literary process in the first sense it means the literary life of a certain country and era, in the second - centuries-old development of literature on a global, worldwide scale. It is the second meaning of this concept that will be discussed.
Obviously, literary creativity is subject to change as history moves. In the composition of the culture, which includes literature, individualized and dynamic phenomena, on the one hand, and universal, transtemporal static structures, called topic, on the other side. The topic is heterogeneous. Invariably present in literary work types of emotional state(sublime, tragic, laughter, etc.), moral and philosophical problems(good and evil, truth and beauty) « eternal themes”, an arsenal of art forms- all these are constants of world literature, that is, topoi, constituting the fund of continuity, without which the literary process would be impossible.
as stages literary process stand out literature ancient, medieval, modern with their own stages (following the Renaissance - baroque, classicism, Enlightenment and sentimentalism, romanticism, realism, naturalism, symbolism, futurism, etc.).
Ancient and medieval literature characterized by the prevalence of works with non-artistic functions, the widespread existence of anonymity, the predominance of oral folk art over writing, which resorted more to the recording of oral traditions and previously created texts than to writing. An important feature of ancient and medieval literatures was also the presence in the texts of bizarre alloys of "one's own" and "alien", and as a result, the blurring of the boundaries between original and translated literature. AT new time Literature becomes a purely artistic phenomenon, writing becomes the dominant form of verbal art, individual authorship is activated, and the development of literature acquires much greater dynamism.
debatable question geographical boundaries Renaissance. Some consider him global phenomenon, recurring and varying both in the West and in the East. Others believe that there was only one Renaissance - specific, unique - in Italian culture.
Veselovsky, as the founder of historical poetics, identified three major stages in the development of world literature:
- first stage- (“archaic”, from the ancient Stone Age to the 7th-6th centuries BC in Greece and the first centuries AD in the East) - syncretism, not yet complicated, a holistic view of the world, influence folklore tradition, the predominance of mythopoetic consciousness;
- second stage- (“traditionalist”, from the VI-V centuries BC in Greece and the first centuries AD in the East to the second half of XVIII in. in Europe and turn XIX-XX centuries in the East) - the traditionalism of artistic consciousness, the orientation of authors to pre-made forms of speech, dependence on genre canons;
- third stage- (“individual-author's”, from the second half of the 18th century in Europe and the turn of the 19th-20th centuries in the East to the present day) - the primacy of individual creative artistic consciousness. The poetics of the author, who has freed himself from the "fetters" of genre and style prescriptions, dominates. The literary process is closely connected "simultaneously with the personality of the writer and the reality surrounding him."
The term is used to characterize the literary process. « literary direction». Consider its main historical forms:
- baroque. Pomp, a tendency to allegorism, allegorism, complex metaphor, a combination of comic and tragic, an abundance of stylistic decorations in artistic speech. Such features were associated with disappointment in the Renaissance, the emergence of tragic moods. Representatives: Simeon Polotsky.
- classicism. Regulatory system. Appeal to ancient art as the highest example and reliance on tradition high renaissance. Reflection of the idea of a harmonious structure of society. Conflicts of personality and society, ideal and reality, feeling and reason. Strict organization, balance, clarity and harmony of images. Of interest to classicism is only the eternal, unchanging - in each phenomenon, he seeks to recognize only essential, typological features, discarding random individual features. Classicism takes many rules and canons from ancient art. Representatives: N. Boileau, M. V. Lomonosov, A. P. Sumarokov, P. Corneille;
- Education. Includes intellectual direction and sentimentalism. It took from Descartes, the founder of rationalism, the idea that the mind is omnipotent, and Enlightenment and education can free from all kinds of unfreedom. The intellectual direction promotes the cult of reason and hope for its saving power. Sentimentalism interprets the human personality as responsive, capable of compassion, humane, kind, possessing high moral principles. Representatives: G. E. Lessing, D. Diderot, D. Swift, N. I. Novikov, A. N. Radishchev, J. J. Rousseau (considered in his theory of social contracts that “if there are enlightened enlighteners and people, then nothing they should not agree”), N. M. Karamzin;
- romanticism. normative system. Here there is already a disappointment in the rationalist concept of the Enlightenment, an individual-authorial stage is being created. Attention to the individual as a spiritual being with inner world independent of the conditions of existence and historical circumstances. The originality of such a personality is defined by the concept of "romance", which Belinsky characterized as a type of mentality, manifested in a breakthrough to the better, the sublime, the intimate life of a person, from which all aspirations for the better, the sublime rise, trying to find satisfaction in the ideals created by fantasy. Within itself, romanticism was decomposed into civil and religious-ethical. Representatives: D. Byron, V. A. Zhukovsky, A. S. Pushkin, K. F. Ryleev, V. Hugo, Stendhal;
- realism. Active demythologization. The image of heroes as a product of certain socio-historical circumstances national life. Heroes act according to the characteristics of their social characters created by the social relations of their country and era. The romantic self-worth of the individual is preserved, but in relation to the real life circumstances. Representatives: O. de Balzac, G. Flaubert, C. Dickens, W. Thackeray;
- socialist realism. Aggressively implanted political power in the USSR, countries socialist camp. Reliance on the forms of depiction of traditional realism, but in essence - opposition to the worldview of most writers of the 19th century. Comprehension of life in its revolutionary development towards socialism and communism. Representatives: M. Gorky, V. Mayakovsky, M. A. Sholokhov, A. T. Tvardovsky.
- modernism(includes symbolism, acmeism, futurism, imagism, expressionism, etc.). The maximum free self-disclosure of the authors, their persistent desire to update artistic language, to make the impression of the poetic text more refined, focusing on the cultural and historically distant, rather than on the reality close to the writer. Representatives: F. Kafka, B. Brecht, M. Proust, E. Hemingway, T. Mann.
- postmodernism. He promoted the idea that the center and the periphery change places, that the world is multicultural, and activated interest in everything national. The perception of the world as chaos, devoid of causal relationships and value orientations. Hence the tendency to depict the unconscious, random in the behavior of the characters, the predominance of the ugly over the normative, the abundance of irony in the perception of any phenomena of life, the assertion of emptiness. Representatives: V. Nabokov, D. Fowles, B. Akunin, I. Brodsky, V. Pelevin, V. Sorokin.
Despite the recurrence of literary phenomena in world literature, it has a place to be and regional, state, national originality. The culture of mankind has symphonic character: each national culture with its distinctive features plays the role of a certain instrument necessary for the full sounding of the orchestra. The Beginnings of Essential Proximity Between Literature different countries and eras are named convergences- typological similarities. The unifying role is played by international literary connections (influence- the impact on literary work of previous worldviews, ideas, artistic principles and borrowing- the use by the writer of single plots, motives, text fragments, speech turns etc.)
Perhaps the largest phenomenon in the field of international literary relations of modern times is Europeanization, the intensive impact of Western European experience on other regions. Negative side Such a phenomenon is considered to be the erosion of the national cultural color of the country in which Europeanization comes. On the other hand, its positive consequence is organic compound began primordial and assimilated from outside.
, Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor
Department of Philological Education
and interdisciplinary integration LOIRO
World Literary Process: Basic Terms and Concepts
The formation of a holistic worldview of students is successfully taking place in the process of studying literature as a global literary process. Need systems approach in solving this problem determines the importance of considering the spectrum of problems related to the concept of the world literary process, its terms and concepts ( national literature, world literature, world literary process; dynamics and stability in the composition of world literature, stages in the development of world literature, literary connections, etc.). In the field of our attention is a complex of problems related to the comprehension of the world literary process in school literary criticism.
It is necessary to clarify the term "national literature". Today under national literature Literature is understood as expressing the self-consciousness of the people. And it is from these positions that it should be considered in school literary criticism.
World (world) literature - a concept covering the entire set of literatures of the world; its main content is the literary process on the scale of world history
The origins of the problem were laid down in Dante Alighieri's treatise "On the Monarchy" (), suggesting the existence of some kind of global cultural process. The first attempts to comprehend this process were made in the 17th century in French aesthetic thought (a dispute between the ancient and the new).
The term "world (world) literature" belongs to the one who used it in a conversation with Eckerman. Goethe's concept assumed the inherent value of each of the constituent (national) parts of the world literary process. The concept was largely prepared by Herder, his teacher. Herder argued the equivalence of various historical eras culture and literature. (“Ideas of the philosophy of the history of mankind”, 1784-91). For Herder, art is a link in the chain historical process. He approached the idea of world literature through the assertion of national identity and national dignity.
F. Schiller put forward the concept of "world history" as universal, universal. Hegel owns the concept of the world soul and the world spirit. Ahead of time, Schiller in the 18th century considered as the eve of the merging of hotel nations into a single human community (“What is world history and for what purpose they study it”, 1789), and he liked to call himself, as one of his heroes, the Marquis of Pose (“Don Carlos”, 1783-87), “a citizen of the world”.
In the concept of "universality" of the early German Romantics, also in general form the idea of world culture is expressed (eg, Wakenroder. Fantasies about Art, 1799). After the beginning of publications of courses of national literatures (English, German, French, Italian) in the 18th century, courses of European literatures began to be created, considering the literary phenomena of different countries as a single stream. F. Schlegel in the years. lectured on the history of European literature. He had already asserted that one literature invariably leads to another, for literatures are not only successively, but side by side, one great, closely connected whole. In the works of Novalis and Tiek, the motifs of Eastern and Western literature are intertwined.
Accumulating the experience of the Enlightenment and early romanticism, Goethe created his own concept of world literature. But its emergence was connected, however, with the advent of modern times. The one-sided influence of one literature on another was replaced by the mutual influence of literatures. In this connection Special attention was given to the connecting role of translators.
The concept of world literature was enriched by the era of romanticism and consolidated in the 20th century, when interethnic literary contacts expanded and when the presence of facts of mutual influence and typology of correspondences in the world cultural process became obvious.
Get full textBy the beginning of the 20th century, three main interpretations of the concept of world literature had crystallized:
1. Simple sum all works, from primitive songs of primitive tribes to diverse forms artistic creativity modern highly developed peoples.
2. Chosen from the literary wealth of all nations over narrow circle works the highest level, included in the world treasury of fiction (a view close to the romantics and vulnerable in that the criteria for such selection are difficult to establish and, moreover, changeable).
3. The process of mutual influence and mutual enrichment of literatures, which occurs only at a certain stage in the development of civilization (Goethe's view).
- World Literature as the Literature of the Regions of a Common Language (Hellenic East, Latin West) World Literature as a Community of National-Typical Manifestations – Regardless of Influences and Cultural Exchanges.
The latter understanding of the term, although we must take it into account, however, loses sight of the internal laws of world literature. They will be discussed below.
The next important term is literary process . It is interpreted as a historical movement of national and world fiction developing in complex connections and interactions.
The literary process is a set of generally significant changes in literary life(both in the work of writers and in the literary consciousness of society), that is, the dynamics of literature in a large historical time.
Units of the world literary process are: literary movement, literary direction, art system, international literary communities, artistic method.
Dynamics and stability as part of
world literature - following characteristics world literary process.
Forms (types) of the movement of literature in time are heterogeneous. It belongs to him as forward movement(the steady increase in the personal principle in literary creativity, the weakening of the canonical principles of genre formation, the expansion of the range of choice of forms by the writer), and cyclic changes(fixed in the theories of Dm. Chizhevsky and the rhythmic alternation of primary and secondary styles).
The literary process is characterized by the alternation of periods of prosperity and rise (“classical” stages of national literatures), with crises, times of stagnation and decline.
