The poet Blok once wrote about the 'gloomy roll-call' in Russian history of tyrants and executioners, 'and opposite them a single bright name - Pushkin'. Quite true. But to put it like that is the equivalent of a single bright name outside the cinema - Omar Sharif as Dr Zhivago. The Russians have a word for the process - poshlost. This is not vulgarity, which is a good honest affair, but a factitious emphasis placed where none should exist, the facile forcing into expression and standardisation of what can only be true at the level of private, exploratory feeling. Television and advertising, politics and journalism, are the natural homes of poshlost, where it has its proper uses and its presence is so much taken for granted as to be relatively benign. Though bad art may embody poshlost, its pretensions are usually harmless and recognisable: worse things happen when good art is taken up by poshlost, and has the kind of qualities which it can take over.

LRB 15 September 1983 | PDF Download