The hidden dialogue between Lukacs and Bakhtin in the context of Socialist Realism — The Poetics of the genre in the perspective of a long time

The subject of research in this article is the hidden dialogue between the philosophical and literary theories of Mikhail Bakhtin and Gyorgy Lukacs, which unfolded against the background of the formation and development of socialist realism. The focus is on the analysis of how, by polemicizing with the teleological premises underlying Lukacs' system and the Socialist realist doctrine, Bakhtin forms his concept of the poetics of the novel in the perspective of "big time." The research focuses on contrasting approaches to understanding genre, where Lukacs, relying on the philosophy of history, builds a linear and teleological model of genre development, culminating in socialist realism, and Bakhtin, entering into a hidden polemic, develops anti-ideological, space-time poetics. Special attention is paid to how Bakhtin, shifting the focus from historical philosophy to the text level, offers a dialogic interpretation of genres in which each of them, including the novel and the epic, appears as a unique and eternal way of understanding the world, coexisting and interacting within the framework of the "big time", rather than striving for a historical conclusion.   The research methodology is based on the analysis of Lukacs and Bakhtin's texts, with an emphasis on revealing hidden dialogical connections between their theories, especially in the context of the formation and development of the literary theory of socialist realism. The article uses a comparative method, exploring various aspects of genre poetics (including chronotopes, genre types, and the roles of writers) in the works of both authors. The scientific novelty of this study lies in the identification and analysis of the hidden dialogue between Bakhtin and Lukacs, which is not limited to comparing their views on the novel and the epic, but reveals fundamental differences in their approaches to understanding the historical process and the role of the literary genre. In contrast to Lukacs' teleological concept, which considers the development of genres as a linear process aimed at a specific goal, the study demonstrates the innovative nature of Bakhtin's anti-ideological poetics, which asserts eternal coexistence and dialogue between genres. In particular, the work shows that in Bakhtin's concept of “big time,” a genre that is not tied to a specific historical epoch does not act as a means of expression, but as a way of discovering and understanding the world itself, gaining its significance in dialogue with other genres.

social realism, Lukacs, Bakhtin, big time, the poetics of the genre, dialogue, teleology, antitheleology, chronotope, historicism