1 Report has it that a Soviet librarian in 1956, not long after the Soviet Union opened its doors to Western tourists, complained that she was tired of hearing from her American visitors that Envy was the greatest Soviet novel. In his history of Soviet literature Edward J. Brown refers to Olesha's writings as “among the most significant artistic productions of the twentieth century” (Russian Literature since the Revolution [New York and London, 1963], p. 84).

2 A listing of the Russian critical literature is to be found in Russkie sovetskie pisateli— prozaiki, III (Leningrad, 1964), 348-67. Several of the better articles published in this period are mentioned in the footnotes of the present article. There has been almost no Soviet criticism of Olesha since his partial rehabilitation in 1955. The only piece worthy of mention is the excellent introduction, by Galanov, B., to Olesha, Iurii, Povesti i rasskazy (Moscow, 1965), pp. 3–16 Google Scholar. In the literature published outside the Soviet Union there are three significant treatments of the novel by Struve, Gleb: Soviet Russian Literature (Norman, Okla., 1951), pp. 98–105 Google Scholar; “Introduction,” in Y., Olesha, Envy (London, 1947), pp. i–xvGoogle Scholar; and “Pisatel' nenuzhnykh tem,” Novyi zhurnal, XXV (1951), 140-46.

3 See V. Polonskii, “Preodolenie ‘Zavisti,’ “ Novyi mir, No. 5, 1929, 191-92; Struve, “Pisatel* nenuzhnykh tem,” p. 141.

4 See Polonskii, pp. 191-92; and Struve, Soviet Russian Literature, pp. 104-5.

5 See, for example, Erich, Fromm, The Forgotten Language (New York, 1951)Google Scholar. Recently I discovered that my friend and colleague Robert Maguire has analyzed Olesha's Envy from a somewhat similar point of view. The interested reader may consult Professor Maguire's forthcoming book, Red Virgin Soil: A Study of Soviet Literature in the 1920s (to be published by Princeton University Press, 1967).

6 Envy is not a work which can be effectively summarized; besides, it is short and readily available in English. In addition to the translations of P. Ross (London, 1947) and Anthony Wolfe (in Philip Rahv, ed., Great Russian Short Novels [New York, 1951], pp. 635-771), the novel is published in a paperback edition under the spurious title of The Wayward Comrade and the Commissar, trans. Andrew R. MacAndrew (New York, i960). All quotations are translated by the present author from the Russian, from Iurii Olesha, Povesti i rasskazy (Moscow, 1965), pp. 17-120.

7 Friedrich Engels argued that “the modern individual family is founded on the open and unconcealed domestic slavery of the wife.” Under communism Engels would take women out of the home and place them in productive industrial life, which “demands the abolition of the monogamous family as the economic unit of society.” Housekeeping would then become a “social industry.” Quoted from Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (New York, 1942), pp. 61-73. Alexandra Kollontai, the noted Soviet feminist, popularized such views in the Soviet Union in the 1920s.

8 See Rufus W. Mathewson, Jr., The Positive Hero in Russian Literature (New York, 1958). PP- 243-44, esp. n. 31.

9 The opening scene of the novel, in which Andrei is in the toilet, may possibly be regarded as the very scene in which this child of his sterility is born. His spirit of “joy of life“ (zhizneradosf), which infuses this passage, is quite appropriate, in Soviet mythology, for creative activity.

10 See Struve, “Introduction,” in Olesha, Envy, pp. v-vii.

11 In his reminiscences Olesha mentions his own youthful interest in sports, especially in soccer; see “Iz zapisnykh knizhek 1954-1956,” Izbrannye sochineniia (Moscow, 1956), p. 461. See also his recently published memoirs, Ni dnia bez strochki (Moscow, 1965), pp. 109-16.

12 Olesha's stories “The Cherry Stone,” “Love,” “Aldebaran,” and “Natasha” show similar figures. See my article “The Philosophical Tales of Jurij Oleša,” in Orbis Scriptus: Dmitrij Tschižewskij zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Dietrich Gerhardt et al. (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1966), pp. 349-54.

13 See D. Tal'nikov, “Literaturnye zametki,” Krasnaia nov', No. 6, 1928, pp. 238, 244. See also Struve, “Introduction,” in Olesha, Envy, pp. vii-viii; and “Pisatel’ nenuzhnykh tem,“ p. 143.

14 See Olesha's sketch “la smotriu v proshloe,” in Izbrannye sochineniia (Moscow, 1956), pp. 284-91, based on reminiscences of childhood.

15 Fictional narrators tend to win the reader's sympathy or at least sneaking affection; thus, an “inside view can build sympathy for even the most vicious character” (Wayne Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction [Chicago, 1961], p. 378).

16 Since the much abused term “expressionistic” appears several times in this study, it may be well to provide a definition. I call a symbol “expressionistic” when it takes on a fantastic form which is designed, through its sheer fantasticality, to reinforce a symbolic meaning or to uncover more strikingly a hidden symbolic truth.

17 Sigmund Freud, “Medusa's Head,” International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, XXII, No. i (Jan. 1941), 69-70.

18 See Struve, Soviet Russian Literature, p. 106. Olesha himself wrote an article on Chaplin, “Mysli o Chapline,” in Izbrannye sochineniia (Moscow, 1956), pp. 436-39. In his play, Spisok blagodeianii (1931), a Chaplinesque figure appears.

19 See The Collected Papers of Otto Fenichel, 2d series (New York, 1954), pp. 11-14.

20 Reinhard Lauer, “Zur Gestalt Ivan Babičevs in Olešas ‘Zavist','” Die Welt der Slaven, VII (1962), 45-54.

21 In 1927, when Envy appeared, this reference to “bookkeepers” no doubt suggested the capitalist entrepreneurs who flourished under the New Economic Policy. Thus, in Valentin Kataev's novel The Embezzlers (Rastratchiki) two bank clerks embezzle funds which they spend in a picaresque whirl over Russia.

22 This myth is illustrated in such tales as that of the Golem of Prague, Mary W. Shelley's Frankenstein, and Karel Čapek's R.U.R. For Olesha's admiring comments on the last-named work, see his Ni dnia bez strochki, pp. 237-39.

23 Fantasies of a woman with a penis are found in psychoanalytic literature. Géza Róheim has analyzed the figure of the witch in European folklore as such a figure; see his “Aphrodite, or the Woman with a Penis,” Psychoanalytic Quarterly, XIV, No. 3 (July 1945), 361-75. In R6heim's interpretation the Sphinx, whose riddle Oedipus solves, is also a castrating mother figure; see his Riddle of the Sphinx (London, 1934).

24 Ni dnia bez strochki, p. 106.

25 Ibid., pp. 298-99.

26 Late in the novel Olesha does suggest, in a physical description of Valia, that she is rather earthy and that she belongs to the contemporary world as much as to the romantic world of Kavalerov's dreams. In this he seems to be pointing to a synthesis of idealism and materialism, akin to the synthesis proposed in “The Cherry Stone” (see note 27). But Valia's presence in the novel is too slight to permit the reader to accept her reality as convincing, and the attempt to give her reality comes too late to be effective.

27 Such a synthesis is suggested not in Envy but in Olesha's stories, especially “Love,“ “The Cherry Stone,” and “Aldebaran.” See my article, “The Philosophical Stories of Jurij Oleša,” p. 352. In “The Cherry Stone” we have a symbol of sterility in the concrete skyscraper which Fedia learns is to be erected under the Five-Year Plan. But still the cherry stone which he has planted will germinate and grow into a tree, for the planners have remembered to provide the new building with a garden. So life will persist in spite of the threat of technology.