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A Russian View of European Literary History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2013

Willem G. Weststeijn
Willem G. Weststeijn*
Affiliation:
Slavic Department, University of Amsterdam, Spuistraat 210, 1012 VT Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article discusses the theory of the Russian medievalist Dmitry Likhachov regarding the evolution of European literature. In the history of European literature, Likhachov distinguishes a number of so-called ‘megaperiods’, which each consist of a ‘primary’ and a ‘secondary’ cultural period or style. The megaperiods are: Romanesque–Gothic, Renaissance–Baroque, Classicism–Romanticism, Realism–Symbolism, Modernism–Postmodernism. Primary periods generally favour ‘realism’ and are connected with a definite ideology; secondary periods tend to decorativeness, irrationalism and various, even opposite, ideologies. The change from a primary to a secondary period is gradual, from a secondary to a primary one rather sudden. The theory makes us aware of the existence of a kind of ‘rhythm’ in the development of European literature and culture.

Type
Focus: Writing a History of European Literature as Part of a World History of Literature
Information
European Review , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , May 2013 , pp. 263 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2013

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References

Notes and References

1. To mention a few of these books: Chelovek v literature Drevnei Rusi (Man in the Literature of Old Russia, Moscow: Ak. Nauk SSR, 1958), Poetika drevnerusskoi literatury (The Poetics of Old Russian Literature, Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia Literatura, 1967), ‘Smekhovoi mir’ Drevnei Rusi (‘The World of Laughter’ of Old Russia, Leningrad: Nauka, 1976), ‘Slovo o polku Igoreve’ i kul'tura ego vremeni (‘The Lay of Igor's Host’ and the Culture of Its Time, Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia Literatura, 1978).Google Scholar
2. The year 988 is generally seen as the beginning of Russian literature. In that year Russia officially embraced Christianity. The first preserved texts are exclusively religious ones: translations from the Bible and from Byzantine religious literature.Google Scholar
3. An anti-European attitude was typical for the so-called Slavophiles in the 19th century. In the 1920s the Eurasian movement, including well-known intellectuals such as the linguist Nikolay Trubetskoy and the historian Georgiy Vernadsky, considered the Russian empire as a territory roughly corresponding with the territory that was formerly controlled by the Mongol ruler Genghis Khan. Russia being the heir of Genghis Khan, the Eurasianists maintained, was a separate country, geographically, historically and ethnologically much more connected with Asia than with Western (Romano-Germanic) Europe. See Weststeijn, W.G. (1994) Aspects of Eurasianism. Slavica Helsingiensia, 14, pp. 171–186.Google Scholar
4. According to the Russian historian of culture N.I. Konrad, who described the development of culture in a number of European and Asian countries, the general, ‘universal’ phases of development are the period of slavery, next the feudalism of the ‘Middle Ages’ and then the epoch of the Renaissance, which concurs with the beginnings of capitalism. Such a development, Konrad argues, is not something accidental, but a historical law, although not all the peoples completely passed the various stages of this development and those who did (he mentions the Greeks, the Italians, the Persians, Indians and Chinese) have their own characteristic features. In spite of all the differences there is a basic resemblance. See Konrad, N.I. (1972) Zapad i vostok (West and East) (Moscow: Nauka).Google Scholar
5. Likhachov extensively discusses the characteristics of the four cultural periods he discerns, the main genres of Old Russian literature and the relations between Old Russian literature and the other arts.Google Scholar
6. The influence of the Russian Formalists’ theories on the evolution of literature is obvious. See, particularly, Tynyanov, Y. (1978) On literary evolution. In: L. Matejka and K. Pomorska (Eds), Readings in Russian Poetics. Formalist and Structuralist Views (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan), pp. 66–78.Google Scholar
7. Mannerism is often considered as a decadent style, a degeneration of High Renaissance.Google Scholar
8.Curtius, E.R. (1969) Europäische Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter (Bern: A. Franke).Google Scholar
9. See, for instance, Chizhevsky, D. (1952) Outline of Comparative Slavic Literatures (Boston: American Academy of Arts and Sciences); V. Zhirmunsky (1928) Klassitsizm i romantizm (Classicism and Romanticism) In: V. Zhirmunsky, Voprosy teorii literatury (Questions of Literary Theory) (Leningrad: Academia), pp. 175–336.Google Scholar
10. The Romanesque style cannot be considered independently of the development of feudalism and Christianity in Europe. The Renaissance originated in an age when cities, industry and commerce began to flourish, and Classicism is closely connected with absolutism and the rise of the bourgeoisie, etc.Google Scholar
11.Döring, J.R. and Smirnov, I.P. (1980) Realizm: diachroničeskij podchod (Realism: a diachronic approach). Russian Literature, VIII-I, pp. 1–39. J.R. Döring-Smirnova and I.P. Smirnov (1980) ‘Istoričeskij avangard’ s točki zrenija èvoljucii chudožestvennych sistem (‘The historical Avant-Garde’ from the point of view of the evolution of artistic systems). Russian Literature, VIII-V, pp. 403–468.Google Scholar
12. Originally published in 1857. A good critical edition is Charles Baudelaire, Les fleurs du mal, Jacques Crépet and Georges Blin (Eds) (Paris: Corti, 1942).Google Scholar
13.Smirnov, I. (2000) Metaistoriia (Metahistory) (Moscow: Agraf).Google Scholar
14. The art of printing was, typically, an invention in the time of the Renaissance. The computer marks the beginning of a new primary style.Google Scholar
15. Here we find the beginning of present-day globalism, an important feature of the post-Postmodernist cultural period, which, like Modernism, is a ‘primary’ movement.Google Scholar
16.A typical example is Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977), who started writing his modernist Russian novels in the time between the two World Wars, but later became one of the outstanding writers of Postmodernism. It is too early to ascertain a possible analogous development in an author who goes from Postmodernism into post-Postmodernism, but in view of the more sudden and radical change between these periods, such a development is less probable. On the other hand, the differences between writers such as John Barth and Jonathan Franzen or William T. Vollmann with his multivolume Rising Up and Rising Down (San Francisco: McSweeney's, 2003. Six volumes) are obvious.Google Scholar
17.One would expect that after the Second World War and the Holocaust, culture would take a more serious turn instead of a ‘lighter’ one (‘To write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric’, Theodor W. Adorno (1955) An essay on cultural criticism and society. Prisms, p. 34). The contrary was the case. Culture has its own laws of development, connected with social changes, but much less with historical events. The French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars occurred in the period of Sentimentalism, the Boer War in the fin-de-siècle. The First World War and 9/11 are often considered as the beginning of a new era, but the cultural movements of Modernism and post-Postmodernism respectively had already started earlier.Google Scholar
18. Russian literature being dominated for ages by Old Church Slavonic, it was only at the end of the 18th century that it succeeded in establishing a modern literary language that could express a contemporary, ‘European’ view of life. As is well-known, during the 18th century the upper circles in Russia spoke French, Russian being considered as awkward and course.Google Scholar
19. See Weststeijn, W.G. (2004) Pushkin between Classicism, Romanticism and Realism. In: R. Reid and J. Andrew (Eds), Two Hundred Years of Pushkin. Vol. 3. Pushkin's Legacy (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi), pp. 47–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
20. The ‘strength’ of a cultural movement in a country is generally dependent on the number of important artists and writers in a certain period.Google Scholar
21. As regards philosophy: in a primary period we generally see the development of Aristotelian philosophy, in a secondary one that of Platonic philosophy.Google Scholar