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p “We do not so;/: ’Back to Goethe’. We say: ’Onward to Goethe, onward with Goethe’."
J. Becher

p One of the “eternal” problems of literature and the arts is that of tradition and innovation.

p The artist comes into a world already full of works of art created before him. He studies not only the real life of his contemporaries and ancestors, the whole complex and frequently contradictory system of human relations, but in addition the history of art stretching back over many centuries. His link with life is not simply a link with actual events but, as Johannes Becher emphasised, with the spiritual culture of society. When an artist considers how best to reflect life and which devices to use, he cannot avoid taking into account how those who lived before him reflected life. "Whatever we may think of ourselves we are all essentially collective beings,” observed Goethe sagely as early as 1832. "We must borrow and learn from those who lived before us and those who live around us. Even the greatest genius would not get very far if he were to try to produce everything out of himself alone. But there are many good souls who do not understand this and spend the best part of their lives groping in the dark dreaming about originality. I have known painters who boasted of the fact that they did not model themselves on any of the masters, and that their work was the exclusive product of their own genius. What rubbish! As if anything of the kind were possible! As if the external world did not leave its stamp on them at every turn and shape them in 188 il.s own way, in spile of their stupidity!”  [188•1  In addition lo being a great poet, Goethe was also an eminent art historian and Ihe author of many classical works on aesthetics. His views on tradition and innovation summarise his observations on the history of art and are also based, which is most important, on his own many-sided artistic ex perience.

p Let us now turn lo a dilferenl age and a different writer. Leonid Leonov recently remarked: "Of course, the wind of genius blows on all writers. Any boat that has a sail should catch it. All literature is bound to be a diagonal in a parallelogram composed of the individual author and the whole heritage of world literature.”  [188•2  Leonov seems here to be developing Goethe’s idea: the individual writer is a collective being, a member of the great family of writ ers from all ages and countries. The talented Soviet writer is not afraid of drawing such bold comparisons: modern literature is defined as the diagonal of a huge parallelogram, one side of which is the whole history of world lil erature, and the other the literary products of coiilempo rary writers. Thus modern literature is an organic link in the development of world literature as a whole. This view was common to the classical writers of the past, and is shared by the outstanding writers of the present. It has been challenged by certain contemporary bourgeois nolions of the historical process, which frequently see the history of culture as nothing more than a chaotic accumu lation of unrelated artistic phenomena. The well-known French novelist, Francois Mauriac, was apparently influenced by these ideas when he wrote in 1960: "Rereading War and Peace I feel I am faced not with a stage which we have been through, but with a secret which we have lost.”  [188•3 

p The task of finding a correct solution lo the problem of tradition and innovation is further obstructed by the remnants of vulgar sociologism which are still apparent 189 here and there, and lead, as Konslaiilin Fedin so aptly put it, lo a dangerous splitting-up of the very core of literature into ideology and art, with the problems of subjecl-matter, composition, style and vocabulary being Irealed separately from Ihe ideological conlent of Ihe work. "As if the conlent of the work can exisl independenlly of ils embodiment in form. It is we, the opponenls of formalism, who do Ihis. Isn’t this in fad formalism upside down?”  [189•1 

p Those who support this approach argue that the lilcralure of the past exerls an influence on modern wriling only through its ideas, subject-matler and individual characters, not through Ihe whole complex of literary devices in which these ideas are given form. There is a very significant remark by Johannes Becher, which seems to me to pinpoinl Ihe weakness of Ihis "formalism upside down.” Discussing Ihe relevance of our literary herilage lo modern wriling, he observes: "Tolstoi’s War and Peace as well as portraying Ihe realily of historical evenls also depicls Ihe realily crealcd by Homer, which is lo be found in Ihe characlerislic features of the wriling of Tolsloi himself. Thus there is no reality capable of being depicled in literature which does not contain features of the realily created by lileralure itself.”  [189•2  It would seem thai Tolstoi was faced with two realities in wriling his epic: Ihe concrele, historical reality of Russia al Ihe lime of the war againsl Napoleon, and Ihe artificial realily crealed by Homer in accordance with artistic laws. (Some critics avoid referring fo works of arl as Ihe second realily, artificial realily, on the grounds lhal idealist aeslheticians make a contrasl belween works of arl and real life which, Ihey hold, bear no relalion to one another, art being the only Irue realily.)

p The hislory of arl shows lhat arl is not only the producl of real life reflected through the prism of the individual artist, but of those aesthetic forms in which similar manifeslalions of real life were reflected at earlier stages in the developmenl of art which were, of course, also refracted in Hie prism of the particular arlisl. II goes without saying 190 that Tolstoi did not merely imitate Homer (just as lie did not simply copy lii’e in Russian society at the beginning of the nineteenth century), but made use of Homer in writing his epic scenes, creating at the same time a new form of the epic novel. Mikhail Bakhtin was, therefore, quite right when he wrote in relation to genre that: "A genre lives in the present, but is constantly aware of its past and origin, (ienre represents the artistic memory in the process of literary development.”  [190•1  The artistic memory does not exclude, but rather presupposes innovation. Lev Tolstoi shows himself to have been acutely aware of this in his article entitled "A Few Words on the Book War and Peace" (1868) where he said that he found it difficult to define the genre of his book in accepted terminology, and that the whole history of Russian literature was that of deviating from the generally accepted definitions of the novel, poem or short story. The leading writers in Russia and other countries have always created original works, each of them being an artistic discovery. But these discoveries far from disrupting the course of art went to form un identical links in the single chain of its development.

