The role of landscape sketches in the work is very different: usually the landscape has a compositional value, and is also a bright background against which events unfold, the landscape helps to understand and feel the experiences of the characters and their state of mind. With the help of the landscape, the writer expresses his views on the events taking place around him, depicted by him, and also emphasizes his attitude to nature, the heroes of the text.

Let's remember how the second book of "Virgin Soil Upturned" by M. Sholokhov begins. The writer draws a colorful picture of the coming summer: “The earth swelled from rain moisture, and when the wind parted the clouds, it thawed under the bright sun and smoked with bluish steam.” The first thing that cannot be overlooked in this passage is the emotionality and expressiveness of the author's speech. It is achieved in two ways. First of all, the use of artistic means of the language. These include: personification (the earth melted, the wind moved apart), epithets (bluish steam, turquoise haze), comparison (like a scattered fraction), metaphor (spill of wheat) and others.

Gogol and Turgenev, the great Russian writers, portrayed a summer morning in different ways. In Gogol's story "Taras Bulba" the picture of the steppe opens gradually. And the more attentively the reader peers into the expanse of the steppe, the brighter it blooms. Turgenev in the story "Bezhin Meadow" describes the steppe more calmly, but one can still feel how passionately and sincerely he loves Russian nature, showing a quiet, silent morning.

Drawing a rural landscape in the novel "Fathers and Sons", Turgenev speaks of peasant ruin, depicting peasant fields with squalid pastures and neglected reservoirs, as well as almost completely collapsed huts. At the sight of all this distress and ruin, even Arkady understands that the need for transformation is long overdue. “Spring has taken its toll. Everything around was golden green, everything was wide and softly agitated and glossy under the quiet breath of a warm breeze,” this picture of spring awakening inspires hope that the renewal of everything is ahead. "The sun's rays, breaking through the thicket, doused the aspen trunks with such light that they became like pine trunks, and their foliage almost turned blue, and a pale blue sky rose above it" - what he saw sets Kirsanov in a dreamy mood, he admires the undying beauty nature.

In a sad episode that tells about the strength of the grief of parents, when the old Bazarovs come to cry at the grave of their son in a rural cemetery, the landscape helps to understand the depth of these painful feelings and experiences: “... it is a sad sight; the ditches surrounding its appearance have long been overgrown ... ". In some cases, sketches about nature emphasize the mood and feelings of the characters. Thus, the picture of “a white winter with dense, creaky snow, pink frost on the trees and a pale emerald sky” on the pages of the last chapter of Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons” is in harmony with the high spirits of Arkady and Katya, Nikolai Petrovich and Fenechka, who just a week ago forever united their destinies. All the heroes of the novel are tested not only by love, but also by their attitude to nature. Here Pavel Petrovich looks at the sky, and it is reflected in his blue soulless eyes only with a cold gleam. And Nikolai Petrovich sincerely admires the nature around him.

Many decades separate us from the events depicted in Mikhail Sholokhov's novel. His characters, their characters, way of life, everyday worries are not like our contemporaries. As we read Sholokhov's books, these people become close to us, their problems begin to worry us for real. Landscape sketches help the author to display everything that happens: the author's description of a thunderstorm over melons, when Natalya curses Grigory. The landscape of a hot sunny day becomes a kind of exposition for the central event. There seemed to be no sign of a storm. The whole world is saturated with dazzling light, the singing of a lark is heard. However, some details cause, although unclear, but tangible anxiety: clouds torn by the wind, a cloud suddenly running into the sky, from which it becomes cooler for a moment, and the suffocating smell of the earth.

Nature itself responds to the wrath of the heroine. The thunderstorm that broke out in the soul of the meek and patient Natalia responds to a thunderstorm in nature, which suddenly replaced a hot sunny day. The contrast of shining streams of light and black swirling thunderclouds gives the scene a truly tragic glow.

Sholokhov - a master of landscape painting, uses the technique of psychological parallelism. Everything that happens in the soul of the heroine reveals the landscape. Burning white lightning, wind howling across the steppe, thunder that struck with a dry crack - all these details help to understand the full depth and strength of her truly inhuman suffering. Ilyinichna turned out to be wise and courageous, that she let Natalya cry, and then, seized with fear, she orders her daughter-in-law to ask God for forgiveness so that he would not accept her prayers, since we are talking about her son and it’s not good to wish death to your loved ones - this is a grave sin . Natalya understands this truth, and nature agrees with her: “The steppe, washed by a downpour, turned wonderfully green.”

Peasant workers experience joy from communion with the land, from labor on it. The heroes of Leo Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" experience a similar feeling from closeness with nature and with each other in the hunting scene, where the general mood allows you to feel the joyful squeal of Natasha Rostova. The relationship between the Cossacks and the land in Sholokhov's novel "Quiet Flows the Don", the feeling of its spirituality is emphasized by the metaphor "meadow sighed". Talking about the character of Grigory Melekhov, the author also notes his inherent sense of indissoluble connection with the outside world, especially in the episode of bathing the horse: “Grigory stood by the water for a long time. The shore breathed damp and insipid Prelu. Gregory has a light, sweet emptiness in his heart.

The landscape of a starry, moonlit night, traditional for Russian literature, is given here through the perception of the Don Cossack. Blood connected with his native nature, loving all living things - this is how we see Gregory at the beginning of the First World War, the central historical event of the first book of the novel. The military episodes are preceded by a landscape: “Dry smoldering summer ... an owl roared in the bell tower. Unsteady and terrible cries hung over the farm, and the owl flew from the bell tower to the cemetery, soiled by calves, groaned over the brown, harassed graves. Here we see many details that prepare readers for depicting a national disaster, and we recall the solar eclipse, which became a formidable omen before Prince Igor's campaign against the Polovtsy.

In Sholokhov, the world of people and nature is comprehended as a single life stream, in which all the described events in the life of people and nature are given in unity. In order to find out what Grigory Melekhov saw, what Grigory Melekhov experienced in the first months of the war, let us again turn to the landscape: “In the gardens, a leaf turned fat yellow, from a cutting it was filled with a dying crimson, and from a distance it looked like the trees were in torn wounds and bleed ore with tree blood” . Bright and expressive metaphors and personifications create the feeling that nature itself is involved in the war. War is a universal disaster. This landscape reveals the inner state of people caught in the war. The changes that take place in nature correspond to what takes place in the soul of each person.

Sholokhov in his works contrasts the life-giving power of nature with fratricidal war and mutual cruelty of people. At the end of the second book, there, near the grave, near the chapel, there is a nest in which nine smoky-blue spotted eggs are warmed by the heat of her body, the female little bustard. Nature and man in the "Quiet Don" act as independent, but equal forces. But this is not the only function of the landscape. Let us turn to another example: “All around, crosswise, slicked down by the winds, a white bare plain. As if the steppe is dead ... But the steppe still lives under the snow. There, where, like frozen waves, the ploughing, silver from the snow, hums ... lies the winter zhito tumbled down by frost. Silky green, all in tears of frozen dew…” The author finds such shades of colors to depict the hidden life of the steppe, in order to more accurately convey the movement hidden from the eyes. A diverse color palette amazes us, readers, with its multi-color - red-clay, silver, as well as various shades of black - blackening, charred black, black earth.

The author's perception of nature is conveyed with the help of emotionally colored epithets - prayerful, joyless, proud, transparently immovable, fabulously and indistinctly, amazing metaphors and comparisons: a month is a Cossack sun, a scattering of wheat stars. Landscape author's sketches provide us with the richest material for observing the writer's language. The origins of this diversity are in folk speech, Sholokhov uses a lot and dialect words and expressions, which gives the work a unique color and vivid metaphor. The life of nature and the life of people are closely connected. “People are like rivers,” L. Tolstoy claimed. We see the same thing in the work of Sholokhov. Man is not a grain of sand in the waters of the flooded Don. He must find his own way. But how to determine which path leads life to the truth?

Sholokhov's landscape has no analogues in world literature in its diversity, close connection with the characters and ongoing events. In the writer's story "The Fate of a Man", the narrative begins with a picture of the first post-war spring, spring off-road, when, despite the warm winds, the irresistible breath of spring is already felt, winter still reminds of itself. The words - difficult, heavy, off-road, impassable - create a special mood of the landscape. Already on the first page - the image of a difficult road, symbolizing the difficult life path of Andrei Sokolov. The author depicts nature, with great difficulty waking up from hibernation, and we get to know the main character of this story at the moment when his heart, hardened by grief, begins to thaw.

After the story of the numerous losses of the hero, the writer again gives a landscape sketch: “In the flooded hollow water, a woodpecker tapped loudly. The warm wind still lazily stirred the dry earrings on the alder tree ... but the boundless world seemed to me different at these moments, preparing for the great accomplishments of spring, for the eternal affirmation of the living in life. The word “still the same” shows the immutability of the external world, but the author emphasizes the feeling of the invincibility of the forces of life in the fight against death.

If we compare the description of a thunderstorm by L.N. Tolstoy in the novel "Anna Karenina" and A.P. Chekhov in the story "Steppe" you can find a lot in common. Key words - thunderstorm, clouds, wind, raindrops and others. There are common epithets: black clouds, strong wind. The main features of the text-narrative here are perfective verbs, which denote actions that quickly replace each other in temporal space. So, in Tolstoy's "clouds ran across the sky with extraordinary speed", and in Chekhov's: the clouds "hurried somewhere back, the wind blew from a black cloud." These differences in the texts are due to the fact that the thunderstorm is illuminated by different people: L.N. Tolstoy in the perception of an adult - Levin, and A.P. Chekhov in the perception of the child - Yegorushka, for whom natural phenomena are personified. Thunder rumbles angrily, black shaggy clouds look like paws. Both experience a feeling of fear, although the reasons for it are different: one is afraid for himself, he is scared, he wants to hide behind a matting, and the other feels not just fear, but horror for his wife and child, whom a thunderstorm caught in the field.

In their works, the masters of the artistic word address first of all to each of us. And all of us, of course, should always remember that man and nature are eternal and inseparable concepts from each other, complementary to each other.

Nature writers

Ecology ... A beautiful word that came to us from abroad. And now, perhaps, you will not find a person who would not hear him. It has firmly entered our lives, in all industries, in the minds of people.

The school also has such a subject "Ecology". In an independent science, she stood out quite recently. It belongs to the block of biological disciplines. But the importance of this subject in school is very great. If in biology lessons children mainly learn the structure of plants and animals, their evolution. That ecological discipline shows the relationship between man and wildlife, his influence on the world around him. Ecology tells about the reality in which we live and warns about what may happen in a few years.

Of course, the teaching of ecology is inextricably linked with biology, and in many schools this subject has not yet emerged as an independent subject. Nevertheless, "Ecology" already exists not only as a science, but also as a subject of the school cycle.

