The hidden dialogue between Lukacs and Bakhtin in the context of Socialist Realism — The Poetics of the genre in the perspective of a long time

Tan Ke Postgraduate student; Institute of Literature and Journalism; Sichuan University 33 Chuanda St., Chengdu, Sichuan, China, 610064 TangKe1@yandex.ru

Introduction

This study is devoted to the analysis of the formation of the theory of Mikhail Bakhtin's epic novel, considered in the context of his hidden dialogue with the ideas of Gyorgy Lukacs. The relevance of this work is due to the need for an in-depth understanding of the influence of two key twentieth-century theorists on the development of literary thought, as well as the identification of a complex relationship between their concepts. In particular, we seek to clarify how Bakhtin's understanding of the epic novel, in the perspective of “big time,” was formed in critical correlation with Lukachev's ideas about this genre and its place in literary history.

The purpose of this study is to identify and analyze the specifics of the hidden dialogue between Bakhtin and Lukacs, as well as to determine the significance of Bakhtin's concept of the epic novel for modern literary theory. We intend to demonstrate how Bakhtin deconstructs Lukacs' teleological approach and offers an alternative vision of the genre based on the principles of dialogism and nonlinear time.

To achieve this goal, it is necessary to solve the following tasks:: 1. To analyze the influence of the theory of the novel by Gyorgy Lukacs on the formation of the socialist-realistic concept of the epic novel, including its methodological and ideological prerequisites. 2. Identify and examine the key aspects of the hidden dialogue between Bakhtin and Lukacs, identifying the main points of their disagreement. 3. To investigate and analyze the features of Bakhtin's theory of the epic novel in the perspective of “big time”, including its anti-ideological character.

The research methodology includes an integrated approach based on the analysis of texts by Mikhail Bakhtin and Gyorgy Lukacs, as well as a comparative analysis of their ideas. We use methods of historical and literary analysis to examine the evolution of the concepts of the epic novel in their historical context, as well as methods of textual analysis to study texts in detail and identify hidden polemical moments. We also rely on theoretical works on novel theory and Bakhtin studies presented in the works of A.V. Chicherin ^[8], Tzvetan Todorov ^[14], Gary Saul Morson; Caryl Emerson ^[11], Belaya Galina ^[5], Galin Tihanov ^[13], V.G. Andreeva ^[1], Alastair Renfrew ^[12], Frederick T. Griffiths; Stanley J. Rabinowitz ^[10].

The research material is based on the key works of Gyorgy Lukacs (^{[6, pp. 19-78][7, pp. 795-832]}) and Mikhail Bakhtin (^[2][3][4]), as well as scientific research on the theory of the novel and Bakhtin studies, presented above.

The practical significance of the research lies in the fact that it contributes to a deeper understanding of the work of Bakhtin and Lukacs, as well as their contribution to the development of the theory of the novel. The results of the research can be used in further scientific works on Bakhtin studies, novel theory and genre poetics, opening up new perspectives for studying their ideas in the context of modern literary theory and helping to expand our understanding of the dynamics of literary forms.

Lukacs' theory of the Epic novel and the teleological premises underlying Socialist realism

Based on Hegel's philosophy, Lukacs defines the novel as an epic of the "era of perfect sinfulness" in his work "The Theory of the Novel: A Historical and Philosophical Experience in the Study of a large epic form." Lukacs' research methodology is based on the principle of dichotomous opposition of epic and novel as literary forms. However, in the final part of his work, Lukacs suggests the possibility of an epic renaissance, linking this with the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky. This teleological perspective had a significant impact on the formation of the methodological principles of socialist realist literary criticism, especially on the formation and canonization of the "epic novel" genre.

As you know, according to Lukacs: "A novel is an epic of an era that no longer has a direct sense of the extensive totality of life, for which the immanence of meaning in life has become a problem, but which nevertheless tends towards totality" ^{[6, P. 32]}. Thus, the novel becomes a genre that seeks to create totality in a fragmented reality, and therefore the typical form of the novel is the autobiography of a "problematic individual." However, this is just a false attempt to overcome the "bad infinity" (die schlechte Unendlichkeit).

