The literature of the origins
The Cyrillic alphabet came to the Russians towards the end of the 10th century, through Christianization and catechization. Two centuries earlier, the monks Cyril and Methodius had set the rules in order to evangelize the Slavic populations. The language chosen to spread the good word was a Bulgarian dialect understood by the majority of Slavs. This dialect settled and became the learned language of the Orthodox faithful: Slavon, still today the language of the liturgy. But this dialect, which became a written language, was no longer spoken anywhere when it became established in the Rus'. Used for the diffusion of the holy books, it is quickly influenced by the local oral language, giving rise to Old Russian. Alongside scholarly literature, popular culture developed a rich and varied folklore: tales, songs, proverbs and satires were rediscovered in the 18th century. In the north, bylines, long rhythmic melodies, were dedicated to the legendary heroes of Kiev or Novgorod's past. The medieval Rus' knows some original works, including the famous Chronicle of the past times attributed to the monk Nestor and retracing the history of the Rus'. The most remarkable work of this period is certainly the Tale of Igor's Campaign. The evolution of the language, the rise of the Christian national ideology and the increasing secularization of the society can be observed in the literature of the 14th to 17th centuries. But its literary value is far below that of the oral culture. This gigantic corpus will have practically no influence on the genesis of modern literature, whose genres are borrowed from the Western world via French classicism. A gap is already emerging between Europeanized scholarly culture and popular culture, between the ruling elite and the people.
Under Pushkin
Born in 1799 in Moscow into an old noble family, Alexander Sergueyevitch Pushkin, a future member of the Russian elite, attended the Tsarskoye Selo high school, where progressive ideas reigned at the time. He composed satirical epigrams about his contemporaries and was exiled between 1820 and 1826. When he returned, Nicholas I kept a close watch on him and proclaimed himself the poet's critic and official censor. This did not prevent him from writing The Little House in Kolomna, a satirical tale. In 1831, he marries a frivolous and frivolous young woman, whose social activities monopolise the poet, and who will bring him an early death. Balls and feasts soon disgust him. He takes refuge in writing and composes The Bronze Knight, History of Pugachev's Revolt and The Captain's Daughter. He died in Saint Petersburg in 1837 in a duel with one of the most famous Frenchmen in Russia: Georges d'Anthès. But it should not be forgotten that the effervescence of the 18th century had prepared the arrival of the great genius. Lomonossov's linguistic work had indeed enabled the modern Russian language to establish its rules. The omniscient founder of Moscow University introduced into Russia classical literature in accordance with Boileau's prescriptions. After the French Revolution, writers turned to English or German references. Walter Scott, Byron, Goethe, Schiller or Hoffmann inspired Karamzine, Pushkin's protector, who occasionally sacrificed to romantic fashion. In addition to fixing the modern language, Pushkin inaugurates a great tradition: in the face of the almighty and authoritarian Tsar, it is the writer who assumes the prophetic function and enlightens the people.
From romanticism to realism
The 19th century, decidedly fertile, also saw the birth of Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1841), whose dark and pessimistic poetry is divided into two corpuses: historical poems and poems exalting the courage and freedom of the Caucasian mountaineers. It was he who introduced the theme of the Caucasus into Russian literature. His best-known novel is A Hero of Our Time, published in 1840. It is the first Russian psychological novel and the first use of interior monologue. Romantic, he paved the way for the great prose writers of the second half of the 19th century with his realistic portraits. The name of Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) remains linked to realism and the natural school even if it is definitely unclassifiable. He portrays life in the Ukrainian countryside in Dikanka and Mirgorod ' s Vigils at the Farm, which enchant Pushkin. Les Nouvelles de Saint-Pétersbourg, which includes Le Portrait, La Perspective Nevski, Le Journal d'un fou, Le Nez and Le Manteau, deals with a world that is both fantastic (one character wakes up without his nose, another thinks he is the King of Spain) and social(Le Manteau is that of an obscure civil servant earning a miserable wage). Despite these masterpieces of narrative, Gogol owes his fame to his play Revizor and his novel Les Âmes mortes, published in 1842. A dark painting of Russia at the time, this story is one of the great novels of Russian literature and makes its author the standard-bearer, unbeknownst to him, of critical realism.
The giants of realism
ThePossessed, Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, The Player, The Idiot, are works by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) who began writing his great works at the age of 44. It represents both simple beings and complex feelings. The other giant of realism is the no less famous Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), whose works include the inescapable War and Peace, Anna Karenina and The Death of Ivan Ilyich. The era of the great novels gave way to more succinct genres. Vsevolod Garchin (1855-1888) was the great short story writer of the 1880s, while Nicolai Leskov (1831-1895) gave masterful pictures of the life of the people(The Bride). But the undisputed master of the Russian short story is Anton Chekhov (1860-1904).
