28

Communist, Roger Garaudy. Indeed so important were these two events considered that they were made the central subject matter of discussion at a literary-scholarly conference organized by the Gorky Institute of World Literature, in which Dymshits was only one of a number of talented participants."

In his book, Garaudy advanced a theory of total realism. Any authentic work of art, he insisted, is "realistic" and "expresses the form of man's presence in the world." 30 On the other hand, all art is based on convention and stylization, and so is in some measure independent of the world it depicts. Dymshits makes some motions towards accepting the first statement, but not the second. There is one kind of stylization he finds unacceptable the formalistic! For those who might think this a contradiction in terms, he specifies: "The literature of Socialist Realism is guided by the main line defined by the party." "31 Far from being schematic, he contends, this provides a basis for stylization that is the richest and most flexible approach to the real world; nor does it rule out any particular technique or area of human experience, provided the technique is understood as secondary and the experience is understood in the context of worldwide development.

The subconscious is not ruled out as an area of human experience. "But," Dymshits argues, "we do not approach the subconscious with Freudian measure; we insist on seeking for an explanation of subconscious impulses in society." Literature may use myth—either in the form of folklore motifs in the manner of Yevgeni Schwartz,32 or in the form of Gorkian "revolutionary romanticism." He objects, however, to myth as the object of creation, as an analogue in story and images of what is felt but cannot be rationally explained, to myth as the

28 D'un réalisme sans rivages," Paris, 1963.

29 For the papers presented at the conference, see I. I. Anisimov et al. (eds.), Sovremennye problemy realizma i modernizma, Moscow, 1965 (hereafter cited as Sour.).

30 Garaudy, op. cit., p. 243.

31 Dymshits, "Khudozhestvennoe mnogoobrazie sovetskoi literatury i sovremennyi modernizm," Sovr., p. 101. This, however, would seem to contradict his earlier assertion, in criticizing an article by Max Rieser ("Russian Esthetics Today and Their Historical Background," The Journal of Esthetics and Art Criticism, No. 1, 1963, p. 47), that "our esthetic. . . has not at all become a pseudonym for politics, has not lost its specifically artistic significance." Sovr., p. 82.

32 Yevgeni Schwartz (died 1954) was one of the best Soviet playwrights. His plays are witty, highly stylized politicophilosophical allegories based on fairy-tale motifs. His best play, The Shadow (based on the story of Peter Schlemiel, the man who lost his shadow), was removed from the boards in 1940, and Schwartz himself fell into disfavor, from which he reemerged only in the last year of his life.

34

creation or invocation of archetypes. He quotes Marx to the effect that as man gains control over the forces of nature the need for myth recedes. What is dangerous about Kafka, in Dymshits' judgment, is his portrait of man as devoid of effective will, imbedded in a "human condition" from which he cannot shake loose.33 Details and particular techniques may be of great interest, especially to Austrian writers, but the attempt made by a number of Czech and Polish comrades to derive from Kafka a pseudo-Marxist notion of “alienation" that applies to socialist as well as capitalist countries is clearly heresy. Dymshits attempts to show that Russia had its Kafka in the person of Leonid Andreev, a talented writer who, however, used his talents well only during the period when he strove towards realism. Nor should it be considered accidental that this Russian "modernist" stood closest to the revolutionary movement during his realist phase; nor is the fact that he ultimately became a renegade unrelated to his modernism, according to Dymshits.

35

In response to the charges made against Socialist Realism that it is impoverished, worn out, and schematic-Dymshits retorts that it is the modernist approach that is schematic. By removing man from his engagement with and involvement in society and politics, it abstracts and schematizes him. Techniques of all sorts, including those of myth and folklore, are not closed to the Soviet writer.

