7

p G. V. Plekhanov was the lirst representative of Marxism in aesthetics and literary criticism in Russia. He entered the world of letters at a time when, alongside the spread of subjective sociological views of liberal Narodism, the advocates of various forms of decadence and mysticism had raised their voices.

p Plekhanov’s struggle for Marxist principles in aesthetics and literary criticism, and his attacks on reactionaries and pseudoinnovators of different persuasions, contributed some fine pages to the history of revolutionary social thought.

p The present volume of the Selected Philosophical Works of G. V. Plekhanov contains his writings on questions of aesthetics. Plekhanov’s range of interests in this field is extremely broad. He sought to elucidate from the Marxist standpoint questions concerning the origin of art and to explain the specific nature of art among the other forms of mankind’s spiritual life, its purpose, content and form, its social role and the laws of its historical development. He pursued his studies with the help of a vast amount of artistic and literary material of many periods and countries. To his pen belongs a series of outstanding works on many writers and artists and on the aesthetic views of foreign and Russian classic philosophers. His analysis of the writings of V. G. Belinsky and N. G. Ghernyshevsky, who were prominent figures in Russian revolutionary-democratic aesthetics, was particularly broad and fruitful. Plekhanov’s attention was attracted by the problems of the development of modern artistic creation: he firmly opposed decadence and naturalism and defended the principles of realist truth, the ideological foundations of the new revolutionary art and literature.

p By his persistent struggle Plekhanov paved the way for Marxism in the field of aesthetics and literary criticism in Russia. His brilliant style and popular method of exposition enhanced even more the influence of his works in progressive circles of Russian society.

p Plekhanov’s first work of literary criticism written from the Marxist viewpoint is an article on Gl. Uspensky (the collection Sotsial-Demokrat, No. 1, 1888). An article on S. Karonin followed 8 in 1890 (Sotsial-Demokrat, No. 1, 1890). Then other articles appeared: onChaadayev (the collection Materials for a Characterisation of Our Economic Development, 1895), on A. L. Volynsky’s book Russian Critics (Novoye Slovo, No. 4, 1897), on N. Naumov (Novoye Slovo, No. 5, 1897), and others.

p For Plekhanov revolutionary-democratic views were the summit of pre-Marxist aesthetics. He constantly emphasised the proximity of his views to those of Belinsky and Chernyshevsky. lie regards as a brilliant discovery Chernyshevsky’s conclusion that different social classes have different ideals of beauty, depending on the socio-economic conditions of their existence.

p Contrary to idealist aesthetics, which declared that artistic creation was independent of the objective world and looked upon art as an immanent manifestation of the human spirit, Plekhanov showed that art had its roots in real life and that it was derived from social being.

p Plekhanov’s search for a Marxist basis for the theory of art and literary criticism was aimed in the first instance against the views of the Narodniks and Decadents, against subjectivism in all its forms. His many years of struggle for the principles of realist literature characterise most vividly the trend of his aesthetics. Plekhanov’s consistent defence of artistic realism proceeded logically from the materialist basis of his theory of art. In developing and defending the traditions of materialist aesthetics, Plekhanov considered the authentic portrayal of reality to be the main criterion of art and its greatest merit and he consistently maintained that reality was the main source of art.

p Plekhanov did not confine himself to the heritage of Russian classical revolutionary-democratic thought in the field of aesthetics. He went further. The basic task of substantiating a scientific, Marxist understanding of art and literature is characteristic of all his studies. A most important aspect of Plekhanov’s activity is his desire to make criticism scientific, to find firm theoretical grounds for judgments on literature. Plekhanov found this scientific basis for a theory of art and critical judgment in_tthe Marxist world outlook. In one of his early works on art he expressed the conviction that the further development of the theory of art and criticism was possible only on a Marxist basis. "I am deeply convinced,” he said, "that criticism (more exactly, scientific theory of aesthetics) can now advance only if it rests on the materialist conception of history."  [8•* 

p Plekhanov firmly believed that Marxism, which produced the scientific method of the conscious application*of objective social laws, confronts aesthetics with new tasks. First and foremost, aesthetics must acquire a scientific understanding 9 of the laws of development and the specific nature of art, and provide firm ’objective artistic criteria.

p The main purpose of most of Plekhanov’s works on art and literature is to provide a materialist substantiation for art and its social role. These works include: "V. G. Belinsky’s Literary Views" (1897), "N. G. Chernyshevsky’s Aesthetic Theory" (1897), "Unaddressed Letters" (1899-1900), "French Drama and French Painting of the Eighteenth Century from the Sociological Viewpoint" (1905), and "Art and Social Life" (1912-13).

p Plekhanov’s great service is that he revealed the relations!)ip between the historical and the individual, the objective and the subjective in art. We know that the concept that art is socially conditioned, that it is dependent on the being of definite classes, has been and still is interpreted in different ways. The view that the writer embodies abstract ideas in the artistic image was very widespread among theoreticians of art, many of whom sincerely considered themselves to be Marxists. In particular, vulgar sociologists of the Shulyatikov type, who were close to the idealists in their contempt for the representation of reality in art, reasoned thus. Later the Prolelkult  [9•*  also sought to propagate this point of view.

p According to Plekhanov, the artist reproduces the phenomena of reality in the light of his class views. He links the representation of certain aspects of life in art witli the world outlook of classes or social groups. At the same time Plekhanov did not accept the idea of the identity, the harmony of all aspects of the artist’s world outlook and the objective content of his work, the pictures of life presented by him. lie noted, for example, the limited nature of Balzac’s political views, but what attracted him primarily in the French novelist’s works was their realism, their authentic representation of life. PJekhanov pointed out that Balzac did a great deal to explain the psychology of the different classes in the society of his day. In his review of G. Lanson’s book Histoire de la litterature franyaise Pleklianov writes that Balzac "’took’ passions in the form which the bourgeois society of his day gave them; lie traced with the naturalist’s care how they grow and develop in a given social environment. Thanks to this he became a realist in the most profound meaning of the word, and his works are a unique source for studying the psychology of French society during the periods of the Restoration and Louis Philippe."

p Plekhanov regarded objective portrayal as the main positive feature of Gustavo Flaubert’s realism.

p In spite of his reactionary way of thinking Flaubert was able to study his environment well, portray it faithfully and create 10 highly artistic works. For Plekhanov there is no doubt that the reactionary nature of Flaubert’s views greatly restricted his field of vision. Alien to the liberation movement of his day, he overlooked the most vivid human types with a rich inner life. Nevertheless, Flaubort was a truthful writer in his portrayal of bourgeois society. "Flaubert,” Plekhanov remarks, "considered it his duty to be as objective in his attitude to the social environment he described as the natural scientist is in his attitude to nature."  [10•* 

p Plekhanov approached the phenomena of Russian literature from the standpoint of materialist aesthetics. In his opinion, the realist works of certain Narodnik writers refuted their Utopian Narodist doctrines. Authentic portrayal of life clashed with narrow and erroneous thought. Examining S. Karonin’s sketches of village life, Plekhanov notes that this writer’s portrayal of the village is at variance with the general Narodnik moods. He sees Karonin’s originality as lying in the fact that, in spite of his subjective views, Karonin depicted precisely those aspects of peasant life the clash with which reduced all the Narodniks’ ideals to ashes. The mun merit of Karonin’s sketches and stories, according to Plekhanov, is that they reflected the most important of social processes in Russia at that time: the break-up of old village customs, the disappearance of peasant patriarchism, and the emergence in the people of new feelings, new views on tilings and new intellectual requirements.

