Aleksandr Grin’s Primate Visions: The Short Story ‘Obez´iana’ (‘The Ape’)

The article offers the first close reading of Aleksandr Grin’s short story ‘Obezʹiana’ (‘The Ape’, originally published in 1924 as ‘Obezʹiana sapun’). The analysis connects Grin’s story with Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ (1841) and examines some of the key aspects of the narrative through the lens of Darwin-inspired debates on the theatre as a site of transgressions on the human/animal boundary. The story is interpreted as an ironic critique of an ontology of the human that seeks, unsuccessfully, to keep the ‘beastly’ roots of human nature at bay. Ultimately, the article emphasizes Grin’s exposure of the tragic ethical consequences of this ontological stance.