If you look at it as a whole, then “Ecology” is a subject of “black” color. A lot is written in black colors, although this is our reality, what a person deserves. Thanks to your "mind". But the teaching of ecology at school should not be conducted only from a pessimistic point of view. Students need to be shown and told about the beauty of nature, taught to take care of what we still have left. If only dry facts and figures are given in the lessons, this can soon get boring, in the minds of the children there will be the thought that nothing can be done, it remains only to wait for the inevitable. But we need to tell students that it is not too late to do something, everything is in our hands. And this can be helped by our and foreign authors who have created wonderful works about nature, plants, and animals. They not only describe the beauties of our planet, but also warn a person about imminent danger in the text between the lines, they try to tell what can be done to save what we have left. Many of these authors have already passed away, but their immortal works have not lost their relevance today. Let's talk about some of these authors.

The remarkable writer, scientist, publicist Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov was inextricably linked with his native nature. He sought to comprehend its secrets. To bring to the greatest possible number of fellow citizens the discoveries made by him. In his various hunts - from collecting mushrooms, catching butterflies, fishing to fishing for large predators - he first of all observed, noticed the most characteristic features of plants and animals - habitats, dwellings, food and habits. Subsequently, Aksakov described his observations in books imbued with love for his native nature, a reverent attitude towards it. His works, replete with interesting facts, are written in such an accessible and colorful language that they still have not lost their significance and are in no way inferior to the books of A. Bram or J. Darrell.

Modern ecologists can only envy the richness, accuracy and expressiveness of the materials he cites. In “Notes of a Gun Hunter of the Orenburg Province”, “Stories and Memoirs of a Hunter about Different Hunting”, he gave detailed characteristics of the classification of swamps (“clean, dry, wet”), flowing waters, lakes, ponds, steppes, forests, animals. It also shows how, as a result of human measurement of natural lands, previously numerous animals disappear. Aksakov drew the attention of readers to the fact that under the influence of pollution of water bodies, the species composition of fish changes in them. He noted the same patterns in relation to mushrooms. At the same time, Aksakov emphasized that these processes are constantly changing and affecting the human economy. For example, the state of the steppes, their vegetation is reflected in the taste and medicinal qualities of koumiss.

Aksakov's observations on the biology of individual species are extensive. He gives not only the ecological characteristics of animals, but also information on their numbers, economic importance, seasonal and daily rhythms of life, and migrations.

The scientist-writer constantly emphasized the importance of nature in people's lives. Forests reduce water evaporation, protect soils from the scorching sun and drying winds. Aksakov was indignant at the facts of plunder, destruction of nature, hated all types of poaching, for example, hunting stuffed black grouse and hares during floods. He thought. That "this is not hunting, but fishing." Aksakov was above all an inquisitive scientist. His characteristics of the animal world make it possible to call their author one of the first Russian faunists. Therefore, the father of Russian ecology K.F. Roulier considered Aksakov's books a serious contribution to science.

Blagosklonov Konstantin Nikolaevich (1910-1958) - ornithologist, teacher, researcher of bird behavior, nature conservation specialist, initiator and organizer of school and biological competitions, a popular Bird Day holiday in the country. The author of a number of books on ornithology and nature conservation, K. N. Blagosklonov left behind a rich scientific heritage. For many years he worked at the Department of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy of Vertebrate Animals of Moscow University, of which he was a graduate.

His seething energy, curiosity, flexible scientific thought revealed to the youth the secrets and beauty of their native nature, aroused an ardent desire to know it and contribute to its protection. His books “Protection and Attraction of Birds Useful in Agriculture”, “Birds and Forest Pests” (co-authored with B.I. Osmolovskaya), “Nature Protection” (together with L.P. Astanin), “Zoology” (together with E.G. Batsylev) have been repeatedly reprinted and are still very popular among specialists. He has always been among those who are seriously involved in the protection of nature. He conducted a huge public environmental work in various organizations of the country - from schools to the ministry. Many of his ideas were put into practice and now continue to work in the works of his students and like-minded people.

We have scientists who are better known abroad than here. These include Dementiev Georgy Petrovich (1898-1969). In addition, he is a wonderful writer. Fluency in five European languages ​​and a few others that he read allowed him to keep abreast of all ornithological news. Excellent knowledge of history, religion, philosophy, classical fiction gave him

the opportunity in their writings to show the role of birds in the development of the culture of the peoples of the world. He knew absolutely everything about birds. From the ecology of the habitat to the smallest details of their way of life. He was one of the first to make an attempt to unite birds according to their habitat from an ecological point of view. Birds of the forest, swamps, steppes - these were not just groups, but their features and ecological role were described. Knowledge about domestic birds was constantly accumulating. And they needed to be summarized. Dementiev together with A.S. Buturlin writes "Key to the birds of the USSR", which amounted to five volumes.

More than 450 books and articles brought him recognition both here and abroad. He was elected as an honorary member of the ornithological societies of France, the USA, Germany, Czechoslovakia and many other countries. He appreciated the importance of the conservation of nature, its ecological relationships and the promotion of natural science knowledge. Since 1973 By decision of the World Wide Fund for Nature, his name was included in the “Gallery of Eternal Glory of the Workers of Nature”.

He was ready under any circumstances to help with knowledge, advice, information, a book from his vast library, both to a specialist - a scientist, and an amateur, a young naturalist.

Do you know who is called the father of Russian phenology? Kaigorodov Dmitry Nikiforovich (1846-1924). And the children called him none other than “forest grandfather”. And knowingly Kaigorodov was an excellent popularizer. In an accessible form, he tried to tell people everything. What did you know about nature? Many generations of young naturalists grew up on his books. They enthusiastically read “Petals”, “Friendship with Nature”, “Primary Botany”, “On Various Topics”, “From the Green Kingdom”, “Fly-eating Plants” and many, many others.

And why is he called the “father of Russian phenology”? In 1871 he began to conduct phenological observations in the vicinity of St. Petersburg and was able to captivate many amateur volunteers with this business. By 1895 under his leadership they worked all over the country. Thus, a system of observations of the seasonal processes of nature in Russia was created, what is now called the foreign word “monitoring”. The phenological observations of Kaigorodov were published in the regular calendars of St. Petersburg spring and autumn nature, on the pages of many newspapers and magazines.

A faithful follower of D.N. Kaigorodov was our wonderful writer Vitaly Bianchi. He not only re-read all his books and almost knew all his articles by heart, but he himself wrote a magnificent “forest newspaper”, which children begin to read already from kindergarten. All mini-stories of V. bianca are written in such an accessible and interesting form that after reading one, you immediately understand what nature meant for this person and how he loved her. Bianchi noticed such unusual habits of animals that you don’t always read about even in encyclopedias. Going out into the forest or park, he listened to every bird's squeak, peered at every flying butterfly or fly. For many years, before his eyes, spring changed winter, summer - spring. Autumn - summer and winter came again. Birds flew and flew in, flowers and trees bloomed and faded, and V. Bianchi carefully wrote down all this, collected, and then printed his observations in newspapers and magazines. After some time, he had accumulated enough material to combine it into one large book. This is how the “Forest Newspaper” appeared. This wonderful work is known not only in our country, it has been translated into several languages ​​and published in millions of copies.

Almost all the author's stories run through the ecological theme. He not only emphasizes the importance of nature, but also tells children how to behave in the forest, on the river, how to help animals in difficult times of the year, how to watch birds and at the same time go unnoticed. If Bianchi's stories are read to a child from childhood, then we can say with confidence that such a child will never harm nature, he will know what can and should be done in the forest, and what not, how to behave. The contribution of V. Bianchi is invaluable, his "Forest Newspaper" can be called with confidence one of the best works of art of a biological and ecological nature.

Introduction

The image of nature, the landscape in the work

1.1 Images of nature in the literature of the XVIII-XIX centuries

2 Images of nature in the lyrics of the XX centuries

3 Images of nature in the prose of the XX century

Natural Philosophical Prose of the Second Half of the 20th Century

1 Belov V.

2 Rasputin V.

3 Pulatov T.

2.4 Prishvin M.M.

2.5 Bunin I.A.

2.6Paustovsky K.G.

2.7 Vasiliev B.

2.8 Astafiev V.P.

3. Masculine and feminine principles in natural-philosophical prose

Conclusion

Literature

INTRODUCTION

The 20th century brought great changes to human life. The creations of human hands were out of his control. Civilization began to develop at such a crazy pace that people were seriously scared. Now he is threatened with death from his own offspring. Yes, and nature began to show "who is the boss in the house," - all kinds of natural disasters and disasters have become more frequent. In this regard, a close study began not only of nature as a separate system with its own laws, but also theories appeared that considered the entire Universe as a single organism. This harmonious system cannot exist without the coordinated interaction of all its parts, which include each person individually and human society as a whole. Thus, for the existence of the Universe, harmony is necessary, both in the natural and in the human world. And this means that people on the entire planet should live in peace not only with their own kind, with plants and animals, but, above all, with their thoughts and desires.

Mankind naively thinks that it is the king of nature.

Meanwhile, in the film "War of the Worlds", based on the book H. G. Wells, the Martians were defeated not by the power of human weapons or reason, but by bacteria. The same bacteria that we do not notice, which create their little life without our knowledge and are not at all going to ask if we want this or that.

Perhaps, never before has the problem of the relationship between man and nature been as acute as in our time. And this is no coincidence. “We are no strangers to losses,” wrote S. Zalygin, “but only until the moment comes to lose nature, after that there will be nothing to lose.”

What is Motherland? Most of us will begin answering this question by describing birches, snowdrifts, and lakes. Nature influences our life and mood. She inspires, pleases and sometimes gives us signs. Therefore, in order for nature to be our friend, we must love and protect it. After all, there are many people, and nature is one for all.

“Happiness is to be with nature, to see it, to talk with it,” Leo Tolstoy wrote more than a hundred years ago. That's just nature in the time of Tolstoy and even much later, when our grandparents were children, surrounded people completely different than the one among which we live now. The rivers then calmly carried their clear water to the seas and oceans, the forests were so dense that fairy tales were entangled in their branches, and in the blue sky nothing but bird songs broke the silence. And quite recently, we realized that all this clean rivers and lakes, wild forests, unplowed steppes, animals and birds are becoming less and less. The crazy 20th century brought to mankind, along with a stream of discoveries, many problems. Among them, very, very important is environmental protection.

It was sometimes difficult for individual people busy with their work to notice how poor nature was, how difficult it was once to guess that the Earth is round. But those who are constantly connected with nature, people who observe and study it, scientists, writers, nature reserve workers, and many others have discovered that the nature of our planet is rapidly depleting. And they began to talk, write, make films about it, so that all people on Earth would think and worry. A variety of books, on any topic, for a wide range of readers can now be found on the bookshelves of the store.

But almost every person is interested in books on a moral topic, which contain answers to the eternal questions of mankind, which can push a person to resolve them and give him accurate and comprehensive answers to these questions.

The first of the greatest monuments of ancient Russian literature that has come down to us "The Tale of Igor's Campaign"contains amazing episodes that testify to the tradition of depicting a person in unity with the whole world around. The unknown ancient author of the Lay says that nature takes an active part in human affairs. How many warnings about the inevitable tragic end of the campaign of Prince Igor she makes: and the foxes bark, and the ominous unprecedented thunderstorm is irritated, and the sunrise and sunset were bloody.

