Poshlust

by Chris Abraham on 25/07/2005 · 1 comment

Thank you, Vladamir and David, for the Russian term, postlust, “corn trash, vulgar clichés, Philistinism in all its phases, imitations of imitations, bogus profundities, crude, moronic, and dishonest pseudo-literature.”


“‘Poshlust’, or in a better transliteration, poshlost, has many nuances, and evidently I have not described them clearly enough in my little book on Gogol, if you think you can ask anybody if he is tempted by poshlost. Corn trash, vulgar clichés, Philistinism in all its phases, imitations of imitations, bogus profundities, crude, moronic, and dishonest pseudo-literature – these are obvious examples. Now, if we want to pin down poshlost in contemporary writing, we must look for it in Freudian symbolism, moth-eaten mythologies, social comment, humanistic messages, political allegories, overconcern with class or race, and the journalistic generalities we all know.”

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • email
  • Fark
  • Identi.ca
  • LinkedIn
  • Live
  • MySpace
  • Netvibes
  • NewsVine
  • Ping.fm
  • Reddit
  • Slashdot
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati
  • FriendFeed
  • HelloTxt
  • PDF
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • MSN Reporter
  • Print
  • SphereIt
  • Suggest to Techmeme via Twitter
  • Tumblr

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

1 Faust 25/07/2005 at 13:44

Just allow me to point out that it is not derrived from either the word posh or lust. The etymology behind posh (actually an acronym) is very interesting. Look it up.

Reply

Leave a Comment

You can use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

By submitting a comment here you grant this site a perpetual license to reproduce your words and name/web site in attribution.

Previous post:

Next post: