Dictionary of Russian Literature

William E. Harkins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000386387
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Biografías literarias

This book, first published in 1957, provides essential information on the entire field of Russian literature, as well as a great deal on literary criticism, journalism, philosophy, theatre and related subjects. Russian literary tradition has tended to blur the distinctions between social and political criticism on one hand, and literary criticism on the other, and even, to an extent, the distinction between philosophy and literature. Although intended primarily as a reference work, this book also contains much critical analysis.

P

P. Ya. See Yakubovich, P. F.

Pakhomii Logofet, a Serbian monk who, between 1429-36, came to Russia, where he worked as a professional writer. He was one of the first writers to introduce the new style of the Second South Slavic Influence (see Literature), with its dignified panegyric tone. Many works have been attributed to Pakhomii, including lives of saints and a history of the world (1442). The latter work is noteworthy for its analytic treatment of history by topics rather than by years, as was the prevailing Russian manner. It also stresses the biographical element in history, and the significance of the actions of rulers, especially from a moral point of view. In this we see some echo of Renaissance influence. Sometimes attributed to Pakhomii is the Story of the Princes of Vladimir, a false genealogy of the Muscovite princes (also princes of the city of Vladimir), in which their line is traced back to a certain Prus, a fictitious “brother” of Augustus Caesar. The work thus served to justify the assumption of autocratic power by the Muscovite grand princes, and the concept of a Russian empire.

Palitsyn, Avraamii, author of a popular history of the turbulent “Time of the Troubles” of the early seventeenth century. This work, which was probably completed in 1620, is remarkable for several passages in verse, among the earliest examples of the so-called pre-syllabic verse (see Prosody).

Panfyorov, Fyodor Ivanovich (1896- ), Soviet novelist and playwright. His long novel, Bruski (1928-37), depicts the history of a village from the end of the Civil War through the collectivization of the land under the First Five-year Plan. During the 1930’s the novel was much attacked for its rough language and lack of artistry. Panfyorov’s war novel, The Struggle for Peace (1945-47), and its sequel, In the Land of the Unvanquished (1948), are crude and sensational novels which describe guerrilla warfare and Russian espionage behind the German lines. His most recent novel, Mother Volga (1953), depicts mans struggle against nature in agriculture. Though the author “correctly” recognizes the importance of Party leadership in this struggle, his Communist hero was severely criticized as morally imperfect.

Panova, Vera Fyodorovna (1905- ), Soviet novelist and playwright. Her short novel, Travelling Companions (1946; English translation as “The Train”), was one of the most popular and successful novels about the Second World War. It tells the story of a hospital train, the people who work on it, and how their lives are affected by the war. Panova’s later novel, Kruzhilikha (1947), describes the work of a factory of that name during the war and the transition to peace. Her most recent novel, Seasons of the Year (1953), depicts life in a Soviet industrial town, but, unlike most recent Soviet fiction, is more concerned with human beings than machines. It has been severely criticized for its lack of “Party spirit” (see Partiynost).

Parnassian Poets, a term used to describe a number of poets of the mid-nineteenth century, including FET, APOLLON MAYKOV, SHCHERBINA, MEY and POLONSKI, and, to a limited extent, A. K. TOLSTOY. The Parnassians advocated art for its own sake; thus, as estheticists, they opposed the powerful CIVIC CRITICS of the period, with their predilection for political and social ideas. The Parnassians employed precise, vivid, sensual imagery, often to the detriment of emotional expression. Themes taken from the world of classical antiquity are common in their work. Though the movement paralleled French Parnassianism in many respects, it seems to have been indigenous in its origins, going back to PUSHKIN and the poets of the “Golden Age” of early nineteenth-century Russian poetry.

Partiynost, or “party spirit,” along with IDEYNOST and NARODNOST one of the chief requirements for literature under SOCIALIST REALISM. The expression of “party spirit,” i.e., of identification with the goals and methods of the Communist Party, is a quality demanded from writers by Soviet critics. LENIN is credited with originally stating the necessity for the expression of “party spirit” in literature. The opposite of partiynost in art is “bourgeois decadence.” (See Criticism, Soviet.)

Party Spirit See Partiynost.

Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich (1890- ), a leading poet of the Soviet period. His father was a well-known painter, while his mother was a talented pianist. He studied music for some years, then philosophy at the Universities of Moscow and Marburg. He joined the Cubo-Futurists (see Futurism) in 1912, but was only associated with them briefly, and, except for his interest in obscure words and his occasional use of shocking or vulgar imagery, he has little in common with the Futurists. His first collection, A Twin in the Clouds, was published in 1914. He won wide recognition after the First World War with a collection of lyrics called My Sister Life, written in 1917 but published only in 1922. With the publication of successive collections, he soon acquired the position of the leading younger poet of Russia. His Spektorski (1926) is an attempt at treatment of certain episodes of his own life. As a narrative work, it was somewhat less successful than his lyrics, as were his other narratives, 1905 (1925-26) and Lieutenant Schmidt (1926-27), both attempts to celebrate the revolutionary movement in Russia. Pasternak aims at a personal, lyric verse, and the revolutionary movement is a subject which seems alien to his real interests. His collection The Second Birth (1932) frequently employs the Caucasus and its magnificent landscapes as a setting, and these poems, like others by Pasternak, sometimes recall LERMONTOV’s Caucasian poetry.

Though Pasternak’s poetry is difficult and at times obscure, he has become the favorite poet of Soviet intellectuals, and there is little doubt that he is one of the leading poets of our time. The obscurity of his work, its individualism and concern for personal subjectivity have made much of his work unacceptable to orthodox Soviet critics, who attacked him for “formalism” and “alienation from the masses.” Apparently driven from original creation by the hostile pressure of his critics, Pasternak turned to translation, producing excellent versions of several of Shakespeare’s plays as well as selections from Armenian and Georgian poets. He took advantage of the somewhat more lenient atmosphere of the time of the Second World War to publish two new original collections: On Early Trains (1943) and The Terrestrial Expanse (1945), which show a certain simplification and greater directness by comparison with his earlier work. But in 1946 the critics launched a new attack, and since diat year he has published nothing except translations.

Pasternak is a highly individualistic poet, for whom philosophical themes and the contemplation of reality are favorite subjects, along with the more conventional tiiemes of love and nature. Nature in his poetry appears as new and strange; the poet describes her almost animistically as alive, and re-creates for us something of the elemental wonder of a primitive view of the world. But Pasternak’s “primitivism” is actually part of a sophisticated but deliberately irrational approach to nature, which he depicts in strikingly rich and novel images. He is unusual as a lyric poet whose poetry tends to be prosaic in its great use of synecdoche and metonymic imagery, of part-whole and object-symbol relations. His metaphors and similes are especially remarkable in their freshness, and he is not in the least afraid to use images of objects which are of a technical nature, or are prosaic or even vulgar. Thus, he compares the guilt of a lover to a skin infection, or the color and feel of fresh air to a bundle of wash taken home from a hospital. Images of sound are particularly striking in his poetry, as when he speaks of the “clatter of winter” or the “rumble of grief.”

Pasternak’s prose is an extension of his poetry, with the same prosaic quality and the same unexpectedness of imagery. In 1925 he published his only collection of stories, including a long narrative, The Childhood of Luvers. The story is virtually plotless, full of reminiscences which Pasternak “objectivizes”; a young girl’s reactions to the world about her seem to become part of that very world. Another story is Air Ways (1925), set against the background of the 1917 Revolution, depicting in a fragmentary and quite unsentimental manner a father’s inability to save his illegitimate son, arrested for taking part in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy. But the story as such is less important than its imagery. Safe Conduct (1931) is an autobiographical account of the poet’s youth and early spiritual development.

Pasternak has been compared to a number of modern poets, including Eliot, Hopkins and Rilke. More than they, however, he is a writer whose subject is a new manner of perception, a manner far more important than what is perceived or what is believed. It is the fresh way of perceiving reality which is original in his work. During the 1920’s Pasternak had considerable influence on a number of young Soviet poets, including TIKHONOV, Bagritski (see Dzyubin) and SELVINSKI. But his influence has largely waned with the attacks on his work by Soviet critics.