This tradition was brought to us by many masters of the artistic word. It would not be an exaggeration to say that many classical works, be it "Eugene Onegin" A.S. Pushkinor "Dead Souls" N.V. Gogol, "War and Peace" L.N. Tolstoyor "Hunter's Notes" I.S. Turgenevare absolutely inconceivable without wonderful descriptions of nature. Nature in them participates in the actions of people, helps to form the worldview of the characters.

Thus, we can state the fact that, speaking of Russian literature of the previous centuries, including the 19th century, we primarily had in mind this or that degree of unity, the relationship between man and nature.

Speaking about the literature of the Soviet period, one should talk mainly about the environmental problems that have arisen on our planet.

It is noteworthy that A.P. Chekhov, reflecting on the causes of unhappiness, "non-hotness" of a person, believed that with the current relationship between man and nature, a person is doomed to be unhappy in any social system, any level of material well-being. Chekhov wrote: “A person needs not three arshins of land, not a manor, but the whole globe, all nature, where in the open space he could manifest all the properties and characteristics of his free spirit.”

1. The image of nature, the landscape in the work

The forms of the presence of nature in literature are diverse. These are mythological incarnations of her powers, and poetic personifications, and emotionally colored judgments (whether they are separate exclamations or entire monologues). And descriptions of animals, plants, their portraits, so to speak. And, finally, the actual landscapes (fr. pays - country, area) - descriptions of wide spaces.

In folklore and in the early stages of the existence of literature, non-landscape images of nature prevailed: its forces were mythologized, personified, personified, and as such often participated in people's lives. Comparisons of the human world with objects and natural phenomena were widespread: the hero - with an eagle, falcon, lion; troops - with a cloud; the brilliance of weapons - with lightning, etc. As well as names in combination with epithets, as a rule, constant: “high oak forests”, “clear fields”, “wonderful animals”. The most striking example is "The Legend of the Mamaev Battle”, where for the first time in ancient Russian literature one sees a contemplative and at the same time deeply interested look at nature.

Nature has a very strong influence on a person: it gives him strength, reveals secrets, answers many questions. Creative people draw inspiration from simple yet perfect pictures of nature. Writers and poets almost always turn to the problem of man and nature, because they feel a connection with it. Nature is an invariable part of almost every prose creation.

And it is not surprising that many writers have paid so much attention to the theme of nature. Prose writers include P. Bazhov, M. Prishvin, V. Bianchi, K. Paustovsky, G. Skrebitsky, I. Sokolov-Mikitov, G. Troepolsky, V. Astafiev, V. Belov, Ch. Aitmatov, S. Zalygin, V. Rasputin, V. Shukshin, V. Soloukhin and others.

Many poets wrote about the beauty of their native land, about caring for mother nature. it N. Zabolotsky, D. Kedrin, S. Yesenin, A. Yashin, V. Lugovskoy, A.T. Tvardovsky, N. Rubtsov, S. Evtushenkoand other poets.

Nature was and should remain man's teacher and nurse, and not vice versa, as people imagined. Nothing can replace our living, changeable nature, which means it's time to wake up, in a new way, much more carefully, more carefully than before, to treat it. After all, we ourselves are also part of it, despite the fact that we fenced ourselves off from it with the stone walls of cities. And if nature becomes bad, it will certainly be bad for us.

.1 Images of nature in the literature of the XVIII-XIX centuries

This kind of imagery is also present in the literature of the epochs close to us. Let us recall Pushkin's "The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Bogatyrs", where Prince Elisey, in search of a bride, turns to the sun, the moon, the wind, and they answer him; or Lermontov's poem "Heavenly Clouds", where the poet not only describes nature, but talks with the clouds.

Landscapes before the 18th century rare in the literature. These were more exceptions than the "rule" of recreating nature. Writers, drawing nature, still to a large extent remained subject to stereotypes, clichés, commonplaces characteristic of a particular genre, whether it be a journey, an elegy or a descriptive poem.

The nature of the landscape changed markedly in the first decades of the 19th century. In Russia - starting from A.S. Pushkin. From now on, the images of nature are no longer subject to the predetermined laws of genre and style, to certain rules: each time they are born anew, appearing unexpected and bold.

The era of individual-author's vision and recreation of nature has come. Every major writer of the XIX-XX centuries. - a special, specific natural world, presented mainly in the form of landscapes. In the works of I.S. Turgenev and L.N. Tolstoy, F.M. Dostoevsky and N.A. Nekrasov, F.I. Tyutchev and A.A. Feta, I.A. Bunin and A.A. Blok, M.M. Prishvin and B.L. Pasternak nature is assimilated in its personal significance for the authors and their heroes.

This is not about the universal essence of nature and its phenomena, but about its uniquely individual manifestations: about what is visible, heard, felt right here and now - about that in nature that responds to a given spiritual movement and state of a person or gives rise to it. . At the same time, nature often appears as inescapably changeable, unequal to itself, existing in a variety of states.

Here are a few phrases from the essay by I.S. Turgenev “Forest and Steppe”: “The edge of the sky turns red; in birch trees they wake up, jackdaws awkwardly fly; sparrows chirp near the dark stacks. The air is brighter, the road is more visible, the sky is clearer, the clouds are turning white, the fields are turning green. Splinters burn with red fire in the huts, sleepy voices are heard outside the gates. And meanwhile the dawn flares up; golden streaks have already stretched across the sky, vapors swirl in the ravines; the larks sing loudly, the pre-dawn wind blew - and the crimson sun quietly rises. The light will flood in.”

It is also appropriate to recall the oak tree in "War and Peace" by L.N. Tolstoy, dramatically changed in a few spring days. Nature is endlessly mobile in M.M. Prishvin. “I look,” we read in his diary, “and I see everything different; yes, winter comes in different ways, and spring, and summer, and autumn; and the stars and the moon always rise in different ways, and when everything is the same, then everything will end.

Over the past two centuries, literature has repeatedly spoken of people as transformers and conquerors of nature. In a tragic light, this topic is presented in the finale of the second part of "Faust" by I.V. Goethe and in "The Bronze Horseman" by A.S. Pushkin (dressed in granite Neva rebels against the will of the autocrat - the builder of St. Petersburg).

The same theme, but in different tones, joyfully euphoric, formed the basis of many works of Soviet literature:

The man said to the Dnieper:

I will block you with a wall

To fall from the top

defeated water

Moving cars fast

And pushing trains.

.2 Images of nature in the lyrics of the 20th century

In the literature of the 20th century, especially in lyric poetry, the subjective vision of nature often takes precedence over its objectivity, so concrete landscapes and the certainty of space are leveled, or even disappear altogether. Such are many poems BUT. Blok, where landscape specifics seem to dissolve in fog and twilight.

Something (in a different, "major" key) is palpable in B. Pasternak1910-1930s. Thus, in the poem "Waves" from "The Second Birth" a cascade of vivid and heterogeneous impressions of nature is given, which are not formed as spatial pictures (actually landscapes). In such cases, the emotionally intense perception of nature triumphs over its spatial-specific, “landscape” side. Subjectively significant situations of the moment are brought to the fore here, and the actual filling of the landscape begins to play, as it were, a secondary role. Based on the now familiar vocabulary, such images of nature can rightfully be called “post-landscape”.

For the first post-revolutionary years, the poem V.V. Mayakovsky“A third of the cigarette case went into grass” (1920), where the products of human labor are given a status incommensurably higher than that of natural reality. Here, “ants” and “grass” admire the pattern and polished silver, and the cigarette case says contemptuously: “Oh, you are nature!” Ants and grass, the poet notes, were not worth "with their seas and mountains / before the cause of man / nothing exactly."

Every Russian person knows the name of the poet Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin. All his life, Yesenin worships the nature of his native land. “My lyrics are alive with one great love, love for the motherland. The feeling of the motherland is the main thing in my work,” Yesenin said. All people, animals and plants in Yesenin are children of one mother - nature. Man is a part of nature, but nature is also endowed with human traits. An example is the poem "Green Hair". In it, a person is likened to a birch, and she is like a person. This is so interpenetrating that the reader will never know who this poem is about - about a tree or about a girl.

The same blurring of boundaries between nature and man in the poem "Songs, songs, what are you shouting about?":

Good willow on the road

Watch over dormant Russia...

And in the poem "Golden foliage spun":

It would be nice, like willow branches,

To tip over into the pink waters..."

But in Yesenin's poetry there are also works that speak of disharmony between man and nature. An example of a person's destruction of the happiness of another living being is the Song of the Dog. This is one of Yesenin's most tragic poems. The cruelty of a person in an everyday situation (a dog's puppies were drowned) violates the harmony of the world. The same theme sounds in another Yesenin poem - "The Cow".

Another famous Russian writer Bunin Ivan Andreevichentered literature as a poet. He wrote about the harmony of nature. Genuine admiration for nature sounds in his works. The poet wants to be reunited with her. At 16 he writes:

You open me, nature, hugs,

So that I merge with your beauty!

Bunin's best poetic work - the poem "Falling Leaves" occupies an honorable place in the world landscape lyrics.

Images of nature (both landscape and all others) have a deep and completely unique content significance. In the centuries-old culture of mankind, the idea of ​​the goodness and urgency of the unity of man with nature, of their deep and indissoluble connection, is rooted. This idea was artistically embodied in different ways. The motive of the garden - nature cultivated and decorated by man - is present in the literature of almost all countries and eras. The image of the garden symbolizes the natural world as a whole. “Garden,” remarks D.S. Likhachev - always expresses a certain philosophy, an idea of ​​the world, a person's attitude to nature, this is a microcosm in its ideal expression.

.3 Images of nature in the prose of the XX century

The writers of the 20th century continued the best traditions of their predecessors. In their works, they show what should be the relationship of man in the turbulent age of the scientific and technological revolution to nature. The needs of mankind for natural resources are increasing, and the issues of caring for nature are especially acute, because. an environmentally illiterate person in conjunction with heavy-duty equipment causes faulty damage to the environment.

The unique beauty of native nature at all times encouraged to take up the pen. Nature for writers is not just a habitat, it is a source of kindness and beauty. In their ideas, nature is associated with true humanity (which is inseparable from the consciousness of its connection with nature). It is impossible to stop scientific and technological progress, but it is very important to think about the values ​​of humanity.

All writers, as convinced connoisseurs of true beauty, prove that the influence of man on nature should not be detrimental to her, because every meeting with nature is a meeting with beauty, a touch of mystery. To love nature means not only to enjoy it, but also to take good care of it.

The natural world becomes a source of inspiration and artistic ideas for the writer. Once seen, felt, and then transformed by the author's imagination, the pictures of nature organically fit into the fabric of his works, serve as the basis for many plots, participate in the disclosure of the characters' characters, bring life authenticity to his prose and give the works a special, uniquely artistic and emotional flavor.