p Plekhanov finds the same in Gl. Uspensky. "The most observant, most intelligent and most talented of all the Narodnik fiction writers, Gl. Uspensky, having undertaken to show us some ’quite definite’, ’real forms of the people’s cause’, has, without realising it, signed the death warrant of Narodisrn and all the ’programmes’ and plans of practical activity that are in any way connected with it. But if this is so, we are at a loss to understand how the ’harmony’ of peasant life perceived by him could have such a reassuring effect on him. The theoretical clarity of his view of the people was purchased at the price of the sad practical conclusion: ‘don’t interfere!’~".  [10•** 

p Piekhanov’s articles on the Narodnik fiction writers Gl. Uspensky, S. Karonin and N. Naumov played an important role in the struggle against Narodism. Another, no less important positive feature of these articles is that they seek to establish the realist criterion for assessing literary phenomena.

p True, during the period when he adopted the Menshevik standpoint Piekhanov’s treatment of the phenomena and questions of realism was one-sided and inconsistent. This made itself felt 11 most strongly in his assessment of literary works connected with an understanding of the motive forces of the maturing socialist revolution, in particular in his assessment of certain works bv Maxim Gorky. Because of his narrow understanding of realism Plekhanov failed to see the Decadent nature of the novel What Never Happened by Ropshin (B. Savinkov), describing it as an artistically truthful work.

p Plekhanov deduced the origin and development of the artistic tastes of people belonging to different social groups from the conditions of social being, lie reveals most convincingly the invalidity of theories that connect a sense of beauty primarily with man’s biological perception. Biology does not reveal the origin of our aesthetic tastes and even less can it explain their historical development. "It is because of human nature" Plekhanov concludes, "that man may have aesthetic tastes and concepts. It is the conditions surrounding him that determine the conversion of this possibility into a reality; they explain why a given social man (that is, a given society, a given people, or class) possesses particular aesthetic tastes and concepts and not others."  [11•* 

p But there are disputable and clearly erroneous elements in Piekhanov’s explanation of the role of the social and biological factors in the origin and development of art. In his later views excessive importance is attached to man’s biological organisation: "The ideal of beauty,” he wrote in 11)12, "prevailing at any time in any society or class of society is rooted partly in the biological conditions of mankind’s development ... and partly in the historical conditions in which the given society or class arose and exists."  [11•**  This statement of Piekhanov’s is misleading, because it equates the biological and historical factors. The authors of many works have exaggerated its significance, ignoring other statements by Plekhanov concerning the same question, and not taking into account the general meaning, the whole spirit of his views. If one proceeds from Piekhanov’s overall aesthetic view, it is perfectly obvious that he did not attach decisive importance to the biological factor, and (irmly advanced the idea of the social nature of man’s aesthetic sense. In criticising Plekhanov, we are still not justified in adhering to the standpoint of his vulgar sociological opponents, who denied that the peculiarities of man’s sense of colour, space, perspective, sound, rhythm, etc., are of any significance in art.

p The great attention which Plekhanov paid to primitive forms of art is perfectly logical. Specimens of primitive art express most clearly the link of art with people’s labour, its socially conditioned nature. Plekhanov turns mainly to the artistic 12 creation of hunting tribes, whore the productive forces were less developed than in pastoral tribes, and still less than in farming tribes. This makes it possible to examine the very origins of art, where its link with people’s labour and everyday life is particularly obvious. "Here life appears to us in its simplest form and yields up its secrets to us all the more easily."

p Plekhanov believes that originally drawing and dancing had a utilitarian aim or were clo.’ely connected with production: fish drawn on a river bank indicated the type of fish to be found in the river; primitive man’s dancing reproduced a definite production process and had the significance of an exercise; a certain rhythm in singing and music corresponded to a work rhythm, etc. As a result of his studies of artistic creation in primitive society Plekhanov concludes that "...work is older than art, and that, generally, man first looked upon objects and phenomena from the utilitarian standpoint, and only later did he begin to regard them from the aesthetic standpoint."  [12•* 

p Plekhanov subordinated the study of the origin of art to the task of working out the materialist principles of scientific aesthetics. On the basis of considerable historical material he showed the invalidity of theories that art was older than human productive activity. On this question Plekhanov polemicised fruitfully with Spencer and Gros and concluded that art in primitive society was directly conditioned by human labour. Plekhanov agreed with Biicher tint work, music and poetry merged together at the initial stage of development. But work was the main element of this triad, whereas music and poetry were only of secondary importance.

p Plekhanov’s materialist substantiation of the nature of art served a specific purpose of great importance at that time. Theconsistency and persistence with which he advanced the idea that art is socially conditioned is explained by the vital need to eliminate idealism and vulgar views of all kinds from the path of revolutionary thought. Plekhanov never tired of opposing attempts to vulgarise the materialist treatment of literature. He revealed the anti-scientific nature of the oversimplified views of the so-called economic materialists, who discredited Marxist aesthetics with their crude ideas. As we know, the vulgar sociologists distorted Marxism by linking art directly with the development of the economy, with the state of the productive forces.

p A study of the art of primitive peoples helps one to answer the question of the origin of art, but cannot provide material for revealing the laws of its development at the higher stages of human society. Whereas at the beginning of its emergence art is linked directly with the economy, later this connection manifests itself 13 in immeasurably more complex forms. Vulgar sociological art historians sought to extend the proposition on the direct link of art with production and the economic system to the art of the later period. Plekhanov rejected this primitive point of view. He ends his notes on the materialist interpretation of history with

p the following conclusion which expresses his viewpoint on this question clearly: "Thus, in primitive, more or less communistic society, art is subject to the direct influence of the economic situation (de la situation economique) and the state of the productive forces. In civilised society the evolution of the fine arts is determined by the class struggle."

p Objecting to the eclectic viewpoint of the well-known art historian Wilhelm Liibke, Plekhanov explains: "...the art of civilised peoples is no less under the sway of necessity than primitive art. The only difference is that with civilised peoples the direct dependence of art on technology and mode of production disappears. I know, of course, that this is a very big difference. But I also know that it is determined by nothing else thin the development of the social productive forces, which leads to the division of social labour among different classes. Far from refuting the materialist view of the history of art, it provides convincing evidence in its favour".  [13•* 

p By emphasising the complexity of the connections between the material basis of society and art, Plekhanov sought to reveal its specific nature as a special type of human spiritual activity. Unlike the supporters of the idealist systems of aesthetics of the past and present he considered social relations to be the main motive force of the development of art.

