Pynchon like Shostakovich?

[Derek C. Maus]

On Mon, 7 Feb 2000 DudiousMax at aol.com wrote:

> Something I thought you might like to know.  In Russian culture there
> is the concept of the "yurodivy."  "The yurodivy has the gift to see
> and hear what others know nothing about.  But he tells the world about
> his insights in an an intentionally paradoxical way ... He plays the
> fool, while actually being a persistent exposer of evil and
> injustice."

Well...that's fairly close to accurate, at least as far as the association
with Shostakovich goes. He had one biographer (Solomon Volkov, who edited
his "memoirs") who linked him with this term, but it's far from a
generally accepted association. 

I think a better definition of "yurodiviy" in this metaphorical
association (the adjective itself means something akin to "mentally
touched" or "crazy") is "Holy fool". I'm not sure where that very precise
typology involving the intentional paradoxes, etc. cited in the article
comes from, but there are dozens of examples of yurodivy in Russian lit.,
especially from the 19th century. 

The association with Shostakovich seems to be a somewhat belabored one
anyway, since the "gospel" he's presumed to be prophesying is that of
socialist realism, which would make Mayakovskiy, Gorkiy and other ardently
revolutionary writers "yuordiviy," a linkage I suspect they would reject
rather angrily. 

I see the linkage with Pynchon in the quoted section above, but I'm not
sure it's really all that accurate a description of the type (or
necessarily of Shostakovich, who remains something of an enigma for
musical historians).

Sergey, you around to help me out on this one?

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Derek C. Maus               | "My fondest hope is to die at the hands
dmaus at email.unc.edu         |   of a murderer. In America, the truly 
UNC-CH, Dept. of English    |       famous are always murdered."
http://www.unc.edu/~dmaus/  |                   --Quentin Crisp
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