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p How did Belinsky’s reconciliation with "rational reality" affect his literary views?

p “Carried away by B...n’s interpretations of Hegel’s philosophy, that ’all that is real is rational’, Belinsky preached reconciliation in life and art,” says Panayev. "He reached the point (extremes were in his nature) at which any social protest seemed a crime to him__ He spoke contemptuously of the French Encyclopaedists of the eighteenth century,^^66^^ of critics who did not recognise the theory of ’art for art’s sake’, of writers who were seeking a new life, social revival. He was particularly angry and bitter in his remarks about George Sand. For him art was a kind of superior, separate world, enclosed within itself, that concerned itself only with eternal truths and had no connection at all with our everyday worries and trifles, with the base world in which we move. He regarded as true artists only those who created unconsciously.  To them belonged Homer, Shakespeare and Goethe.... Schiller did not fit in with this view, and Belinsky, who had once admired him passionately, cooled towards him as his new theory took hold of him. In Schiller he did not find the calm which was an, essential condition of free creativity.... Belinsky’s clear vision became more and more clouded, his innate aesthetic sense was stifled by implacable theory. Belinsky imperceptibly became enmeshed in it."

p In quoting this passage from Panayev’s reminiscences, Mr. Pypin confined himself to the laconic remark: "It was already in St. Petersburg that Belinsky found a way out of this situation.” Thus, our esteemed scholar accepted without any reservations Panayev’s view of the significance of reconciliatory aspirations in the development of Belinsky’s literary ideas. This view is very widespread now. One might say that it has even reached the school textbook. This is what we read, for example, in Mr. N. Polevoi’s History of Russian Literature.

_p “This period of Belinsky’s activity, from 1838 to 1841, consists of the saddest and least fruitful years of his literary career. True. he performed services to Russian literature in this period also by introducing the public to Hegel’s philosophy, but at the same 179 time, having assimilated this philosophy in an extremely onesided, bookish, abstract way. he introduced one-sidedness and exchisiveness into aesthetic concepts also. Thus, basing himself on the proposition that the truly rational person should adopt an attitude of calm impartiality to all life’s adversities and, bearing in mind that all that is real is rational, should reconcile all contradictions in his reason. Belinsky began to regard as truly artistic only those works in which he saw an objective, Olympian, calm contemplation of life.... Demanding that poetry, while contemplating life impassively, should exist for its own sake and not concern itself with anything but the artistry of its forms, and declaring that true poetry was poetry of form, while poetry of content, no matter how noble the ideas it contained, was a travesty of poetry and eloquence, Belinsky also excluded from the sphere of poetry all works in which he saw an interest on the part of the poets in the vital questions of social life. From this point of view Belinsky showed particular virulence and bitterness in his attacks on modern French literature, and at the same time on French national character itself."

p This is almost the same as Panayev said.

p In Mr. Polevoi’s opinion, Belinsky’s revolt against Hegel and "rational reality" marked a whole turning-point in Belinsky’s aesthetic concepts. This opinion follows quite logically from Panayev’s view, which we have quoted, of the "sad period" in Belinsky’s literary activity. And this opinion in its turn leadslogically to the conclusion that his enthusiasm for Hegel’s philosophy brought nothing but harm to our brilliant critic.

p But is this really so? Is it true that Belinsky’s enthusiasm for Hegel had a harmful effect on the development of his aesthetic and his literary views in general?

_p In order to reply to this question we shall find it useful to recall what Belinsky’s aesthetic concepts were in the period of his total reconciliation with reality, i.e., in the period when he wrote the article on Essays on the Battle of Borodino.

p At the end of this article is the following extremely interesting and instructive passage:

_p “We think and firmly believe that the time of ’oohs and alls’ and exclamation marks and rows of dots to express profound thought where none exists has passed in our literature; that the time has passed when great truths were stated with dictatorial pomposity, but without any foundation or support apart from the personal opinion and arbitrary conceptions of a pseudothinker. The public is beginning to demand thought, not opinions. An opinion is an arbitrary concept based on the by-word ’that’s how it seems to me’; what does it matter to the public what and how it seems to this or that gentleman?... One and the same thing will seem like this to one person, like that to another, and for

p 12*

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p the most part usually topsy-turvy. The question is not one of what seems to be but one of what is in actual fact, and that question cannot be solved by opinion but by thought. Opinion reposes on the chance conviction of a chance individual who is, in himself, an insignificant thing and of no interest to anyone; thought reposes on itself, on its own internal development in accordance with the laws of logic."

p In the article "Menzel, Goethe’s Critic" we read: "Art is the reproduction of reality; consequently, its task is not to correct and not to embellish (life), but to show it as it really is. Only on this condition are poetry and morality identical. The works of tempestuous French literature are immoral not because they present revolting pictures of adultery, incest, patricide and filicide, but because they dwell on these pictures with gusto and, by abstracting from the fullness and wholeness of life only these aspects of it, which really do belong to it, select them exclusively. But since in this choice, which is false already by virtue of its one-sidedness, the literary sansculottes are governed not by the requirements of art, which exists for its own sake, but by the desire to confirm their personal convictions, their portrayals do not possess the merit of probability and truth, the more so because they slander the human heart intentionally. In Shakespeare too we find the same aspects of life which tempestuous literature grasps so exclusively, but in him they do not offend either our aesthetic or our moral sense because together with them he shows us ones that are the opposite of them, and most importantly because he does not seek to develop or prove anything, but simply shows life as it is."

_p One more passage, this time from the article on Wit Works Woe: "Poetry is truth in the form of contemplation; its creations are embodied ideas, visible, tangible ideas. Consequently, poetry is the same philosophy, the same thought, because it has the same content—absolute truth, only not in the form of the dialectical development of the idea out of itself, but in the form of the direct appearance of the idea in an image. The poet thinks in images; he does not try to prove the truth, but shows it. But poetry does not possess an end outside itself—it is its own end; consequently, the poetic image is not something external for the poet or secondary, it is not a means, but an end: otherwise it would be not an image, but a symbol. The poet sees images and not the idea, which is concealed from him by the images and which, when the work is ready, is more accessible to the thinker than to the creator himself. Therefore the poet never proposes to develop this or that idea, never sets himself a task; without his knowledge and will images arise in his imagination, and, fascinated by their charm, he strives to transfer them from the sphere of ideals (and) possibility to reality, i.e., to make that which is visible to him 181 alone visible for everyone. The highest reality is truth; and since the content of poetry is truth, poetical works too are the highest reality. The poet does not embellish reality, he does not show people as they should be, but as they are."

p That is enough quotations; let us now see what they show.

p If we are not mistaken, they show, firstly, that during the period of his enthusiasm for Hegel’s philosophy Belinsky did in fact support the so-called theory of art for art’s sake.

p Secondly, they show that Mr. Polevoi had no grounds whatsoever for ascribing to the Belinsky who was reconciled with reality an exclusive passion for "the poetry of form" and a " negative attitude towards the poetry of content".

p Thirdly, they show that the Belinsky who was reconciled with reality was extremely contemptuous of the subjective method (as we would say today) in literary criticism and believed firmly in the possibility of finding an objective basis for this criticism.

Fourthly, they show something else as well, but not very clearly, and therefore we shall not pay attention to this something else until it reveals itself on its own in one of the following chapters. For the present let us see where our critic sought an objective basis for the assessment of literary works.