p The question of tradition and innovation in literature is closely bound up with the concept of artistic development. Can such a concept really exist, ask certain modernists, shifting the discussion from the field of aesthetics into that of sociology and philosophy.

p For example, the father of existentialism, Karl Jaspers, said: world history is a chaotic jumble of random events, a flooding maelstrom. It goes on and on from crisis to crisis, from one disaster to the next, with brief spells of happiness, and small islands untouched for a while by the eddying stream until they are finally inundated by it. It is all like a picture by Max Weber: world history is a street which has been paved by the devil with ruined splendour. If world history is in fact nothing but chaos, an absurd conglomeration, a disconnected string of random events and phenomena, there can naturally be no question of consecutive literary development. This is also a valid point of view, but it is the point of view of people 191 who have lost all sense of direction in the complex world of life and art. They regard their helplessness as great strength, and themselves as original thinkers, who as it were stand above the fray calmly observing the futile social battles beneath them. But it should not be thought that their writing is indifferent, for this is by no means the case. By violent assertion of their beliefs they hinder the struggle of progressive forces for a belter future.

p There is another concept of literary development which has won great popularity among certain circles in the West, and which was expounded particularly forcefully in the speeches of a number of participants at the Leningrad Forum of Writers in 1963. The Italian writer, Guido Piovenc, announced, for example, that the work of such writers as Proust, Joyce and Kafka marked the end of a literary era and produced the blueprint for a new one, for modern man. Several participants at the meeting referred to Proust, Joyce and Kafka as their spiritual fathers.

p However, those who attended the Leningrad meeting were by no means unanimous in their views. For example, the second address of the General Secretary of the European Community of Writers, Giancarlo Vigorelli, was full of contradictions. Vigorelli also spoke reverently of the "ranks of his spiritual fathers”, the works of Proust, Joyce and Kafka. However at the same time he observed: "The point must be made that in spite of our profound respect for these names and our unfailing gratitude for the discoveries of these writers, whose work laid the foundation of our culture and continues to influence it up to this day, the point must be made that we, their literary sons, are faced with a real crisis of spiritual values. We have reached a definite state of collapse, which no doubt contains its element of criticism. But all the same we have arrived at a state of collapse of the individual, society and the novel. To put it in childishly simple terms: we left the great Joyce and, in spite of all our respect for him, arrived at the little Beckett.”  [191•1  Such is the contradictory nature of Vigorelli’s thinking, and this very contradiction is common to a i’air number of Western intellectuals.

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p A third point of view was put forward by the Polish writer Ryszard Matuszewski. lie sees two lines of development in world literature. One is realist or traditional literature represented by the novels of Balzac, Tolstoi, Sholokhov and Leonov. The other is associated with the names of Proust, Joyce and Kafka. According to Maluszewski these two trends should not be opposed to each other. "I think,” he emphasised, "that today we can refer to all the literary experiments of the great writers of the twentieth century from Sholokhov and Thomas Mann to Joyce and Kafka, as being our common properly.” The Polish writer holds that "the reality which surrounds us is infinitely rich. Consequently realism has at its disposal an effectively inexhaustible store of objective material”. From this he draws the logical conclusion that there is no fundamental difference between realist and modernist literature, and that modernist literature can be included in this broad concept of realism. This was the reasoning which led to the formulation of the aesthetic system advanced in Roger Garaudy’s D’un realiamc sans riuages. Maluszcwski’s viewpoint is not a new one. As early as 1959 at the Third Congress of Soviet Writers one of the Italian guesls, Mario Alicala, made a speech in which he said that in Italy socialist realism arose from the struggle against "the decadent aspects of modernist art”, and that the Italian Marxist critic was faced with "the task of making an intensely profound study of avant-garde trends, with which some of Ihe greatest socialist realist writers such as Vladimir Mayakovsky and Bertolt Brecht were associated at the beginning of their literary careers. This is essential in order to be able to draw the line between genuine avantgarde literature and the false kind such as contemporary cosmopolitan abstraclioiiism.”  [192•1 

p Soviet writers felt compelled to disagree with the views which were propounded by certain members of the European Community of Writers in Leningrad. Both during and after the meeting Konstantin Fedin and other Soviet delegates drew attention to one feature which was most characteristic of the speeches of their opponents. Many of 193 the latter asserted lliat the approach of Soviet writers and critics to art was dogmatic, that they tried to impose set systems on it, and were .sectarian in their defence of realism. The question then arises: why should the defence of realism and progressive art be called dogmatic and sectarian, when the insistence of Ihc Wesl that writers should model themselves entirely on the works of Proust, Joyce and Kafka is not held to be eilher. Any unbiased reader will lell you which concept is broader, richer and gives more scope for independent arlistic enquiry. Proust, Joyce and Kafka are, of course, talented and original writers. II is a mailer of regref lhal until recently their work was insufficiently studied. They were sometimes over-simplified and subjected to unfair criticism. All this is true and musl be remedied. It is already being remedied. However, a serious study of the works of Proust, Joyce and Kafka does not support the suggestion lhal they (and they alone!) are determining the future course of modern world literature. To accept the views of our opponents would be tantamount to selling up a tyrannical dictatorship of this triumvirate, such as no supporter of dogmatism would ever dream of, a rigid set of rules which would paralyse all individual talent.

