Serapion Brothers (Petrograd)

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Serapion Brothers. Left to right: Konstantin Fedin , Michail Slonimski , Nikolai Tichonow , Jelisaveta Polonskaja , Nikolai Nikitin , Michail Soschtschenko , Ilya Gruzdev , Weniamin Kawerin

Serapionsbrüder ( Russian Серапионовы братья) was a literary group founded by ETA Hoffmann in Petrograd in 1921 based on the model of the Serapionbrothers in Berlin .

history

The history of the Serapion Brotherhood begins in 1919, when the House of Arts was opened in Petrograd under the aegis of Maxim Gorky . In the literary studio of the new facility, young authors were given the opportunity to meet for readings and discussions and to attend seminars by experienced writers and poets such as Yevgeny Zamyatin and Nikolai Gumiljow . During the period marked by revolution, civil war and political pressure on artists, this house was one of the centers of free intellectual life in Petrograd. In this environment the circle of young writers slowly formed who called themselves “The Serapion Brothers” with a name borrowed from the German romantic ETA Hoffmann. The group was officially formed in 1921, and on February first of that year the brothers met for the first time. The Serapion brothers were Lew Lunz , Nikolai Nikitin , Mikhail Slonimski , Ilja Gruzdev , Konstantin Fedin , Vsevolod Ivanov , Mikhail Soschtschenko , Weniamin Kawerin , Viktor Shklowski , Nikolai Radishchev , Vladimir Pozner , Nikolai Tichonow and Jelisaweta Polonskaja . Schklowski and Gruzdev were literary critics, Tikhonov, Radishchev and Polonskaya, the only Serapion sister, wrote poetry, the remaining members were prose writers and publicists. The admission of new members was stopped almost simultaneously with the establishment. Many other authors who were close to the Serapions in spirit or as real friends were allowed to participate in the regular meetings and also have their say. The group had no official positions and no statutes, although minutes of the meetings were written. The brothers often met privately, mostly in Slonimsky's small room on Nevsky Prospect, where the authors presented their works and discussed them. Most of the members of the group were still very young and lived from the financial support of Maxim Gorki, who sponsored the group, although the Serapions considered the realistic fiction to be out of date and thus also questioned the work of their patron.

Literature of the Serapion Brothers

The aim of the Serapion brothers was to create their own narrative prose, which they viewed as a rejection of the realism of the 19th century. For them, the focus was on the architecture, the form of narration, which should form a complex optical system. Typical was a semantically shifted narrative language and a strong emphasis on the narrative form with an intricate plot structure and original jumps. This was accompanied by a new formal criticism of prose, which was justified by the formalists in the Society for the Study of Poetic Language ( OPOJAS ). The writers made ample use of the means of humor, the fantastic and the grotesque. The basis of her artistic work was the desire for free expression and a passionate interest in stylistic and formal elements. They demanded the right of the poet to his ingenuity and imagination and devotedly invented a wide variety of new techniques and tricks; they regarded writing as a craft.

Wiktor Schklowski outlined their aesthetic as follows:

“Psychology is lagging behind, analyzes have been abolished, the heroes do not address each other, in many cases the motivation for their actions is deliberately lacking, because against the background of Russian literature overloaded with" motivation ", an action becomes particularly vivid when you do one immediately more follows - the actions are only linked by the dynamics of the narrative. "

The young writers felt very much connected with the revolution. "None of us are against the revolution," emphasized Schklowski. But they did not want to be patronized and instrumentalized by her. Zoshchenko said he was neither a monarchist nor a communist, but a "simple Russian". "We called ourselves Serapion brothers because we oppose coercion and limitations and because we are against one person writing like the other," said Lunz in the so-called manifesto "Why we are Serapion brothers". Every work of art has its own life and does not have to reflect the current social discussion, because an artist is not a seismograph of society, Nikitin emphasized there. Some of the Serapion brothers like Tikhonov and Ivanov and those who were influenced by them like Leonov and Pavlenko were even followers of the revolution. They campaigned for the idea of ​​the revolution personally, served in the Red Army , and wanted to participate in building a classless society. They shared the goals of the Communist Party , but were not party members. Revolution and civil war were often used as themes for stories, novels and dramas. Later some of the Serapion brothers had to admit to themselves that artistic creation that was detached from politics was not possible at all and to a certain extent came to terms with power and its demands on the artists. Nikolai Nikitin, for example, could not withstand the increasing pressure over the years, tried to adapt to the spirit of social realism, but lost his style and finally relegated literary. Weniamin Kawerin handled the situation very differently when the writers were required to deliver heroic, splendid ham. Kawerin fulfilled it without losing his artistic dignity, he wrote the classic of Soviet literature Two Captains .

As Lunz explained, the group's authors were very diverse in their artistic creation and their views on literature and its criticism. Lew Lunz, one of the most talented writers in the group, was unable to realize his creative plans because he died in Hamburg at the age of 23. Only a few short stories and four dramas were published by him. Utopia, satire and fantasy were some of Lunz's favorite means. This is done in a pointed form, for example, in the story Sendeschrift No. 37, in which the head of a state chancellery is transformed into an official document through auto hypnosis, the symbol of bureaucratic operation. Actually, each of the Serapion brothers played their special role: Fedin led the way in the renewal of the novel and continued the realistic tradition, Zoscenko continued the tradition of Zamyatin as a humorist and satirist. Some, such as Lunz and Fedin, oriented themselves towards Western literature with their clear subject matter and exciting plot structure, while others, such as Ivanov and Nikitin, tended more towards the national tradition and more towards the East.

End of the group

After the Serapion brothers were able to publish some works, the group went downhill after just a few years - also due to the circumstances of the time. Not all the brothers came together for an anniversary event in February 1926. The attempt to revive the group in 1929 failed.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Viktor Schklowski: The Serapion Brothers. First published in 1921, see: The awakening of the word. Leipzig 1987, pp. 59-61.
  2. ↑ Viktor Schklowski: The Serapion Brothers. First published in 1921, see: The awakening of the word. Leipzig 1987, p. 61.
  3. ↑ Lev Lunc: Why We Are Serapion Brothers . In: The Serapion Brothers of Petrograd . Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1963, p. 7-12 .
  4. ↑ Lev Lunc: ideology and journalism . In: The Serapion Brothers of Petrograd . Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1963, p. 233-238 .