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an interview with Inna Kouper Inna
Kouper is one of the
first russian PhD students who's dissertation is devoted to
"Hypertext as a form of discourse representation". It will
be published part of it on her homepage
in about 6 months. In 1993 when Inna started to study
hypertext theoretically nobody even spoke about hypertext in
Russia. Now, there are hypertexts and hyperfiction in Russia
as well as cell phones and Dollars. Roberto
Simanowski talked with Inna about the Russian Internet,
Dmitry Galkovsky's masterpiece "Endless dead-end", about the
Russian Queneau, and why it is incorrect to take postmodern
theory as a basis for hypertext. dd:
What is the state of art of Hypertext in Russia? First of all, there are no
bears on the streets in Russia. I mean the development of
digital literature and Internet is quite similar in Russia
and in Europe or USA. May be with some peculiarity. The
general difference is that we advance by giant bounds. In
1990-1991 there were few enthusiasts of the Net, electronic
literature existed off-line in text files (illegal, of
course). In 1994-1995 there were still big problems with the
encoding of cyrillic alphabet, but in 1997-1998 RuNet
(Russian Internet) was a quite developed and wide-spread
system. All experiments with
multimedia we can ever imagine exist in RuNet. But the
evolution of hypertext and hypermedia is different in Russia
and I think it depends on historical and cultural patterns.
There is a strong tradition of hypertext in computer
science, russian hypertext systems are close to expert
systems or intellectual agents. Unfortunately, there are too
few theorists of hypertext and no theoretical publications
about literary hypertext. The latest materials I saw were in
very serious and high-qualitatiy literary journal but
articles were quite ordinary and just describing some
obvious things. There are no off-line
fiction and non-fiction hypertexts like those "published" by
Eastgate Systems although there are lots of encyclopedias,
manuals and guides on CDs. Most of the texts exist in the
Internet, but are not always of good quality. dd:
Can you think of some examples of authors and
texts? IK: RuNet is big and
diverse so here I can't give an exhaustive review of digital
literature. I'll give some distinctive examples. The most
famous attempt of a collaborative hypertext novel is the
novel in Russian ROMAN
(all links lead to sites in Russian). It is written with
latin letters ans awful to read, I should say. The initial
fragment was written by author of the idea, the subsequent
fragments could be written by anybody. The author of the
idea and the initial fragment is Roman Leybov. This fragment
is about a young man who loves a girl and can't tell her
about it. He writes a letter and when he came to put it into
mail-box he hears her speaking and kissing with another man.
But he sends the letter. Then when the girl took the letter
and read it she called him and said that she loved him too.
So, the fragment is of doubtful literary quality. More
interesting is D. Manin's article "How
to write ROMAN". So,
after a year of activity this novel became a system of more
than 1500 interconnected fragments with no plot but many
associations, flashbacks, side stories. One day something
happened with the main server and now ROMAN exists as a
monument for heroic efforts of collaborative
writing. Collaborative writing is
quite popular in RuNet, especially in poetry. There are
several well-known sites with such projects. For example,
Les
bouts-rimes,
Garden
of forking hokku,
RenguRu.
Depending on rules and type of poetry users may suggest
verses, stanzas of whatever. Eventually they create
interesting pieces of poetry with no author. A very wide-spread activity
I can't drop out is creating "electronic libraries" (in
special sense of the word). Volunteers worked on
digitalizing of fiction, scientific and special literature
(and unfortunately part of this work connected with modern
literature has been done illegally). Such "libraries" exist
without catalogues or search engines, there are only the
collected texts but I'm sure that the Gutenberg Project
would never collect so many texts. Modern (young) writers who
write in postmodern tradition sometimes put there works in
Internet themselves. These works live their own lives
different from printed analogues. They become hypertextual,
intra-, inter- and extra- connected. Another outstanding work
that deserved separate consideration is "Endless
dead-end" by Dmitry
Galkovsky. The author calls his work a philosophic novel
about the history of Russian culture in the 19th an d20th
century and the destiny of Russian mentality. This
"masterpiece" consists of 950 fragments with a very
complicated structure. I can't tell you what this novel is
about but the list of names discussed in it includes God,
Saint Augustin, Dante, Hamlet, Bakhtin, James Joyce, Hegel,
Hitler, many Russian and European kings, musicians,
philosophers, writers, poets and others. I think it is the
biggest russian hypertext and the earliest one (the author
began to write it in 1980-s). dd:
This work's contradictory title "Endless dead-end" seems to
be a good symbol for what hypertext is. Could you tell us
please a little more how Dmitry Galkovsky employs the
hypertextual structure of endless dead-ends to mirror the
destiny of the Russian mentality? IK: First of all, I
must say that I disagree with most of Galkovsky's ideas.
