Charles Moser

The nineteenth century: the natural school and its aftermath, 1840–55

The 1840s – that “marvellous decade,” in Paul Annenkov’s phrase – occupy a special place in the historical memory of the Russian intelligentsia. For most of its length the decade was a time of great philosophical, cultural, and literary beginnings, which then came to an abrupt ending in the so-called “epoch of censorship terror” commencing with the European revolutions of 1848 and continuing through Russia’s losing involvement in the Crimean war of 1853–6. The second portion of the years from 1840 to 1855 transformed the entire period from a beginning to something more like a transition, from the great years of romanticism to the time of the Russian realists who would win for Russian literature a worldwide reputation. It was also a period of continuing transition from an age of poetry to an epoch when prose writing dominated the literary arena. Philosophically, the early 1840s were a time when young Russians eagerly followed and endlessly discussed all the latest theories, emanating especially from Germany. Young people formally enrolled in universities found it much more interesting to spend their hours participating in small “circles” and all-night debates about the good, the true and the beautiful, than attending classes. That frame of mind is epitomized in Turgenev’s vignette of an instance when he and Belinsky were summoned to dinner by Belinsky’s wife and the critic objected to being interrupted for a meal when the two of them had not yet settled the question of God’s existence.

The nineteenth century: romanticism, 1820–40

The decades between 1820 and 1840 witnessed simultaneously the zenith of Russian romanticism and the first stages of Russian literatures greatest period, which extended from approximately 1820 to the time of the First World War. In terms of genres, Russian romanticism began with a strong emphasis on poetry, but in the course of its development shifted toward prose. It was also during the romantic period that the Russian writer began to view himself as normally an adversary of the existing order. Another important change occurred in the writers status. Atmospheric nature descriptions, intriguing dialogues between Maria and Mazeppa, and an effective impressionistic description of the battle of Poltava are highpoints of Pushkins Poltava. Although some may hold that Pushkins narrative poetry, especially Eugene Onegin and The Bronze Horseman, are his most significant achievements, he possibly made his greatest contribution to Russian literature through his lyrics. Mikhail Lermontovs death in 1841 marks the end of the Golden Age of Russian poetry.

The nineteenth century: the age of realism, 1855–80

The zenith of Russian realistic prose is treated here as beginning in 1855, a date of political significance, the year in which Nicholas I passed from the scene, but also of literary importance, as the year which saw the publication of Chernyshevsky’s Esthetic Relations of Art to Reality . That essay formulated the principles upon which literary critics, by then quite numerous, would judge and interpret the literary masterpieces shortly to be produced. Chernyshevsky’s was a straight-forwardly materialist esthetic, based on the central propositions that “the beautiful is life” and that art is in every meaningful sense inferior to a reality subject to rational comprehension. His critical followers elaborated upon his ideas with such enthusiasm that by 1865 his doctrine had become the dominant critical view. Even those numerous critics and even more numerous writers who rejected Chernyshevsky’s approach had to take it into serious account, and in this sense his ideas defined the course of the literary discussion in large measure until about 1870. The years from 1855 to 1880 were the time when the Russian realists flourished. A mere listing of names is sufficient to make the point: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Goncharov, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Pisemsky, Ostrovsky, Leskov – the literary careers of all these reached their peak during this quarter-century. It was also a stimulating period for criticism, with critics of sufficient stature at least to compare with the writers they interpreted: Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov and Pisarev among the radicals, Grigorev among their opponents.

The literature of old Russia, 988–1730

The story of Russian literature begins with a date of great significance for Russian political and cultural history: the year 988, when the ruler of Kievan Rus officially accepted Christianity as the new faith of the principality. At that point there was no written literature in Rus, but by his action Prince Vladimir laid the foundations of what we now call medieval Russian literature, even though it would not come into real being – so far as we know from what has reached us after the destruction wrought by the Mongol invasion – for some years thereafter. But the eastern Slavs received an alphabet designed by SS. Constantine-Cyril and Methodius, and also fell heir to the rich Byzantine cultural heritage which had been and would be translated from the Greek. When we speak of “literature” in the old Russian period, however, we must understand it as something quite different from our notions of “literature” in the twentieth century. In the first place, most old Russian literature was not what we would consider fictional, or at least it presented itself as dealing with fact and reality. In the earliest period one of the leading literary genres was the chronicle (exemplified by the Primary Chronicle) which built upon the achievements of the Byzantine historians. This genre by its very nature claimed to be factual even though it contained some clearly fictional (or at least non-factual) elements. Another leading genre was hagiography, which dealt with biographical accounts of the lives of Russia’s holy men and women: if a saint’s life contained fantastic elements, they were meant to be taken seriously, and not regarded as fiction.

