Yevgeny Zamyatin, a figure of profound significance in 20th-century literature, is renowned not only for his literary prowess, such as the dystopian novel “We” that later inspired many other works in the same genre, but also for his stance on censorship, creative freedom, and keen understanding of the artistic process. Years before it led him into self-exile, in the wake of the Russian Revolution, Zamyatin delivered several lectures to young literati at the literary studio of the House of Arts in Petrograd.
“In 1917 he returned to Petersburg and plunged into the seething literary activity that was one of the most astonishing by-products of the revolution in ruined, ravaged, hungry, and epidemic-ridden Russia. He wrote stories, plays, and criticism; he lectured on literature and the writer’s craft; he participated in various literary projects and committees – many of them initiated and presided over by Maxim Gorky – and served on various editorial boards, with Gorky, Blok, Korney Chukovsky, Gumilev, Shklovsky, and other leading writers, poets, critics, and linguists. And very soon he came under fire from the newly ‘orthodox’ – the Proletarian Writers who sought to impose on all art the sole criterion of ‘usefulness to the revolution.’”
— Mirra Ginsburg about the 1919-1921, the period in Zamyatin’s life after he returned from his first exile in England, where he worked as a naval engineer for several years. I decided to translate some parts of his lectures that I found most interesting, add some footnotes, including graphical and extra quotations.