p As for the suggeslion that a special study should be made of those modernist schools with which some of the great modern writers were associated, this is a task in which Soviet specialists have been engaged for some considerable lime. Thej- have succeeded in establishing that Blok, Mayakovsky and Brecht became prominent writers not because their work developed according to the principles of symbolism, futurism, surrealism or expressionism, but because they managed to reject these principles and create their own aesthetic systems and literary forms. They were hindered, not helped by modernism, and became great writers only after they had won the fierce inner struggle to overcome its intluence on them. Consequently symbolism, surrealism, futurism and expressionism have no right to congratulate themselves on their brief association with these outstanding writers. There is little to support the assertion that the writing of Mayakovsky the futurist is as interesting as that of Mayakovsky the classical Soviet poet. We cannot obviously accept a form of 194 realism in which genuine realism is united with modernist experiments: the two are organically incompatible. And when they do occasionally appear together in I lie work ol individual talented writers, such as some of Thomas Mann’s works, the combination impedes the author rather than helps him, as the critics have already pointed out.

p Certain representatives from European socialist countries offered us their own views on the development of world literature, in particular the Czechoslovak writers and critics.

p We are all familiar with the fact that Gorky and manySoviet critics after him referred to progressive and reactionary romanticism. Our Czechoslovak comrades take the view that this concept can be extended to other literary methods. They speak not only of reactionary and progressive romanticism, but of reactionary and progressive critical realism and even reactionary and progressive modernism. According to them they use the term “ modernism” differently from the way it is used in Hie Soviet Union, namely, to denote not only reactionary art but modern art in general. Therefore they distinguish between two types of modernism. According to them the term ”socialist realism" is not broad enough to cover all the riches of contemporary progressive art in Czechoslovakia, and they therefore suggest the use of what in their opinion is a more comprehensive one, namely, "socialist art”, which combines both progressive modernism and, as one of the trends in modern art, socialist realism. Some of our friends warned us not to confuse reactionary modernism with that which they refer to as “modern”, i.e., contemporary. Of course, one should bear in mind the different historical conditions which influence the meaning of this or that term in various countries, but it would seem, nevertheless, that we are dealing here not so much with a disagreement over terminology as with certain divergences of opinion on the nature of modern art.

p Our comrades from the socialist countries emphasise that they arc united with Soviet writers and critics in their dialectical materialist attitude towards life, their rejection of bourgeois ideology, and their conscious striving lo cooperate through their literature in the task of building socialism and communism. This is a sufficiently broad 195 and solid base for a friendly discussion of artistic problems.

p Let’s make no bones about it. We are not convinced that Hie term "socialist art" is belter than (hat of " socialisl realism" or thai we should renounce socialist realism. The latter has now more than half a century behind il, and ils achievements have been acclaimed by all progressive mankind. Certain weaknesses in Soviet art were due lo the fact that individual artists disregarded the fundamental principles of the socialist realist method or applied them with insufficient skill, not to any fault in the method itself. All this is a mailer of lacl and does not require any detailed substantiation.

p The supporters of socialist realism and modernism dilTer profoundly in their attitude to the basis of art. It is impossible to examine Ihese problems without having recourse lo certain fundamental philosophical questions.

p Our system of aesthetics is based on Lenin’s theory of reflection. Art reflects Hie world in Ihe light of certain ideals. Every great artist is original and unique. He creates a new phenomenon of life, namely art. Herzen called this aesthetic reality, Belinsky the artislic world, and it is now frequently referred to as the artislic model of Ihe world. It derives its strength from its close links with realily which enable il to reflect its most profound regularities.

p This is the view of the supporters of realism.

p The modernists see things differently. In spite of Ihe many different schools and trends they still frequently proceed from Schopenhauer’s formula: man "does not know any sun or any earth: only Ihe eye which sees the sun and the hand which feels Ihe earlh".  [195•1  The modernist is not concerned with the world reflected by the arlist, bul with the reflection of lhal world in the arlisl’s soul, "Ihe subjective landscape of the soul”, as one modernist thcorclician pul it. For Ihem a work of arl is not a model of the real world, bul a model of Ihe inner model of Ihe real 196 world reposing in I lie artist’s soul. For this reason they do not relate works of art to the real world, but to the artist’s subjective conception of the real world. This view of art was described in the magazine America by it certain Ben Heller who wrote: "By ceasing to be the servant of the church or society the artist, just as the writer or philosopher, started a new tradition of revealing himself in his art, a tradition which has today perhaps reached its highest peak. Withdrawal into oneself as a means of self-analysis and an essential prerequisite for studying problems that interest him independently of their value or use to society is one of the major achievements of modern painting.

p “Furthermore, the feeling of individual freedom has had a tremendous effect on the scope of the artistic quest with the result that the artist of today has complete freedom of action. He is unrestricted in his choice of subject- matter, method and stylistic approach, in the choice of colour, line, dimensions and materials. He is free, if he likes, to distort reality: in fact, we expect and demand of him thai he should.”  [196•1  Here in concentrated form we have the basic tenets of modernist aesthetics: art ceasing to serve society, the unrestrained subjectivism of the artist, aestheticism, an anarchical altitude to artistic freedom, the right, even the duty, of the artist to deform reality. Such a programme justifies complete chaos in art.

p Modernism also springs from certain specific traditions, which are not only those of the "fathers of contemporary modernism”, Proust, Joyce and Kafka. The modernists make use of the idealistic philosophy of Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Bergson.

p In speaking of the traditions of socialist realism we more often than not speak too generally and state that it inherits the best traditions in the art of all ages and peoples. This is perfectly correct, of course, but I consider that the time has come for us to give a more specific, detailed account of these traditions. I propose the following division: 1) world literature, 2) national traditions, and 3) socialist realism traditions.

