Lev Natanovich Lunts
Lev Natanovich Lunts was a Russian writer born in St. Petersburg in 1901, to a family with a background in music and science. He graduated with honors from high school and later studied Romance and Germanic languages at Petrograd University, where he became involved in the cultural movements of the time. Following the Russian Revolution, Lunts worked as a secretary in the theater section of the People's Commissariat of Education and became part of the Disk group, which was focused on literary production rather than translation. Influenced by prominent literary figures like Viktor Shklovsky and Yevgeni Zamiatin, Lunts embraced the Formalist movement, emphasizing literary form and technique. He co-founded the Serapion Brotherhood, a group that advocated for artistic autonomy and skill in writing, and he published essays and creative works that often grappled with the complexities of revolution and humanity. Lunts's most notable work, "Vne zakona," explores themes of anarchism and tyranny. His life was tragically cut short in 1924 due to health complications, and his early death spared him from the political pressures that would later affect his contemporaries. Today, his papers are housed at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book Collection, although complete works in English remain unavailable.
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Lev Natanovich Lunts
Writer
- Born: April 19, 1901
- Birthplace: St. Petersburg, Russia
- Died: May 9, 1924
- Place of death: Hamburg, Germany
Biography
Lev Natonovich Lunts was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1901 to Natan Iakovlevich, a pharmacist and dealer in scientific instruments, and Anna Efimovna, a talented pianist. The middle child of three, he had a delicate constitution, reading adventure stories voraciously as a child. He graduated from high school in 1918 with gold medal honors, and then enrolled in what had become Petrograd University, studying Romance and Germanic languages. He graduated with good grades in January, 1922.
In 1919, two years after the Bolsheviks overthrew the czarist government, Lunts was a secretary in the theater section of the People’s Commissariat of Education. He later joined a group of writers being trained to translate literary texts. The writers, however, were more interested in producing their own writing, forming a group working in the Disk, or House of Arts. Two teacher-writers were particularly influential to the young Lunts: Viktor Shklovosky and Yevgeni Zamiatin. Both were exponents of Formalism, a literary movement focusing on literary form and technique. In this, they stood against the Bolshevik concentration on message and social commentary, but at this stage of the revolution, political ideas were still fluid, without the strict party line prevalent in the late 1920’s.
Russia’s leading writer, Maxim Gorky, provided the group with jobs, food, and accommodation. Lunts wrote five essays for the cultural journal Z’hizn iskusstva, asserting his Formalist ideas, and three creative works, the best known being Vne zakona, a novel which first appeared in a journal in 1923. The novel is about a Spanish anarchist protagonist, whose anarchy turns to tyranny. Several of Lunts’s creative pieces examine how idealistic revolution still needs the human dimension, otherwise all law and order are lost. The Bolshevik criticized this idea, considering it counterrevolutionary.
In 1921, Lunts and a small group of Disk writers formed the Serapionovy brat’ia (Serapion Brotherhood), named after the German Romantic E.T.A.Hoffman’s fictional group of writers. It is largely through this brotherhood that Lunts is remembered today. The group focused on learning the skills and techniques of writing and believed in the autonomy of all art. Group members published an almanac and gave public readings. For the 1922 almanac, Lunts submitted a story based on the Israelite exodus, one of the few clues to his secular Jewish upbringing, followed by “Rodina” in 1923, a science-fiction story of the Babylonian captivity. Other offerings from this period include several screenplays for the silent movies, often surrealistic, and various satires. In 1922, he made his most polemic statement under the guise of an autobiographical notice, “Pochemu my Serapionovy Brat’ia” (Why We Are the Serapion Brothers), where again he makes the plea for a work of art to be judged solely on its artistry.
Lunts had an accident that set off a period of ill health. A stay in Germany for medical treatment was unsuccessful, though he did manage to continue writing. He died of an embolism in Hamburg, Germany, in 1924. His early death precluded him from having to either compromise with the Russian government or go into exile, the fate of other members of the Serapion Brotherhood during the administration of Russian leader Joseph Stalin. Lunts’s papers have been gathered together in the Beinecke Rare Book Collection at Yale University, though no complete works in English as yet exists.