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'Chief surveyor of Russian Icebreakers' Building E.Zamiatin. </blockquote> 'Chief surveyor of Russian Icebreakers' Building E.Zamiatin. </blockquote>


⚫ The characters Yu-10 and R-13 may be easily derived from the Swan Hunter yard numbers of three more of Zamyatin's major Tyne icebreakers: 1012; 1020 and 1021.{{Fact|date=May 2007}}

⚫ The characters Yu-10 and R-13 may be easily derived from the Swan Hunter yard numbers of three more of Zamyatin's major Tyne icebreakers: 1012; 1020 and 1021.{{fact}}


===Dostoevsky=== ===Dostoevsky===
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*The names are related to characters' genders. Males' names begin with consonants and end with odd numbers, females' with vowels and even numbers. *The names are related to characters' genders. Males' names begin with consonants and end with odd numbers, females' with vowels and even numbers.


*The letters corresponding to the numbers are directly related to various characteristics of that specific character. For example, the character O-90, D-503's most common sexual partner and female friend in the beginning portion of the novel, has very round and simple physical and mental characteristics. Such relationships between name letter and character exist throughout the novel.{{fact}} *The letters corresponding to the numbers are directly related to various characteristics of that specific character. For example, the character O-90, D-503's most common sexual partner and female friend in the beginning portion of the novel, has very round and simple physical and mental characteristics. Such relationships between name letter and character exist throughout the novel.{{Fact|date=May 2007}}


*The name of S-4711 is a reference to the ] number ].<ref>Ermolaev.</ref> *The name of S-4711 is a reference to the ] number 4711 .<ref>Ermolaev.</ref>
*"''Auditorium 112''" refers to cell number 112, where Zamyatin was twice imprisoned.<ref>Randall, p. xvii.</ref> *"''Auditorium 112''" refers to cell number 112, where Zamyatin was twice imprisoned.<ref>Randall, p. xvii.</ref>


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:English: ''My wives, icebreakers and Russia''. Russian: ''О моих женах, о ледоколах и о России''. :English: ''My wives, icebreakers and Russia''. Russian: ''О моих женах, о ледоколах и о России''.
:The original date and location of publication are unknown, although he mentions the 1928 rescue of the ] expedition by the ], the renamed ]. :The original date and location of publication are unknown, although he mentions the 1928 rescue of the ] expedition by the ], the renamed ].

] ]
] ]

Revision as of 14:04, 19 May 2007

We
File:WeCover.jpgCover of the Penguin Classics translation of We
AuthorYevgeny Zamyatin
Original titleМы
TranslatorClarence Brown
Cover artistGeorgii Petrusov, Caricature of Aleksander Rodchenko (1933-34)
LanguageRussian
GenreDystopian novel Science fiction
PublisherPenguin Books
Publication date1920-1921 (written); 1988 (pub'd in USSR); 1993 (Penguin ed.)
Publication placeSoviet Union
Published in English1924
Media typePrint (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages226
ISBNISBN 0-14-018585-2 Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character

We (Template:Lang-ru) is a dystopian novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin completed in 1921. It was written in response to the author's personal experiences with the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, his life in the Newcastle suburb of Jesmond and work in the Tyne shipyards at nearby Wallsend during the First World War. It was on Tyneside that he observed the rationalisation of labour on a large scale.

Plot summary

Template:Spoiler The story is told by the protagonist, "D-503", in his diary, which details both his work as a mathematician and his misadventures with a resistance group called the Mephi, who take their name from Mephistopheles.

D-503 lives in the One State, an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass, where everything is organized according to primitive mathematics. Sleep times are measured out for each day and each individual is given a certain number of other people to have intercourse with based on a system of coupons and scheduling. People move around according to special marches in-step with each other and wear special suits so there is hardly any way to differentiate between different people save by given numbers.

D-503 spends most of his time with O-90 and R-13, referring to their relationship as a “triangle.” He eventually falls in love with I-330 and the problems begin. He starts a diary as a testament to the happiness that the One State has discovered. He hopes to present it to the extraterrestrial civilizations which the spaceship he designed and oversaw the building of, the Integral, will visit. This ends up being all a part of the Great Benefactor’s plan so he could collect as many Mephi followers as possible.

As the novel progresses, D-503’s infatuation with I-330, a rebellious woman in league with Mephi, starts to take over his life. He starts to lose his initial dedication to the One State, and his ability to differentiate between reality and dreams starts to fade. He is permitted to take off work at one point to overcome his illness (the formation of a soul), but cannot seem to shake the strange and alien sensations he is experiencing.

By the end of his story, he has almost been driven to madness by inner conflicts between himself and his society, or imagination and mathematic truths. In addition, other members of the One State have fallen prey to higher math (perhaps symbolizing love) and various forms of chaos begin to occur. The “Green Wall” that separates their world from the outside is destroyed, birds begin to populate the glass city, people start having intercourse with the blinds up without using coupons, and the Great Benefactor has to create a special field to keep out the Mephis and their followers.

At the end, D-503 is captured and taken for the Great Operation, where a “splinter” is removed from his brain (the soul he has formed) and he no longer loves, falling back into his previous existence.

Though the society appears to be containing the spread of the so-called illness, it is suggested at the end that perhaps the society itself will soon fall and the energy wall is only a temporary hindrance to the inevitable. Most literary critics are uncertain what Zamyatin was intending with his ending, whether the One State has won or whether love will eventually overcome the Great Benefactor and the remaining followers of order.

Major themes

Dystopian society

The dystopian society depicted in We is called the One State, a glass city led by the Benefactor (in some translations also known as The Well Doer) and surrounded by a giant Green Wall to separate the citizens from nature. The story takes place after the Two Hundred Year's War, a war that wiped out all but "0.2 of the earth's population". The 200 Years War was a war over a rare substance never mentioned in the book, as all knowledge of the war comes from biblical metaphors; the objective of the war was a rare substance called "bread" as the "Christians gladiated over it" - as in countries fighting conventional wars. However, it is also revealed that the war only ended after the use of superweapons, after which came a time when grass grew over old streets and buildings crumbled.

Efficiency and mathematics

All human activities are reduced to mathematical equations, or at least attempted to. For sexual intercourse, numbers (people) receive a booklet of pink coupons which they fill out with the other number they'd like to use on a certain day. Intercourse is the only time shades are allowed to be lowered. It's believed pink coupons eliminate envy.

Every single moment in one's life is directed by "The Table," a precursor to Nineteen Eighty-Four's telescreen. It is in every single residence, and directs their every waking instant. With it, every person eats the same way at the same time, wakes at the exact same time, goes to sleep at the exact same time, and works at the exact same time. The only exception are two required "Free Hours" in which a Number might go out and stroll down a street, or work, or write a diary or the like. According to D-503, he is proud to think that someday there will be a society in which the Free Hours have been eliminated, and every single moment is catalogued and choreographed.

Individualism

Society places no value on the individual. Names are replaced by numbers. In one instance, ten numbers are incinerated while standing too close to the rockets of the Integral during tests. With pride, D-503 writes that this did not slow down the test in any way.

Totalitarianism and Communism

The Benefactor is the equivalent of Big Brother, but unlike his Orwellian equivalent, the Benefactor is actually confirmed to exist when D-503 has an encounter with him. An "election" is held every year on Unanimity Day, but the outcome is always known beforehand, with the Benefactor unanimously being reelected each year.

The Integral, the One State's space ship has been designed by D-503 to bring efficiency of the One State to the rest of the universe. This is often seen as analogous to ideals of Global Communist State held by early Marxists. Template:Endspoiler

Literary significance and influences

We is a futuristic dystopian satire, generally considered to be the grandfather of the genre. It takes the totalitarian and conformative aspects of modern industrial society to an extreme conclusion, depicting a state that believes that free will is the cause of unhappiness, and that citizens' lives should be controlled with mathematical precision based on the system of industrial efficiency created by Frederick Winslow Taylor. Among many other literary innovations, Zamyatin's futuristic vision includes houses, and indeed everything else, made of glass or other transparent materials, so that everyone is constantly visible. Zamyatin was very critical of communism in Russia and his work was repeatedly banned.

Aldous Huxley reportedly claimed that he did not read We before writing Brave New World (1932), although Orwell believed that Huxley was lying.

Ayn Rand's Anthem (1938) reads largely like We rewritten to conform to her philosophy.

George Orwell was familiar with We, having read it in French and reviewed it in 1946; it influenced his Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Kurt Vonnegut said that in writing Player Piano (1952) he "cheerfully ripped off the plot of Brave New World, whose plot had been cheerfully ripped off from Eugene Zamiatin's We."

