Solzhenitsyn And The New Realism

Abstract

In artistic terms the relationship of the novella to the novel has been often explored, by the present writer among others. Much less has been said of their historical relationship and their reciprocal influence as literature has developed. Yet here we come upon an extremely interesting and instructive problem, and one that throws an especially revealing light on the contemporary situation. I refer to the recurrent fact that the novella makes its appearance either as the harbinger of some new conquest of reality by large-scale forms, narrative or dramatic, or else at the close of a period, by way of rearguard or postlude. It appears, that is to say, either at the moment of not yet in the subduing by the creative imagination of some particular social epoch in its entirety, or at the moment of no longer.