The modern period
While French readers appreciate Chekhov's theatre(Oncle Vania, La Mouette, Les Trois Sœurs, La Cerisaie...), they are generally less familiar with his short stories, which are a model of the genre: conciseness, finesse of detail and density(La Dame au petit chien, La Steppe, Une histoire triste, La Salle numéro 6). His language of great clarity often makes him the first writer to be read in the text by students in Russian. He knew how to make provincial life and the upheavals of pre-revolutionary Russian society intelligible beyond the borders of the Empire. While Anton Chekhov died before the 1905 Revolution, Maxim Gorky (1868-1936) built a literary bridge between Tsarist Russia and the USSR. He was one of the most widely read authors of the time of the USSR. Proletarian, socialist and rebellious, he is the author of Le Chant du pétrel, an allegory on the eminence of the revolution, as is his play Les Bas-fonds. After 1917, he was quick to denounce the atrocities committed by the new government before later launching socialist realism and unconditionally supporting the Stalinist regime. Literature at the end of the 19th century, heralding a social cataclysm or a prophetess of a brighter tomorrow, was, like Europe, familiar with its literary movements in "-ism". Russian symbolism is placed under the sign of decadence and mysticism. Dimitri Merejkovski (1865-1941), the father of this movement, tirelessly fulminated against realism, which was considered trivial and utilitarian. The 1905 Revolution gave a new air to intellectual life. The symbolists Andreï Biély (1880-1934), author of Pétersbourg, and the poet Alexandre Blok (1880-1921) remain less removed from the realities of this world. Acmeism, which denies symbolism and wishes to rediscover the value of the everyday and the real, is a forgotten word today, but one of the greatest poetesses of the 20th century, Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966), is part of it. Futurism also has its emulators in Russia, led by the singular Velimir Khlebnikov. His work is the quest for a primitive language that would be at the origin of all the others. The Silver Age (the period between 1905 and 1917) is the age of an avant-garde whose vitality and experiences were largely wiped out by the revolution.
Literature, revolution and Stalinism
The majority of the writers who were calling for change finally remains perplexed and would have preferred to stick to democratic reformism. The intelligentsia will be able to verify whether or not its ideals are a vast illusion. Serge Essenine (1895-1925) is a poet marked by popular poetry, a peasant poet convinced that peasantry would hold a special place in the society of the future. He gives the revolution a religious interpretation and is surprised by the lack of enthusiasm of Russian peasants. Conversely, the futurist Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930), author of The Cloud in Pants, spontaneously put his enthusiasm at the service of the Bolsheviks. A proponent of a social and utilitarian literature at the service of the masses, Mayakovsky dislocated language and prosody. In the 1920s, while internal struggles monopolize the party, intellectual life is intense. The foundations of Russian formalism were laid. Literary groups such as the Forge, the LEV or the RAPP will not survive Stalin's takeover of Soviet letters. Mikhail Bulgakov miraculously slips through the net. His novel The Master and Margarita, which transposes the myth of Faust to the Moscow of the 1920s, is a must-read. A satire of Soviet life, this text is also an ode to individualism, which will eventually take over state totalitarianism. The 1930s are, from the point of view of official production, of barely imaginable poverty. Only a few names emerge, including that of Mikhail Cholokhov, Nobel Prize winner in 1965, for his Peaceful Gift. Books become instruments of propaganda where brave peasant women and brave soldiers succeed in their humble lives through hard work and obedience.
Contemporary literature
This reality of the present time also calls for the picaresque novel with, for example, Alexei Slapovski's It's not me. In contrast to this sometimes violent realism, some writers prefer to opt for a certain conceptualism, in the sense that they start from an idea, from the image we have of reality, to build their stories. The best known of these writers making fun of reality in this way is Victor Pelevine(The Yellow Arrow, The Life of Insects, Omon Ra). The sulphurous Vladimir Sorokin wrote The Tail, snippets of dialogue in a gigantic queue or The Day of an Oprichnik, a journey through time in a Russia of 2050 that is probably not far from what a Putin dreams of. In The Breach, Vladimir Makanin describes a contemporary society that is completely dilapidated, where intellectuals live underground and the totalitarian world in the open air. Tatiana Tolstaya also uses fantasy in Slynx: human beings became half-man half-animal after Chernobyl. Finally, popular literature of excellent quality is flooding Russian and foreign bookshops. The detective genre reaches new heights with Alexandra Marinina, who draws her readers into the various circles of present-day Russian society, and with the dandy Erast Fandorin, a character in Boris Akunin's historical-police novels that evoke nineteenth-century Russia.