Turn of a century: modernism, 1895–1925

The period from 1895 to 1925, arguably the most complex in the entire history of Russian literature, may be characterized as the era of modernism in its various manifestations: decadence, symbolism, avant-gardism, futurism, acmeism, formalism, and a number of other doctrines, all of which were formulated by writers acutely conscious of culture as an entity created by human minds. The beginnings of Russian modernism are generally traced to an important critical piece of 1893 by Dmitry Merezhkovsky entitled On the reasons for the decline and on the new currents in contemporary Russian literature , an article which defined the new mood of the Russian intelligentsia, now prepared for a quite different sort of literature than it had welcomed theretofore. When modernism in its various forms did prevail, it held the stage for some time, even past the political cataclysms of the First World War and the October revolution: the literature of the early 1920s which dealt with these events still remained modernist in its approach until about 1925. The year 1925 functions as a dividing point in literary terms for several reasons, of which two may be noted here. First, in that year the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union passed a resolution enunciating a comprehensive position on questions of literature and art. Although it did not actually exert its control at that stage over such matters, it asserted its right to do so in the future, and eventually did so.

The eighteenth century: neoclassicism and the Enlightenment, 1730–90

Although those who came first chronologically in the history of eighteenth-century Russian literature – Antiokh Kantemir and Vasily Trediakovsky – initially wished to effect a radical break with their medieval tradition, much as Peter the Great had done in the political sphere, they could not manage it immediately. They initiated the transition to a modern literature, but it would take some time to accomplish, for the greatest literary figure of mid-century, Mikhail Lomonosov, was not so anxious as they to jettison native ways, and indeed eventually Trediakovsky too reverted to a greater sense of his roots than he had displayed in his youth, when under strong western European influence. Although the church ceased to nurture literature directly in those years, it still continued to do so indirectly – through its schools, for example, which Lomonosov attended – and took an active hand in developing culture generally. Although literature was evidently much more secular in the eighteenth century than it had been earlier, there was still a serious religious component to it, one which emerged, for example, in Lomonosov’s “Morning meditation” and “Evening Meditation,” in Trediakovsky’s Feoptiya , and in Derzhavin’s ode “God,” promptly translated into many languages. Nor did it prove a simple matter to implant an understanding of literature as fiction: Kantemir had to explain carefully to the readers of his satires that his characters were but literary creations.

The nineteenth century: between realism and modernism, 1880–95

After the powerful impetus given Russian literature by the flowering of realism from 1855 to 1880, the period from 1880 – the year when Dostocvsky completed publication of his last novel, and Tolstoy underwent his spiritual conversion – to 1895 was perhaps inevitably a time of lesser cultural energies, although any epoch which contained writers of the stature of a Chekhov is still a remarkable one. In 1894 Alexander III had died after reigning for almost this entire period and taking very little interest in literary matters, unlike most of his predecessors. In literary terms 1895 is the year which saw the creation of Chekhov’s The Seagull – the first of his four outstanding plays which followed upon a period dedicated for the most part to the short story – a major work which incorporated modernist and even symbolist elements, foreshadowing the cultural revival to come. This transitional period was dominated ideologically by the late Tolstoy, who after his spiritual crisis of 1879–80 turned to moral didacticism in literature, developed a viewpoint which came to be known as Tolstoyanism (advocating primarily non-violent resistance to evil), and gathered disciples about him. In his short story “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” he argued that the most ordinary life is the most terrible life; and in “The Kreutzer Sonata” he suggested that since sexual passion was the root of all evil, human beings might abstain from sexual relations even if this meant the end of the human race.