Twentieth-Century Russian Literature [antikvár]

Foreword No literature in the modern world has artistic, philosophicalr or psychological ingredients or values alone. Inevitably it is alsó a sociopolitical expression, whether or not the prose writers and the poets in question consciously set out to articulate such thoughts and emotions. For specific historical Russian reasons, this is particularly valid for Russian literature of all recent and current eras. As this was true of the great Golden Age of Russian literature in the nineteenth century, so it was in the Silver Age of the twentieth century up to the Revolution of 1917, and even more so in the Soviet period since the Communist takeover of the nation in that momentous year. At all times Russian literature is a mirror of its people's grievances, pro-tests, and aspirations. What the tsars and the commissars have prohibited or curtailed on the political aréna, what the police and the censors have denied to the people in its civil liberties, the people's bold and rare talents — its writers and other artists—have sought to voice, sometimes at great risks to their own personal freedom and even lives, through novels and short stories, through poems and stage plays and, latterly, through films. But the effect often has alsó been the cause. The mirror has spoken up in magic and disturbing tones as a call to dissent and action. Itself a child of sociopolitical dreams and demands, Russian literature has ever been a mighty instrument and influence upon the societal fabric and the body politic of that gifted nation. In the nineteenth century