| 词条 | Russian literature |
| 释义 | Russian literature Introduction the body of written works produced in the Russian language, beginning with the Christianization of Kievan Rus in the late 10th century. The unusual shape of Russian literary history has been the source of numerous controversies. Three major and sudden breaks divide it into four periods—pre-Petrine (or Old Russian), Imperial, post-Revolutionary, and post-Soviet. The reforms of Peter I (the Great; reigned 1682–1725), who rapidly Westernized the country, created so sharp a divide with the past that it was common in the 19th century to maintain that Russian literature had begun only a century before. The 19th century's most influential critic, Vissarion Belinsky, even proposed the exact year (1739) in which Russian literature began, thus denying the status of literature to all pre-Petrine works. The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Bolshevik coup later in the same year created another major divide, eventually turning “official” Russian literature into political propaganda for the communist state. Finally, Mikhail Gorbachev's ascent to power in 1985 and the collapse of the U.S.S.R. in 1991 marked another dramatic break. What is important in this pattern is that the breaks were sudden rather than gradual and that they were the product of political forces external to literary history itself. The most celebrated period of Russian literature was the 19th century, which produced, in a remarkably short period, some of the indisputable masterworks of world literature. It has often been noted that the overwhelming majority of Russian works of world significance were produced within the lifetime of one person, Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910). Indeed, many of them were written within two decades, the 1860s and 1870s, a period that perhaps never has been surpassed in any culture for sheer concentrated literary brilliance. Russian literature, especially of the Imperial and post-Revolutionary periods, has as its defining characteristics an intense concern with philosophical problems, a constant self-consciousness about its relation to the cultures of the West, and a strong tendency toward formal innovation and defiance of received generic norms. The combination of formal radicalism and preoccupation with abstract philosophical issues creates the recognizable aura of Russian classics. Old Russian literature (10th–17th centuries) The conventional term “Old Russian literature” is anachronistic for several reasons. The authors of works written during this time obviously did not think of themselves as “old Russians” or as predecessors of Tolstoy. Moreover, the term, which represents the perspective of modern scholars seeking to trace the origin of later Russian works, obscures the fact that the East Slavic peoples (of the lands then called Rus) are the ancestors of the Ukrainian and Belarusian as well as of the Russian people of today. Works of the oldest (Kievan) period also led to modern Ukrainian and Belarusian literature. Third, the literary language established in Kievan Rus was Church Slavonic (Old Church Slavonic language), which, despite the gradual increase of local East Slavic variants, linked the culture to the wider community known as Slavia orthodoxa—that is, to the Eastern Orthodox South Slavs of the Balkans. In contrast to the present, this larger community took precedence over the “nation” in the modern sense of that term. Fourth, some have questioned whether these texts can properly be called literary, if by that term is meant works that are designed to serve a primarily aesthetic function, inasmuch as these writings were generally written to serve ecclesiastic or utilitarian purposes. The Kievan (Kiev) period The Kievan period (so called because Kiev was the seat of the grand princes) extends from the Christianization of Russia in 988 to the conquest of Russia by the Tatars (Mongols) in the 13th century. Russia received Christianity from Byzantium rather than from Rome, a fact of decisive importance for the development of Russian culture. Whereas Catholic Poland was closely linked to cultural developments in western Europe, Orthodox Russia (Russian Orthodox church) was isolated from the West for long periods and, at times, regarded its culture as dangerous. Conversion by Byzantium also meant that the language of the church could be the vernacular rather than, as in the West, Latin; this was another factor that worked against the absorption of Western culture. Russia was not the first Slavic culture to be converted to Christianity, and a standardized language, the Old Church Slavonic pioneered in the 9th century by Saints Cyril (or Constantine) and Methodius, was already available. Bulgaria, which had been Christianized a century earlier and had offered a home to the Cyrillo-Methodian community, became a conduit for the transmission of Greek culture, translated into Old Church Slavonic, to Russia, which in turn rapidly established its own scribal activities in copying and translating. Thus a significant literary activity of the Kievan period consisted of translating or adapting borrowed works. It is worth stressing that the enormous prestige accorded to translating has continued to be a distinctive characteristic of Russian culture. Even in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, major Russian writers devoted their energies to the translation of foreign works, which in some cases constituted their most significant contribution—a literary fact reflecting Russia's status as a self-conscious cultural borrower for much of its history. During the Kievan period the selection of translated foreign works circulating in Russia by and large reflected the interests of the church: almost all were from the Greek, and most were of ecclesiastical interest. Ostromirovo evangeliye (The Ostromir Gospel) of 1056–57 is the oldest dated Russian manuscript. Versions of the four Gospels, the Book of Revelation, guidebooks of monastic rules, homilies, hagiographic collections, and prayers reflect the religious interests of the clerical community. To be sure, translations of secular works also circulated, including Flavius Josephus' The Jewish War (which influenced Russian military tales), chronicles, and some tales. But, on the whole, translations offered a rather limited access to Greek culture aside from the ecclesiastical. A celebrated monument of Old Russian literature is Hilarion's (Hilarion Of Kiev) Slovo o zakone i blagodati (1037–50; “Sermon on Law and Grace”), an accomplished piece of rhetoric contrasting Old Testament law with New Testament grace. Other significant homiletic works were written by Clement of Smolensk, metropolitan of Russia from 1147 to 1154, and by St. Cyril of Turov (1130–82). The central genre of Old Russian literature was probably hagiography, and a number of interesting saints' lives date from the earliest period. Both a chronicle account and two lives of Boris and Gleb, the first Russian saints, have survived to the present day. The sanctity of these two men, who were killed by their brother Svyatopolk in a struggle for the throne, consists not in activity but in the pious passivity with which, in imitation of Christ, they accepted death. This ideal of passive acceptance of suffering was to exercise a long-lasting influence on Russian thought. The monk Nestor (c. 1056–after 1113), to whom a life of Boris and Gleb is ascribed, also wrote Zhitiye prepodobnogo ottsa nashego Feodosiya (“Life of Our Holy Father Theodosius”) (d. 1074). The Kievo-Pechersky paterik (The Paterik of the Kievan Caves Monastery), closely related to hagiography, collects stories from the lives of monks, along with other religious writings. A saint's life of quite a different sort, Zhitiye Aleksandra Nevskogo (“Life of Alexandr Nevsky”) (d. 1263), celebrates a pious warrior prince. The tradition of pilgrimage literature also begins in this period. Nestor was involved with compiling the Povest vremennykh let (“Tale of Bygone Years”; The Russian Primary Chronicle (Russian Primary Chronicle, The)), also called the Primary Chronicle of Kiev (compiled about 1113), which led to the writing of other chronicles elsewhere. From a literary point of view, the best work of Old Russian literature is the Slovo o polku Igoreve (The Song of Igor's Campaign (Igor's Campaign, The Song of)), a sort of epic poem (in rhythmic prose, actually) dealing with Prince Igor's raid against the Polovtsy (Kipchak), a people of the steppes, his capture, and his escape. Composed between 1185 and 1187, the Igor Tale, as it is generally known, was discovered in 1795 by Count Musin-Pushkin. The manuscript was destroyed in the Moscow fire of 1812; however, a copy made for Catherine II the Great survived. The poem's authenticity has often been challenged but is now generally accepted. Its theme is the disastrous fratricidal disunity of the Russian princes. From the 14th to the 17th century Moscow's ascendancy Beginning in the 1230s, the Tatars (Tatar) conquered most of the Russian lands, thus destroying the hegemony of Kiev and initiating a period in which political and cultural power was dispersed among numerous principalities. Eventually the grand princes of Moscow succeeded in defeating the Tatars (1480) and subduing the principalities. (The exception was the lands under the rule of the Lithuanian-Polish kingdom, and this division initiated the development of separate Ukrainian and Belarusian cultural traditions.) Once the Russian lands were united, Tsar Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible; reigned 1533–84) undertook a campaign against the remaining power of the old aristocracy (boyars). Reflecting these political facts, chronicles (chronicle) and saints' lives served the interests