Generally speaking, Russian culture is characterized by mixture and internal homogeneity. For nearly three centuries, it has again begun to take on the characteristics of literary centrism that combines the face of Russia's cultural diversity. That is to say, literature became the core building block of the Russian cultural system of the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. It had a decisive influence not only on the plastic arts, music, theater and later art forms such as film and television, but also on philosophy, religion, social thought, journalism and even today's Internet outside of art. Themes and objects, ideas and images, genres and styles, plots and scenes, characters and personalities – all of this is specified by literature.
Literature has an innate advantage over other art forms
In general, Russian literature and culture are so closely interconnected that such a close connection may be difficult to find in any other country. The history of Russian literature is directly related to the continuous development of spiritual life manifested in various cultural forms. This "metahistoric" feature in Russian culture can be called literary centrism. Because, in general, Russian culture has a strong tendency to use literary forms for self-presentation.
The creation of the nineteenth-century Russian classic writers Pushkin, Gogol, Chutchev, Nekrasov, Lev Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Saltykov-Shedlin, Chekhov and others is an example of this. The stark examples of Russian literary centrism in the twentieth century are reflected in the works of Gorky and Mayakovsky, A. Tolstoy and Bulgakov, Pasternak and Tsvetaeva, Bunin and Nabokov, among others.
Russian culture expresses the content of its thought image through language, and to some extent this feature is not unique to Russian culture. Other developed cultures of the world share similar characteristics. This is true at least at a certain stage in its historical maturity. For example, Italy, France, Britain, Germany, China, North America and Latin America. But in Russian culture this phenomenon is particularly widespread and pronounced, so that it can be considered that cultural centrism is a characteristic of Russian culture.
Literature as a cultural phenomenon closely related to language and writing has an all-encompassing universality. This is reflected in the ability of literature to convey mythological, religious, philosophical, socio-political, scientific, everyday and all other ideas and images in the form of artistic aesthetics.
With the help of common materials in human interaction and culture (such as words, expressive means of natural language, etc.), literature has become the most zeitgeist of all arts. At the same time, compared with art forms such as modeling, music, and sculpture, literature has great possibilities in conveying ideas such as philosophy, religion, morality, politics, society, and specific sciences.
Pushkin
Thus, philosophical and religious lyrics such as pushkin, Lermontov, Chutchev, Feth, Solovyov, Blok, etc.; philosophical and ideological novels, tragic novels, psychosocial novels, satirical novels, moral didactic novels, etc.) appear more naturally than in Russian art forms such as painting, architecture, music or dance. Specific works include: Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, "Idiots", "The Brothers Karamazov"; Tolstoy's "War and Peace", "Anna Karenina", "Resurrection"; Turgenev's "Father and Son", "The Night Before"; Gunchalov's "Oblomov", "Cliff"; Saltykov-Schedlin's "History of a City", "Contemporary Idyll", "The Family of Golovev", etc.
Gogol
At the same time, literature is the most literary of all genres (such as philosophy, religion, morality, law, political moral doctrine, and administrative literature, let alone scientific theory). With the help of the metaphorical meaning and symbolic meaning of language texts, by giving priority to the use of image association resources in culture rather than the logical discourse content of literature, literature can not only be straightforward, but also indirectly, allegorically, and metaphorically express various ideas, concepts and theories, showing the hidden thoughts, subtexts or various associative relationships with other texts (such as intertextual connections, hypertext connections). This allows literature to hide its deep content behind meaningful images and symbols, effectively avoiding tracking through the use of "Aesop's allegorical language."
In this way, Russian literature of the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries was gradually formed as a unified cultural text and a common problem field in Russian history. Here, the intertextual and hypertextual connections between various cultural texts are realized through literature, thus constructing the value meaning and conceptual system of the entire Russian culture. Other components of Russian culture (cultural texts such as vision, hearing, intelligence, behavior, etc.) are institutionally, organized, and functionally bound together through literary centrism.
Literature, more than any other art, can be regarded as a multi-layered linguistic text, and it can always serve as a model for the literary reproduction of culture. In this sense, the names of Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Gorky and others became symbols and symbols of russian culture as a whole. They each created the basis for the development of Russian history and culture and the aesthetics of art.
When contradictions between specific spheres of culture (such as politics and philosophy, religion and science, morality and art, nineteenth-century censorship and distribution) lead to the intensification of ideological struggles and unpredictable cultural consequences, the cultural tendencies in literature are clearly expressed in this culture. Russian culture belongs to this category.
It should be noted that, on the one hand, literature as a language art (which is different from leisure literature and political treatises) should not be reduced to missionary itself; on the other hand, literature should not be regarded as an art like music.
