f J.K. Rowling had been a bearded 19th century Russian anarchist and
her novel had been titled Pyotr Pottanovich Shervchovskii instead
of Harry Potter, academics would be praising it to the rooftops as
the greatest novel since Anna Karenina.
With vicious wars breaking out across the planet, economic catastrophe just around the corner, and WWII-grade antisemitism boiling from our decaying universities into the streets, who could blame young people for wanting to disappear into a world where the only danger is a mad authoritarian wizard who wants to murder everybody?
Of course, it would have to be much longer than the mere 4,095 pages in the book. It would also need at least 8,000 characters with names that sound indistinguishable. There would have to be a guy named Harry Michaelovitch, one named Michael Harryovitch, and three Pottarovitchs, each of whom is addressed by five different names and nicknames at different times, including Harry, Mike, Michaelovitch, Potter Michaelovitch, and Bruce. And each one gets a chance to talk about their soul for at least a hundred pages.
AMOS: Merlinski's beard! You must be Pyotr Pottarovich Harrychnenko! PYOTR: Nyet, comrade! It is I, Pyotr Pottanovich Shervchovskii! PYOTR: Is now, He Who Is Not Naming is making lobotomy scar hurt. But suffering is good for soul.
Getting dazzled by bright lights is good for soul
There are many other similarities. There's snow everywhere. As in Crime and Punishment, Hermione gets more and more tense and dysphoric as the story progresses. In the scenes where they're wandering through the vast untamed wilderness of the United Kingdom, I found myself thinking: Somebody please snog that girl before she jumps off a cliff.
The villain of the HP story, Voldemort, whose name means flight of death, probably because his life is one long plane crash, tries to kill someone he sees as a threat to his immortality. That one act sets in motion a complex series of events that through simple cause and effect destroys his chance to get the one thing he wants most.
Russian novels reflect this same idea. Someone starts out happy and then does something unethical that poisons the rest of his life and harms everyone he comes in contact with. And everybody gets what they really want: to be utterly and inconsolably miserable.
It is a repeated theme: committing a sin will fatally harm you, not because some deity punishes you but because it is a sin, meaning it goes against human nature and harms your soul, poisoning everything you do from then on. It's as true for individuals as for whole nations. That's something that people forget again and again.
My theory is that there's some undiscovered endemic virus that attacks people's brains and makes them do this. Look at how the entire planet was driven insane after Covid. (Granted, for some countries, like America, it's a short trip.)
So here's some alternative dialogue for the Malfoy Manor scene in the style of a Russian novel.
DOBČEK: Pyotr Pottanovich, vy Betelgeuse is lying on top of you? PYOTR: Is not Betelgeuse, is Bellatrushka. Is torturing me for information. Come back in about an hour or so. BELLATRUSHKA: What did you take from my vault, dahlink? PYOTR: I will never talk. If I tell you, you might stop torturing me. Being tortured is good for the soul.
At that moment a dark thought entered Pyotr Pottanovich's mind. If suffering is good for soul, he thought, then should we not seek suffering? And if so, when we achieve it are we not then getting what we want, which means we are not really suffering at all, but just enjoying being miserable? Perhaps, he thought, we are like the Buddhists, who teach that life itself is suffering and seek enlightenment by purging themselves of all desires, including the desire to become enlightened itself. This, he concluded, was an impossible task.
Or, perhaps, thought Pyotr Pottanovich, the problem was that Bellatrushka was just not doing it right. Whatever she was doing, it hardly hurt at all. Pyotr Pottanovich thought he could see in Bellatrushka's eyes that she sensed his misgivings about the whole thing.
As if reading his mind, Bellatrushka, who had always prided herself in her torturing skills, fell into such a deep depression that she stabbed hardly anyone for the rest of the day.
Here's another scene.
PYOTR: Even though we've got a fight ahead of us, we have one thing Voldemort doesn't have. HERMTASHA: What's that, then? PYOTR: We're totally outnumbered. We have a complete lack of tactical knowledge, and we're just kids. Also, our enemy is fighting to achieve immortality, while we have no clear objective at all. RON: That's four things. Technically minus-four things. What we really need is a couple of those H-bombs you told me about. PYOTR: Getting nuked is good for the soul.
Once again Pyotr Harryovitch felt a twinge of doubt. How could it be that such a thing could truly be good for one's soul? And what is a soul, anyway, and why are we so obsessed with them? Would it not be better to move to a farm far away from Moscow, become a peasant, and raise cows? Cows are nice . . . .
But Hermtasha interrupted him.
HERMTASHA: Don't you two read? It says right here in the SANDIA Annual Report on Nuclear Weapons Security Assessment, volume XXVII, that muggle technology doesn't work here. Why do you think we can't get Tik Tok?
Pyotr Pottanovich shuddered. The last time Hermtasha used those words she was only eleven, but she slammed her book on the library table so hard it obliterated an innocent little kid who had been sitting there. That kid disappeared from the movie entirely. What happened, Pyotr Harryovitch wondered, to that poor kid's soul?
PYOTR: What should we do, then? Invade a neighboring country, steal their land, and make them as miserable as us? That would be crazy. Let's do it! RON: Good plan! I'm getting depressed already! PYOTR: Being depressed is— HERMTASHA: Don't say it. . . .
nov 14 2023, 6:04 am. revised nov 21, 2023, 4:25 am.
Category: Articles not good enough for the front page