of particular local powers. A series of works in various genres, known as the Kulikovo cycle, celebrated the first (but by no means definitive) Russian victory over the Tatars in 1380 under the leadership of Grand Prince Dmitry Ivanovich (“Donskoy”). A rather weak imitation of the Igor Tale, the Zadonshchina (attributed to Sofony of Ryazan and composed no later than 1393) glorifies Dmitry Donskoy. The Second South Slavic Influence The Ottoman occupation of the Balkans at the end of the 14th century, and later the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, drove a number of prelates to Russia, thus initiating the “Second South Slavic Influence.” Schooled in an Eastern Christian theological movement, Hesychasm, these men brought with them a style of writing closely linked to their theological doctrines. Known as “word weaving,” this ornamental style played with phonic and semantic correspondences. It appears in the most notable hagiography of the period, Zhitiye svyatogo Sergiya Radonezhskogo (“Life of Saint Sergius of Radonezh”) by Epifany Premudry (Epiphanius the Wise; d. between 1418 and 1422). Possessors and Nonpossessors A theological and political controversy of great significance took place between St. Joseph of Volokolamsk (Joseph of Volokolamsk, Saint) (1439–1515) and his followers, known as the “Possessors,” or “Josephites,” and Nil Sorsky (Nil Sorsky, Saint) (1433–1508) and his followers, known as the “Nonpossessors.” Joseph justified the killing of heretics and the church's possession of lands (thus the name “Possessors”). These positions were disputed by Nil and his followers, especially Vassian Patrikeyev (d. before 1545) and Maximus the Greek (c. 1475–1556). The Nonpossessors called for greater tolerance and an inner, more spiritual religion, a view that left its mark on a tradition eventually embodied in Dostoyevsky's ideal monk, Father Zosima, in his novel The Brothers Karamazov. With the Josephites' triumph, the division between church and state dissolved; apostasy and treason became inseparably linked. Works reflecting Muscovite power Accompanying Moscow's rise were a series of writings on the theme of translatio imperii (“translation of empire”), which constructed genealogies and described the transmission of imperial and ecclesiastical regalia to Russia. Particularly important is the monk Philotheus' (Filofei's) epistle to Vasily III (written between 1514 and 1521), which proclaimed that, with the fall of Constantinople (the second Rome), Moscow became the third (and last) Rome. Along with the title tsar (caesar) and the claim that Orthodox Russia was the only remaining true Christian state, the doctrine of the Third Rome came to justify Russian imperial ambitions and to legitimize the idea that it was Russia's destiny to save and rule the world. Reflecting the consolidation of Muscovite power were a series of encyclopaedic works, including the enormous Velikiye Minei-Cheti (“Great Martyrologue”) of 1552, the Ulozheniye (“Code of Laws”), and other collections or codifications. Encyclopaedic writing also includes the famous Domostroy, or rules for household management, which later became a byword for oppressive narrow-mindedness. The 16th century also saw the first examples of polemical writing by laymen. Ivan Peresvetov (rather superfluously) urged Ivan the Terrible to inspire fear. From a literary point of view, the most remarkable work of this period is the correspondence between Andrey Mikhaylovich, Prince Kurbsky (Kurbsky, Andrey Mikhaylovich, Prince) (1528–83) and Ivan the Terrible (Ivan IV). In a series of letters Kurbsky, who escaped from Russia and entered the service of the Polish king, denounced Ivan's tyrannical rule and developed a theory justifying rebellion against unjust power. In a simple but polemically powerful style, which included citations from Cicero, he also denounced Russian cultural backwardness, thus earning a reputation as Russia's first “ Westernizer” (as well as first “dissident” and first “émigré” writer). In his vituperative replies, Ivan exhibits the psychology of a victim (self-pitying in accounts of his childhood) turned victimizer. Among the other noteworthy works of this period are some tales of entertainment, including Povest o Petre i Fevroni (mid-16th century; “Tale of Peter and Fevroniya”). In his Khozhdeniye za tri morya (“Journey Beyond Three Seas”) a merchant, Afanasy Nikitin, describes his travels to India and Persia during 1466–72. However, what is most striking about this period is what did not take place: Russia experienced no Renaissance and became quite isolated from the West. With nothing resembling Western secular literature, philosophy, or science, it remained a land remarkable for its lacks. The 17th century The 17th century began with a period of political chaos. The ruling Muscovite dynasty came to an end in 1598. Before Michael Romanov was at last proclaimed tsar in 1613, Russia was convulsed by struggles for power, peasant rebellions, and foreign invasions. This Time of Troubles (Troubles, Time of) became the topic of a number of historical or memoiristic works, including Avraamy Palitsyn's Istoriya v pamyat sushchim predydushchim godom (completed in 1620; “History to Be Remembered by Future Generations”). Western cultural influences gradually penetrated Russia in the 17th century. They entered the country through a number of channels, including the “German 【foreign】 quarter” in Moscow and through Ukraine, which was united with Russia in 1654. Ukrainian and Belarusian clerics, who had received a Polish-style education at the Kiev Academy, brought Western and Latin culture with them to Moscow. By the end of the 17th century, Russian literature had changed in important ways. A key figure in producing these changes was Simeon Polotsky (1629–80), a monk educated at the Kiev Academy. He played the leading role in introducing syllabic (syllabic verse) poetry (verse that is measured by the number of syllables in each line), based on Polish models, into Russia. Old Russian literature had been dominated entirely by prose, and so Polotsky's verse marked a decisive break. So did the introduction of drama into Russia with Polotsky's school dramas (modeled on Jesuit Counter-Reformation plays having biblical or religious themes), the establishment of a court theatre by Tsar Alexis, and the production of Artakserksevo deystvo (1672; “Action of Artaxerxes”), the first court play (in prose), by Johann Gottfried Gregory. The change in literary culture is also evident in the beginnings of prose fiction. Translations of foreign adventure romances appeared, along with Russian stories, parodies, and satires, including the picaresque (and erotic) Povest o Frole Skobeyeve (“Tale of Frol Skobeyev”) and Kalyazinskaya chelobitnaya (“The Kalyazin Petition”). Povest o Gore-Zlochastii (“Tale of Woe-Misfortune”), written in folk-epic verse, combines motifs of temptation, adventure, and salvation. In the mid-17th century liturgical reforms undertaken by Patriarch Nikon split the Russian church. The dissenters (or Old Believers (Old Believer)) produced some remarkable work, including the masterpiece of 17th-century Russian writing Zhitiye protopopa Avvakuma (Avvakum Petrovich) (1672–73; The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum). Avvakum, who eventually was burned at the stake, narrates his life in a powerful vernacular alternating with Church Slavonicisms. Written in prison, his narrative conveys a feel for his fanatic, earthy personality in a paradoxical form that is both autobiography and autohagiography. The “Ukrainian hegemony” over Russian letters continued during the reign of Peter I the Great. St. Dmitry (Tuptalo) of Rostov, Stefan Yavorsky, and Feofan Prokopovich, the three most important writers of the period, were all educated at the Kiev Academy. Imperial literature The Petrine reforms The Westernization of Russia Peter the Great's (Peter I) radical and rapid Westernization of Russia altered the daily life of the upper classes and all high culture. The nobility was made to conform to Western models in its dress, customs, social life, education, and state service; women came out of seclusion; a European calendar was introduced; Russians were sent abroad to study; foreign languages were learned. Western culture was absorbed so rapidly in the course of the 18th century that by the 19th century the first language of the upper nobility was not Russian but French. As a result, a large cultural gap opened between the nobility and the peasantry, whose distance from each other became an important theme of Russian literature. In the context of world history, Russia may be seen as the first of many countries to undergo rapid modernization and Westernization while wrestling with a question capable of different answers: in adopting Western technology and science, is it also necessary to adopt Western culture and forms of living? Under Peter's autocratic will, Russia was forced into an uncompromisingly affirmative answer to this question, which has concerned Russian writers up to the present moment. In 1703 Peter founded a new capital, St. Petersburg (Saint Petersburg). It was built in Western architectural style and populated by his command on an inhospitable swamp. The city—Peter's “window to the West”—became a key theme of literary works, including Aleksandr Pushkin's poem The Bronze Horseman, Dostoyevsky's novel Crime and Punishment, and Andrey Bely's novel St. Petersburg. In contrast to Moscow, St. Petersburg came not only to symbolize the power of the state over the individual but also to stand for reason and planning divorced from tradition, individual human needs, and the nonrational elements of human nature. The hero of Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground calls the capital the world's “most artificial city,” associating it with utopian contempt for tradition and experience. Like Peter's reforms generally, the city evoked the idea of historical change by sudden leaps rather than by a gradual, organic process. The response of writers and critics By the 19th century it became commonplace to regard Russia as a young country that had entered history only with the Petrine reforms. The very genres in which 19th-century literature was written had essentially no counterpart in medieval Russia, deriving instead from European literary history. Thus, in tracing their literary past, Russians often felt the necessity of “crossing borders.” To be sure, it became common for Russian writers to appropriate old Russian themes, characters, and events, as is the case in Pushkin's Boris Godunov, Mikhail Lermontov's Pesnya pro kuptsa Kalashnikova, and Tolstoy's Father Sergius. But these works are recognizably conscious of overcoming a break. Some scholars have insisted that the idea of a radical break in Russian literary history is mistaken, but there is no doubt that the perception of discontinuity is a key fact of Russian literary history. An aura of foreignness adhered to high culture, which is one reason why a tradition arose in which the sign of Russianness was the defiance of European generic norms. Justifying the self-consciously odd form of War and Peace, Tolstoy (Tolstoy, Leo) observed that departure from European form is necessary for a Russian writer: “There is not a single work of Russian artistic prose, at all rising above mediocrity, that quite fits the form of a novel, a poem, or a story.” This (admittedly exaggerated) view, which became a cliché, helps explain the enormous popularity in Russia of those Western writers who parodied literary conventions, such as the 18th-century British novelist Laurence Sterne, as well as the development of Russia's most influential school of literary criticism, Formalism, which viewed formal self-consciousness as the defining quality of “literariness.” The sense that culture, literature, and the forms of “civilized” life were a foreign product imported by the upper classes is also reflected in a tendency of Russian thinkers to regard all art as morally unjustifiable and in a pattern of Russian writers renouncing their own works. While English and French critics were arguing about the merits of different literary schools, Russian critics also debated whether literature itself had a right to exist—a question that reveals the peculiar ethos of Russian literary culture. The 18th century The 18th century was a period of codification, imitation, and absorption of foreign models. The century's major contribution was the development of a literary language (Russian language). Under the pressure of new subject matter and the influx of foreign expressions, Church Slavonic proved inadequate, and the resulting linguistic chaos required the standardization of literary Russian. In 1758 Mikhail Lomonosov (Lomonosov, Mikhail Vasilyevich) published “Predisloviye o polze knig tserkovnykh v rossiyskom yazyke” (“Preface on the Use of Church Books in the Russian Language”) in which he classified Russian and Church Slavonic words, assigning their use to three styles, and correlated these styles with appropriate themes, genres, and tones. Thus the Russian literary language was to be established by a combination of Russian and Church Slavonic. Verse also changed decisively. The old syllabic verse, based on qualities of the Polish language, gave way to syllabotonic verse (i.e., verse in which the number of stressed syllables in each line becomes the dominant prosodic element), more suitable to Russian. Theories of versification were advanced by Vasily Trediakovsky in 1735 and 1752 and, especially, by Lomonosov in 1739 (the date Belinsky chose as the beginning of Russian literature). It is also noteworthy that the Petrine assault on the church decisively ended the role of the clergy in Russian literature. Throughout the 18th century Russian writers imitated, adapted, and experimented with a wide variety of European genres, thus grafting them onto the Russian tradition and making them available for later, more original, use. Much classical and western European literature was translated, read, and assimilated, thus producing a kind of telescopic effect, as works and movements that were centuries apart were absorbed at the same time. Four writers dominate the period from the death of Peter to the ascension of Catherine II the Great in 1762. Antiokh Kantemir is best known for his verse satires. In addition to his treatises and poems in various genres, Trediakovsky produced a poetic psalter. Lomonosov, who was also a scientist and played a key role in founding Moscow State University (1755), achieved his greatest poetic success in panegyric and spiritual odes, especially “Oda na vzyatiye Khotina” (1739; “Ode on the Seizure of Khotin”), “Vecherneye razmyshleniye o Bozhiyem velichestve” (1743; “Evening Meditation on the Majesty of God”), and “Utrenneye razmyshleniye o Bozhiyem velichestve” (1743; “Morning Meditation on the Majesty of God”). Whereas Baroque poetics strongly influenced Trediakovsky and Lomonosov, the younger Aleksandr Sumarokov, a poet and dramatist, stood for a rigorous and lucid classicism. Catherine II the Great Catherine began her reign as an enlightened despot. She corresponded with Voltaire and Denis Diderot and sponsored the arts. Although her native language was German, she has to her credit a number of plays in Russian as well as a statement of legal principles, Nakaz (Instruction). In 1769 she established a satiric journal, Vsyakaya vsyachina (“All Sorts and Sundries”), which was soon followed by others, including the Truten (“Drone”), founded by Nikolay Novikov (Novikov, Nikolay Ivanovich). In a curious exchange between journals, Novikov and Catherine disagreed with each other about the nature of satire—like the Kurbsky-Ivan correspondence in the 16th century, it was a case of a sovereign deigning to argue with a subject. Shocked by an uprising of Cossacks and peasants (1773–75), known from the name of its leader as the Pugachov Rebellion, and later by the French Revolution, Catherine turned increasingly conservative. Generally speaking, these events marked a turning point as the Russian autocracy switched from being a modernizing to a restraining force. When Aleksandr Radishchev (Radishchev, Aleksandr Nikolayevich) published Puteshestviye iz Peterburga v Moskvu (1790; A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow), a work that was sharply critical of Russian society and serfdom, Catherine had him condemned to death, a sentence she commuted to Siberian exile. Offended by a posthumously published play by Yakov Knyazhnin (1742–91), Vadim Novgorodsky (“Vadim of Novgorod”), she had copies of the manuscript burned and the published text torn from the offending volume. Poetry Catherine's reign saw real accomplishment in Russian poetry. Excellent verse was produced, and the canon as it is known today began to take shape. It is worth stressing the important role of tradition and the canon in Russian poetry. To a much greater extent than in many other traditions, including the English and American, Russian poetry typically relies on the reader's detailed knowledge of earlier poems. The poems of the past constitute a sort of literary bible, a common culture known in detail by the literate public. Poets count on their readers being sufficiently familiar with the tradition to detect even faint allusions to earlier poems. Moreover, Russian poets also rely on readers to appreciate the semantic associations that specific verse forms have acquired, which is perhaps one reason why free (unrhymed and unmetered) verse has played a relatively small role in Russian poetry. Three poets—Ivan Khemnitser, Ivan Dmitriyev, and Ivan Krylov (Krylov, Ivan Andreyevich)—are known for their fables. Krylov's fables rapidly became classics and some of his lines proverbial. Rossiyada (written 1771–79; “The Rossiad”), an epic by Mikhail Kheraskov, is a rather stilted effort that proved a literary dead end. It was the ode, rather than the epic, that was the successful high poetic genre of the age. But Vasily Maykov and Ippolit Bogdanovich wrote amusing mock epics. Maykov's Elisey; ili, razdrazhenny Vakkh (1769; “Elisei; or, Bacchus Enraged”) cleverly parodies a Russian translation of the Aeneid with a narrative in which the Greek pantheon directs whores, drunks, and other low-lifes. In Dushenka: drevnyaya povest v volnykh stikhakh (1783; “Dushenka: An Ancient Tale in Free Verse”), Bogdanovich produced a light and witty updating of the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche. Gavrila Derzhavin (Derzhavin, Gavrila Romanovich) is generally considered to be Russia's greatest 18th-century poet. He is best known for his odes, including his chatty panegyric “Oda k Felitse” (1782; “Ode to Felitsa”), in which praise for the prosaic virtues of Empress Catherine alternates with depictions of the low amusements of courtiers. His poems “Bog” (1784; “God”) and “Vodopad” (1791–94; “The Waterfall”) daringly make the metaphysical concrete and the specific poetic. Derzhavin, who also served as a governor and as Catherine's personal secretary, exemplifies the tendency of 18th-century writers to pursue government careers, a practice that was almost unthinkable a century later. Drama and prose fiction Although the theatrical repertoire in the late 18th and early 19th centuries continued to be dominated by translations and adaptations, numerous, if not very distinguished, tragedies were written by Sumarokov, Kheraskov, Vladislav Ozerov, and others. Of greater merit were two comedies by Denis Fonvizin, Brigadir (1769; The