The unwelcome tradition

Bely, Gogol and metafictional narration

Roger Keys

pp. 92-108

in: Jane Grayson, Faith Wigzell (eds), Nikolay Gogol, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1989

Abstract

The idea that literature should be valued and explained by reference to moral criteria above all has been the principal assumption of most Russian writers and critics over the last hundred and fifty years. "I am a writer," said Gogol, "and the duty of a writer is not to furnish pleasant pursuits for the mind and taste; he will be held accountable if things useful to the soul are not disseminated by his works and if nothing remains after him as a precept for mankind" (VIII, 221).¹ Not dissimilar sentiments were expressed by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his Nobel Lecture of 1970. "Russian literature," he wrote, "has long been familiar with the notions that a writer can do much within his society, and that it is his duty to do so. Let us not violate the right of the artist to express exclusively his own experiences and introspections, disregarding everything that happens in the world beyond … Nevertheless, it is painful to see how, by retiring into his self-made worlds or the spaces of his subjective whims, he can surrender the real world into the hands of men who are mercenary, if not worthless, if not insane."²

Cited authors

Belyj Andrej

Gogol Nikolaj