By Tricia Virgo
Russian literature is
defined as the body of written works produced in the Russian language, beginning with the Christianisation
of the country in the late
10th century.
It can be broken down
into four periods — Old Russian, Imperial,
post-Revolutionary, and post-Soviet. The reforms of Peter the Great who
rapidly westernised 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, thus denying the
status of literature to all works prior to that. 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. Russian literature, especially of the Imperial and post-Revolutionary
periods, has as its defining characteristics an intense concern with
philosophical problems, and a constant self-consciousness about its
relationship to the cultures of the West.
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.
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. But to set it in context, I thought I should give you a quick
overview of the previous 900 years.
Old Russian Literature
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 are the ancestors of the
Ukrainian and Belarusian as well as of the Russian people of today. Finally,
works of this era are not necessarily defined as literature as
they were generally written to serve ecclesiastic or utilitarian purposes with
no aesthetic function.
In
fact, the most significant literary activity of this period consisted largely
of translating or adapting borrowed works. By the by, it is worth noting 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
this 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 including versions of the four Gospels, books of monastic rules,
homilies, and prayers reflecting the religious interests of the clerical
community. From a literary point of view, the best work of Old Russian
literature is the The Song of Igor’s Campaign, a
sort of epic
poem dealing with Prince Igor’s raid against the Polovtsy, 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 Pushkin. The
manuscript was destroyed in the Moscow fire of 1812; however, a copy made for
Catherine the Great survived. The poem’s authenticity has often been challenged
but is now generally accepted. Incidentally, the opera Prince Igor by Borodin
is loosely based on this poem
The
next significant event in Russian history was the uniting of Russian lands in
the late 15th /early 16th centuries. Ivan the Terrible led a campaign against
the old aristocracy and works of literature reflect this political situation –
celebrating victories and emphasising the Russian way of life based around
Moscow and not Kiev. Along with the
title tsar (not Caesar) and the claim that Orthodox Russia was the only
remaining true Christian state, this doctrine of Moscow being a third Rome came
to justify Russian imperial ambitions and to legitimise the idea that it was Russia’s
destiny to save and rule the world.
From a literary point of view, the
most remarkable work of this period is the correspondence between Andrey
Mikhaylovich, Prince Kurbsky and
Ivan the Terrible. 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
powerful style, which included citations from Cicero, he also denounced Russian
cultural backwardness, thus earning a reputation as Russia’s first “Westerniser” (as well
as first “dissident” and first “émigré” writer).
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 lack of culture as we understand it.
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 a monk educated at
the Kiev Academy. He played a leading role in introducing poetry and drama
Into the literary culture,
accompanied by the beginnings of prose fiction.
Imperial Literature - The Westernisation
of Russia
Peter the Great’s radical and rapid Westernisation 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. 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. 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.
Catherine the Great
corresponded with Voltaire and Diderot and sponsored the arts, but as far as literature is concerned,
her reign is significant for real accomplishment in Russian poetry. Excellent
verse was produced and Gavrila Derzhavin is generally considered to
be Russia’s greatest 18th-century poet. He is best known for his odes, one of which praises the
virtues of Empress Catherine while alternating with depictions of the low
amusements of courtiers. Prose
fiction began to appear in print only in the mid-18th century with Nikolay Karamzin being the dominant figure,
whose importance also lies in his contribution to the Russian literary language
as his writing reflected the language of high society.
The 19th century in Russia
is one of the most fruitful periods in world literature. Several features
distinguish the literary culture of these years:
1. Literature by and large enjoyed
greater prestige in Russia than in the West, and its achievements were
sometimes thought to be the justification for the Russian people’s very
existence.
2. Literature and criticism were expected to fulfil functions, such as philosophical, moral, and religious analysis,
that in Europe were typically assigned to distinct disciplines. One can see why the highest achievement of Russian literature
was probably the philosophical novel.
3. In the 19th (and still
more in the 20th) century, politics and literature were intimately connected,
and a writer or critic was often called upon to be a political prophet.
The 19th century began with
the “Golden Age” of Russian poetry, with noted names being Vasily Zhukovsky, Anton Delvig,
Yevgeny Baratynsky, Konstantin Batyushkov and of course Aleksandr Pushkin.
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, but
his verse does not read well in translation.
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.
Nikolay Gogol is one of the finest comic authors of world literature and is
best known for his short stories such as The Overcoat
Beginning about 1860,
Russian culture was dominated by a group known as the “intelligentsia”. This
group of people felt that they owed their primary allegiance not to their profession or class but to men and women with whom
they shared a common set of beliefs, including a fanatic faith in revolution,
atheism, and materialism. They insisted that literature was a form of socialist
propaganda and rejected aesthetic criteria or apolitical works. Writers including Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and
Chekhov were not surprisingly all contemptuous of the intelligentsia.
