scholarly journals On innovativeness of Maksim Gorky

Author(s):  
Lidia A. Spiridonova

In Soviet literary criticism, Gorky's innovation was usually associated with his revolutionary activity, calling him “the first proletarian writer in time and rank” and “the founder of socialist realism”. The cliches of Marxist-Leninist aesthetics were so tightly attached to the writer that they survived to this day. The paper considers the work of Gorky from new methodological standpoint, since the writer from the very beginning of his activity sought to create his own method of depicting life from the perspective of the future. Analyzing the novel “Mother”, which was considered the first work of socialist realism, the author shows that this novel was inextricably connected with a philosophical and aesthetic system of the Silver Age, and its genre (utopia novel) is consonant with the novels by A. Bogdanov “Red Star” and F. Sologub “Legend in the making”. The organic connection of Nietzscheanism with Marxism, and God-building with a realistic description of the revolutionary movement in the working settlement, was truly innovative. Gorky's sincere faith in socialism, which could become a new religion of the working person, was first expressed in an art work as a utopian dream of a happy future for Russia. Socialist mythology, combined with realism and romanticism, created an innovative method of depicting reality, which is characteristic of “Tales of Italy”, an autobiographical trilogy and “The Life of Klim Samgin”. Gorky's work came to be a link between the culture of the Silver Age and Soviet literature.

1974 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 76-79
Author(s):  
Earl W. Jennison

The heart and soul of a society is often much more fully revealed in its imaginative literature than in such self-conscious statements as political manifestos or constitutions. It is this soul-baring quality of imaginative literature which explains, even if it does not justify, the primacy in Soviet literary criticism of political and ideological concerns over such factors as psychological honesty and aesthetic efficacy. The neglect of the transpolitical, transideological subtleties of literary art makes Soviet literary criticism seem very mechanical and heavy-handed to most non-Marxists. Of course this kind of critical analysis is not inappropriate to some of the hack work generated under the rubric of “socialist realism.” However, Western critics are often equally ideological in their own way, even towards Soviet literature of intrinsic artistic merit. Indeed, this essay itself runs the risk of abusing art by subjecting a charming little Soviet story, “Instructress Asta,” to political analysis.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 34-38
Author(s):  
Eduard Osvaldovich Krank

The article is devoted to the problem of the genre of V. Bryusov’s novel “The Fiery Angel”. The purpose of the article is to assert that the author uses the tradition of the medieval German novel in a stylized capacity. Bryusov needs the method of literary mystification not so much to hide relationships of real people who served as prototypes for the heroes of the novel, but to establish an allusive cultural connection between Germany in the era of M. Luther and the “Silver Age” of Russian literature, with its interest in issues of religion and gender. The relevance of the study dictated by the attention of the modern reader to the literature of the “Silver Age”, as well as a special interest in metamorphoses that the novel genre undergoes in the era of modernism and postmodernism. The research materials are the text of the novel, biographical information related to the personalities of prototypes, reviews of literary criticism, as well as literary studies. We use descriptive, hermeneutic, synchronic, diachronic, historical-genetic, comparative, analytical and biographical methods in this work. The results of the study and their discussion consist in reflection on the paradigm in defining the genre of the novel, in pointing out the tradition of literary mystification, which rises to the “Belkin’s Tales” by A. Pushkin. Also important is the circumstances that the religious searches inherent in the prototypes of the heroes of the novel are akin to Protestant moods of the Reformation. As a result, we conclude that the author, because of the anthropological unity of the archetypal situation, continued the literary tradition of the German Middle Ages. It is laid down in the basis of the plots of both V. Bryusov’s novel and the first part of “Faust” by I.W. Goethe, as well as A. Belyi’s novel “Petersburg”, in which the love triangle invariant and its transformation from prototypes to characters is represented by the same mechanism as is characteristic of the “Fiery Angel”. The assertion of this way of implementing a behavioral scheme (anthropological invariant) in the process of transforming prototypes into characters is the innovation of our work.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-32
Author(s):  
Konstantin S. Pozdnyakov

The topic of the work is relevant, since at present the Russian literary criticism is rediscovering the features of the artistic expression of Soviet literature of the 1920s. The aim of the study was to discover the features of the poetics of Greens text that allow us to identify the novel under consideration as expressionist. Research methods used in the article: comparative-historical and semantic analysis of texts. At the beginning of the article, the research of the novella Gray Car by A.V. Polupanova and L.U. Zvonareva is considered, inaccuracies and obvious factual errors are noted, indicating a lack of understanding of the text, a mixture of such forms of expression of the authors position (according to B.O. Korman) as hero-narrator and author-narrator. As an empirical material, in addition to the novel by A. Green, the works of G. Mayrink, F. Kafka and L. Perutz were used. As a result of consideration of the novels the Golem, Castle, the Cossack and the Nightingale, the Wizard of judgment was allocated with the following features art in the world of the expressionist literary works: a) the problem of identity associated, as a rule, the main character; 2) semema madness, which became a constant for expressionist texts; 3) mysterious (hidden) order of a seemingly chaotic world; 4) the lack of success of speech acts. All these features were found in the story of A. Green, so it seems that the new approach to the work of the writer as a representative of Russian expressionism, demonstrates its consistency and can be contrasted with the more traditional consideration of the authors prose as a super-textual unity.


