Modernism and Revolution: Russian Literature in Transition (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Modernism and Revolution: Russian Literature in Transition John E. Bowlt Modernism and Revolution: Russian Literature in Transition. Victor Erlich. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994. Pp. 314. $45.00. Victor Erlich has built many intellectual monuments, although he is remembered most often for his pioneering Russian Formalism of 1955 (and subsequent editions), still one of the best commentaries on Russian Formalist criticism and its obligations to the theory and practice of modernist writers such as Andrei Bely and Boris Eikhenbaum. To a considerable extent, Modernism and Revolution can be regarded as a sequel to Russian Formalism in that Erlich now explores the genesis and evolution of an even more diaphanous concept in Russian culture, i.e., modernism. For Erlich the modernist aesthetic in Russia encompasses a complex of movements and personages, from the secret doctrines of the Symbolists represented by Bely and Alexander Blok through the raucous declarations of the Futurists such as Velimir Khlebnikov and Vladimir Maiakovsky to the stenographic prose of Isaak Babel and the controlled factographies of Ilya Ehrenburg. Although some may argue that such an extensive coverage may distort any characteristic identification of Russian modernism, Erlich demonstrates through his relentlessly lucid prose that a common stylistic, formal, and even thematic denominator joined these apparently diverse inquiries. His belief in the inner cohesion and purpose of Russian literature during the 1910s and 1920s justifies this inclusion of so many stars within a single constellation. In this respect, Erlich’s initial appeal to the Symbolist sensibility is a felicitous way to embark upon the modernist journey. As we learn in the first chapter, the Symbolist poets and philosophers such as Valerii Briusov, Bely, Blok, and Viacheslav Ivanov exposed many of the “microbes” that nurtured and transfigured Russian literature in its subsequent metamorphoses through the Cubo-Futurism, Constructivism, Ornamentalism, and what Erlich calls Neo-Futurism of the 1920s (not to be confused with the 1913 movement of Neo-Futurism in Kazan). The Symbolists argued, for example, that concentration on form would lead to a “nonobjective” art (Bely’s term), that the true artifact was both formulaic and transcendental, [End Page 162] and that it was part of a utopian reconstruction of the world. Above all, the Symbolists granted the word a special privilege, imbuing it with an enunciatory and celebratory quality that Socialist Realism would exaggerate even further in the 1930s and 1940s. That for the Russian artist and writer the word was of greater import than the deed becomes especially clear in Erlich’s debate of Blok’s stratified The Twelve and his section on “The Battle of Manifestoes.” Erlich’s modernist repertoire is both traditional and unconventional. At first glance, the particular writers selected for critical discussion (Anna Akhmatova, Babel, Ehrenburg, Konstantin Fedin, Lev Lunts, Maiakovsky, Osip Mandelstam, Yurii Olesha, Boris Pasternak, Boris Pilniak, Andrei Platonov, Viktor Shklovsky, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Mikhail Zoshchenko) seem to constitute a textbook register of customary heroes. Certainly, Erlich has his likes and dislikes (it is hard to share his enthusiasm for Fedin or his rejection of David Burliuk as a mere Futurist apparatchik), and the reader may wonder why Erlich replicates the accepted pantheon rather than offer a new configuration. After all, recent studies of the Russian avant-garde have demonstrated the boldness and originality of other, less familiar Russian writers, suggesting a possible usurpation of Khlebnikov’s status by Alexei Kruchenykh, of Maiakovsky’s by Burliuk, or of Platonov’s by Nikolai Zabolotsky (ignored here). Where are Vasilisk Gnedov, Vasilii Kamensky, Maximilian Voloshin, Igor Terentiev, and Ilia Zdanevich? Of course, such replacements can always be proposed, but as Erlich himself implies on several occasions, ultimately, the “other” modernists only supplement the initial ranks (Kruchenykh is unthinkable without Khlebnikov, but not vice versa). Obviously, Erlich’s own discussion of certain writers is dictated by the appeal and evidence precisely of their writings, and the reading list contains few surprises. We should remember, however, that the Russian modernists advanced as much by unrehearsed gesture, emotional caprice, the impromptu speech, and violent dispute as by the published novel or poem and that they used all media to express their concerns (cinema, dance, fashion design). If, by some miracle, we were able...