The Icon and the Axe

At the same time, it is only fair to note a less flattering resemblance between the present generation and the "Hamletism" of the old intelligentsia: its confusion and uncertainty of objectives. The younger generation is far surer of what it opposes than of what it accepts, and much of its work is not technically impressive by the increasingly refined standards of literary criticism. Yet the authenticity of aspiration and popularity of the quest cannot be denied. Their art has, as Tertz maintains, "hypotheses instead of a goal"; and the testing ground for such hypotheses lies not in the

hothouse of literary criticism but in the broad arena of life. The response elicited in the lives of the audience-that indispensable second participant in Akimov's unending dialogue of creative culture-is a truer measure of significance than the reviews of critics. Increasingly, new productions in the USSR are animated by lively and often turbulent "exchange of opinion" sessions in which artists discuss with the audience the nature and significance of a play immediately after the final curtain.54

New literary "hypotheses" often seem to draw less inspiration from literature than from other art media. But, whereas the hidden source of inspiration for the new literature of the silver age was music, the controlling medium now tends to be the visual arts. Akimov is a gifted painter; and Voznesensky, who was trained as an architect, has stated:

I do not think that closeness to his literary predecessors is very good for a writer. "Incest" leads to degeneracy. I have got more from Rublev, Joan Miro, and the later Corbusier than from Byron.55

The importance of painting lies not so much in the large numbers and occasional virtuosity of the experimental canvases that are unofficially painted in the USSR, but rather in the fact that visual art tries to do what the most gifted new writers are also trying to accomplish: depict objectively the real world. The Promethean visionaries of the late imperial period sought to leave the material world altogether, and fled into the world of music, the most immaterial of all the arts and the only guide man could hope to find in his quest for a new language of outer space. In the post-Stalin era, however, when the philistine "metal eaters"56 have thrust their wares out into space, the creative imagination has moved back to earth and sought to grasp once more Russian reality. Thus, young Russians turn to the visual arts for guidance, but they instinctively look beyond the conventional realists to the "more real" art of ancient Russia and the modern West. Hence Voznesensky's juxtaposition of Rublev with Miro and Corbusier, and his powerful anti-war poem that begins "I am Goya" and describes his paintings by means of plays on his name.57 This disturbed and often grotesque Spanish prophet of artistic modernism also appears in the small list of those whom Tertz commends as guides toward the new "phantasmagorical art which . . . would best respond to the spirit of our epoch."58

May the unearthly imaginations of Hoffmann and Dostoevsky, of Goya and Chagall, of Maiakovsky (the most socialist realist of all), as well as those of many other realists and non-realists-,may these teach us how to express truth with the aid of the absurd and fantastic!59

Akimov speaks of the influence upon his theatrical conceptions of pictorial images from Russian icons, Daumier, Van Gogh, and the post-war Italian cinema.60 Yutkevich speaks of the ideal Soviet movie of the future as a "synthesis of the style of Watteau and Goya."61

One of the most remarkable of recent Soviet short stories, "Adam and Eve" by Yury Kazakov, tells of a young painter and a girl going to a deserted island. It is a kind of return to Eden in search of artistic truth. Yet the painter is as restless as the Soviet youth he personifies. He sees himself as "a prophet without an idea." In a deserted church, however, he has a kind of vision of rediscovering "the genuine life of the earth, the water, and the people." He climbs the belfry, and looks down from the sky above to "another sky . . . the whole immeasurable mass of surrounding waters luminous with reflected light."62 In the last scene, he departs over those waters amidst the strange, unearthly whiteness of the northern lights.

One is left again with the image of a ship at sea and no fixed destination. But one feels certain that the destination is not to be found on the approved itineraries of the state travel agency. One can almost imagine a middle-aged Communist official rebuking him with the words addressed by a Pravda editorial five years earlier "to all Soviet workers in literature and the arts":

He who tries to reject the method of socialist realism imitates the irresponsible captain who throws the ship's compass overboard on the high seas so that he may guide his ship "freely."63