For the artist, the words nature and its elemental forces become the embodiment of Beauty, and beauty “divine” and “earthly” sometimes act as identical concepts.

In the second half of the 20th century, humanity was faced with the need to reconsider the established relationship with nature. The romanticization of the confrontation between man and nature is replaced by the realization of the need for unity and the search for ways of unity.

The work of many writers of the 20th century is saturated with the philosophy of cosmic harmony: a person is merged with nature, every event of his life - birth, death, love - is somehow connected with nature. In the troubles of everyday bustle, a person is not always aware of his unity with the natural world. And only approaching the so-called boundary situations makes him take a fresh look at the world, come closer to comprehending the universal secrets, understand the meaning of merging with nature into a single whole and physically feel like a part of the great cosmic unity.

During this period, the moral and philosophical aspect in the disclosure of the theme of nature, which brought to the fore in creativity Prishvin and Leonova. In this regard, L. Leonov's novel "Russian Forest" (1953) was a landmark work, which became the "reference point" in the transformation of the theme "man and nature" in Russian literature of the middle of the 20th century.

Moral-philosophical and ecological problems are updated in fiction, especially in “village” prose, which is quite understandable, since while the peasants, occupying the traditional cells of society, were its center of gravity (its magnet), society was tumbler and had no environmental problems.

The works of the 60-70s, in which the "philosophy of nature" became the semantic dominant, are grouped into three main areas: philosophy of nature - mythology of nature - poetics.

They are enrolled in different "departments": village prose- with a thematic approach in its comprehension, philosophical and ethical prosewhen the specifics of the problem were taken into account.

The study of the "natural" foundations of life in the literature, according to critics, testified not to "going into nature", but to the solution of the question of the organic development of society and man.

In the sixties, works appeared V. Astafieva, V. Belova, S. Zalygina, E. Nosova, V. Chivilikhin, V. Bocharnikova, Yu. Sbitnevain which there is a need to “restore” nature in its rights, to remind a person of his primary source.

The concept of "natural-philosophical poetry and prose" is firmly included in literary criticism. The designation "natural-philosophical prose" in relation to the literary process of the second half of the 20th century was one of the first to be used by the critic F. Kuznetsov in his review of "Tsar-fish" V. Astafieva.

2. Natural philosophical prose of the second half of the twentieth century

The problem of the relationship between man and nature received coverage in world literature, but it began to play a dominant role in the structure and content of the artistic whole only within the framework of such a direction as natural-philosophical prose of the second half of the 20th century.

In fiction, a hero appears who is not concerned with the social side of people's relationships, but with their desire for the harmony of nature, finding a natural path of development. A personality living not according to social ideals, but according to the laws of bioethics, acquires its own specific features.

The essence of natural-philosophical prose is a reflection of the world through the prism of the life-giving being of all that exists.Everything is subject to the thought of the inexhaustible and boundless power of physis (nature), the product and particle of which is homo sapiens. The question of how a person interacts with natura (nature) and the degree of their relationship becomes the leading one for this literary trend. Naturphilosophical prose depicts a person as "a creation of nature, her child", which she "teaches" to gain unity with being.

The feeling of universal belonging, participation in the intelligent cosmos, which brings vitality to the Earth, equates the individual in ethical and biological rights with the kingdom of animals and plants. A similar perception of reality is also characteristic of the hero of other literary movements. This makes natural philosophical prose related to philosophical prose. However, they differ from each other in their focus. Philosophical prose considers the existence of a person from the standpoint of anthropocentrism, natural philosophical prose, on the contrary, from the standpoint of nature-centrism. Man becomes one of the manifestations of the life-giving foundation of all that exists.

Bioethical ideals are most fully reflected in a number of works S.P. Zalygin(“Paths of Altai”, “Commissioner”, “After the Storm” and others), whose work can also be considered within the framework of historical and rural prose. At Ch.T. Aitmatovanatural-philosophical motives are inseparable from the national image of the world. In works A.G. Bitovathe urban beginning determined the originality of his creative assimilation of ideas about physis. The artistic heritage of these authors represents the core of prose about the life-giving existence of all things. Separate natural-philosophical features manifested themselves in the work of L.M. Leonova("Russian Forest", "Pyramid"); V.P. Astafieva(stories for children and "Tsar-fish") and V .G. Rasputin(stories of the 80-90s) associated with the rural trend in the art of the word; Yu.P. Kazakova, whose stories are analyzed by literary critics within the framework of meditative and lyrical prose; B.L. Vasiliev("Don't shoot the white swans")

Close to the natural philosophical direction and creativity IN AND. Belova. The images created by the writer are distinguished by apperceptive behavior, tribal consciousness, fusion with nature and high spirituality.

Russian prose about the countryside of the 60-70s introduced the reader to the peasant, inscribed in the natural world order, who inherited the centuries-old folk morality. She created a type of hero, with whom it was time to part, as well as with the whole peasant world, with whom they nostalgically said goodbye V. Belovin "Ordinary Business" V. Rasputinin "Farewell to Mother" V. Astafievin "The Last Bow".

Turning to the foundations of human existence, this prose could not help but think about “eternal” questions: about life and death, about the meaning of human existence, about “who, for what purpose invented all this” (V. Belov), and about what awaits beyond the last limit. On the pages of prose about the village, an image of Nature as Cosmos, integral in its unity, with its origins in deep antiquity, was created.

The “natural” attitude of such writers as V. Belov and V. Rasputin is expressed in the fact that the most important, including tragic, events coincide with the natural annual cycle: awakening (spring), flowering (summer) and withering (autumn ) nature. Human life is inscribed in this cycle in its most important manifestations.

2.1 Belov V.

“... Rhythm explains harmony, a harmonious world order ...” (V. Belov). Rhythmically - in accordance with the natural "order" - the life of the heroes of the story by V. Belov is organized "The Usual Business"(1966). This order is not established by man, and it is not for him to change it. The protagonist of the story, Ivan Afrikanovich, reflects, watching the sunrise: “It rises - it rises every day, so all the time. No one can stop, do not overpower ... ". And he is surprised, thinking about the imminent awakening of nature, about black grouse, that "in a week they will disperse, roam ... That's how nature works." And the sky in its immensity and height is incomprehensible to him: "Ivan Afrikanovich always stopped himself when he thought about this depth ...". The hero of V. Belov himself is a part and continuation of the natural world. This ontogenetic property, which forms the basis of the folk character, is a typological feature that unites the heroes of "village" prose.

In the story E. Nosova“And the ships sail away, and the shores remain,” a similar type of hero is recreated. Savonya "did not know how to separate himself from the existence of earth and water, rains and forests, fogs and the sun, he placed himself near and did not exalt himself above, but lived in a simple, natural and inseparable merger with this world."

The feeling of “dissolution” in the environment brings happiness to Ivan Afrikanovich, allows him to feel the world around and himself in it eternal (“time stopped for him”, and “there was no end or beginning”). Criticism was ironic about the fact that Ivan Afrikanovich in his worldview is close to the newborn son and the cow Rogula, not seeing that he has not lost the ability to “identify” himself with nature, of which he feels himself an organic part.

For Ivan Afrikanovich, the sparrow warmed by him is a brother, and a stranger, after the grief experienced - the death of Katerina, is also a brother (“Misha is a brother”). Through nature, with which a person feels a "kinship" connection, one can also feel one's brotherhood with other people.

This idea is also close V. Astafievand finds a detailed incarnation in him (“Tsar-fish”), the Forest is familiar to Ivan Afrikanovich as a “village street” (this is a habitable, native space). “For the life of every tree, every tree has been re-knocked out, every stump has been stoned, any undercut has been trampled.” This is also a property that characterizes a person inscribed in the natural world order.

The heroine of the story E. Nosova“Meadow fescue makes noise” perceives its mowing as a native home, examining it as “a room in which it has not been for a long time.”

With the death of his “hotly” beloved wife Katerina, having lost his life orientation, “indifferent to himself and the whole world,” Ivan Afrikanovich reflects on life and death: “We must go. You have to go, but where would you go, why go now? It seems that there is nowhere else to go, everything has been passed, everything has been lived, and there is nowhere for him to go without her, and not just ... Everything is left, she is not alone, and there is nothing without her ... ". And the answer to the question of whether it is worth living on comes to him precisely in the forest, when he himself looked into the face of death. The mysterious forest acts as a kind of higher power that leads Ivan Afrikanovich in his wandering and "brings" him out. The night forest also symbolizes a natural mystery, eternal and mysterious, into which a person is not allowed to penetrate. “... A minute later, a vague, confused emptiness is suddenly felt in the distance again. Slowly, for a long time, a dull anxiety is born, it gradually turns into an all-worldly and still ghostly noise, but then the noise grows, spreads, then rolls closer, and drowns everything in the world a dark flood, and you want to shout, stop it, and now it will swallow the whole world ... ".

From this moment, Ivan Afrikanovich's struggle for life begins. The only star that shines "through the darkness from the dark peaks", which then became "a detail of his dream", left a mark in the subconscious, like Katerina's soul, reminds him of life and salvation. Not afraid of death before, Ivan Afrikanovich is afraid of it, for the first time he thinks about it. “... No, there is probably nothing there ... And who, for what purpose, invented all this? Live this one ... How did it start, how will it end, why is all this?

The hero of V. Belov rises to a philosophical understanding of life, realizing that, just as he was not before birth, he will also not be after death, that “there is no end-edge either here or there”, turning out to be consonant in his thoughts with the narrator in “Other Shores” V. Nabokov: “... Common sense tells us that life is just a crack of weak light between two perfectly black eternities. There is no difference in their blackness, but we tend to peer into the pre-life abyss with less confusion than into the one to which we fly at the speed of four thousand five hundred heartbeats per hour.

The thought of the eternity of life helps Ivan Afrikanovich find the answer to the question: “Why was it born? ... It turns out, after all, that it was better to be born than not be born.” The idea of ​​the cycle of life, the cyclicity of the processes taking place in it, is expressed in a variety of ways in the story. The life of the Drynov family is inscribed in the circle of nature: the birth of the last, ninth, child, named after his father Ivan, and the death of Katerina, the life and death of the breadwinner of the Roguly cow family. H.L. Leiderman notes that in the life of Ivan Afrikanovich’s family “the same general law of movement and continuity operates”: the ninth child is named Ivan, after her mother Katya makes her first fetus, and for Katerina this swath was the last. The world of the Drynovs is integral, continuous and immortal.

In the context of the endless cycle of life depicted in the story, its title “The Usual Business” is filled with philosophical meaning.

2.2 Rasputin V.

V. Rasputin's favorite heroes, like Nikolai Ustinov, "feel their kinship with nature from birth to death."

The artistic space of the story is closed: Matera is separated from the rest of the world by the borders of the island, the waters of the Angara. It has its own way of life, its own memory, its own flow of time, which is constantly emphasized by the author both in the rhythmically repeating signs of those changes that occur from the moment of awakening of nature and until its natural withering (he - by the will of man - is not allowed to materialize on Matera), so and in the perception of time by the characters. Pavel, arriving in the village, “every time was amazed at how readily time closed after him,” as if there was no new settlement and he never left Matera.

