Postmodernism in Russia
The forerunners of postmodernism were modernism and avant-gardism, which sought to revive the traditions of the Silver Age. Russian postmodernism in literature rejected the mythologization of reality, to which the previous literary trends gravitated. But at the same time, he creates his own mythology, resorting to it as the most understandable cultural language. Postmodern writers led a dialogue with chaos in their works, presenting it as a real model of life, where the utopia is the harmony of the world. At the same time, between the cosmos and the chaos, there was a search for a compromise.
Ideas considered by various authors in their works, at times, are strange unstable hybrids, called to eternally conflict, being absolutely incompatible concepts. So, in the books of V. Erofeev, A. Bitov and S. Sokolov, there are compromises, paradoxical in fact, between life and death. In T. Tolstoy and V. Pelevin – between fantasy and reality, in Victor Erofeev and Pitsukha –
Among the postmodern writers, in addition to those already listed, include S. Dovlatov, V. Voinovich, L. Petrushevskaya, V. Aksenov, A. Sinyavsky. In their works, the main characteristic features of postmodernism are observed, such as the understanding of art as a way of organizing text according to special rules; an attempt to convey the vision of the world through organized chaos in the pages of a literary work; gravitation to parody and denial of authority; emphasizing the conventionality used in works of artistic and visual techniques; a connection within a single text of different literary epochs and genres.
The ideas that postmodernism proclaimed in literature indicate its continuity with modernism, which in turn called for a departure from civilization and a return to savagery, which leads to the highest point of involution – chaos. But in concrete literary
Formed in Russia in the period 80-90-ies, postmodernism in literature absorbed the collapse of ideals and the desire to escape from the orderliness of the world, so there was a mosaic and fragmentary consciousness. Each author in his own way broke it in his work. In L. Petrushevskaya and V. Orlov, the work combines the craving for naturalistic nakedness in describing reality and the desire to emerge from it into the mystical realm. The sense of peace in the post-Soviet era was characterized as chaotic. Often in the center of the plot in postmodernists becomes an act of creativity, and the main character is the writer.
It is not so much the character’s relationship to real life as to the text. This is observed in the works of A. Bitov, Yu Buida, S. Sokolov. It turns out the effect of the closure of literature on oneself, when the world is perceived as a text. The protagonist, often identified with the author, in the face of reality pays a terrible price for its imperfection.
You can make a prediction that, being oriented to destruction and chaos, postmodernism in literature will one day leave the stage and give way to another trend aimed at a systemic worldview. Because sooner or later the state of chaos is replaced by the order.
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