Brigadier), a satire on Gallomania, and Nedorosl (1783; “The Minor”). Prose fiction began to appear in print only in the mid-18th century. Mikhail Chulkov's picaresque Prigozhaya povarikha (1770; “The Comely Cook”) is addressed to a popular audience. At the end of the 18th century, the dominant figure of Russian sentimentalism (sentimental novel) was Nikolay Karamzin (Karamzin, Nikolay Mikhaylovich), author of Pisma russkogo puteshestvennika (1792; Letters of a Russian Traveler, 1789–1790), describing a journey to western Europe in 1789–90, and of the very popular story “Bednaya Liza” (1792; “Poor Liza”), a tale of lovers separated because they belong to different social classes, which seems cloying to the modern reader. Appointed imperial historiographer, Karamzin later wrote the 12-volume Istoriya gosudarstva rossiyskogo (1818–26; “History of the Russian State”), which is a landmark of Russian literature. Karamzin's importance also lies in his contribution to the Russian literary language. His writing reflected the language of high society, using a Gallicized vocabulary and syntax at the expense of Church Slavonic. The 19th century The Russian 19th century is one of the most fruitful periods in world literature. Several features, in addition to those mentioned above, distinguish the literary culture of these years: (1) Literature enjoyed greater prestige in Russia than in the West, and its achievements were sometimes thought (as Dostoyevsky once declared) to be the justification for the Russian people's very existence. Literary critics were typically the leaders of Russian intellectual life and political thought. (2) Literature and criticism were expected to fulfill functions, such as philosophical, moral, and religious analysis, that in Europe were typically assigned to distinct disciplines. Thus Dostoyevsky's works are central to the histories of all these areas of Russian thought. One can see why the highest achievement of Russian literature was probably the philosophical novel. (3) In the 19th (still more, the 20th) century, politics and literature were intimately connected, and a writer or critic was often called upon to be a political prophet. The “Golden Age” of poetry Readers relying on translations usually think of Russian literature almost exclusively in terms of prose, but for Russians their tradition is also, and perhaps equally, one of poetry. The 19th century began with the “Golden Age” of Russian poetry. An aristocratic sensibility, the culture of salons, an aura of friendly intimacy, and genres suitable to this ethos marked the poetry of this period. The romantic poet Vasily Zhukovsky (Zhukovsky, Vasily Andreyevich) is celebrated for several translations or adaptations that are major poems in their own right, including versions of the English poet Thomas Gray's An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard (1802 and 1839), Homer's Odyssey (completed 1847), and Lord Byron's “The Prisoner of Chillon” (1822). His “Svetlana” (1813) reworks the German poet Gottfried August Bürger's “Lenore.” Konstantin Batyushkov (Batyushkov, Konstantin Nikolayevich) was noted for playful and erotic as well as melancholy verse and for the elegy Umerayushchy Tass (1817; “The Dying Tasso”). The “Pushkin Pleiad,” consisting of poets of Pushkin's generation and closely associated with him, included Anton Delvig, Prince Pyotr Vyazemsky, and, most important, Yevgeny Baratynsky, who was a superb philosophical “poet of thought.” Aleksandr Pushkin (Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeyevich) Pushkin occupies a unique place in Russian literature. It is not just that Russians view him as their greatest poet; he is also virtually the symbol of Russian culture. His life, as well as his work, has acquired mythic status. To criticize Pushkin, or even one of his characters—as, for example, Tatyana, the heroine of his novel Yevgeny Onegin (written 1823–31; Eugene Onegin)—has been taken as something akin to blasphemy. Pushkin's quasi-sacred status has itself been parodied by Russian authors, including the satirist Mikhail Zoshchenko, the absurdist Daniil Kharms, and, most recently, Andrey Sinyavsky in his Progulki s Pushkinym (1972; Strolls with Pushkin). Even if one sets this mythic image aside, Pushkin is truly one of the world's most accomplished poets; his verse, however, which relies on the author's perfect control of form, tone, and language, does not read well in translation. Deeply playful and experimental, Pushkin adopted a vast array of conflicting masks and personae. He writes now seriously, now with irony, and now with irony at his own irony, on moral and philosophical themes. He is ultimately a philosophical fox, appreciating the limitations, as well as the virtues, of any set of ideas. A master parodist (parody), Pushkin wrote a number of erotic and at times sacrilegious mock-epics, such as “Gavriiliada” (1821; “The Gabrieliad”), a scabrous retelling of the Annunciation, and Ruslan i Lyudmila (1820; Ruslan and Ludmila), which, after parodying epic, folk tale, literary ballad, and romance in a spirit of pure play, ends with a startlingly sombre epilogue. His diverse lyrics include a series on the poet's double identity as artist and man of the world; political poems that got him into trouble with the tsar as well as poems in praise of the tsar and his suppression of the Poles; some remarkable elegies (“Vospominaniye” 【1828; “Remembrance”】; “Elegiya” 【1830; “Elegy”】); love poems, including the “imageless” “Ya vas lyubil” (1829; “I Loved You Once”); and powerful meditations on human evil (“Anchar” 【1828; “The Upas Tree”】; “Ne day mne Bog soyti s uma” 【1833; “God Grant I Go Not Mad”】). Pushkin's narrative poems include Tsygany (1824; “The Gypsies”), which considers the meaning of freedom. Plot is mere excuse for parody of literary forms and conventions in Domik v Kolomne (1830; The Little House in Kolomna). Most famously, Medny vsadnik (written 1833; The Bronze Horseman), which reflects on Peter the Great and the significance of St. Petersburg, examines the meaning of history in relation to individual lives. Concern with the nature of historical causation also led to complex formal innovations in the quasi-Shakespearean drama Boris Godunov (written 1824–25), which reworked Karamzin's Istoriya gosudarstva rossiyskogo and was in turn reworked by other artists, notably Modest Mussorgsky in his opera Boris Godunov (1869; revised 1874). Pushkin's greatest work was probably Eugene Onegin, the first truly great Russian novel and the source of countless themes and images in Russian fiction. Playful in the manner of Sterne's Tristram Shandy and Lord Byron's Don Juan, it far surpasses them for sheer brilliance of form, wit, and thought. Amid endless clever digressions, in which the poet adopts a dazzling array of tones and engages in myriad self-conscious self-parodies, it tells the story of Onegin, a “ superfluous man”—that is, a man with no core or purpose to his life—and Tatyana, who stands for authenticity in a sea of literary or social clichés, which she somehow manages to transcend even when she accepts them. The work's serial publication over several years enabled both its own unpredictable creation and changes in the author's perspective to become themes of the poem itself. Each of Pushkin's four “little tragedies,” all written in 1830, succinctly deals with a philosophical problem. The most remarkable, Motsart i Salyeri (Mozart and Salieri), based on a legend that Salieri poisoned Mozart, meditates on the nature of creativity while introducing, in brilliantly compressed speeches, what was to be one of the important Russian themes—metaphysical rebellion against God. After 1830 Pushkin turned to prose. He wrote both a novella and a nonfictional account—Kapitanskaya dochka (1836; The Captain's Daughter) and Istoriya Pugachovskogo bunta (1834; The History of Pugachev)—about the same historical events, as if to illustrate that representing the historical truth requires more than one genre. Povesti pokoynogo Ivana Petrovicha Belkina (1830; Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin) filters five narratives, each a parody of a received plot, through the minds of several narrators, collectors, or editors. Pikovaya dama (1834; The Queen of Spades) offers a suspenseful account of a man seeking mystic knowledge that would enable him to gamble without risk and, implicitly, to know the deepest forbidden truths. Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment may be seen as an expansion of Pushkin's brief story. Lermontov (Lermontov, Mikhail) and Griboyedov Next to Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, who personifies Romanticism, is probably Russia's most frequently anthologized poet. His celebrated lyrics often recycle lines from his own and others' poems. “Smert poeta” (1837; “Death of a Poet”), which first earned him fame, deals with Pushkin's death shortly after a fatal duel in 1837. Among his narrative poems, Demon (1841; The Demon) describes the love of a Byronic demon for a mortal woman; Pesnya pro tsarya Ivana Vasilyevicha, molodogo oprichnika i udalogo kuptsa Kalashnikova (1837; A Song About Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich, His Young Bodyguard, and the Valiant Merchant Kalashnikov) is a stylized folk epic. Also an accomplished prose stylist, Lermontov wrote Geroy nashego vremeni (1840; A Hero of Our Time), which in form is something between a novel and a complexly framed cycle of stories about a single hero, a Byronic superfluous man. This work ranges from sketches of philosophical brilliance (“The Fatalist”) to episodes of near puerility (“Princess Mary”). The theme of the superfluous man finds another important rendition in Aleksandr Griboyedov's classic work, Gore ot uma (completed 1824; Woe from Wit). Nikolay Gogol (Gogol, Nikolay) One of the finest comic authors of world literature, and perhaps its most accomplished nonsense writer, Gogol is best known for his short stories, for his play Revizor (1836; The Inspector General, or The Government Inspector), and for Myortvye dushi (1842; Dead Souls), a prose narrative that is nevertheless subtitled a “poem.” “Nos” (1836; “The Nose”), a parable on the failure of all explanatory systems, relates an utterly inexplicable incident and the attempts to come to terms with it. Both “Shinel” (1842; “The Overcoat”), which is probably the most influential Russian short story, and “Zapiski sumasshedshego” (1835; “The Diary of a Madman”) mix pathos and mockery in an amazing display. As in “Nevsky prospekt” (1835; “Nevsky Avenue”) and “Povest o tom, kak possorilsya Ivan Ivanovich s Ivanom Nikiforovichem” (1835; “The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich”), language itself seems to generate its own absurd content while the universe turns out to be a counterfeit of which there is no original. Characteristic of Gogol is a sense of boundless superfluity that is soon revealed as utter emptiness and a rich comedy that suddenly turns into metaphysical horror. The Inspector General develops a sequence of (witting and unwitting) confidence games within confidence games in a corrupt world of endless self-deception. The mock-epic, even mock-satiric, Dead Souls simultaneously allegorizes the timeless bureaucratic tendency to make official documentation more genuine than actual existence, the emptiness of the human soul, and the mind's absurd ways of grasping meaning or value. It is one of the most striking (and most Gogolian) ironies of Russian literary history that radical critics celebrated Gogol as a realist. Other poets and dramatists From the death of Lermontov until the end of the 19th century, Russian literature was dominated by prose, but some poets of lasting interest appeared. Fyodor Tyutchev (Tyutchev, Fyodor Ivanovich), a member of Pushkin's generation, wrote nature, love, and political poetry but is probably best appreciated for his philosophical “poetry of thought,” including “Silentium!” (1830). Afanasy Fet (Fet, Afanasy Afanasyevich) wrote delicate love lyrics remarkable for their absence of verbs. Violently attacked by radical critics as symbolizing pure art, he came to be appreciated by the Symbolist poets to follow. Nikolay Nekrasov (Nekrasov, Nikolay Alekseyevich), who was also a major figure in Russian journalism, wrote social satires, tendentious “civic” verse, and compassionate accounts of peasant life, including Komu na Rusi zhit khorosho? (1879; Who Can Be Happy and Free in Russia?), which he began writing in 1863 and left unfinished at the time of his death. Among the dramatists of this period, Aleksandr Ostrovsky (Ostrovsky, Aleksandr Nikolayevich), who has proved much more popular in Russia than abroad, wrote many slice-of-life plays about the Russian merchantry. His plays Svoi lyudi—sochtyomsya! (1850; “It's a Family Affair—We'll Settle It Among Ourselves”; Eng. trans. A Family Affair) and Groza (1859; The Thunderstorm) were the subject of reviews by Nikolay Dobrolyubov (1836–61), one of Russia's most influential radical critics. Aleksandr Sukhovo-Kobylin wrote a macabre trilogy, whose third play, Smert Tarelkina (1869; The Death of Tarelkin), is a brilliant piece of grotesque humour about a man who fakes his own death. The theme of the faked suicide, a motif of Russian drama, later appeared in Leo Tolstoy's Zhivoy trup (written 1900; The Living Corpse) and Nikolay Erdman's Samoubiytsa (1928; The Suicide). The “intelligentsia” Beginning about 1860, Russian culture was dominated by a group known as the “intelligentsia,” a word that English borrowed from Russian but which means something rather different in its original Russian usage. In the word's narrow sense, the “intelligentsia” consisted of people who owed their primary allegiance not to their profession or class but to a group of men and women with whom they shared a common set of beliefs, including a fanatic faith in revolution, atheism, and materialism. They usually adopted a specific set of manners, customs, and sexual behaviour, primarily from their favourite book, Nikolay Chernyshevsky's (Chernyshevsky, N.G.) utopian novel Chto delat (1863; What Is to Be Done?). Although appallingly bad from a literary point of view, this novel, which also features a fake suicide, was probably the most widely read work of the 19th century. Generally speaking, the intelligentsia insisted that literature be a form of socialist propaganda and rejected aesthetic criteria or apolitical works. In addition to Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, typical members of the intelligentsia came to include Lenin, Stalin, and other Bolsheviks who seized power in 1917. Thus it is not surprising that a gulf separated the writers from the intelligentsia. In an important anthology attacking the mentality of the intelligentsia, Vekhi (1909; Landmarks), the critic Mikhail Gershenzon observed that “an almost infallible gauge of the strengths of an artist's genius is the extent of his hatred for the intelligentsia.” Typically, the writers objected to the intelligentsia's intellectual intolerance, addiction to theory, and belief that morality was defined by utility to the revolution. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Anton Chekhov were all sharply contemptuous of the intelligentsia. Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Dostoyevsky, Fyodor) Having been imprisoned in Siberia for political activity, Dostoyevsky parodied What Is to Be Done? in Zapiski iz podpolya (1864; Notes from the Underground), a novella that has had incalculable influence on Western literature for formal as well as thematic reasons. In a complex series of paradoxes, its hero argues against determinism, utopianism, and historical laws. In Prestupleniye i nakazaniye (1866; Crime and Punishment), a philosophical and psychological account of a murder, Dostoyevsky examines the tendency of intelligents (members of the intelligentsia) to regard themselves as superior to ordinary people and as beyond traditional morality. Besy (1872; The Possessed), a novel based on Russian terrorism, is famous as the work that most accurately predicted 20th-century totalitarianism. In Idiot (1868–69; The Idiot) and Bratya Karamazovy (1879–80; The Brothers Karamazov), Dostoyevsky, who is generally regarded as one of the supreme psychologists in world literature, sought to demonstrate the compatibility of Christianity with the deepest truths of the psyche. Leo Tolstoy (Tolstoy, Leo) Probably even more than Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy has been praised as being the greatest novelist in world literature. The 19th-century English critic and poet Matthew Arnold famously expressed the commonest view in saying that a work by Tolstoy is not a piece of art but a piece of life: his novels read as if life were writing directly, without mediation. Tolstoy's techniques reflect his belief that no theory is adequate to explain the world's complexity, which unfolds by “tiny, tiny alterations” fitting no pattern. He denied the existence of historical laws and insisted that ethics is a matter not of rules but of supreme sensitivity to the particular. “True life,” he contended, is lived not at moments of grand crisis but at countless ordinary and prosaic moments, which human beings usually do not notice. All these ideas are illustrated and explicitly expressed in Voyna i mir (1865–69; War and Peace), set in the time of the Napoleonic wars, and in Anna Karenina (1875–77), which applies this prosaic view of life to marriage, the family, and work. Anna Karenina also contrasts romantic love, which is based on intense moments of passion and leads to adultery, with the prosaic love of the family, which is based above all on intimacy. After completing Anna Karenina, Tolstoy underwent a religious crisis, which eventually led him to reject his two great novels, formulate a new religion that he thought of as true Christianity, and cultivate a different type of art. To outline his views, he wrote a number of tracts, including Tsarstvo bozhiye vnutri vas (1893; The Kingdom of God Is Within You) and Chto takoye iskusstvo? (1898; What Is Art?). His only long novel of this period, Voskreseniye (1899; Resurrection), is a tendentious failure. But he produced brilliant novellas, many of which were published posthumously, including Otets Sergy (written 1898; Father Sergius), in which he seems to reflect on his own quest for sainthood, and Khadzhi-Murat (written 1904; Hadji-Murad). Smert Ivana Ilicha (1886; The Death of Ivan Ilyitch), which is often considered the greatest novella in Russian literature, conveys the existential horror of sickness and mortality while describing civilization as a web of lies designed to distract people from an awareness of death. Ivan Turgenev (Turgenev, Ivan Sergeyevich) The first Russian writer to be widely celebrated in the West, Turgenev managed to be hated by the radicals as well as by Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky for his dedicated Westernism, bland liberalism, aesthetic elegance, and tendency to nostalgia and self-pity. He first gained fame with his subtle descriptions of peasant life in Zapiski okhotnika (1852; A Sportsman's Sketches), which contributed to the climate leading to the abolition of serfdom. He is celebrated for his novels about intelligents and ideology: Rudin (1856), Nakanune (1860; On the Eve), and Dym (1867; Smoke). His most distinguished work, Ottsy i deti (1862; Fathers and Sons), offers both an evenhanded portrait of the radical nihilists and an allegorical meditation on the conflict of