The Calamity of Average Taste Polemical Comments

Abstract

The current situation in literature, as in our entire cultural life, prompts us to give some thought to the nature of our postrevolutionary culture and to the origins of the forces that remain opposed to its fullest possible restoration. So as not to discuss this "in general," I would like to dwell on one particular literary fact, one that speaks volumes—i.e., the rather sensational article by Dmitrii Urnov titled "A Mad Exceeding of One's Powers," about Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago. In the half year since its appearance the article has received, on the whole, an accurate and well-deserved response. There are few who have agreed with Urnov, and few have failed to see the thoroughgoing inappropriateness of his opinions and conclusions for the work itself. It is not that the article's author had a negative opinion of the novel; that's everyone's right. The point is that his interpretation bypassed the book's actual substance.