Abstract：It is insufficient to account for the sudden rise of Russian literature in modern times within the framework of national literature and merely from such perspectives as political changes in the Russian Empire and national characteristics. Given the relative deficiency of their national literary tradition, Russian writers engage in a profound dialogue with the “European World-System”. On the one hand, they obtain more complex cultural components and broader cultural horizons, and on the other hand, by constantly distancing themselves from the traditional “center”, they reveal the discontinuities and imbalances brought about by the expansion of modernity. The literary tendency represented by their works has been hailed as a new “literary present” by Europe in the crisis of its civilization. The profusion of borrowed literary capital in Europe also boosts the spread of 19th-century Russian literature in “peripheral” areas, ultimately contributing to its canonization. Such a holistic and dynamic examination of the rise of Russian literature can offer unique insights for “the reconstruction of world literature” amid globalization and anti-Western-centrism.
The process of European integration since the 18th century has allowed the educated strata in Russia to take in European resources at a faster pace and on a larger scale. The integration of civilizations proves too intense to sustain the dichotomy between “the indigenous” and “the foreign”. Beyond imparting concrete literary knowledge, European literature and culture, more significantly, influence the shaping of deep cognitive and imaginative paradigms among Russians. Of particular importance can be the successful implantation of Romanticism into the Orthodox Church tradition, which fosters in Russia a serious outlook on the social responsibility of art, thereupon giving rise to the emergence of “Literature-centrism”.
But the process of European integration has also increasingly been called into question. The motif of “Russia and the West” turns into a typical thread running through modern Russian literature. The literary elements, be it the classic image of “the superfluous man” or the in-depth psychological portrayal of characters, all reflect the violent clash between divergent lifestyles and value systems in the wake of the overwhelming expansion of Western civilization. Meanwhile, Russian writers strive to transform the pressure emanating from the “center” into creative motivation. By consciously appropriating and challenging the Western “subtext” in literary works, Russian literature strikes a balance between being recognizable (“the chance of being perceived”) and being differentiable (“the value of being perceived”).
Such assertion of subjectivity in Russian literature has also laid the groundwork for its tremendous success in the European market in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Faced with the severe crisis of civilization at that time, Europe was in dire need of heterogeneous resources to break away from its established traditions. A multitude of modernist writers draw inspirations from 19th-century Russian novels to exhibit the modern existential predicaments, vividly presenting the multiplicity and multisource of “modernity”. The proliferation of translations into Western languages, coupled with the considerable reputation bestowed by Europe, has swiftly sparked a wave of enthusiastic reception of Russian literature in other areas. While the recipients in the United States and China developed divergent interpretations of these works on both aesthetic and political levels, they all discern in the rise of Russian literature a possibility for the “periphery” to penetrate and ultimately reshape the “center”.
龙瑜宬. “文学中的世界”与“世界中的文学”：俄罗斯文学崛起的再思考[J]. 浙江大学学报(人文社会科学版), 0, (): 1-.
Long Yucheng. “The World in Literature” and “Literature in the World”: Reflections on the Rise of Russian Literature. JOURNAL OF ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY, 0, (): 1-.
