Per un recupero della »izjaščnaja slovesnost’«: osservazioni sul linguaggio »proetico« di Saša Sokolov

Abstract

Commenting on the relationship between literature, culture and tradition in the Russian context, in a recent interview the émigré writer Saša Sokolov provocatively asks “What is Russian изящная словесность without nature and traditions?” (2010). What is striking in the formulation of the author’s answer is his use of the locution “izjaščnaja slovesnost’” (“belle lettres”), as opposed to the more wide-spread wording “chudožestvennaja literatura” (i.e. “artistic literature”), a category which generally indicates literature. In Sokolov’s answer, and more precisely in his mixing of artistic expressions which are historically separated, as in the case of the written tradition and oral culture, an ambiguous dualism (“dvoekul’turie”, or double culture) there emerges, that binary-dichotomic structure that has been domi-nating Russian culture for centuries. Sokolov’s choice becomes even more relevant if placed in the perspective of the actual process that might be defined as “unification” between the Russian “zarubežnaja” (“foreign”) production and the “official” one. Indeed, Sokolov’s word-ing may suggest that, in the context of the so-called “writing as resistance” (Caramitti 2010) it is possible to outline a tendency towards the recovery of historical continuity within Russian literature. This recuperation is achieved through the (re-)appropriation of the antique Russian literary and cultural traditions, inseparable from the religious element, and the retrieval of numerous motifs linked to the natural world, in opposition to the soviet “grand narrative”. On the basis of these premises the article investigates the narrative modalities that allowed the revaluation of the “izjaščnaja slovesnost’” in the context of non-official soviet literature.