33 This is very close to the criticism of Kafka by the Hungarian writer György Lukacs (The Meaning of Contemporary Realism, London, 1962, pp. 47-92), who in general resembles the more sophisticated defenders of Socialist Realism much more closely than he does the "revisionists" with whom he has frequently been classified by Soviet critics. See, e.g., Ia. E. Elsberg, "O nekotorykh subektivistskikh i obektivistskikh kontsepsiakh v estetike i literaturovedenii," in A. G. Dementev et al. (eds.), Protiv burzhoaznykh kontseptsii i revisionizma v zarubezhom literaturovedenii, Moscow, 1959, pp. 48-77. While it is true, as Elsberg charges, that Lukacs tends to blur the distinction between critical and socialist realism, it is also true to some extent of Dymshits and Elsberg himself. Other Soviet charges against Lukacs are purely political, having to do only with his role in Hungary in 1956. Indirectly, however, Lukacs has been influential, through his influence in matters of Marxist epistemology on such figures as Lucien Goldmann and Roger Garaudy: see the article "After Lukacs," in The Times Literary Supplement (London), July 14, 1966.

34 Dymshits emphasizes that Kafka is obviously of greater interest to Austrian comrades, Proust to French, and Joyce to British, than any of these writers are to Russians; that is to say, their critical social interest is of a purely local nature.

35 Leonid Andreev (1871-1919), a contemporary and friend of Gorky, was a very uneven writer, overrated in his day and probably underrated in ours. His work ranged from the Gorkian realism of The Seven Who Were Hanged (1908) to the symbolist-allegorical play, He Who Gets Slapped (1914). His political allegiances wavered somewhat, like his style; in the end he left Russia (and the revolution) a sick and disillusioned man. To compare Andreev with Kafka strikes me as going too far.

On the contrary, familiar as he is (and as foreign writers generally are not) with the newly-developing literatures of the Soviet national minorities, he has available to him a richness and variety of forms and genres that are still virtually untapped by European writers. Against the names of Kafka, Joyce and Proust, thrown at him by Garaudy and others, Dymshits falls back on Sholokhov, Leonov, Gorky, Furmanov and Ostrovski. There is indeed a beleaguered tone to his presentation at the 1963 conference that is not present in most of his work elsewhere. If one looks at some of the other articles in the volume covering the conference, one can perhaps understand why.

The

here are articles on Kafka and on the conception of "alienation” as it is understood in Western Europe. Though these are more or less in Dymshits' spirit, they are more detailed and concede more than he does. There is a good deal else. An astonishing article by E. F. Trushchenko returns very subtly to Ehrenburg's notion of coexistence with modernism. While proposing to retain a guarded boundary between modernism and Socialist Realism, he also proposes a strip of joint territory, a kind of UN mandate, limited in extent but free in its possibilities, where the two should be allowed to interact. Indeed, he implies that such interaction constantly goes on in any case. E. M. Potapov gives a detached and objective account of an argument at the Gramsci Institute between Garaudy and Italian Communist scholar Cesare Luporini over the possibility of reintroducing Kantian ethics into Marxism. P. V. Palievski, in a detailed analysis of The Sound and the Fury, performs the astonishing trick of converting Faulkner from a "decadent" into a newly-discovered realist.

Most interesting of all, there is a long article on James Joyce and Ulysses by D. M. Urnov.36 Ultimately, Urnov rejects Ulysses as "the sick book of a sick age," but in the course of his essay he demonstrates a thorough and sympathetic understanding of what Joyce was up to and reviews his early impact on Russia (including the critical articles by D. S. Mirski and Startsev, the fragmentary Russian translations of Ulysses, and the rather witty parody of Joyce by A. Arkhangelski). Urnov also engages in a subtle examination of what innovation in literature means and how experi

