Friday, April 13, 2012

Nineteen is definitely not twenty

In the first part of the course I got more and more used to the romantic and maybe a bit exaggerated style of the 19th century authors. The protagonists were usually trying to prove their heroism and had romantic concepts about how they could escape mediocrity. Some of the novels we read had happy( The Captain's daughter) or at least reasonable(Fathers and Sons) endings, while others were rather tragic(Anna Karenina). All in all, after reading the first few novels, the ending of Anna Karenina could be foreseen and the element of surprise was going away for me. I nevertheless enjoyed reading them and picking up the hints about the future of Russia and its literature in the 20th century.
However, I was still blown away by We. I did not expect such an amazing change even if the book was classified as Sci-Fi. As we read Envy and Master and Margarita I was even more surprised by the change in style, the narrative and even in symbolism. While the 19th century authors, especially Tolstoy, seemed to mostly point out to obvious ideas in his book and make us think in a certain way, the 20th century authors are more open-ended and more descriptive.
I think one of the most interesting aspects of writing in the new century is how love, or rather how sexual interactions are described. From the "..." scenes in Anna Karenina, we went to lowering the curtains and the pink slips in We, then to sharing the same woman in Envy and most recently we witnessed the love affair between the Master and Margarita.  Also, the accurate descriptions of envy in Olesha's novel felt new and refreshing compared to the old century depictions as well.
What is the most surprising aspect of the transition from the 19th century to the 20th for you? What is your favorite novel of these three 19th century ones that we have read until now? Do you think they are linked together by any other stylistic or textual element except for the references to the Soviet rule? And lastly, which one do you like best: 19th or 20th century?

7 comments:

  1. To me, the style change may not have been as unexpected as you suggest, Iulia. If we recall that We was written in 1921, a short few years following the Revolution, the questions on my mind are: (1) was there enough time to become romantic in these turbulent times?, and (2) could one write very bluntly and openly about this new system and feel safe at the same time? My answer to these two questions is no. As far as comparing the three novels of the 20th century (I believe you wrote 19th century by accident), that is difficult to do. I like The Master and Margarita more than the other two novels because of its symbolism and complexity. However, Bulgakov completed his novel almost 20 years after Zamiatin completed We. Hence he had more time to observe, experience, and "digest" the new system which became increasingly violent in 1930s. Thus I think Bulgakov's symbolism is more powerful and telling because his writing benefitted from this additional 20-year insight.

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  2. I did feel that We was completely different and an unexpected changed from the 19th century - based on the novels that we have read. I'm curios about the transition though. The last 19th century novel we read, Anna Karenina, was published in the 1870s while We was published in 1921. Thus, 50 years has passed and I'm wondering what went on in literature during those years.

    Also to answer your last question, I prefer the 19th century.

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  3. I think the preponderance of unhappy endings is what has struck me most so far about the 20th century novels we've read. Of course, I haven't finished The Master and Margarita yet. But We ends with D-503 getting brainwashed. He's more content, but all of the work he has gone through developing a soul throughout the novel is for nothing -- he just gets crushed by the One State. And Envy ends with a sad, hopeless state of Hedonism for its characters who represent the end of the previous era. I see in these endings more focus on the consequences of the system as a whole, rather than individual characters or families like we saw in the 19th century.

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  4. In response to Addie's comment, at least part of that 50 year period was spent during the revolution where writing was heavily censored. Even though books like We and Master and Margarita were *published* after the revolution, I would imagine that much of the thinking and writing of these books went on during the revolution.

    I think some of the massive shift in literary style can be attributed to authors distancing themselves from other propagandic works of the early 20th century. For example, in my tutorial, we read a novel called Time, Forward!. I would say that the writing style was much more similar to that of the 19th century novels than of the 20th century works that we have read. Perhaps some of the change was less about distancing themselves from the previous century and more about distance from the current accepted "norm"?

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  6. I agree, Iulia, We came as a huge surprise. Other than love, the way the body is described is something that has shifted dramatically between the novels we have read. In Crime and Punishment bodily descriptions are really graphic. Any scene where Raskolnikov walks outside is filled with gross imagery of his physical health and expressive discomfort. Similarly in Anna Karenina, scenes that involve a sick person are filled with explicit detail. As we talked about in class, the characters in We each have a consistent body part or feature that is mentioned but past that, it is hard to even visualize their appearance.

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  7. I guess just to answer the question at the end of the parent post: I thought that, beyond any difference in narrative style or other literary mechanics, the most striking difference between 19th and 20th century literature was about content. The authors working in the twentieth century were concerned with fundamentally different phenomena and ideas than those of the nineteenth. Where authors before the turn of the 20th century wanted to engage romantic ideas like love and tragedy, more contemporary authors are FAR more political. The individual, rather than becoming the focus of the novel, becomes a device through which an author may engage the political concern du jour.

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