The causes of the emergence and disappearance of this or that trend, conflict and clash in literature are found by Plekhanov in life itself, in the position of the classes, in the social relations that determine the nature of the art of their day.

p Plekhariov sought to reveal the active role of art, arguing that Marxist aesthetics alone provides a truly scientific solution and substantiation of tliis question. It was precisely his profound understanding of the formative influence of art that explained his great interest in problems of aesthetics and literary criticism. Yet this aspect of Plekhanov’s aesthetics has received one-sided treatment by some theoreticians of art. As a rule, reference has been made only to Plekhanov’s statement that art is socially conditioned, that it depends on the basis. Far less attention has been paid to the propositions of Plekhanov’s aesthetics that speak 14 of the specific historical features of this conditioning, the mutual interaction of art and social being, the specific nature of its historical development.

p The Narodniks and other opponents of Marxism alleged thai the Marxist viewpoint ascribes to art a passive, fatalistic role, which is entirely predetermined by the movement of the basis, and denies its active influence on the life of society. Plekhanov persistently revealed the invalidity of such allegations. His statements on the cognitive importance of art, its role in the transformation of reality are most valuable for elucidating the active influence of art on life. In this respect Plekhanov’s aesthetics is opposed to many theories of art of the past and present which limit the function of art to the passive reflection of life. As a rule, these uninspired “theories” have served, and still do, as the foundation for dull, Naturalist art. Plekhanov does not accept the standpoint of "pure reflection”, of the separation of art from thought and from other ways of cognising reality.

p The idea of the automatic replacement of some types of art by others is alien to Plekhanov’s aesthetic view. Using extensive material he shows that, in spite of their dependence on the upheavals that take place during the replacement of one social formation by another, literature and art possess continuity, relative independence and specific laws of development. Art accumulates the constant artistic values. Many of its phenomena outlive by far the age which gives birth to them and exert an ever growing influence on the consciousness of new generations of people.

p Plekhanov was not always consistent on this question. One cannot agree, for example, with his interpretation of Alexander Pushkin’s works, with his opinion that they are too old-fashioned for the modern reader, the worker. But on the whole it is clear from Plekhanov’s writings that Marxism highly appreciates the progressive heritage of the past and sees the creation of the new art as a logical continuation of the whole of artistic development.

p Plekhanov’s aesthetic view refutes the vulgar sociological interpretation of art as directly dependent on the economy. The idea of the complex forms of connection between social being and art was illustrated by Plekhanov with the example of the development of French drama in the eighteenth century. The mail) popular dramatic genre in mediaeval France was the farce. This dramatic genre served to express the views of the people, its discontent with the upper estates. During the age of Louis XIV farce was declared to be unworthy of “respectable” society. Its place was taken by tragedy. French tragedy, says Plekhanov, has nothing in common witli the views, aspirations and feelings of the popular masses. It is the creation of the aristocracy and expresses the views, rnoods and tastes of the upper class, "“(lass decorum" becomes the criterion for assessing literary works. 15 The decline of Classical tragedy and the emergence and development of "tearful comedy" are linked by Plekhanov with the development of the French bourgeoisie. The main thing in French "tearful comedy”, as in the older English bourgeois drama, is the idealisation of bourgeois life. Nevertheless, French bourgeois drama soon gave way again to Classical tragedy. The reason for this was the need for the ideals of the civic virtues and for an heroic garb for the revolutionary overthrowing of the power of the feudal lords. Models of civic virtue and heroism were found in the ancient world, the heroes of which had earlier been rejected by the authors of "tearful comedy”. A new content was poured into old literary forms. When the passion for republican heroes lost all social significance, bourgeois drama rose again. Speaking of the revolutionary bourgeoisie attiring itself in antique garb, Plekhanov proceeded from Marx’s explanation of the complex forms of expression of the class ideal in art and criticised idealist and vulgar sociological views on this question.

p One cannot agree fully with all Plekhanov’s concrete historicoliterary judgments concerning eighteenth-century French drama. Nevertheless, the main propositions on art being conditioned by clsses are substantiated convincingly by him.

p According to Plekhanov, idealist critics believed that the main task of studying the phenomena of art was to reveal the mysterious, supernatural force that guides the artist’s hand and to trace how a timeless, abstract poetic idea, which has arisen in the mysterious depths of the human spirit, makes its way through the diverse material of ideas and views of life. In his article on the book by the idealist A. L. Volynsky, Hussion Critics, Plekhanov writes: "Idealist aesthetics knew, of course, that each great historical epoch had its own art (for example, Hegel distinguishes between Oriental, Classical and Romantic art); but in this case while stating obvious facts, it gave a totally unsatisfactory explanation of them."  [15•*  Plekhanov stressed the historical changeability of art, the decisive importance of the artist’s ideas and views of life, which are ignored by idealist aesthetics. Plekhanov argued with the idealist Volynsky that Aeschylus’ poetic idea was not similar to Shakespeare’s poetic ideas. The art of each historical period has a special character of its own. For Plekhanov his dispute with Volynsky was not an end in itself. He carried on the polemic with him for a broader purpose: first and foremost, to establish the principles of the materialist interpretation of artistic phenomena and to discredit the foundations of idealist aesthetics as a whole.

p According to Plekhanov, people’s spiritual development, art and literature, is an expression of mankind’s social life. He shows 16 that the speciiic nature of Shakespeare’s works was determined by the social relations in England during the reign of Elizabeth, when the upper classes had not yet severed their ties with the people and still shared with it the same tastes and aesthetic requirements, and when the end of the recent strife and the rise in the level of the people’s well-being gave a strong impetus to the nation’s moral and intellectual forces. "It was then that the colossal energy built up, which was felt later in the revolutionary movement; but for the time being this energy made itself felt mainly in a peaceful field. Shakespeare expressed it in his dramas."  [16•* 

p The historically conditioned development of art and literature is also illustrated by Plekhanov with the example of the refined aristocratic painting of Boucher and the contrasting Jacobinically austere brush of David.

p Plekhanov attacks the Narodniks and other opponents of Marxism who alleged that Marxism oversimplified and schematised the complex, living development of art, overlooking the role and influence of ideas, artistic traditions, etc. In Plekhanov’s opinion, the link of art with social being is expressed in the most varied forms and is frequently an indirect one. He sought to clarify the role of aspects of social life that are directly connected with art, such as psychology, politics, philosophy and morals.

p Contrary to the crude ideas of economic materialism, Plekhanov shows the importance in art of all aspects of the political and spiritual life of mankind, of the influence of cultural traditions and the interaction of the artistic works of different countries and periods. Due to historical conditions the influence of one or other of these aspects of social life frequently comes to the fore. "At certain moments of social development,” Plekhanov writes in his notes for lectures on art, "the influence on literature of the political factor is stronger than that of the economic factor, for example, in the nineteenth century (during the Restoration). Basically, economics is there as well, but sometimes it does not exert an influence through politics, but through philosophy, for example. This depends on what kind of social relations have developed on a given economic basis, but it seems as though the matter depends on the fact that, for some inexplicable reason, the factors influence one another more weakly at some times and more strongly at others."

p The question of literary influences and interconnections is placed by Plekhanov on a real historical basis. As a Marxist he helped to explain and develop the broadest links between the literatures of the various peoples. He saw the development of social life, class being, as the basis of literary development. Therefore 17 he regarded as invalid idealist comparative theories that advance the factor of influences as the main one which determines the emergence and development of literary phenomena. According to his point of view, the process of the mutual influences of the literatures of different peoples is based on common laws and the specific historical path of each people and its culture.

p In dealing with questions of literature and art Plekhanov always supported the broadest international links and opposed national isolation. He regarded the progressive movement of literature and art as resting on the achievements of the whole of preceding human culture. In spite of a certain abstraclness in his understanding and studying of the problem of literary influences, Plekhanov provided a fruitful materialist treatment of it. According to him, "the influence of one country’s literature on that of another is directly related to the similarity of the social structures of each of these countries. It does not exist at all when this similarity is insignificant."

p According to Plekhanov, the influence of one country’s literature on that of another is directly proportional to the similarity of the social relations and the ideological and practical aspirations of these countries. However, Plekhanov realised that this proposition was not universal. For example, the imitation of Greek tragedy by French dramatists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries cannot be explained by a similarity in social relations. Plekhanov gives a special explanation of this: when Virgil wrote the Aeneid Roman society was quite unlike Greek society at the time of Homer. This fact did not prevent Virgil from imitating Homer, but this imitation is confined only to form. Thus, in the absence of common social or ideological aspirations imitation will be purely external. Greek literature influenced not only Roman literature, but also the literature of peoples who lived much later. Here a comparison of the Iliad with the Aeneid or of the tragedy of the Greeks with the pseudo-Classical French tragedy of the eighteenth century suggests itself. It is not enough to want to imitate, Plekhanov says, the imitator is separated from his model by the distance which separates the societies to which each of them belongs. Is Racine’s Achilles a Greek or a marquis from the Frensh court? And are not the characters in the Aeneid really Romans of Augustus’ day?