36 D. M. Urnov, “Dzh. Dzhois i sovremennyi modernizm,” Sovr., pp. 309-45.

mental exercises that previous writers relegated to their notebooks or the margins of their manuscripts, devices that they used sparingly and secondarily in their works, suddenly assume a central importance, and thus how past literary history is also rediscovered and rejuvenated through new application in the present. Although the surface meaning is rather different, Urnov's article reminded me of the brilliant finale to Mandelstam's Egyptian Stamp: "Destroy your manuscript, but save whatever you have inscribed in the margin out of boredom, out of helplessness, and, as it were, in a dream. These secondary and involuntary creations of your fantasy will not be lost in the world. . " 37 On the surface, Urnov seems to be rejecting Joyce, but underneath, his entire tone and meaning are not only understanding and sympathetic, but even full of fascination. He goes to some pains to bring out Vsevolod Vishnevski's great admiration for Joyce and quotes Vishnevski's defense of himself against charges of "Joyceism".38 It would seem, too, that the admiration was mutual, and that Joyce once promised Vishnevski to go see the movie "We are from Kronstadt" (for which Vishnevski had written the scenario), though Joyce was all but blind at the time. In general, Urnov dwells on Joyce's heroism, his titanic struggle for his art— a struggle to which the Russians, with their love for the elemental (Jack London and all), cannot help but respond with some sympathy. Joyce, he points out, influenced more realistic writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose Gatsby is now widely admired in the Soviet Union. And incidentally, in the course of the article, he manages to include, if not James Joyce, at least Henry James in the realist camp!

Of course, either Anisimov or Dymshits might easily have organized a conference at which his own would have been the most rather than the least radical voice. Dymshits is by no means the only conservative critic of talent, though possibly the

37 The Prose of Osip Mandelstam, transl. with a critical essay by Clarence Brown, Princeton, N. J., Princeton University Press, 1965, p. 187.

38 Vsevolod Vishnevski (1900-1951) was another of the herowriters of the Russian Revolution, joining in the Petrograd insurrection in 1917 and serving in the Red cavalry, 1918-20. He is best known as a playwright and stirred up a controversy in the 1930's by his disregard for the traditional conventions of the drama. Influenced by Meyerhold and Eisenstein as well as by Joyce, he tried to create a Brechtian "epic drama" with the mass as hero, although the results were more ordinary than Brecht's. Accused of "Joyceism," Vishnevski nevertheless disdained to conceal his admiration for the English writer. Since 1954, a five-volume edition of his collected works has appeared. Dymshits wrote an article on him ("Proza V. V. Vishnevskovo") in Znamia, No. 5, 1955.

most able and articulate. He represents a small but important handful of "party people" in literature who see themselves as a bridge between the authority of the party and the youthful modernism of more radical writers and critics. They advocate expression rather than repression and would choose to argue with and convince their talented juniors rather than attempt to destroy them. Nevertheless, in this atmosphere, one cannot help wondering what possible harm could have come from the works of Abram Tertz? Why translate Kafka, usher Faulkner into the realm of critical (if not socialist) realism, and then send Tertz and Arzhak off to hard labor for seven and five years respectively? It seems doubly inexplicable in view of the fact that the "crackdown" many feared after the trial did not take place. Yevtushenko went off to Australia, Voznesenski to America. Novyi mir went on in more or less its accustomed manner. What seems to have been at issue in the Tertz trial was the direct, basic political issue of the party's capacity to control Soviet writers, for it is quite obvious that if Soviet writers can publish works abroad under pseudonyms, the party's capacity to judge, mold, reject, or even claim them is completely undermined.

Pyrrhic Victory?

In actual fact, the results of the trial seem to have strengthened the hands of the pro-modernists. Artists of undoubted party loyalty who are nevertheless also artists, and critics who are party critics but have all along been advocating—and sincerely advocating—a critical tolerance, are bound to have been badly shaken, whatever facade they may present for the sake of appearances. At a meeting of Italian and Soviet film directors late last spring, Grigory Chukhrai (director of "Ballad of a Soldier" and "The Forty-First") said in reply to a question about the Tertz-Arzhak trial that he did not approve of it, that he found the methods of Tertz and Arzhak in themselves unacceptable but felt that they had now been dignified with the status of martyrdom.39 Tvardovski wrote in the April 1966 issue of Novyi mir that political interference with literature de

feated its own aims and that writers were right to stand up against such interference.*°

