INTRODUCTION
347
press:
'Long live peace
in
the whole world' and 'Down with the
wannongers'. This is neither classicism nor realism. It is semi–
classical demi-art of a none too socialist demi-realism."
[Non:
The
full
text
of
this important essay
will
shortly be published by Pan–
theon Books.]
What it amounted to was that the Soviet writers were to
model themselves on the nineteenth-century Russian classics
(Gorky himself launched the slogan "Learn from the classics!")
and adopt a kind of composite style based on the language of
Turgenev, Tolstoy and Chekhov (Dostoevsky was less favored
as
time went on). All the modernist movements of the beginning
of the century and the early Soviet period (symbolism, imagism,
futurism---of which Mayakovsky was a product-and the rich
"ornamental" style which Pilnyak and others derived from
An–
drei Bely and Remizov) were declared to have been an aberra–
tion in the development of Russian literature and were hence–
forth denounced as "formalism." Strictly speaking, "formalism"
had been nothing more than the name of a highly interesting
and original method of literary criticism (its protagonists, such
as
Victor Shklovsky and Roman Jakobson. referred to it as "the
fonnal method in literature" and its enemies ..aIled it "formal–
ism")
which had concentrated on the analysis of form in art and
literature. It arose in the early 'twenties among a group of young
critics and linguists who set themselves the task of restoring the
balance in Russian literary criticism which had always been al–
most exclusively concerned with matters of content. In the era of
socialist realism the word "formalism" was misappropriated, like
many other terms, and came to cover a multitude of sins. It
be–
came a blanket term of abuse for the slightest deviation from the
run-of-the-mill "realist" style and was freely applied to anyone,
whatever the nature of his offense, who seemed to the now
ubiquitous watchdogs to be in any way "off-beat."
But the greatest difficulty for the writers was that, in ac–
cordance with the formula laid down by Zhdanov, they were