Having been imprisoned in Siberia for political activity, in Crime and Punishment, a philosophical and psychological account of
a murder, Dostoyevsky examines the tendency of the intelligentsia to regard
themselves as superior to ordinary people and as beyond traditional morality. The Possessed, a novel based on Russian terrorism, is famous as the work that
most accurately predicted 20th-century totalitarianism.
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 ideas are illustrated
and explicitly expressed in War and Peace, set in the time of the Napoleonic
wars, and in Anna Karenina, which applies this prosaic view of life to marriage, the family,
and work. 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, and some brilliant novellas, many of which were published
posthumously.
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 A Sportsman’s Sketches, which contributed to the climate
leading to the abolition of serfdom. His most distinguished work is Fathers and Sons
While Tolstoy abandoned prose,
Chekhov, one of the greatest short story writers in world literature, remained
loyal to it. Indeed, he reinterpreted it, stressing the moral necessity of
ordinary virtues such as daily kindness, cleanliness, politeness, work, sobriety,
paying one’s debts, and avoiding self-pity. In his hundreds of stories and
novellas, which he wrote while practicing medicine, Chekhov adopts something of
a clinical approach to ordinary life, combined with meticulous observation and a broad sympathy for diverse points of view. His
plays are the high point of Russian drama, including The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard.
Twentieth Century
The Bolshevik seizure of power in 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 sub literary 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,
but they were also expected to fulfil the dictates of the Communist Party to
produce propaganda on specific, often rather narrow, themes of current interest to
it.
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. The union became the state’s instrument of
control over literature, and expulsion from it meant literary death. Maxim Gorky became the official founder
of Socialist Realism which in 1934 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’. As a result, 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, works smuggled abroad for publication, and
works not published until decades after they were written.
The harsh years under Leonid Brezhnev opened with the arrest, trial, and imprisonment of two writers, Andrey Sinyavsky and Yuly Daniel 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. From a literary point of
view, unofficial literature clearly surpasses official literature.
Ivan
Bunin
was the first Russian writer
awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature.
He was noted for the strict artistry with which he carried on the classical
Russian traditions in the writing of prose and poetry. The texture of his poems
and stories, sometimes referred to as "Bunin brocade", is considered
to be one of the richest in the language.
Joseph
Brodsky
Was a poet and essayist awarded the
Nobel Prize for his all-embracing authorship
Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn
First earned fame with 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 The Gulag Archipelago, is arguably the greatest work of Soviet prose.
Boris
Pasternak
His poetic novel set at the time of the
Revolution, Doctor Zhivago sees life’s meaning as transcending politics and is one of the more significant literary works written in
the post-Stalin years
Post Soviet
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 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 was 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.
Vladimir
Nabokov
Was a noted butterfly expert but is
probably best known for his novel Lolita
Vladimir
Voynovich
Is known as a satirical writer, poet,
playwright and journalist
The end of the 20th century proved a
difficult period for Russian literature, with relatively few distinct voices.
Although censorship was lifted and writers could now freely express their
thoughts, the political and economic chaos of the 1990s affected the book
market and literature heavily. The book printing industry descended into
crisis, the number of printed book copies dropped several times in comparison
to Soviet era, and it took about a decade to revive.
Among the most discussed authors of
this period were Victor Pelevin, who gained popularity with first short stories and then novels,
novelist and playwright Vladimir Sorokin, and the poet Dmitry Prigov. A relatively new
trend in Russian literature is that female short story writers Tatyana Tolstaya (incidentally a
descendant of Tolstoy)and Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, and novelist Lyudmila Ulitskaya have come into prominence. The tradition of the classic Russian novel
continues with such authors as Mikhail Shishkin and Vasily Aksyono.
In the 21st century, a new generation
of Russian authors has appeared differing greatly from the postmodernist
Russian prose of the late 20th century, which lead critics to speak about “new
realism”. Having grown up after the fall of the Soviet Union, the "new
realists" write about everyday life, but without using the mystical and
surrealist elements of their predecessors. Names include Ilja Stogoff, Zakhar Prilepin, Alexander Karasyov, Arkadi Babchenko, Vladimir
Lorchenkov and Alexander Snegiryov.
But I regret that I can’t tell you very much about any of them!
Article based on Encyclopaedia
Britannia Online, Wikipedia and a few literature-based websites
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