History

The novel was the first work banned by Glavlit, the new Soviet censorship bureau, in 1921, though the initial draft dates to 1919. In fact, a good deal of the basis of the novel is present in Zamyatin's novella 'Islanders', begun in Newcastle in 1916. Zamyatin's literary position deteriorated throughout the 1920s, and he was eventually allowed to emigrate to Paris in 1931, probably after the intercession of Maxim Gorky.

The novel was first published in English in 1924, but its first publication in the Soviet Union had to wait until in 1988, when glasnost resulted in it appearing alongside George Orwell's 1984. A year later We and Brave New World were published together in a combined edition.

Allusions and references to other works

Saint Alexander Nevsky

Alan Myers finds that the numbers of the main characters - O-90, D-503 and I-330 - are almost certainly derived from the specifications of the icebreaker Saint Alexander Nevsky.

The numbers ... of the chief characters in WE are taken directly from the specifications of Zamyatin’s favourite icebreaker, the Saint Alexander Nevsky, yard no. A/W 905, round tonnage 3300, where 0-90 and I-330 appropriately divide the hapless D-503 ...

Zamyatin recalls the Alexander Nevsky as his favourite icebreaker.

All these icebreakers were constructed in England, in Newcastle and yards nearby; there are traces of my work in every one of them, especially the Alexander Nevsky - now the Lenin;I did the preliminary design, and after that none of the vessel's drawings arrived in the workshop without having been checked and signed:


'Chief surveyor of Russian Icebreakers' Building E.Zamiatin.

The characters Yu-10 and R-13 may be easily derived from the Swan Hunter yard numbers of three more of Zamyatin's major Tyne icebreakers: 1012; 1020 and 1021.

Dostoevsky

In his article Two Adams and Eve in the Crystal Palace: Dostoevsky, the Bible, and We, Richard Gregg draws attention to similarities between Fyodor Dostoevsky's work, particularly Notes from the Underground and The Brothers Karamazov.

Biblical references

Many comparisons to The Bible exist in We. Gregg points out similarities between Genesis Chapters 1-4 and We, where the One State is considered Paradise, D-503 is Adam, and I-330 is Eve. The snake in this piece is S-4711, who is described to have a bent and twisted form, with a "double-curved body".

References to Mephistopheles (in the Mephi) are seen as allusions to Satan and his rebellion against Heaven in the Bible. The Mephi are rebels against what is considered to be a perfect society. The novel itself could also be considered a criticism of organised religion given this interpretation.

Mathematical references

Furthermore, in the novel, D-503 mentions how the irrationality of square root -1 bothers him greatly. It is known that in math, this number is represented by the letter i. But, the most ironic and one of the greatest satirical symbols in the novel is the fact that the One State thinks it is perfect because it bases its system on math even though math itself has irrationality in it. Zamyatin's point, probably in light of the increasingly dogmatic Soviet government of the time, would seem to be that is that it is impossible to remove all the rebels against a system and he even says this through (ironically) I-330: "There is no final revolution. Revolutions are infinite."

Trivia

  • The names are related to characters' genders. Males' names begin with consonants and end with odd numbers, females' with vowels and even numbers.
  • The letters corresponding to the numbers are directly related to various characteristics of that specific character. For example, the character O-90, D-503's most common sexual partner and female friend in the beginning portion of the novel, has very round and simple physical and mental characteristics. Such relationships between name letter and character exist throughout the novel.
  • The name of S-4711 is a reference to the Eau de Cologne number 4711 .
  • "Auditorium 112" refers to cell number 112, where Zamyatin was twice imprisoned.

See also

Notes

  1. The title Мы (IPA: [mɨ]) is the Russian first person plural personal pronoun. It is usually romanized as My by transliterating the Russian letter ы (Yery) as the English letter y. However, the romanization My is not a translation or a pronunciation and should not be confused with the English word my.
  2. Brown, p. xi, citing Shane, gives 1921. Russell, p. 3, dates the first draft to 1919.
  3. Ginsburg and Randall use "One State". Guerney uses "The One State" — each word is capitalized. Brown uses the single word "OneState", which he calls "ugly" (p. xxv). Zilboorg uses "United State".
    All of these are translations of the phrase Yedinoye Gosudarstvo (Russian: Единое Государство).
  4. Fifth Entry (Ginsburg translation, p. 21).
  5. "Leonard Lopate Show". WNYC. August 18 2006. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) (radio interview with We translator Natasha Randall)
  6. Gimpelevich, Zina (1997). "'We' and 'I' in Zamyatin's We and Rand's Anthem". Germano-Slavica. 10 (1): 13–23. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |quotes=, |coauthors=, and |month= (help)
  7. Orwell (1946). Brown writes that for Orwell and certain others, We "appears to have been the crucial literary experience." (Brown trans., Introduction, p. xvi)
  8. Playboy Magazine interview with Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., July 1973.
  9. In a translation by Zilboorg.
  10. Brown translation, p. xiv. Tall notes that glasnost resulted in many other literary classics being published in the USSR during 1988-1989.
  11. Tall, footnote 1.
  12. Myers.
  13. Zamyatin ().
  14. Ginsburg, Introduction, p. v. The Thirtieth Entry has a similar passage.
  15. Ermolaev.
  16. Randall, p. xvii.

