Le canon littéraire du XIX e siècle russe à l’épreuve de la guerre: que faire des spectres de Pouchkine et Dostoïevski après février 2022?

Abstract

Russia’s war in Ukraine has brought the culture of the Russian Empire in the 19th century back to the forefront of our thinking, first and foremost the literature of the classics such as Pushkin and Dostoyevsky. Nineteenth-century Russian literature seems to have become as topical as it is uninviting to our 21st-century mindsets. Imperial culture, colonialism, nationalism, capitalism, sexual and gendered domination – all the issues that emerged in the 19th century have now invaded our discussion forums. The great Russian century has never been more contemporary in the questions it raises, and perhaps never more distant from us in the way it raised them. But rather than the authors of the nineteenth century, aren’t it the traditional ways of transmitting it, those that neglect the real workings of the field of literature to create a mythologising imaginary of great authors and great texts, that we need to question and re-evaluate in depth? Shouldn’t February 2022 set in motion the necessary revision of our scientific tools and terminology, for those of us working to transmit a culture whose structural imperialism and obsession with grandeur are now being denounced?