''Uhryab'' () is a short story by

Victor Pelevin Victor Olegovich Pelevin ( rus, Виктор Олегович Пелевин, p=ˈvʲiktər ɐˈlʲeɡəvʲɪtɕ pʲɪˈlʲevʲɪn; born 22 November 1962) is a Russian fiction writer. His novels include ''Omon Ra'' (1992), ''The Life of Insects' ...

, published in 1991.

Plot

The events of Pelevin's early period story take place in Soviet times (judging by the line "we've had so much incomprehensible stuff these seventy years" – in the second half of the 1980s). The hero of the story, a retired humanitarian named Maralov, who in order not to feel permanently retired, responds to readers' letters to journals, for example, to a schoolboy's question, "Why do I live?" The rest of the time he chats with a single student on general philosophical topics. And so, during another drunken conversation, he expresses the unexpected idea that God is the personified generalization of everything incomprehensible in an individual country. He exists objectively, and a certain religious

mysticism Mysticism is popularly known as becoming one with God or the Absolute (philosophy), Absolute, but may refer to any kind of Religious ecstasy, ecstasy or altered state of consciousness which is given a religious or Spirituality, spiritual meani ...

corresponds to him. The morning after the hangover it turns out that the idea is rooted in the soul of its inventor in the form of a strange word "uhryab", Russian for "ухряб". Uhryab is just a set of letters or sounds that accompany the hero. The hero begins to see the ubiquitous "uhryab" everywhere: in the sounds of chopping meat, in a hidden form in works of

classical literature Classics, also classical studies or Ancient Greek and Roman studies, is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, ''classics'' traditionally refers to the study of Ancient Greek and Roman literature and their original languages, ...

, as an

acrostic An acrostic is a poem or other word composition in which the ''first'' letter (or syllable, or word) of each new line (or paragraph, or other recurring feature in the text) spells out a word, message or the alphabet. The term comes from the Fre ...

slogan A slogan is a memorable motto or phrase used in a clan or a political, commercial, religious, or other context as a repetitive expression of an idea or purpose, with the goal of persuading members of the public or a more defined target group ...

s (), in the sequence of pictures on the wall. Gradually the new local deity becomes the manic passion of the hero, he sees himself sandwiched between two "uhryab" as in the press, and he does not yet agree to recognize himself as one, although this is not fair, since the "uhryab" and inside. The mania leads to the hero's voluntary death – outside the city in a snow-covered pit, which appears to him to be "an uhryab in its original form," which is the natural end of the story, the last, ninth chapter of which consists of one sentence: "They found him two days later – skiers, by a red sock sticking out of the snow." In the story, the main character at a certain point realizes the

meaninglessness Meaning most commonly refers to: * Meaning (linguistics), meaning which is communicated through the use of language * Meaning (non-linguistic), a general term of art to capture senses of the word "meaning", independent from its linguistic uses * M ...

and

emptiness Emptiness as a human condition is a sense of generalized boredom, social alienation, nihilism, and apathy. Feelings of emptiness often accompany dysthymia, depression (mood), depression, loneliness, anhedonia, wiktionary:despair, despair, or o ...

of the world around him. And he must come to terms with it. But to come to terms not because he is a victim of the Soviet system, but because for Pelevin and his hero, who accepts the world in all its manifestations, there is no other way out. There is no way out in the usual sense, because in any case Pelevin's hero will only find himself in a different name of the huge world, the essence of it will not change. Uhryab is a mind-blowing Deity (or its symbol), the personification of everything incomprehensible. Uhryab in its pure form is "a long snowy hole with two rather tall, half the height of a red deer, icy ridges on the edges. Such an uhryab resembles both a grave and a woman's womb, which makes death a return to the earthly womb. The

neologism In linguistics, a neologism (; also known as a coinage) is any newly formed word, term, or phrase that has achieved popular or institutional recognition and is becoming accepted into mainstream language. Most definitively, a word can be considered ...

"uhryab" represents in the

Freudian Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in t ...

sense, i.e., the combination of different images, concepts, words or syllables into one whole. In the story, Pelevin uses the technique of wordplay: combining parts of adjacent words to form a new meaning. This is how the "uhryab" appears. Some literary critics find in the story a reference to the work of

Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Rus ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Uhryb 1991 short stories Short stories by Victor Pelevin Existentialist short stories