generations. Other prose writers The mid-19th century produced a number of other fine prose writers. Sergey Aksakov (Aksakov, Sergey Timofeyevich) wrote fictionalized reminiscences: Semeynaya khronika (1856; The Family Chronicle) and Detskiye gody Bagrova-vnuka (1858; Years of Childhood). Aleksandr Herzen (Herzen, Aleksandr Ivanovich) wrote his greatest works in emigration. In S togo berega (written 1847–50; From the Other Shore), which combines essays and dialogues, he reflects with penetrating skepticism on the idea that history has knowable laws. Herzen's Byloye i dumy (written 1852–68; My Past and Thoughts) is regarded as the best Russian autobiography. Ivan Goncharov (Goncharov, Ivan Aleksandrovich) is the author of the comic masterpiece Oblomov (1859), a study of dreamy slothfulness: its hero spends a hundred pages getting out of bed. Nikolay Leskov (Leskov, Nikolay Semyonovich) is remembered for his short stories, including “Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uyezda” (1865; “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District”), as well as for his novel Soboryane (1872; The Cathedral Folk). Like Gogol before and Mikhail Zoshchenko after him, he was a master of skaz, a written narrative imitating a spontaneous oral account in its use of dialect, slang, or a particular idiom. A radical satirist and (remarkably) a government official who attained general's rank, Mikhail Saltykov wrote (under the pseudonym N. Shchedrin) the extremely dark novel Gospoda Golovlyovy (1876; The Golovlyov Family), portraying the relentless decline of a family. The agony of an intellectual who wants to merge with the common people and the intimate link of utopianism to madness figure as prominent themes in the short stories of Vsevolod Garshin (Garshin, Vsevolod Mikhaylovich), including “Khudozhniki” (1879; “Artists”) and “Krasny tsvetok” (1883; “The Red Flower”). Anton Chekhov (Chekhov, Anton) When Tolstoy abandoned the prosaic ethos, Chekhov, one of the greatest short story writers in world literature, remained loyal to it. Indeed, he reinterpreted it within his essentially bourgeois values, stressing the moral necessity of ordinary virtues such as daily kindness, cleanliness, politeness, work, sobriety, paying one's debts, and avoiding self-pity. Replying to the intelligentsia's demand for political tendentiousness, which he equated with a stifling intellectual conformity, he maintained that his only “tendency” was a protest against lying in all its forms. In his hundreds of stories and novellas, which he wrote while practicing medicine, Chekhov adopts something of a clinical approach to ordinary life. Meticulous observation and broad sympathy for diverse points of view shape his fiction. In his stories, an overt plot subtly hints at other hidden stories, and so the experience of rereading his fiction often differs substantially from that produced by a first reading. Especially noteworthy are “Skuchnaya istoriya” (written 1889; “A Dreary Story”), “Duel” (written 1891; “The Duel”), “Palata No. 6” (written 1892; “Ward Number Six”), “Kryzhovnik” (written 1898; “Gooseberries”), “Dushechka” (written 1899; “The Darling”), “Dama s sobachkoy” (written 1899; “The Lady with the Lap Dog”), “Arkhiyerey” (written 1902; “The Bishop”), and “Nevesta” (written 1903; “The Betrothed”). Along with Gogol's The Inspector General, Chekhov's plays are the high point of Russian drama. In his four great plays, Chayka (1896; The Seagull), Dyadya Vanya (1897; Uncle Vanya), Tri sestry (1901; Three Sisters), and Vishnyovy sad (1904; The Cherry Orchard), Chekhov's belief that life is lived at ordinary moments and that histrionics are a dangerous lie found expression in a major innovation, the undramatic drama—or, as it is sometimes called, the theatre of inaction. The Silver Age The period from the 1890s to 1917 was one of intellectual ferment, in which mysticism, aestheticism, Neo-Kantianism, eroticism, Marxism, apocalypticism, Nietzscheanism, and other movements combined with each other in improbable ways. Primarily an age of poetry, it also produced significant prose and drama. Russian Symbolism, which was influenced by French Symbolist (Symbolist movement) poetry and the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900), is usually said to have begun with an essay by Dmitry Merezhkovsky (Merezhkovsky, Dmitry Sergeyevich), “O prichinakh upadka i o novykh techeniyakh sovremennoy russkoy literatury” (1893; “On the Reasons for the Decline and on the New Trends in Contemporary Russian Literature”). A poet and propagator of religious ideas, Merezhkovsky wrote a trilogy of novels, Khristos i Antikhrist (1896–1905; Christ and Antichrist), consisting of Yulian otstupnik (1896; Julian the Apostate), Leonardo da Vinchi (1901; Leonardo da Vinci), and Pyotr i Aleksey (1905; Peter and Alexis), which explores the relation of pagan and Christian views of the world. Symbolists The Symbolists saw art as a way to approach a higher reality. The first wave of Symbolists included Konstantin Balmont (1867–1942), who translated a number of English poets and wrote verse that he left unrevised on principle (he believed in first inspiration); Valery Bryusov (Bryusov, Valery Yakovlevich) (1873–1924), a poet and translator of French Symbolist verse and of Virgil's Aeneid, who for years was the leader of the movement; Zinaida Gippius (Gippius, Zinaida Nikolayevna) (1869–1945), who wrote decadent, erotic, and religious poetry; and Fyodor Sologub, author of melancholic verse and of a novel, Melky bes (1907; The Petty Demon), about a sadistic, homicidal, paranoid schoolteacher. Three writers dominate the second wave of Symbolism. Eschatology and anthroposophy shaped the poetry and prose of Andrey Bely (Bely, Andrey), whose novel Peterburg (1913–22; St. Petersburg) is regarded as the masterpiece of Symbolist fiction. Aleksandr Blok (Blok, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich), who wrote the lyric drama Balaganchik (1906; “The Showbooth”), is best known for his poem Dvenadtsat (1918; The Twelve), which describes 12 brutal Red Guards who turn out to be unwittingly led by Jesus Christ. The principal theoretician of the Symbolist movement, Vyacheslav Ivanov (Ivanov, Vyacheslav Ivanovich) (1866–1949), wrote mythic poetry conveying a Neoplatonist philosophy. Acmeists (Acmeist) and Futurists In the second decade of the 20th century, Symbolism was challenged by two other schools, the Acmeists, who favoured clarity over metaphysical vagueness, and the brash Futurists (Futurism), who wanted to throw all earlier and most contemporary poetry “from the steamship of modernity.” Among the Acmeists, Nikolay Gumilyov (Gumilyov, Nikolay Stepanovich) (1886–1921), who stressed poetic craftsmanship over the occult, was executed by the Bolsheviks. Already an accomplished creator of superb love lyrics in these years, Anna Akhmatova (Akhmatova, Anna) produced densely and brilliantly structured poems in the Soviet period, including Poema bez geroya (written 1940–62; A Poem Without a Hero) and Rekviyem (written 1935–40; Requiem), which was inspired by Soviet purges and was therefore unpublishable in Russia. From 1923 to 1940 she was forced into silence, and in 1946 Akhmatova and Zoshchenko became the target of official abuse by the Communist Party cultural spokesman Andrey Zhdanov (1896–1948). Some consider Osip Mandelshtam (Mandelshtam, Osip Emilyevich) (1891–1938), who died in a Soviet prison camp, to be the greatest Russian poet of the 20th century. Many of his difficult, allusive poems were preserved by his wife, Nadezhda Mandelshtam (1899–1980), whose memoirs are themselves a classic. The two most important Futurist poets were Velimir Khlebnikov (Khlebnikov, Velimir Vladimirovich) and Vladimir Mayakovsky (Mayakovsky, Vladimir Vladimirovich). Khlebnikov hoped to find the laws of history through numerology and developed amazingly implausible theories about language and its origins. His verse, which is characterized by neologisms and “trans-sense” language, includes “Zaklyatiye smekhom” (1910; “Incantation by Laughter”) and Zangezi (1922). Mayakovsky epitomized the spirit of romantic bohemian radicalism. Humour, bravado, and self-pity characterize his inventive long poems, including Oblako v shtanakh (1915; A Cloud in Trousers). After the Russian Revolution in 1917, which he ardently supported initially, Mayakovsky “stepped on the throat” of his song to produce propaganda poems. But he also satirized Soviet bureaucracy in the witty “Razgovor s fininspektorom o poezii” (1926; “Conversation with a Tax Collector about Poetry”). As a dramatist, he is best known for Vladimir Mayakovsky (1913), in which he played the lead role, and Klop (1929; The Bedbug), in which a philistine, along with a bedbug, is resurrected into the banal communist future of 1979. Having written a poem about the suicide of the peasant poet Sergey Yesenin (1895–1925), Mayakovsky later shot himself, leaving a brilliantly ironic suicide note with a poem explaining that “love's boat has smashed against daily life.” Others Celebrated in their day, the fiction writers Leonid Andreyev (1871–1919), Aleksandr Kuprin (1870–1938), and Vladimir Korolenko (1853–1921) now have faded reputations. But Ivan Bunin (Bunin, Ivan Alekseyevich), who became the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1933), wrote superb works both before the Revolution and as an émigré after it. Especially noteworthy are his dark novella Derevnya (1910; The Village), which is relentlessly critical of Russians, and his Zhizn Arsenyeva (1930; The Life of Arseniev, or The Well of Days), a fictionalized autobiography. Maksim Gorky (Gorky, Maksim) became the official founder of Socialist Realism. Western readers now appreciate his three-volume autobiography Detstvo (1913–14; My Childhood), V lyudyakh (1915–16; In the World, or My Apprenticeship), and Moi universitety (1923; My Universities) and his Vospominaniya o Lve Nikolayeviche Tolstom (1919; Reminiscences of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy). His highly tendentious novel Mat (1906; Mother), a model for Socialist Realism, and many other works divide characters simplistically into two groups—progressive and virtuous or reactionary and vicious. Post-Revolutionary literature Literature under Soviet rule The Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 (Russian Revolution of 1917) radically changed Russian literature. After a brief period of relative openness (compared to what followed) in the 1920s, literature became a tool of state propaganda. Officially approved writing (the only kind that could be published) by and large sank to a subliterary level. Censorship, imprisonment in labour camps, and mass terror were only part of the problem. Writers were not only forbidden to create works that were dissident, formally complex, or objective (a term of reproach), but they were also expected to fulfill the dictates of the Communist Party to produce propaganda on specific, often rather narrow, themes of current interest to it. Writers were called upon to be “engineers of human souls” helping to produce “the new Soviet man.” As a result of Bolshevik rule, the literary tradition was fragmented. In addition to official Soviet Russian literature, two kinds of unofficial literature existed. First, a tradition of émigré literature, containing some of the best works of the century, continued until the fall of the Soviet Union. Second, unofficial literature written within the Soviet Union came to include works circulated illegally in typewritten copies (“ samizdat”), works smuggled abroad for publication (“tamizdat”), and works written “for the drawer,” or not published until decades after they were written (“delayed” literature). Moreover, literature publishable at one time often lost favour later; although nominally acceptable, it was frequently unobtainable. On many occasions, even officially celebrated works had to be rewritten to suit a shift in the Communist Party line. Whereas pre-Revolutionary writers had been intensely aware of Western trends, for much of the Soviet period access to Western movements was severely restricted, as was foreign travel. Access to pre-Revolutionary Russian writing was also spotty. As a result, Russians periodically had to change their sense of the past, as did Western scholars when “delayed” works became known. From a literary point of view, unofficial literature clearly surpasses official literature. Of Russia's five winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature during the Soviet period, Bunin emigrated after the Revolution, Boris Pasternak had his novel Doctor Zhivago (1957) published abroad, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918) had most of his works published abroad and was expelled from the Soviet Union, and Joseph Brodsky (1940–96) published all his collections of verse abroad and was forced to emigrate in 1972. Only Mikhail Sholokhov (1905–84) was clearly an official Soviet writer. In the early years following the Revolution, writers who left or were expelled from the Soviet Union included Balmont, Bunin, Gippius, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Kuprin, and Merezhkovsky. Émigrés also included the poets Vladislav Khodasevich (1886–1939) and Georgy Ivanov (1894–1958). Marina Tsvetayeva (Tsvetayeva, Marina Ivanovna) (1892–1941), regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century, eventually returned to Russia, where she committed suicide. Vladimir Nabokov (Nabokov, Vladimir), who later wrote in English, published nine novels in Russian, including Dar (published serially 1937–38; The Gift) and Priglasheniye na kazn (1938; Invitation to a Beheading). From the 1920s to c. 1985 Experiments in the 1920s Within Russia the 1920s saw a wide diversity of literary trends and works, including those by mere “fellow travelers (fellow traveller)” (Leon Trotsky's phrase) of the Revolution. Isaak Babel (Babel, Isaak Emmanuilovich) wrote a brilliant cycle of linked stories, collected as Konarmiya (1926; Red Cavalry), about a Jewish commissar in a Cossack regiment. Formally chiseled and morally complex, these stories examine the seductive appeal of violence for the intellectual. A modern literary genre, the dystopia, was invented by Yevgeny Zamyatin (Zamyatin, Yevgeny Ivanovich) in his novel My (1924; We), which could be published only abroad. Like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four, which are modeled on it, We describes a future socialist society that has turned out to be not perfect but inhuman. Yury Olesha's Zavist (1927; Envy) is a satire in the tradition of Notes from the Underground. Like Chekhov, Zoshchenko was a master of the comic story focusing on everyday life. Pasternak (Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich), who had been a Futurist poet before the Revolution, published a cycle of poems, Sestra moya zhizn (1922; My Sister—Life), and his story “Detstvo Lyuvers” (1918; “Zhenya Luvers's Childhood”). Other important novels include Boris Pilnyak's “ornamental” Goly god (1922; The Naked Year); Andrey Platonov's deeply pessimistic Kotlovan (The Foundation Pit), which was written in the late 1920s and published in the West in 1973; Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov's clever satire Dvenadtsat stulyev (1928; The Twelve Chairs); Konstantin Fedin's novel Goroda i gody (1924; Cities and Years); and Leonid Leonov's Vor (1927; The Thief). The Russian Formalists (Formalism) were a school of critics closely tied to the Futurists. They developed a vibrant, comprehensive theory of literature and culture that inspired structuralism, an influential critical movement in the West. Two of them, Viktor Shklovsky (Shklovsky, Viktor Borisovich) and Yury Tynyanov, wrote significant fiction illustrating their theories: Shklovsky's Zoo; ili, pisma ne o lyubvi (1923; Zoo; or, Letters Not About Love) and Tynyanov's “Podporuchik kizhe” (1927; “Second Lieutenant Likewise”). Their respectful opponent, Mikhail Bakhtin (Bakhtin, Mikhail), whom some consider the most original, far-ranging, and subtle theorist of literature in the 20th century, wrote Problemy tvorchestva Dostoyevskogo (1929, 2nd ed., 1963; Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics) and essays about the relation of novelistic form to time, language, psychology, and ethics. The 1920s also produced novels that became classics of official Soviet literature, including Dmitry Furmanov's Chapayev (1923) and Aleksandr Serafimovich's Zhelezny potok (1924; The Iron Flood). Fyodor Gladkov's Tsement (1925; Cement) became a model for the “industrial production” novel. Also in this period, Sholokhov began writing the best-known official work, a four-part novel published as Tikhy Don (1928–40; “The Quiet Don”; translated in two parts as And Quiet Flows the Don and The Don Flows Home to the Sea). The Stalin era The decade beginning with Stalin's ascendancy in the late 1920s was one of unprecedented repression. The “war in the countryside” to enforce the collectivization of agriculture cost more than 10 million lives, about half of them by starvation. Purges (purge trials) took the lives of millions more, among them Babel, Kharms, Mandelshtam, Pilnyak, the peasant poet Nikolay Klyuyev (1887–1937), and the director Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874–1940). In 1932 all independent literary groupings were dissolved and replaced by an institution that had no counterpart in the West, the Union of Soviet Writers (Writers' Union of the U.S.S.R.). The union became the state's instrument of control over literature, and expulsion from it meant literary death. In 1934 Socialist Realism was proclaimed the only acceptable form of writing. Henceforth, literature was to be governed by a series of official directives regarding details of style and content in order to ensure that each work offered a “truthful” depiction “of reality in its revolutionary development.” Literature had to be “party-minded” and “typical” (that is, avoiding unpleasant, hence “atypical,” aspects of Soviet reality), while showing the triumph of fully “positive heroes.” Some talented writers turned to the safer areas of children's literature and translation. Others, such as Valentin Katayev in his production novel Vremya, vperyod! (1932; Time, Forward!) and Fedin in Pervyye radosti (1946; Early Joys), sought to infuse official writing with some interest. Quite popular was Nikolay Ostrovsky's fictionalized autobiography Kak zakalyalas stal (1932–34; How the Steel Was Tempered). In his unfinished novel Pyotr Pervy (1929–45; Peter the Great) and his play Ivan Grozny (1941–43; “Ivan the Terrible”), Aleksey Tolstoy (Tolstoy, Aleksey Nikolayevich, Graf), an émigré who returned to become one of Stalin's favourite writers, praised tyrannical tsars admired by Stalin. The moral nadir of Soviet literature was reached in a collaborative volume, Belomorsko-Baltiski kanal imeni Stalina: istoriya stroitelstva (1934; Belomor: An Account of the Construction of the New Canal Between the White Sea and the Baltic Sea). With Gorky as an editor and 34 contributors, including Gorky, Katayev, Shklovsky, Aleksey Tolstoy, and Zoshchenko, the volume praised a project (and the secret police who directed it) using convict labour and costing tens of thousands of lives. During these dark years the work now generally regarded as the finest post-Revolutionary novel, Mikhail Bulgakov's (Bulgakov, Mikhail Afanasyevich) Master i Margarita (The Master and Margarita), was written “for the drawer” (1928–40); it appeared (expurgated) in