The world literary process is characterized by both temporary, local phenomena, and transtemporal, static (constant) topics.
Topeka (from other Greek topos - place, space) - universal, transtemporal, static structures in the culture; constants of world literature. We list the main ones: types of emotional mood (sublime, tragic, laughter, etc.), moral and philosophical problems (good and evil, truth and beauty), "eternal themes" associated with mythological meanings, moral phenomena and philosophical situations , sustainable motives and eternal images, as well as an arsenal of universally significant art forms (style and genre). Topeka constitutes a fund of literary continuity, which is rooted in the archaic and is replenished from era to era.
The world literary process is characterized stadiality. In modern literary criticism, there are three stages of the world literary process .
The first stage is “the mythopoetic artistic consciousness of the archaic period”, or, as the authors of the concept called it, “poetics without poetics”. Literature exists in the form of folklore. Mythopoeic consciousness prevails. There is no reflection on verbal art. Not literary criticism, theoretical studies, artistic programs.
The second stage (the middle of the 1st millennium BC - the middle of the 18th century) is the “traditionalist artistic consciousness”, “the poetics of style and genre”. This stage is characterized by "orientation to pre-made forms of speech that meet the requirements of rhetoric and are dependent on genre canons." Gradually there is a "transition from the impersonal beginning to the personal", literature acquires a secular character.
Finally, the third stage (mid-18th century - ...), it lasts to this day. It is characterized by "individual creative artistic consciousness", or "author's poetics". With the advent of romanticism as a new type of artistic consciousness and artistic practice on the literary arena, there is a “liberation from the genre and style prescriptions of rhetoric”, “literature is moving closer to human being”, the “epoch of individual author's styles” begins.
Based on the theory of the dialogue of cultures, the interconnected study of Russian and foreign literature today is a necessary condition for the formation of a holistic view of the world literary process within the framework of school course literature. Which, in turn, contributes to the formation of a holistic philosophical approach to reality.
In literature lessons, students get acquainted with the heritage major poets, playwrights, prose writers, whose works have entered the treasury of world culture, have become the common property of mankind. The national originality of native literature cannot be comprehended outside the broad context of world literature. To carry out this task allows the interconnected study of Russian and foreign literature.
Get full textAt the same time, a deep understanding by the teacher of the main characteristics of the world literary process is necessary: an idea of its content, units, stages, dynamics and stability, unity and national originality of the literatures of the world.
International literary connections
The unity of the world literary process is determined by the links between individual literatures. Literary ties in the context of cultural ties existed between peoples, countries, continents from the very beginning. All over literary history of mankind, world literature was formed as a whole, which is in continuous formation and development. It is especially important to comprehend the development of world literature as a systemic unity. This is not a mechanistic sum of the literatures of individual peoples, but a polysyllabic phenomenon considered in internal relations and interrelations of its parts, patterns of development. The most important evidence of commonality literary development humanity in the era of its new and recent history- a uniform change of methods and styles in the literatures of different peoples.
In the process of school teaching, the development of literature at all stages should be studied, on the one hand, on the basis of considering the literary phenomenon as an element public consciousness certain social group and epochs in a particular country, and, on the other hand, in correlating a literary phenomenon with the movement of the entire world literary process.
The teacher needs to understand the nature of literary relationships. With a variety of classifications, it is most expedient to distinguish them from the standpoint of the method of implementation. Relationships and correspondences in the literary processes of various national cultures can be the result of contact connections, genetic affinity, literary transplantation, typological convergence.
ü Literary contacts- connections in which there is direct contact between aesthetic ideas or literary works. Belonging to a certain national culture determines the peculiarities of the perception and interpretation of the phenomenon foreign literature.
Here it is appropriate to bring next opinion famous literary critic “Naming the names of Byron, Walter Scott, Dickens, George Sand, we recall the writers, without whom the composition of Russian literature of the 19th century would have been significantly different. Without Byron, there would not have been, at least in the same form, "Prisoner of the Caucasus" and "Gypsies", "Demon" and "Mtsyri" and a number of romantic poems of the 20s and 30s; Without Walter Scott, we would not have had The Captain's Daughter and Dubrovsky, Taras Bulba and Prince Serebryany, not to mention the historical novels of Zagoskin, Lazhechnikov and others.
ü genetic affinity presupposes the existence of a single source of literary phenomena. For example, common ancient sources European literatures, the ascent to the drama of Tirso de Molina of numerous national versions of the story of Don Giovanni, as well as folk and literary tales with similar subjects (see below), etc.
ü Literary transplantation– transfer of essential phenomena of foreign literature and their assimilation. An example is Old Russian literature, its perception of elements of Byzantine culture. (see, for example, Ostromir Gospel)
ü Typological similarities- an obligatory consequence of the fundamental unity of the development of human culture and necessary condition implementation of contact links between national literatures. For example, the spontaneous generation of similar fairy tale plots in the literatures of the East and West (for example, "Golden Fish" - a Chinese folk tale, a Russian folk tale about a helper fish, indian fairy tale about the cutting-assistant, "The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish").
Typological convergence is not only a type of literary connections. This, which is especially important, is the fundamental principle of the unity of world literature. Here are two examples of typological similarities that will be of great interest to both the teacher and the students. We will talk about the phenomena of the history of literature, which will complement the picture of the world literary process in the minds of students.
The classic plot of the comparative history of literature - Faust in Goethe and Pushkin - is the first of them. The image of Faust in two the greatest poets became, in a way, the result of the Enlightenment. And in this case, scientists to this day have not been able to unequivocally answer the question - typological or contact literary connections here became the basis for the similarity of images.
Summarizing the experience of the previous generation of leading researchers of the work of Pushkin and Goethe, among which the academician’s research is the most important, he proposes this task for solving high school students attending elective course on foreign literature. cornerstone The researcher of the problem means the question: “Did Pushkin know about the intention of the second part of Faust when (probably) in the summer of 1825 he wrote The New Scene between Faust and Mephistopheles”? Or did he, independently of Goethe, arrive at a similar interpretation of the story about Faust?
The exact date of Pushkin's first acquaintance with Goethe's work is still unknown, however, it must be remembered that in 1820, for the first version of The Prisoner of the Caucasus, lines from Goethe's Faust, written in German, were taken as an epigraph.
Get full textGoethe considered the second part of Faust while working on the first part in 1824, but completed it only after 1824. It is possible that when starting the second part of Faust, Goethe heard from one of the Russian travelers about working with the same subject, which he was extremely interested in. Pushkin created the "Scene from Faust" in Mikhailovsky in 1826, it was published in 1828 in the "Moscow Bulletin".
Alekseev devoted a thorough study to this problem. However, it remained unresolved. Goethe and Pushkin, almost at the same time, came to the same solution story about Faust. Their common motif is Faust on the seashore.
It is on the seashore that Faust becomes for Pushkin “a symbol of the fate of a Western European man, a representative of a new cultural era". offers this leitmotif, Faust as a symbol of cultural destiny, to make the basis for comparison. Following M. Epstein, who drew a parallel between Goethe's "Faust" and Pushkin's "The Bronze Horseman", we note the commonality in the images of Faust and Peter. Both of them are elemental transformers. Although the Bronze Horseman was completed a year after Goethe's death, in 1833, its design dates back to 1824, the year of the St. Petersburg flood. This event aroused keen interest in both Pushkin and Goethe.
However, the year 1824 has another important meaning for world culture - it is the year of Byron's death. The heroes of the poets go to the sea, which was perceived as a Byronic element. Poets responded to the death of the greatest of romantics almost immediately. Pushkin created “To the Sea” (July 16-31, 1824), where there were lines later crossed out by censorship: “The fate of the earth is the same everywhere: / Where a drop of goodness is, there is on guard / Enlightenment is a tyrant ...”. This variant, as he claims, is connected with the lines from Childe Harold, translated by Batyushkov from the Italian interlinear in 1828: the sea - what will it appropriate for itself?
Work hard, build huge ships ... ". Batyushkov broke off his translation at the point where Byron sees an enlightened person as a "vain tyrant", whose activity is doomed in the face of the elements. When Pushkin in the poem "To the Sea" brought the Enlightenment and the tyrant closer together, he did so following Byron's thought, changing its outcome: Enlightenment and tyranny seemed to him stronger than the elements.
For Goethe and Pushkin, Faust on the seashore symbolizes the end of the era of romanticism imbued with the name of Byron, the era of utopias and disappointments in them. An era came when the concept of "Enlightenment" returned, but it was no longer connected with freedom, equality, fraternity, but with tyranny - the arbitrariness of a person whose activity has lost its moral meaning.
For Goethe, the motif of the sea appears in act IV of the second part - "Mountainous area". At the end of the previous act Beautiful Elena and Faust part after the death of their son Euphorion, in whose dead face the face of Byron showed through. When looking at the sea, Faust for the first time has an idea about the transformation of the elements, the violation of its repetitive useless course. With the help of Mephistopheles, he conquers the coast and in act V - "Open Country" - begins grandiose construction. The victims are Philemon and Baucis, the patriarchal couple and the Wanderer (in Ovid's Metamorphoses, the source of the plot, an unrecognized god was hiding behind this image). The realization of utopia begins with a human tragedy. The transducer is blind spiritually, this becomes a metaphor at the end of the tragedy, where Faust really goes blind.
The finale of the tragedy was written in the year of Goethe's death (1832), seven years later than Pushkin's scene. Shaitanov believes: "if we compare Pushkin's Faust with the hero of Goethe, then he could be like that after the first part of the tragedy." This is a farewell to the sea, Odessa, Byron, romanticism, bringing boredom to the state of universal denial, to the point of self-elimination of it. This essence is reduced by the words of Mephistopheles. Pushkin's Faust is different from Goethe's Faust - he passed the test and temptation of romantic boredom, he is disappointed.
But there are similarities in these images. Disappointment in activity is a motive that arises on the seashore. In Pushkin's "Scene from Faust" this motive is the thought, the mood of the hero, similar to the Byronic hero. Goethe in "Faust" rises to a great historical height, a position that Pushkin will take in " The Bronze Horseman". Faust and The Bronze Horseman raise the question of the consequences of free man and the moral limits of his freedom. Be that as it may, the greatest artists of the two national cultures expressed the worldview common to Russian and European literature.
One of numerous examples typological convergence in the culture of the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. can serve as a common worldview of artists belonging to different national cultures who did not have the opportunity to get to know each other personally, or even to get to know each other's works.
Alexander Blok, analyzing Madness, said that “it resembles modern painting - some strange monster with glassy eyes forever gazing into the clouds buried in the fiery sands. At the same time, Blok quotes Tyutchev’s lines: “Where the vault of heaven merged with the charred earth / Merged like smoke, - / There, in cheerful carelessness / Pitiful madness lives. / Under the hot rays, / Buried in the fiery sands, / It is with glass eyes / Looking for something in the clouds<…>"Madness" (1830)
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Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (1, "Peace"
One gets the impression that Blok is describing a picture of Čiurlionis that he had not seen before. This was accurately established by M. Roziner, a researcher of the work of the Lithuanian composer and artist. But general feeling era, foreshadowing the tragedy of the coming twentieth century, served as the starting point for its figurative representation by Blok and Čiurlionis. This is how the typological connections of cultures are manifested.
Identification and analysis of literary interactions allows you to realize internal unity world literature and national originality of native literature.
Literary encyclopedia of terms and concepts / Ch. comp. . M., 2003.S. 149-151.
Big literary encyclopedia for schoolchildren and students / Krasovsky V. E et al. M .: Slovo, 2003. S. 419.
