This is just a summary of notes I made while I read this whopper. Probably very dull to read and very little original thought — just putting it here because I didn’t know what else to do with it.
This is a brilliant, integrated volume which, in its five sections, discusses the history of Russian literature from the medieval period to the present day.
The first section tracks the movement away from purely liturgical texts in the middle ages into more secular forms, displaying ‘the absence of a strongly regimented genre system’, in which aspects such as characterisation, rhetoric and metaphor were developed in unusual ways.
The seventeenth century ‘was a period in which the modern notion of authorship began to emerge.’ One prominent example of this was the texts of Old Believers: compelled by the Schism in the church, writers such as the Archpriest Avvacum created literature which was ‘written in opposition to the Church and the state’ and which ‘circulated in secret.’
The writers of this History are keen to dispel myths of a process of transition or ‘evolution’ between the seventeenth and eighteenth-centuries. In fact, the paucity of published texts in the former meant that writers and readers in the latter had very little awareness of any traditions or examples to draw upon. Instead, they drew on classical examples.
Russian classicists of the eighteenth-century believed that ‘the basic, eternal, and unchangeable literary models were all created in Greece, brought to perfection in Rome, and then revised in seventeenth-century France’.
This period saw ‘attempts to work out an educated prose style’ and there was some debate about the level of formality which should be used in texts. Some opted for a ‘chatty, polite, smooth, modern style.’ The idea of ‘vulgarity’ in prose was one to be avoided at all costs. Karamzin later reduced this to a mroe ‘elegant and ostensibly “simple” prose.’
The seventeenth-century was also filled with literary spats, ‘the use of personal quarrels to articulate a literary system.’ There’s a great deal of boring information about tedious clashes between long-forgotten writers but it is perhaps of interest because of the legacy these disputes left. The flare-ups would ‘persist into the 1810s, Pushkin’s formative years’, and they would clearly have an impact on the way he navigated his own literary landscape.
At this time, despite widening audiences outside of the court, literature was prominently ‘meant for consumption by the monarch, her entourage, and a relatively small group of well-educated figures.’ Throughout, the book is extremely interesting in the way it nails down the relationship between writer and reader throughout the centuries.
This relationship between the state and the writer became more uneasy as the seventeenth-century drew on. The literary journals of the second half of the eighteenth-century served as a forum for banter and satire between literary groups, a discussion in which Catherine the Great took an extremely active part. Despite her progressive role during the period of Enlightenment, Catherine still found space, when her ‘patience for dissent had been stretched thin’, for the brutal suppression of criticism of her autocracy. Radishchev, ‘a remarkable figure in the history of Enlightenment thought and literature . . . used writing in all forms to provoke others into reconsidering fundamental premises underlying beliefs, institutions, and customs.’ Catherine made ‘many highly critical marginal notes’ in her copies of Radishchev’s works and sentenced him to death, later commuting this to exile in Siberia.
It’s really interesting to see the way in which literary techniques developed. Radischev, in his Diary of One Week, an ‘enigmatic and controversial experiment in subjectivity’ pioneered the internal monologue, using inventive and unusual techniques to create voice and portray emotion. He began to ‘disrupt the flow of the narrative’ with experimental punctuation and used fragmented structural features to create a ‘sense of disquiet and impatience.’ These devices ‘also worked at the aural level, allowing the reader to hear the hero’s voice.’ Techniques such as these had apparently been used fairly sparsely before and their impact in creating character and developing an ‘interior landscape’ was huge. We can see their direct influence in later ‘skaz’ narratives like Dostoevsky’s Notes From the Underground.
The novel, despite these experimentations, was slow to gain traction in the eighteenth-century. At this time, the form was viewed as ‘morally dubious’ and was only really used to accommodate swashbuckling adventure stories with two dimensional characters.
The nineteenth-century saw the tentative appearance of women readers and writers in Russian literature. The publications of condescending journals ‘mixing fashions in sleeve styles and lace with prose and poetry’ highlight an incipient recognition of the ‘possibilities of women’s presence’ among the readership.
Karolina Pavlova (whose most famous book A Double Life was recently published in English translation by the Columbia University Press ‘Russian Library’ series) was one of the more prominent women writers and her dreadful treatment at the hands of her contemporaries is a clear indication of the chauvinistic attitude embedded ‘in a culture that deemed [women] unsuited to creative work.’
Women were, however, allowed ‘a place and a voice’ in the vibrant literary salons of the period, in which the ‘ritualised performance’ of album inscription allowed writers and readers to interact directly ‘in an era when professional literary criticism was barely beginning.
The nineteenth-century novel was often used as a project to assert Russian nationalism. We see how ‘foreigners’ became ‘frontline targets for literary fiction.’ Germans bear some of the brunt of this: Leskov creates a character who asserts that ‘Russian flexibility and lack of rigor are more effective than German orderliness and rigidity.’ Tolstoy depicts German officers who are ‘always wrong in their military decisions, whereas Russians are always right.’ Jews and ‘indigenous people’ were, predictably, also prominent targets. This theme obviously continued into the Soviet era.
The History contains several ‘Case Studies’ offering a detailed study of particular ideas such as ‘Duelling Writers’ and ‘Terrorism’. One of the most interesting of these discusses censorship under the tsars and the intricate, often turbulent relationship between autocracy and culture. The ‘irrepressible humour and creativity’ used by writers to ‘evade the system’ of censorship which they lived under is revealing both in terms of authorial integrity and resilience but also in the way it illuminates the fears of the ruling classes and the ‘ramshackle administrative culture’ which often allowed dissent to slip through the cracks.
The section on ‘Terrorism’ discusses how ‘literature and religion provided powerful behavioural models for Russian terrorists.’ We learn how literature both inspired and reacted to terrorist events: Dostoevsky’s scathing treatment of terrorism and particularly the ‘doctrine’ of nihilism in Demons ‘emphasises both the inviolability of each individual life and the unscrupulousness of the terrorist leaders’ tactics.’ Turgenev — who apparently invented the word ‘nihilism’ — was more sympathetic (and was directly mocked by Dostoevsky in Demons).
At the beginning of the nineteenth-century, the tension surrounding authors’ abilities and willingness to turn inward and analyse their own characters autobiographically became apparent. At some level, this kind of soul-baring was seen as improper and undignified. Rousseau’s Confessions, published at the end of the eighteenth-century, seems to have caused huge debate at the beginning of the nineteenth. Writers like Nadezhda Durova, who tackled autobiographical writing with striking insight, had an impact on the works of subsequent authors. Durova’s The Cavalry Maiden is ‘a strong precursor to . . . Tolstoy’s War and Peace’ in the way it tackles scenes of conflict. Another prominent author who turned ‘inwards’ at this time was Herzen. Containing details of his own love affairs, family dramas and ‘the death of his wife’s premature baby’, as well as political and historical analysis, My Past and Thoughts was Herzen’s ‘elevation of the private to the level of the public.’ The book ‘defined the unusual genre of memoir’ for the readers of the time.
When I have more time, I’ll update this with some notes from the book’s final section, on twentieth-century literature. I’m sure all of the avid readers of this will be waiting with bated breath.
