Solzhenitsyn

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Solzhenitsyn

Pubblichiamo la versione inglese del libro di L. su Solzhenitsyn, che contiene un saggio (il secondo), a qaunto ci risulta mai tradotto in italiano e che contiene degli elementi interpretativi nuovi del romanzo non solo dell’autore russo, ma anche del Novecento.

Georg Lukac’s most recent work of literary criticism, on the Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn, hails the Russian author as a major force in redirecting socialist realism toward the level it once occupied in the 1920s when Soviet writers portrayed the turbulent transition to socialist society.In the first essay Lukacs compares the novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich to short pieces by “bourgeois” writers Conrad and Hemingway and explains the nature of Solzhenitsyn’s criticism of the Stalinist period implied in the situation, characters, and their interaction. He also briefly describes Matriona’s House, An Incident at the Kretchetovka Station, and For the Good of the Cause — stories that depict various aspects of life in Stalinist Russia.In the second, longer section, Lukacs greets Solzhenitsyn’s novels The First Circle and Cancer Ward, which were published outside Russia, as representing “a new high point in contemporary world literature.” These books mark Solzhenitsyn as heir to the best tendencies in postrevolutionary socialist realism and to the literary tradition of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Moreover, from the point of view of the development of the novel, Lukacs finds the Russian author to be a successful exponent of innovative methods originating in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain.The central problem of contemporary socialist realism is a predominant theme in the book: how to come to critical terms with the legacy of Stalin. The enthusiasm with which Lukacs acclaims Solzhenitsyn will not surprise those who have followed his persistent refusal to endorse the so-called socialist realist writers of the Stalinist era. He outlines the aspects of Solzhenitsyn’s creative method that allows him to cross the ideological boudaries of the Stalinist tradition, yet he finds a basic pessimism in Solzhenitsyn’s work that makes him a “plebeian” rather than a socialist writer.Of Ivan Denisovich and the future of socialist realist literature, Lukacs urges: “If socialist writers were to reflect upon their task, if they were again to feel an artistic responsibiliity towards the great problems of the present, powerful forces could be unleashed leading in the direction of relevant socialist literature. In this process of transformation and renewal, which signifies an abrupt departure from the socialist realism of the Stalin era, the role of landmark on the road to the future falls to Solzhenitsyn’s story.”

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The meaning of contemporary realism

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Brecht, Conrad, ideologia, Joyce, Kafka, Mann, modernismo, Morante, Musil, realismo, realismo critico, realismo socialista, Tolstoj

Presentiamo qui l’edizione inglese di “Il significato attuale del realismo critico” perché contiene alcune pagine (83-89) non presenti nelle edizioni italiana, francese e tedesca.

In this fascinating study the Hungarian philosopher and literary critic examines what he considers the three main trends in modern literature. First, he discusses the ‘literature of the avant-garde’ – experimental Modernism from Kafka, Joyce and Musil to Beckett and Faulkner. He criticises Modernism for its subjectivism, its ‘static’ view of the human condition, its dissolution of ‘character’, its obsession with pathological states, and its lack of a sense of history. According to Lukács, the ‘literature of the avant-garde’ has been the typical literature of Western capitalist society over the past fifty years. Its counterpart in Communist Eastern Europe, often equally narrow and dogmatic, though in Lukács’ view more promising in the long run, is so-called ‘socialist realism’. The main fault Lukács sees in socialist realist writers is that they over-simplify the problem of realism in literature by failing to see the contradictions in the everyday life of actual society. Their view of history – Utopia is already with us – is no less ‘static’ than that of Western avant-gardists. Contrasted with these two systems of artistic dogmatism stands, in Lukács’ view ‘critical realism’. The critical realists, represented at their best by Thomas Mann, Conrad and Shaw, are the true heirs to the great European realists of the nineteenth century – Balzac, Stendhal and Tolstoy. In their work the social changes that characterise our era are most truly reflected, character is not sacrificed to artistic pattern, the human condition is understood dynamically, in a historical context, the pathological aspects of modern life are placed in a ‘critical’ perspective. Thus, ‘critical realism’ is not only the link with the great literature of the past, but is also the literature that points into the future.