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Poets and Poetry in an Antipoetic Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Charles A. Moser
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Extract

Historians of Russian literature would nearly all agree that the 1860s, the most radical period of nineteenth-century Russian intellectual life, witnessed a sharp decline in the esteem in which poetry was held, that it began to recover its prestige only in the 1880s, and that it did not fully regain its previous position until the birth of the symbolist movement. At no other time in the history of Russian literature did poetry and “aesthetics” come under heavier assault.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , March 1969 , pp. 48 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1969

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References

1. D. S. Mirsky labels them the“eclectic poets” on the grounds that they compromised with their ideals,“did not believe in the rights of the poetical imagination and sought to reconcile it with the modern spirit of science and positive knowledge” (A History of Russian Literature [New York, 1949], p. 219). As Mirsky tailored his characterization for Polonsky only, I prefer to use the term“aesthetic poets” or“aesthetic writers” to designate those poets or critics who insisted upon the importance of aesthetics, certainly in poetry, and usually in other spheres of life as well. For an extensive discussion of this period in Russian poetry, see Iampolsky, I,“Nekotorye voprosy russkoi poezii 1850-1860-kh godov,” Uchenye sapiski Leningradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, no. 200, Seriia filologicheskikh nauk, no. 25 (1955), pp. 23–69 Google Scholar.

2. Turgenev to Polonsky, Apr. 16, 1869, in Turgenev, I. S., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisetn: Pis'ma (Moscow, 1961—), 8: 20 Google Scholar (all dates cited are Old Style).

3. Dobroliubov, N,“Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin,” in Sobranie sochinenii v deviati tomakh (Moscow and Leningrad, 1961—), 1: 287–301 Google Scholar.

4. Pisarev, D., Sochineniia (Moscow, 1955-56), 3: 397 Google Scholar.

5. On the well-worn subject of Nekrasov and Pushkin, see especially the chapter on Pushkin in Chukovsky, K., Masterstvo Nekrasova (Moscow, 1952), pp. 7–72 Google Scholar.

6. Viazemsky, P,“P. A. Pletnevu i F. I. Tiutchevu,” in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (St. Petersburg, 1878-96), 12: 127 Google Scholar.

7. Fet, A,“O stikhotvoreniiakh F. Tiutcheva,” Russkoe slovo, no. 2 (February 1859), section“Kritika,” p. 67 Google Scholar.

8. Polonsky to Stasiulevich, Oct. 10, 1871, in M. M. Stasiulevich i ego sovremenniki v ikh perepiske (St. Petersburg, 1912), 3: 496.

9. Tolstoy to Markevich, Nov. 7, 1869, in Tolstoy, A., Sobranie sochinenii v chetyrekh tomakh (Moscow, 1963-64), 4: 318–19Google Scholar.

10. Pisarev,“Pisemskii, Turgenev i Goncharov,” in Sochineniia, 1: 195.

11. Polonsky to Turgenev, Oct. 28-31, 1873, in Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 73, bk. 2 (Moscow, 1964): 243.

12. Polonsky to Turgenev, Nov. 25, 1869, ibid., p. 222.

13. Shtakenshneider, E., Dnevnik i sapiski (Moscow and Leningrad, 1934), p. Leningrad Google Scholar.

14. Polonsky to Stasiulevich, Feb. 23, 1872, in M. M. Stasiulevich i ego sovremenniki, 3: 500.

15. Polonsky to Nekrasov, Apr. 7, 1871, in Nekrasov, N., Neisdannye stikhotvoreniia, varianty i pis'ma (Petrograd, 1922), pp. 280–81 Google Scholar.

16. Letter of Feb. 29, 1874, ibid., p. 295.

17. “Vaiateliu,” in Maikov, , Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (St. Petersburg, 1914), 1: 256 Google Scholar.

18. Fet,“O stikhotvoreniiakh F. Tiutcheva,” pp. 64, 68.

19. Ibid., pp. 68, 69.

20. Bukhshtab, B,“Esteticheskie vzgliady Feta,” Literaturnaia ucheba, 1936, no. 12, pp. 36, 42Google Scholar.

21. Pisarev, ,“Razrushenie estetiki,” in Sochineniia, 3: 423 Google Scholar.

22. See Polonsky's letter of 1867 to the poet Sluchevsky, Konstantin in Shchukinskii sbomik, no. 7 (Moscow, 1907), p. 335 Google Scholar. Incidentally, the problem of Nekrasov's niche in the antipoetic radical camp deserves investigation. He tended to subordinate, sometimes even prostitute, his poetic talent to the political exigencies of the moment, but his gift remained despite the misuse he sometimes made of it.

23. Turgenev to M. Avdeev, Mar. 30, 1867, in Turgenev, , Polnoe sobfanie sochinenii i pisem: Pi/ma, 6: 213 Google Scholar.

