MIA: Subjects: Art: Literary Criticism

Literary Criticism

You admire the delightful variety, the inexhaustible riches of nature. You do not demand that the rose should smell like the violet, but must the greatest riches of all, the spirit, exist in only one variety? I am humorous, but the law bids me write seriously. I am audacious, but the law commands that my style be modest. Grey, all grey, is the sole, the rightful color of freedom. Every drop of dew on which the sun shines glistens with an inexhaustible play of colours, but the spiritual sun, however many the persons and whatever the objects in which it is refracted, must produce only the official color! Karl Marx, Comments on the Latest Prussian Censorship Instruction




Marx/Engels on Literature and Art
Comprehensive index to references to art, literature, culture and literary criticism in the writings of Marx and Engels.
Lenin on Literature and Art
Speeches and statements by Lenin on Art and Culture.
Lenin and the Bourgeois Press, Boris Baluyev.
Vygotsky On Literature and Art
Works on the psychology of Art and analysis of a number of works of literature.
Trotsky on Literature and Art
Index to works of Trotsky on art, literature and culture.
Georg Lukács
Theory of the Novel
Tagore’s Gandhi Novel
Holderlin’s Hyperion
Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther
Dostoyevsky
Diego Rivera & André Breton
Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art
Henrik Ibsen Debate
Engels, Mehring, Kautsky, Plekhanov, Trotsky, Lunacharsky and Havelock Ellis on the significance of Ibsen, plus full texts of his plays.

Jenny (Westphalen) Marx
Theatre Reviews from London of the 1870s by Jenny von Westphalen, Marx's wife.
Maxim Gorky
Includes Pushkin: An Appraisal

D. S. Mirsky
Pushkin, 1934
Realism, 1935
Robinson Crusoe, 1935
Romanticism, 1937
Walter Scott, 1937

E. M. Braudo
Richard Wagner: A Marxist Interpretation, 1935
Pierre Bourdieu
Classes and Classifications, from Distinction, 1979
William Morris
William Morris Archive
Soviet Discussion on Romanticism
French, German and English Romanticism, Vladimir Fritsche, 1908
Romantic Literature, Anatoly Lunacharsky, 1924
Brief history of literary Romanticism, Isaak Nusinov, 1930
Russian Romantics, Pavel Lebedev-Polyansky, 1931
Romanticism, Viktor Zhirmunsky, 1934
The Romantic Period of German Literature, A. Lavretsky, 1934
Romanticism, D. S. Mirsky 1937
German Romanticism, V. Geiman 1939
Romanticism, A. Vishnevsky 1941
Romanticism, Georg Lukács 1945
Novalis, A. S. Dmitriev 1975

German Romanticism, Franz Mehring, 1911
Eleanor Marx
The difference between Byron and Shelley, with Edward Aveling, 1888
Shelley and Socialism, with Edward Aveling, April 1888
Dramatic Notes, February 1890 - February 1891
Literature Notes, August 1890 - February 1891
A Doll’s House Repaired, March 1891

A. Lavretsky (Iosif Moiseevich Frenkel)
Tyutchev, Seeker of Grace, 1918
On Literary Influence, 1925
Brief History of Literary Criticism, 1925
The realistic drama, 1930
Milton’s style, 1934
The Romantic Period of German Literature, 1934
Soviet Writers’ Congress 1934
Problems of Poetry in the U.S.S.R., Bukharin
Soviet Literature, Maxim Gorky
World Literature and Tasks of Proletarian Art, Radek
Greetings to Romain Rolland, Radek
Andrei Zhdanov
On Literature, Music and Philosophy
    Speech at the Congress of Soviet Writers, 1934
    Report on the Journals Zvezda and Leningrad, 1947
    Speech at Conference of Soviet Music Workers, 1948
    Speech at Conference of Soviet Philosophical Workers, 1947

