“... By merely rotating this handle any one is enabled to produce about three sonatas per hour. What difficulties our predecessors had in making music! They were able to compose only by bringing themselves to strokes of inspiration,—an extinct form of epilepsy. [...]”

I first read this book in October/November, but I’m re-reading it now for an exam. What’s interesting is how many things I’m noticing that completely escaped me the first time. For example, this passage reminded me of generative AI. Of course, Zamyatin could not have known about such technology, but some of the arguments made by supporters of generative AI sound remarkably similar.

What is particularly striking is that Zamyatin wrote the novel when avant-garde artistic movements in the newly established Soviet Union were at their peak. It was a period of experimentation and relative artistic freedom – relative, of course, given that the authorities censored this book for years. Yet he still managed to pick up some clues about the direction in which Soviet culture was moving: toward what Paperny later called “Culture Two” (as opposed to the preceding Culture One), a static and repressive cultural order associated with Stalin’s rule.

Under Culture Two, a “poet” could easily compose three “sonatas” in the blink of an eye (though they were actually novels, since novels were the most popular form in Culture Two as the most efficient medium for conveying the Party’s values to the general public). In fact, this system was characterized by standardization and reproducibility, rather than genuine creativity.

Of course, Zamyatin was likely drawing inspiration from scientific management as well, he even mentions Taylor more than once. But the idea of being “one” with others closely anticipates the collectivist ideal that would later come to be associated with Stalin’s regime during his years in power.

He couldn’t have known that Stalin would ultimately take power, but some artists are remarkably sensitive to the currents of their own time, which is part of what makes their work so compelling – and at times even “prophetic”.