The article discusses the features of the concept of Ukrainian literature teacher and professor of KhINO, the head of the department of the history of Ukrainian literature (1933–1936) of the Kharkov University V. Koryak (1889–1937). His aesthetic views combined Marxism, sociological criticism and the ideas of building “proletarian culture”. The sociological concept of the dynamics of the national literary process and the interpretation of works of art reflected the Marxist approach to the analysis of writing and significantly influenced the Ukrainian literary criticism of the 1920s, as well as its further transformations during the period of “socialist realism”. V. Koryak taught at KhINO since 1925, and having defended his thesis, he first became the so-called “red professor”, from 1927 - a visiting professor, while continuing to teach the course of history of Ukrainian literature. He was also the head of the Soviet literature room at the T. G. Shevchenko Institute of Literature, and from 1933 to 1936, after the restoration of Kharkov University, he headed the department of the history of Ukrainian literature. The basic terms of the sociological concept of V. Koryak were made public in the textbook of Ukrainian Literature (1928), which was used to teach this subject. This course was the first attempt to synthesize the problematic issues of "Marxist literary criticism" to create an original concept of the history of Ukrainian literature based on the sociological method. Negative and positive features of V. Koryak’s literary-critical concept were reflected to the greatest extent in his interpretation of T. G. Shevchenko’s works. A significant amount of his extraordinary ideas can also be traced in the interpretation of the works of other Ukrainian writers.


Author(s):  
Р.Я. Фидарова ◽  
И.А. Кайтова ◽  
I.A. Kaytova

Осетинская советская литература в 60-80-е гг. XX в. в соответствии со своими эстетическими принципами убедительно отражала как социально-исторические условия жизни своего субъекта – осетинского народа, так и духовно-нравственные особенности бытия советского общества, обусловленные диалектикой его мировоззренческих взглядов на социальную и национальную действительность. Существенная эволюция общественного сознания была вызвана политической атмосферой в послевоенные годы, в частности, во второй половине 1950-х гг., «оттепелью» 1960-х и назревающими уже в первой половине 1980-х гг. тенденциями в общественной жизни и общественном сознании, приведшими к перестройке во второй половине 1980-х гг. Важнейшим «инструментарием» для осетинской советской литературы в 60-80-е гг. ХХ в. явился ее ведущий художественный метод – социалистический реализм. Значительная эволюция общественного сознания привела к качественным изменениям художественной литературы, сказавшимся прежде всего на сущности и особенностях социалистического реализма. В предложенной статье социалистический реализм рассматривается как художественный метод и как художественное направление. Как метод социалистический реализм остается верным своему историческому предназначению и продолжает традиции первого, «жесткого» типа, который, согласно нашей концепции, функционировал в 30-50-е гг. ХХ в. Второй тип социалистического реализма ярко проявился в 60-80-е гг. При этом ведущие его принципы (партийность, тенденциозность), определившие его «жесткий» характер в первом типе, в 60-80-е гг. начинают несколько ослабевать, в художественном сознании появляются элементы философского осмысления, обобщения. Это ведет к углублению аналитического начала в осетинской советской литературе, к расширению ее философского, нравственно-этического кругозора. Данный процесс порождает серьезнейшие качественные изменения в жанровой системе осетинской литературы. В частности, зарождается новый тип романа – роман-миф. Кроме того, эти процессы, определившие качество и характер социалистического реализма второго типа как художественного направления в осетинской советской литературе, дали нам возможность определить данное направление как философско-мифологическое, т.к. роман-миф, наиболее ярко олицетворяющий эволюцию реалистического типа мышления, структурно формируется на мифологических сюжетах и с участием мифологических героев. Ossetian Soviet literature in the 60-80s of the XXth century in accordance with its aesthetic principles convincingly reflected both the socio-historical conditions of life of its subject – the Ossetian people, and the spiritual and moral features of the existence of Soviet society, due to the dialectics of its ideological views on social and national reality. A significant evolution of social consciousness was caused by the political atmosphere in the postwar years, in particular, in the second half of the 1950s, the "thaw" of the 1960s and brewing in the first half of the 1980s. trends in public life and public consciousness that led to the restructuring in the second half of the 1980s, the most Important "tools" for Ossetian Soviet literature in the 60-80-ies of XX century was its leading artistic method of socialist realism. A significant evolution of public consciousness led to qualitative changes in fiction, which affected primarily the essence and features of socialist realism. In the proposed article socialist realism is considered as an artistic method and as an artistic direction. As the method of socialist realism remains true to its historical mission and continues the tradition of the first "hard" type, which, according to our concept, functioned in 30-50-ies of XX century the Second type of socialist realism is evident in the 60-80s While leading his principles (partisanship, bias), defined the "hard" character in the first type, in the 60-80s a few start to weaken, in the artistic consciousness there are elements of philosophical reflection, generalization. This leads to the deepening of the analytical principle in Ossetian Soviet literature, to the expansion of its philosophical, moral and ethical outlook. This process generates serious qualitative changes in the genre system of the Ossetian literature. In particular, a new type of novel – a myth novel-is emerging. In addition, these processes, which determined the quality and character of the socialist realism of the second type as an artistic direction in Ossetian Soviet literature, gave us the opportunity to define this direction as a philosophical and mythological, as well as the novel-myth, which most vividly embodies the evolution of the realistic type of thinking, is structurally formed on mythological subjects and with the participation of mythological heroes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 268-276
Author(s):  
Irlan S. Khugaev

