather risk hunger from unemployment in 1930s England than dig the Belomor Canal in 1930s Russia.
Re: How Yevgeny Zamyatin shaped dystopian fiction
#20I've never heard Platonov mentioned in the West when it comes to Russian/USSR literature dealing with ideological totality. Probably Platonov's language is very hard to translate in the way preserving his sound. To me his https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Foundation_Pit is if one removed all the fictional elements from "We", removed even any [anti] glory of "dystopia" and any color, got down to the very ground, and w…
I deeply hated Котлован (The Foundation Pit) at school. To this day I can't understand why this on is even in school program.