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Ivan Goncharov on Art, Literature, and the Novel
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
Extract
Scattered through Goncharov's correspondence, memoirs, several critical essays, and even his novels are many statements about the nature and purposes of art. They reflect the prejudices as well as the special insights of the practicing artist. Little interested in systematic aesthetic philosophy, Goncharov wrote about art sporadically, sometimes to defend his own work, often in the heat of current controversy. His writings on art were not intended to contribute to a comprehensive theory. Nor were they designed as a program. Goncharov did not formulate an aesthetic position and then seek to demonstrate its validity in artistic compositions. On the contrary, many of his opinions derive from a later period, when he was already an established novelist. Though they remain constant enough to permit us to extract a consistent viewpoint, Goncharov's aesthetics seem to have more bearing on some of his works than on others. Nevertheless, they provide an invaluable (and little studied) guide to the mind of the artist.
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References
1. Belinsky's famous phrase reads, “The poet thinks in images….” Belinsky, V. G., Sobranie sochinenii v trekh tomakh, ed. Golovenchenko, F. M. (Moscow, 1948), 1 : 464.Google Scholar
2. Goncharov, I. A., Sobranie sochinenii, 8 vols. (Moscow, 1952-55), 8 : 69, 79.Google Scholar All references to Goncharov's works (unless otherwise indicated) are to this edition, cited simply by volume and page numbers after quotations.
3. Ibid., p. 70. Goncharov is referring to Belinsky's characterization of him in the essay “Vzgliad na russkuiu literaturu 1847 goda“ : “Mr. Goncharov draws his figures, characters, scenes before all in order to satisfy his need and enjoy his ability to portray.” Belinsky, Sobranie sochinenii, 3 : 830.
4. Goncharov, Sobr. soch., 8 : 79, 107. “Neobyknovennaia istoria, ” Neizdannaia rukopis' I. A. Goncharova, Sbornik rossiskoi publichnoi biblioteki, vol. 2, no. 1 : Materialy i issledovaniia (Petrograd, 1924), p. 85. Goncharov, I. A., Literatumo-kriticheskie stat'i i pis'ma, ed. Rybasov, A. P. (Leningrad, 1938), p. 315.Google Scholar
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6. A definition of nineteenth-century realism proposed by Wellek, René in Concepts of Criticism, ed. Nichols, Stephen G. Jr., (New Haven and London, 1963), pp. 240–41.Google Scholar
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8. Literatumo-kriticheskie stat'i, p. 310.
9. Abrams, M. H., The Mirror and the Lamp : Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York, 1953), pp. 47–68, 187.Google Scholar Abrams credits Schelling with making the unconscious “an ineluctable part of the psychology of art” (p. 210). For Plato (or Socrates) on the poet as “inspired and possessed, ” see Ion 533-34.
10. Abrams (pp. 156-225) presents an extensive survey of organic theories.
11. Sobr. soch., 8 : 113. Golos minuvshago, 1913, no. 12, p. 245. Sobr. soch., 8 : 112. Also, the distinction between “composition” and “creation” recalls August W. Schlegel's famous antithesis of mechanical and organic art. See August Wilhelm von Schlegel's Sämmtliche Werke, ed. Eduard Böcking, 12 vols. (Leipzig, 1846-47), vols. 5-6 : Vorlesungen über dramatische Kunst und Literatur, 6 : 157.
12. Boris Raisky in The Precipice (Obryv) employs the same phrase (une mer á boire) in speaking of the novel (5 : 43).
13. Wellek, in Concepts of Criticism, pp. 242-46, gives a brief history of the concept of “type” from its romantic “sense of a great universal figure of mythical proportion“— what we might call today “archetypal pattern“—to its usage by the realists to denote a socially representative (or ideal) character—that is, “social type.” Goncharov, though he never specified exactly what he meant by “type, ” employed the term to describe a great literary character (Don Quixote, Lear, Hamlet, Don Juan, Tartuffe) who is able to give birth to “entire generations of related semblances in the creation of later talents …” (8 : 104-5)—a view closer to the romantic usage.
14. Sbornik, pp. 149-51.
15. The anthology was entitled simply A Collection (Skladchina) and was published in St. Petersburg in 1874. The Dostoevsky contribution was “Small Sketches“ (“Malen'kie kartinki“).
