Vladimir Bogomolov and Yuri Trifonov. Representati

Владимир Залесский Переводы
Vladimir Bogomolov and Yuri Trifonov. Representatives of Russian literature in later historical epochs. A literary note.


Sometimes you look closely at a literary work, and a question arises – to what literary direction it belongs?

For example, a novel by Vladimir Bogomolov "In the August of '44" ("The Moment of Truth"), 1973…

In terms of the breadth of reality, to some extent the novel "In the August of '44" can be compared with" War and peace " by Leo Tolstoy.

There are differences. "War and peace" has a broader historical material, a greater elaboration of details.

"In the August of '44" is a more professional, a more documentary…

Both works describe the historical intervals when Russia (the USSR) was at the Zenith of power – the periods of the victorious events of 1812 and 1942-1944-1945.

Is it possible to put between them — between “War and Peace” and “In the August of '44” - a some works by Henryk Sienkiewicz, Nobel Prize laureate in Literature (1905)?

In any case, it can be assumed that Vladimir Bogomolov was and is a representative of not Soviet, but Russian literature.

Or maybe a representative of Russian (Velikolithuanian, East-Republican) literature? - Such an assumption requires more thorough argumentation.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov watched what happens to the souls of people living under an autocratic political regime ...

What was Yuri Trifonov reflecting about? The theme of his work is approximately the same as that of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov — what happens to his contemporaries? How is it, that freedom “shrinks”, and human qualities are lost with freedom - one after another - with the exception of the most elementary, primitive?

Yuri Trifonov has something from Dostoevsky and from Chekhov ...

Perhaps Yuri Trifonov is more a representative of Russian (Velikolithuanian) literature, and to a lesser extent - Soviet.

In general, if we single out a large directions - (Velikolithuanian, East-Republican) Russian literature, Soviet, post-Soviet, "Russial" literature - then, perhaps, in later cultural complex phenomena, representatives of earlier directions can be found.

At least, a creativity both of Vladimir Bogomolov and of Yuri Trifonov are so significantly distinguished from the general "timbre", "tone" of Soviet literature, and are so similar to some outstanding predecessors that they can be considered as an example of the existence of representatives of Russian (Velikolithuanian, East-Republican) literature into a later historical (cultural)  epoch.


December 28, 2019 21:08


P.S. Authors - books - biographies


On the question of a not clear elements in the biography of Vladimir Bogomolov, we note the following.

Recall, for example, that Henryk Sienkiewicz did not participate in the events of 1671... and A. N. Stepanov (author of the novel "Port Arthur") has never been to Port Arthur…

Vladimir Bogomolov didn't called his novel "In the August of '44" a memoir.

The thinking of a many people is not a conceptual, but a drawing-like, a comic-like. In other words, many people think not by (with the help) a concepts, not by a knowledge, but by a drawings, by a pictures, by a comics.

It was always difficult for the Thomases Buckles (to authors from a "common people").

Maupassant had to enter the French literature through Flaubert, and Flaubert had to sit for years, if not in a hallway (in a reception room), then in his office-room (until he became a kind of a walking legend).

How many years  Chekhov and Gorky sawed feuilletons?

For a drawing-like, a comic-like thinking (especially in the absence of a normal literary criticism), it is important not only what is written, but by whom is written.

If you are not Thomas Buckle, and live, for example, in Russia, then you need to have not only works, but also a "beautiful" ("heroic") biography.

All the more "beautiful" biography was needed if the author was in a vulnerable social stratum …

With a "beautiful" (a "heroic") biography, it was five times more probability to reach fastly into a publishing house, up to a printing press, to a readers…

By the combination of circumstances it was necessary to make compromises…


December 29, 2019 21: 22


Translation from Russian into English: December 29, 2019 22:08.
Владимир Владимирович Залесский «Владимир Богомолов и Юрий Трифонов. Представители русской литературы в более поздние исторические эпохи. Литературная заметка».