Hadji-Murat Muguev (1893-1968) was a prominent representative of Soviet literature, an Ossetian by origin who wrote in Russian. As a veteran of three wars (WWI, the Civil War, and WWII), Hadji-Murat Muguev devoted most of his works to military topics. The Wild Terek (1937-1968), a historical novel about the Caucasian War of the 19th century, is considered his magnum opus. The topic proposed herein is of interest due to, first, the desirability of a new reading of the text of Soviet literature, especially as regards its historical concept; secondly, a vivid ethno-cultural character of the material; thirdly, a peculiar poetic manner of translingual (written in Russian) literature of peoples of the Russian Caucasus. It is noteworthy that the novel has not received due consideration by contemporary literary criticism; as for the Soviet period, the then critics were carried away with the major ideological issues provoked by its contents and thus disregarded its imaginary characters, internal framework and particular motifs that worked for the fundamental idea. In this article, by relying on a number of key factors, we intend to highlight some ideologic discourses of Muguevs text referring to the authors humanistic system and signs of forthcoming peace between the peoples of the Caucasus and Russia.


Author(s):  
Alison Milbank

Scottish fiction about the Reformation is concerned with the mechanics of historical change, which are rendered through a series of enchanted books and people discussed in Chapter 8. In the novel, The Monastery, describing the Dissolution and Reformation, Scott gothicizes the Bible as a magic book and the White Lady as its guardian to dramatize the mysterious nature of religious change, the dependence of the future on a Gothic past, and the need for interpretation. In Old Mortality, Scott’s protagonist escapes the frozen dualities of Covenanter and Claverhouse, revealing historical change itself as problematic in Humean terms and requiring a leap of faith. James Hogg contests this presentation of the Covenanters by re-enchanting them as supposed brownies, as mediators of history and nature, and in his Three Perils of Man reprises Scott’s wizard Michael Scott pitted against Roger Bacon and his ‘black book’ the Bible to present the Reformation as an eternal reality.


Author(s):  
Charles Dickens ◽  
Dennis Walder

Dombey and Son ... Those three words conveyed the one idea of Mr. Dombey's life. The earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in, and the sun and moon were made to give them light.' The hopes of Mr Dombey for the future of his shipping firm are centred on his delicate son Paul, and Florence, his devoted daughter, is unloved and neglected. When the firm faces ruin, and Dombey's second marriage ends in disaster, only Florence has the strength and humanity to save her father from desolate solitude. This new edition contains Dickens's prefaces, his working plans, and all the original illustrations by ‘Phiz’. The text is that of the definitive Clarendon edition. It has been supplemented by a wide-ranging Introduction, highlighting Dickens's engagement with his times, and the touching exploration of family relationships which give the novel added depth and relevance.


Author(s):  
Émile Zola

Did possessing and killing amount to the same thing deep within the dark recesses of the human beast? La Bete humaine (1890), is one of Zola’s most violent and explicit works. On one level a tale of murder, passion and possession, it is also a compassionate study of individuals derailed by atavistic forces beyond their control. Zola considered this his ‘most finely worked’ novel, and in it he powerfully evokes life at the end of the Second Empire in France, where society seemed to be hurtling into the future like the new locomotives and railways it was building. While expressing the hope that human nature evolves through education and gradually frees itself of the burden of inherited evil, he is constantly reminding us that under the veneer of technological progress there remains, always, the beast within. This new translation captures Zola's fast-paced yet deliberately dispassionate style, while the introduction and detailed notes place the novel in its social, historical, and literary context.


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