Somewhere he wrote that endless dead-end means Russian
nationality. But in some parts of the text I felt that the
endless dead-end is the author's ego. The text is too
emotional to be philosophical although it contains some
original ideas. The structure is really interesting, some
authors
consider it similar to Nabokov's "Pale Fire". It is
constructed as a multi-level system of comments to his
unwritten text and other texts. Comments create other
comments, etc. General ideas are concentrated on the
author's thoughts about himself, his father, Russian
philosophy, Russian language. Also he tries to understand
his favorite philosopher V. Rozanov. I'll give you one
fragment: In order to do this
Galkovsky uses different associative schemes and invites the
reader to fix associative fields in the flexible structure
of his comments. Reading this text I can't get rid of the
feeling that it was wrong to use the hypertext form. It
allows to leave the material unorganized and gives freedom
to the reader but it shows the author's inability to be
philosophically consequent. The author must respect the
reader and not throw him into the ocean of associations,
thoughts, insights or whatever. If I read your text it
doesn't mean that I have to solve a riddle without coming to
a solution. It is my personal opinion but when I "fought"
against M. Joyce's "Afternoon" the result (the pleasure I
took from the text) kept in balance with the efforts to read
it. In case of Galkovsky the efforts were too big and the
result was the feeling of protest. May be I just disagree
with his ideas and not with the form of
representation. Speaking about authors I
think the situation concerning Russion writers in the
Internet is the sdame as in other countries. Good authors
need to sell their works because it is their bread, so they
can't simply put texts into the Internet. But there are many
graphomaniacs who write always and everywhere and don't need
money for it. The Internet is paradise for them. That's why
there is a lot of low quality literature in the Internet and
slow diffusion of good literature. In this situation I think
the role of journals like this is invaluable. dd:
We try to find some criteria to evaluate and appreciate
digital literature. You are mentioning the low quality of
literature in the Internet. How do you evaluate digital
literature and specially hypertext? IK: I see at least
two criteria (unfortunately unreliable). First one has
nothing to do with real quality. It depends on how people
will buy the book and it cannot be applied to the Internet.
For publishers the bestseller is the highest quality book.
Maybe it is not too bad because buyers are always right.
Another criterion is about the real quality of the book. But
it is so subtle . . . Several editors in one literary
journal may have different opinions about one text. With
hypertext the situation is even worse. I think hypertext
literature is a kind of intellectual literature for a small
group (It seems to me that M. Bernstein spoke about that in
some of your previous interviews). So it can not be approved
by masses of people. As for me I prefer good, beautiful and
even subtle style like Nabokov's style, a plot and
characters well thought out, no disorderly linking, which
means that linking has its own meaning. Well I'm not sure
these criteria are calculable. Speaking about pictures and
animation in digital literature I think that a writer is not
a painter, creating multimedia text seems to be a new
profession. So maybe it is necessary to create digital text
like manuscript with scribes and miniaturists or to learn
more about creating images. For this moment I see only
experiments, sometimes very successful. dd:
Can you describe the typical Russian hypertext
reader? IK: Official
information about readers may be found on some servers. I
can judge only by my personal impressions about the typical
reader. As I've said before: when we are speaking about
readers of hypertext we speak about Internet readers. I
suppose that literary sites have a specific audience, mainly
about 25-45 years old males. Most of them I think are
interested in hypertext not as literature but as a new form
of representation. dd:
What is to say about the conditions for dealing with
hypertext in Russia? How many people have a computer, how
many access to the internet? How much is it to dial in? What
about universities and access to the Internet? IK: As far as I know
there are Internet connections in most universities in the
country. And it is free of charge for students. Also big
libraries give access to the Internet (some of them for
money). Speaking about people I think the situation is
different in Moscow and St.-Petersburg and other cities. In
Moscow many people have computers at home but not all of
them have access to the Internet. It costs approximately 1.5
dollars per hour and it is quite expensive (average salaries
vary between 50 and 300 dollars). In other cities it is
worse, so people cannot afford computers and Internet and
they even don't stop to think about it. But the situation is
changing and the provinces advance slowly but
steadily. dd:
Forerunners of hypertext may be found in print literature:
English examples include works by Laurence Sterne and James
Joyce; French examples in the work of Raymond Queneau and
Marc Saporta; Spanish examples include the work of Julio
Cortázar and Jorge Luis Borges; German examples
include the work of Georg Philipp Harsdörffer and Jean
Paul. Are there forerunners of hypertext in Russian
literature and to what extent may they be called
forerunners? IK: I don't think we
must speak about forerunners of hypertext in print. It is
the same as if we spoke about forerunners of printed book in
manuscript. Of course, manuscript books couldn't be printed
without changes and the press didn't necessarily demand
linear representation. I think we can speak about a
tendency of non-linearization. The most famous Russian (and
American) writer who sometimes is considered as a forerunner
is Vladimir Nabokov with his "Pale Fire". But don't you
think that his "Lolita" or "Bend Sinister" are hypertextual
too in a broad sense? The point is that now we can call
hypertextual and non-linear any writing because our optics
of perception (I use Iser's term) is NON-LINEAR. Russian
literature never was realistic in European (especially
French) tradition. Although in the 19th century it was
necessary to give a unified plot line, Gogol and Dostoevsky
used cut-ins with no apparent relation to the plot. The aim
of that was to give a deeper understanding in comparison or
juxtaposition, all in all their works mean very little
without non-linear reading although they are written and
printed with traditional techniques. Speaking about forerunners I
can give you one funny example. When I started my studies in
hypertext I've written some text about R. Queneau's "Cent
mille milliards de poémes" where I argued that it may
be taken as a print hypertext poem. Then I found a similar
work by the Russian poet N. Markevich written in 19th
century. Unfortunately, this work is not available in the
internet. Both of them, Queneau and Markevich wanted to
suggest a kind of game for readers who could write a poem.
