Bakhtin and Russian literature between the centuries: Two incidents

The article reconstructs Bakhtin’s concept of carnival laughter with reference to two turn-of-the-century authors: L. Andreev and K. Sluchevsky. The latter was described as ‘a voice outside the chorus’ by Bakhtin in his Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity [ Avtor i geroy v esteticheskoy deyatelnosti ]. This formula is projected onto the protagonist of Sluchevsky’s cycle Mephistopheles . Andreev’s short story ‘Laughter’ [‘Smekh’] shows Christmas carolling turning into a tragedy of solitude: the hero cannot share in everybody’s joyful festivities. Laughter becomes a destructive force devoid of the usual rejuvenating purpose. The two writers demonstrate a crisis of carnival laughter: it loses its relatability because of the censoring of the traditional culture of laughter. The comparison between Sluchevsky’s and Andreev’s texts illustrates the transformation of the mediaeval concept of a carnival in the literature of decadence.