The Twelve Chairs and The Golden Calf by Il’f and Petrov.

Writer’s duo of Communist Muscovy Il’ya Il’f and Evgeniy Petrov created three books together. One of them is “One-Storied America” (1937), which about their journey through the United States. I never take for reading because learning revealed it’s a philistine view on a country from two men who didn’t know English. The other two books are fictions The Twelve Chairs (1928) and The Golden Calf (1931), which are satirical picaresque adventures about con artist Ostap Bender. I was familiar with them by films and had a thought on reading, but it never was strong until lately.

The Twelve Chairs

You must be familiar and, foremost, belong to Muscovian mentality. It was a hard reading for me because I am far from that national perception. Writers’ creation of satire did turning to demonstration of reality, which caused a rejection instead of laughing. There are places for laugh but a lot of their comedy only for Muscovites can be humorous. I wasn’t in that rapture when I had in reading dozen of pages. It revealed as unpleasing reality than satire. And the last did a slight take to awkwardness.

It wasn’t always. There were genius moments as a creation of tram lines which is powerful because authors showed authenticity in alongside with Muscovy personality in exactness, which were bearable in acceptance, and it had a good wrap of satire here. From there Il’f and Petrov made reaching in places of showing Muscovy through satire. And that surrealism is reality, which didn’t gone. How it was adorable to read about limitation in entrances and a trapped woman gets a fine threat. But, still, I couldn’t laugh here. I thought on a film Deja Vu by Juliusz Machulski. It did ideal in demonstration of communistic reality in it’s constant surrealism. I can watch and fun from this flick, which constantly sustain this atmosphere while Il’f and Petrov’s book isn’t.

There were strange metaphors and same with describing of things but such element is common in a literature of this nation. Personally with The Twelve Chairs, sometimes writing isn’t well. In the very beginning in less than one full page authors say about people who don’t die in that town three times. There will repeat constantly of that any of characters says “Are you crazy?” because it’s too polite here. The duo writes twice on one page that heroes were alien in that place and had dirty clothes by describing one of these elements again and character’s saying other. Sometimes I didn’t understand sense of authors’ describing. And there was too much usage of that a personage lies or believes about this occupation, which he does, and writers call him by that post in the next stroke by wanting to be humorous but making this thing always discloses they’re not finest authors. The duo wasn’t poor in writing but they have Bender who speaks a nonsense in occasions, which isn’t acceptable even there was striving to satire.

Il’f and Petrov put doubtful statistics of weird facts. Their narration itself jumps in acts. Furthermore, writers can’t make paragraphs. A next stroke already moves to other location and period. Personally, Schukins’ couple line didn’t require continuation in Pyatigorsk and the duo turns it as unresolved here. Authors were insolent by blunt writing an own opinion that Mark Twen couldn’t joke on this and demonstrated a bad taste by doing in describing “…and the rest balderdash.”

The book’s story lives in coincidences. I would accepted if the narration be in always absurdity. Main two characters want to take one chair, which always stayed in that building, but it was just sold or they came for ten other pieces of respective furniture by recognizing it lied forgotten in a warehouse for seven years and only lately it was discovered and just yesterday it was sent on auction. Or more than usual was in Vorob’yaninov walks on the city’s street and sees a man with a chair. Ostap climbs up to apartment through a stairway and exactly in that place a drop of water falls, he rises his head for get “a little waterfall of the dirty water” which was from a flooded flat.

I have rows of questions in motivations, to that left undisclosed and authors have absence in math. There were confusions. Bender against stealing of one chair but he does with others later. I don’t see a sense in doing a complicated cover as marriage on owner of this piece of furniture. I didn’t understand how Kislyarskiy was released who confessed in participation of conspiracy. No explanation of Bender’s gone of fifty rubles in Moscow. It wasn’t once when he had much money, but then he hadn’t as reveals. He comes on a ship with sixty rubles and somehow leaves it with nothing. And there additionally arrives, why they didn’t take and disclose all four chairs there if access was to all of them?

Two protagonists become more disgust in personalities toward the end, but it shouldn’t surprise, while no abominate qualities have these heroes in a brilliant commie Muscovy flick of 1971, which doesn’t set in mentality for me, always keeps a comedy. It made an impeccable casting in which main roles had Archil Gomiashvili and Sergey Philippov who belong to these characters. This movie removes all shortcomings and does and excellent interpretation in which puts away an exaggerated part in book’s ending, which about decorations. I don’t only like that director’s wife appears as Tamar of Georgia, because she had another personage before that while a book doesn’t connect these personages, and I don’t see a reason of filming of contemporary days and showing film’s characters who looks on flick’s poster.

The Golden Calf

It has funny and brilliant moments of satire but The Golden Calf isn’t enticing and hasn’t colorful personalities as The Twelve Chairs where even episodic personages are memorable. I was already questionable to a storyline.

Why didn’t a government worker call a military police who was supposed to see that he was tricked? Reading of Adam Kozlevich’s story how he wanted to take a driving niche in Arbatov is impossible. No savvy explanation of why trains stopped to come on a station of this city and it’s a drivel nonsense that people started to afraid to use his services. Then he shows rudeness to Bender and Balaganov but he offers drive them free and accepts journey in few sentences. That trouble with underdevelopment writers did in The Twelve Chairs as I asked on what Vorob’yaninov feels in long walks but it made me to quit with this book. The Golden Calf makes soon in such questions and creates reading as unacceptable. What was point to pick up Panikovskiy? Additionally, authors didn’t know economy. Koreyko’s stolen medicaments couldn’t be sold on these astronomical money. I see, the duo lost in chronological counting. A setting takes after three years of The Twelve Chairs in which Bender is twenty-eight while he is thirty-three here. I want to point only that authors did in The Golden Calf more detailed describing but that was a fact and nothing more. I couldn’t read it at whole. I did relocations.

I always expect a line of party in reading of Communist Muscovy literature. If it isn’t in The Twelve Chairs, it comes eventually in The Golden Calf. Bender is already doesn’t feel a happiness in being a millionaire. It was a truth that connections were more important than money in Commie Muscovy but the duo exaggerated in this part where Ostap Bender can’t spend finances anywhere. Moreover, it wasn’t acceptable that the protagonist’s skills of con artist disappeared there in the end. He constantly dreams about Rio de Janeiro but Il’f and Petrov make a far-fetched explanation of Bender’s rejection of his dream because it disrupts his personality.

I read the ending of the book many years before and saw it in 1968 adaptation, which I watched in the last minutes and never aspire to see entirely. I hadn’t such enthusiasm because never liked that’s conclusion in which Bender was robbed by Romanian customs, it was stepping away from satire and hero’s personality. That situation wasn’t possible itself. I don’t like it more by the last phrase in which a main hero wants to become what literally translates as a “housekeeper of apartment house”. It is a combination of two words in original language. These commies began to fuse words after coming to power. A sense in that the protagonist wants to become a Soviet worker, a thing which is outside of him again. This final on the Romanian border was created after authors got an indication from superiors to rewrite the conclusion because it perceived that Il’f and Petrov are sympathizing to the protagonist. I read years ago an original ending in which Bender marries. These people who approved a book didn’t like for this. I did reading of it now and there saves ideological right his ridding from the million and his want to become the housekeeper of apartment house. The writers wanted to write a third novel about Ostap Bender “A Cad”, which planned to be a half-serious and half-satire (though The Golden Calf is too much serious) and end up that Bender makes a total transformation into socialist but the duo became out of jokes and failure with elaboration of a plot and evolution in a lead personage’s personality didn’t let it to realize.