Aleksandr Dmitriev
The Century of Humanism, 1990
Communist Party of Australia
Art and the Struggle, by D. Diamond, November 1943
Art and the Individual, by Kathleen Watson, March 1944
A Further Reply to John Reed’s Views, by H.M., July 1944
“Infantile Disorder” on the Cultural Front, by John Reed, July 1944
A Criticism of Adelaide’s “Angry Penguins” by Vic O'Connor, 1944
Hoax Renders Service to Literature, by Katherine Susannah Prichard, March 1945
Fascist Mentality in Australian Art and Criticism, by B. Smith 1946
On “What Shall We Ask of Writers?”, by Max Brown 1946
Art for the People, by J. B. Miles, August 1948
Women and Marxism Archive
Fiction and poety written by women on the working class, women's issues, and Marxism, and biographies written by women revolutionaries.
Dora Montefiore
The Voice of the Outcast in Literature
Wagner as a Revolutionary
Some Notes on the Early Flemish Painters
Georg Plekhanov
Historical Materialism and the Arts, 1899
French Drama and Painting of the 18th Century, 1905
Art and Social Life, 1912
Georges Politzer
Who Do You Write For, 1933.

A. K. Dzhivelegov
Rabelais, 1935
Writings in Aesthetics and Criticism
Letter to N. V. Gogol, V. G. Belinsky 1847.
Plato's Idealism, Dmitry Pisarev 1861.
Proletarian Poetry, Aleksandr Bogdanov 1923
On Being the Right Size, JBS Haldane 1928
The Work of Art, Andre Malraux 1935.
Shakespeare: A Marxist Interpretation, Aleksandr Smirnov 1936
Literature and Ideology, James Farrell 1942
What is Aesthetics, G.A. Nedozchiwin 1972
Literature and Revolution: Trotsky, Cliff Slaughter 1980.

Boris Tomashevsky
Pushkin: A Marxist Interpretation, 1929

A. S. Dmitriev
German Literature from Holderlin to Wagner, 1991
Anatoly Lunacharsky
Heroes of Action in Meditation, 1909
On Pushkin, 1922
Taneyev and Scriabin, 1925
Theses on the Problems of Marxist Criticism, 1928
Chernyshevsky’s Ethics and Aesthetics, 1928
Dostoyevsky’s “Plurality of Voices” (Re Bakhtin on Dostoyevsky), 1929
Jonathan Swift and A Tale of a Tub, 1930
George Bernard Shaw, 1931
Heine the Thinker, 1931
Vladimir Mayakovsky, Innovator, 1931
Alexander Blok, 1932
Maxim Gorky, 1932
Richard Wagner, 1933
The Man Who Painted Happiness. Renoir, 1933
Bacon and the Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays, 1934
Marcel Proust, 1934
Ibsen, 1934
Pushkin as Critic, 1937

Others
A Sad Day For Soviet Arts, V. Karalasingham, 1969.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Soldier, Prisoner, Writer, R. Weerakoon, 1972.
Revolutionary Art, H. Arvon, 1973.
F. D. Klingender
Marxism and Modern Art: An approach to social realism, 1943

Viktor Zhirmunsky
J. G. Herder, 1959

P. S. Kogan
Nietzsche, 1905
Voronsky
On Art, A. K. Voronsky, 1920.
Scoundrels and Toadies, A. K. Voronsky, 1926.

Émile Zola
The Experimental Novel, 1893.
Bertolt Brecht
Speech at the Second Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture, 1937.

Roman Kutov
An Essay on the History of Literature, 2014
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer
The Culture Industry, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer
Alasdair MacIntyre
Culture and Revolution, Summer 1961

Sergei Turaev
Young Germany, 1989

From the Reference Archive

Philosophy of Aesthetics, Hegel c. 1817
The Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality, Nicholas Chernyshevsky 1853
The Sociology of Literature, Leo Lowenthal
Elements of Semiology, Roland Barthes
Of Grammatology, Jacques Derrida
The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Frederic Jameson