_p The importance of the socio-ideological prerequisites that determine literary influences is vividly illustrated by Plekhanov with the influence of French eighteenth-century drama on English bourgeois drama. Plekhanov explains the extensive international influence of progressive French literature in the late eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth by the profound social and ideological changes brought about by the French Revolution.

While stating that the development of literature is based on

2—0786

18 social being, Plekhanov sees the interaction of national literatures and arts as a complex process in which both progressive ami reactionary tendencies manifest themselves. His works distinguish clearly between progressive literary influences that promote the development of progressive national literatures, and reactionary ones that impede the development of popular emancipatory ideas and traditions in literature.

p The principle of the historical approach advanced by Plekhanov in solving the problem of literary influences and interactions deserves special attention. The vital interests of the development of culture and friendship between peoples demand a profound study of the historical interconnections and laws of the process of the mutual enrichment of the progressive literatures of the different peoples.

p Plekhanov’s idea that the influence of one country’s literature on that of another is directly proportional to the .similarity of the social relations in these countries provides a key for explaining many phenomena of modern art. It enables one to understand more deeply the foundations of the very close and constantly developing interconnections of the socialist art of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. On the other hand, this idea makes it possible to explain why the works of Decadent art are so willingly exported and imported by the bourgeoisie of the various countries.

p In support of his propositions in the sphere of aesthetics Plekhanov makes extensive use of the works of foreign art theoreticians and historians—H. Taine, Gh. Saint-Beuve, F. Brunetiere and G. Lanson. What attracted Plekhanov in the works by these scholars were the ideas of the historical development of art, of its dependence on social life, and of the unity of the artistic process and social evolution.

p In his Unaddressed Letters Plekhanov, assessing Taine’s view of aesthetic development, makes special mention of this author’s study of the importance of the principle of antithesis. However, in analysing the development of art, Plekhanov sometimes adopts an uncritical attitude to Taine, who reduced the laws of art to two opposing qualities of human nature—to “imitation” and " contradiction”. According to Taine, the desires to “imitate” and “contradict” are inherent in human nature: these biological features of human nature make possible the sense of rhythm and symmetry. But, according to Plekhanov, the character of the “imitation” and “contradiction” and their concrete content are determined in each individual case by historical forces. Plekhanov illustrates his understanding of the operation of the laws of imitation and contradiction, and also of their interconnection, in the sphere of drama with the example of the attitude of English society to Shakespeare’s works.

19

p Plekhanov also repeats the scheme of art according to the law of antithesis in his lectures on the materialist conception of history. The new dramatic genre of "tearful comedy" is defined by him as a “reaction” against the expression of moral dissoluteness in literature and the theatre.

p The law of thesis and antithesis, uncritically accepted by Plekhanov as the main law of development of literature and art, is a particular case of dialectical movement and there are no grounds for regarding it as a general law of artistic development. Plekhanov usually regards art from the Marxist viewpoint, first and foremost as a phenomenon of social history, lie believes, for example, that G. Tarde placed the study of the law of imitation on a false biological basis. Man’s natural urge to imitate manifests itself only in certain social conditions and relations. If they are absent the urge to imitate disappears, giving way to the opposite—the urge to contradict. Therefore, both the appearance of influences and imitations in the sphere of art and their character are determined by social conditions. Nevertheless, Plekhanov occasionally raises the principle of thesis and antithesis to the level of the basic law of development of literature and art in relation not only to the primitive art of primitive peoples, but also to the developed artistic creation of the modern period. There can be no doubt that these mistaken opinions contradict Plekhanov’s basically correct scientific materialist views.

p Plekhanov advances the Marxist idea that contradictions in the literary development of a given period always express the social contradictions, views, positions and struggle of the classes. He proceeds to develop this idea with a concrete historical analysis of literary phenomena.

p In general Plekhanov is critical of the main principles of Taine’s and Brunetiere’s theories. While accepting some of their propositions, he gives them a materialist interpretation. For example, even before he wrote the Unaddressed Letters, in the book The Development of the Monist View of History (1895), he expressed his opinion of Brunetiere’s theory as follows: "Where Brunetiere sees only the influence of some literary works on others we see in addition the mutual influences of social groups, strata and classes, influences that lie more deeply. Where he simply says: contradiction appeared, men wanted to do the opposite of what their predecessors had been doing, we add: and the reason why they wanted it was because a new contradiction had appeared in their actual relations, because a new social stratum or class had come forward, which could no longer live as the people had lived in former days."  [19•* 

20

p PJekhanov’s system of ideas on the laws of the historical development of literature is, of course, richer than the theory of imitation and contradiction. It is significant that in his historicocritical works he rarely makes use of this theory. It is therefore unjustified when certain researchers concentrate attention only on this proposition of Plekhanov’s, ignoring the other, more fruitful ideas on the laws of the development of art.

Plekhanov thoroughly substantiated the idea that the art and literature of any people are closely interrelated with its history, with the struggle of classes, with their views and psychology. This standpoint had, and still has, a militant political purpose and serves to refute reactionary views widespread in the past and the present, on the lack of dependence of art and literature on history and the development and struggle of classes. Following Marx and Engels, Plekhanov defended the idea of the dependence of art and literature on the onward movement of society. In spite of isolated mistakes, the main content of Plekhanov’s theory is first and foremost the idea of the historical nature of the development and class foundations of artistic creation. Plekhanov’s heritage has been of great value in overcoming the various forms of opposition to the historical method in dealing with the development of literature and art.

p Plekhanov’s works on questions of aesthetics are characterised by attention to the specific nature of art which distinguishes it from other types of human ideological activity. The problem of the specific nature of artistic portrayal is analysed most thoroughly by Plekhanov in the Unaddressed Letters. In his opinion, the specific nature of art is that whereas science cognises social life in abstract concepts, art begins at the point where impressions, thoughts and feelings acquire expression in images. Plekhanov regarded representation as the necessary specific quality of art. In this question he proceeded from the tradition of classical aesthetics. In defining art as the reproduction of life in images he is, for the most part, developing certain propositions in the aesthetics of Belinsky and Chernyshevsky. But it would be wrong to think that in this case Plekhanov merely repeated what had been said before him. The emphasis on the representational nature of art was a matter of dire necessity. On the one hand, Plekhanov’s emphasis on the specific representational nature of art was largely necessitated by struggle against vulgar sociologists of the Shulyatikov type, who ignored the difference between literature and publicistics. On the other hand, already in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Plekhanov saw clearly the beginning of the Decadent campaign not only against the general ideological 21 principles of Realist literature, but also against, its artistic principles. He noted, first and foremost, the tendency of the artistic image to be dissolved into various forms of the lifeless abstractness of formalism and mysticism. History has shown how perceptive Plekhanov was. The striving of the Decadent trends to subvert and discredit the representational basis of art has revealed itself fully in our time, reaching its limit in the so-called nonrepresentational, abstract art, in the aesthetics of modernism.