“Opposition” of Matera to another land is also revealed in the fact that she lives according to her own moral laws, the keeper and guardian of which is the main character of the story, the wise Daria. She constantly, slowly and with concentration reflects on where the conscience has gone, why a person lives to old age, “to uselessness”, “where does a person go if the place speaks for him”, “who knows the truth about a person, why he lives”, “what should a person feel for whom whole generations have lived”?

Daria has her own philosophy that helps her live, her own ideas about the world order: the underground, earthly and heavenly levels, about the connection of times, she has her own view on the meaning of human existence. She finds answers to many questions, although she suffers from the fact that she does not understand what is happening: “... I don’t understand anything: where, why?” Daria is Matera's conscience. "Daria is an absolutely complete type of consciousness, where the word and deed are equal to conscience."

She took upon herself the whole burden of the farewell ceremony with the land, with the house in which her family lived for more than three hundred years. And having grown old, she follows the "tyatka" order: not to take on a lot, but to take the very first thing: "to have a conscience and endure from conscience." Daria blames herself for what is happening on Matera, tormented by the fact that it is she - the eldest of the family - who must prevent the flooding of her parents' graves.

To understand the image of Daria, the words from the story are important that in everyone there is a “true person”, who “appears almost only in moments of goodbye and suffering.” Such a moment has come for Matera and Daria, throughout the story the heroine is revealed as a true person.

"Farewell to Matera» - a socio-philosophical story. It was the philosophy of the heroine, consonant with the author's thoughts and supplemented by them, that formed the basis of the artistic concept of the work, which is a slow-motion chronicle of farewell to Matera on the eve of her death: spring, three summer months and half of September. On the eve of the disappearance of Matera, everything takes on a special meaning: the exact chronology of events, the attitude of the villagers towards Matera, the last haymaking, the last harvest of potatoes.

The story begins with a solemn prologue: “And spring has come again, its own in its endless series, but the last for Matera, for the island and the village, bearing the same name. Again, with a roar and passion, the ice swept through, piling up hummocks on the banks ... Again, on the upper cape, water roared briskly, rolling down the river on two sides, greenery again blazed over the ground and trees, the first rains fell, swifts and swallows flew in and croaked lovingly for life on frogs awakened in the evenings in the swamp.

This picture of the awakening of nature with repeated “again” is intended, on the one hand, to emphasize the eternity of the processes taking place in it, on the other hand, to emphasize the unnaturalness of the fact that this spring is the last for Matera. In connection with the impending flooding of the island, a discord was introduced into human existence: “... The village withered, it is clear that it withered like a cut tree, rooted, left the usual course. Everything is in place, but not everything is so ... ".

In the story "Fire", Rasputin's voice sounds angrily and accusingly against people who do not remember their kinship, their roots, the source of life. Fire as retribution, denunciation, as a burning fire, destroying hastily built housing: Forestry warehouses are burning in the village of Sosnovka . The story, as conceived by the writer, created as a continuation Farewell to Matera , speaks of the fate of those who betrayed their land, nature, the very human essence.

Nature is merciless, it needs our protection. But how sometimes it’s a shame for a person who turns away, forgets about her, about all the good and bright that is only in her depths, and seeks her happiness in a false and empty one. How often we do not listen, do not want to hear the signals that she tirelessly sends us.

The tone of the theme of man and nature in literature changes dramatically: from the problem of spiritual impoverishment, it turns into the problem of the physical destruction of nature and man.

Russian natural philosophical prose lyrics

2.3 Pulatov T.

Among the works of natural-philosophical prose, the story of T. Pulatov "Possessions"(1974) occupies a special place. Small in volume, it gives a holistic picture of the life of nature, which appears as something unified and ordered in its relationship. S. Semenova, characterizing it, emphasized the author’s mastery precisely in creating the image of nature as a Whole: “Days in the desert, the mobile existence of material forces, the play of the elements, the microcycle of the life of a whole pyramid of creatures - and to us with the firm hand of an amazing master, some kind of all-seeing, all-hearing , the all-sensing mediator of natural life, its order of being is outlined, ringed by the law of Fate, the destiny of every creature - equally surprising and equivalent - to the natural Whole.

Space and time in the story are clearly delineated, space is limited by the boundaries of the possessions of “our kite”, time is closed in the circle of the day: a full moon night with an “unnaturally red” moon and a day when the kite once a month circles its territory “to the very dry lake with a lonely tree on the shore."

The night of the full moon in the story is a kind of temporary sign, a "reference point", fixing the beginning of a new microcycle. In the light of the full moon, the changes that have taken place in the desert during the month are distinct. The full moon is also a “signal” for the kite, obeying the natural “call” (“the unspoken law of birds”): “Instinct commands the kite to fly on this very day ...”. The natural clock, which has counted the month, on the night of the full moon “notifies” this, it is not for nothing that it is not like other nights. Life in the desert freezes, “no growth and gains, but many losses” on this night, summing up the natural microcycle. The full moon for the kite is the night before the test of his strength, endurance, the right to own the territory. He cannot break this "unspoken law of birds" and flies around his possessions on the day set for this. Life on the territory of the kite, as well as in the entire desert, is subject to a certain order, which cannot be changed or violated even by the kite, the owner of the possessions. He himself is "inscribed" in this order and obeys it.

So, the natural world in the image of T. Pulatov is ordered, cyclical and harmonious. Everything in it is interconnected and interdependent, is in motion. This movement is the basis of life, thanks to it changes occur in the biosphere, and time is the measure that allows not only to fix the transformation of space, but also to identify the regularity, the natural expediency of this movement. Interconnected are not only the living creatures of the desert, not only its flora and fauna, but cosmic and terrestrial processes. If “wormwood is a link between people and beasts” (the human world is only “supposed” in the story, it has no place in the kite’s domain), then “dew, clean and transparent” smells of “the heights of the universe, where star dust flies”. The light brings the smell of wormwood. T. Pulatov in a poetic form captures a picture of the water cycle in nature (irreproachable from a scientific point of view) in order to once again emphasize the relationship between the earthly and the cosmic. “In spring, and often in summer, at such a time as now, it pours a short but heavy rain, instantly fills the lakes, is quickly absorbed into the sand, penetrating into holes and driving the animals out of their homes. And then the rain passes just as quickly, the water evaporates, rising in a heavy cloud over the desert, not a dense cloud, but from layers between which the air shines through in the rays of the sun; layers of clouds descend to each other, the heated air bursts between them - the sound is deaf and fearless - the clouds break and throw a few large drops on the ground, no longer rain, but water, but this water, before reaching the sand, evaporates.

The general "movement" in nature is carried out by common efforts. At the heart of the movement is transformation, "transformation". The story contains a description of the onset of morning in the desert, which captures this movement and the "coherence" of efforts. T. Pulatov creates a complete picture of the processes taking place in the Earth's biosphere, based on the interaction of natural phenomena, on the relationship of the earthly and the cosmic, which manifests itself, in particular, in the geological transformation of the face of the Earth. IN AND. Vernadskyemphasized this relationship: "The face of the Earth ... is not only a reflection of our planet, a manifestation of its substance and its energy - it is also the creation of external forces of the cosmos."

A.L. Chizhevskyin his well-known work “Earth Echo of Solar Storms” (1936) he wrote that life “to a much greater extent” than is commonly thought, “is a cosmic phenomenon than a living one. It was created by the impact of the creative dynamics of the cosmos on the inert material of the Earth. She lives by the dynamics of these forces, and each beat of the organic pulse is coordinated with the beat of the cosmic heart - this grandiose collection of nebulae, stars, the Sun and planets.

The story of T. Pulatov reveals the relationship between the captured moment from the life of the desert (one day) and the entire previous course of time, which cannot be measured and incorporates the evolutionary process of living matter. Noteworthy is the description of some natural phenomena in the story. So, it is said about moss: “In it, perhaps, in an equal proportion from stones, from plants and from animals, for moss is the basis of what exists in the desert. From it, and then developed, separated, three branches - sand, grass and shrubs, as well as birds and animals.

2.4 Prishvin M.M.

The work of Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin from beginning to end is full of deep love for his native nature. Prishvin was one of the first to talk about the need to maintain a balance of power in nature, about what a wasteful attitude to natural resources can lead to.

No wonder Mikhail Prishvin is called the "singer of nature." This master of the artistic word was a fine connoisseur of nature, perfectly understood and highly appreciated its beauty and wealth. In his works, he teaches to love and understand nature, to be responsible to it for its use, and not always reasonable. The problem of relations between man and nature is covered from different angles.

Even in the first work "In the land of fearless birds"Prishvin is worried about man's attitude to forests "... You only hear the word "forest", but with an adjective: sawn, drill, fire, wood, etc." But this is half the trouble. The best trees are cut down, only equal parts of the trunk are used, and the rest "... rushes into the forest and rots. The whole dry-leaved or fallen forest also rots for nothing ..."

The same problem is discussed in the book of essays "Northern Forest"and in " Ship more often". Thoughtless deforestation along the banks of the rivers leads to disturbances in the entire large organism of the river: the banks are washed away, the plants that served as food for the fish disappear.

AT "Forest drops"Prishvin writes about bird cherry, which during flowering is so unreasonably broken by the townspeople, carrying away armfuls of white fragrant flowers. Bird cherry branches in houses will stand for a day or two and go to garbage cans, and bird cherry died and will no longer please future generations with its flowering.

And sometimes, in a seemingly harmless way, an ignorant hunter can lead a tree to death. Such an example is given by Prishvin: “Here is a hunter, wanting to excite a squirrel, knocks on the trunk with an ax and, having taken the animal, leaves. And the mighty spruce is destroyed by these blows, and rot begins along the heart.”

Many of Prishvin's books are devoted to the animal world. This is a collection of essays Dear animals", telling about predators, fur-bearing animals, birds and fish. The writer wants to tell the reader in detail about wildlife in order to show the close connection of all the links that make it up, and warn that the disappearance of at least one of these links will result in irreversible undesirable changes in the entire biosphere.

In the story "Ginseng"the writer tells about a hunter's meeting with a rare animal - a spotted deer. This meeting gave birth in the hunter's soul to the struggle of two opposing feelings. “As a hunter, I was well known to myself, but I never thought, I didn’t know ... that beauty, or whatever else, could tie me, the hunter, myself, like a deer, hand and foot. Two people fought in me One said: "You will miss the moment, it will never return to you, and you will forever yearn for it. Hurry, grab it, hold it, and you will have a female of the most beautiful animal in the world. " Another voice said: "Sit still! A wonderful moment can be saved only without touching it with your hands. "The beauty of the animal prompted a hunter in man ...

