THE REVOLUTION AND THE DEATH OF AESTHETICS: THE IDEOLOGICAL LITERARY CRITICISM BY DMYTRO DONTSOV AND LEV TROTSKY

Abstract

This article discusses the key features of Dmytro Dontsov and Lev Trotsky’s aesthetics and literary from the point of view of their revolutionary character, grounded typological identity of the Ukrainian national revolution and the Bolshevik Russian perception of the nature and function of art. At the strategic level, the revolutionary aesthetics presupposes the primacy of ideology over art and the fundamental necessity of art in the victory of the revolution. At the tactical level, there is a reduction of the artistic image, hypertrophy of its valuable components, as well as the identification of the ideological aspects of imagery with the ideology of the author or his worldview. At the same time, the aesthetic views of both the revolutionaries presuppose the existence of some support in the form of extra-aesthetic parameters: social origin of the author (Trotsky), the anthropological type of the author (Dontsov). Dontsov and
Trotsky’s aesthetic views are not reducible to any traditional aesthetic theory. General attribute that distinguishing them from the latter is revolutionary.