p Plekhanov’s treatment of the problem of the speeific nature of art, the reproduction of reality in images, was at that time and still is today of topical significance. The representational nature of artisticembodiment was established by classical aesthetics long before Plekhanov. But the problem of the artistic image during different periods has often revealed new aspects, grown more acute and become the object of bitter disputes. Plekhanov not only reminded us of the classical treatment of the specific nature of art. but also sensed most perceptively the tremendous importance of solving the problem of the artistic image in the interests of the struggle for realism, against various types of Decadent art.

p Plekhanov’s artistic criteria proceed from his understanding of the essence of art. He denies the absolute nature of the criteria of the “beautiful” of normative aesthetics. Disagreeing with A. V. Lunacharsky, he shows in the work Art and Social Life that there is not and cannot be any absolute criterion of beauty because people’s ideas of beauty do not stay the same all the time, but change with the course of historical development. But, if there is no absolute criterion of the beautiful, Plekhanov continues to develop his view, this does not mean that there is no objective artistic criterion. The objective artistic criterion lies in the correspondence of form to content. Plekhanov says: "The more closely the execution corresponds to the design, or—to use a more general expression—tiie more closely the form of an artistic production corresponds to its idea, the more successful it is. There you have an objective criterion."  [21•*  He stresses the same proposition in the original versions of the Unaddressed Letters. All the laws of artistic creation, Plekhanov states, "ultimately amount to the following one: form should correspond to content ... this law is important for all schools—for Classics, and for Romantics, etc."

p The correspondence of design to execution, of form to content is, according to Plekhanov, the key, the criterion for ascertaining the artistic merit of this or that work of art. And it is precisely because this criterion exists, Plekhanov argues, tfiat we are justified in saying that the drawings of, for example, Leonardo da 22 Vinci are better than the drawings of some little Themistocle? who daubs paper for his own entertainment.

p Pleklianov’s idea about the existence of objective artistic criteria is correct and extremely fruitful. His assertion of objective criteria of aesthetic appreciation in the period of the spread of Narodnik and Decadent aesthetics, and later of Machisl views in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was extremely fruitful. It armed Russian social thought and criticism against various types of subjectivism and helped to defend the true values of art and literature. Plekhanov’s desire to find objective artistic standards is undoubtedly rooted in the scientific, Marxist basis of his aesthetic views.

p It must be noted, however, that in some cases Plekhanov treated the criterion of artistic merit as the correspondence of the execution to the author’s design, basing himself on a particular, subordinate factor of the dialectics of form and content, on the high level of the execution of the artistic design. Execution must correspond to design—this is how Plekhanov sometimes formulated the objective criterion of artistic merit.

p The proposition on the unity of form and content is not a nonhistorical, empty formula, as critics of Plekhanov’s understanding of artistic merit maintained. As we know, this proposition was developed in classical aesthetics long before Plekhanov. For Lessing, Belinsky and Chernyshevsky the question of artistic merit is inseparable from the question of the general relation of art to reality. Thus, a broad materialist understanding of unity of content and form (reproduction in images) presupposes the relation of works of art to reality as the basis for judging artistic perfection. At the same time the classical critics did not separate this basis from the specific nature of its reproduction in art. Judgment about the authenticity, depth and character of the portrayal of life in works of art cannot fail to be at the same time judgment about the perfection of the technological execution of the artist’s design (particularly images, language and composition). However, materialist aesthetics regards as the basis of the objective criterion of artistic merit not the correspondence of art to a speculative idea, but its correspondence to living reality.

p The strong and weak aspects of the criterion of artistic merit and of Plekhanov’s methodology of literary criticism as a whole are seen most clearly in his articles on Lev Tolstoy: "Within Limits" (1910), "A Confusion of Ideas" (1910-11), "Karl Marx and Lev Tolstoy" (1911), and "More about Tolstoy" (1911). These articles were written in connection with Tolstoy’s death and the first anniversary of his death (about the same time as V. I. Lenin’s articles). The conservative aspects of Tolstoyism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Russia were taken 23 up by reactionary circles who sought to make use of them in the struggle against the revolutionary movement. Various revisionists and liquidators from among the Social-Democrats also sought to idealise these weak aspects of Tolstoy’s world outlook. Plekhanov sharply criticised the reactionary teaching of non-resistance of evil by violence and its apologists. V. I. Lenin noted the positive significance of Plekhanov’s articles in this respect. In a letter to Gorky of January 3, 1911, he commented approvingly on Plekhanov’s articles about Tolstoy and expressed his agreement with their general trend: "Plekhanov, too, was infuriated by all the lying and sycophancy around Tolstoy, and in here we see eye to eye."  [23•*  Concerning the comment with which the editors of the Zvezda furnished Plekhanov’s article "Within Limits”, Lenin wrote to Gorky: "Zvezda No. 1 ... also contains a good article by Plekhanov with a trivial comment, for which we have already scolded the editors."  [23•**  The editors’ comment on Tolstoy was unprincipled and vague. They equated all points of view, making it impossible to ascertain which were correct and acceptable, and which mistaken and unacceptable.

p Plekhanov rightly notes Tolstoy’s merciless criticism of the social foundations of autocracy and the established church. Working people, he writes, "...value in Tolstoy a writer who, although he did not understand the struggle for the reorganisation of social relations and remained completely indifferent to it, nevertheless felt deeply the inadequacy of the present social order. And, most importantly, they value in him a writer who used his tremendous artistic talent in order to portray this inadequacy vividly, although, it is true, only episodically."  [23•*** 

p Plekhanov’s articles that expose the reactionary meaning of “sycophancy” in relation to everything wrong in Tolstoy are an important phenomenon of Russian social thought and literary criticism of the early twentieth century. However, a comparison of them with Lenin’s works on Tolstoy reveals their weak aspects most clearly. They depend largely on Pleklianov’s Menshevik ideas about the motive forces of the Russian revolution and disregard of the role of the peasantry. Lenin finds the origins of the contradictory nature of Tolstoy’s world outlook in the specific and contradictory nature of the Russian peasantry, whose ideology the great writer reflected. For Plekhanov, however, Tolstoy was first and foremost an aristocrat and nobleman. While saying a great deal that is right and valuable about Tolstoy, which was approved by Lenin, he emphasises that "Tolstoy was and remained to the end of his life a real barin”,  [23•****  not noticing 24 that the writer arrived, through long and painful searching, at the patriarchal, peasant consciousness and left his own class.

p Whereas Lenin relates Tolstoy’s world outlook and work primarily to Russian reality and all its specific features, showing them in connection with all the complex social relations of the period, Plekhanov characterises him as a thinker and writer divorced from the reality of his day. He says so directly and without reservations. "When a person [i.e., Tolstoy.—V.Sh.],” he writes, "withdraws to such an extent from the ’present day’, it is absurd to even speak of his ’close link’ with it."  [24•* 