"The inner form of the novel thus represents the process of the problematic individual's movement towards himself, as a path from vague immersion in reality, heterogeneous and, from the individual's point of view, devoid of meaning, to clear self-awareness. Upon reaching this self-awareness, the acquired ideal, however, shines through the rays of life meaning into the immanence of being, but the contradictions between being and ought are not removed, and cannot be removed in the sphere of this process, that is, romantic life; only the maximum convergence of opposites, the deepest and most intense illumination, revealing to a person the meaning of his life, is possible" ^{[6, P. 43]}.

After emigrating to the Soviet Union, Lukacs wrote an extensive 37-page article entitled "Novel" for the ninth volume of the Literary Encyclopedia (1935) of the Institute of Philosophy of the Communist Academy of the USSR. This article basically continues the line outlined in The Theory of the Novel, but there are two points in it that deserve special attention.

First, Fichte and Hegel, mentioned in the "Theory of the Novel" of the pre-Marxist period, are completely replaced in this 1935 article by Marx and Engels: "For Hegel, Schelling, etc. Bourgeois development was the last "absolute" stage of human development. Because of this, they could not understand the historical doom of capitalism, so understanding the main contradiction of capitalist society (the contradiction between public production and private appropriation) lay beyond their horizon" ^{[7, pp. 800-801]}. Thus, the novel as an epic of the "era of perfect sinfulness" was replaced by "The Novel as a bourgeois epic" ^{[7, p. 795]}. From the very beginning, Lukacs seeks to emphasize the illegitimacy of the novel in the pre-bourgeois era: "Although there are works in the literatures of the ancient East, antiquity, and the Middle Ages that are largely related to R., R. acquires its typical characteristics only in bourgeois society" ^{[7, p. 795]}. Lukacs argues that, compared with other genres adopted by the bourgeoisie without changing their essence, the novel has undergone such significant transformations that it has become "a typically new artistic genre" ^{[7, p. 800]} of bourgeois society. According to this logic of reasoning, the novel exists throughout the entire period of capitalism: the beginning of capitalism means the beginning of the novel, and its end is the end of the novel's existence.

Secondly, within the framework of this logic, the three-part division of the novel, established in the Theory of the Novel on the basis of the relationship between the soul and the world, disappears, and instead Lukacs identifies five stages of the novel's history based on the stage of development of bourgeois society.: 1. the birth of the novel; 2. the conquest of everyday reality by the novel; 3. poetry of the "spiritual kingdom of animals"; 4. "new" realism and the decomposition of the form of the novel; 5. The prospects of socialist realism. Within the framework of such a literary and sociological perspective, the novel reaches its peak during the period of the "spiritual kingdom of animals" (for example, in Balzac), coinciding with the heyday of the bourgeoisie, and the "new" realism (that is, naturalism) marks the disintegration and completion of the novel form. This logic determines Lukacs' prediction about the end of the novel genre in the chapter "Perspectives of Socialist Realism" — that is, about the return of epic totality.

"That is why it is necessary to clearly understand that here we are talking about a trend towards the epic. The struggle of the proletariat to “overcome the remnants of capitalism in the economy and in the minds of people" develops new elements of the epic. <...> And the literature of socialist realism is really stubbornly and honestly fighting for this new type of Poetry, and in this struggle for a new artistic form, for Poetry, approaching the greatness of the epic, but at the same time necessarily retaining the essential features of Poetry, it has already achieved significant success (Sholokhov, Fadeev, etc.)" ^{[7, pp. 830-831]}.

Thus, based on the theory of Roman Lukacs, the historical dialectic of the novel and the epic presupposes the achievement of a final synthesis in the era of socialist realism. This synthesis asserts and encourages the legitimacy of the creation of epic novels within the framework of the socialist realism system, which leads to the emergence of a large number of works claiming their "typical totality", and even to the formation of a special genre "epic novel". As Belaya Galina notes in her discussion of the "epic novel" genre: "The ideology of the epic novel (not yet called an epic novel) in the 30s was significantly strengthened by the work of G. Lukacs, a recognized Marxist theorist. Without hiding the purpose of his goal – to prove that the epic novel is the top of the genre hierarchy and that it is possible only in the conditions of a victorious revolution, Lukacs clearly formulated his initial positions" ^{[5, p. 176]}. According to A.V. Chicherin in his work "The Birth of the Epic Novel": "The epic novel is a literary genre much more widespread in socialist literature than in the literature of critical realism" ^{[8, p. 360]}.

