The dream of a better way to live: The New Man in English, German and Russian literature of the early twentieth century

Whereas utopian literature posits that people will be happier when society is well ordered, New Man literature starts with the assumption that mankind is the cause of disorder in society. To achieve a better society, we must first improve human nature. In this study, I examine how five European authors, representing three cultures and spanning the first three decades of the twentieth century, use the character of the New Man to criticize contemporary social issues. The specific New Man which we find in each of the five works is formed by the social context of that culture and the particular political views of the author.;The authors of New Man literature lay out what exactly is lacking in humanity through their portrayal of a different and “better” humanity. The change which George Bernard Shaw proposes in Man and Superman is that humans increase their potential for contemplation and self-awareness by means of a quasi-Lamarckian program of eugenics. Georg Kaiser in Von morgens bis mitternachts (From Morning to Midnight) and Bertolt Brecht in Baal advocate humans tapping into the purer roots of their nature, to live more vitally and to free themselves from the confines of narrow social convention. Mikhail Bulgakov in Sobach' serdtse (Heart of a Dog) and Yury Olesha in Zavist' (Envy) warn against focusing too closely on only a few aspects of humanity, especially against focusing too closely on humanity's newness, and they point to the contributions which old-fashioned men like Preobrazhensky or social misfits like Kavalerov and Ivan can make to society. Above all, these five authors take to task the dominant social group of their country—the middle class in England, the Bildungsbürgertum in Germany, and the supposed proletarian society in Bolshevik Russia—for its subhuman failings, and they propose the better kind of human necessary to rectify these flaws.