A new underground comic book could be created based on this Vladimir Sorokin novel: BRO - Ice from the primordial light awakened his dormant heart. And now he seeks other blonde, blue-eyed brothers and sisters chosen by the light to have their hearts likewise awakened
Bro is the true Volume #1 of the author's Ice Trilogy. The title Bro is taken from the name of the novel’s protagonist following his awakening by the Primordial Light. Frequently, as is the case here, Bro is listed as Volume #2 since Vladimir Sorokin wrote this novel after Ice. However, it should be pointed out, Bro precedes Ice chronologically and Bro also provides the needed context for Ice. Therefore Bro most definitely should be read before Ice.
Bro is simply amazing - what starts off in the first few chapters as a work in the tradition of great Russian nineteenth century literature shifts briefly to Soviet-era Socialist Realist scientific exploration before shifting again, this time to the bulk of the novel: a combination new age Gnostic sacred text, science fiction thriller and the adventures of a comic book superhero. Whoa, baby - what a gripping read!
It all starts with Alexander Snegirev relating the facts of his early life: he was born on June 30, 1908 with a clasp of thunder (a critically important date as he discovers at age twenty), his stern, wealthy Russian businessman father and loving mother raised him along with his older brothers and sisters; how, at age ten, his childhood ended with an act of violence during the Russian Revolution that left him roaming from city to city for four years. He moves in with his poverty-stricken old aunt, attends school and finally astronomy lectures at university where he is given the opportunity to join a scientific expedition to unearth and scrutinize pieces of one of the largest meteors ever to reach our planet, the Tungus Meteorite that exploded in Siberia on the exact date of his birth.
Reflecting back on his past life, Alexander notes there was one thing that both frightened and attracted him in childhood, a recurring dream where he is at the base of an enormous mountain. In the dream his body begins to crumble and fall apart and then abruptly “my spine broke and I collapsed into wet pieces and fell backward. That's when I saw the summit. It shone WITH LIGHT. The light was so bright that I disappeared in it. This felt so awfully good that I woke up." Foreshadowing with a vengeance.
Out in Siberia on expedition, Alexander suddenly dreams his recurrent dream, only with a difference: he sees the Light departing and disappearing forever; he cries out to the Mountain not to die. Just at that moment he senses a shift in his heart, that something else lives in his heart connecting him to the Mountain. Thereafter Alexander experiences great joy and feels beckoned forward by an undefined presence.
Then one morning our protagonist sits before a fire and can see his carefree childhood, his tormented life resulting from loss of family and orphanhood, his teenage student years all appear before him as if gathered under glass - they harden and detach themselves from him forever, all instantly becoming the past. Oh, yes, a frequently reported feature of the mystical experience - one's prior conventional identity and concerns appear as colossal illusion to be blown away as if a mere soap bubble.
Not long thereafter Alexander runs away from all the others and their camp. Once alone in the forest he tastes the bliss of freedom: “The absolute silence of the world amazed me. The earthly world froze in front of me in the greatest calm. And for the first time in my life I felt distinctly the vile vulgarity of this world.”
Alexander presses on until he reaches an area covered with ice and is seized by ecstasy. He comes upon a particular mass of ice and moves out on the ice and falls, slamming his chest against the ice. “Then my heart began to resound from the blow of the Ice. And I immediately felt the entire MASS of the Ice. It was enormous. And the whole thing was vibrating, resonating in time with my heart. For me alone. My heart, which had been sleeping for all these twenty years inside my rib cage, awoke. It didn’t beat harder, but sort of jolted - at first it was painful, then it was sweet. And then quivering, it spoke. “Bro-bro-bro . . . Bro-bro-bro. Bro-bro-bro . . . I understood. This was my real name.”
The Ice beneath him vibrates. He feels the Ice and himself hanging alone in the universe. His awakened heart begins to listen attentively to the Music of Eternal Harmony. Bro is told many things about the universe and his place within it, including: in the beginning there was only Primordial Light; The Light consists of 23,000 Light-bearing rays and he, Bro, is one of them; the Light’s mistake was creating this flawed, unstable, disharmonious Earth, leading to the greatest mistake - human beings; this huge piece of Heavenly Ice was sent to open the hearts of 23,000 Brothers and Sisters held hostage by the Earth to help them become 23,000 rays of Primordial Light once again; You, Bro, must find your Brothers and Sisters and come together in a great Circle.
Now that’s extreme! You can see why I said a comic book based on the novel would be fringe or underground. I wonder how many mainstream readers would swallow the place humans are assigned by the novel’s Primordial Light.
We can speculate as to why Vladimir Sorokin wrote this novel. Does he find our modern word disgusting? Is he writing in the same spirit when his countryman Alexander Solzhenitsyn stated: “The human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits, exemplified by the revolting invasion of commercialism, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music.”
Or, is the author targeting religion? Although there’s next to nothing included about Christianity or any other religion, Bro does begin with two quotes, one from the Bible and this from Gregory Palamas, a great Saint within the Eastern Orthodox Church: “And so, brethren, let us lay aside works of darkness and turn to works of the light.”
Or many other possibilities. Such a bizarre, quizzical work but a work of tremendous imagination and philosophical depth. I can see why Vladimir Sorokin has many fans among young readers. I mean, having his protagonist call “regular” humans meat machines and seeing World War II as a battle between the Land of Order and the Land of Ice is, if nothing else, unique - and that's understatement.
Vladimir Sorokin, Russian author born 1955
"Who sent you?"
I answered, "The Primordial Light. Which exists in you, in me, and in her. The Light. It lives in your heart, it wants to awaken. You have been asleep all your life and lived like everyone else. We have come to awaken your heart. it will wake up and speak in the language of the Light. And you will become happy. And you will realize who you are and why you came into this world." - Vladimir Sorokin, Bro
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