or () is a pejorative Russian word for amorality, vulgarity, a lack of originality, and/or bad taste. It has been cited as an example of a so-called untranslatable word, because there is no exact single-word English equivalent. It carries much cultural baggage in Russia and has been discussed at length by various writers.

It is derived from the adjective (), which may describe a negative human character trait, a manmade object, or an idea.

Description

Svetlana Boym defines poshlost as "obscenity and bad taste". She says:

It has also been defined as "petty evil or self-satisfied vulgarity".

In his novels, Turgenev "tried to develop a heroic figure who could, with the verve and abandon of a Don Quixote, grapple with the problems of Russian society, who could once and for all overcome '', the complacent mediocrity and moral degeneration of his environment". Dostoevsky applied the word to the Devil; Solzhenitsyn, to Western-influenced young people.

D. S. Mirsky was an early user of the word in English in writing about Gogol; he defined it as "'self-satisfied inferiority,' moral and spiritual".

Another literary treatment is Fyodor Sologub's novel The Petty Demon. It tells the story of a provincial schoolteacher, Peredonov, notable for his complete lack of redeeming human qualities. James H. Billington said of it:

Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov made the term more widely known in his book on Gogol, where he romanized it as "" (punningly: "posh" + "lust"). , Nabokov explained, "is not only the obviously trashy but mainly the falsely important, the falsely beautiful, the falsely clever, the falsely attractive. A list of literary characters personifying will include... Polonius and the royal pair in Hamlet, Rodolphe and Homais from Madame Bovary, Laevsky in Chekhov's 'The Duel', Joyce's Marion [Molly] Bloom, young Bloch in Search of Lost Time, Maupassant's 'Bel Ami', Anna Karenina's husband, and Berg in War and Peace". Nabokov also listed: In a New York Times piece about Fyodor Dostoevsky, whom he considered an exemplar of , Nabokov further characterized it as being "cheap," "sham," "smutty," "highfalutin," and "in bad taste."

Nabokov often targeted in his own work; the Alexandrov definition above of "petty evil or self-satisfied vulgarity" refers to the character of M'sieur Pierre in Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading.

See also

• Kitsch

• Middlebrow

References

Bibliography

• The original interview, with Herbert Gold in the October 1967 issue of the Paris Review, is available on line, and an extract is available in a Time article (Dec. 1, 1967) about the interview.