Serapion Brothers
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The Serapion Brothers
The group eventually split: some of them moved to Moscow and became official Soviet writers, while others, like Zoshchenko, remained in Petrograd (Leningrad), or emigrated from the Soviet Russia. Hongor Oulanoff wrote, "The Serapion Brothers did not found a literary school. In fact - as it appears from the Serapion 'Manifesto' and from Fedin's words - the Brotherhood did not even intend to found one."[3]
Yevgeni Zamyatin and the Serapion Brothers
At that time, Zamyatin fearlessly criticized the Soviet policy of Red Terror. He had already completed We and worked as an editor with Maxim Gorky on the "World Literature" project. Shklovsky and Kaverin described Zamyatin's lectures as provocative and stimulating. However, Zamyatin's famous statement that "True literature can be created only by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics" was largely misunderstood. The Serapion Brothers remained neutral, withdrawn and eventually became mainstream, among other, more innovative and experimental literature. Zamyatin became disillusioned with teaching them, and moved on.
Yuri Tynyanov and the Serapions
Most members of the Serapion Brothers gradually conformed to official socialist realism.
Kornei Chukovsky and the Serapions
Leon Trotsky and the Serapion Fraternity
Leon Trotsky gave a brief analysis of the Serapion Fraternity in the second chapter of his Literature and Revolution (1924). Trotsky characterises the group as young and naive; he is not sure what might be said about their coming maturity. He writes that they 'were impossible without the Revolution, either as a group, or separately.' He repudiated their claimed political neutrality: 'As if an artist ever could be "without a tendency", without a definite relation to social life, even though unformulated or unexpressed in political terms. It is true, that the majority of artists form their relation to life and to its social forms during organic periods, in an unnoticeable and molecular way and almost without the participation of critical reason.' But, only two years after their foundation, he admitted that his analysis was hardly likely to be definitive: 'Why do we relegate them to being "fellow-travelers" of ours? Because they are bound up with the Revolution, because this tie is still very unformed, because they are so very young and because nothing definite can be said about their tomorrow.'
Maxim Gorky and the Serapion Fraternity
Most of the members of the Fraternity had no regular income and often were hungry and poorly clothed. They lived as a fraternity commune in a nationalized former palace in Petrograd and used among other sources the financial support of Maxim Gorky, even though the group considered the realistic novel and the style of socialist realism to be outdated and therefore called the works of their benefactor into question.
References
Sources
- Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, Chapter 2 (analysis of the Fraternity).
- Hongor Oulanoff, The Serapion Brothers: Theory and Practice, Mouton, 1966 (the first book-length study of the group).