Bakhtin's theory of Romance and Epic and her hidden dialogue with Lukacs

Unlike Lukacs, who took an active part in shaping the theory of socialist realism, Bakhtin almost never entered the official literary theoretical system of the Soviet Union. However, as V.G. Andreeva notes, his statement about the close connection of the epic with the monologue is "polemical." <...> in the direction of Soviet literary criticism" ^{[1, P. 96]}. For the purposes of polemic, Bakhtin's "epic" was aimed not so much at accurately reflecting the epic in literary history as at "better matching the characteristics of the novel of socialist realism" ^{[10, p. 208]}. The main opponent of this theory, which abstracts the epic to "epicness" as the embodiment of integrity, totality and isolation, in this hidden dialogue, is Lukacs, of course. Tikhanov offers the most comprehensive discussion of this issue, in which he points out that: "In the 1930s, when the key controversy with Lukacs was taking place, Bakhtin, who suffered from a chronic illness and was forced to live in exile, was practically forgotten, and his opportunities to express his own position were largely limited to silent dialogue with his opponent. Even such programmatic works as The Epic and the Novel, published in 1941 at the Gorky Institute of World Literature under the title The Novel as a Literary Genre, could not openly mention Lukacs' name" ^{[13, p. 15]}.

At first glance, as Tikhanov notes ^{[13, p. 52]}, Bakhtin's article "Epic and Novel" seems to mostly borrow and rethink the ideas outlined by Goethe and Schiller in their work "On Epic and Dramatic Poetry" (Über epische und dramatische Dichtung): the epic of the "absolute past" (vollkommen vergangen) remains, while the drama of the "absolute present" (vollkommen gegenwärtig) is replaced by a novel. However, in essence, Bakhtin's theory of the epic novel is a rewrite of the Hegel-Lukacs system. This rewriting can be considered on two levels.

Firstly, continuing this line, Bakhtin reverses the value relationship between novel and epic proposed by Lukacs: epic integrity turns into isolation and monologue, while the fragmentariness of the novel becomes discord, dialogism and openness. Thus, it can be concluded that the novel, in the context of the literary system under consideration, is positioned as a higher priority genre than others. This statement, apparently, has a polemical character and is aimed at overthrowing the established hierarchies of genres. In particular, the author emphasizes the conflict between the novel and other literary forms, expressed in the impossibility of achieving harmonious interaction based on mutual differentiation and complementarity. Consequently, the novel claims a dominant role in the literary space, excluding the possibility of equal coexistence with other genres. The novel parodies other genres (precisely as genres), exposes the conventionality of their forms and language, displaces some genres, introduces others into its own design, rethinking and re-interpreting them" ^{[2, p. 610]}. Unlike other genres (especially epic or epic), the novel is an unformed genre and is constantly in a state of unformulation. The novel is always in a state of parodying other genres. From this point of view, the novel is "alien" in relation to literary genres.

