Where do the
characters in Solaris get their names? This brief study suggests that Stanislaw
Lem, a cultured Middle European intellectual, is using them, playfully, to
point back to specific historical individuals, and, in this way, to the nature
and origins of the characteristic concerns of all his work.
Solaris follows the convention, found in other Soviet
science fiction, of a world apparently, though not explicitly, unified on the
model of the Soviet Union (and, in the film, speaking Russian). Black and Asian
faces are seen, and names are often not Russian, as here. Apart from anything else,
this ‘internationalism’ doubtless flattered Soviet authority on whom these
artists depended.
There is more to these
names. With one exception, each of Stanislav Lem’s characters appears to allude
to a specific historical individual. Learning something of these namesakes
supplies the means of guessing at the author’s thoughts about his own
creations, or his novel more generally. ‘Guessing’, because the intention is
often clearly playful or ironic. The final effect of these shared names is that
the characters in Solaris are themselves something almost like
‘Visitors’ - fantastical re-imaginings from the recorded fragments of long-dead
actual personalities.