Rightly attacking Bazarov and Potresov, who were guilty of “sycophancy” in relation to Tolstoy, and making many correct and interesting points in his analysis of Tolstoy’s work, Plekhanov overlooks the historical roots of the contradictions in the writer’s world outlook and work. Therefore he characterises these contradictions as an abstract struggle in Tolstoy’s mind between “Christian” and “pagan” elements, linking this only with his nobleman’s consciousness.

p In the atmosphere of the nineties and the beginning of the nineteen hundreds, when "lack of principles and ideals" was elevated by the Decadents and Naturalists to the rank of the chief artistic merit, Plekhanov championed the ideological nature of art, its duty to bring progressive social ideals to the people. In the article "V. G. Belinsky’s Literary Views”, he formulates aptly the significance of ideas in artistic creation: "...the great poet is great only in so far as he expresses a great stage in the historical development of society".  [24•**  How can one fail to support Plekhanov when he says that each artist gains a great deal if he is imbued with the progressive ideas of his day?

p The merit of a work of art depends not only on the authenticity with which it portrays the phenomena of reality, but also on the importance of the ideas expressed in it. According to Plekhanov, no work of art is entirely devoid of ideas, but not every idea can form the basis of an artistic work. Quoting Ruskin’s words that a maiden may sing of her lost love, but a miser cannot sing of his lost money, Plekhanov accompanies them with his own commentary: "Why,” he asks, "cannot a miser sing of his lost money? Simply because, if he did sing of his loss, his song would not move anybody, that is, could not serve as a means of communication between himself and other people."  [24•***  This opinion forms the basis of Plekhanov’s well-known proposition on "false ideas". 25 Its essence is expounded most fully by the author in the articles "Art and Social Life”, "Henrik Ibsen" and "Doctor Stockmann’s Son".

p Plekhanov never supported the oversimplified idea that a talented writer who proceeds from mistaken views cannot create a truly artistic work. In speaking of the pernicious nature of "false ideas”, Plekhanov had in mind the entire process of the development of literature, and not individual phenomena. "It would therefore be strange to think,” he writes, "that present-day bourgeois ideologists are definitely incapable of producing works of distinction. Such works, of course, are possible even now. But the chances of any such appearing have drastically diminished. Furthermore, even works of distinction now bear the impress of the era of decadence."  [25•*  Plekhanov illustrates his idea with the example of D. Merezhkovsky’s novel Alexander the First which, in spite of the author’s talent, was irreparably harmed by his religious mystical philosophy.

p Plekhanov’s assertion that a false, reactionary idea in art limits the artist’s horizons is perfectly true. The demand that works of art should have a progressive ideological content is a fundamental one in Russian and world classical criticism. Often a "false idea" at the basis of an artistic work leads to the distortion of reality in its most essential features. This logically reduces the cognitive and artistic merits of the work. This proposition of Plekhanov’s is particularly relevant to modern Decadent art.

p The following idea of Plekhanov’s is extremely valuable and correct: when a false idea is made the basis of a work of art it introduces into the latter inner contradictions which inevitably impair its aesthetic merit.

p Plekhanov’s analysis of Ibsen’s dramas is extremely important for an understanding of the question of "false ideas”. In the abundant international critical literature on the famous Norwegian dramatist Plekhanov’s article "Henrik Ibsen" is one of the best. In terms of subtlety of observation and depths of analysis of Ibsen’s plays it has much to offer the modern reader also. And it was all the more significant in its day.

p Plekhanov describes in detail the pointlessness of Brand’s and Stockmann’s revolt against the reality around them from the viewpoint of modern socialism. The vagueness of the protest by Ibsen and his characters, Plekhanov maintains, introduces an anti-artistic element into the dramatist’s works. But Plekhanov analyses the ideas and content of Ibsen’s dramas without reference to the historical environment which gave birth to them. However, the “eccentricity” of Stockmann’s and Brand’s actions cannot be 26 explained by their petty-bourgeois nature alone, as Plekhanov seeks to explain it. Their initiative, their striving for truth and independence have their roots in the specific features of Norwegian history.

p As an example of a literary work that suffers from the falsity of its ba-^ic idea Plekhanov takes Knut Hamsun’s play At the Gates of the Realm. The hero of the play, the writer Ivar Kareno, calls himself a man with "thoughts that are as free as a bird”. He calls on people to hate the proletariat and resist it, i.e., he preaches a reactionary bourgeois thought.

p “Kriut Hamsun,” Plekhanov says, "is highly talented. But no talent can convert into truth that which is its very opposite. The grave defects of his play are a natural consequence of the utter unsoundness of its basic idea. And its unsoundness springs from the author’s inability to understand the struggle of classes in present-day society of which his play is a literary echo."  [26•*  While criticising the Nietzschean ideas of Kareno, the hero of Hamsun’s drama, and a number of collisions that arose on this basis, Plekhanov overlooks the second, equally important problem of the degree of authenticity in the artistic portrayal of reality. In spite of the shortcomings of his world outlook, in the drama At the Gates of the Realm Knut Hamsun succeeded in showing some important processes that were taking place among the bourgeois individualist intelligentsia.

p In his concrete critical judgments Plekhanov did not always adhere fully to his proposition on "false ideas”, but revealed the real contradictions in the writers’ world outlook and work. For example, in examining the special features of Narodnik literature, he threw considerable light on the difference between the Narodnik ideas and realism of Gleb Uspensky’s works.

p Plekhanov convincingly developed and gave materialist substantiation to the proposition of classical aesthetics on the unity of thought and feeling in art. As we know, he did not accept the definition of the essence of art as a means of emotional human intercourse, given by Lev Tolstoy, and considered it one-sided. In criticising it, Plekhanov formulated his point of view as follows: "Nor is it true that art expresses only men’s emotions. No, it expresses both their emotions and their thoughts—expresses them, however, not abstractly, but in live images—I, however, think that art begins when a man re-evokes in himself emotions and thoughts which he has experienced under the influence of surrounding reality and expresses them in definite images."  [26•**  Plekhanov’s assertion of the unity of thought and feeling proceeded from a materialist idea of man and the nature of art.

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p In his works Plekhanov proceeded from the proposition on the uneven development of art in different periods and different countries. Characterising the art of capitalist society, he develops Marx’s idea that the flowering of a new art does not always coincide with the progress of the material basis of capitalist society that constitutes, as it were, the skeleton of its organism. Plekhanov explains the phenomena of crisis and decline in art and literature during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—the spread of various types of decadence and uninspired naturalism—by the hostility of the capitalist system to art. "The same capitalism,” Plekhanov writes, "that in the sphere of production is an obstacle to the utilisation of all the productive forees at the disposal of modern mankind is also a brake in the sphere of artistic creation."  [27•* 

p In preaching artistic realism, Plekhanov sharply criticised all Decadent trends in art and literature. He regarded as the main feature of contemporary bourgeois art its isolation from life, its depersonalisation, its belittling and distortion of human strivings. Plekhanov’s analysis of the origin and content of Decadent and Formalist trends in criticism helps to reveal more profoundly the logic of their further development, their negative role in the spiritual life of modern mankind. Against the opinion that Russian decadence was borrowed from the West Plekhanov argues convincingly: "But if the appearance of Russian decadence cannot be adequately explained, so to speak, by domestic causes, this fact in no way alters its nature. Introduced into our country from the West, it does not cease to be what ii was at home, namely, a product of the ’anaemia’ that accompanies the decay of the class now predominant in Western Europe."  [27•**  The belittling of aesthetic and social ideas by modern reactionary writers does not mean that the latter lack social interests. Using the works of Ziuaida Hippius, D. Merezhkovsky and D. Filosofov as examples, Plekhanov reveals the conservatism of their social ideas. The mystic does not reject thought, but his thought is reactionary and irreconcilably opposed to reason, to reality. The main manifestation of the reactionary world outlook of Decadent artists is their hostility to progressive movements of the day. A reactionary idea frequently assumes the form of indifference to earthly things and makes itself felt in Hie urge to withdraw into another world, in a special passion for the subconscious.

