Expressionist Genesis in Russian Literature

There is no art movement that can be separated from the social conditions of the age and the dominant understanding of art. Expressionism, one of the active art movements of the 20th century and mainly shaped by Germany and Austria, also emerged as a reaction to the events that took place at the border of the century. While these developments point to the World War I in Germany, they correspond to the wars and revolutionary mobilization process that took place between 1905 and 1917 in Russia. At this point, expressionism, which is a part of a historical period, affects many areas in the intellectual field; it directs not only poetry and painting but also many disciplines such as prose, theater, music, and architecture. However, unlike German expressionism, which took place largely in the visual arts, the starting point of this movement in Russia is literature— in the genre of prose and dramaturgy. The first scientific transmission of expressionism in Russia is in the form of articles or criticisms of texts translated from German. The emergence of expressionism in Russia is dated simultaneously with the works titled “The Wall, 1901” and “The Red Laugh, 1904” by Leonid Andreyev. In this study, the expressionist worldview, which perceives the world as an environment of chaos and the individual as a person silenced and suppressed by this chaos, has been examined from a historical perspective, in particular Russian literature. The development process of expressionism in Russian literature has been revealed in the example of approaches and works that deal with people in the intellectual intensity of the 20th century.

Cite this article as: Tan Metreş, E. H. (2022). Expressionist Genesis in Russian Literature. Journal of Literature and Humanities, 69, 60-66.