Reflection on the Artistic Event in the Russian Literature of the 1940s–1950s

This article analyzes ideas about the architectonics of the artistic event and the creative act as a sequence of moments in the Russian Modernism of the 1940s and 1950s. This period is classified as Late Modernism and is considered a distinct historical and literary stage. It comprises authors whose creative careers had their roots in the Silver Age. The article examines the lyrical, epic, and diary works on the nature of creativity by Boris Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova, and Mikhail Prishvin. These writers shared similar views on the architectonics of the artistic event. They investigated the topic of the artist’s split soul: while one part dwells in empirical everyday life, the other belongs to transcendental harmony. This transcendental position gives the author a perspective that completes the artistic image. Boris Pasternak acquired this understanding of architectonics in the 1910s whereas Anna Akhmatova and Mikhail Prishvin came to it during the period of Late Modernism. The philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin expressed similar views on the nature of the artistic event as early as in the 1920s. Probably, the Silver Age inherited this philosophical idea from Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

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