Literary encyclopedia of terms and concepts. / Ch. comp. . M., 2003.S.467-471
See more: Panchenko and cultural distance// Historical Poetics: Results and Perspectives of Study. M., 1986. S. 240, 236.
See more: and others. "Categories of Poetics in Shift literary epochs", 1994.
Zhirmunsky in Russian literature. L., 1981. S. 24.
See for more details:, Afanasiev Literature. Methodological advice. M., 2008.
Afanasiev Literature. Methodological advice. M., 2008. P.52.
Glebov Gl. Pushkin and Goethe // Links. II. M., L., 1933. S. 41.
See more: Epstein M. Faust and Peter on the seashore. 1979
Vatsuro Batyushkov's elegy: on the history of the text// Vatsuro commentator. St. Petersburg, 1994, pp. 103-123.
Afanasiev Literature. Methodological advice. M., 2008. P.57.
Block. cit.: V 6 t. M., 1971. T. 6. S. 109.
Lecture 23
HISTORICAL AND LITERARY PROCESS
Literature is a kind of ideology, and like any ideology, it is a reflection of reality in the minds of people, a figurative knowledge of reality, which at the same time contains an element of active influence on this reality. Literature is a historical phenomenon and, consequently, historically changing and developing. We have already said that in the process historical development Literature has an objective and a subjective side. objective side- this is a change in social reality itself, which is reflected in literature; the subjective side is a change in public consciousness, which is due to a change in reality itself. When we talk about changing styles, we are essentially talking about a changing social consciousness.
Like any other form of social consciousness, literature does not develop in a vacuum. no poetwhen not creating empty place he can't look at the world through the eyes of a baby, for whom everything in this world is new, who still knows nothing. The poet always relies on the traditions that have developed in the course of the historical development of literature, on the experience of his predecessors, assimilated by him in the literary school in which he was formed. These traditions and literary school are found both in the attitude of the poet, and in figurative system, in genres, in style, which have developed by the time when the artist creates; all this he somehow uses and modifies in his work.
What does this tradition mean in the history of literature? Let's try to follow this with a few examples. Let's start with Schiller's drama "Cunning and Love". It is known that in its youthful creativity Schiller expressed the third estate ideals of the eve French Revolution, in particular the idea of the natural equality of all people. He fights against class prejudices, class restrictions, class barriers of the old feudal society. For him, this is concretized in a certain theme: love equalizes people; love between people belonging to different classes, divided by class prejudices, breaking these prejudices, these barriers, proves the natural equality of people. Hence the plot of the play "Treachery and Love". A nobleman, an officer who fell in love with a simple, petty-bourgeois girl, fighting for his love, becomes the herald of the natural equality of mankind. These are the impulses from which the play is created. When Schiller brings up this theme, he is acting within a certain tradition: in the tradition of the philistine drama genre, which replaces the old tragedy. high style.
Bourgeois Drama X VIII century, he loves the topic of class inequality very much, and this is no coincidence, because at this time the “third estate” - the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie - is fighting for its rights, for the destruction of estate partitions. The theme of class prejudices, as a prerequisite for a love conflict, for a clash of people belonging to different classes, was a favorite in the petty-bourgeois drama of Schiller's time. But usually it was interpreted in this way: an officer-nobleman, falling into a philistine family, acts as a seducer of a virtuous philistine girl; the unfortunate fate of the seduced and becomes the subject of teaching in the spirit of the new ideas of the bourgeois era. Schiller changes the situation. Ferdinand in his drama is indeed Louise's "seducer" in a sense, a seducer in the sense that he forces her to go beyond the patriarchal family bondage; she loves him, ready to belong to him. But Ferdinand is a positive character, the mouthpiece of the author's ideas, he fights against social prejudices, for his love, for the natural equality of people, in which he believes, although he is a nobleman. Schillerin a new way, in the spirit of those rebellious revolutionary sentiment, which characterize the era of "storm and stress" immediately preceding the French Revolution, reworks the tradition of the petty-bourgeois drama, which until now saw in the nobleman only the seducer of the petty-bourgeois girl. He makes the hero the herald of rebellion against society, but he does it within the framework of existing tradition, the traditions of the genre of petty-bourgeois drama.
Another example is one of the most famous classic German novels: Goethe's Years of Wilhelm Meister (1796). Goethe's theme is the education of the hero. To do this, a person must get rid of the petty provincialism of petty-bourgeois life. He must develop his personality. The main theme of this biographical novel is the upbringing of the personality, its comprehensive development through the knowledge of life; acquiring a variety of life experiences in the course of wandering through life. In that life experience big role play love and art. Consecutive meetings with women reveal different sides mental life hero, contribute to his upbringing, his development. Art liberates man from petty-bourgeois bondage. Serving the Arts Opens the Opportunity comprehensive development personality, which in narrowly practical activities was constrained by bourgeois practicality. Under the conditions of Germany in the 18th century, there was no other way out of philistine life, and only art could free a person, give him the opportunity to fully develop. The basis of Goethe's worldview in this era is an optimistic view of man, characteristic of the ideology of the Enlightenment. The personality develops and is brought up harmoniously, it does not enter into sharp conflicts with environment. As a result of the wanderings of the hero passing through life, he learns to justify life, he comes to terms with reality, finds the opportunity to take his place in this reality, but subordinating his practical activities a lofty idea that revealed to him the meaning of this life. This is how the "educational novel" is built in Goethe's understanding. This is an expression of the worldview of Goethe of the Enlightenment, an era that believed in man, looked optimistically at the possibility of the development of the human personality, at the possibility of its maturation in a collision with life, therefore, gave an optimistic justification for reality.
But how does Goethe portray the education of the individual? Before him stands a very old tradition - the tradition of the wandering novel, where the hero travels through life, travels at the same time in the literal sense - through high road- and worries during his journey whole line adventure. A hero wandering along the high road, who experiences various adventures - such is the plot thread of the old novel of countriesstviya. Also in late XVI and especially in the 17th century arises first in Spain, and then throughout Western Europe the so-called picaresque novel. The hero of the picaresque novel is a rogue servant, a person who usually comes from the lower circles of society, sometimes from the middle circles, who is trying to settle down in life, to make a career. He is the servant of many masters, wanders along the high road, sees the underside of life, and in the end "settles himself" in this life.
In this old adventurous, picaresque novel, realistically depicting the underside of life, psychological characteristic the hero is usually reduced to a minimum. Various kinds of adventures are strung on the personality of a clever seeker of life's happiness, a wandering hero as interesting, entertaining anecdotes. Meanwhile, in the XVIII century, during the Enlightenment, in connection with the growing interest in the personality of a person, in his psychology, a novel of this type is gradually psychologized, an internal motivation appears for what happens to the hero wandering along the high road. As a result of the development of this tradition, Goethe's educational novel arises: it takes a lot from the old novel of wanderings with a hero traveling along a high road, experiencing various meetings, adventures, etc., but now this external, plot frame of the work is comprehended. Each meeting of the hero with people becomes a fact of his "upbringing", his internal growth, the formation of his personality, comprehension of life by this personality, which eventually finds its place in life. The new that the Goethe era brings, the Goethe worldview, finds expression in the rethinking of the genre tradition.
Goethe's later educational novel(Bildungsroman) type "Wilhelm Meister" becomes a model for the novel of the era of German romanticism. But the romantics rethink Goethe's novel in a new way, interpret the theme of love and art in the spirit of a romantic worldview. Love for a romantic reveals the secret of being; art is something that raises a person above petty-bourgeois reality, the highest ideal of a romantic artist. romantic hero passes through life, drawn by an endless longing for the ideal. This "languor" becomes the main content of the novel. Each meeting of the hero in life, each love adventure is a search for an ideal, which, like a mirage, moves away from him as he approaches. Lyrical hero, pouring out his soul in song, in verse, full of loving longing for an unknown beloved, which they are looking for in every woman, passes through this novel, as Wilhelm Meister passes in his wanderings, but the worldview of the hero of the era of romanticism is already different than that of Wilhelm Meister.
This is another example of how, on the one hand, in the novel tradition is preserved, but on the other hand, how the novel is filled with new content that modifies this tradition.
Not only the genre of the work undergoes such changes, but also the images of the characters, and the style of the writer. There are moments in the history of literature when traditions change most dramatically; this happens when a new social force enters the arena of struggle, the bearer of a new worldview, when a new aesthetics appears; new principles of artistic creativity, literary creativity, which find expression in new artistic forms.
Let's take as an example literary revolution in Germany in the early 70s of the XVIII century. This is the time when the young Goethe entered literature, the so-called era of “storm and stress”. Representatives of the new public class, the young bourgeoisie, the leading representatives of the German burgher youth are rebellious, revolutionary. Strong personality comes into conflict with society, with the class traditions and prejudices of the old society, with its philistine morality. Nature and the human personality are opposed to those that bind this personality. public forms, public relations of the old regime. In the field of aesthetics, the slogan is put forward, according to which in art it is not the rules, not the samples, not the traditions that matter, but above all the individuality of the artist. The artist draws his knowledge of the truth directly from nature, which he depicts in his work. The young Goethe is against tradition, against the school, against the rules. “Principles are even more harmful to a genius than to example... School and principles fetter the forces of knowledge and activity,” he writes in Werther. The hero of the novel (the artist, according to the conception of this work) declares: “This strengthened me in the intention to continue not to deviate from nature in anything. She alone is inexhaustibly rich, she alone perfects a great artist.
Direct artistic knowledge of nature, truth, objective reality - such is the task of the artist: "A lot can be said in favor of the rules - the same that can be said in praise of public relations and connections. A person brought up by them (i.e., social rules.- V.Zh-), will never create anything tasteless and bad, just like the one who obeys the laws public life, will never be a nasty neighbor or interesting villain; but, whatever you say, the rules always destroy the true feeling of nature and the true expression of it ... Oh, my friends! why does the stream of genius so rarely break through, so rarely do its waves seethe, shaking the astonished soul? My dear friends! Reasonable and calm people live on both banks. Their arbors and vegetable gardens and beds with tulips would have suffered then: and now they build dams and channels in good time to avoid the coming danger.”
The young Goethe opposes the moral freedom of the human person to social rules, social decorum, in the spirit of rebellious individualism "storm and onslaught". He compares his individualism in the field of morality with individualism in the field of art. Just as rules in life make a person decent in his behavior, but never bring up a genius, so in the field of art, rules can teach something mediocre, but genius breaks through like a stormy stream that blows away dams. From the point of view of the young Goethe of the era of "storm and onslaught", the poet must be guided primarily by his immediate, elemental feeling.
Wenn ihrs nicht fiihlt, ihr werdets nicht erjagen,
Wenn es nicht aus der Seele dringt
Und mit urkraftigem Behagen
Die Herzen aller Horer zwingt...
<.. .>Doch werdet ihr nie Herz zu Herzen schaffen
Wenn es euch nicht von Herzen geht.
(“If you don’t feel yourself, you won’t achieve anything. If it doesn’t press from the depths of your soul and conquer the hearts of your listeners with primitive strength ... You will never merge heart with heart if your words do not come from the heart.” )
Consequently, according to the young Goethe, the work of a brilliant personality, which is guided by nature and feeling, breaks the traditional rules of art.
If classicism, against which the writers of the Sturm und Drang era opposed, recognized in art, first of all, harmonious, ideally beautiful forms, the forms of a beautiful Greek temple, then Goethe comes forward with the principle of “characteristic” in art. Characteristic means individual, peculiar, it means a more realistic approach to reality, in which there are a number of individual, characteristic forms that do not fit into the classicist norms of the ideal-beautiful.