197

p The first category constitutes the whole of world literal ure. We all remember Lenin’s words that Marxism is entirely alien to sectarianism, that it sprang up and advanced on "the high road of the development of world civilisation”, that it provides answers to questions "already raised by the foremost minds of mankind".  [197•1 

p Socialist realism cherishes the culture of the past with the greatest reverence. In the very early days of the young Soviet state that great founder of socialist realism, Maxim Gorky, organised the publishing house Vsemirnaya Lileratura (World Literature) in incredibly difficult conditions. His foreword to the catalogue of the publishing house printed in 1919 will remain an eternal witness to the artistic energy which was aroused by the Great October Socialist Revolution. Gorky conceived the great plan of introducing the Soviet people and Soviet artists to the literature of An tiqtiily, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and Age of En lightenment and, (irst and foremost, the nineteenth and twentieth century classics. "All the books together will con stilute an extensive compendium of literature over the ages, which will help the reader learn in detail about the origin, writing and decline of schools of literature, the gradual development of poetry and prose, the role played by the literatures of different countries, and, in general, the whole course of the evolution of literature from Voltaire to Analole France, from Richardson to Wells, from Goethe to Ilauplmann and so on.”  [197•2  Gorky believed that the knowl edge and study of world literature would help to develop a feeling of internationalism in the people of the new world. "This publication is the only one of its scope in Europe,” wrote Gorky. "The honour of having undertaken this enterprise belongs lo the creative energy of the Russian Revolution, which is called a ’rising of barbarians’ by its enemies. By committing itself to a cultural task of such scope and importance in its very first year of power under inexpressibly difficult conditions the Soviet people has the right to say that it has built a monument worthy of 198 itself.”  [198•1  Gorky was not able lo see his plan through lo the end. His work on it was impeded by the connlry’s devastation and his serious illness. But in subsequent years Soviet publishers have gone a long way towards fulfilling Gorky’s plan. It is unfortunate Ihat historians of Soviet literature tend to pay little attention to the ideological importance of Gorky’s great design in their analysis of the early period, and it did, in fact, play a far more significant role in the development of our art than the nihilistic announce ments of the Prolelkult, which are generally examined in great detail.

p The relation between socialist realism and the traditions of world literature has been a subject of extensive study by Soviet and foreign specialists alike. Brecht, for instance, borrowed from a wide range of literary traditions, particularly those of the Enlightenment and Shakespeare.  [198•2  lie was influenced by the genre theory of the Enlightenment: the process of making drama epic by the introduction of narrative elements, the intellectual pathos of art, the removal of the action from a definite place or time, new forms of contact with the audience, who may well know the outcome of the action in advance, the tendency of Enlightenment realism lo strip reality of its concreleiicss and not demand from the reader that he identify himself with the action and characters portrayed. At the same time Brecht placed Shakespeare’s realism higher than that of the Enlightenment, because it was broader in scope, without intrusive rationalist construction, and forced the spectator to think about the problems by not providing him with ready-made conclusions. However, there were also times when Brecht disagreed with Shakespeare: ordinary people arc just as worthy of the writer’s attention as the great of this world. Throughout all this, Brecht remained himself, a great playwright of socialist realism, and not a mere apprentice of Shakespeare or the representatives of the Enlightenment.

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p The second category is that of national artistic traditions. The question of the significance of these traditions for the development of socialist realism was raised somewhat later than that of the traditions of world art.

p The term "socialist realism" was first coined in 1932 and the first detailed exposition of the basic principles underlying it was given at the First Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934. Even at that time our ideological opponents had already claimed that socialist realism had no national roots in the separate countries where it appeared, that it was being forced upon them from outside and that it was a propagandist invention of Moscow, not an artistic method. One still catches echoes of this in somewhat different form in the works of bourgeois writers even today. Take, for example, a book on socialist realism by G. Yermolayev which came out in 1963 in the U.S.A. The author attempts to prove that socialist realism was decreed by Stalin and foisted upon the art of other countries. Quite apart from ignoring the facts, Yermolayev seems to honestly believe that it is possible to persuade progressive writers the whole world over to obey certain canons by means of decrees. What a strange belief Mr. Yermolayev has in the omnipotence of a decree! This, incidentally, also reflects his profound lack of respect for those who make a progressive contribution to culture.

p Leading writers and critics were faced with the task of not only parrying the attacks of their ideological opponents, but of working out a theory of socialist realism in general, and its national origins in particular.

In an impassioned speech addressed lo the Second AllUnion Congress of Soviet Writers in 1954 the Brazilian writer, Jorge Amadou, spoke of the national origins of socialist realism. Condemning the over-simplification and schematising of socialist realism, he emphasised that: "The problem of national form is a fundamental one for us, otherwise our books would not be Brazilian and we would be engulfed by meaningless cosmopolitanism. If our books, novels or poetry, are to serve the cause of the revolution they must be Brazilian first and foremost. And this is the guarantee that they wnll also be international.”  [199•1 

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p A study of the development of socialist realism in different countries shows thai there is no single recipe for it, each country’s development being influenced by its peculiar historical and national characteristics. A particularly important role is played by the specific cultural traditions of the country in question. In Russia, for example, critical realism was highly developed in the past, and its national traditions arc of prime importance for the development of socialist realism, in particular the Tolstoi and Dostoyevsky schools of psychological analysis. This is not the case in Poland and Czechoslovakia where the romantic tradition was very strong. Icelandic writers cannot avoid being influenced by the ancient sagas which make themselves felt in all spheres of the country’s culture. The course of modern literature in Korea and Iran is inevitably determined by the century-long traditions of Oriental poetry. The problem of determining the influence of national sources on individual poets is a more complex one. Let us lake Mayakovsky, for example. This original poet appears to have borrowed from all the best traditions of Russian poetry. We catch the strains of Lomonosov’s civic fervour, the measured rhythm of Uerzhavin, Pushkin’s profound musing on the fate of his country, the romantic poetry of Lermontov, the journalistic lash of Nekrasov and the bewitching, sometimes tragic, lines of Blok.

