Arzamas

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

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Arzamas or, more formally, “The Arzamas Society of Obscure People” [Arzamasskoe obshchestvo bezvestnykh liudei] was a St. Petersburg literary circle active in Russia from 1815-1818. It was formed in response to another literary circle, Beseda (more formally, “The Colloquium of Admirers of the Russian Word” [Beseda liubitelei russkogo slova]). Arzamasians celebrated literary innovation, experimenting with genres, borrowing Western forms and language, and juxtaposing linguistic registers. The Besedists, on the other hand, are sometimes called “archaists” as they sought to maintain the eighteenth-century Russian literary tradition, especially its neoclassical forms and purity of language. Arzamas’s focus was on sharing and discussing its members’ literary works and it is best…

1999 words

Citation: Bowers, Katherine. "Arzamas". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 September 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=19327, accessed 19 March 2024.]

19327 Arzamas 2 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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