If we divide the globe into two halves, the western and eastern hemispheres, we will
notice that the majority of literary works produced in the eastern hemisphere are not
amenable to criticism. There are exceptions, of course, but by the works created in
the eastern hemisphere I mean literary works produced in the Communist Russia, the
Middle East, Africa and the majority of developing countries. The major cause of this
phenomenon is that the rulers, poets and writers of the eastern hemisphere were
followers of Plato who believed that art should have utility - the rulers of the Soviet
Union used to dictate that their writers had to create a kind of art which was at the
service of the Communist Party and propagated communist ideas among the
proletariat. In countries like Iran, intellectuals often favoured communism and
although no one dictated to them how they had to write, under the influence of
communism, they wrote novels in the fashion of Social Realism. Most countries in
the eastern hemisphere had social problems and their writers were dedicated artists
who wanted to enlighten the people through the medium of writing so that they
would revolt against capitalism.
On the contrary, in the western hemisphere and especially beginning with the
First World War, fiction in particular and literature in general went through a drastic
upheaval and writers began to pay especial attention to "subjective" issues. They
became the followers of Aristotle imd loved to manipulate language by literary
devices. Such writers like Kafka, Joyce, Faulkner, and Eliot deliberately refused to
communicate with their readers and consequently were called "decadent" by the
critics of the eastern hemisphere. As long as the communists were in power, their
works were banned and were never translated into Russian.