16. Prutskov, , Masterstvo Goncharova-romanista (Moscow, 1962), p. 221.Google Scholar
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18. The comparison of Goncharov with the Flemish genre painters originated with Druzhinin and is almost universal in Russian criticism. See Druzhinin, A. V., “Oblomov, roman I. A. Goncharova,” I. A. Goncharov v russkoi kritike : Sbornik statei (Moscow, 1958), p. 168.Google Scholar The review appeared originally in Biblioteka dlia chteniia, 158, no. 12 (1859) : 1-25. The “plotless” character of Oblomov, another commonplace of Goncharov criticism employed to describe the paucity of action and drama in the novel, was implicit in Dobroliubov's famous essay, “Chto takoe oblomovshchina, ” though he did not use the term : “No external events, no obstacles …, no extraneous circumstances intrude into the novel.” Isbrannye sochineniia, ed. A. Lavretsky (Moscow and Leningrad, 1947), p. 77. See also Dobroliubov's description of the static quality of Oblomov, which reads as though the critic knew the novelist's views concerning the kind of life suitable for representation in art, which of course he had no way of knowing : “He [Goncharov] reflects every phenomenon of life like a magic mirror; at any given moment, and in obedience to his will, they halt, congeal, and are molded into rigid immobile forms. He can, it seems, halt life itself, fix its most elusive moment forever, and place it before us so that we may eternally gaze upon it for our instruction or enjoyment” (ibid., p. 78). Dobroliubov's essay'first appeared in the Sovremennik, 1859, no. 5, pp. 307-43. The static quality of much of Goncharov's fiction can be traced to the influence of the “natural school, ” which, in Likhachev's description, “attempted to ‘arrest’ fictional time and create 'daguerreotypes’ … by means of ‘physiological sketches.'” D. S., Likhachev, “Time in Russian Folklore,” International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics, 5 (1962) : 79.Google Scholar
19. See Angus, Fletcher, Allegory : The Theory of a Symbolic Mode (Ithaca, 1964).Google Scholar Fletcher argues that “caricature … is allegorical in essence, since it strives for the simplification of character in terms of single predominant traits” (pp. 33-34); he also distinguishes “realism of character [which] is related to freedom of choice in action” and which shows people “growing” or at least communicates “the power to change radically“ from the hero who “is intended iconographically; in that case he obeys a strict causal necessity” (pp. 66-67).
20. I omitted an illustration from The Precipice because the problem there, though analogous, is too complicated to describe in a brief summary.
21. Sobr. soch., 8 : 162, 110. Literaturno-kriticheskie stat'i, p. 329. Sobr. soch., 8 : 162, 164, 426.
22. Sbornik, p. 157. Literaturno-kriticheskie stat'i, p. 327.
23. Literaturno-kriticheskie stat'i, p. 313.
24. Sobr. soch., 8 : 110. Literaturno-kriticheskie stat'i, p. 308. Sobr. soch., 8 : 107, 211.
25. Literaturno-kriticheskie stat'i, p. 348.
26. A. G. Tseitlin identifies Winckelmann and the Maikovs as sources in “Goncharovkritik, ” in Istoriia russkoi kritiki, ed. B. P. Gorodetsky, 3 vols. (Moscow and Leningrad, 1958-64), 2 : 290. For a description of the Maikov family and Goncharov's relation with its members, see Liatsky, E. A., Roman i zhisn'' : Razvitie tvorcheskoi lichnosti I. A. Goncharova (Prague, 1925), pp. 109 ff.Google Scholar Rybasov, A. P. gives Nadezhdin as an influence in I. A. Goncharov (Moscow, 1962), p. 21.Google Scholar
27. The quotation is from Lavretsky, A, “Literaturno-esteticheskie idei Goncharova,” Literaturnyi kritik, 1940, no. 5-6, p. 34.Google Scholar The thesis is almost universal in Soviet scholarship. For a more modest assessment of Belinsky's possible influence, one must go back to Soviet scholarship of the twenties. See Evgeniev-Maksimov, V. E., I. A. Goncharov : Zhisn', lichnost', tvorchestvo (Moscow, 1925), p. 51–55.Google Scholar
28. Tseitlin, A. G., I. A. Goncharov (Moscow, 1950), p. 63.Google Scholar
29. Wellek, René, A History of Modern Criticism, 4 vols. (New Haven and London, 1955-65), 3 : 263.Google Scholar
30. Belinsky, Sobranie sochinenii, 1 : 127-29, 2 : 460, 1 : 560-61, 16, 3 : 802, and 1 : 643. Belinsky of course did not perceive a contradiction in his theory of the unconscious but, following the romantics, thrived on the paradox whereby art could be “purposeless with purpose, unconsciousness with knowledge” (1 : 128), since the artist is the unwitting bearer of “an idea.” Belinsky's views on the nature of art underwent changes of emphasis which cannot be discussed here; it is merely my purpose to point out that Goncharov's “romantic” views were in complete agreement with opinions expressed by the critic at various stages of his career.
31. Wellek, History of Modern Criticism, 3 : 245.
32. Literaturno-kriticheskie stat'i, p. 337.
33. For details of the novel's history, see Alekseev, A. D., Letopis' shisni i tvorchestva I. A. Goncharova (Moscow and Leningrad, 1960).Google Scholar