24. Tolstoy to Markevich, Jan. 11, 1870, in Tolstoy, , Sobranie sochinenii, 4: 342–43Google Scholar. Dostoevsky's philosophy of art was rather similar to Tolstoy's, for both outlooks were developments of the aesthetic views of such critics as Pavel Annenkov and Alexander Druzhinin, who flourished in the 1850s. On Dostoevsky see Jackson, R. L., Dostoevsky's Quest for Form (New Haven and London, 1966), especially the chapter on his critique of the utilitarian aesthetic, pp. 136–57Google Scholar.

25. Tolstoy to Stasiulevich, Nov. 17, 1869, in Tolstoy, , Sobranie sochinenii, 4: 324 Google Scholar.

26. The radical critics of the 1860s—and Soviet scholars in their footsteps—regularly accused the aesthetic poets of promoting the doctrine of“art for art's sake.” Fet did adopt this view, but most of his colleagues did not. It is true that in an article of 1862 Tolstoy spoke of himself as dedicated to“art for art's sake” and held that an“instinctive sense of the beautiful” was basic to the formation of any national culture. But this formulation was a bit extreme for Tolstoy, and even here he says that art and social conscience should work in alliance, not war with each other. See Tolstoy, A,“Peredelannaia stsena iz Don Zhuana: Pis'mo k izdateliu,” Russkii vestnik, 1862, no. 7, pp. 213–15Google Scholar.

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28. Pisarev, ,“Pisemskii, Turgenev i Goncharov,” in Sochineniia, 1: 193, 195Google Scholar, and“Moskovskie mysliteli,” 1: 319.

29. Review of Pavlova's Stikhotvoreniia of 1863 in Otechestvennye zapiski, June 1863; see Saltykov-Shchedrin, M., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Moscow, 1933-41), 5: 310–11Google Scholar.

30. Review of Fet's Stikhotvoreniia of 1863; ibid., p. 331.

31. Review of Maikov's Novye stikhotvoreniia of 1864; ibid., p. 377.

32. Review published in Otechestvennye zapiski, September 1869; see text in Saltykov-Shchedrin, , Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 8: 372–76.Google Scholar

33. Polonsky to Turgenev, Dec. 27, 1869, in Literatumoe nasledstvo, 73, bk. 2: 228.

34. “Moemu izdateliu (A. F. Marksu),” in Maikov, , Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 1: 268 Google Scholar.

35. Viazemsky, , Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 12: 18 Google Scholar.

36. Tolstoy to Pavlova, Oct. 25, 1861, in Tolstoy, , Sobranie sochinenii, 4: 144 Google Scholar.

37. “Gr. A. K. T… mu [Tolstomu],” in Pavlova, K., Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii (Leningrad, 1939), p. 113 Google Scholar.

38. Tolstoy to Polonsky, Dec. 20, 1868, in Tolstoy, , Sobranie sochinenii, 4: 249 Google Scholar.

39. Tolstoy to Markevich, July 8, 1869; ibid., p. 306.

40. See the quotation from a letter of his to Polonsky in Bukhshtab,“Esteticheskie vzgliady Feta,” p. 41.

41. Tolstoy might have justified his antinihilism to himself with the following chain of reasoning: (1) hatred of tyranny is invariably linked with love for art (as he contended when speaking of his dramatic trilogy); (2) the main threat of (intellectual) tyranny at the time came from the radical left; (3) therefore antinihilism was a natural concomitant of love for art.

42. See Moser, C,“Antinihilism in Russian Poetry of the 1860's,” The Slavic and East European Journal, 9, no. 2 (Summer 1965): 155–73 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43. “Iubilei Shillera” (1862), in la. Polonsky, , Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii (St. Petersburg, 1896), 1: 360 Google Scholar.

44. Tolstoy, , Sobranie sochinenii, 1: 196 Google Scholar.

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46. See the text in Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 25-26 (1936): 485-544.

47. Fet, A,“Po povodu statui g. Ivanova na vystavke Obshchestva liubitelei khudozhestv,“ in Khuozhestvennyi sbornik (Moscow, 1866), p. 78 Google Scholar.

48. Polonsky, la.,“Prozaicheskie tsvety poeticheskikh semen,” Otechestvennye zapiski, 171, bk. 2 (April 1867): 714–49.Google Scholar

49. Ibid., p. 749.

50. In fact, Nekrasov had made some fairly favorable remarks on Polonsky in a review article of 1866; see Nekrasov, N., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem (Moscow, 1948-52), 9: 441 Google Scholar.

51. See the text of the letter in Turgenev, I., Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow, 1953-58), 11: 193–99Google Scholar.

52. Turgenev to Polonsky, Jan. 29, 1870, in Turgenev, , Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem: Pis'ma, 8: 182–83Google Scholar.

53. Saltykov-Shchedrin, , Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 8: 422–30Google Scholar.

54. Turgenev to Polonsky, Apr. 24, 1871, in Turgenev, , Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem: Pis'fma, 9: 85 Google Scholar.