Markevich's verses were banal, as he said "here is nothing
but metre, rhyme and passion". Something like (in free
translation): Queneau was more poetic I
think. He used this technique because he explored the
possibilities of poetic language. Markevich used it because
he wanted to show that classical poems are sometimes
ordinary and you may use a standard set of verses and
produce bearable poems. This "hypertext" poem showed the
triviality of poetastery and the impossibility of
multiplicity in real Poetry. And for the first time I
thought about the importance of our perception and the way
of thinking. In 18th - 19th century multiplicity couldn't be
an advantage. dd:
There are very distinct sorts of German digital literature
or digital art. We have to distinguish at the very least
between pure hypertexts, projects driven by interactivity
and collaborative authorship, and pieces focused on
multimediality, 'written' just by one author (maybe with a
little help of a friend who is a webdesigner). How would you
characterize Russian hypertext design? IK: I don't think
there are some special features of Russian hypertext design.
Maybe thjere is less experience and more enthusiasm - these
days more and more new sites and home-pages appear in the
Internet. dd:
In your contribution to the '99 Hypertext Conference you
claim that it is incorrect to take postmodern theory as a
basis for hypertext, as is done for example by George P.
Landow and many theorists following him. What is wrong with
this, and how should we think of hypertext? IK: It is a very
complicated question, in my dissertation I'm trying to
explicate this. First of all, I wouldn't say
that the theoretical works of G. Landow, J. D. Bolter, S.
Moulthrop and some others are completely wrong. In their
pioneering and comprehensive works the fundaments of a new
field were established. They legitimated (literary)
hypertext as a discipline and tried to include it into some
general critical trend. But the times of first steps and
experiments have passed and now it is time for concentrated
and deep analysis. We can't equal hypertext and postmodern
text because postmodernism means a way of thinking. The
basis is to discredit the discourse. Hypertext does not mean
discredit. If we speak about multiplicity, webs of
signifiers, lexias, all this we can apply to externally
linear texts. So non-linearity is not an external feature.
In hypertext external form was mixed with internal
content. Borges for example didn't
used any external technique except just writing and his
texts we call hypertextual. Why? He brought his and our
imagination in the text. No linking, no navigation, just
imagination and you have a very powerful non-linearity. In
my dissertation I'm trying to elaborate the concept of
non-linearity as a broad historical term. It will include
hypertext as well as postmodern texts. In any epoch the
linear and non-linear co-existed and it depends on
historical, social and cultural conditions why one of it
dominates. So linking is just one of
many ways of representation. Hypertext may be more linear
than any other text. I think we should restrict hypertext to
what it really is: electronic text with different kinds of
links or we must consider as hypertext any digital text
(even image) because any electronic text includes techniques
of manipulation (cut&paste, drug&drop, sending via
e-mail, convert into different formats, searching, etc.) and
it is something more (hyper) than text. May be Ted Nelson
wouldn't agree. I hope I managed to explain
somehow my position. It is very polemic question and I'm
sure in Hypertext'00 we'll discuss it again and
again. dd:
Your point of view is very interessting and, in deed, very
polemic. I totally aggree that hypertext does less
deconstruction on discourse than some ambitious postmodern
texts as far as the structure of hypertext does not
establish any strong meaning that could be deconstructed at
all. However, I am wondering whether one still has to
distinguish between two kinds of non-linearity:
non-linearity of associations (postmodern texts, and Borges'
hypertextuality of imagination) and non-linearity of
text-segements (hypertext). Maybe we can divide
non-linearity in terms of connotation from non-linearity in
terms of combination? IK: Yes, may be
you're right. Although somebody may contradict that
combinations cause connotations and vice versa. I think we
must certainly divide non-linearity of hypertext and
non-linearity of postmodernism in order not to mix hypertext
as a concept and postmodernism. And connotation /
combination is a helpful distinction. Hypertext work may be
postmodern as well. It uses the language in which we doubt
now, and reflects reality which is discredited. Even if we
don't like postmodernism as a trend of art, we still live in
discredited reality. So I disagree to mix the concepts. If
we speak in terms of connotation and combination, the first
kind of non-linearity is concerned more with content and the
later one with form. But one of the general problems for
contemporary literature is the disappearance of pure forms
and content. So we must be very careful. dd:
You showe an interesting reading of the term hypertext as
"something more than text". This makes hypertext equal to
hypermedia, that is something more than text as well. Do you
consider hypertext a good equipped umbrella-term for what
can be found in digital shape? Do we need terms like
cybertext, netliterature, digital literature, electronic
art? IK: It seems to me
that hypertext is quite appropriate for all that (except
electronic art) but people don't like using terms invented
by others. That's why they invent new terms. Maybe that's
not too bad. Sometimes it stimulates discussions. dd:
Thank you very much for this interview and good luck for
your research. |