Thus, there is a revolution in the main artistic principles. But this revolution does not at all mean the construction of a new art from scratch. Goethe and his young contemporaries, in their own way, overestimate those writers who were highly valued by the classicists. So, for example, the young Goethe was fond of Homer, but if the classicists saw in Homer, first of all, a model for creating an epic that meets the rules of high style, then Goethe was attracted to Homer by the patriarchchall simplicity and closeness to nature. At the same time, Goethe and his associates turn to literary heritage and find in it samples that are opposed to the samples of art adopted in the era of classicism. Takova folk song with its simplicity, artlessness, direct impact on the feeling; further on - ancient German poetry, especially burgher literature of the 16th century (its largest representative, Hans Sachs, with his naive didactic realism, becomes an example for Goethe's work), but first of all, Shakespeare's dramas become such a model for Goethe. In 1771, Goethe delivers a speech on Shakespeare's memorial day and begins this speech with the following words: “The very first page of Shakespeare that I read captivated me for life, and having overcome his first thing, I stood like a blind man, to whom the miraculous hand suddenly gave sight. And further: “I learned, I vividly felt that my existence had multiplied by infinity, everything was new to me, unknown, and the unfamiliar light hurt my eyes. Without a moment's hesitation, I renounced the theater subject to the rules (that is, the French theater of the era of classicism with its rules of three unities. - V. Zh.). The unity of place seemed to me terrifying, like a dungeon, the unity of action and time - heavy chains that fetter the imagination. I escaped into the fresh air and for the first time felt that I have arms, legs.
Goethe says that Shakespeare “competed with Prometheus, reproduced his people line by line, only on a colossal scale; that is why we do not recognize them as our brothers; and then he revived them with the breath of his spirit, he speaks with their lips, and we will know their relationship. Shakespeare appears to the poet of the era of "stormy aspirations" primarily as the creator of strong personalities.
One could compare Goethe's historical play Goetz von Berlichingen with Shakespeare's chronicles and see from this example how similar and unlike Shakespeare it is, how, learning from Shakespeare and following Shakespeare, Goethe at the same time creates the work of his time.
Let us take, however, another example of international literary influence, more widely known because it school example- the question of Byron's influence on young Pushkin, which is discussed in detail in my book "Byron and Pushkin".
"Prisoner of the Caucasus", "The Fountain of Bakhchisarai" is new type poems that the young Pushkin creates, poems with a modern hero, poems, in their content in the highest stesongs relevant and meeting the needs of the Russian public of that time, a poem that expresses feelings in an epic story modern man, his conflict with society, his disappointment and melancholy caused by the oppressive social relations of the era, the flight of this person from society “to nature” (“Prisoner of the Caucasus”, “Gypsies”), in conditions of simpler, patriarchal social relations (“Renegade of the Light, friend of nature,” Pushkin said about the Caucasian captive; “He wants to be like us, a gypsy; he is pursued by the law,” says Aleko). Moreover, as a result of this conflict, a man of culture, a man of civilization, who wanted to go beyond the framework of social relations familiar to him, in fact turns out to be not a man of nature, but a man of society. “And fatal passions are everywhere, and there is no protection from fate,” the poet comes to this conclusion, talking about the tragedy that is played out in “Gypsies”.
Russian social reality on the eve of the Decembrist uprising and own experience Pushkin was prompted by the images of the Caucasian prisoner, Aleko, that is, the image of the Russian hero, an advanced, revolutionary-minded young man from a noble society. And yet, as you know, Byron's oriental poems served as a model for Pushkin. Pushkin in these years, like all the youth of that time, is fond of the work of Byron, the poet of revolutionary protest in the era of pan-European political reaction after the fall of Napoleon. Byron is the leader of all political opposition literature in Europe at that time. He creates an image of protesting and disappointed modern hero and makes his lyrical poems, his romantic poems, an expression of the inner experiences of this hero. Byron's poem is centered around the image of a hero, through whose mouth the poet himself speaks, a hero who is the bearer of the author's thoughts and experiences. The plot of this poem is not heroic, as in the old epic, but romantic, love. The image of Byron's hero, as is well known, has certain permanent features, both internal and external. The appearance of a Byronian hero: a proud posture, a high pale forehead, cut with wrinkles of passion, eyes sparkling with an ominous fire, lips twisted into a smile. His inner mental image: deep disappointment in life and conflict with society.
Next to the hero is the image of his beloved, the ideal beauty. Byron usually has this image differentiated: on the one hand, a passionate oriental beauty, dark-haired and black-eyed, on the other hand, a blue-eyed, fair-haired beauty, a gentle Christian girl (Gulnara and Medora, opposed to each other in The Corsair, like Zarema and Maria in " Bakhchisaray fountain).
The setting of the action: the exotic of the East, descriptions of exotic nature, bright and colorful folk life East and South, most often in the form of a lyrical overture or introduction to a story. Then the lyrical and dramatic composition of the poem: not a connected sequential narrative, but the concentration of the action around its spectacular dramatic heights, fragmentation, understatement, the lyrical manner of the story with repetitions, questions, exclamations, appeals to the hero, which express the author's lyrical participation in the narrative, emotional sympathy for that what he tells, the fate of his heroes. Finally, the short lyrical meter inherent in most cases in Byron's poems and sharply different from the long six-foot verse, which Ostolopov considered mandatory for an epic poem.
All these genre features Byron's poems we also find in Pushkin's poems. Pushkin was a student of Byron and followed the example of the European poet who was the first to pave the way for the creation of a new art form, in which it was possible to protest against the reality that constrains the artist.
““The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,” wrote Pushkin, “weaker than the “Prisoner” and, as it responds to reading Byron, from which I went crazy.” Passion leads to well-known private borrowings, rather than even conscious borrowings, but reminiscences that allow created image invest some features suggested by reading the works of your favorite teacher. Such borrowings were repeatedly pointed out in the "Bakhchisarai Fountain". For example, Pushkin's portrait of the oriental beauty Zarema resembles the same portrait of the oriental beauty Leila in Byron's Gyaur. The story of the execution of Zarema for the crime committed, according to the cruel oriental custom(“Whatever the guilt, the punishment was terrible!”), is close to the same story about the execution of Leila by his master in Byron's poem. The image of the mental anguish of Girey, who cannot free himself from the memory of the deceased Mary, resembles completely similar passages from Byron's Gyaur, depicting mental anguish hero after the execution of Leyla who cheated on him. Even the "fountain of tears" - the ending of the "Fountain of Bakhchisarai" - resembles the image of Zyuleyka's grave at the end of "The Abydos Bride".
So, there are a number of little things that can be traced as separate borrowings associated with the fact of a deeper and more fundamental influence of one writer on another. And at the same time, of course, it would be completely wrong to speak of Pushkin's youthful creativity as imitative, dependent creativity. Pushkin follows his own paths, based on Russian social experience and on the basis of the individual characteristics of his creative talent. Pushkin, in particular, deducing the image of Byron's individualist hero, debunks him (remember Aleko in "Gypsies"), condemns his egoism, shows the limitations of this hero, which Byron never does, who completely identifies himself with the hero. This is an important turning point in the development of Pushkin, in the development of all Russian literature; this is the path to the rejection of the individualistic revolt of the lone intellectual of the Decembrist persuasion, which was characteristic of Pushkin in those years, in the years immediately preceding the December uprising. People and history - that's what decides the fate of mankind, according to Pushkin. Pushkin moves on to historical drama ("Boris Godunov") and to historical novel (« Captain's daughter"). This turn is finally determined after December uprising. But even before the uprising, we see that the path of individualistic decision of people's destinies, the path of their solution by the intervention of lone intellectuals is condemned by Pushkin, who looked at the fate of mankind more historically than Byron did. This critique of individualism within Pushkin's Byronic poems has a parallel in the artistic style of these poems. It can be said that Pushkin in the romantic poem destroys the artistic autocracy of the Byronic hero. Byron's hero absorbs everything that happens in the poem with his experiences. He dominates the development of the plot, he is the only one who occupies the poet's imagination. In Pushkin, in contrast to Byron, the heroine becomes an independent factor in the action. Suffice it to recall the touching image of the Circassian woman, the image of Zemfira, which is not at all absorbed by the image of Aleko. And, finally, the figure of the old gypsy (in "Gypsies"), who occupies an independent place in the poem, is not at all a Byronic character, through whose mouth the wisdom of the patriarchal folk collective pronounces the sentence on the individualist hero. It is no coincidence that "Gypsies" in places move from compositional form lyric poem into drama; dramatic form means the presence of a series actors having their own independent meaning, fighting each other, etc. Let us also note the differences in the role of descriptions in Byron and in romantic poems Pushkin. As contemporaries have already noted, Byron's descriptions do not play an independent role, they only play the role of an overture, an entry into action. Meanwhile, in Pushkin, descriptions often play an independent role. These are the descriptions of the life of the Caucasian highlanders in " Caucasian prisoner”, Gypsies in “Gypsies”, a picture of a harem in the “Bakhchisarai Fountain”. All this indicates that Pushkin goes beyond the limits of the subjective isolation of the lyrical poem. He is interested in the colorful, original life of the Russian East, the Crimea, the Caucasian highlanders, etc. Through a romantic interest in exotic life Crimean Tatars, Caucasian highlanders or gypsies Pushkin goes to realistic art, interested insustained by objective reality, historical and national originality, people's life.
The difference between Byron and Pushkin is especially noticeable when comparing separate similar passages in their works. At the same time, there are clearly individual characteristics style of both poets. Byron has an abstract, effective rhetorical declamation; Pushkin has classical precision and strictness of expression.
Let's take, for example, the image of an oriental beauty in "Gyaur". Byron's portrait of Leila takes about 40 verses. The beauty's eyes are compared with the eyes of a gazelle, her eyes sparkle like gems Jamshida, her blush is like a pomegranate flower, her loose hair resembles a bouquet of hyacinths, her feet turn white on marble slabs, whiter than mountain snow, not yet stained by the touch of the earth. And here is a much more concise and accurate description of the oriental beauty by Pushkin:
... He changed! .. But who is with you,
Georgian, equal to beauty?
Around the lily brow
You twisted your braid twice;
Your captivating eyes
Clearer than day, darker than night.
Outbursts of fiery desires?
Whose passionate kiss live
Your caustic kisses? (IV, 135)
Here, in a few lines, very precise and at the same time lyrical, a portrait is given that Byron takes 40 verses of extremely rhetorical, emphatic and abstract.
Another example. famous poem Byron's "Parisina" opens with a description of the night, exciting summer night where the date of the loving Ugo and Parisina takes place:
It is the hour when from the boughs
The nightingale's high note is heard;
It's the hour when lover's vows
Seem sweet in every whisper'd word;
And gentle winds, and waters near,
Make music to the lonely ear.
("This is - the hour when the high voice of the nightingale is heard in the shade of the branches. This is the hour when lovers' vows seem sweet in every whispered word, and gentle wind and the near waters sound like music to a solitary ear...”).
This is very beautiful description, but the description is lyrical through and through, almost non-objective, in any case, not adding up to a clear picture. Twilight is depicted, the play of chiaroscuro, shine sparkling stars and moons; distant romantic sounds are noted: the singing of a nightingale, the voice of jets, the rustle of the wind; the transition from flowers on earth to stars in heaven, from the blue of heaven to colors on earth is determined not by the objective content of the description, but by musical parallelism, lyrical repetitions, etc.