In the story " undressed spring"Prishvin talks about people saving animals during the spring flood. And then he gives an amazing example of mutual assistance among animals: hunting ducks have become islands of land for insects that have fallen into the water due to a stormy flood. Prishvin has many such examples of animals helping each other. Through in them he teaches the reader to be attentive and notice the complex relationships in the natural world.Understanding nature, a sense of beauty is inextricably linked with the correct approach of mankind to the use of the generous gifts of nature.

Throughout his literary activity, M.M. Prishvin promoted the idea of ​​preserving flora and fauna. In any work of the writer, a high love for nature sounds: "I write - it means I love," said Prishvin.

2.5 Bunin I.A.

Bunin achieved wide fame thanks to his prose. Story "Antonov apples"is a hymn to nature, filled with irrepressible joy. In the story" Epitaph"Bunin bitterly writes about the deserted village. The steppe lying around ceased to live, all nature froze.

In the story" new road"two forces collided: nature and a train rattling along the rails. Nature retreats before the invention of mankind: "Go, go, we make way for you," the eternal trees say. nature?" Anxious thoughts about what the conquest of nature can lead to torment Bunin, and he pronounces them on behalf of nature. Silent trees have found the opportunity to speak with humanity on the pages of the works of I.A. Bunin.

In the story " Sukhodol" Bunin spoke about the process of the emergence of ravines. From the descriptions of the paintings of the 18th century, when dense forests stood around the Kamenka River, the writer proceeds to what was observed after deforestation: "stony ravines appeared behind the huts with white pebbles and rubble on their bottoms", for a long time the Kamenka River dried up, and "the Sukhodolsk men dug ponds in a rocky bed." This story gives an excellent example of the fact that everything is interconnected in the natural world. It was worth depriving the soil of the protective layer of forests, and conditions were created for the emergence of ravines, which are much more difficult to deal with than To cut down forest.

2.6 Paustovsky K.G.

One of the followers of the Prishvinian traditions in literature was Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky. Paustovsky's story Telegram"begins like this: “October was extremely cold, insatiable. The boarded roofs turned black. The tangled grass in the garden fell. loose clouds. From them the rain was importunately pouring. It was no longer possible to pass or drive along the roads, and the shepherds stopped driving the herd into the meadows. "

The sunflower in this episode symbolizes the loneliness of Katerina Petrovna. All her peers died, and she, like a small sunflower by the fence, outlived them all. With the last of her strength, Katerina Petrovna writes a letter to her beloved daughter: “My beloved! I won’t survive this winter. A parallel runs through the whole story - a man and native nature, Katerina Petrovna "stopped at an old tree, took a cold wet branch with her hand and found out: it was a maple tree. She planted it a long time ago ... and now it has become flying around, chilled, he has nowhere was to get away from this impartial windy night.

Another story by Paustovsky rainy dawn"is full of pride, admiration for the beauty of his native land, attention to people who are in love with this beauty, subtly and strongly feeling its charm.

Paustovsky knew nature very well, his landscapes are always deeply lyrical. A feature of the writer is his manner of not telling, underdrawing, he allows the reader to complete this or that picture in his imagination. Paustovsky was fluent in the word, being a true connoisseur of the Russian language. He considered nature one of the sources of this knowledge: “I am sure that in order to fully master the Russian language, in order not to lose the feeling of this language, one needs not only constant communication with ordinary Russian people, but also communication with pastures and forests, waters, old willows, with the whistling of birds and with every flower that nods from under the hazel bush.

Paustovsky talks about the hidden charms of nature to people who have not yet understood that "native land is the most magnificent thing that has been given to us for life. We must cultivate it, protect and protect it with all the forces of our being."

Now, when the problem of nature conservation is in the center of attention of all mankind, the thoughts and images of Paustovsky are of particular value and significance.

2.7 Vasiliev B.

It is impossible not to note the work of Boris Vasiliev " Don't shoot white swans"in which every page, every line is imbued with great love for native nature. The protagonist Yegor Polushkin, a forester, found his vocation by becoming a guardian of nature. Being a simple, unpretentious person, he shows all the beauty and richness of his soul in his work. Love for his work helps Polushkin open up, take the initiative, show his individuality. So, for example, Yegor and his son Kolya wrote the rules of conduct for tourists in verse:

Stop tourist, you entered the forest,

Do not joke in the forest with fire,

The forest is our home

If there is trouble in him,

Where will we live then?

How much this man could have done for his land, if not for his tragic death. Yegor defends nature to the last breath in an unequal battle with poachers.

Shortly before his death, Polushkin says wonderful words: “Nature, she endures everything for the time being. She dies silently before flying. mother's coffin."

2.8 Astafiev V.P.

Viktor Astafiev, whose thought is constantly focused on the "pain points" of time, turned to the problem of the relationship between man and nature already at an early stage of his creative activity, long before the creation of "Tsar-fish", which is, in fact, natural-philosophical manifesto of the writer, summing up his reflections on the place of man in nature. Astafyev's favorite heroes live in the world of nature, close and understandable to them. This is their cradle and home, a source of joy, inspiration and happiness. In line with the classical tradition, the writer develops his views on the harmonious unity of man and nature, on its healing and renewing influence. His heroes are not outside of nature, but "inside" the processes taking place in it, being its natural particle and continuation. Astafiev continues the humanistic traditions of Russian classics with a cycle of stories " Horse with pink mane.

Story " Why did I kill the corncrake? autobiographical. This is a confession of an adult in a long-standing childhood misconduct: stupid and cruel boyish fun - hunting for a living thing with a stick, slingshot, whip. This game must be passed on to boys with the blood of distant ancestors, whose countless generations obtained food by hunting animals and birds. The instinct, once saving for the human race, has now lost its meaning, has become an enemy of nature and of man himself. Having obeyed him, the hero of the story once, in childhood, caught up and swept to death a wounded, badly running bird, which is not even customary to eat. But his heart was enough to understand all the senseless cruelty of his act, albeit belatedly, to be horrified by himself, recklessly beating a rawhide whip on a defenseless tiny living calf. This belated horror haunts him for the rest of his life with the tormenting question placed in the title of the story. In the mouth of a man who went through the whole great war, many times was on the verge of death and fired at enemies, this question sounds especially exacting. Because morality is precisely in the answer to the question: why a violent death?

A real hunter will never raise his hand to a capercaillie female if she feeds and warms her fledgling chicks and her stomach is plucked naked, because, incubating eggs, she must give them more heat, and feathers interfere with this (“ Kapalukha"). Not against the extraction of marten fur, but against the stupid indifference to nature, the story is also addressed " Belogrudka- how the children killed the brood of the white-breasted marten, and she, distraught with grief, takes revenge on the whole world around her, destroying poultry in two neighboring villages, until she herself dies from a gun charge.

« Haircut Creak"- in form, in genre - a naturalistic fairy tale. But, reading how mischievous boys killed the father of a haircut with a slingshot, we involuntarily recall that place from the story “The Horse with a Pink Mane”, which says how Sanka and Vitka knocked out a swift with a stone and he, choking with blood, died in their arms.

3. Masculine and feminine principles in natural-philosophical prose

Nature, from a natural-philosophical point of view, endowed individuals of different sexes with specific forms of perception and motivation for actions. With a certain similarity in the features of comprehension of the cosmos and existence in the bios, the male and female principles differ in the models of behavior inherent in their physis.

The masculine principle in natural-philosophical prose of the second half of the 20th century is represented by several main images (hunter, wanderer, sage, artist, righteous man and God-seeker) . Each of them is endowed with specific personality traits and a penchant for a certain type of activity.

hunter mandistinguishes somewhat, at first glance, a hostile attitude towards nature. He chooses for himself the role of its conqueror, but such domination of natura turns out to be a way of creating vital energy in the world. A man-hunter in the natural-philosophical prose of the second half of the 20th century chooses for himself the role of a breadwinner and breadwinner. Such, for example, are the heroes of the story Ch.T. Aitmatova"Spotted dog running along the edge of the sea." Hunting for them is not an act of conquering nature with the aim of destroying it, but a way to overcome death, a kind of transition to eternity, an opportunity to realize oneself as Sfires.

Another embodiment of the masculine principle in the natural-philosophical prose of the second half of the 20th century is wanderer. The hero spends his life in constant closeness to nature. However, he does not conquer her, but merges with her in his movement. This happens, for example, with the hero of the story Yu.P. Kazakova"Wanderer". His path, sometimes forced, not voluntary, runs to infinity. Not knowing the final point of his arrival, the male wanderer learns on the way to a subtle feeling of nature, acquires the meaning of life. At the same time, he sometimes gets stuck in some intermediate form of existence of a multidimensional personality (the heroes of Yu.P. Kazakov), not reaching the form of Sfiros.

Forced wandering (heroes A.A. Kima, L.M. Leonovaand other authors-natural philosophers), on the contrary, helps a person in acquiring this status.

The comprehension of the being of everything that exists through the prism of reason is realized in the natural-philosophical prose of the second half of the 20th century in the archetype sage. If the conquest of nature is important for the hunter, albeit in its creative basis, and for the wanderer, merging with the physis in motion on the way to infinity, then for the thinker; the main way to achieve the form of Sfiros is the knowledge of the world of flora and fauna. The unity and diversity of all that exists is revealed to him in the course of intense reflection. A similar quality (dominating over other personal properties) is distinguished by the protagonist of the story A.G. Bitova"Birds, or new information about man". In the mind of the natural-philosophical sage lies all the rationality of the world, which guarantees the preservation of vitality. Cognizing reality, the atomic personality of the thinker is endowed with all-permeability. In other words, he comprehends the essence of phenomena and the course of things at the level of a biologized mind. Consequently, the image of a natural-philosophical thinker recreates the archetype of the sage K.G. Jung, with a predominance in the ontological aspect of being of the organic category of comprehension of the world.

For, male artistthe aesthetic transformation (more precisely, display) of reality becomes dominant. The cult of reason yields its primacy to creativity. In this case, the multidimensionality of a person is already created by art. The act of creativity attaches the personality to cosmic life. This is indicated, for example, by the hero of the novel B.L. Vasiliev"Don't shoot white swans" Yegor Polushkin. Art through admiration and knowledge of the beauty of nature leads a person to comprehend the idea of ​​eternity and infinity of the Universe. The act of creative transformation of reality turns the natural-philosophical artist into Sfiros.

The religious aspect of being in prose, reflecting the structure of the world according to the laws of logos, is embodied in the guise of a man righteous and/or god-seeker. In this case, the way of interacting with nature is based on the fact of the ethical improvement of the personality itself, but not through reason, creativity, dynamics, domination, but in the spiritualization of the nature of being of everything that exists. The righteous and God-seeker sees, or rather, feels the moral foundations in the organization of the world. He understands the source of life as the divine principle, manifested to man in nature. From the blissful contemplation of the world, the heroes turn to the deepest facets of their personality, while transforming spiritually.

