Collaborations

By Patricia Blake

ARARAT by D.M. Thomas Viking; 191 pages; $13.50

All art is a collaboration, a translation if you like . . . plagiarism is a different matter," declares a character in Ararat. D.M. Thomas has set out to prove that dictum. In The White Hotel, his collaborative efforts were a critical and popular success. That novel began as an ingenious imitation of a case history by Freud, then moved to an account of the Nazi massacre of Jews at Babi Yar, originally written by a Russian novelist, Anatoli Kuznetsov. But what was an effective device in The White Hotel has become a conceit in Ararat. The density of literary allusion in Thomas' latest novel has rendered it virtually unintelligible.

For the centerpiece of his novel, Thomas has translated an unfinished story by Pushkin and supplied two alternative endings. Signs of Thomas' other collaborations are on virtually every page: snatches of Russian poetry; names of obscure Armenian writers; places that evoke poems by Pushkin.

The construction of the novel has not helped matters. Ararat is built on the ancient practice of poetic improvisation. Its key character, Rozanov, a Soviet poet and a scoundrel, has mastered the art of making up a story or a poem when presented with a subject by someone in his audience. The theme of Rozanov's current improvisation is--improvisations. He proceeds to spin out tales about other poets who then go on to invent tales of their own. The effect resembles a garishly colored Russian matryoshka: wooden dolls within wooden dolls.

There is scarcely a discernible connection between the improvisers' tales. Usually after a bout of vicious lovemaking, each bard tells a snippet of a story. A Russian seduces a teen-age Polish gymnast on an ocean liner; an Armenian American on a pilgrimage to Soviet Armenia makes furious love with her guide. The lengthiest improvisation is narrated by the poet Surkov, who fancies he is Pushkin incarnate. After a jealous scene with Pushkin's wife, he retells the master's unfinished tale, Egyptian Nights, followed by a parodic string of bromides: "Her black eyes flashed . . . Her red lips were inviting . . . Her bosom swelled over the decolletage."

Towering over Ararat is the mountain of the same name, a symbol of unattainable purity. The characters frequently invoke it, or plan visits to Soviet Armenia so they may glimpse it in the mists. The shadow it casts upon the characters is the memory of the Turkish massacre of Armenians in 1915. Indeed, one important figure is Everyman's executioner, who improvises a story of how he participated in this and other mass murders.

As the invocation of Mount Ararat is meant to raise the eyes heavenward, Thomas' repeated mention of Russia's greatest poets from Pushkin to Pasternak is obviously intended to heighten the moral tone of this melodrama of murderers, scoundrels and sadistic sex. As Thomas well knows, poets have historically served as a symbol of redemption in Russia. But merely dropping their names will not redeem Ararat for readers who expected more from the author of The White Hotel. --By Patricia Blake This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.