Russian Literature

C

The 17th Century

A period of political chaos at the beginning of the 17th century marked the end of Muscovite Russia. In literature the new century saw the end of Old Russian culture, with literary efforts directed largely by the church or the tsar, and the beginnings of Western influence. This shift resulted from Russia’s westward expansion, its military conflicts with other European powers, and, late in the century, Tsar Peter the Great’s fascination with European culture. The first printed books appeared, although they were few in number. Almost all were religious in content. Translations (largely from Polish) of adventure tales and romances brought secular (nonreligious) Western culture to a small audience. The traditional genres of Old Russian literature—saints’ lives and historical chronicles—were still alive, although with distinctly secular features. The most notable example of this growing worldliness is Zhitie protopopa Avvakuma (1672-1673; The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum). In his biography, Avvakum forcefully defends the values of tradition in the face of change. He does so in a racy, vivid language that owes less to traditional Church Slavonic than to the spoken Russian of his day.

For the first time, Russian poets composed verses in imitation of Western models, and the first plays by a Russian, written by Symeon Polotsky, appeared in 1678 and 1679. In fiction the influence of Western adventure tales (such as Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes) is evident in works such as Povest’ o Savve Grudtsyne (The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn, 1660?) and Povest’ o Frole Skobeeve (The Tale of Frol Skobeev, late 17th century). The former is a moralistic story, but the latter is written purely for entertainment, presenting the adventures of a rogue in the manner of the picaresque novel.

III

Modern Russian Literature

Modern Russian literature emerged as writers began to develop a distinctly Russian style of writing. By the 18th century written Russian finally came into wide use, replacing Old Church Slavonic. Rulers such as Peter the Great and Catherine the Great made efforts to promote literature, and their efforts played an important role in enabling writers to flourish.

A

The 18th Century

Peter the Great, who reigned from 1682 to 1725, began a process of Europeanizing Russia’s upper class by introducing Western ideas and practices. This process continued under Peter’s successors in the remainder of the 18th century. As Western education spread among this small class of landed gentry, a taste for literature developed. Empress Catherine II (Catherine the Great), who reigned from 1763 to 1796, was herself a playwright, and she made her court a center of literary activity. The most influential literary models were French, but as the century progressed, Russian writers began to find their own voice. The 18th century was not a period of great creativity in Russia, but it prepared a foundation for modern literature by introducing a variety of purely secular genres in prose and poetry and by producing these in Russian rather than in Old Church Slavonic.

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The major figure in Russian intellectual life in the 18th century was Mikhail Lomonosov, who rose from peasant origins to become a scientist and writer. Lomonosov attempted to clarify the relations between Old Church Slavonic, which was the traditional written language of Russia, and the spoken Russian of the day. He proposed high, middle, and low styles, each to be used for different genres: for example, high for heroic poems and odes, middle for drama and pastoral poetry, and low for comedy and epigrams. The greatest poet of the age was Gavrila Derzhavin, whose sonorous lyrics mixed high and low literary language and combined elevated sentiments with prosaic details. Denis Fonvizin dominated the drama. His plays Brigadir (written 1768-1769; published 1790; The Brigadier) and Nedorosl’ (1782; The Minor) satirized the manners and morals of the upper classes.

Original prose fiction developed more slowly than poetry or drama, and most prose imitated European romances or adventure tales. One of the most interesting nonfiction works of the period was Puteshestvie iz Peterburga v Moskvu (1790; Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow) by Aleksandr Radishchev. The work is a furious protest against landowners’ abuses of the peasants who farmed their land. It earned its author a ten-year exile to Siberia. Nikolay Karamzin established a Russian prose style in his travel writings and his Istoriia gosudarstva rossiiskogo (1818-1824; History of the Russian State). His sentimental story “Bednaia Liza” (1792; “Poor Liza”) largely imitated popular French stories, but it introduced psychological motivation to Russian fiction.

B

The 19th Century

The 19th century is the period of Russian literature most familiar to Western readers. It was during this century that such literary giants as Aleksandr Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Nikolay Gogol, Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, and Anton Chekhov wrote most of their masterpieces.

B

1

Pushkin and the Golden Age of Poetry

The first few decades of the 19th century saw an explosion of talent that propelled Russian literature to new heights. The advances of this period, which is known as the Golden Age of Poetry, are most vividly seen in the work of Aleksandr Pushkin. Pushkin knew the Western European literary movements of his time. He was educated in the tradition of 18th-century classicism, which set down strict rules for literary form and style. He later absorbed and then moved beyond romanticism, a movement that emphasized individual creativity and the imagination. At the same time, Pushkin captured the vitality of native Russian traditions, creating an expressive and natural literary language. Although his life was brief he left examples of nearly every literary genre of his day: lyric poetry, narrative poetry, the novel, the short story, the drama, the critical essay, and even the personal letter.

Pushkin’s most renowned work, the novel in verse Evgeny Onegin (1823-1831; Eugene Onegin), has a simple plot: It traces the unrequited love of a naive provincial girl, Tatiana, for a jaded sophisticate, Eugene. A memorable narrator provides ironic, witty, and wise commentary, not only on the love story itself, but also on Russian society, the nature of poetry, the Russian landscape, the narrator’s own biography, and his personal search for meaning in life. The novel is composed in a 14-line stanza form that gives order and structure to a work filled with digressions. For most Russians, however, it is Pushkin’s lyric poetry that conveys his true genius. The lyrics—complex and meticulously crafted to seem effortless, simple, and natural—continue to hold a central place in Russian culture.

Pushkin’s poetry did not appear out of nowhere, however. His predecessors included Vasily Zhukovsky, a representative of early romanticism who wrote original poetry and also translated or adapted Western verse into a precise and melodious Russian idiom. A number of Pushkin’s contemporaries were major poets, but only Evgeny Baratynsky, who produced mainly philosophical poetry, comes near to rivaling Pushkin. Mikhail Lermontov, who died in 1841, is considered the last of the Golden Age poets. The rebellious heroes and exotic settings of Lermontov’s lyric and narrative verse represent the peak of Russian romanticism. The best-known of his long poems, Demon (written 1829-1839; published 1841; The Demon), tells of a fallen angel’s love for a Georgian princess and is set within the dramatic scenery of the Caucasus Mountains.

The poets of stature in the decades that followed the Golden Age saw their efforts overshadowed by Russian novelists, who began to produce outstanding works in the 1830s (for more information, see the Prose Fiction section of this article). Fyodor Tiutchev, generally considered Russia’s greatest nature poet, was Pushkin’s contemporary but received recognition only in 1850, when a collection of his earlier poems was published. Tiutchev also wrote philosophical and love poetry. Many critics consider his short lyric poetry finer than Pushkin’s, and most rank him, with Pushkin and Lermontov, as one of the three greatest Russian poets of the 19th century. Afanasy Fet produced melodious love lyrics and nature and philosophical poetry. While Fet and Tiutchev were regarded as pure poets, several so-called civic poets sought to express contemporary political and social ideas in poetry. The most notable representative of this trend was Nikolay Nekrasov, who was an influential editor and publisher as well as a prolific poet. Much of his poetry focuses on peasant life and expresses great compassion for the tribulations of the common people. These poems are often cast in the form of folk songs and employ racy, vigorous language.

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