The New Man and Religion. V. Mayakovsky’s Mystery-Bouffe and A. Lunacharsky’s Ivan in Paradise

Abstract

Starting from a discussion about the different philosophical, political and literary conceptions regarding the notions of a new man, concept that had a particular development in the russian literature and in the slogans and political ideals of the Russian Revolution, the present article aims to discuss the way in which the aforementioned concept is forged and given shape in two literary texts from the beginning of the revolution. In order to do so, we will analyze V. Mayakovsky’s Mystery-Bouffe and A. Lunacharsky’s Ivan in Paradise. Although both texts resort to religion to build by contrast a new secular ideal of man, their poetics and literary techniques produce not only very different models of the new man, but models that reveal the internal tensions among the revolutionary agents in respect of the path they wished for the revolution.