GROSSMAN: EVERYTHING FLOWS: a workshop that employs the disabled

[Robert Chandler]

Dear Christine,

Thanks very much - this is very helpful.  I am sure you are right.

Best Wishes,

Robert


> Dear Robert: It would appear that Grossman is describing what psychiatrists
> have 
> termed an epidemic of hysteria. I would not assume that the first description
> is 
> necessarily describing an epileptic fit. The connection to war suggests that
> all of 
> these individuals had experienced trauma of one type or other, and that the
> manifestation of seizure/paralysis and its imitation in the workshop is akin
> to 
> what sometimes occurs in confined spaces such as factories, schools, prisons.
> In the Russian situation in the late imperial period, epidemics of hysteria
> were 
> most commonly associated with beliefs in "porcha" and witchcraft and often
> manifested themselves at rural weddings. In a more urban environment into
> the 1920s there were some reports of epidemics of hysteria associated
> with witchcraft and demonic possession, but also reports of such epidemics
> in factories and boarding schools (in the latter case, only for the pre-
> revolutionary period). In most of these cases women predominated over
> men as victims of the hysteria. In the case of epidemics of hysteria at
> weddings, men feared that they would become impotent as a result of
> the porcha. Emasculation of men was also a major fear in World War I.
> In the pre-revolutionary and early Soviet period, one of the places where
> the disabled would have sought help was at monastic shrines (saints'
> reliquaries), where they would have witnessed "pripadki" of a variety
> of sorts. It would appear then that Grossman is bringing together a
> number of factors here that would be understandable to a Russian
> audience. In the Russian sources, a description of an epileptic fit
> invariably mentions foaming at the mouth.
> 
> I have written about the phenomenon as it connects to "porcha" in my
> Possessed: Women, Witches, and Demons in Imperial Russia (Northern
> Illinois University, 2001). For a discussion of Russian psychiatry and
> its concern with mass epidemics of hysteria and crowd psychology
> (including religious hysteria, revolutionary activities), see Daniel Beer,
> Renovating Russia: The Human Sciences and the Fate of LIberal
> Modernity, 1880-1930 (Cornell University Press, 2008).
> 
> Best wishes, 
> Christine Worobec
> 
> Christine Worobec
> Board of Trustees Professor and
> Distinguished Research Professor
> Department of History
> Northern Illinois University
> DeKalb, IL 60115 
> worobec at niu.edu/worobec at comcast.net
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Robert Chandler" <kcf19 at DIAL.PIPEX.COM>
> To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
> Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2009 12:53:02 AM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central
> Subject: [SEELANGS] GROSSMAN: EVERYTHING FLOWS: a workshop that employs the
> disabled 
> 
> Dear all, 
> 
> The hero of this work, set in the mid –1950s, gets himself taken on as a
> metal worker in a small workshop that employed the disabled.
> 
> Среди рабочих были инвалиды Отечественной войны; были покалеченные на
> производстве либо на транспорте, имелись три старика, покалеченных еще в
> войну 1914 года. [...]
> Инвалиды в артели были по большей части люди веселые, склонные
> юмористически относиться к жизни; но иногда с кем-нибудь из них
> приключался припадок, и к грохоту молотков, визгу напильников примешивался
> крик припадочного, начинавшего биться на полу.
> У седоусого лудильщика Пташковского, военнопленного 1914 года (говорили,
> что он австриец, но выдает себя за поляка), вдруг цепенели руки, и он
> застывал на своем табуретике с поднятым молотком, лицо его становилось
> неподвижным, надменным. Надо было его тряхнуть за плечо, чтобы вывести из
> оцепенения. А однажды припадок, случившийся с одним инвалидом, заразил сразу
> многих, и в разных концах мастерской стали биться на полу, кричать молодые и
> старые люди. 
> 
> “The other workers included injured veterans from the Great Patriotic War,
> as well as men who had been crippled in accidents in factories or on the
> roads and railways; there were even three old men who had been crippled as
> long ago as the First World War. [...]
> The other workers were, for the main part, good-humoured people who
> preferred to look on the bright side of things. Now and again, however, one
> of them would have a fit, and his screams as he began to writhe on the floor
> would mingle with the banging of hammers and the squeal of files.
> 
> Ptashkovsky, a tinsmith with a grey moustache, had been taken prisoner by
> the Russians during the First World War (people said he was Austrian, just
> pretending to be a Pole). Suddenly his arms would go completely numb and he
> would freeze there on his little stool, his hammer raised in the hair, his
> face immobile and haughty. Someone would have to shake him by the shoulder
> to bring him out of this paralysis. There was one occasion when one man had
> a fit and this set off a chain reaction; in different corners of the
> workshop young and old alike were writhing on the floor and screaming.”
> 
> Does anyone understand just what is going on here? It seems like the first
> person has an epileptic fit, but epileptic fits are not, as far as I know,
> communicable in this way.
> 
> Best Wishes, 
> 
> Robert 
> 
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