In the process of gaining the status of Sfiros, they go through trials (tempted), make a choice between Good and Evil, and, finally, are initiated into sacred knowledge. All these steps are overcome, for example, by the hunchback Alyosha, the hero of the novel L.M. Leonova"Pyramid". In other words, in natural-philosophical prose, a person who seeks piety and observes the highest spiritual covenants of being (nature - God), makes a choice between the absolute of truth and the chaos of social life, as a result of which it is transformed into Sfiros by the bios. Heroes find themselves in situations where it is necessary to go either to the side of spirituality, or to the side of a society that destroys vitality. The dominant feature of a multidimensional personality in such an incarnation becomes ethical selflessness through natural influence.

The feminine principle in the natural-philosophical prose of the second half of the 20th century incorporates images endowed not only with a sense of kinship with nature, but also with a desire for further perfection of the world. . In any of their incarnations (foremother Eve, the Savior, the “unreal-real” Beautiful Lady), they are distinguished by their endless desire to merge with world harmony, the cosmos - only the ways of their interaction with the bios are differentiated. At the same time, all the heroines of the natural-philosophical prose of the second half of the 20th century have already been marked with signs of the world soul, the Universe. They are not only a particle of nature, but a good and perfect manifestation of it. In other words, in these images of natural-philosophical prose, the ideal of the “eternally feminine” is recreated on organic grounds.

Mother Evebecomes the embodiment of the source of being. The image of a woman-nature is the creative essence. Its naturalness, pristineness, the ability to feel reality is taken as the basis. Next to such a woman, a man realizes his destiny, therefore, the image of Eve is a designation of the fullness of being, its unity and infinity. Nina Vsevolodovna, the heroine of the novel, has a similar omnipresence. S.P. Zalygin"After the storm". The woman Eve bestows immortality on mankind, from a natural-philosophical point of view. In this desire to create life one can guess an attempt to resolve the contradiction between society and the bios. Thus, the progenitor Eve takes on the role of conciliator. In her striving for vitality one can guess the natural-philosophical recognition of the value of the bios (the moral criterion for the development of man-Sfiros).

Already in this incarnation of the feminine principle of the prose about physis, the cult of feeling is manifested. A certain rationalism prevailed in the images of men. Hence the greatest proximity of women to nature, the rationality of which lends itself to a logical explanation from the standpoint of the value of the bios. Expediency in natura is not the result of a long evolution, but the source of being, therefore, a mystery.

A natural embodiment of the "unreal-real" beautiful lady, in the image of which the admiration for the perfection of physis, the aesthetic value of being a man-Sfiros, is expressed. The harmony of an inspiring woman stems not so much from ethics as from the laws of the organic world. The heroine has secret knowledge, but it is incomprehensible due to her inaccessibility. You can only admire her in such a beautiful bodily form, like a shaman from a story in stories V.P. Astafieva"King fish". Having once arisen in the imagination of a man, the “unreal-real” Beautiful Lady teaches him the feeling of nature, introduces him with her perfection to the spiritualized understanding of the phenomena of being of everything that exists, inspires him to search for a good beginning in organic matter, directs him to worship him.

Role saviorsof this world are taken over by other heroines of natural-philosophical prose of the second half of the 20th century. They appear in two incarnations of the feminine, depending on the way they interact with nature. Righteouscomes to the salvation of the world through his holiness. The blessing contained in the laws of the preservation of vitality helps the Eternal Virgin to find God in the affirmation of life. The preservation and continuation of being brings it closer to the maternal essence of nature. This is the heroine of the novel Ch.T. Aitmatova“And the day lasts longer than a century” Altun.

Unlike the righteous wise womangives the world salvation through reason. However, from the Eternal Virgin she inherits boundless sacrifice. Like the good beginning of the world for a righteous woman, so its rationality for a wise woman stems from the bios. Only here to the preservation of life the second leads to a deep understanding of it. Starting from love, like a righteous woman, a wise woman affirms her spirituality in it, but only then she realizes the role of the Savior, gaining unity with the world.

The preservation of the being of all that exists stems from the ethical-biological feeling (holiness) and awareness of reality (wisdom) by the heroines of the natural-philosophical prose of the second half. XX century-righteous and wise woman. In these two incarnations, the role of the Savior is revealed.

Conclusion

All our classics wrote and spoke about the fact that man and nature are connected by inseparable threads in the last century, and the philosophers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries even established a connection between the national character and the way of life of a Russian person, the nature among which he lives.

Evgeny Bazarov, through whose mouth Turgenev expressed the idea of ​​a certain part of society that nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man is a worker in it , and Dr. Astrov, one of Chekhov's heroes, planting and growing forests and thinking about how beautiful our land is - these are the two poles in posing and solving the problem Human and nature.

And in modernist and, in particular, postmodernist literature, alienation from nature takes place, it takes on a radical character: “nature is no longer nature, but “language”, a system of modeling categories that preserve only the external similarity of natural phenomena.”

The weakening of the ties of literature of the XX century. with “wildlife”, it is legitimate to explain not so much the “cult of language” in the writing environment, but rather the isolation of the current literary consciousness from the big human world, its isolation in a narrow circle of professional, corporate circles, purely urban. But this branch of the literary life of our time is far from exhausting what has been done and is being done by writers and poets of the second half of the 20th century: the images of nature are an ineradicable, eternally vital facet of literature and art, full of the deepest meaning.

The basis of the artistic reality of natural-philosophical prose is the unity and diversity of being of all that exists. The world of society as a product of artificial, unnatural and chaotic is alien to the environment that was formed naturally. Here everything is subject to the bios, organized logically; and harmoniously. Each of its elements, even in the smallest modification, carries the features of universal unity. All segments of reality, reflecting the structure of the universe, are aimed at the creation of being. The planetary scale of the bios is swallowed up by the techno-society, which destroys the generated ecosystem, bringing chaos to the life of flora and fauna, as well as man as its representative.

And sinister images appear in Russian literature Arkharovtsy , poachers , transistor tourists , which boundless expanses became subject . In the open spaces they frolic so much that behind them, as after Mamaev's troops, are burnt forests, a polluted shore, fish dead from explosives and poison. These people have lost touch with the land on which they were born and raised.

Having absorbed the endless metamorphoses of being, their rationality and expediency, reality, in the natural-philosophical prose of the second half of the 20th century, it began to be understood as natural. Creativity Ch.T. Aitmatova, V.P. Astafieva, A.G. Bitova, B.L. Vasilyeva, S.P. Zalygina, Yu.P. Kazakova, A.A. Kim, L.M. Leonova, V.G. Rasputin reflects the natural order: the coexistence of the Universe and the individual, where the latter is forced to obey the laws of the logos, otherwise it may die.

In their works, the authors-natural philosophers create the image of a multidimensional person, dating back to ancient sources. Taking as a basis the doctrine of the universal harmony of the Universe and the useful (unified) beauty of being of everything that exists, they depicted a person achieving perfect unity with nature.

Such a state of the ancient Greek philosopher Empedoclesin his work "On Nature" he defined it as Sfairos (Spheros). In turn, a person, as a particle of being, also acquired its features. Consequently, the apogee of the existence of the personality was the achievement of the form of Sfiros. The natural-philosophical understanding of reality determined the path of development of natural man and endowed him with special features. Hence his biological intelligence, increased ability to reflect on the planetary level, a sense of kinship with the universal WE, a sense of the infinity of the cycle of things and events, through which immortality is comprehended. The spherical shape of Sfiros allows a person to feel nature and endows it with all-permeability, which helps to discover its atomic device - a particle of the cosmos - within its own corporeality.

Another distinguishing feature of a multidimensional man is his relationship with other representatives of flora and fauna. From admiring the perfection of everything living, a person comes to the realization of equal rights between the manifestations of being. Thus, a number of value aspects of reality are affirmed, in accordance with which a person stays. They concern the ontological, religious, moral and aesthetic essences of the reality of a multidimensional personality.

Man-Sfiros is trying to comprehend the mystery of nature and determine the expediency of his existence. Comprehending the natural development of the existence of all living things, he creates a personal concept of world outlook; for example, Vadim from the novel L.M. Leonova"Pyramid".

The cult of reason becomes the driving force of vitality for a multidimensional person. Natural thought acts as a constructive element in the mind of a natural-philosophical personality. It also sees the essence of human being, the result of his life. Far in their content from Hamlet's reflections of a homeomeric personality, they acquire an ontological value. This is directly stated in the works of natural philosophers, for example, in the story V.G. Rasputin"Live a century - love a century." The ontological value becomes one of the leading ones on the way to the realization by a person of his idea - the atom. The planetary scale of reflections allows a person to reach the level of Sfiros, realizing himself as a microcosm of the Universe.

The essence of being for the hero of natural-philosophical prose of the second half of the 20th century lies not only in an attempt to comprehend the mind of nature, but also in reverent admiration for it. It does not come down to fanatical admiration, but evokes in the individual a reverent attitude towards the imperishable. Eternity, which distinguishes the peculiarity of being of everything that exists, is understood by a multidimensional person as the divine principle of the world. Nature and the creative source of vitality are identified. Thus, a person acquires immortality not only in thought, but also in the being of everything that exists. This happens, for example, with the heroes of the novel A.A. Kim"Onliria".

Religion, the embodiment of goodness and faith in it, becomes a measure of the value of human life in relation to nature. The being of everything that exists in the guise of the Almighty contains in a multidimensional personality a certain good potential aimed at perfecting the immortal soul of the Universe, the diverse unity of WE.

Through the attitude to nature, the criteria of bioethics are also expressed in the understanding of the man-Sfiros. Ecological values ​​affirm the connection between the moral aspects of a person's being and his attitude to the bios. Nature becomes defenseless against the manifestations of society. A technically armed man, born in an artificial social consciousness, destroys the existence of everything that exists.

Natural resources are perceived by people as material wealth, for example, in the work S.P. Zalygin"Environmental Novel". Such an attitude towards the bios leads to the death of the person himself, attracted by social reality.

The hero of the story in the stories "Tsar-fish" V.P. Astafievarealizes the vital orientation of the bios, the craft invented by the society becomes alien to Akim due to its biological nature. The protagonist of the work of the author-natural philosopher grows morally. Through the attitude to nature, the ecological values ​​of the individual are expressed. The moral aspect of being - bioethics, designated as a dilemma between the bios and society, becomes another segment of reality that contributes to the achievement of the form of Sfiros by a person.

In the natural-philosophical prose of the second half of the 20th century, the antipode of the man-Sfiros appears. Their main opposite is the choice of life path. In one of his stories Yu.P. Kazakovdesignated such a hero as a person striving for an "easy life". The image is distinguished by the adoption of such a model of behavior, which boils down to the simplicity of being, an ingenuous appeal to others. The hero is a natural product of society, allowing lightness in feelings and relationships. For example, Goga Gertsev ("Tsar-fish" V.P. Astafieva) changes the medal from Kiryaga-tree tree for his own benefit.

The natural-philosophical prose of the second half of the 20th century sets off such a simplicity of perception of reality with the indifferent and even consumerist attitude of the hero towards nature. The existence of everything that exists becomes for a person an “easy life” a way of gaining material wealth. Superficial perception of reality destroys nature. Consequently, the depth of feelings in relation to the biologized reality, of which the person himself is a particle, becomes another moral criterion that distinguishes the essence of Sfiros.