p The third category is that of Soviet literary traditions and the traditions of socialist realism in the socialist countries and the capitalist world.

p We are sometimes apt to forget that socialist realism has been with us now for more than six decades and that it has its own history and stages of development, its own traditions. "Surely it is time for us to slop speaking exclusively of the influence which classical traditions have had on us, and to turn to the many and varied traditions of our own Soviet literature which grew up and developed before our very eyes,” said Konslantin Simonov.  [200•1 

p Progressive writers the whole world over have a deep respect and devotion for Ihe achievements of Soviet writers. In their articles, letters and speeches they speak of how Soviet literature has opened up a new world for them, 201 given them faith in man and his creative powers, helped them to overcome the trials and tribulations of life and cultivated a sense of collective responsibility for the destiny of mankind.

p However, the course of progressive foreign literature has shown that a true appreciation of Soviet literary traditions does not come easily. The bright optimism which radiates from the works of the best Soviet writers grows dim if, in place of a genuine understanding of Soviet artistictraditions, there is nothing but thoughtless mechanical imitation of their models, and if foreign writers do not study the specific characteristics of life in their own country and borrow from their own cultural traditions. At the Second Congress of Soviet Writers Amadou, criticising young Brazilian writers in whose work socialist realism was taking its first steps, emphasised how futile it was to simply imitate Soviet literature. The Brazilian critics no doubt had the best intentions in trying to ensure that the characters portrayed by their country’s leading writers were as similar as possible to those of Soviet writers. They urged their colleagues to renounce the traditional free verse and replace it by the rhymed verse with fixed metre of Soviet poets and so on. Such an approach to traditions could obviously not produce good results.

p Thus Soviet socialist realism cannot serve as a pattern for the development of this method in other countries. Socialist realism in France or Mexico is not obliged to repeat that which has been achieved in the Soviet Union. At the same time it cannot afford to ignore the development of socialist realism both in the Soviet Union and in other countries.

p True art is always the discovery of something new. Here one should beware of the dogmatic repetition of old formulae as well as a nihilistic altitude towards the achievements of socialist realism in all the countries where it flourishes.

p We have examined briefly the three categories of Iradilions which underly and promote the development of socialist realism. The question may now be asked as to which of them is the most important. The answer to this is simply thai they are all ol equal importance, and that to 202 elevale any one of them above the others could lead, and lias in fart led in the past, to serious errors of judgement. Concentrating on the world classics at the expense of national traditions may result in cosmopolitanism. Limiting oneself to national traditions alone and ignoring the history of world literature reduces the writer’s scope and encourages dangerous nationalistic tendencies. Following Soviet traditions to the exclusion of national and world art means the production of feeble imitations. True, great socialist realist art is an organic unity of national and international elements illuminated by the ideas of scientific socialism.

p Our ideological opponents do their utmost to try to persuade the public that realism is the blind copying of life, that it rejects the subjective aspect of the artistic view of the world, that it underrates the importance of artistic originality and in so doing encourages imitation and conservatism in both form and content. Modernism, on the other hand, gives full scope for investigation, innovation and originality of form and content.

p Is this in fact the case?

p The whole history of realism from the Renaissance and Enlightenment to critical and socialist realism disproves these contentions. Respect for traditions (we remember how Pushkin criticised Bestuzhev for his attitude to Zhukovsky: "Why bite the breast that feeds us? Because we have just cut our first teeth?”  [202•1 ), hatred of imitation (Lessing’s unforgettable words: "Shakespeare must be studied, not plundered"  [202•2 ), love of bold innovation (Mayakovsky’s famous line: "Poetry is a constant journey into the unknown”)—these are the basic principles of all true realist art. It is common knowledge that Gorky valued the richness and variety of nineteenth century Russian realism very highly. As early as 1909 he pointed out that a study of Russian classical literature "will astound you by its variety of characters, devices, creative power, thought and rich language.

p “Each writer in Russia possessed a keen, individual talent, but they were all united by the same stubborn urge 203 to understand, feel and foresee their country’s future, the fate of its people and its role 011 earth.’"  [203•1  Continuing to develop this thought Gorky wrote in 1917: "One is filled with pride and joy not only by the abundance of the talent to which Russia gave birth in the nineteenth century, but by its variety, a variety to which the historians of our art have not paid sufficient attention.”  [203•2 

p It is well known that Gorky adopted a mistaken approach to certain political, philosophical and aesthetic problems in the early years of the Soviet state. In particular, he took the view that the people’s one and only need at that time was for the heroic romantic theatre (of Schiller. Hugo, etc.). In this Gorky was abandoning his former position, and Lenin corrected him. In a conversation with Gorky in 1919 Lenin voiced his disagreement with him when he said: "We need lyricism as well, Chekhov and the ordinary truth.”  [203•3  Gorky had allowed himself to be carried away by one form of drama, one artistic school, and it was Lenin who reminded him of the richness and variety of artistic traditions, all of them precious to the sons and daughters of the new revolutionary order.

