Editors
Dmitri N. Shalin
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2012
First page number:
1
Last page number:
32
Abstract
Culture sets the parameters of our reality, defines its boundaries, gives each of us a system of values and reference points and, most important, provides our subconscious with the materials necessary for an awareness of chaos and the universe, space and time, cause and effect. Beginning my essay with these broadest categories, I will attempt to sketch the coordinates of that landscape in which the stormy drama of post-Soviet literature is played out. This will be followed by an analysis of the literary situation in the period directly preceding our own. Coming next will be some brief sketches of nine prose-writers: Andrei Siniavsky, Andrei Bitov, Vladimir Makanin, Venedikt Erofeev, Sergei Dovlatov, Sasha Sokolov, Tatiana Tolstaya, Vladimir Sorokin, and Viktor Pelevin. The poetics of each of these points out, in my view, the liveliest and most promising directions in contemporary literature. I will explore in greater detail those works which have the potential to become a certain kind of "bud" in a new and diverse post-Soviet literature. This survey will conclude with a summary characterization of the contemporary period in Russian literature.
Keywords
Culture; Russia (Federation); Russian literature – History and criticism
Disciplines
Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures | Slavic Languages and Societies
Language
English
Repository Citation
Genis, A.
(2012).
Colonizing Chaos: Russian Literature at the End of the Twentieth Century. In Dmitri N. Shalin,
1-32.
Available at:
https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/russian_culture/17
Included in
Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures Commons, Slavic Languages and Societies Commons