Paustovski, Konstantin Ceorgievich (1892- ), Soviet novelist and story writer. He published his first story as early as 1911, but did not become a professional writer until 1925. His stories are remarkable for their lyric feeling and treatment of landscape and nature. He often depicts nature as transformed by Soviet construction, as in his short novel, Birth of a Sea (1952), about the Volga-Don Canal. He has also written historical and biographical tales, such as Lieutenant Lermontov (1941), and a story about Pushkin called Our Contemporaries (1949).

Pavlenko, Pyotr Andreyevich (1899-1951), Soviet novelist. He entered literature early in the 1920’s, joining the PEREVAL group. His early tales, such as The Desert (1932) and Journey to Turkmenistan (1932), depict the First Five-year Plan in Central Asia. The Barricades (1932) is a historical novel about the Paris Commune of 1871. In the East (1937) called attention to the Japanese threat and emphasized the need to fortify and develop the Siberian Far East.

After World War II Pavlenko published a novel, Happiness (1947), which, though very weak, brought him high official recognition. Its hero, a wounded colonel, Voropayev, is discharged from the army at the end of the war and settles in the Crimea to recover his shattered health. Here he plays a leading role in the task of war reconstruction. He also serves as an interpreter at the Yalta Conference, and is finally favored by a personal interview with Stalin himself. The Yalta Conference gives the author an opportunity to indulge in many anti-British and anti-American observations. The novel was one of the first examples of post-war anti-Westernism in Soviet literature. It also led in the post-war cult of deification of Stalin. Happiness is typical of recent Soviet fiction not only in its ideology, but also in its sentimental optimism and almost total absence of realistic psychological portrayal.

Pavlov, Nikolay Filippovich (1805-64), a mid-nineteenth century writer of tales, husband of the poetess Karolina Pavlova. His collection, Three Tales (1835), embodied a strong implicit protest against serfdom and the regime of Nicholas I. The most memorable of the tales, The Name Day, tells of the tragic career of a talented musician who had been a serf. Passed by the censor, the Three Tales created a sensation, and the censorship refused to permit further editions to be published. Pavlov’s New Tales (1839) were less successful, and he virtually abandoned literature.

Pavlova, Karolina Karlovna (1807-93), a Russian poetess of German descent. In her youth she translated a number of contemporary Russian poets, including PUSHKIN and BARATYNSKI, into German. The wife of a minor novelist, NIKOLAY PAVLOV, she and her husband conducted a popular literary salon in Moscow. Her poetry, which had little success in her lifetime, consists of melancholy and elegiac reflections and meditations. Technically her work is of high quality, with a great diversity of rhymes and rhythms.

Pecherski, Andrey. See Melnikov, P. I.

Peresvetov, Ivan, a publicist writer who came to the Muscovite court around 1538, during the reign of IVAN THE TERRIBLE. He was active as a writer during the 1540’s, when he produced a number of political tracts and petitions to the tsar. Peresvetov advocated strengthening the power of the tsar at the expense of the nobility, systematizing and enlarging the army and the civil service and making these responsible directly and solely to the tsar. His ideal model is the Turkish state, while he points to the end of the Byzantine Empire as a warning of the anarchy to which a strong nobility may lead. Probably he was led to fear the power of the nobility by his earlier service in the constitutional monarchies of Poland, Bohemia and Hungary, while his conception of an autocratic sovereign may show the influence of Western European ideas. Peresvetov’s writings anticipate the later reforms of Ivan the Terrible, and probably influenced them.

Pereval (“The Pass”), a group of writers formed in 1923, and led by the critic Alexander VORONSKI. PRISHVIN and Klychkov (see Leshenkov) were older writers who joined the organization; among the younger members were Pyotr PAVLENKO, Ivan Katayev, Boris Guber, Andrey Platonov and N. Zarubin. They published in Voronski’s journal, Red Virgin Soil Like Voronski, they opposed the concept of enforced “proletarian” literature (see October). In 1932 the group was dissolved when all literary or ganizations were forcibly merged in a single Union of Soviet Writers.

Pereverzev, V. G. See Criticism, Soviet.

Perovski, Alexey Alexeyevich (1787-1836), an early romantic novelist, who wrote under the pseudonym of Antoni Pogorelski. His stories, published in the collection, The Double, or My Evenings in the Ukraine (1828), are fantastic tales, imitations and even adaptations of the stories of the German writer Hoffmann. His novel, The Convent Girl (1830-33), is a humorous treatment of the life of the Ukrainian gentry.

