Aesthetic Value and the Institutions of Russian Modernism

• In Event: Sociological Methods: Institutional Construction of Literature across Time

Abstract

Rather than focusing on an individual poet or work, we must consider the flurry of forces at work in shaping Symbolism as the expression of a group responding to the advancements, reconsiderations, and crises of the modern era. Aleksandr Dobroliubov’s Collected Verses (1900) models those changes and proves ripe for analysis as an object of cultural production. This paper shows how a sociological approach is an indispensable element for a proper understanding of Symbolism’s ability to negotiate the Russian literary sphere. Briusov comprehended that Dobroliubov’s work called for the revaluation of literary and commercial conventions and demonstrated a “crisis of aesthetic value”. Briusov attempted to redirect the capacity of determining Symbolism’s quality and worth into the hands of readers who actively seek out a book of Symbolism (and thus, in Rainey’s terms, become its patrons and investors as well as its readers) and his publishing house Skorpion proved to be the vehicle that enabled such a reappraisal.

Author

• Jonathan Craig Stone, Franklin & Marshall College