Symbolism
The symbolist movement was born in Russia in the early 1890s, and crossed the border between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. If this current dominated Russian literature for nearly twenty years and was part of the Silver Age, the avant-garde took over from the beginning of the USSR, namely in 1921. Symbolist authors, in poets in particular, write with the idea that they have the power to reveal the world through symbol. Symbolism marks the beginning of the Silver Age. The musical side also allows this explanation of the world.
Symbolism was unquestionably a 19th century phenomenon. Our revolt against symbolism was absolutely logical, because we felt like men and women of the 20th century and did not want to remain prisoners of the past. [1]
New literary trends
Succeeded him and are part of the Silver Age, Acmeism, as well as Futurism. The first movement is fiercely opposed to symbolism by its constructive character from the word, and the role of craftsman which falls to the poet. Although few acmeist authors were published in the twentieth century, it is in this current that the greatest authors such as Kuzmin are to be found. The futurists, on the other hand, are distinguished by their anti-conformism and avant-garde taste. They actively participate in the abstraction of art and, at the same time, create new concepts through language, using meaningless words. The form in poetry becomes fundamental.
Modernism
An avant-garde movement, modernism brings a real change in the conception of forms, like impressionism, which marked a revolution in the field of painting. Modernism comes to find the design of forms and leads to the avant-garde; this is how modernism revolutionized painting. It is no longer a question of making aesthetics useful or committed, since art becomes independent:it no longer serves the tsar, nor politics. Art does not perform a useful function strictly speaking:the authors are supporters of “art for art’s sake” which concerns literature, painting, dance, etc. A certain interest was born in Russian folklore, and a period of openness contributed to the emancipation of artists. New art, which includes modernism, notably represents a modernized orientalism, and concentrates all its interest on form since art represents itself. It is a real period of experimentation.
If the year 1917 marks the abstention from censorship in Russia, it will be brief (from January to October), because the Soviet Union will take care of regulating the literature of the time. The Union of Soviet Writers succeeds the Union of Writers
We cut the object!
We are made to see the world through and through.
We have learned to follow the world backwards, and this reverse movement fills us with joy (regarding the word, we noticed that it can be read backwards, which makes it gives deeper meaning!).
We can change the weight of objects (this eternal earthly attraction), we see suspended buildings and the weight of sounds.
In this way, we give a world with new content…
The literature of emigration
Russian emigration has three waves:the first following the Revolution in 1917, the second after World War II in 1945, and the third in the 1970s, when Russian Jews were allowed to join Israel. . We will mainly focus on the first wave. While the violence resulting from the Revolution reigns in Russia, perpetrators are forced to leave the country and claim to be emigrants. However, these are rather exiled people who are in real danger on Russian soil. As the Russian-speaking readership is limited outside Russia, some authors adopt the language of their host country. Let us quote for example Elsa Triolet (of which Aragon will versify her Russian origin), Joseph Kessel and Nathalie Sarraute who evokes the emigration of her father in her autobiography Enfance . Vladimir Nobokov writes his famous novel Lolita in English. A House in Passy , by Boris Zaïtsev, is the reference in terms of Russian emigration and exiles driven out by the Revolution. If, originally, Boris Zaïtsev wanted to fight against Bolshevism, he too ended up leaving Russia where he was a member of the Union of Russian Writers. From then on, in the Soviet Union, the Union of Soviet Writers only proposed socialist realism as a literary method or poetics. Zaïtsev will be part of the Union of Russian Writers in France. The “Russian nest” or the “Russian islets”, as this house is called in Une Maison à Passy , hosted Boris Zaïtsev when he was in France. We also notice in his work that emigration sought to preserve his culture and his religion from before 1917.
Soviet literature
The literature of the 1920s mainly wrote about socialist realism. From 1917 to 1932, censorship began to rage again and people hardly ever published or wrote. In 1920, less than three thousand books were printed in Russia. War Communism closes the newspapers and the revolution hampers the freedom of the press. Literature is replaced by propaganda in all its forms, new literary reviews are created to replace those closed by the Bolsheviks. If socialist realism dominates the productions, some works are also dedicated to the revolution, or at least have the theme of the revolution:literature must evolve like society. From then on, Russia experimented:it no longer analyzes the psychology of characters as Dostoyevsky did, gets rid of the plot, prefers to construct a novel in an innovative way and break down the boundaries between genres, promotes the documentary novel . The cinema is also a propaganda factor, and it serves as a model for literature which increasingly opts for the fragmentation of the narrative, to violate the text as violence ravages the country.
Satire was quickly reinstated by censorship. Inevitably, clandestine literature emerges:we resort to metaphor, to strategies allowing us to slip through the cracks, and to wonder about the Revolution. The theme of violence remains omnipresent.
The literature of the N.E.P.
The NEP (New Political Economy) was born in the 1920s. After the exile of many Russian intellectuals outside the USSR, the Union of Soviet Writers emerged and acquired prestige. Socialist realism is perceived as a regression in literature, and annihilates the evolution due to the avant-garde:literature becomes a real propaganda tool. Themes and style are therefore imposed and above all controlled. The artistic aesthetic becomes secondary. The NEP ended in 1928, at the start of the Stalinist revolution.
The RAPP
An association of proletarian writers, the RAPP was born in 1925 and lasted until 1932. Post-revolutionary, this association brought together civil servant writers of literature, hired by and in the service of the party. They claim to be futurists and distinguish themselves from intellectuals who mobilize the pen. The Soviet Union publishes only them. In 1934, the Union of Writers organized its first congress. Now their goal is to show that reality is revolutionary. Writers, therefore, adapt to socialist realism… to the point of sometimes becoming bad.
The post-revolutionary period
A double literature has now been set up:the unpublished and the published, which presents a real mediocrity. We retain today the works not published at the time, such as Coeur de chien by Bulgakov. On the party side, if the Writers' Union does not oblige people to write, a writer who remains silent is suspicious, even dangerous. It becomes important to adapt… and quickly.
The struggle between acmeism and symbolism, assuming it is a struggle and not the occupation of an abandoned fortress, has as its main stake the world here below, full of sounds, of colors, endowed with shapes, weight and duration, it has our planet Earth as its stake. Symbolism has ended up filling the world with “correspondences”, it has transformed it into a phantom that only matters insofar as it allows other worlds to show through, it has diminished its immense intrinsic value. . [2]