Let's compare this with the description of the night in the Bakhchisarai Fountain. In Pushkin, everything is precise, substantive in all the details, chosen sparingly, but at the same time unusually expressive:
The night has come; covered in shadow
Tauris of the sweet field;
Away under the quiet canopy of laurels
I hear the song of the nightingale;
Behind the chorus of stars the moon rises;
She's from cloudless skies
To the valleys, to the hills, to the forest
A languid radiance induces.
Covered in a white veil
Like shadows, light, flickering,
Through the streets of Bakhchisaray
Spouses rush simple Tatars
Share evening entertainment.
The palace is quiet; fell asleep harem,
Embraced by serene bliss... (IV, 137-138)
A night landscape unfolds in front of the reader. The moon does not shine somewhere or somehow, but directs its light on the valleys, on the hills, on the forest. The “white veil” with which the Tatars are covered is not some kind of indefinite foggy veil, but a veil, with which women cover their faces according to Muslim custom.
From house to house, one to the other,
Spouses rush simple Tatars
Share evening leisure ... (IV, 138), -
the custom of evening gatherings after a hot day, etc.
How true and vitally authentic this picture is in all the successively unfolding details!
Pushkin's path went from romanticism to realistic art. Pushkin, from the very beginning of his studies with Byron, goes beyond Byron's school, overcomes Byron's manner.
The given examples are a private evidence of the ambiguity and complexity of the processes of literary interaction. The prerequisites for such interactions, international literary and cultural influences are those unevenness that characterize the development of society. In the conditions of uneven socio-historical processes, the country that has gone further along a single path human development, presents a more backward country with a picture of its own future. It follows from this that a more backward country does not always have to traverse the path of historical development that has already been done in another country, it can use those cultural achievements that were created earlier in similar conditions by another people.
Literary influences - special case cultural interactions. very often false national pride suggests the idea that our national literature (in this way representatives of any nation can argue) was created only by our own efforts, that the universal cultural movement did not help us in our creativity, which is exclusively and completely ours. This, of course, is a false national pride, because the unity of the historical process lies in the fact that there is cultural mutual assistance among all the peoples of the world. This means in practice the "brotherhood of peoples" realized - the mutual assistance of peoples in the common cause of the general cultural construction of mankind. In essence, just not cultural peoples never experienced the influence of other peoples, while civilized peoples lived in communion with each other and therefore experienced international influences, but they used the advanced ideas of their time in a way that corresponded to specific historical experience and needs given people, therefore, transforming, transforming, combining the world cultural heritage with its own national tradition.
When posing the question of literary influences, especially international influences, a lot of mistakes were made in literary criticism of the past. This question was often treated first of all very externally, schematically, mainly from the point of view of borrowings: what exactly did such and such a poet “take” from another poet. This comparison was often reduced to a mechanical comparison; it was enough to discover the similarity of the plot or individual characters, or some visual techniques to come to the conclusion that in this case there is borrowing.
For us, in such a comparison, the difference is as important as the similarity. If the relationship between the young Pushkin and Byron was cited as an example, it is only because, by comparing the young Pushkin and Byron, we can more easily understand what creative originality Pushkin, as, learning from Byron, on the basis of Russian historical experience, on the basis of the personal characteristics of his talent, Pushkin transformed what served as a model for him, transformed this model and overcame its influence.
For us, all literature is, first of all, an understanding of social experience, first in narrower national ones: framework, then more widely - on a universal scale. The poet creates artistic images, comprehending social reality, artistic images in which he expresses his experience and through this individual experience the historical experience of mankind.
This means that in literature, which is ripening in order to perceive any literary influence, should arise on the basis of their own historical experience, some kind of “counter currents” (a term that Academician Veselovsky uses in his writings on historical poetics). Only in that case could Byron be successful in Russia, in France or in Germany, if, under conditions community development Germany, France or Russia had some facts of social experience, some potencies that made Byron's influence possible and necessary. At the same time, no less important than the fact of influence is the question of the national transformation of the image, because the borrowed model is never borrowed mechanically, simply as an imitation, as a mechanical reproduction, but is complex. creative process, in which the borrowed is rethought, transformed or even overcome on the basis of one's own experience.
The comparative-historical method that we apply in this case (say, comparing Byron and Pushkin, or within the framework of Russian literary tradition- L. N. Tolstoy and Turgenev, young Lermontov and Pushkin), is extremely important and useful for the methodology of historical and literary work.
It is very difficult to talk about a literary work in isolation from other works and a picture of the literary process: it is difficult to determine what measure to apply to it. When comparing literary work with another work of the same time or a previous era immediately arises a starting point in order to understand the originality of the studied work. Comparing, say, the young Lermontov with Pushkin, or Pushkin with Byron, we better understand the originality of each of these poets. We match various stages historical and literary process precisely in order to understand the originality of the stage that we are studying.
The main prerequisite for the possibility of cultural interactions, and in particular literary influences, is unity and regularity. overall process literary development, due to the unity and regularity of the socio-historical process as a whole.
For the historian, the question of similarity historical events at the same stages of social development is not subject to any doubt. Let us take, for example, the relations of feudalism in the West and in the East - somewhere in Spain, in the extreme west of Europe, and in the East, in Central Asia. Both here and there we state, under the conditions of feudal society, the same phenomena: domination subsistence farming, the relatively low state of production technology, the attachment of the direct producer-farmer to the land, the personal dependence of the peasant on the landowner. Rising from these basic premises of feudalism to the more complex phenomena of social life, we will notice everywhere the disintegration of the wars of conquest big empires into independent or semi-independent estate-states. We will find both in the East and in the West with feudal relations huge role Church, which is the largest feudal institution, the largest landowner, and at the same time, in ideological terms, the main ideological support feudal system. Moreover, we will find in the East in the era of feudalism public institutions, reminiscent of the corresponding institutions in the West, for example, organizations similar to Western European chivalry and monasticism among Muslims, only under a different name (dervish monks), etc. We will find merchant guilds and craft workshops both in the West and in the East.
This means that in different countries, despite their different historical fate, we find similar phenomena in social life. This allows us to talk about public process how about a natural process: in the same historical conditions similar phenomena should naturally occur.
Of course these general patterns, these analogies do not exclude significant local differences associated with the specific conditions of the historical development of a given people or a given country. On the other hand, they do not exclude mutual cultural influence. On the contrary, it is precisely this similarity in general historical movement of all mankind and is a prerequisite for the possibility of influences, because, as we have already said, influence becomes possible where there is a similar social situation, where there are “counter currents” that make influence possible.
Returning to the example that I gave in relation to feudalism, we know that chivalry as a form of organization of the feudal nobility in the era of developed feudalism, knightly customs, knightly culture spread throughout Europe from France. In Germany, chivalric customs, chivalry as a form of organizing the life of the feudal nobility came from France, just as the German chivalric lyrics of the minnesingers or the German chivalric romance arise under the influence of France.
The similarity that we find in the social life of different countries, regardless of the direct contacts of these countries and the possible influence of one on the other, also exists in the field of culture. That is why such ideological and artistic movements like renaissance, baroque, classicism,
Enlightenment, romanticism, classical realism, naturalism, decadence, which were discussed above, are characteristic of most European countries. They can be regarded as successive stages of a single historical and literary process, although in one country, in comparison with another, Enlightenment, romanticism or realism may lag behind and develop in a very peculiar way. When we compare the literature of the Romantic era in France, in Germany, and in England, despite significant differences, we find a far-reaching similarity that embraces the essential features of ideology and artistic style. There may be phenomena associated with the structure of the genre, and signs associated with the choice of topics, plots. works of art, with the typology of images, with stylistics, metrics, and above all with the social worldview that underlies the artistic style. Therefore, it would be wrong to consider the development of France, Germany or England in isolation.
It is known that the literature of the Enlightenment originates first of all in England. France follows England. At the beginning French Enlightenment stand " English letters» Voltaire. Voltaire, the great French educator, brought news from England of a new direction, of new trends public thought, which will then develop in France, will develop differently, because France was in a pre-revolutionary situation, and bourgeois enlightenment ideas here acquire much greater political urgency. And then Germany, a country backward in comparison with France and England, picks up the same educational ideas, but gives them a more moderate, more philistine character, corresponding to the level and type of development.
This applies not only to the development of educational ideas, to ideology in broad sense This also applies directly to literary creativity, to literary genres. petty-bourgeois drama new genre Enlightenment originates in England. Then we find it in France, and finally, following the example of France and England, in Germany. The family petty-bourgeois romance also originates in England. England provides the first samples of this new genre - Richardson's novels. Then this genre appears in France, in Germany, acquiring here its local differences associated with the peculiarities of the historical development of France and Germany.
It does not follow from this, of course, that the Enlightenment in Germany appeared only as a response to the Enlightenment in France or England. emergence artistic directions cannot be compared to the fashion for costumes, which spreads by imitation gradually from some center and captures the whole of Europe. The fact is that Germany or. France, at one time or another in its historical development, mature to enlightening ideas that the French bourgeoisie is beginning to comprehend its fate, comprehend the world, forge weapons to fight against feudal society, but at the same time use the experience of England, where a similar situation arose somewhat earlier. Therefore, in such cases, where - as in Western Europe - we have very close cultural connections between peoples, it is very difficult to find facts isolated enough to say: what we have here is not an influence, but an analogy—as we now say, a stage analogy, i.e., a similarity of literary development at the same stages of social development.
Purer cases of stadial analogies can be found if we expand the framework of universal literature and approach more broadly to the picture of a single historical process that is naturally experienced by everyone. human society, and in particular in the field of literary development. Such stage analogies can be found in the history of the culture of the West and the East.
During the period of feudalism, medieval literature in Europe begins with the heroic epic. The heroic epic arises even earlier, in the era of the decomposition of tribal relations. With heroic folk epic ancient world and the Romano-Germanic West, with the poems of Homer, with the "Song of Roland", with the German heroic epos, Russian epics, Serbian youthful songs, old epic poetry peoples of the East - the Armenian "David of Sassun", the Kalmyk "Dzhangariada", the Kyrgyz "Manas", the Uzbek "Alpamysh", etc.
The similarity is expressed primarily in the ideology epic age, in the heroic military ideals that the epic puts forward. In the center stands the image of a hero, a defender of a kind-tribe. The hero is the embodiment popular ideal courage, military prowess, exorbitant strength, physical masculine beauty. We find in the world epic, in the East and in the West, the same motifs and plots in which the action of the heroic epic unfolds. Let's say, the miraculous birth of a hero, the growth of a child who is added by leaps and bounds, his first feat, which he performs (as young Roland) almost in childhood, his marriage trip to a distant country, where he "gets" a bride for himself; a topic related to the defense of the homeland, the struggle against foreign invaders; portraits of enemy heroes, whether they are Tatars in Russian epics or Saracens in a French epic, or Kalmyks in an epic Turkic peoples Central Asia: ugly, monstrous figures of enemies whom the hero defeats, despite his more human, weaker appearance, are similar in the epic of different countries. We find in heroic epic and cyclization around the feudal monarch: Vladimir-Krasnov the Sun - in Russian epics, Charlemagne - in the French epic, Dzhangar - in Kalmyk, Manas - in Kyrgyz. The poems often begin with a scene depicting knights gathered for a feast at their monarch. They drink "a cup of honey drunk." An enemy ambassador appears, challenging the heroes, and one of the heroes leaves to fight for the honor of his homeland. We find in the epic the same features of language, stylistics, for example, decorating epithets that serve as a means of idealizing the heroes and objects of the epic. This is a universally widespread poetic means, corresponding to the worldview of the epic, which idealizes the hero, transfers the action to the sphere of what is the ideal norm for the singer and for the people listening to the singer's song.
