Authors

Rolf Hellebust¹;  ¹ The Brilliant Club, UK

Discussion

Having grappled with such unalluring artistic concepts as tradition and greatness in "How Russian Literature Became Great" (Northern Illinois UP, 2023), I propose to explore further the connection between the cultural construction of the greatness of the national literary tradition and that of the nation itself – including its resonance in the contemporary geopolitical context. One focus of my investigation is the rise in prominence of the Russian concept of derzhavnost’ in its figurative meaning of “affirmation of the role of one’s country as a great and united power” (Ozhegov), as attested in both political discourse and literary scholarship from the beginning of the Putin era. Another is the apocalyptic affirmation that Russia can only be “great or be nothing,” which has its own significant literary and historical antecedents, both native and foreign. Ultimately, greatness is a matter of faith; an empty concept that only starts to mean something when we think about it in terms such as those I have used to describe literary tradition in my book, as a quasi-religious mystery embracing the Beautiful (aesthetic value) and the Good (the social function, the redemptive mission) along with the crucial sense of the Hegelian organic whole, about which we recall Adorno’s observation that the “idea of greatness as a rule is bound up with the element of unity.”