Lunacharsky -Pushkin and modernity

Lunacharsky Articles and speeches on international politics

Pushkin and modernity

Published in the magazine Krasnaya Niva, 1929 No. 46

In 1930 Krasnaya Niva gives its subscribers the complete works of Pushkin. The editors intend to place on the pages of Krasnaya Niva a number of articles about the life and work of Pushkin and about his significance for our time. The first article published below by A. V. Lunacharsky, one of the editors of the complete works of Pushkin, introduces the reader to the Marxist understanding of Pushkin's literary heritage.

Pushkin still occupies a dominant place in our literature. Already during his lifetime, he was almost unanimously proclaimed the coryphaeus of Russian literature. Pushkin's assessment, however, fluctuated somewhat in subsequent eras; but even those critics who, reflecting the profound changes in social life and in the political and cultural moods of the country, began to be critical of Pushkin, recognizing at the same time that in the field of purely aesthetic values, as an artist, he remains unsurpassed, and reassessment was going on not so much along the line of Pushkin's place in art, but along the line of criticism of art itself - the place and purpose of this entire phenomenon in human society. The unsurpassed beauty of the form, the diversity, the depth of the content of Pushkin's works allowed his heritage, like a heavenly body, to come out again and again from behind the clouds and even menacing clouds,

Not so infrequently voices were heard that Pushkin, of course, is a great master of the word, but in relation to worldview, for example, as a poet-philosopher, he should be placed immeasurably lower than the great poets of other peoples - Shakespeare and Byron, Schiller and Goethe. But the myth of Pushkin, a pure aesthete who amused himself and others with "sweet sounds", was gradually eliminated. It became clear that in Pushkin we have a poet of great power of thought and great depth of feeling, not inferior in this respect to the greatest among the great.

Our time is a time of grandiose reassessment of heritage. We are entering a completely new phase in the life of our country, even the life of the entire human society. We know for sure that we must rely on the achievements of the past generation, even if they are class alien to us. We are by no means preachers of breaking away from everything old—such "futuristic" tendencies meet with a harsh rebuff from communist thought. However, we, on the other hand, are by no means inclined to kneel before the values of the past, we are convinced that the future will be more brilliant than the past was, we are convinced that we are moving towards a cultural upsurge that will raise its head above all the peaks of cultural creativity, which peoples only knew in the past. We know that in order to reach these peaks, we need to freely, discarding any reverence for authorities, critically reassess the treasury of mankind, in particular the peoples of our country, and take from there only that and only that which we really need in our forward movement.

Not so infrequently voices were heard that Pushkin, of course, is a great master of the word, but in relation to worldview, for example, as a poet-philosopher, he should be placed immeasurably lower than the great poets of other peoples - Shakespeare and Byron, Schiller and Goethe. But the myth of Pushkin, a pure aesthete who amused himself and others with "sweet sounds", was gradually eliminated. It became clear that in Pushkin we have a poet of great power of thought and great depth of feeling, not inferior in this respect to the greatest among the great.

Our time, of course, reacted the same way to Pushkin.

It is interesting to note that Lenin treated Pushkin with tender and almost enthusiastic love. Lenin, of course, was better than others aware of everything alien to us that was born in Pushkin by his class affiliation and his era, but this did not in the least embarrass him and did not obscure for him those great values of language, music, plastic imagery, living feeling and intense thought, which are rich in the works of Pushkin.

Despite the fact that our Marxist literary criticism is still young—and, in particular, Marxists have done very little in the field of Pushkin studies—we can already say that our time has brought considerable elucidation of the human and literary figure of Pushkin. Gradually, superficial voices about Pushkin’s original Hellenism, about his sunny poise, happy, carefree nature, etc., gradually fall silent. it was necessary to make Pushkin a school poet for children and adolescents, an emasculated teacher of the Russian language and an official decoration of the pediment of official Russia.

We now know that the Hellenes themselves were people of great tragedy, mournful consciousness of life, horror before fate.

Moreover, we now see twilight, even painful features in Pushkin, and for us his tearing cry does not seem at all unexpected: “God forbid I go crazy!”

Pushkin's sunshine was already distorted and obscured by life's hardships and government persecution from an early age. By the end of his life, he was literally hunted down. He was afraid of both his own thoughts,

He internally trampled on many things in himself - and precisely that which seemed to him dangerous, akin to “madness”, which would plunge him into a fatal conflict of an “insignificant” personality with the crushing elemental force of the “copper” autocracy. With a noose of debts around his neck, with endless troubles of a literary, Soviet and social nature, with internal dissatisfaction with himself and his work, under the heavy right hand of the autocracy, which, "caressing the poet", scratched his self-esteem and his creative impulses to the blood, Pushkin, stumbling over one of the countless scandals with which his enemies easily littered his path, in impotent rage he rushed against the pack that tormented him and was physically destroyed by it.