Let us take the next stage in the development of Western poetry. The era of developed feudalism creates a knightly love lyrics courtly style, the lyrics of troubadours and poems, and then a prose courtly chivalric romance.
For a long time in science there has been a question about the extremely large similarity that exists between the lyrics of the troubadours and minnesingers in the West and the Arabic love poetry Middle Ages, earlier in time. There is even a theory according to which Spanish-Arabic poetry, the poetry of the Arabs in Spain, served as the closest source, the closest impetus for the formation of the poetry of the Provençal troubadours. These Arab poets we find the same new understanding of love as lofty, ennobling, spirituality, the cult of the lady in the forms of vassalage, the demand from those who love love secrets, the theme of yearning, languishing, unsatisfied love, typical shapes love complaint, a virtuoso play with the contradictions of the sublime love feeling- suffering in love and feeling joy from love suffering. We find typical troubadour lyrical motifs in earlier Arabic poets: description spring nature, which opens love song; “guards”, “spies”, from whom lovers hide their love secret; the poet's heart is the "cell" in which his beloved lives; the motif of a love dream, illusory love joy; love for an unfamiliar lady based on rumors about her beauty, etc.
Was there really an influence here? Did the lyrics of the Provençal troubadours really take shape under the influence of Arabic poetry? Researchers do not give a clear answer to this question. Nevertheless, we share the opinion of those scientists that in this case we can talk more about a stage analogy than about direct influence; in similar conditions of life in feudal society, similar phenomena of poetry are created.
Another example is the chivalric romance of the Middle Ages. Chrétien de Troy creates a new type of epic poem in France, telling about sublime chivalrous love, about fantasyic adventures and feats that the hero performs for the sake of his lady, entering into a fight with giants, with cunning sorcerers and sorceresses, etc. In the East, in the Persian romantic epic, one can find a very close analogy to the Western European French chivalric romance. The poems of the famous Azerbaijani poet Nizami (XII century) “Leyli and Majnun” and “Khosrov and Shirin”, especially the last one, are a very close analogy with the somewhat later French chivalric romance. The plot of the 11th-century Persian novel “Vis and Ramin” by the poet Gurgani is so similar to “Tristan and Isolde” that the question arose whether the legend of Tristan arose under the influence of this oriental poem? And only the distance and the absence of any direct connections make us consider this similarity as an analogy, as similar poetic phenomena arising at the same stage of social development.
In the same way, the urban literature of the Middle Ages: fablio, short stories, shvanki have very close analogies in the same anecdotes in the East. It is highly probable that many European stories of this type come from the East. Here, one can undoubtedly feel a certain literary influence associated with the cultural influence of the more advanced East on the more backward European West in the Middle Ages. But from the point of view that I am now developing, it makes no difference to us whether there is influence or more general fact stage analogy. It is important that similar phenomena appear in literature at the same stages of social development.
A. N. Veselovsky spoke about the presence of stage parallels in language and literature. Back in the late 70s of the XIX century, he wrote: “As in languages, with their difference sound composition and grammatical structure, there are general categories<...), отвечающие общим приемам мышления, так и сходство народных верований, при отличии рас и отсутствии исторических связей, не может ли быть объяснено из природы психического процесса и совершающегося в человеке? Чем иначе объяснить, что в сказках и обрядах народов, иногда очень резко отделенных друг от друга и в этнологическом, и в историческом отношениях, повторяются те же мотивы и общие очертания действия».
When Veselovsky put forward this idea about the similarity in the literatures of different peoples in the absence of influence, about the similarity based on analogies of the mental process at a certain stage of social development, he relied on the example of the classics of ethnography. It was in the field of ethnography that this idea of historical development and similarity was first put forward. phenomena among different peoples. For example, Stone Age tools are similar among peoples all over the world. When we say that the Old Stone Age - the Paleolithic, the age of chipped stone tools, is replaced by the Neolithic - the age of polished stone tools, then this change is the same all over the world. It is known that primitive man is characterized by animism, the belief that objects of inanimate nature have the same soul as man; these animistic notions, beliefs and superstitions were spread all over the world. This thesis was first put forward by the founder of classical ethnography, the English scholar Edward Taylor in his book Primitive Culture, published in 1871.
In the introductory chapter to this book, Taylor puts forward the idea of uniformity, constancy and regularity in the development of the material and spiritual culture of mankind at the same stages of social development, regardless of geographical location, from the contact between peoples in which we find similar phenomena.
Taylor denies the racial isolation and isolation of the cultural development of peoples, considering the history of civilization, the history of mankind as a single process. The same idea underlies Veselovsky's Historical Poetics, a book that remained unfinished, but which, despite this, remains a grandiose attempt at a literary-historical synthesis on the basis of nineteenth-century literary criticism.
In constructing his Historical Poetics, Veselovsky conceives of the development of literature as a world process taking place within the broadest framework in the true sense of world literature. "Historical poetics" was supposed to cover, according to Veselovsky, the development of all literatures as a single and natural process. Veselovsky proceeds from the idea of the unity and regularity of the process of development of world literature in its social conditioning. This general concept of the literary process allowed Veselovsky to broadly compare phenomena that are not connected with each other by a direct connection of mutual influences, a direct historical dependence, or even a chronological sequence, since these phenomena are at the same stage of social development. For example, Veselovsky compares the ancient Germanic heroic epic with the Iliad and the Finnish Kalevala, compares the lyrical quatrains that Alkey and Sappho exchanged with the same love quatrains of Italian peasants. He compares the cult drama of the ancient Greeks, which developed from the cult of Dionysus, with the so-called bear drama of the peoples of Northern Siberia; compares the tribal and squad singer among the ancient Greeks, Germansand Celts with Caucasian ashugs, Central Asian bakhshis, etc.
Such a method of comparison suggests the possibility of considering these phenomena, regardless of their origin, geographical distribution and chronological timing, as phenomena that are equivalent from a stadial point of view. In other words, the same unity and regularity of the process of literary development is implied, as well as of the entire socio-historical process as a whole.
Veselovsky's "Historical Poetics" remained unfinished. Of course, there were practical difficulties in its implementation even for such a brilliant scientist as Veselovsky, with his exceptional erudition. It was impossible for one person to cover the history of world literature, building it anew, according to a new principle, as Veselovsky thought. But there were probably some internal reasons for the failure of Veselovsky's plan, internal reasons that allowed the author to navigate relatively easily within the boundaries of primitive society, within the boundaries of folk ritual poetry and made it difficult for him to study the later stages of the development of literature, when the literary process became more and more complex. and diverse. It was difficult for Veselovsky to move further because, in his philosophical views, he was close to positivism, and this prevented him from comprehending the content of the historical process and its artistic specificity. Veselovsky tried to empirically approach this issue. He said: it is necessary to compare series of similar facts in different literatures; the more we accumulate series of similar facts, the wider the scope of comparisons will be, the deeper we will penetrate into the patterns that appear in these facts. Veselovsky acted empirically, by induction, proceeding from the accumulated empirical facts. He did not have a general idea of the regularity of the historical process, and could not have had it in the state of science in the 19th century. We can now continue the work of Veselovsky and complete that grandiose construction of a unified historical and literary process, which the great Russian scientist outlined in his brilliant experiment, which remained unfinished.
1. The literary process as part of the general historical process. Social conditionality and relative independence of literary development.
2. The problem of national identity of the historical and literary process. General and special in the development of national literatures.
3. Intraliterary connections. Continuity. Traditions. Innovation.
Bibliography
1) Blagoy D.D.. Literary process and its regularities // D.D. Good. From Cantemir to the present day. - M., 1972. - T.1.
2) Zhirmunsky V.M. Introduction to literary criticism: a course of lectures. - St. Petersburg, 1996.
3) Historical and literary process: Problems and methods of study / ed. A.S. Bushmin. - L., 1974.
4) Literary encyclopedic dictionary / ed. ed. V.M. Kozhevnikov and P.A. Nikolaev. - M., 1987.
5) Literary process / ed. G.N. Pospelov. - M., 1981.
6) Literary encyclopedia of terms and concepts / ed. A.N. Nikolyukin. - M., 2003.
7) Ozmitel E.K.. Theory of Literature. - Frunze, 1986.
8) Palievskiy P.V.. Literature and theory. - M., 1978.
9) Pospelov G.N.. Problems of historical development of literature. - M., 1972.
10) Encyclopedic dictionary of a young literary critic / comp. IN AND. Novikov. - M., 1988.
The term "Literary process" arose at the turn of the 20-30s. XX century and has become widely used since the 60s. The concept itself was formed during the 19th-20th centuries as literature was understood as a historically changing entity (already in the 19th century, the terminological expressions “literary evolution” and “literary life of the era” were used).
literary process usually defined as a historical movement of national and world literature, developing in complex connections and interactions; historical existence, functioning and evolution of fiction. The literary process at every historical moment includes both the verbal and artistic works themselves and the forms of their social existence: publications, editions, literary criticism, reader reactions, etc.
The fact that the world literary process is part of the socio-historical process, was already realized by the philosophers of the 18th century J. Vico (Italian) and I. Herder (German), later by G. Hegel and others.
According to V.E. Khalizeva, the literary process is correlated with the stages of the social development of mankind (mythological archaism, antiquity, the Middle Ages, modern times, modern times). It is stimulated by the (not always conscious) need of writers to respond to shifts in historical life, to participate in it, and to influence public consciousness. Thus, literature changes in historical time primarily under the influence of social life.
Literary critic E.N. Kupreyanova explains the close relationship of literary development with the development of social consciousness in general and with the historical change of its leading forms (religious - in the Middle Ages, philosophical - in the 17th-18th centuries, scientific and political - in the 19th-20th centuries) also by the fact that the main the subject of depiction in fiction is the subject of all the humanities, including philosophy.
Modern literary criticism considers the literary process as conditioned by cultural and historical life. At the same time, it is emphasized that literature "... cannot be studied outside the integral context of culture ... and directly correlated with socio-economic and other factors ... The literary process is an integral part of the cultural process."
At the same time, most scientists note that the development of literature has relative independence and is characterized irregularity(the flourishing of art is not in line with the general development of society, as evidenced by Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Igor's Tale, Shakespeare's works, etc.).
As is known, history itself unfolds unevenly: on the general path of socio-economic development, some peoples advance, while others lag behind. This unevenness is one of the driving forces of the historical process. In every great epoch, a push forward is created in some one region of the world, and under the influence of this shock, a corresponding movement arises in other regions. This is what happens in socio-economic history, and this is what happens in literary history.
The other side of the literary process is connected with the dialectic of similarities and differences between the literatures of different peoples and nations. Modern literary criticism reveals both the features of the typological similarity of literary evolution among all peoples and nations, and its essential heterogeneity: the general, world-historical tendencies of the literary process are manifested in different literatures in different ways. In other words, the literary process is directed by two interacting factors: the national-cultural tradition and the influence of a foreign culture. In the development of any national literature, we can identify both the general (characteristic of all literature) and the special (inherent only in a particular literature).
G.N. Pospelov, speaking about the patterns of the historical development of literature, argues that different peoples pass through their social life, although not identical, but still similar stages of historical development. And it is natural that at these stages their social life, in all its inconsistency, reveals some common features. Hence, in the views and ideals of different peoples, some common features are also manifested, which are reflected in the works of fiction. These common features Pospelov calls the stadial community in the literature of different peoples. As an example of a stadial community, he cites ancient literature created by the ancient Greeks and Romans. The scientist notes that, despite the political differences in the social life of Greece and Rome, their literature has significant common features (mythological imagery, poetic form, civic worldview, abstract characteristics of heroes, a foregone conclusion of conflicts, etc.).
