The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-12-03
Russian Revolution in Literature and Art

! Later, men who had passed through
the fire and thunder of the heroic
days had respite to frame in concrete
images the torrent of experience
which they had undergone. They had
not merely shouldered gun like
mercenaries: they had taken part in
the building of a new world; and the
experience to which they had to give
expression was in consequence eXcep-
tionally rich. These writers had not
self-consciously to "create an atmos-
phere" like the bourgeois litera-
teur: the deep emotional imprint of
that experience, compelling express
sion, forged form and style for it
self from its own inner rhythm.
Moreover, these experiences were So
cial experiences, in which the individu-
al had been subordinated to the mass,
and individual conflicts and emotions
had been absorbed and merged in
mass struggles and emotions; and the
new art which resulted was, conse-
quently, both more complex and pow
erful and of more universal mass APP
peal. Of works of this kind we have
only few in English. There is
Libedinsky's "a Week., the tale of
a week of Soviet rule and counter
revolutionary rising in remote viii
lage, possessing all the quiet beauty
of the classic Russian work, combined
with a simplicity of form and new
vigour of atmosphere" which serves
to drag one into the sweep of a great
movement, transcending individuals
and temporal events, carrying one
forward with it beyond the final page
OF the book into a new future. There
are also the sketches included in the
collection, Flying Osip," telling of
incidents of the revolution. which
seem to have the burr and beat of
machinery about them, while others
echo the hum of hurried voices ming
led with the click of a hundred type
writers energy, creation organise
ton. There is the cold horror of the
Photographic" method of Semenov's
Hunger; the feeling of clumsy, pri-
mltlve forces being slowly shaped
and moulded in Zozulya's ga Mere
Trifle"; the charm and freshness of
liberated youth in Seifulina's Claw
breakers. We should soon have also
in England Gladkov's Cement. !"
which epitomises the giant creative
forces of the revolution, building out
OF the ruins of civil war a new
Russia.
Meanwhile, Russia's old "intelli-
gentsia," with it's writer's and artists.
divided and went different WAYS.
Some emigrated to Paris and Berlin
or Prague. Others stayed in Russia.
but shrank into themselves awav
from the new forces which thew all
norred and could not understand.
Some of them, on the other hand. like
Count Alexei Tolstoy, Maxim Gorki,*
and Alexander Biloxi, were willing to
accept the new order, and tried to
understand it and interpret it in their
art. The two former groups soon
tended to become barren, for the rea-
son that they had lost their social
roots: great art can seldom gain in
splration for long from contemplation
OF ones own shadow or admiration
OF ones own reflection. These ner-
sons turned their attention inwards
sought to escape from reality bv in.
rroversion, and become theoretically
iitra-lndlvidualist and mystical.
Many of the third group, however.
While retaining the old forms and Of
en- casting their work in an individu-
alist mould, managed to give a very
interesting Interpretation of the new
torces and the new ideas. Because of
their previous training, they were able
to reach higher perfection in form
than newer writers among the work
ers, and their energies were less alb
sorbed in political and economic
tasks. AS Trotslly says in his Litter
Azure and Revolution":-
1T is untrue that revolutionary art
can be created only by workers.
1t is not surprising that the contem-
plative intelligentsia is able to give
and does give, better artistic repro
duction of the Revolution than the
Gorki's latest book "Decadence
recently published in England by
Cassell (7-6), is interesting as a pic
ture of the rise and decline of the
Russian bourgeoisie over three gen.
erations.