In official literary history, it is customary to contrast the bright Pushkin with the gloomy Lermontov. There is nothing more erroneous than such a contrast. When we get to know the physiognomies of both poets more closely, we are struck by the extraordinary affinity even of their natures, not to mention their destinies. We now know that this is due to the extremely similar social position of both poets. Pushkin was also a representative of the middle nobility, who treated with envy and malice towards the empty and swaggering nobility of the largest landowners and the tops of the bureaucracy. He was already surrounded by the very same generation that could only be looked at "sadly". Pushkin also talked about the disease of the century, which suffered and from which his great successor tried powerfully to get rid of. We now know that the very sunshine of Pushkin, which, of course, lived in him as in a richly gifted nature, longing for happiness and capable of being happy, was to a large extent a desire to console himself, to get away from his painful impressions. The thirst to avoid direct conflict with the Nikolaev regime, the thirst to somehow justify oneself in this very conciliatory attitude towards the nightmarish autocracy, the thirst to forget oneself on some more abstract calm images, feelings and thoughts constantly lives in Pushkin, but she, sometimes giving birth, - in some quiet, majestic moments - calm and wise reflections, in general, lies a burden on Pushkin's consciousness and is reflected in almost every of his creative acts, often distorting it. We now understand perfectly well that the imaginary harmonious work of Pushkin is tragic through and through, just like the work of Lermontov, Gogol (whom they also wanted to pass off as a merry fellow), Dostoevsky and others.

To understand Pushkin the writer to the bottom, one can only realize him as a social phenomenon and apply the Marxist method to this realization. Only Marxism is able to reveal the true essence of the fate of the country through the study of the evolution and disintegration of individual classes, and only knowledge of this general picture of the economic and class-social evolution of the country and the reflection of these processes in literature can provide the key to understanding the evolution of literature and Pushkin's place in it, both in general and in literature. , without exaggerating, in every single poem, in almost every single line of his works.

We must delve into the class contradictions of the Pushkin era, into a peculiar combination of economic conditions, understand the balance of class forces of the era and the place in it of Pushkin, who, by the way, was acutely conscious and generous with sociological statements. The spokesman for a certain group of the nobility and its movement into the ranks of the bourgeoisie, Pushkin can only be understood if the social meaning of his works is revealed and the public comprehends the enormous aesthetic pleasure they deliver. It does not at all follow from this that the task of our epoch, of our generation, is purely scientific and socio-analytical in relation to the artistic works of the past. We do not say at all that previous generations had the privilege of admiring roses, and our business is to classify them, dry them and lay them out in herbariums. We need an awareness of Pushkin precisely for the more expedient assimilation of his still living gifts, which can and must become an important component of our further construction, not only literary, but in general all socialist construction, up to the transformation of everyday life. Pushkin can and should be, as a result of the critical assimilation of his work, our contemporary and collaborator. Only such assimilation neutralizes his negative features, does not allow them to spoil his appearance in our eyes and resurrects him for a fruitful life among us.

These are the goals that should be pursued, within the limits of what is possible at the present stage of development of our thought, for the publication of Pushkin's works, provided with Marxist prefaces and rich comments that explain the text so that, on the one hand, it is understandable to a fresh and still inexperienced reader. and was accepted in connection with the phenomena of the era that gave birth to Pushkin himself, in connection, on the other hand, with the tasks of our time, in connection with which Pushkin's immortal genius must henceforth enter.

"Krasnaya Niva" decided to give this edition of Pushkin in the form of 12 issues (6 volumes) as an appendix to its subscribers. We are confident that the readership of our journal will be pleased to accept this decision of the State Publishing House and editorial office and will help us with their instructions - after the appearance of the first issue and even the first detailed prospectus - to carry out this task of ours as best as possible.

We are, of course, aware that the next years or decades will end with the work of understanding Pushkin with a greater maturity of Marxist thought, with a greater number of facts in hand, with a greater number of experienced and irreproachable literary Marxist workers. But, realizing that at the present time it is impossible to fulfill this task with final and ultimate success, we should in no way, of course, have to wait for some happier times, because, in our opinion, to lay the true beginning of such a massive assimilation of Pushkin by contemporary builders socialism is urgently needed.