“Differences in each national literature, at one stage or another of its historical development,” the literary critic further asserts, “arise because the writers who create this national literature usually belong to different social strata and social movements. As a result, they have different social views, ideals, ideological aspirations, which, becoming the “prerequisites” for their work, are expressed in different artistic ideas and lead to the creation of works that differ in content and form, in their style. The stated idea is confirmed by the following example: if Aeschylus and Sophocles created predominantly civil heroic tragedies based on legendary and mythological plots, then Euripides also used these plots, but created tragedies of personal family passions.
The unity of the national and international can also be shown by the example of the history of Mordovian literature, which in its development, on the one hand, took into account the experience of Russian classics, on the other hand, was based on the traditions of the oral and poetic creativity of the Mordovian people.
All of the above leads to the conclusion that in each national literature there is a typological one that makes it related to other national literatures, and a special one that distinguishes it. Both are in dialectical unity.
According to V.G. Belinsky, "... Each nation borrows from another especially that which is alien to its own nationality, giving in exchange to others that which is the exclusive property of its historical life and which is alien to the historical life of others."
Each nationality has its own special strengths, sides, its own merits, with which it enriches the universal human world. The peculiarity of each of the national literatures and the uniqueness of each stage in the historical development of literature opens up opportunities for many-sided and complex connections and interactions in time and space. According to the literary critic B.G. Reizov, national literatures live a common life only because they are unlike one another; the originality of some stimulates interest in them from other literatures and develops a system of international relations.
One of the regularities of the literary process is the historical continuity or dialectical relationship between tradition and innovation.
The problem of inheriting progressive and overcoming obsolete traditions remains always relevant. According to the literary critic A.S. Bushmin, in order to understand the process of development of literature, it is important to know not only what it takes from past centuries, but also what heritage it refuses, with what and why it is at enmity in this heritage. Without the development of viable and without overcoming dilapidated traditions and replacing them with new ones dictated by the requirements of modernity, the very concept of a new historical stage, of progressive movement, progress is unthinkable.
In different periods of the history of literature and literary criticism, the problem of continuity was solved in different ways. Theorists of classicism, for example, believed that the main goal of creativity is to follow the classical models of antiquity; sentimentalists and romantics, on the contrary, solving the problem of continuity, started from the dogmatic norms of classicism. Such approaches to the problem of succession suffered from a lack of dialectics.
Bushmin A.S. argues that in relation to the past, the nihilistic formula “only rupture, enmity”, proclaimed, for example, by Russian futurists, proletarians and supporters of similar views in other literatures, and the epigone formula “only acceptance, consent”, which are adhered to by opponents of everything new, are equally unsuitable . The pseudo-innovation of some and the conservatism of others ultimately turn out to be a hopeless dispute with history: it goes on as usual, rejecting the claims of individuals and groups trying to stop the operation of the objective law of historical continuity.
The entry of the tradition of the elders into the work of the younger ones is a complex process. The elements of the literary tradition, consciously or involuntarily perceived, interact in the artist's thinking with the impressions of his life experience, are supplemented by the work of creative imagination, undergo a deep transformation, enter into unique relationships and poetic associations.
The writer's innovation is the cumulative result of talent, life experience, a keen attitude to the demands of the time, a high general culture and professional skills based on knowledge of artistic patterns.
Artistic creation never remains a simple use of ready-made forms. Including tradition, it is at the same time every time a new act of artistic knowledge of reality, carried out in new forms. The search, creation, improvement of forms for the artists of the word is always a thought process.
A genuine work of art is a highly integrated system in which the elements of tradition enter as its own internal elements.
The interaction of the inherited and the personal in a work of art turns out to be so complex and interpenetrating that it is always difficult to answer the question of what belongs to tradition and what belongs to the author, and the more difficult it is, the larger the artist, the more powerful his creative power. And not because there is no tradition here or its role was insignificant, but because it has been mastered deeply creatively, has ceased to be only a tradition, having become an organic element of the spiritual development of society of a given time.
TEST QUESTIONS:
1. What is the "literary process"?
2. What patterns of the literary process are distinguished by modern literary critics?
3. What are traditions and innovations in literature?
4. What is the manifestation of the unity of the national and international in fiction?
literary process- the historical movement of national and world literature. The scope of the LP concept includes the following concepts: LP levels, literary discussions, literary connections. LP levels:
Regional (in Siberia, in the Novosibirsk region, in the south of Russia, etc.)
Zonal level (Eastern Siberia, Ural lit. process)
National level (in Russia in the new 21st century, France, Germany, Canada, etc.)
All this is world literature.
Literary discussions (disputes)- are included in the scope of the concept of LP, determine the literary process. Discussions about the ways of development of Russian literature, about the Russian idea (does it even exist as a connection with culture and literature in the world), about acmeism, about realism (about the status, scope of the concept, about content), about utopia, dystopia, etc. d.
Literary connections- 1 of the signs of the immanence of literature. The connection between the work of one writer and the TV of other writers. Rousseau and Stendhal in Tolstoy's TV, Schiller in Dostoevsky's TV, Chekhov in the dramaturgy of the 20th century in foreign literature. Group ties - mutual attraction, repulsion. In the 19th century To this day, there are disputes about magazine groups. International relations: Shakespeare in Russia, Russian literature in Japan, etc.
Criticism deals with LP in synchrony. 3 layers:
Mass literature, which is designated as trivial literature, paraliterature (near, near, near)
Fiction is the main layer of the LP, the majority of good literature.
Literary classic.
The boundaries between fiction and literary classics are fluid.
Stages of literary development Modern literary scholars (following M.M. Bakhtin, who considered genres to be the “main characters” of the literary process and substantiated the concept of romanization of literature) distinguish three historically successive types of literary creativity: pre-reflective traditionalism (folklore-mythological archaism), reflective traditionalism (from ancient Greek classics of the 5th century BC to the middle of the 18th century), the “post-traditionalist” era, characterized by non-canonical genre poetics (S.S. Averintsev); or (in a slightly different terminology) the following stages of literary development are distinguished: Archaic, mythopoetic; Traditionalist-normative; Individually creative, based on the principle of historicism (P.A. Grintser).
6. *Classicism and Romanticism.
Classicism (from lat. classicus - exemplary) - an artistic trend in European art at the turn of the 17th-18th - early 19th century, formed in France at the end of the 17th century. Classicism asserted the primacy of state interests over personal interests, the predominance of civil, patriotic motives, the cult of moral duty. The aesthetics of classicism is characterized by the severity of artistic forms: compositional unity, normative style and plots. Representatives of Russian classicism: Kantemir, Trediakovsky, Lomonosov, Sumarokov, Knyaznin, Ozerov and others.
One of the most important features of classicism is the perception of ancient art as a model, an aesthetic standard (hence the name of the direction). The goal is to create works of art in the image and likeness of antique ones. In addition, the ideas of the Enlightenment and the cult of reason (the belief in the omnipotence of reason and that the world can be reorganized on a reasonable basis) had a huge impact on the formation of classicism.
Classicists (representatives of classicism) perceived artistic creativity as strict adherence to reasonable rules, eternal laws, created on the basis of studying the best examples of ancient literature. Based on these reasonable laws, they divided works into "correct" and "incorrect". For example, even Shakespeare's best plays were classified as "wrong". This was due to the fact that Shakespeare's characters combined positive and negative traits. And the creative method of classicism was formed on the basis of rationalistic thinking. There was a strict system of characters and genres: all characters and genres were distinguished by "purity" and unambiguity. So, in one hero it was strictly forbidden not only to combine vices and virtues (that is, positive and negative traits), but even several vices. The hero had to embody any one character trait: either a miser, or a braggart, or a hypocrite, or a hypocrite, or good, or evil, etc.
The main conflict of classic works is the struggle of the hero between reason and feeling. At the same time, the positive hero must always make a choice in favor of the mind (for example, choosing between love and the need to completely surrender to the service of the state, he must choose the latter), and the negative one - in favor of feelings.
The same can be said about the genre system. All genres were divided into high (ode, epic poem, tragedy) and low (comedy, fable, epigram, satire). At the same time, touching episodes were not supposed to be introduced into comedy, and funny episodes into tragedy. In the high genres, “exemplary” heroes were depicted - monarchs, “commanders who could serve as an example to follow. In the low genres, characters were depicted covered by some kind of “passion”, that is, a strong feeling.
Special rules existed for dramatic works. They had to observe three "unities" - places, times and actions. Unity of place: classical dramaturgy did not allow a change of scene, that is, during the entire play, the characters had to be in the same place. The unity of time: the artistic time of a work should not exceed several hours, in extreme cases - one day. Unity of action implies the presence of only one storyline. All these requirements are connected with the fact that the classicists wanted to create a kind of illusion of life on the stage. Sumarokov: "Try to measure my hours in the game for hours, so that I, forgetting, could believe you."
So, the characteristic features of literary classicism:
The purity of the genre (in high genres, funny or everyday situations and heroes could not be depicted, and in low genres, tragic and sublime ones);
The purity of the language (in high genres - high vocabulary, in low genres - vernacular);
Heroes are strictly divided into positive and negative, while positive heroes, choosing between feeling and reason, prefer the latter;
Compliance with the rule of "three unities";
The work should affirm positive values and the state ideal.
Russian classicism is characterized by state pathos (the state (and not a person) was declared the highest value) in conjunction with faith in the theory of enlightened absolutism. According to the theory of enlightened absolutism, the state should be headed by a wise, enlightened monarch, who requires everyone to serve for the good of society. Russian classicists, inspired by the reforms of Peter the Great, believed in the possibility of further improvement of society, which seemed to them a rationally arranged organism. Sumarokov: "Peasants plow, merchants trade, warriors defend the fatherland, judges judge, scientists cultivate science." The classicists treated human nature in the same rationalistic way. They believed that human nature is selfish, subject to passions, that is, feelings that oppose reason, but at the same time lend themselves to education.
Romanticism - an artistic direction in European and American culture of the late 18th - first half of the 19th century. Romanticism arose in the 1790s, first in Germany and then spread throughout Western Europe. The prerequisites for the emergence were the crisis of rationalism of the Enlightenment, the artistic search for pre-romantic trends (sentimentalism), the French Revolution, and German classical philosophy.
The emergence of this literary trend, as well as any other, is inextricably linked with the socio-historical events of that time. Let's start with the prerequisites for the formation of romanticism in Western European literatures. The Great French Revolution of 1789-1899 and the reassessment of the educational ideology associated with it had a decisive influence on the formation of romanticism in Western Europe. As you know, the 18th century in France passed under the sign of the Enlightenment. For almost a century, French enlighteners led by Voltaire (Rousseau, Diderot, Montesquieu) argued that the world could be reorganized on a reasonable basis and proclaimed the idea of natural (natural) equality of all people. It was these educational ideas that inspired the French revolutionaries, whose slogan was the words: “Liberty, equality and fraternity. The result of the revolution was the establishment of a bourgeois republic. As a result, the winner was the bourgeois minority, which seized power (it used to belong to the aristocracy, the highest nobility), while the rest were left "with nothing". Thus, the long-awaited "kingdom of reason" turned out to be an illusion, as well as the promised freedom, equality and fraternity. There was a general disappointment in the results and results of the revolution, a deep dissatisfaction with the surrounding reality, which became a prerequisite for the emergence of romanticism. Because the basis of romanticism is the principle of dissatisfaction with the existing order of things. This was followed by the emergence of the theory of romanticism in Germany.