p “Nonsense cubed" is what Plekhanov called the Cubist trend m painting. In his opinion, cubism has as its creative principle the philosophy of subjective idealism and rests on the idea that there is no reality other than our “self”. But it took all the infinite 28 individualism of the period of the decline of the bourgeoisie lo turn this narrow idea not only into an egoistic rule that determines the mutual relations between people, but also into the theoretical basis of aesthetics. From this viewpoint Plekhanov criticises the propositions in the book by the Cubist painters Albert Glei/es and Jean Metzinger where they expound the doctrines of their school. "There is nothing real outside of us,” they say. "... ll does not occur to us to doubt the existence of the objects which act upon our senses: but reasonable certainty is possible only in respect to the images which they evoke in our mind."  [28•* 

p Plekhanov provided an interesting description of the Decadent trends, symbolism, in particular. First of all he demolishes the popular argument that futurism and symbolism are the most convenient way of overcoming poetically the ugly prose of bourgeois reality. The Symbolists, dissatisfied with the Naturalist extremes produced by the crisis in modern art, emphasised, as their main principle, the desire to reveal in the symbol the inner meaning of phenomena which allegedly cannot be understood by tho usual forms of cognition. They declared that, apart from the reflection of reality, there is something else. In his polemic with the Symbolists PJekhanov wrote: "But thought can advance beyond the bounds of a given reality—because we are always dealing only with a given reality—along two paths: firstly, the path of symbols which lead to the sphere of abstraction; secondly, the path along which reality itself—the reality of the present day—developing its own content with its own forces, advances beyond its bounds, outliving itself and creating the foundation for the reality of the future"  [28•** 

p Orientation towards symbolism shows that an artist’s mind is not investigating the meaning of the social development taking place around him. "Symbolism is a kind of testimony to poverty,"  [28•***  Plekhanov states. When an artist is equipped with an understanding of reality he has no need to venture into the wilderness of symbolism; then he seeks a way out in reality itself, and then art is capable, to use Hegel’s splendid expression, of uttering magical words that conjure up an image of the future.

p It is particularly interesting to recall Plekhanov’s shrewd and apt remarks on impressionism. He sees considerable value in the representational searchings and achievements of the Impressionists, and iinds a serious meaning in the technical questions which they pose. Having rightly detected in impressionism a kind of protest against the lack of ideas in naturalism, Plekhanov gave a profound analysis of the strong aspects of this trend—its lively, 29 spontaneous perception of reality and its masterly rendering of the rich colours of nature and of the real world around. He singles out in particular the importance of the Impressionists’ light effects in painting. While acknowledging the merits of the works of certain Impressionist painters, Plekhanov criticised this trend for its indifference to the social content of art. The artist who confines his attention to the sphere of sensations is indifferent to thoughts. He may paint a good landscape, but landscape is not all there is to painting. The main subject of art is man.

p Plekhanov pinpointed clearly the main weakness of impressionism, its failure to develop the human, social element. In respect of the representational potential of art this is connected with a lack of attention to the culture of plastic form which is expressed primarily in the realistic portrayal of man. It is precisely this Achilles’ heel of impressionism that makes one most acutely aware of the dividing line between impressionism and lofty realism. Recording his impressions of the picture At the Cattle Market by the Italian painter Gioli Luigi, Plekhanov pinpoints the main shortcoming of impressionism. "A cattle market in a square surrounded with trees. The light effects here are very good indeed. The patches of light on the bulls’ backs are so beautiful. But when it is a question of man, we demand more. Compare Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper."

p Contrasting Leonardo da Vinci’s famous picture The Last Supper with the works of the Impressionists in his article "Art and Social Life”, Plekhanov stresses the profound humanity of the loftiest works of art. Leonardo da Vinci portrayed a spiritual human drama brilliantly, whereas impressionism confines the artist’s task to well-painted patches of light.

p This comparison is most important for an understanding of Plekhanov’s aesthetic standpoint. Essentially two types of art are counterposed here. The first places man and the most profound problems that affect his interests, directly or indirectly, at the centre of what is portrayed. The second type of art confines itself to tasks of an emotional, aesthetic nature. This kind of art is based on exclusive attention to representational devices. At the same time it is indifferent to human life, feelings, thoughts, i.e., everything that concerns man. Plekhanov is firmly on the side of humane art that reflects progressive thought and noble sentiments.

Plekhanov was most consistent in his defence of the human, truly dramatic principle in art. The picture The Slave Girl by the painter Bilbao Gonzalo caused certain critics to comment that its dramatic theme (prostitution) bore no relation to art. Plekhanov attacked the widespread Decadent formalist view that the portrayal of swch dramas is not a matter for painting, the 30 tasks of which are not the same as those of literature. The task of art, he maintains, is to portray everything of interest and concern to social man, and painting is no exception to the general rule.

p Plekhanov fruitfully developed genera) Marxist principles in aesthetics and literary criticism. But in his works, as has already been noted, one can find oversimplified, one-sided, and sometimes mistaken ideas which were conditioned by his Menshevik views. His incorrect idea of the motive forces and paths of revolution led Plekhanov to make a number of grave errors, including a negative assessment of some of Maxim Gorky’s ideas and characters and attempts to use his articles on this writer in order to challenge Lenin’s political standpoint.

p Gorky’s work is the subject of Plekhanov’s articles "On the Psychology of the Workers’ Movement" (1907), the foreword to the third edition of the symposium Twenty Years (1908), and some letters of 1911. Hitherto in considering Plekhanov’s works on Gorky the critics have concentrated their attention mainly on the mistakes in the foreword to the symposium Twenty Years. Quite wrongly the other aspect of Plekhanov’s writings on Gorky, his defence of the great proletarian writer’s works, has remained in the background. Plekhanov sees Gorky not only as an outstanding writer indissolubly linked with the proletarian revolutionary movement, but also as an outstanding artist. He argued convincingly with critics who commented unfavourably on Gorky’s creative development and declared that his talent was waning and that his new works were artistically weak and did not meet the requirements of the day. To the incorrect statements of Koruei Chukovsky, who said that "Gorky is a philistine from head to foot”, Plekhanov rightly objected that only someone who did not know the difference between socialism and philistinism could write that. Plekhanov also challenged the unfair comments of those who regarded themselves as sharing Gorky’s views, but who denied the power of his literary talent. "As for my own humble opinion,” Plekhanov wrote in the article "On the Psychology of the Workers’ Movement”, "I will say outright that Gorky’s new play is excellent. It is extremely rich in content, and one would have to close one’s eyes deliberately not to see this."  [30•* 

p Plekhanov had a high opinion of the talent of the proletarian writer Maxim Gorky, and of the ideological importance of his works in the development of modern revolutionary literature. He emphasises in particular that it is not only a question of the importance of the actual material on the working-class revolu- 31 tionary movement which the writer shows in his works. The material merely provides the possibility of producing a good literary work. For this possibility to become reality a highly artistic treatment of the material is necessary. And Plekhanov rates Gorky’s new work, the controversial play The Enemies, as satisfying the strictest aesthetic requirements. He singles out in particular the importance of the excellent portrayal in The Enemies of the psychology of the modern working-class movement.