Turgenev
Thus, even the most politicized works in Russian literature (such as Herzen's Whose Sin?) Chernyshevsky's What to Do? Nekrasov's Who Can Live a Good Life in Russia? Dostoevsky's "The Devils", Gorky's "Mother", Mayakovsky's long poem "Lenin", "Good! Works such as Fadeyev's Destruction and Ostolovsky's How Steel is Made) are also far more than politically conceived themes—although at first glance, they reflect such themes—and are highly artistic. On the contrary, there are many literary works that are unanimously recognized as "art for art's sake", which to some extent not only have purely aesthetic significance, but also express profound philosophical thought, religious morality and social and historical significance. For example, some of the poetic works written by Pushkin, Chutchev, Fett, Maykov, A. Can Tolstoy, Polonsky, Anniansky, Balmont, Sologub, Blok, Beret, Kuzmin and others.
The Causes of Literary Centrism
The literary centrism of Russian culture arose because the invention of the Slavic script coincided with the Christianization of ancient Rus' and the birth of literature; Russian culture has retained a mixture of characteristics for many centuries; the process of secularization of Russian culture at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the national consciousness in Russian culture and literature from the end of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century; and literature has become an effective means of communication.
Ostrovsky
In Russia, literary imagery is seen as all-encompassing and all-encompassing, almost a metaphysical constant. This understanding, if not yet independent, is already widely disseminated. The reasons for this can be explained as the result of a combination of many heterogeneous cultural factors. These factors influence the historical choice of language art as the semantic center of socio-cultural life. This can point to the following basic characteristics of Russian culture, which may have constructed the basic types and systems of Russian culture, at least, it can be imagined.
1) The peculiarity of the category of Russian habits, which is closely related to the life of language, manifested in the right to public expression of opinions and collective discussion on the most pressing social issues.
2) The course of Russian history and culture recorded in written form is closely integrated with the history of Russian literature. This began with Ross's baptism. The baptism of Rus was a major event, which was closely related not only to the Christian origins of Russian history, but also to the birth of the Slavic script and Russian literature.
3) The results of cross-cultural exchanges with the East and the West are directly or indirectly reflected in Russian cultural texts and presented in Russian literature through linguistic expressions. Russian literature focuses on intercultural dialogue, pursuing exchanges and integration between different ethnic cultures.
4) Russia's unique historical experience has promoted the formation of Russian cultural self-linguistic awareness and corresponding socio-political, socio-cultural and artistic practices. Most of this is presented in speech or in a form closely related to speech, because for all native speakers, speech is the most popular and effective way.
5) The richness and uniqueness of the Russian language itself. The expressive means of the Russian language (phonetics, lexical semantics, rhetorical, associative, etc.) can convey in linguistic form grand ideas and images with great moral aesthetic and religious philosophical potential and a socio-political and socio-cultural loud voice. It is precisely because the Russian language has such an all-encompassing possibility that centuries have created a great literature of both national and world significance, which at the same time exhibits a deep and figurative character that encompasses all adjacent (and beyond) areas of Russian culture.
Literature as a language art is in the "middle" (mediating) position in other special forms of culture (religion, philosophy, science, art, etc.), so it plays the function of connecting and communicating other cultural phenomena. Compared with philosophy and science, literature is more popular and more easily accepted by the masses. The former requires the subject to have specialized knowledge, skills and intellectual experience, or requires special cultural practices (such as music, plastic arts or drama) related to the subject's individual input.
In this respect, every reader has the potential to participate in the existing process of text creation, and every cultural subject who masters the text has the potential to become a writer. In this way, the question lies in the depth of reading (or the degree of comprehension of what is read) on the one hand, and the refinement of the form of writing (ranging from official documents and letters to literary masterpieces) on the other.
The nineteenth century was the pinnacle of literary centrism
The peak of the development of Russian literary centrism was the nineteenth century, although preconditions had long been established in ancient Rus' culture. It was ancient Russian literature that assumed the functions of history and politics, religion and philosophy, embodied theological ideas, and realized political and moral debates, and the cultural paradigm shifts that occurred on the eve of and during Peter I's reforms caused the expansion of the scope of contact between Russian literature and culture and the absorption of near or distant cultural experiences.
Different national cultures exhibit literary centrism to varying degrees, which may require a historical perspective to examine which European cultures, when they experienced the peak of literary centrism, and when they declined. In this sense, russian classical culture is the culture with the highest degree of literary centrism. Its origins can be traced back to the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1845, In his famous essay Notes on Russian Literature, Belinsky examined European culture for the first time from the point of view of literature and where literary factors played a decisive role. It is in this treatise that Belinsky first clearly expresses the idea that, for example, English culture is primarily related to industry and trade, i.e., to different forms of political economy; German culture is more or less related to philosophy, and even German literature is philosophical; and French culture is mainly related to social history and political thought. In fact, on the basis of dividing Europe into three main cultures, the doctrine of the "three sources of Marxism" was born. Although Lenin may not have read Belinsky's treatise, he had read Chernyshevsky's Notes on Russian Literature in the Gogol Period, in which Chernyshevsky relayed this idea in detail.