Secondly, Bakhtin's polemic with Lukacs represents not only a reassessment of the value of dialogue and monologue, but also a transition from a linear perception of time to a pluralistic view of nonlinear time (and hence the transition from teleology to anti-teleology). Lukacs' silence about the Greek novel (if the ancient Greek novel were included in his theoretical system of the epic novel, it would undermine his claim of the novel as an exceptional genre of bourgeois society) stands in stark contrast to Bakhtin's special attention to the Greek novel.: "I have developed the provisions of today's report in a somewhat abstract form. I have illustrated them only with some examples from the ancient stage of the novel's formation. My choice is determined by the fact that we dramatically underestimate the importance of this stage. It is characteristic that in the well-known article about the novel in the Encyclopedia, the ancient novel is mentioned only in the subordinate clause. If they talk about the ancient stage of the novel, they mean, according to tradition, only the "Greek novel". The ancient stage of the novel is of great importance for a correct understanding of the nature of this genre" ^{[2, p. 642]}. Thus, the novel, contrary to Lukacs' statement, is not a genre that arises with the beginning of capitalist society and ends with its end. Bakhtin, therefore, stands for eternal romance. In his work "The Word in the Novel," he divides literary genres into two types: centripetal and centrifugal: "While the main varieties of poetic genres develop in line with the unifying and centralizing, centripetal forces of verbal and ideological life, the novel and the artistic and prose genres gravitating towards it have historically developed in line with decentralizing, centrifugal forces." ^{[2, P. 26]}. Here, the epic clearly belongs to centripetal genres, while the novel is a representative of centrifugal genres. In this metaphysical context of literary genres, the epic as a centripetal genre and the novel as a centrifugal genre become unavoidable phenomena. In this regard, one can refer to Bakhtin's arguments in his work "Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics": "So, no new artistic genre abolishes or replaces the old ones" ^{[4, p. 299]}.

Thus, Bakhtin carried out a radical deconstruction of the teleological theory of Lukacs' epic novel, which eventually led to an anti-teleological view of genres. As we will discuss in the next section, this approach considers the novel and the epic (as well as all genres) within a non-linear time, providing a place for the existence of each genre and each way of understanding the world.

The poetics of the genre in the context of big time

From the above discussion, it is easy to see that a non—linear, antitheological understanding of the relationship between genres contributes to the creation of dialogical connections between them - this is the result of the genre's poetics, viewed from the perspective of a long time. Big time is a spatial time devoid of linear development. But it's not dead, it's full of continuous dialogue. From a long-term perspective, the centrifugal force of the novel is an indispensable part of the forms of human experience, coexisting with centripetal genres such as epic and poetry.

Here it is necessary to consider Bakhtin's concept of the so-called "genre memory", which is logically connected with the idea of big time: "This is the life of the genre. Therefore, the archaic that persists in the genre is not dead, but eternally alive, that is, archaic that can be renewed. The genre lives in the present, but always remembers its past, its beginning. Genre is a representative of creative memory in the process of literary development" ^{[4, p. 120]}. Of course, there is competition between different literary genres, but they continue to exist throughout the history of literature. Each genre represents a way of perceiving the world by the subject and a way of revealing the world to the subject, and each genre is irreplaceable.

Thus, for Bakhtin, the importance of a writer in the history of literature stems from his ability to update the genre. Updating the genre also means expanding the boundaries of human vision and perception.: Dostoevsky is important because he discovered the polyphonic novel; Goethe — because his work presents the most developed chronotope; Rabelais — because he pushed the carnival worldview to the limit. However, this does not mean that they were creators in the full sense of the word: "it was not Dostoevsky's subjective memory, but the objective memory of the genre in which he worked, that preserved the features of the ancient menippea" ^{[4, p. 137]}. These attributes (such as polyphony, carnivalization) are initially like seeds hidden in the memory of the genre, and only in Rabelais, Goethe and Dostoevsky could they develop and flourish. Therefore, every great writer should have a special long-term vision that allows him to see the experience of humanity as a whole and conduct a dialogue with previous, subsequent and modern forms of experience (that is, with genres).: "The role of memory in this eternal transformation of the past. Cognition is the understanding of the past in its incompleteness (in its discrepancy with itself). A moment of fearlessness in learning. Fear and intimidation in expression (seriousness), in self-disclosure, in revelation, in the word" ^{[3, p. 9]}.

