We
by Yevgeny Zamyatin
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Book Summary Information
Author: Yevgeny ZamyatinTranslator: Clarence Brown
Introduction: Clarence Brown
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1993-08-01
ISBN: 0140185852
Number of pages: 221
Publisher: Penguin Twentieth Century Classics
Book Reviews of We
Book Review: "We" is "1984"-lite (another reader's thoughts)
Summary: 5 Stars
Much has been said about "We" - after all, it's been around since the early 1920s.
While it is an established literary fact that Orwell's "1984" was inspired by Zamyatin's "We," I'd like to "caution" the reader who has already read "1984:" "We" is a "1984"-lite. If you are jonesing for an other dose of Orwellian Dystopian Goth, you won't find it in Z's "We." Zamyatin was fortunate enough to write before the Stalinist purges of the Soviet 30s - and, as a result, he had been spared the real Big Brother extremism that Orwell had witnessed USSR go through. Therefore, "We" is less dystopic in its effect.
It is also a bit less philosophical than the "1984." It does, however, make a couple of intriguing "mathematical" contributions. Whereas "1984" is infamous for its "2+2=5" equation, "We" offers a psychologically astute examination of love through the following algebraic function: L = f(D), where L stands for Love and D for death. An indeed, if Love is a process of disidentification from oneself, in parallel with the growing identification with the "we" of the relationship, then it could be certainly posited that the birth of Love is accompanied by a dissolution of Self (which, in psychological terms, can be equated with a kind of phenomenological Death).
Is this "L = f (D)" issue Zamayatin's criticism of Collectivism, Love or, perhaps, Buddhism (after all, Buddhism with its "Oneness" too could be viewed as a dissolution of Self; note Z. mentions Buddha at least a dozen times)? Who knows, but I certainly found this deconstruction of love psychologically intriguing.
A couple of side notes: "OneState" - I think - is a very fitting translation of Edinnoye Gosudarstvo; even if not exactly correct, even if, perhaps, slightly connotationally liberal, the meme of "OneState" goes right along with the collectivist one-state-of-mind idea that pervades Z's dystopian society.
Not being a Zamyatin buff, I am not sure if anything has been written about the apparent racism of Z's protagonist who seems to have an aversion to his poet-friend's African lips (the poet's name in the book is alpha-numeric, as everyone's, and starts with R). Zamyatin references in the book the great Russian poet, Pushkin, who was half-African and I wondered if R is Pushkin, a rebel-poet, and I was expecting him to die in a duel (with D-503, since Pushkin died in a duel, and there seemed to be clearly a romantic tension b/w D-503 and R, as the two were part of the triangle with I-330). But it didn't play out that way - although D-503 did wrestle I-330 out of R's arms at one of the most climactic moments of the book. Once again, not being a "We" buff, I was left wondering if the letter part of the alpha-numeric names had any connotational loading (with R, by way of poet/Pushkin association, begging for the association with romanticism, in contrast with D's own "r" of rationalism).
And as a final side note about the imbedded racism of "We," allow me to note Zamyatin's first name: Evgeni - which, of course, stems from eugenics, "good genes." If we were to assume that D-503, the protagonist, is a psychological corrolary of Zamayatin himself, then D-503's struggle with his atavistically hairy hands, with his own "drop of forrest blood" might be of additional interest in terms of understanding the psychology of the author.
In sum, I find the book to be, indeed, a literary/cultural treasure, but not necessarily better than its Orwellian echo. It's a little thinner on character development (protagonists are less dimensional); a bit more chaotic in terms of the plot-line (D-503's records are almost too graphomaniacally flighty to be the primary vehicle for the plot-line, in contrast with Winston's "diary" that is never more than a rib cage to the backbone of the story).
In the tradition of evaluating "We" in light of "1984," I am leaning towards the following conclusion: sometimes the copy is better than the original.
Pavel Somov, Ph.D.
Author of "Eating the Moment: 141 Mindful Practices to Overcome Overeating One Meal at a Time" (New Harbinger, 2008)
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