References

Translations

  • Zamyatin, Yevgeny (1924). We. Gregory Zilboorg (trans.). New York: Dutton. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  • Zamjatin, Jevgenij Ivanovič (1927). My. Václav Koenig (trans.). Prague (Praha): Štorch-Marien. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) Template:Cs icon
  • Zamâtin, Evgenij Ivanovic (1929). Nous autres. B. Cauvet-Duhamel (trans.). Paris: Gallimard. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) Template:Fr icon
  • Zamjàtin, Evgenij (1955). Noi. Ettore Lo Gatto (trans.). Bergamo (Italy): Minerva Italica. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) Template:It icon
  • Zamyatin, Yevgeny (1972 repr. 1999). We. Mirra Ginsburg (trans.). New York: EOS HarperCollins. ISBN 0-380-63313-2. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  • Zamyatin, Yevgeny (1972). We. Bernard Guilbert Guerney (trans.). UK: Penguin Books. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  • Zamjàtin, Evgenij (1990). Noi. Ettore Lo Gatto (trans.). Milano (Italy): Feltrinelli. ISBN 88-07-80412-3. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) Template:It icon
  • Zamyatin, Evgeny (1991). We. Raduga Publishers (trans.). Moscow: Raduga. ISBN 5-05-004845-1.
  • Zamyatin, Yevgeny (1993). We. Clarence Brown (trans.). New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-018585-2. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  • Zamiatin, Eugene (2000). We. Gregory Zilboorg (trans.). USA: Transaction Large Print. ISBN 1-56000-477-0. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) (author photo on cover)
  • Zamyatin, Yevgeny (2006). We. Natasha Randall (trans.). USA: Random House. ISBN 0-8129-7462-X. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

Russian language editions

  • Zamiatin, Evgenii Ivanovich (1988). Selections. sostaviteli T.V. Gromova, M.O. Chudakova, avtor stati M.O. Chudakova, kommentarii Evg. Barabanova. Moskva: Kniga. ISBN 5-212-00084-X. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) Template:Ru icon
We was first published in the USSR in this collection of Zamyatin's works. (Brown, p. xiv, xxx)
Catalog card image from the National Library of Russia showing ISBN 5-212-0084-X (sic). Template:Ru icon
  • Zamyatin, Yevgeny (1998). Zamyatin: We. Bristol Classical Press. ISBN 1853993786. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help) (also cited as Zamyatin: We, Duckworth, 2006) Template:Ru icon Template:En icon
Edited with Introduction and Notes by Andrew Barratt.
Plain Russian text (unstressed, without a vocabulary), but with English introduction, bibliography and notes.

Online works

Reviews

Books

  • Russell, Robert (2000). Zamiatin's We. Bristol Classical Press. ISBN 185399393X. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) (also cited as Zamiatin's We, Duckworth, 2001) (about the author)
  • Shane, Alex M. (1968). The life and works of Evgenij Zamjatin. University of California Press. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  • Zamyatin, Yevgeny (1992). A Soviet Heretic: Essays. Mirra Ginsburg (editor and translator). Northwestern Univ Pr. ISBN 0810110911. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

Journal articles

  • Zamyatin, Yevgeny (), "O moikh zhenakh, o ledokolakh i o Rossii", Mosty, IX, Munich: Izd-vo Tsentralnogo obedineniia polit. emigrantov iz SSSR: 25 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |year= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |month=, |quotes=, and |coauthors= (help)CS1 maint: year (link) Template:Ru icon
English: My wives, icebreakers and Russia. Russian: О моих женах, о ледоколах и о России.
The original date and location of publication are unknown, although he mentions the 1928 rescue of the Nobile expedition by the Krasin, the renamed Svyatogor.
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