In this context, the poetics of the genre in the perspective of a long time contributes to solving the problem of historicism, which has long been a concern for researchers of Bakhtin studies. Many critics have already noted that Bakhtin's genre poetics seems to oscillate between essentialism and historicism, as Tsvetan Todorov put it.: "We have already encountered Roman in the course of presenting various theses of Bakhtin: he is the supreme embodiment of intertextual play and provides heterology with the greatest freedom of action. However, heterology and intertextuality are timeless categories that can be applied to any period of history; how can their ubiquity be reconciled with the inevitably historical nature of the genre?" ^{[14, p. 85]}. Alastair Renfrew, a British researcher of Bakhtin, answers this question: "However, the argument of this book is that Bakhtin's split is not only incorrigible, but also that his continued value for literary criticism in some strange positive sense depends precisely on this incorrigibility" ^{[12, p. 111]}. Nevertheless, the historicism of Bakhtin's genre poetics may well be consistent with the genre's poetics from a long-term perspective.

As is well known, the historicism of Bakhtin's genre poetics is particularly expressed in two texts devoted to the chronotope: "The Forms of Time and Chronotope in the Novel" and "The Novel of Education and its Significance in the History of Realism." The poetics of the chronotope, being diachronic, is inextricably linked with the historical reality in which space and time are merged. This determines its historical character. However, despite Bakhtin's historical approach to analyzing the various types of chronotope in the texts under study, his interpretations are paradoxically anti-historical in nature. The chronotope is closely related to a specific historical ground only in the sense of its origin: in subsequent literary development, the chronotope may temporarily disappear and then be revived, entering into a dialogue with other chronotopes. Consistently, as Carl Emerson noted, "every dialogue takes place in a particular chronotope, and the chronotopes themselves also enter into a dialogue with each other" ^{[11, p. 427]}. Thus, in any novel, there is a dialogue both inside the chronotope and between the chronotopes, and these dialogues inside and outside the chronotopes form part of the dialogical exchange in the novel.

Conclusion

In this study, we have attempted to uncover a deep and sometimes implicit dialogue between two key figures of literary theory of the 20th century – Mikhail Bakhtin and Gyorgy Lukacs. Our review has shown that Bakhtin's theory of the epic novel was formed not in a vacuum, but in a tense, albeit hidden, dispute with Lukacs' teleological concepts, especially pronounced in his works on the novel and in his influence on the canonization of the “epic novel" genre within the framework of socialist realism.

We have established that Lukacs, relying on the Hegelian dialectic, built a hierarchy of genres in which the novel, being an “epic of the era of perfect sinfulness,” aspired to epic totality, anticipating its possible revival in a socialist society. His Marxist interpretation linked the development of the novel with the development of bourgeois society, seeing it as a temporary, historically determined phenomenon. At the same time, Bakhtin, actively criticizing Lukacs' monistic and teleological paradigm, offered an alternative view, focusing on the dialogism, polyphony and openness inherent in the novel.

Analyzing Bakhtin's approach, we have revealed his desire to deconstruct the Lukachev hierarchy and to invert the values attributed to the epic and the novel. Bakhtin presented the epic as a monological and closed genre, and the novel as dynamic, polyphonic and constantly updated. He also discarded the linear concept of time, replacing it with a pluralistic understanding, where each genre occupies its own independent place, interacting with others in a continuous dialogue. Special attention was paid to the significance of the ancient novel, which Lukacs ignored, which allowed Bakhtin to substantiate the idea of an “eternal novel” not tied to a specific historical epoch.

The chronotope has become a key concept for understanding Bakhtin's poetics. We have shown that although Bakhtin considered the chronotope as closely related to a specific historical ground, his interpretations are not strictly historical in nature, but rather represent a dialogue between different types of chronotopes, which fits into his concept of “big time". As we have found out, this concept plays a crucial role in resolving the apparent contradiction between essentialism and historicism in Bakhtin's theory.

As a result, our research concluded that Bakhtin did not just borrow Lukacs' categories, but radically reinterpreted them, placing them in a new, anti-theological context. Bakhtin's poetics of the genre in the perspective of a long time demonstrates openness to the world and rejection of hierarchical structures. It allows us to see not a sequential movement from one genre to another, but their parallel and dialogical coexistence, where each genre represents a unique way of understanding reality and expressing human experience. This, in turn, opens up new perspectives for understanding the dynamics of literary development and the importance of a writer who is able to renew and expand the horizons of genre memory, seeing in it not only the past, but also the potential for the future.