As you know, Western European culture, in particular French, had a huge impact on Russian. This trend continued into the 19th century, so the French Revolution also shook Russia. But, in addition, there are actually Russian prerequisites for the emergence of Russian romanticism. First of all, this is the Patriotic War of 1812, which clearly showed the greatness and strength of the common people. It was to the people that Russia owed its victory over Napoleon, the people were the true heroes of the war. Meanwhile, both before the war and after it, the bulk of the people, the peasants, still remained serfs, in fact, slaves. What was previously perceived by the progressive people of that time as injustice, now began to seem like a flagrant injustice, contrary to all logic and morality. But after the end of the war, Alexander I not only did not abolish serfdom, but also began to pursue a much tougher policy. As a result, a pronounced feeling of disappointment and dissatisfaction arose in Russian society. Thus, the ground for the emergence of romanticism arose.
The term "romanticism" in relation to the literary movement is accidental and inaccurate. In this regard, from the very beginning of its inception, it was interpreted in different ways: some believed that it comes from the word "roman", others - from knightly poetry created in countries that speak Romance languages. For the first time, the word "romanticism" as the name of a literary movement began to be used in Germany, where the first sufficiently detailed theory of romanticism was created.
Very important for understanding the essence of romanticism is the concept of romantic duality. As already mentioned, rejection, denial of reality is the main prerequisite for the emergence of romanticism. All romantics reject the outside world, hence their romantic escape from existing life and the search for an ideal outside of it. This gave rise to the emergence of a romantic dual world. The world for romantics was divided into two parts: here and there. “There” and “here” are antithesis (contrast), these categories are correlated as ideal and reality. The despised "here" is a modern reality, where evil and injustice triumph. “There” is a kind of poetic reality that the romantics opposed to reality. Many romantics believed that goodness, beauty and truth, repressed
from public life, are still preserved in the souls of people. Hence their attention to the inner world of man, in-depth psychologism. The souls of people are their "there". For example, Zhukovsky was looking for "there" in the other world; Pushkin and Lermontov, Fenimore Cooper - in the free life of uncivilized peoples (Pushkin's poems "Prisoner of the Caucasus", "Gypsies", Cooper's novels about the life of Indians).
Rejection, denial of reality determined the specifics of the romantic hero. This is a fundamentally new hero, like him did not know the old literature. He is in hostile relations with the surrounding society, opposed to it. This is an unusual, restless person, most often lonely and with a tragic fate. The romantic hero is the embodiment of a romantic rebellion against reality.
7. *Realism and naturalism.
Realism (from the Latin realis - material, real) - a method (creative setting) or a literary direction that embodies the principles of a life-truthful attitude to reality, striving for artistic knowledge of man and the world. Often the term "realism" is used in two senses: 1) realism as a method; 2) realism as a trend that emerged in the 19th century. Both classicism, and romanticism, and symbolism strive for the knowledge of life and express their reaction to it in their own way, but only in realism does fidelity to reality become the defining criterion of artistry. This distinguishes realism, for example, from romanticism, which is characterized by the rejection of reality and the desire to “recreate” it, and not display it as it is. It is no coincidence that, referring to the realist Balzac, the romantic George Sand defined the difference between him and herself in this way: “You take a person as he appears to your eyes; I feel a calling to portray him the way I would like to see. Thus, we can say that the realists represent the real, and the romantics - the desired.
The beginning of the formation of realism is usually associated with the Renaissance. The realism of this time is characterized by the scale of images (Don Quixote, Hamlet) and the poeticization of the human personality, the perception of man as the king of nature, the crown of creation. The next stage is enlightenment realism. In the literature of the Enlightenment, a democratic realistic hero appears, a man "from the bottom" (for example, Figaro in Beaumarchais's plays "The Barber of Seville" and "The Marriage of Figaro"). New types of romanticism appeared in the 19th century: "fantastic" (Gogol, Dostoevsky), "grotesque" (Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin) and "critical" realism associated with the activities of the "natural school".
The main requirements of realism: adherence to the principles of nationality, historicism, high artistry, psychologism, the image of life in its development. Realist writers showed the direct dependence of the social, moral, religious ideas of the heroes on social conditions, and paid much attention to the social aspect. The central problem of realism is the relationship between plausibility and artistic truth. Plausibility, a plausible depiction of life is very important for realists, but artistic truth is determined not by plausibility, but by fidelity in comprehending and conveying the essence of life and the significance of the ideas expressed by the artist. One of the most important features of realism is the typification of characters (the fusion of the typical and the individual, the uniquely personal). The credibility of a realistic character directly depends on the degree of individualization achieved by the writer.
Realist writers create new types of heroes: the type of "little man" (Vyrin, Bashmachki n, Marmeladov, Devushkin), the type of "extra person" (Chatsky, Onegin, Pechorin, Oblomov), the type of "new" hero (nihilist Bazarov in Turgenev, "new people" Chernyshevsky).
Naturalism(fr. naturalisme from lat. naturalis- “natural, natural”) - a late stage in the development of realism (or positivism) in the literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Naturalism should not be confused with the "natural school" in Russian literature of the 1840s.
Naturalism is also called the artistic method, which is characterized by the desire for external plausibility of details, for the depiction of single phenomena - without generalizations and typification.
The principles of naturalism can be traced already in the novels of the Goncourt brothers and George Eliot, published in the 1860s. However, the first to use the term "naturalism" to refer to his own work was Emile Zola - the author of the theoretical works "Experimental Novel" (1880), "Natural Novelists" (1881) and "Naturalism in the Theater" (1881). Zola grouped such writers as Guy de Maupassant, Alphonse Daudet, Huysmans and Paul Alexis. After the publication of the collection "Medan Evenings" (1880) with frank stories about the disasters of the Franco-Prussian war (including the Maupassant story "Dumpling"), the name "Medan group" was assigned to them.
The naturalistic principle in literature has often been criticized for lack of artistry. For example, I. S. Turgenev wrote about one of Zola's novels that "there is a lot of digging in chamber pots." Gustave Flaubert was also critical of naturalism, in whom French critics at first saw almost the ideological leader of the new school. Zola maintained friendly relations with many impressionist painters; both directions intersected in their desire for the most accurate fixation of reality.
In the late 1880s, some naturalist writers (primarily Huysmans and Deissel) switched to symbolist positions, while Zola continued to record the social realities of contemporary France in the 20-volume Rougon-Macquart series of novels. The glory of the French writer thundered far beyond the borders of France. German (Gerhart Hauptman), Scandinavian (Yu. A. Strindberg), Portuguese (Jose Maria Esa di Queiroz), Czech (K. M. Chapek-Hod) and Russian (P. D. Boborykin) writers paid tribute to the fashion for everyday writing. Examples of naturalistic prose in Russian are Artsybashev's novels "Sanin" and "At the last line", Kuprin's novel "The Pit", "Doctor's Notes" by V.V. Veresaev and "The Village" by I.A. V. Amfiteatrov, whom his contemporaries called "Russian Zola".
Naturalism developed into a peculiar school outside of France only in Italy (see verism) and in the USA. American naturalist writers - Theodore Dreiser, Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London, John Steinbeck - mercilessly recorded the realities of everyday life in the backyards of society, on the battlefields and in urban slums (where immigrants who arrived in America settled). In general, their works are even more pessimistic than Zola's novels.
8. *Modernism.
Modernism in literature has become a natural result of the development of artistic consciousness and the transition from the author's classical perception of the world to the modernist one. Instead of creating its own world, offering the reader ready-made concepts, the literature of modernism becomes a pure reflection of reality or its complete opposite. The author ceases to be the bearer of absolute truth and begins to demonstrate its relativity. As a result, the integrity of the world of the work collapses: the linear narrative is replaced by a fragmentary one, fragmented into small episodes and presented through several characters who even have an opposite view of the events and facts presented.
Modernism in literature manifested itself in new directions: symbolism, acmeism, futurism. Simultaneously, realistic literature was rethought. A style called "stream of consciousness" appeared, characterized by a deep penetration into the inner world of the characters. An important place in the literature of modernism is occupied by the theme of understanding the war, the lost generation.
Modernism (from the French modern - the latest, modern) - a philosophical and aesthetic movement in literature and art that arose at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries.
This term has various interpretations:
1) designates a number of non-realistic trends in art and literature at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries: symbolism, futurism, acmeism, expressionism, cubism, imaginism, surrealism, abstractionism, impressionism;
2) is used as a symbol for the aesthetic searches of artists of non-realistic trends;
3) denotes a complex set of aesthetic and ideological phenomena, including not only modernist trends proper, but also the work of artists who do not completely fit into the framework of any direction (D. Joyce, M. Proust, F. Kafka and others).
Symbolism, acmeism and futurism became the most striking and significant trends in Russian modernism.
9. *Postmodernism.
Let's recall the main innovations and historical facts that determined human life in the second half of the 20th century (The second half of the 20th century was characterized by global socio-cultural trends towards changing traditional activities and the cultural and living environment in the course of urbanization and the formation of a post-industrial society. This was manifested in the mediation of results work, accelerating the pace of activity and information exchange, the widespread use in everyday life of artificial materials, household appliances, telecommunications and computer technology, as well as the gradual weakening of interpersonal ties in modern society - urbanization, ntr, industrialization, space exploration, informatization, globalization, development of the media, the creation of nuclear weapons, the Cold War, the fall of the USSR, terrorism, environmental problems).
On the one hand - technical progress, on the other - a state of crisis, disappointment in the ideals and values of the Renaissance and Enlightenment with their faith in progress, the triumph of reason, the limitlessness of human capabilities. The era of "tired" culture reigned in society, the philosophy of despair and pessimism, along with the need to overcome this state through the search for new values and a new language. Significant discrepancies were also found between traditional value orientations and moral norms, on the one hand, and the surrounding reality, on the other, serious difficulties arose in assessing what was happening, since the criteria used were largely blurred.
At the heart of the culture of postmodernism are the ideas of new humanism. The culture, which is called postmodern, states by the very fact of its existence the transition "from classical anthropological humanism to universal humanism, which includes in its orbit not only all of humanity, but also all living things, nature as a whole, the cosmos, the Universe." The true ideal of postmodernists is chaos (cosmos).
This means the end of the era of homocentrism and the "decentration of the subject." The time has come not only for new realities, new consciousness, but also for a new philosophy, which affirms the plurality of truths, reconsiders the view of history, rejecting its linearity, determinism, and ideas of completeness. The philosophy of the postmodern era, which comprehends this era, is fundamentally anti-totalitarian, which is a natural reaction to the long-term domination of the totalitarian system of values. Postmodern culture was formed through doubts in all positive truths. It is characterized by the destruction of positivist ideas about the nature of human knowledge, the blurring of boundaries between different areas of knowledge. The postmodern proclaims the principle of multiple interpretations, believing that the infinity of the world has as a natural consequence an infinite number of interpretations.
The multiplicity of interpretations also determines the "two-address" of works of art of postmodernism. They are addressed both to the intellectual elite, who are familiar with the codes of cultural and historical epochs embodied in this work, and to the general reader, who will have access to only one cultural code lying on the surface, but it nevertheless provides grounds for interpretation, one of infinite set.
The American soil turned out to be the most favorable for the perception of new trends for a number of reasons. Here there was a need to comprehend those trends in the development of art and literature that had declared themselves since the mid-1950s. (the appearance of pop art, which made citation the leading artistic principle) and increasingly gained momentum, which led to a change in the cultural paradigm in the mid-70s: modernism gave way to postmodernism.