In this paper, Belinsky first made the view that the difference between Russian culture and the cultures of other European countries is not philosophy, not social trends, nor political economy, but literature. It is generally believed that it was Belinsky's time that gave birth to the literary centrism of Russian culture (at least nineteenth-century Russian culture).
Later, in his famous essay "On the Development of the Ideas of the Russian Revolution", Herzen also pointed out that there was a lack of such literary factors in European culture, a lack of literature in this sense. Literature has acquired a special status only in a country like Russia, which is oppressed by serfdom and censorship. It became a social pulpit. It is precisely because of this feature that Russian literature has become an alternative to philosophy, political theory, religious thought, and even the social sciences. In other words, the literary centrism that emerged in Nineteenth-century Russian culture has an all-encompassing cultural form that, to a large extent, replaces various cultural texts and organically combines them in literature.
Gorky
The classic Russian literature, from Pushkin to Chekhov, itself nurtures a unique attribute in the entire Russian culture, namely "universal resonance.". The term was first coined by Dostoevsky in a speech in honor of Pushkin. It shows the world significance of Russian literature: Russian literature, which, together with Russian culture, has had an international impact on the literature and culture of other peoples. In this way, the achievements of other major literary centrists in Europe (France, Germany and England) were organically integrated, synthesized and developed in Russian classic literature (including culture). The first is Russian literature represented by Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov. On the whole, it is Russian culture itself that increasingly acquires the form and meaning of world literature (and also world culture), reflecting the world historical significance of Russian literary centrism.
Chekhov
The literary centrist "framework" formed in the Russian art and culture of the nineteenth century led to the formation of a complete system of nonverbal texts around literature - painting, music, drama, dance, etc. At the same time, the core of the system has always been a synthesis of the literary texts of classic Russian writers. Literary texts constitute the meta-textual form of nonverbal works. The most direct connection exists between literary and dramatic works and the theaters in which plays out. The history of Russian theater predetermined the entire history of the development of Russian theater. Such as the dramatic works of von Weissing, Gribauydov, Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, A. Can Tolstoy, A. Ostrovsky, Lev Tolstoy, Chekhov, Andreev, Blok and others. In addition, there is another set of literary material, that is, plays based on Russian novels, of which Dostoevsky's novels are very suitable for theatrical adaptations. Such as "Crime and Punishment", "Idiot", "The Devil", "The Brothers Karamazov" and so on.
Leo Tolstoy
Nineteenth-century Russian musicals (especially operas) are also closely related to Russian literary classics. This is first and foremost the work of Pushkin, Gogol and Lermontov. Even arbitrary adaptations of literary meta-texts do not prevent audiences or audiences from viewing opera scripts as derivatives of literary texts. Many opera works by Russian musicians were based on Pushkin's literary creations. For example: Glinka's Ruslan and Lyudmila; Tchaikovsky's Yevgeny Onegin, The Queen of Spades, and Mateppa are based on Pushkin's long poem Poltava; Dahlgomezyński's Mermaid, The StoneKer; Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov; Rimsky-Korsakov's Mozart and Sarrieri, The Story of The King Satan, The Golden Rooster; Guy's Cossack Captives, Feast in the Plague, The Captain's Daughter Rachmaninoff's Alekko (based on Pushkin's The Tsigons), Napalovnik's Dubrovsky, and Stravinsky's Mafra (based on Pushkin's long poem The Little House of Colonna).
Goncharov
The correlation between plastic works of art and literary meta-texts is relatively less direct. The works of the Russian touring exhibition school, represented by Perov, Kramskoy, Repin, Makovsky, etc., usually reflect acute social problems and psychological scenes. This can also be conveyed in the form of a verbal narrative. These themes echo the "physiological" essays of the "naturalists", the poetry of democratic poets such as Nekrasov and Kurochkin, the works of Dostoevsky, Ya Ni Ostrovsky, Saltykov-Scheidlin, and the works of writers such as Uspensky.
In some cases, literary texts are both musical and dramatic works in national cultures and meta-texts of paintings. For example, Lermontov's long poem "The Devil" was continued and developed in Rubenstein's opera of the same name and in Frübel's series of symbolist paintings.
The crisis of literary centrism
In short, Russian literary centrism is a form of discursive organization in the space of meaning. In thinking about other cultural texts, literature plays a role in setting the lines, tones, and frameworks. Cultural texts here include far from literary, and sometimes even non-artistic, texts such as scientific and technological texts, philosophical texts, and political texts.
