The shining path: the theory of comical by Victor Ardov and redefinition of the limits of the socialist realism

The contradiction between the representative and ideological tasks of the socialist realism was principally mediated with the rigid structure of the narrative and of the idealizing topic, going back to the models of the exercising of central political power in the classicist drama. But in the texts designed for everyday or comic perception a more complex technique was introduced, in which the basic contradiction between feeling and duty appeared as contradiction between narration and symbolic function of a mirror. We find a good example of such technique in the literary works and literary theory of Viktor Ardov. Ardov insisted on educational function of the comedy and the circus, but his key provision on necessary ideologization of all old circus scenes is not confirmed by enough examples or commentaries and so remains obscure. The mise en scene with real mirror and imaginable mirror, not being conceptualized theoretically, became part of his practice as canonical representer of the socialist realism: the script of The Shining Path and the later comic scene The Deaf-and-Dumb are best samples of the practical realization of this principle, not specially explained, but basic for his theoretical understandings. Comparison of the script not only with explicate subtext, the plot of the tale by Charles Perrault Cinderella, but also with the theoretical position of Charles Perrault in the history of French classicism, demands us to take into account Jacques Lacan's concept of the “mirror stage” of common psychics and the achievements of the art iconology interpretation of the framing space. This way of argumentation allows us to clarify the specificity of the “mimetic mirror” or “mime as mirror” in the classicism and the socialist realism as a definite break of the narrative, which, at the same time, only allows the action to acquire real credibility and persuasiveness. Thus, the list of devices of plausibility in classicist and socialist realist literature and dramaturgy should be added with this originally circus device. We prove that the canonical form of the socialist realist design of the bundle narrative-emotion-believability completely corresponds to the Lacanian bundle real-symbolic-imaginary. So the socialist realism canon coudn't be reduced to the achievements of the triumphant propaganda of the Stalin era, but also continues in the later Soviet literature due to the genre diffusiveness of the Soviet comical.