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"Harmful literature is more useful than useful literature, for it is antientropic, it is a means of combating calcification... It is utopian, absurd... It is right 150 years later." - Zamyatin, "On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other Matters"

In art, there's a fine line between inspiration and theft.

A goodreads friend of mine, Tortla, wrote in her review, "Oh, dystopias. You never cease to be exactly the same." Two stars.

But in his defense, Zamayatin was the same first.

C.S. Lewis said of George MacDonald, "I have never concealed the fact that I regarded MacDonald as my master, indeed I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him." -To which I replied in my review of Phantastes, "..., or which I did not simply steal his ideas outright."

I regard Zamyatin's We much the same as I do MacDonald's Phantastes. They're laying the groundwork. I learned the term "mythopoeic" from Phantastes. Myth-maker. Zamyatin here is much the same. Not that he's the very first dystopian author - but he's certainly an innovator, and he certainly came up with something new.

But much like Phantastes bore greater literary fruit in Lewis and Tolkein, here the writing style was perfected in Orwell, in Huxley, in Burgess... even as far as William Gibson. I had thought that the Postmodern Era began in the nuclear age, but it is here. If nothing, lines like "From my own experience I know that the cruelest thing is to make a person doubt his own reality..." and perhaps even more poignantly,

"Every equation, every formula in the surface world has its corresponding curve or body. But for irrational formulas, for my � -1, we know of no corresponding bodies, we have never seen them. ...But the horror of it is that these invisible bodies exist, they must, they inevitably must exist: in mathematics, their fantastic, prickly shadows-irrational formulas-pass before us as on a screen. And neither mathematics nor death ever makes a mistake. So that, if we do not see these bodies in our world, there must be, there inevitably must be, a whole vast world for them-there, beyond the surface. ..."

Is that not the epitome of postmodern lit/cinematography: Neuromancer/The Matrix?

Zamyatin confronts art and propaganda. We was the first book banned by the Soviet Censorship Board.

"As an artist you are responsible to no one and nothing, except to yourself and the truth as you see it. Do you understand? An artist is responsible to his art. Anything else is propaganda."

Chaim Potok, My Name is Asher Lev, 1972

Dostoyevsky (certainly Zamyatin had read Crime and Punishment) said, "The fear of appearances is the first sign of impotence." (There are many direct lines from the truth-telling of Dostoyevsky to the truth-telling of Zamyatin.)

All dystopian writers write in the present, and project into the future. Here's Zamyatin on art and propaganda, and the writing - CCCP agitprop - on the wall: "...Literary chimeras, are a special form of reality. We reject utilitarianism. We do not write for the sake of propaganda. Art is as real as life itself, and, as life itself, it has no goal or meaning, it exists because it must exist. Our one demand is that the writers voice must never be false."

And, "True literature can exist only where it is created not by diligent and trustworthy officials, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics." Can true literature come out of Stalin's USSR? Out of North Korea?

According to Zamyatin: Only underground.

And we of the free West should keep up the questioning, as certainly there are gatekeepers here: false cannons, profit-based publishing houses, crowd-sourced lit-review websites with ads in all the margins... *ahem* ... ... ... ... ... *aHEM*

*ahem* bought out by capitalistic monopolies bent on world domination *aHEM*

And lest you think I'm biting the hand that feeds me, I'm not being compensated for writing this review. Jeff Bezos gets all the money. ...But I feel good about myself.

One more on literature, "Harmful literature is more useful than useful literature, for it is antientropic, it is a means of combating calcification... It is utopian, absurd... It is right 150 years later."

...It is right 150 years later.

We had its flaws. It was often self-contradictory, for instance. For utterly disavowing the past, they sure remember a lot about it. The writing style wasn't polished. The characters were (possibly intentionally) one-dimensional. And the journal-writing schtick I find to be unbelievable in this (and most) case(s).

And those are the reasons for the 3 stars. ...I just didn't find it particularly well written.

But the insights. Much has been made of Orwell's debt to him. They were both writing about Stalin, for instance, right? But when Zamyatin writes, "I was alone..." in chapter 18, it reminded me so of Orwell in Shooting an Elephant. That part where he realizes just how alone he is... how alone any thinking person is inside an autocratic society:

All this was perplexing and upsetting. For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically � and secretly, of course � I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been Bogged with bamboos � all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt. But I could get nothing into perspective. I was young and ill-educated and I had had to think out my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East.

All that to say, I imagine Zamyatin influenced more than just 1984 and Animal Farm.

In a self-serving way, I'm interested in his politics - if he has any. I'm writing this in the US in 2021, where everything has become hyper-partisan. And so much of this felt strictly anti-Communist - especially anti-Where-Stalin-Was-Taking-Communism. Often though, it felt Anti-Libertarian. Where everything is numbers. Everything is utilitarian. Everything is product.

And here in the US - right now - it seems like The Right has usurped Orwell - forgetting that he was a Socialist. That he took a bullet through the throat fighting with the Socialists. ...That he was vehemently against Communism.

Where does Zamyatin fit in? And cannot the truth be the truth? Can't we appreciate Dostoyevsky, Orwell, Zamyatin and Solzhenitsyn without pigeonholing them into some arbitrary and shifting modern political affiliation?

(That's why I said it was self-serving above: I realize I was doing just that, and I kind of hate myself for it.)

I feel like I'm pretty up on books. I can't believe I hadn't heard of this one until now. I got it before the 150 years... but I'm still surprised. And so much feels relevant: crime and freedom, freedom without happiness or happiness without freedom... On revolutions, and who decides when they're over. (Seriously, I've just been debating this for the past 11 months...)

Even if you never read it, add it to your to-read list. It's deserving.