Perventsev, Arkadi Alexeyevich (1905- ), Soviet novelist. His early novels, such as Kochubey (1937), depict the Civil War. Guard Your Honor in Youth (1948) describes the formation of a young man’s character against the background of Soviet history: the Civil War, collectivization and the Second World War.

Peshkov, Alexey Maximovich (1868-1936), a leading writer of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, who wrote under the pen-name of Maxim Gorki (“bitter,” “unhappy”). He was born at Nizhni Novgorod (since renamed Gorki), the child of an upholsterer. His parents died when he was very young, and he was brought up by his grandparents, of whom he produced unforgettable portraits in his Childhood (1913-14). His grandfather, who owned a dyeing establishment, soon went bankrupt and became mentally deranged. He treated the child cruelly, but the grandmother was kind and sympathetic. At the age of eight Gorki was compelled to earn his own living, and at nine to go out into the world. He travelled over Russia, toiling at painful and hard, if varied work; at different times he was employed as a servant, a scullery boy on a Volga steamer, in a bakery, and at different odd jobs; at times he simply tramped about. He had only a few months of formal schooling, and his attempts to get higher education were unsuccessful. He read voraciously in an effort to educate himself. In Kazan he met radical students, and helped to distribute propaganda for the POPULISTS. Disillusioned with his hard life at this early period, he made an attempt to commit suicide.

During his wanderings Gorki had begun to write, and in 1892 he published his first story, Makar Chudra, in a local paper. He continued to write and to publish in provincial newspapers. In 1895 he was discovered by the writer KOROLENKO, who published his tale Chelkash in Russian Wealth. Gorki was at once a success; overnight he became the most popular writer in Russia, eclipsing even Chekhov. He came to Petersburg, where he joined the Social Democratic (Marxist) Party. He devoted much of his tremendous literary income to the revolutionary cause, and also founded a publishing house, called Znanie (“knowledge”), for realist writers. KUPRIN, BUNIN and ANDREYEV were the most famous of those who were published by Znanie.

Gorki’s radical sympathies soon made him the subject of police repression. In 1901 the Marxist journal Life was suppressed for publishing his Song of the Stormy Petrel, obviously intended by the poet as a portent of the coming revolution. He was arrested, but was soon released on account of developing tuberculosis, and allowed to go to the Crimea. In 1902 he was elected honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, but the government annulled the election. He took an active part in the REVOLUTION of 1905, and was again arrested for participating in street demonstrations and for his printed attacks on the government. World-wide public opinion forced the government to release him (his works had already been widely translated), and he went abroad to collect funds for the revolutionary movement. He came first to the United States, where a great reception had been prepared. But it soon became known that he was not married to the woman travelling with him (under Russian law it was impossible for him to divorce his wife), and public opinion quickly turned against him. He was evicted from his hotel, and Mark Twain and W. D. Howells refused to attend a banquet in his honor. Deeply hurt, Gorki retaliated by publishing a series of stories about New York called The City of the Yellow Devil (1906), a collection which still serves as a source of anti-American clichés in Soviet writing.

Returning to Europe, Gorki settled in Capri. During this period his writing lost a good deal of its freshness and vitality, while his close co-operation with the Bolsheviks cost him much of his popularity with Russian intellectuals.

In 1913, taking advantage of the government’s offer of political amnesty, Gorki returned to Russia. At first he greeted the REVOLUTION of October, 1917, with enthusiasm. But, shocked by the excesses of the Bolsheviks, he now began to act with considerable independence, trying through his prestige to preserve a freer air in literature and to protect and encourage younger writers. During the Civil War he literally saved many writers from starvation, found them work, and helped to publish their writings. His breach with the Bolshevik leaders, LENIN and TROTSKI, became more and more open, and in 1921 he returned to Capri, ostensibly for his health, but actually at Lenin’s request.

In 1928 Gorki returned to the Soviet Union. Confronted with the achievements of the First Five-year Plan, he now announced his enthusiastic accep...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Preface
• A
• B
• C
• D
• E
• F
• G
• H
• I
• J
• K
• L
• M
• N
• O
• P
• R
• S
• T
• U
• V
• W
• Y
• Z