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VASIL' IYKOV
dismal fiasco, the "theory of lack of conflict."1 To accuse literature of
so-called slander or calumny is so clumsy as to
be
banal; literature has
always had to contend with this sort of attack. On this point I would
again like to cite the authority of Belinsky. The quotation is a long
one, for which I beg your indulgence:
The most crushing accusation with which writers of the rhetorical
school imagine they can finally destroy Gogol consists in saying
that the characters he normally portrays in his works are an insult
to society. . . . This kind of accusation is more than anything else
proof of our social immaturity. In countries which are centuries
ahead of us in their development no one would dream of accusing
a writer of any such fault. No one can say that the English are
not jealous of their national honor; nay, more - no nation
has
carried national egotism to greater lengths than the English. And
yet they love their Hogarth, who depicted nothing but the sins,
debauch, abuses and vulgarity of English society of
his
time. Yet
not one Englishman will say that Hogarth slandered England, that
he did not also see in her much that was humane, noble, beautiful
and sublime. The English realize that talent has the absolute and
sacred right to be biased and that it can be great in its very bias.
On the other hand they are so profoundly conscious of their na–
tional greatness that they have no fear of it being damaged by a
public display of the defects and evils of English society. But whilst
the immaturity of Russian social consciousness is so lamentable, our
society's sensitivity to any slur on its dignity
is
all too keen. • ..
The stronger a man is, the greater his moral stature, the greater
his ability to come to terms with his own failures and weaknesses.
How much more does this apply to nations, whose age is not three
score years and ten but whole centuries. A
weak,
insignificant or
decrepit nation, which is so debilitated that it can progress no
further, loves self-praise and above all dare not contemplate
its
own wounds: it knows that they are mortal, that there
is
no
comfort to be had in facing reality and that self-deception is the
only source of that false consolation to which the weak and the
decrepit are so susceptible. The Chinese and the Persians are very
prone to this; to hear them talk one might imagine that they were
the greatest peoples on earth and that compared to them
all
others
are so many scoundrels and buffoons. . . • This is not the behavior
of a great nation, of a nation full of strength and vigor; instead
7. Theory developed in the late forties by Stalinist literary ideologues .uch
u
the playwright Nikolai Virta. It declared that since virtually
all
defectJ
had been eliminated from Soviet society, there was no room in literature
for conflict between "bad" and "good"; at the most, any conflict should
be between "good" and "better." The works based on this theory were
so feeble that they were repudiated even by the CPSU.
