“Neo-classicism”

Art, don’t you see, means prophecy. Works of art are the embodiments of presentiments; therefore pre-revolutionary art is the real art of the Revolution. In the almanac Shipovnik, which is filled with reactionary ideas, this philosophy is worked out by Muratov, and by Efros, each one in his own way, but their conclusions are the same. It is absolutely unquestionable that the War and the Revolution were prepared in the material conditions and in the consciousness of the classes. It is also unquestionable that this preparation was reflected in different ways in art. But this, at any rate, was pre-revolutionary art, the art of the languishing bourgeois intelligentsia before the Storm. We are talking, however, about the art of the Revolution, which was created by the Revolution and from which it draws its new “presentiments” and which in its turn it now feeds. This art is not behind us, but ahead of us.

The Futurists and the Cubists, who reigned almost unchallenged over the desert-like field of art in the first years of the Revolution, found themselves driven from the positions they first occupied. This was so not only because the Soviet budget was reduced, but because they did not have, and in their very essence could not have had, sufficient resources to solve their vast artistic problems. And now we hear that Classicism is on the way. And what is more, we hear that the art of Classicism is the art of the Revolution. And still more, Classicism is “the child and essence of the Revolution”. (Efros) Of course these are very cheerful notes. The one thing that is strange is, why Classicism should remember its kinship to the Revolution only after four years of reflection? This is a classic caution. But is it so true that the neo-Classicism of Akhmatova, Verkhovsky, Leonid Grossman and Efros, is “the child and essence of the Revolution”? In so far as the “essence” is concerned, this is going too far. But is not neo-Classicism a “child of the Revolution”, in the same sense in which the NEP is? This question may seem somewhat unexpected, and even out of place. And yet it is most appropriate. The NEP has found an echo abroad in the form of the “Changing Landmarks” group, and we are told the good news that the theorists of change accept the “essence” of the Revolution. They want to strengthen and to order its conquests, and their slogan is “revolutionary conservatism”. For us the NEP is a turn of the revolutionary trajectory, which, in its general direction, is going upward; for them, the turn is in the entire direction of the trajectory. We consider that the historic train has just begun to move, and that this is only a brief stop at a station for the purpose of taking on water and getting up steam. They think, on the contrary, that what ought to be preserved is this state of rest after the disorder of movement has finally stopped. The NEP has produced the “Changing Landmarks” group, and it is the NEP that has caused the discovery that neo-Classicism is the “child of the Revolution”. “We are alive; in our arteries, our pulse is whole and strong; its beat is in harmony with the rhythm of the current day, we have lost neither sleep nor appetite, because the past has passed.” . . . This is very well said. Perhaps even a little better than the author himself intended. The children of the Revolution who, as you see, have not lost their appetite because the past has passed! Children with an appetite, one cannot help saying. But the Revolution is not at all so easily satisfied that it will recognize as its own those poets who, in spite of the Revolution, have lost no sleep, and have not run away across the border. Akhmatova has some strong lines on why she did not go away. It is very good that she did not go away. But Akhmatova herself hardly thinks that her songs are of the Revolution, and tile author of the neo-Classic manifesto is in too much of a hurry. Not to lose sleep because of the Revolution is not the same as grasping its “essence”. It is true that Futurism has not mastered the Revolution, but it has an internal striving which, in a certain sense, is parallel to it. The best of the Futurists were on fire, and perhaps are still so. But Neo-Classicism is merely not losing its appetite. Neo-Classicism is very similar to the poetry of the “Changing Landmarks” group, that foster-sister of the NEP.

And this is only natural, after all. If Futurism was attracted towards the chaotic dynamics of the Revolution, tried to express itself in the chaotic dynamics of words, then neo-Classicism expressed the need of peace, of stable forms, and of correct punctuation. In the language of the “Changing Landmarks” group, this may be called “revolutionary conservatism”.