POETRY AND SOCIALIST REALISM
15
possesses. In our country a rhymed slogan is very often taken as poetry.
One can appeal to Mayakovski here, but the stamp of time has set its
mark upon him also, for our life has become far more complicated and we
must advance with it. Culture, culture and again culture! It is high
time to make an end of the Bohemianism and slothfulness in our midst.
It is time to remember that really great masters of their art, even men like
our own genius, Puschkin, "light-hearted and careless,' were hard work·
ers and knew much, that they stood at the pinnacle of contemporary culture.
It would be foolish to demand that all poets should be academic philosophers
and critics. It is not by accident that one man becomes a philosopher and
another a poet. However, this does not mean that we need abandon our
demand for an advance along the whole line of the general culture of our
poets and of their poetic culture. We must not remain stationary at our
present level. Those who are anxious to create in fact
"a Magnitostroi of
literature,"
those who are equipped with a comprehending attitude towards
art, must do everything possible to make themselves the possessors of all
the treasures of world culture.
