Postmodernism appeared in the late 20th century and combined philosophical and cultural trends of the time. There was integration of science, art, religion, and philosophy. Not looking for profound mysteries and issues of life, Postmodernism tends to simplicity and superficial reflection of the world. Therefore, Postmodernism literature is aimed at accepting the world as it is rather than understanding and explaining.
Postmodernism in Russia
Modernism and Avant-gardism, which sought to revive traditions of the Silver Age were forerunners of Postmodernism. Russian Postmodernism in literature declined mythologization of reality, which was characteristic of the earlier literary trends. At the same time, it created its own mythology, finding it the most comprehensible cultural language. Postmodernists writers are engaged in a dialogue with the chaos, which they see as a real model of life. The look for compromise between chaos and order.
Russian Postmodernist Writers
The ideas considered by many Russian Postmodernist writers in their works happen to be strange unstable hybrids of absolutely incompatible concepts. Thus, books by Victor Erofeyev, Andrey Bitov and S. Sokolov present paradoxical compromises between life and death. In writings by Tatyana Tolstaya and Victor Pelevin these are compromises between the imagination and reality, whereas for Victor Erofeyev and Vyacheslav Pyetsukh these are compromises between the rules and absurdity.
Postmodernism in Russian literature consists in combination of opposite concepts: the sublime and the low, pathetics and mockery, the fragments and integrity. Thus, oxymoron becomes its basic principle.
Besides the above mentioned writers, the Russian postmodernists are Sergey Dovlatov, Vladimir Voynovich, Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, Vasily Aksyonov, and Andrey Sinyavsky. The main characteristic features of Postmodernism in their works , include seeing art as the way of organizing the text according to specific rules, trying to convey their world outlook through organized chaos in book pages, inclination to parody and denial of authorities, and combining various literary eras and genres in one text. The ideas proclaimed by Postmodernism in literature, indicate its continuity with Modernism, which called for leaving the civilization and returning to the wildness, thus leading to the highest point of involution – the chaos.
Having taken shape in Russia in the 1980s-90s, Postmodernism in literature incorporated the crash of ideals and aspiration to escape from orderliness. Hence is mosaicity and fragmentariness of consciousness so typical of Postmodernist writings. Every author refracted it in one's own way. Lyudmila Petrushevskaya and Vladimir Orlov combined thirst for naturalistic nakedness in the description of reality and aspiration to break through it into the mystical realms. The world was felt as chaotic in the Post-Soviet era. A postmodernist plot often hinges on the act of creativity, with the writer being the main character.
Russian Postmodernism is non-uniform. It is represented by two trends: Conceptualism and Sots Art.
Conceptualism is based on dethronement and criticism of any ideological theories, ideas and beliefs. The most vivid representatives of Conceptualism in modern Russian literature are the poets Lev Rubenstein, Dmitry Prigov, and Vsevolod Nekrasov.
Sots Art in the Russian literature can be understood as a version of Conceptualism, or Pop Art. All works of Sots Art are based on Socialist Realism: ideas, symbols, mentalities, and ideology of the Soviet era. Representatives of Sots Art are Z. Gareyev, A. Sergeyev, A. Platonova, Victor Sorokin, A. Sergeyev, and others.
Author: Vera Ivanova