The first signs of a crisis began to appear at the same time when literary centrism was still in its midst of prosperity. The beginning began with the rise of Russian literary criticism. It began a struggle with literary discourse and hoped to win the debate ("critical centrism"). Then there was the synonymous tendency that emerged in the Silver Age. At this time, the traditional poetic text was excluded in form by head rhyme, sound expression, exquisite rhythm, and "mysterious" language, and abstract and vague texts dominated in content. Russian literary centrism at the end of the twentieth century experienced its worst crisis and continues into the twenty-first century today. This is closely related to the advent of the era of media centrism.
Dostoevsky
Nineteenth-century Russian classics coexisted with its formidable "competitors" (plays, musicals, paintings, etc.), with which the Chinese was the ultimate "victor" in competitions and even struggles, and consolidated its position in the form of literary centrism. At the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century, Russian literature encountered a new "rival" who was no weaker than itself, and it was the visual and auditory representative of contemporary media culture. For example, television, radio, video, Internet, multimedia projects, etc. Literature has taken a back seat in conflict with these new rivals and emerging historical and cultural realities. Compared with the "viewing" and "listening" of audio, video and multimedia products, reading has retreated to the second or even third place of culture. This is directly reflected in the sharp cooling of popular reading interest and the sharp decline in professional reading skills. Literature flows into the mainstream of media culture in various ways, so that the end of literary centrism (not just another crisis) is consciously or unconsciously acknowledged.
The most representative is the widespread popularity of audio books in Russia today. People can listen while riding, at home or in the office, while doing other things (daily chores, work production, organizational planning, etc.), and even while driving or engaging in similar automation operations. Many times, "phonography" acts as the first literary impression, which is obtained through the voice, intonation and personal reading style of the famous announcer. Another typical example is that literary classics were adapted into serials that were adapted onto television screens and disseminated through video. Since then, the original literary works have been republished with TV drama pictures as illustrations. As a result, in the eyes of the purchaser, the original literary meta-text was only treated as a paper version of the TV series. Literature and video seem to have switched positions: TV dramas are not considered abbreviated versions and video adaptations of literary texts, but rather as cultural meta-texts, requiring later literary deep processing of what is seen on the silver screen or accompanied by detailed text annotations. Literature has developed uniquely in the context of electronicization and the Internet. Visibility and audibility significantly change the nature of the literary text, giving it distinctive polymorphism, cultural semantic ambiguity, virtuality and multimedia. The recent works of Tolstaja, Sorokin, Pereven, Akunin, Korolev, Alexievich and others are characterized by various forms of interaction and synthesis between literary texts and the media.
If the classic literature of the nineteenth century exported its linguistic means to other artistic genres (painting, music, and twentieth-century cinema) and achieved real literary effects, then today's "post-literature" has become a derivative of modern media in its own right. It expanded its scope from nonverbal artistic and cultural practice, absorbed its artistic and poetic characteristics, and thus completely lost its linguistic identity, and quickly marginalized itself when the mediacentrism formed in the Russian information society culture (like other cultures in the globalized world) prevailed. What is unclear, however, is who is in charge of contemporary Russian culture? Is television using the silver screen of literature to gain cultural universality and expand its overall influence on culture, or is literature deliberately using television (or other media) adaptations of literary texts as a means of restoring its cultural authority and literary centrism in order to compete with or combine with today's mediacentrism.
This clearly shows the crisis of Russian literary centrism in contemporary times. As we can see, crises do not come suddenly. On the contrary, today's literary crisis and the crisis of literary centrism, which is inseparable from it, have been foreshadowed in the three stages before the emergence of this crisis. Therefore, this is not only regular, but also a rather long, multi-stage pulse process of historical and cultural development. It is entirely possible that the contemporary crisis of Russian literary centrism is a non-linear, multi-layered structural layout. At the bottom of today's "media crisis" lies the first three stages of the crisis of Russian cultural centrism: literary criticism, nonverbal art, and political ideology. These crises have threatened the "hegemony" of literature in culture. Although at first it can provide various literary means to overcome the current crisis, another form of crisis will follow.
It is conceivable that the fourth crisis that literary centrism in Russian culture today is experiencing is not the last, nor the end of the history of Russian literature, but of a temporary and transitional character. This is inseparable from the ongoing fierce struggle between literary centrism and media centrism in contemporary Russian culture. Perhaps the struggle will end with the triumph of media centrism. But it is not excluded that this victory is only short-term, even fleeting, if literature can organically integrate into the media culture and successfully use it to serve itself (as has happened many times before in theater, painting, music, film, etc.). Once this happens, we will see a resurgence of literary centrism. The stronger the sense of crisis today, and the greater the difficulty for literature to overcome it, the more obvious and significant this rise will be.
(Translated by: School of Foreign Chinese, Nanjing University, Center for Russian Studies, Nanjing University)
Author: [Russian] Translated by Y. Wa Kondakkov Yang Zheng
Editor: Chen Shaoxu
Editor-in-Charge: Junyi Li
*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.