p There are many profound remarks on innovation in realism to be found in Lev Tolstoi’s articles, notes, letters and reflections on art. These works, which have not yet been studied in sufficient detail, are extremely important for us. Firstly, they are the product of the vast literary experience of one of the world’s greatest writers. Secondly, Tolstoi wrote these articles after a careful study of countless works on aesthetics from different historical periods. Thus, Tolstoi’s reflections on art represent an attempt on the part of this great writer to summarise the history of aesthetic thought. It is, of course, true that Tolstoi’s philosophical, moral and religious views of that period left their imprint on his aesthetic views and led him to certain paradoxical conclusions, but they did not prevent him from expressing some extremely profound ideas on this subject. Finally, Tolstoi the artist and Tolstoi the thinker succeeded in penetrating to the very core of many of the 204 mysterious processes of art and discovering laws which have since become the common properly not only of c. rilical realist writers but also of socialist realism.

p In 1889 Tolstoi began work on his article entitled " Concerning Art”. "A work of art,” wrote the author at the beginning of the article, "is good or had depending on whal the artist says, how he says it and the extent to which he is sincere.”  [204•1 

p In the proofs of 24 March. 1889 the following argument appears: "What the artist says will deserve the name of art only if he sees, understands and feels something which no one else has ever seen, understood or felt. . . .”  [204•2  If one were to cut short the quotation at this point it would win the approval of modernists of every shape and colour, for whom the whole purpose of art consists in the discovery of something new, any subjective truth, the reflection of "the inner model of the world.” Tolstoi, however, did not slop here, but went on to say: "...but at Ihe same lime it must he something which is necessary, relevant and pleasant for Ihe whole of mankind to see, understand and feel. For the artist to be able to see, understand and feel something of this kind, it is essenlial that he should be morally developed and, therefore, not live an exclusively selfish life, but take part in Ihe life of mankind as a whole.”

p Thus Tolsfoi cslablishes Ihe relalion between the subjective truth discovered by the artist and the social development of mankind. Tolstoi rejects subjectivism in art, but does not reject creative subjectivity, Ihe originality of the artist.

p Himself a bold explorer, Tolstoi haled imitators. In his notebook for 1871 there is a delightful passage about writers who base Iheir writings not on life, bul on earlier literary models copying them mechanically. "There is a literature of literature,” wrote Tolstoi, "in which the subject is not life itself, but the literature of life. . .. There is a poetry of poetry and so on, in music, painting, sculpture and 205 writing, in which the object of poetry is not life, but earlier poetry.”  [205•1 

p In his criticism of imitators Tolsloi defended arl which opens up new manifestations of life and does not limit itself even to a brilliant retelling of that which has already been opened up by other artists. This is one of the f’ undamenlal laws of arl. Here Tolstoi was not alone. The acknowledged leader of Ihe naturalisls, Emile Zola, with whom many Russian writers of that time were involved in a tierce dispute, devoted a special section to this question in his articles On the Novel. He speaks scornfully of writers lacking originality. "These writers assimilate the style tloating around them. They snatch ready-made phrases flying about in the air. Their phrases never emerge from themselves and they write as if they are being dictated to from behind.” They do not, of course, actually steal whole pages or even phrases from their fellow writers: "However, although they do not copy, instead of a writer’s mind Ihey have an enormous storehouse full of hackneyed phrases and trite expressions, a sort of mediocre current style.”  [205•2  What an apl descriplion! "Mediocre current style" is the absence of any style at all, the disappearance of artistic originality, the evaporation of individual experience and thought, if they exisled in the first place, into trite formulae. A writer who uses "mediocre currenl style" cannot produce a work of art. His wriling will be a mere imitation of art. It is to people such as these, rather than to the critics of modernism, that this remark by one of the leading spokesmen of surrealism, Andre Breton, should be directed: "They are victims of the strange disease of trying to reduce the unfamiliar to something familiar instead of boldly striking out on new paths.”  [205•3 

p Today the socialisl realist writer, reflecting new reality from a different ideological position, pondering on the future development of arl and solving completely different problems from those which faced Tolstoi and Zola, does 206 not proceed from a set o!’ rigid formulae, hut is guided by the organic laws oi’ art discovered by the classics of world literature, in particular, the law of the dialectical unity of tradition and innovation. The aesllielic. quest of socialist realist writers is enriched by the vital traditions of the aesthetic thought of the past.

p The mere desire to be original has nothing in common with genuine innovation.

p The English writer. Jack Lindsay, once remarked that socialist realism is the, artistic method which develops the specific laws of true art most fully and consistently, in particular the law of revealing the unknown side of life. The socialist realist writer has achieved his aim if the reader says of his book: Yes, it was all just like that. I know it all. I can recognise what I have seen with my own eyes. Arid yet it’s just as if I were seeing it all for the first time from the inside and really understanding what it is and where it is leading. The socialist realist writer aims not only at showing what is new in life, but at pinpointing the lines of its future development.

p At the meeting of poets in Rome in 19”)7 the Soviet poet Leonid Marlynov made some most penetrating observations about socialist realist innovation. ’"There is a saying that ’repetition is the mother of learning’. Agreed, but at the same time it is the deadly enemy of art because a work of art should be unrepeatable. Traditions must be continued not imitated. Every live literature is a scene of constant struggle going on between the continuers and the imitators in which the conlinucrs, and through them life itself, win the day.”  [206•1  Marlynov based his argument on the solid traditions of the Soviet classics led by Gorky and Mayakovsky. "Our writing must remain individual in form and be socialist, Leninist in its basiccontent.”  [206•2  Thus Gorky summed up the task of Soviet writers in a nutshell, whilst Mayakovsky called for "more good poets of all kinds”.

p Our ideological opponents frequently attacked socialist realism on this score. They were especially fond of asking one particular question which was supposed to reduce us 207 to total confusion: can the idea of the artist’s creative originality be combined with the fact that he is expected to feel responsible to the people and that his art must serve socialist ideals? The history of Soviet literature with its wide variety of national, genre and stylistic forms provides the answer. Yes, they can be combined. Soviet literature has now more than half a century behind it. With the lips of one of its best poets it has given a most precise definition of the general attitude of its writers: "Let us say that I am a leader of the people and at the same lime their servant.”

