POETRY AND SOCIALIST REALISM
*
N. Bukharin
THE
ACTUAL THEME OE MY SPEECH
is the problems which arise in the
work of poetic creation in the Soviet Union, but before I proceed to it it
would be as well to examine critically a number of general questions of
poetic creation in view of the many instances of unclarity on the point.
This lack of clarity affects our literary criticism in particular. Our literary
criticism plays a great role, but not always a constructive one.
First of all, poetry as such. It is quite clear that one must differentiate
between particular characteristics of the language of poetry and the cor–
responding poetic thought, because thought is closely and indissolubly
bound up with language.
The art of poetry is the fixing of emotional experience in words. As
compared with science, poetry has a "warmer," temperamental, picturesque
and metaphorical basis. Poetic labour and its product poetry is a special
form of social activity and, despite the specific nature of poetic creation,
it is subject to the laws of social development.
As the fixing of emotional experience in words, poetry is the mediator
in the world of feeling. However, these feelings and these experiences
are · the feelings and experiences of historic-social human beings and in
a class society of class members. Poetry is a social product, one of
the functions of concrete, historic society, and it reflects in its own form
the special characteristics of the age and, where it is produced in class
society, of its class.
The objective and active significance of the social function of poetry
consists, speaking generally, in the reproduction of the experience and
education of character, in the reproduction of certain group psychologies.
Generally speaking, the most burning problem is considered to be that
of content and form. This question is one of particular urgency at the
moment, as we are faced once again and in all seriousness with the problem
of the cultural heritage in general and with the problem of mastering the
technique of art in particular.
•This article
by
Bukharin as well as the article
by
Johannes R. Becker following
this are excerpts from speeches made at the recent All-Union Congress of Soviet
Writers held in Moscow.
11