Russia only in 1966–67 and unexpurgated in 1973. It tells of the Devil and his retinue visiting Soviet Russia, where they play practical jokes of metaphysical and political significance. A novel within the novel gives the “true” version of Christ's encounter with Pilate. The result is a joyful philosophical comedy of enormous profundity. The need to rally support in World War II brought a loosening of Communist Party control. The war itself created the opportunity for a large “second wave” of emigration, thus feeding émigré literature. The period from 1946 until the death of Stalin in 1953 was one of severe repression known as the Zhdanovshchina, or Zhdanovism. During this campaign, attacks on “rootless cosmopolitans” involved anti-Semitism and the rejection of all foreign influences on Russian literature. The Soviet practice of samokritika (public denunciation of one's own work) was frequent. Thaws and freezes The years from the death of Stalin until the fall of Nikita Khrushchev in 1964 saw several “thaws” separated by “freezes.” Ilya Ehrenburg's novel Ottepel (1954; The Thaw) provided this term for a period of relative liberalism. In 1956 Khrushchev delivered a famous speech denouncing certain Stalinist crimes. From that time on, it was possible for Russians to perceive orthodox communists as people of the past and to regard dissidents not as holdovers from before the Revolution but as progressives. The harsher years under Leonid Brezhnev following Khrushchev's fall opened with the arrest, trial, and imprisonment of two writers, Andrey Sinyavsky (whose pseudonym was Abram Terts) and Yuly Daniel (pseudonym Nikolay Arzhak), for publishing “anti-Soviet propaganda” abroad. In the years that followed, well-known writers were arrested or, in one way or another, expelled from the Soviet Union, thus generating the third wave of émigré literature. Among those who found themselves in the West were Brodsky, Sinyavsky, Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Aksyonov, Georgy Vladimov, Vladimir Voynovich, and Aleksandr Zinovyev. Significant literary works written in the post-Stalin years include Pasternak's poetic novel set at the time of the Revolution, Doctor Zhivago (first published in Italy in 1957), which sees life's meaning as transcending politics. Sinyavsky's (Sinyavsky, Andrey Donatovich) book-length essay Chto takoye sotsialistichesky realizm? (1956; On Socialist Realism), attacking Socialist Realist aesthetic doctrine and advocating the use of fantasy, and a number of “phantasmagoric works,” including Lyubimov (1961–62; The Makepeace Experiment), were published abroad. Charged with being the author of these works, Sinyavsky was tried and imprisoned in 1966. Some have considered the transcripts of his trial to be one of his most interesting “works.” After his emigration to France in 1973 he published the novel Spokoynoy nochi (1984; Goodnight!) under the name Terts and Osnovy sovetskoy tsivilizatsii (1989; Soviet Civilization: A Cultural History) under the name Sinyavsky. A movement called “village prose” cultivated nostalgic descriptions of rural life. Particularly noteworthy is Valentin Rasputin's elegiac novel Proshchaniye s Matyoroy (1976; Farewell to Matyora) about a village faced with destruction to make room for a hydroelectric plant. The novel's regret for the past and suspicion of the new dramatically marks the difference between village prose and the Socialist-Realist collective farm novel. Yury Trifonov wrote about what he called “the ordeal of ordinary life” in Dom na naberezhnoy (1976; The House on the Embankment) and Starik (1978; The Old Man). Lyudmila Petrushevskaya's plays portray family life; her collection of stories Bessmertnaya lyubov (1988; Immortal Love) could be published only under Mikhail Gorbachev. Works first published in full in the West and in fundamental ways critical of Soviet ideology and culture include Andrey Bitov's experimental novel Pushkinsky dom (1978; Pushkin House), Venedikt Yerofeyev's alcoholic, hallucinatory novel Moskva-Petushki (1977; Moscow to the End of the Line), Zinovyev's Ziyayushchiye vysoty (1976; The Yawning Heights), and Voynovich's satire Zhizn i neobychaynyye priklyucheniya soldata Ivana Chonkina (1975; The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin). Solzhenitsyn (Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Isayevich) first earned fame with Odin den Ivana Denisovicha (1963; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich), an understated novel about the horrors of a Soviet camp. As part of his de-Stalinization campaign, Khrushchev personally saw to its publication. Under Brezhnev, Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the U.S.S.R. Solzhenitsyn's Arkhipelag GULag, 1918–1956: opyt khudozhestvennogo issledovaniya, 3 vol. (1973–75; The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation) is arguably the greatest work of Soviet prose. It narrates the history of the Soviet camp system with controlled fury and in an ironic mode reminiscent of the 18th-century English historian Edward Gibbon. Post-Soviet literature Almost no one expected the Soviet Union to come suddenly to an end. The effects of this event on literature have been enormous. The period of glasnost (verbal openness) under Gorbachev and the subsequent collapse of the U.S.S.R. led first to a dramatic easing and then to the abolition of censorship. Citizenship was restored to émigré writers, and Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia. Doctor Zhivago and We were published in Russia, as were the works of Nabokov, Solzhenitsyn, Voynovich, and many others. The divisions between Soviet and émigré and between official and unofficial literature came to an end. Russians experienced the heady feeling that came with absorbing, at great speed, large parts of their literary tradition that had been suppressed and with having free access to Western literary movements. A Russian form of postmodernism, fascinated with a pastiche of citations, arose, along with various forms of radical experimentalism. During this period, readers and writers sought to understand the past, both literary and historical, and to comprehend the chaotic, threatening, and very different present. Additional Reading General histories and handbooks of Russian literature include D.S. Mirsky, A History of Russian Literature, from Its Beginnings to 1900, ed. by Francis J. Whitfield (1958); Victor Terras (ed.), Handbook of Russian Literature (1985); Victor Terras, A History of Russian Literature (1991); and Charles A. Moser (ed.), The Cambridge History of Russian Literature, rev. ed. (1992).Histories of specific periods or genres are found in the following texts: Dmitrij iževskij (Dimitrij Tschižewskij), History of Russian Literature from the Eleventh Century to the End of the Baroque (1960, reprinted 1981); N.K. Gudzǐy (N.K. Gudzi), History of Early Russian Literature, ed. by Susan Wilbur Jones (1949, reissued 1970; originally published in Russian, 2nd ed., 1941); Simon Karlinsky, Russian Drama from Its Beginnings to the Age of Pushkin (1985); William Edward Brown, A History of Seventeenth-Century Russian Literature (1980), A History of 18th-Century Russian Literature (1980), and A History of Russian Literature of the Romantic Period, 4 vol. (1986); William Mills Todd III, Fiction and Society in the Age of Pushkin (1986); William Mills Todd III (ed.), Literature and Society in Imperial Russia, 1800–1914 (1978); Marc Slonim, The Epic of Russian Literature from Its Origins Through Tolstoy (1950, reissued 1975), and Modern Russian Literature from Chekhov to the Present (1953); Vladimir Markov, Russian Futurism: A History (1968); Edward J. Brown, Russian Literature Since the Revolution, rev. and enlarged ed. (1982); Gleb Struve, Russian Literature Under Lenin and Stalin, 1917–1953 (1971); Boris Groys (boris Groĭs), The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond (1992; originally published in German, 1988); John Garrard and Carol Garrard, Inside the Soviet Writers' Union (1990); Victor Erlich, Russian Formalism: History, Doctrine, 3rd ed. (1981); Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel, 2nd ed. (1985); Kathleen F. Parthé, Russian Village Prose: The Radiant Past (1992); and Harold B. Segel, Twentieth-Century Russian Drama: From Gorky to the Present, updated ed. (1993).Studies providing interesting general ideas about the tradition include Robert Louis Jackson, Dostoevsky's Underground Man in Russian Literature (1958, reprinted 1981); Rufus W. Mathewson, Jr., The Positive Hero in Russian Literature, 2nd ed. (1975); Caryl Emerson, Boris Godunov: Transpositions of a Russian Theme (1986); Gary Saul Morson (ed.), Literature and History: Theoretical Problems and Russian Case Studies (1986); and Andrew Baruch Wachtel, An Obsession with History: Russian Writers Confront the Past (1994).Among the useful anthologies of Russian literature are Serge A. Zenkovsky (ed. and trans.), Medieval Russia's Epics, Chronicles, and Tales, rev. and enlarged ed. (1974), which contains many useful commentaries; Harold B. Segel (ed. and trans.), The Literature of Eighteenth-Century Russia, 2 vol. (1967), with an excellent history in vol. 1 and useful commentaries throughout; George Gibian (ed.), The Portable Nineteenth-Century Russian Reader (1993); Clarence Brown (ed.), The Portable Twentieth-Century Russian Reader, rev. and updated ed. (1993); Helena Goscilo and Byron Lindsey (eds.), Glasnost: An Anthology of Russian Literature Under Gorbachev (1990); Helena Goscilo (ed.), Balancing Acts: Contemporary Stories by Russian Women (1989); and Dimitri Obolensky (ed.), The Penguin Book of Russian Verse, rev. ed. (1965, reprinted as The Heritage of Russian Verse, 1976). |
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