Zamyatin's Reception of Wells's Fiction

Abstract

In their article "Zamyatin's Reception of Well's Fiction," Natalia Aksenova and Marina Albertovna Khatyamova examine several essays written by Yevgeny Zamyatin on Herbert Wells's texts and analyse Zamyatin's reception of Wells's work. Wells's ironic mindset, plot-driven writings, and attraction to parody drew Zamyatin's attention. Zamyatin felt a rapport with the central role of plot dynamics, unorthodox socialist politics, and dystopian tendencies in Wells's fiction. Discussions of the artistic qualities of Wells's writings allow Zamyatin to expound upon his own aesthetic program, known as "synthetism." In these discussions Zamyatin interprets Wells's work as a complex interpretation of technological modernity where the line between humans and gods is actively blurred, and traces the origins of Wellsian fiction to his predecessors, mostly English-language adventure writers. In doing so, Zamyatin gives Wells credit for extending the typical adventure novel into a philosophical realm while keeping it entertaining and captivating. Furthermore, in terms of the reimagining of the Apollonian and Dionisyan opposition as an opposition between English and Irish in Zamyatin's "English stories" of the same period, Wells is read as a typical Englishman: an unorthodox heretic. Ultimately, it becomes clear that these are the qualities that Zamyatin values most in Wells.