The authority of the party line, however, is still such that it has a surprising hold even on some of its most stalwart opponents in the Soviet Union and is capable of engendering moods of self-doubt, guilt, and a sense of frustrating limitation in all those who consider their primary allegiance to be to the liberation of the arts. Throughout their trial, Tertz and Arzhak spoke up boldly to the prosecutor and the witnesses for the prosecution. Their appeal, however, was to literary criticism, to a sense of literary occasion and convention, and the judge kept reminding them that this was a legal trial. They did not question the legality of the trial as such, or the right of the party to judge. They merely wished to explain the distinction between "propaganda" and "a work of art," no easy task under the best and freest of circumstances-more difficult even than establishing the difference between art and pornography. Their appeal was to the party, that it should be more sophisticated and more civilized, more tolerant and more receptive to literature. They did not at any point-and their defense was as bold as any that has been made by accused writers in the Soviet Union in the last twenty-five years-challenge the right of the party as such, or the court, or any official agency, to judge them. In this sense, the party still holds them in thrall, and Socialist Realism is not yet dead.

Recently, Daniel (Arzhak) wrote from prison an extraordinary and courageous letter to Izvestia which that newspaper did not print, but which somehow found its way abroad. In this letter, Daniel emphasizes that he and Tertz (Siniavski) were duped into a partial complicity in the trial by being misinformed and having information withheld from them concerning the true nature of the reaction abroad to their writings. The minimal confessions wrung from them had been based on their belief that they had unwittingly contributed to the defamation of their native land. "I have come to the conclusion," the letter states, "that our writings should not under any circumstances have been the subject of a criminal prosecution. The verdict is unjust and illegal." Perhaps Socialist Realism is deader than we think.

39 "Soviet and Italian Film Directors Debate Writers' Trial Meaning," The New York Times, Feb. 28, 1966.

40 "Soviet Editor Appeals to Writers to Withstand Political Critics," ibid., April 14, 1966.

By George Gibian

T

he Soviet Union has now passed through ten years of accelerated change. In culture as in other aspects of Soviet life, it is interesting to observe how new trends emerge even while old elements of the Stalin past persist. To convey a partial picture of the shifting cultural scene, the present article draws on the evidence of recently published prose, as well as on conversations held by the author (mainly in the role of listener) during a visit to the USSR in the last three months of 1965. Originally set down as a series of personal notes, the observations offered here have been regrouped to deal first with trends in literature and then with the author's general impression of prevailing currents in Soviet cultural life.

Prose: The Old and the New

One can find almost anything one looks for in Soviet Russian literature today. There are the routine, hectoring, content-analysis-oriented book

Professor Gibian is Chairman of the Department of Russian Literature at Cornell University (Ithaca, New York). He has published numerous articles on literary topics and is co-editor (with Michael Samilov) of Modern Russian Short Stories (New York, Harper, 1965).

reviews which are no better than what appeared in the 1930's or before the death of Stalin; on the other hand, if one wishes to be encouraged about the direction in which Soviet literature is moving, there is some worthwhile new fiction and poetry and even a little high-grade book reviewing.

Within the variety of the present-day literary scene, however, it is possible to discern some sig nificant patterns. The most interesting shift consists in the various ways in which the old literary manners as well as topics and themes are clung to, while at the same time new forms, ideas, and subjects have come into existence, often alongside, or in a sense on top of, the old ones.

A prime example is the latest crop of books dealing with World War II. The theme of the war, which has long obsessed and is still obsessing Soviet consciousness, has far from run its course. Yet works now being published show marked differences from those written earlier. There seems to be a steady advancement in the depth, breadth, and quality of such literature. Part of the reason is the subject matter. Over a period of time, the chronology of war literature has proven to be directly antithetical to the chronology of when works were written. By this I mean that the first books on war themes, produced while Stalin was still alive, dealt primarily with the last period of the war. Glossing over the tragedies as well as mistakes that marked