Adventures of Dilettantes by Bulat Okudzhava – Issues and Conflicts

Barbara Kozak

Instytut Słowiańszczyzny Wschodniej Uniwersytet Warmińsko-Mazurski w Olsztynie

Abstract

Historical prose of Bulat Okudzhava is an interesting phenomenon. It belongs to
the literary trend originating in the 20’s of the 20th century, when a rethinking and reappreciation
of the past were postulated to plausibly lay out the genealogy of the present.
Initially the authors of that period drew on big social and cultural upheavals and their
heroes to explain the complicated relation between the individual and the revolution, and
between the revolution and the Intelligentsia. In the Adventures of Dilettantes Okudzhava
unambiguously follows those literary trails. He focuses on the momentous changes taking
place in the Russian society in the second half of the 19th century and on the moralpsychological
atmosphere of that time. One should note that the historicism of Okudzhava is
of a very peculiar nature. It consists in considering the conflict between the individual and the
authority not just in the historical perspective, but also in the philosophical, moral and deeply
human aspects. In the novel Okudzhava proposes that totalitarian rule has not ever changed
across the eras and tries to prove that hypothesis. In doing that the author is processing and
transforming historical facts. Thus, the classic model of the historical novel is shattered since
it is too constraining to accommodate elements of fiction, fantasy, dream, surreal visions.
Okudzhava uses all of them to expand upon the spirituality of the characters.

Keywords:

Bulat Okudzhava, historical novel, historical costume, oppression of the individual, writer versus the authority