March is amazingly rich for literary holidays: in the first month of spring, the World Poetry Day, the World Writer’s Day, and the Day of Orthodox book are all celebrated.
“Poetry is a fire that kindles in the human soul. This fire burns, warms and illuminates… A real poet burns involuntarily and with suffering, and burns others,” Leo Tolstoy said.
At all times, poets and writers sought to find the answers to eternal questions about human existence. Patriotic poetry called for changes in the social system, dreaming of a just and perfect world order. The poets of the “art for art’s sake” kept aloof from social themes, considering artistic creativity as having intrinsic value; improving poetic technique, expanding the possibilities of the word, they called for admiration of the world reflected in poetry.
And the great Russian novelists of the 19th century, who created the works of enormous artistic power, revealed the dialectics of the human soul, developed Russian literature into a truly unique phenomenon that the world never ceases to admire and that continues to inspire writers of our day.
It would be appropriate here to cite the statement of the remarkable Soviet poet and translator Samuil Marshak: “Literature needs talented readers, just as much as talented writers. It is on them, on these talented, sensitive, imaginative readers, that the author counts when they extend all their mental strength in search of the right image, the right change of events, the right word. The artistic author takes on only part of the work. The rest must be supplemented by the imagination of the artistic reader.”