p Certain participants at the meeting of European writers in Leningrad attempted to persuade Soviet writers that they were following the wrong path. In this connection it may be relevant to quote from a speech made by one of the leaders of the "roman nouveau" movement in France, Alain Robbc-Grillet. He maintained that Soviet writers limit themselves to those political, social and moral values which are already known, whereas Western writers arc concerned with the discovery of new values. Robbe-Grillet had a healed discussion with Konslanlin Simonov, who compared the writer’s role to that of a pilot responsible for the lives of his passengers. Robbe Grillet shifted the argument to a dilferent plane by contending that the pilot knows his destinalion, whereas "the writer does not know where he is going".  [207•1 

p Here is the root of the problem: our divergence of opinion with Ihe modernists on the question of whether creative freedom can be combined with knowledge of the fundamental laws 01 social development, or whether these laws restrict the artistic quest.

p The answer to these questions was provided long ago by Lenin, Soviet writers and specialists on literature and the socialist realist writers of the whole world. The dogmatic, arbitrary approach to the arts which was a product of the cult of personality undoubledly restricted the artist, occasionally turning his "journey into the unknown" into a journey with a rigid timetable. In spite of all this, however, the cull of personally did not succeed in halting the 208 development <>!’ Soviet art although il did a certain amonnl of harm to it.

p And it was not writers who, as Hobbc -Grillel put it, "do not know where they are going" who wrote the poem Good, the novels And Quid Flows I lie Dun, Ordeal and The Russian Forest and the plays Lijiibou Yuroudija and I’laton Krechct and the poem Space Beyond Space. The discoveries made by the classics of Marxism-Leninism in the field of social development laws did not restrict these great artists but rather stimulated their quest, did not pro vide them with a ready-made answer to all the complicated problems of life, but urged them on to a more profound investigation through art of that sphere of spiritual culture which Gorky referred to as the science of mankind.

p An analysis of all these complex questions shows that the problem of tradition and innovation embraces ahnosl all aspects of the theory of literature as a whole and the theory of socialist realism in particular. Although Soviet specialists have given a considerable amount of attention to all these questions, a great deal still remains to be investigated. And investigations of this complexity are bound to have their share of error and miscalculation.

p Let us take one individual, but extremely typical example.

p The practice has grown up here of marking the anniversary of great classical writers by publishing some of their most important works, or extracts from them, in newspapers or magazines, together with a critical review of the work in question. This is an excellent practice, lei it be said.

p In 1965 Literaturnai/a Gazeta celebrated the 125th anniversary of the birth of Emile Zola. The issue for 15 April, 1965 carried a new translation of Zola’s article "The Sense of Reality" which originally appeared in his collection of essays entitled On the Novel published in 1880. The appearance of the new translation was most welcome, since Zola’s theoretical essays have not been republished here for many decades. At the same lime this very fad places considerable responsibility on those who undertake the task of selecting from and commenting on this greal writer’s work.

p The very introductory comment puts the reader on his 209 guard. It was, perhaps, an excess of enthusiasm for the anniversary which led the author to maintain that Zola was the first West European writer to porlray the hard lot of the working class as a social tragedy. The author also praises Zola for aiming only at a truthful, just representation of the facts, and not attempting to be novel and original. But can these two ideas really be separated? Is it not precisely the discovery of new truths that constitutes the writer’s strength? Is originality really such a sin? We have already quoted above from a passage in Zola’s "Originality of Expression" where he deprecates the use of the trite formulae of mediocre current style and demands that Ihe artist be novel and original. Why confuse the reader in this way?

p The author of this short introductory commentary then proceeds to depict romanticism in the worst possible light. He praises Zola for "no longer being able to draw inspiration from the fantasy and subjective anarchy of the romantics”. Which romantics does he have in mind? Anyone with the slightest knowledge of romanticism is aware that it is an extremely complex phenomenon, that Byron, Pushkin, Lermontov, Heine and Hugo were all romantic writers, that this movement had considerably more to it than mere fantasy and subjective anarchy, and that twelve years after the original publication of the article reprinted in Lileralurnaya Gazela, the early romantic revolutionary works of Gorky made their appearance.

p Finally, the author maintains without any reservations that Zola battled for the realistic traditions of Stendhal and Balzac. This is not entirely the case. As well as following in the footsteps of Stendhal and Balzac, Zola also criticised them for their concessions to romanticism. Zola saw Stendhal as his teacher, it is true, but as a teacher who was far from perfect. He considered, for example, that Stendhal in his descriptions laid insufficient emphasis on the importance of environment in the formation and expression of character. Stendhal, he claimed, was too much of an intellectual: he did not describe the whole man, only his head. He chose to porlray personages with exceptional characteristics, ignoring ordinary people, etc. Zola’s critical attitude towards Stendhal and Balzac has its strong and weak points.