p As can be seen from Plekhanov’s statements, he commented equally approvingly on other works by Gorky also, persistently denying the assertion by reactionary critics that his talent was on the decline. However, Plekhanov wrote about Gorky mainly in the period from 1907 to 1911, i.e., during his sudden turning to Menshevism. This explains his incorrect, distorted treatment of a number of Gorky’s well-known ideas and characters. His general correct assessments of the merits of Gorky’s play The Enemies are mixed up with criticism of the Bolsheviks’ tactics in the revolution of 190J3 and later.

p Plekhanov considers that truly revolutionary tactics are embodied in the characters of the class-conscious workers, Levshin, Yagodin and Ryabtsov, heroes from the proletariat. The workers portrayed in Gorky’s play are full of noble self-sacrifice and inspired by the noble aim of elevating the masses, "rectifying the people”. Plekhanov contrasts the true heroism of the workers with an intellectual who has no definite world outlook, the former actress Tatyana Lugovaya. The genuine heroism of the revolutionary workers seems to her loo .simple and lacking in passion. According to Plekhanov, people like Tatyana Lugovaya are prone to deceive themselves with exaggerated, unjustified, rosy hopes, excessive optimism. Long painstaking work with the masses, systematic influencing of them, seems boring lo these people; they see no passion, no heroism in it. Therefore, when she encountered the true revolutionary consciousness of the workers Tatyana Lugovaya did not understand it. She did not nolice heroism where it governed all their actions. And in the heat of his polemic with the Bolsheviks Plekhanov quite unjustifiably compares Tatyana Lugovaya’s groundless optimism to the tactics of I he Bolsheviks.

p Plekhanov was perfectly right in criticising Gorky strongly for his Machist God-building sympathies which are felt most slrongly in the short novel Confession.  But Plekhanov’s attitude to Bolsheviks’ tactics as "revolutionary alchemy" produced his unfair assessment of some of Gorky’s works. In the foreword to the third edition of the symposium Twenty Years he gave an obviously Mistaken assessment of the novel Mother, equaling it with Confession.

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p Lenin criticised Gorky’s “God-building” sympathies categorically and uncompromisingly, and his Confession, in particular. However, he never fully identified Gorky’s philosophical mistakes with his general position as a writer, and he emphasised Gorky’s indissoluble link with the working masses and the revolutionary movement.

p In spite of his one-sided characterisation of certain aspects of Gorky’s work, Plekhanov saw him in general as an outstanding, talented writer who was closely connected with the people and the proletarian revolutionary movement.

p Lenin never identified Plekhanov’s political opportunism with his pliilosophico-aesthetic writings. In a letter to Gorky of March 24, 1908, Lenin remarked that in the sphere of philosophy, in the struggle against the Machists, "Plekhanov, at bottom, is •entirely right in being against them...."  [32•*  Lenin stressed firmly the invalidity of attempts to preach old, reactionary rubbish under the pretext of criticising Plekhanov’s tactical opportunism.

p Nor should one overlook the complexity of the evolution of Plekhanov’s social views. Even when he was already a Meushevik, Plekhanov. to quote Lenin, "occupied a special position, and departed from Menshevism many limes".  [32•** 

p I’lekhanov’s political evolution to Menshevism resulted in a strengthening of the weak aspects of Ids aesthetics and undoubtedly affected his literary-critical views. However, Plekhanov’s special position ou these questions enabled him even after 1903 to produce a number of line works and express much of value in the sphere of philosophy and the theory of art and literature (the articles "French Drama and French Painting of the Eighteenth Century from the Sociological Viewpoint”, "The Proletarian Movement and Bourgeois Art”, "Art and Social Life”, "Henrik Ibsen”, "The Ideology of Our Present-Day Philistine”, and "On D. V. Filosofov’s Book”). And during this period one is bound to note and duly appreciate his fight for materialism in aesthetics, against naturalism and decadence, for progressive realist traditions, and for authentic and representational art.

p Plekhanov’s study of the laws of the art of revolutionary periods is extremely relevant today. He criticises the still widespread view that revolutionary periods are unfavourable for artistic creation. Characterising the art of revolutionary times, Plekhanov totally rejects the popular saying; "When the cannons roar, the muses are silent.” On the contrary, he argues, periods of revolution give art new opportunities and directions. Of particular importance is Plekhanov’s remark that the sansculottes set 33 art "on the path which the art of the upper classes had been unable to follow: it became a matter for the whole people".  [33•*  The revolutionary awakening of the consciousness of the masses does indeed create the most favourable conditions for artistic creation and give art a popular character. Plekhanov is right in saying that the savage Thermidor reaction and the historical limitations of the French Revolution of 1789 soon put an end to the influence of the sansculottes and the realisation of their aesthetic ideals. Only a victorious socialist revolution, capable of liberating the people’s spiritual powers and creative energy, can carry out fully the task of creating an art of the whole people.

p Plekhanov’s ideas on the art of revolutionary periods bear directly on a number of problems of the present-day literary movement. They show convincingly how invalid are the attempts of some writers to elevate a certain "time distance" into a universal standard of artistic creation.

p Already at the dawn of the proletarian movement in Russia Plekhanov raised the question of the development of the new, proletarian literature. He proceeded from the fact that the works of Marx and Engels define theoretically many features of the future socialist art. Marx and Engels spoke of the appearance in the future of art which in the new social conditions, on the basis of the experience of the struggle for the liberation of the people, would develop all that is best in the traditions of the past, would reflect the birth of the new, socialist era, and would achieve a total fusion of great ideological depth and conscious historical purpose with Shakespearian verve and efficacy. Plekhanov was deeply convinced that the time had come to create such a literature. He saw the vital basis of socialist literature in the revolutionary movement and the conscious creative activity of the masses.

p The coming to the fore of the working class, as the most powerful progressive force of history, produces the conditions for the creation of proletarian literature. In 1885 in the introduction to the poetry collection Songs of Labour, which the Emancipation of Labour group was proposing to have published, Plekhanov wrote, addressing the workers: "You must have your own poetry, your own songs, your own verse. In them you must seek the expression of your own grief, your own hopes and aspirations.... And it is not just grief alone, not despair alone that will find expression in it [poetry.—V. Sh.}.... Alongside discontent with the present there will grow within you faith in the great future that is now opening up to the working class of all the civilised countries. And this faith will also be reflected in your poetry; it will make 34 your songs loud, mighty and proud, the victory cry of universal liberty, true equality and sincere fraternity."

p These words, full of faith in the spiritual forces of the popular masses, define the initial, essential features of the new literature created during the struggle for a new world, for the world of socialism.

_p The works of the eminent Marxist theoretician of art and literature, Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov, were of major importance for the development of Marxist aesthetics.

_p V. Shcherbina

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