10 - Irony and Power

Summary

Irony refers to a use of language in which the actual import of words is different from their literal meaning, or in which a work carries multiple messages. The culture of reading and viewing on the eve of the Revolution and in the 1920s incorporated reading for multiple meanings due to the traditional practice of reading aloud in groups. Listeners who commented, questioned, and discussed among themselves automatically gave works layers of meaning. When the Bolsheviks shocked this universe with an onslaught of ideological works, readers sought and found irony. For example, from the outset, it was clear that the Bolsheviks espoused with great seriousness the “science” of “scientific socialism” and the routinely heroic “Soviet man.” Each of these received masterful ironic treatment by Ilf and Petrov, Zoshchenko, Bulgakov, and others. Works for children, too, took on layers of ironic interpretation. Not even music escaped. Shostakovich wrote his “film opera” of Marshak’s poem Silly Little Mouse in part as an ironic retort to Pravda’s earlier criticism of his work. Skill with irony gave creators and audiences channels of communication and outlets in parallel to those officially sanctioned; in short, a supply of fresh air to counter creative suffocation.