Anastasija Verbickaja, o il decadentismo per le masse

Abstract

1910 is remembered in Russian culture as the year when symbolism declares its crisis, when the post-symbolist movements move their first steps. But a look at the publishing figures is enough to understand that this process passed unnoticed by the majority of the reading public. In early XX-th century, popular literature was already an important and complex phenomenon. The readers of dime novels had no notion of the highbrow movements; the “people's intelligentsia”, on the other hand, opposed them as enemies to their values of social commitment. Anastasia Verbickaia, one of the leaders of the market in the first two decades of the century, although her career had started in the same field, in her extremely successful sentimental novel “The Keys to Happiness” refers repeatedly to modern culture. She used, in fact, the names of decadent writers in the same way she included information taken from popular science books or from travel guides – to give the reader the impression to participate a refined and exclusive world. At the same time, she contributed to spread in the lower class public information about the newest ideas – a trend that the Soviet regime, heir to the “peoples' intelligentsia”, would not tolerate.