Russian Literature by Catriona Kelly Read Free Book Online Page A

vital, though obscured, role in the development of Russian literature.
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    6. Double statue of Pushkin and Natalya, unveiled for the bicentenary in 1999, Arbat, Moscow.

Chapter 3
    ‘Tidings of me will go out over all great Rus’
    Pushkin and the Russian literary canon
    He embraced the entire world with his soul, both East and West.
    (Vera Panova, A Writer’s Notes , 1972) The idea that his writings would be his ‘monument’ was not something that Pushkin regarded merely as a soothing fantasy in the midst of unbearable isolation. It was also something that he tried to ensure in a practical way. He was one of the first Russian writers to assemble his scattered publications into a Collected Works , whose content and layout he planned carefully, revising some of his early poems for inclusion. In Russia, such care over the dissemination of one’s poems was decidedly new. Until the late seventeenth century, textual production was dominated by the Orthodox Church, and writers fulfilled much the same function as icon-painters. Many texts (for example, prayers) circulated anonymously, and authors had no control over copying procedures or over the use of their materials in compilations. It was the saintliness or theological expertise of writers that gave their work value, even if rhetorical force played a part in establishing this. Things did not change immediately with the introduction of print in the seventeenth century, given that the new technology was at first used for the production of religious books. Once a secular print culture did come 32
    into being, during the eighteenth century, titles were at first more important than authors: translated texts were regularly published anonymously, or wrongly credited, and plagiarism and book piracy were rife.
    In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, though, a number of changes came about. Book censorship, tightened up successively under Catherine II, Paul I, Alexander I, and Nicholas I, underlined the concept of individual authorship. This was not only because authors were held responsible for what they wrote and anonymity was strongly discouraged (the publication of unsigned journal articles was expressly forbidden in 1848). It was also because, alongside their punitive role, censorship boards were responsible for ‘Tidin enforcing copyright. In the words of an official edict, they were gs
    supposed to ‘prevent publishers from the unauthorized and of
    m
    capricious publication of books by authors with whom those e wi
    publishers have no connection’. At the same time, the growth of ll go
    self-consciousness was fostered by the emergence of the censor as a out o
    reader who was assumed to be both hostile and artistically literate ver
    (several prominent nineteenth-century censors, including Ivan all
    great
    Goncharov, the author of Oblomov , the famous novel about a Ru
    character who can’t get out of bed, were themselves writers). The s’
    need for writers to keep ahead of censors stimulated authors into different forms of allegorical writing. For instance, a tale would be set at the Spanish court, when the Russian one was meant, or references to Hamlet and the rottenness of the state of Denmark would be used to suggest somewhere much closer to home. This use of what was termed ‘Aesopian language’ by writers also encouraged readers (and, of course, censors) to read between the lines of texts, searching for hidden meanings.
    Also in the early nineteenth century, booksellers became aware of the value of authorial ‘brand names’ in the marketplace. They began to enter into contracts according to which the grant to a publisher of 33

    7. Front cover of Evgeny Onegin: Chapter One.
    The front cover of the first chapter of Evgeny Onegin , first published in 1825. Pushkin’s ‘novel in verse’ is widely regarded as his highest achievement; some, such as Vladimir Nabokov, have considered it the greatest novel in Russian literature. The haunt-ing tale of how