Serapion Brothers

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Nikolai Tikhonov, Elisaveta Polonskaya, Nikolay Nikitin,
Mikhail Zoshchenko, Ilia Gruzdev,Veniamin Kaverin ]

The Serapion Brothers (or Serapion Fraternity, _ru. Серапионовы Братья) was a group of writers formed in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1921. The group was named after a novel by 19th Century German romantic author E.T.A. Hoffmann called "Die Serapions-Brüder" (1819-1821). Its members included Nikolai Tikhonov, Veniamin Kaverin, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Victor Shklovsky, Vsevolod Ivanov, Elisaveta Polonskaya, Ilya Gruzdev, Mikhail Slonimsky, Lev Lunts, Vladimir A. Posner, Nikolay Nikitin and Konstantin Fedin. The group formed during their studies at the seminars of Yuri Tynyanov, Yevgeni Zamyatin, and Korney Chukovsky and the then "Petrogradsky Dom Iskusstv" (The Petrograd's House of Arts). The group eventually split: some of them moved to Moscow and became official Soviet writers, while others, like Zoshchenko, remained in St. Petersburg (Leningrad), or emigrated from the Soviet Russia.

Evgeni Zamyatin and the Serapion Brothers

Yevgeni Zamyatin became associated with the Serapion Brothers in 1921, when he was appointed lecturer of the "House of Arts" (Dom Iskusstv) where the members of the Searpion Brothers studied and lived. The institute was located at prestigious building on the Nevsky Prospect in the former Palace of the St. Petersburg Governor. Writers, including the Serapions, had occupied the wing of the palace from Nevsky along the Moika river embankment. That location had originally ispired the phrase "Dom na naberezhnoi" (House on the embankment). Zamyatin and other writers lived there as a small community of intellectuals, as their lifestyle and artistic atmosphere was later described in their memoirs and letters.

At that time, Zamyatin fearlessly criticized the Soviet policy of Red Terror. He had already completed "We" and worked as an editor with Maxim Gorky on the "World Literature" project. Shklovsky and Kaverin described Zamyatin's lectures as provocative and stimulating. However, Zamyatin's famous statement that "True literature can be created only by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics" was largely misunderstood. The Serapion Brothers remained neutral, withdrawn and eventually became mainstream, among other, more innovative and experimental literature. Zamyatin became disillusioned with teaching them, and moved on.

Yuri Tynyanov and the Serapions

Yuri Tynyanov supervised the studies and publications of Serapion Brothers since he met them at the "House of Arts" in St. Petersburg. He supported their soft non-conformism, their quiet opposition to the official Moscow-based Soviet literature. Ironically, many of them ended up making their careers in Moscow, as ranking members of the Union of Soviet Writers.

Most members of the Serapion Brothers gradually conformed with the official socialist realism.

Kornei Chukovsky and the Serapions

Kornei Chukovsky was a lecturer at the House of Arts, along with Zamyatin and Tynyanov. The Serapion Brothers attended most of the seminars of all three lecturers, albeit not for a long time. Eventually some members of the "Serapion Brothers" had followed Chukovsky in Moscow. There they continued their careers under his wing, and became established within the official Soviet socialist realism.

Leon Trotsky and the Serapion Fraternity

The Fraternity are perhaps best known through the brief analysis of them by Leon Trotsky in the second chapter of his Literature and Revolution (1924). Trotsky characterises the group as young and naive; he is not sure what might be said about their coming maturity. He writes that they 'were impossible without the Revolution, either as a group, or separately.' He repudiated their claimed political neutrality 'As if an artist ever could be "without a tendency", without a definite relation to social life, even though unformulated or unexpressed in political terms. It is true, that the majority of artists form their relation to life and to its social forms during organic periods, in an unnoticeable and molecular way and almost without the participation of critical reason.' But, only two years after their foundation, he admitted that his analysis was hardly likely to be definitive: 'Why do we relegate them to being "fellow-travelers" of ours? Because they are bound up with the Revolution, because this tie is still very unformed, because they are so very young and because nothing definite can be said about their tomorrow.'

Encyclopædia Britannica on Serapion Brothers

Serapionovy Bratya, group of young Russian writers formed in 1921 under the unsettled conditions of the early Soviet regime. [Encyclopædia Britannica: [http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9066817/Serapion-Brothers] ]

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References

* Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1924/lit_revo/ch02.htm Chapter 2] - Trotsky devotes a section of this chapter to analysis of the Fraternity.
* Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1924/lit_revo/ch07.htm Chapter 7] - brief mention of the Fraternity.