210

p This is followed by Zola’s article itself, which concentrates entirely on the contrast between reality and fantasy. "To be aware of reality is to be aware of nature and depict it as it really is,” he writes. This is not only a protest against subjective anarchy in art, but a clear failure to appreciate the merits or artistic fantasy on the part of the leader of the naturalist school. The introductory commentary does not examine the divergences between Zola’s theoretical writing and his own work. It gives the impression, moreover, that the aesthetic views put forward by Zola in the article in question correspond to our own. Con sequently, all this material about Zola, which appeared in one of the most widely read Soviet newspapers, has a direct bearing on our discussion of tradition and innovation and analysis of realism. Consciously or unconsciously the author supports the dogmatic view that "learn from life" means making a blind copy of the facts of life. Those who accept this narrow view of art interpret Chernychevsky’s famous injunction on the reflection "of life in the forms of life itself" as meaning that a work of art must reproduce down to the last detail that which these shortsighted people see in life. It is only natural that such cril ics should be highly suspicious of Faust, The Demon, and "Lost in Conference" since these works do not correspond with their ideas of true realism. Basically they saw socialist realism as the most primitive form of naturalism. For them art is not a special form of spiritual human activity, but a means of illustrating and explaining definite social ideas. This primitive conception of art was accompanied by the most arbitrary voluiilarislic judgements.

p Mere we come up against one of the most important questions in our aesthetics: the role of symbolism, in its broadest sense, in art.

p In his synopsis of Feuerbach’s Lectures on the Essence of Religion Lenin indicated his agreement with the following remark made by the German materialist philosopher: "Art does not require the recognition of its works as reality.”  [210•1 

211

p The problem of the symbolic representation of life is one which has occupied many of the acknowledged masters of socialist realism. Konstantin Fedin, for example, entitled a whole section of his article "Literary Chats" as follows: "Truth to Life and Artistic Fantasy.” lie maintains that if the artist aims at giving an exact replica of life he will never be able to achieve this, since he is incapable of reproducing it in alt its fullness. The artist always selects the most important features. The process of portraying in a book that which he has seen in life inevitably involves disturbing certain proportions. "Take the phenomenon of time,” he writes. "Even the most devoted realist finds that he cannot portray it in the same way as we experience it in nature. Only the novelist attempts to render it in his writing. Real time has nothing in common with time as it appears in the novels of Tolstoi, Chekhov, Balzac or Flaubert. Lack of verisimilitude is unavoidable in art, and the more a novelist is able to create the illusion of reality, the greater an artist he is.”  [211•1 

p There is a varying degree of verisimilitude among individual artists and even within the same artistic method. Fedin analyses how Balzac and Tolstoi succeed in creating the illusion of reality, by comparing how the two writers portray death. In Balzac’s novels the dying heroes frequently utter their last testament in long speeches (in La Recherche dc I’absolu, for example, the dying Madame Klaas admonishes her daughter and learned maniac husband). But the reader is convinced by Balzac’s realism. "Any description of dying by Tolstoi is a masterpiece of realism compared with the French writer’s scenes. Yet it is still only the illusion of reality. Even the death of Anna Karenina is full of illusory devices when one begins to compare it with real life.”  [211•2  Fedin underlines one of the most important aspects of art: in a work of art one always detects or is aware of the author as well as the characters and events. Art, as it were, provides the reader with two types of information. "It follows that no realist writer can or should avoid illusion,” writes Fedin in conclusion. 212 “Illusion is in the nature of art, realism in its ’pure form’ is abstraction.” This is how one of the leading Soviet writers presents the problem of illusion in art.

p The extent to which art is illusory is a complex question. This depends on the method employed. Realism abounds with that type of illusion referred to by Fedin, which is sometimes called illusion of the first order, whereas romanticism makes far wider use of it, permitting a "dual polentialising of the image" as Vorovsky so aptly put it. Romantic illusion is sometimes called illusion of the second order. There may also be different degrees of illusion within the same method (viz. Fedin’s example of the portrayal of death in the works of Balzac and Tolstoi). Occasionally illusion is employed as a conscious artistic device by devoted realists (viz. Mayakovsky’s "Lost in Conference" and Brecht’s plays).

p Some critics in rejecting the over-simplified interpretation of realism go to the other extreme of asserting that illusory techniques are the basic feature of all modern art. In so doing they not only limit the theory of socialist realism which has never restricted itself to the portrayal of life in this or that form exclusively, be it “verisimilitude” or “illusion”, but occasionally make concessions to modernism, which lends towards a subjeclivist distortion of life by portraying it with the help of illusory devices. Soviet writers have frequently drawn attention to the dangers of such an approach. It is well known that Konstanlin Fedin is an ardent defender of artistic imagination and had many a heated discussion with Gorky on this subject. Even in 1948 just after completing his two novels Early Joys and No Ordinary Summer he accused his opponent in "Letter to a Post-Graduate" of belittling the importance of imagination in art and exaggerating the role of prototypes, lie also stressed that he saw the "ratio of imagination and ‘fact’ in his own work as 98 to 2”,  [212•1  and that he could only create true works of art by taking (light from a lot of familiar facts, into the "expanse of the imagination”. This consistent champion of the artistic imagination, however, wrote in the fifties that "fantasy must not remove the image from the logic of life or turn it into 213 phantasmagoria. Fantasy does not exclude logic. On the contrary, the more it is infused with logic the freer is its range”.  [213•1 

p Realists and modernists differ in their attitude towards the role of illusion and that of artistic imagination in art. The realist bases his work, regardless of the measure of illusion in it, on real life, whereas the modernist bases his entirely on the artist’s subjective idea of life using this criterion to justify all manner of subjective distortion of life.

Socialist realism gives the modern writer far more literary scope than any other artistic method. This was recently very aptly summed up by Anna Seghers as follows: "Hegel wrote that the German word aufhcben has three meanings: firstly, ’to finish’, secondly, ’to preserve’, ’to continue’, ’to make use’ of a good heritage, and, thirdly, ’to raise’, ’to put on a higher level’. All these three meanings are important for us writers.”  [213•2  All these three meanings, we would add for our part, arc pointers to a solution of the complex problem of tradition and innovation in art.