At the same time, natural-philosophical prose of the second half of the 20th century creates images of children whose moral development at an early age influenced the further growth of the homeomeric personality. The child-perfection, performing the functions of the Savior, appears in the works A.A. Kim, Yu.P. Kazakovaand other natural philosophers. The time of childhood is depicted as the period of the greatest proximity of man to nature. In the feeling of his kinship with her, the child learns the basic moral guidelines for existence not just in the world of people, but also in the universal unity of WE, as Arina does in the fairy tale novel of the same name A.A. Kim. The child in natural-philosophical prose draws moral purity from nature and with such baggage goes to adulthood. At the same time, it is important that the child-perfection has already reached the form of Sfiros.

Cognition, feeling, moral experience of events in natural reality, admiration for its perfection turn for a multidimensional personality into an act of aesthetic admiration. Beauty in the bios becomes an integral part of a person's consciousness when he acquires the status of Sfiros. The beauty of the world is filled with deep meaning for the hero of natural-philosophical prose of the second half of the 20th century: it reflects the perfect arrangement of organic matter and the usefulness of everything that exists. It shows the unity of form and content, harmony, which is so lacking for a person in society.

Aestheticism in the vision of the real world is a necessary component in the improvement of the individual, from a natural-philosophical point of view. The mystery of nature is understood by a multidimensional personality as a mystery of beauty. Even the bodily attractiveness of a person becomes a manifestation of the perfection and harmony of the bios. Therefore, in aesthetic admiration, the path of comprehending the organic world is traced, a feeling of kinship is born, with it, as it happens with the main character of the story. A.A. Kim"Utopia of Turin". The universe is impossible without harmony and beauty. Consequently, in the formation of a man-Sfiros, a large role is given to aesthetic values.

The natural-philosophical prose of the second half of the 20th century creates a unique image of a multidimensional man who creates his being in nature. He is not only close to her, but also feels like her particle - an atom. The typological features of the model of human behavior - Sfiros allow us to attribute it to one or another characterological group, depending on its value essences, taking into account the manifestations of the male and female principles. Created in the works of the authors of the second half of the 20th century (Ch.T. Aitmatov, V.P. Astafiev, A.G. Bitov, B.L. Vasiliev, S.P. Zalygin, Yu.P. Kazakov, A.A. Kim, L. M. Leonova, V. G. Rasputin ) the concept of personality makes it possible to consider natural-philosophical prose as an independent trend in Russian literature, which distinguishes it, for example, from rural prose.

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Dmitry Merezhkovsky is the largest representative of the older generation of Russian symbolists. His ability to feel the atmosphere of the time and anticipate future events created his reputation as a prophet. This can be confirmed by the poem "Children of the Night", in which he, in fact, predicted the coming of the revolution.

Premonition of coming changes

"Children of the Night" was written in 1895. At that time, no one, including Merezhkovsky himself, could even imagine what terrible and bloody events would take place in Russia in October 1917. However, the poet managed to feel the mood of people, to understand that they had lost the bright beginning in their souls and, as a result, they became completely defenseless against the all-pervading forces of evil. That is why he calls his generation "children of the night", who wander in the dark, anxiously and hopefully waiting for the appearance of an unknown prophet.

True, at that time Merezhkovsky did not yet realize that instead of a prophet, a bloody and ruthless revolution would come to Russia, which would take the lives of thousands and thousands of people, forcing them to cruelly and senselessly exterminate each other. The poet saw that humanity, although frozen in anxious anticipation of dawn, in fact, had long been mired in the terrible abyss of sin. It remains only to wait for the inevitable time of purification. He does not yet realize how it will happen, but he foresees that sunlight for those who are accustomed to the darkness of the night will most likely turn into inevitable and terrible death. “We will see the light - and, like shadows, we will die in its rays,” the poet claims.

Revolution and the fate of the poet

However, Merezhkovsky does not spare himself. He understands that he is inseparable from his generation and considers himself one of the children of the night, knowing full well that he will not be able to avoid a common fate with them. The poet is absolutely sure that fate has already prepared for everyone his own Golgotha, ascending which a person will finally die or, on the contrary, will be able to cleanse himself before entering a new life.

For Merezhkovsky himself, emigration will become such Calvary. He perceived the revolution of 1917 as the coming to power of the "coming boor" and the reign of "superworldly evil." In 1919, 24 years after the creation of the poem, he, along with his wife Zinaida Gippius, will be forced to leave their native Petersburg forever, which has turned into the “kingdom of the Beast”. The poet will spend the last years of his life in Paris, longing for his abandoned homeland, but considering separation from her a well-deserved punishment for doing too little to stop the forces of darkness and evil. It seemed to Merezhkovsky that by the power of his prophetic gift he could save the country from the coming revolution, especially since he foresaw what a terrible fate awaited her in the near future.

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The beginning of the poetic career of Dmitry Sergeevich Merezhkovsky cannot be called triumphal. There was one confusion. Once (it happened in 1880), his father, head of the office at the imperial court of His Majesty, decided to introduce his fifteen-year-old offspring not to anyone, but to Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky himself. Here is how the culprit of the incident himself tells about this in Autobiography: “Blushing, turning pale and stuttering, I read to him my children's, miserable poems. He listened in silence, with impatient annoyance. We must have prevented him:

Weak - bad - no good, - he said at last. - To write well, you have to suffer, suffer!

No, better not write, just don't suffer! - objected the father.

To his father, who bore "the burden of a boring life / Without cowardice, murmuring and tears, / Knowing neither passion nor error", Merezhkovsky until the end of his days retained a respectful, but very critical attitude. The young man sympathized with the democratically minded circles of the capital's students. And when the angry father nearly cursed and kicked out his elder brother Konstantin (the future famous zoologist) from the house because he openly supported the people who killed Alexander II, Dmitry unequivocally took the side of his older brother.

And therefore, in the dispute between my father and the author of The Brothers Karamazov, the latter, of course, won. And Merezhkovsky, like most of Dostoevsky's "Russian boys", began to take hard lessons from life in the bittersweet "science of suffering." On this difficult path, fate was favorable to the young man. All in the same 1880, she brings him together with the future poetic hope of "Notes of the Fatherland" - Semyon Nadson. He, in turn, introduces him to the executive secretary of the magazine, the universal favorite of the then youth, the poet Alexei Nikolayevich Pleshcheev. Thus, in 1882-1884, a kind of triumvirate of "Notes of the Fatherland" was formed, which in many respects determined the spiritual portrait of the "eighties" poetic movement. In 1883, the first poems of the beginning poet were published on the pages of the renowned magazine. Merezhkovsky's name is constantly mentioned in the correspondence between Nadson and Pleshcheev. Nadson even calls Merezhkovsky "a brother in suffering."

The word "suffer" becomes a kind of leitmotif of the correspondence of friends. It also predetermined the pathos of their youthful lyrics, as if absorbing the intonations and motifs of populist poems by N. Morozov, V. Figner, G. Lopatin, calling for a sacrificial feat, often identified with the feat of Christ. However, this tradition was not started by the Narodniks, and it will not end with them. Even the young Pleshcheev, entering the circle of Petrashevsky poets of the 1840s, called on the “brothers” to “sacrificial deeds”, beckoning them to the future “dawn of holy redemption” (poem “Forward, without fear and doubt ...”). Glorified the fate of those who taught "to live for glory, for freedom, but taught more<...>die”, and N.A. Nekrasov ("In Memory of Dobrolyubov") and many others.

In the revolutionary-democratic trend of Russian poetry, the ethics of sacrifice has always been based on the ideals of Christian-utopian socialism of the 1840s. Generation A.I. Herzen and V.G. Belinsky sacred history served as an excellent mythological commentary on social history. The Creator bequeathed to the first people to live in peace and brotherhood, to love their neighbor as themselves. From this point of view, the entire subsequent history of mankind, numbering more than one millennium, divided into warring classes, was naturally assessed through the prism of biblical history. Public antagonism is a punishment for humanity that has trampled on the precepts of the Creator. That is why the "dawn of holy redemption" is inevitably coming - the time of the Prophets, fighters for the people's good, ready, like Christ, to put an end to human enmity by their death and return the world to the bosom of the lost paradise of "world brotherhood". In such a mythologized social context, the fate of the Prophet, civil poets of the 1840-1870s, from A.N. Pleshcheev to S.Ya. Nadson, inevitably represented in the halo of a martyr, an ascetic. Each of them secretly dreamed of a halo of the “crown of thorns”, and each of them thought that the hour of the great sacrifice had struck just for his generation. Young Merezhkovsky was no exception in this series:

We are fighters of the great army!
Together we will go into battle.
Not afraid of stupid curses,
The difficult path to the happiness of the brethren
Let's boldly try with a breast!
And on the field we will lie down
With hope alive
That the descendants of proud glory
Resurrect our honest work
And on our corpses firmly
Fortunately, they will go to the right one! ..

Before us is a “reinforced concrete monolith” of a poetic agitation, chained into a frame of phraseological clichés, as if written off from some kind of student-stilted proclamation. True, you cringe a little from the straightforward and too naturalistic image - “And it’s hard on our corpses”, but this stylistic dissonance is not able to overcome the sadly correct and monotonous pathos of the “expiatory sacrifice”.

But finally, the first collection of "Poems" by Merezhkovsky, published in 1887. Not only did the young poet not forget Dostoevsky's advice to “suffer”, but he repeatedly emphasized it and made it the leitmotif of the composition of the entire collection. The book of “Poems” is preceded by an epigraph from the Bible: “And you will give your soul to the hungry and feed the soul of the sufferer; and then your light will rise in the darkness, and your darkness will be like noon.” Experienced in populist civic rhetoric, the reader immediately tuned in to a well-known theme. And it is true that many of the verses in the first section do not deceive these expectations. But what is it? The poem "Corals", which opens the book, significantly expands the content framework of the motif stated in the epigraph. The socio-Christian myth takes on the shape of a myth about the creation of the Universe - a “new paradise”, “a new island created over the centuries”:

Each kind is a step for a new life -
Will be turned to stone by death
To lay an unshakable foundation
Generations of future times;
And rises from the abyss of the ocean,
And the coral pattern is growing.

And although in the end it comes to the fate of the “weary worker and slave”, it is obvious that the scope of the law of “expiatory sacrifice” in this text is significantly expanded compared to the same “We are fighters of the great host”. It turns out that the ascetic pathos of death embraces not only the "leaders", this pathos animates the life of the entire universe.

Turning over a few more pages, we are convinced that the content of the entire debut collection is permeated with the principle of correspondences, which makes one recall the artistic world of Ch. Baudelaire. The third section, the thematic core of which is formed by love lyrics, opens with an epigraph that echoes the epigraph to the entire book: "The soul, burned by love, will be reborn for eternity, like a phoenix." Indeed, the lyrical situation of the poems “We are fighters of the great army” and “Corals” will be repeated in a variety of ways in a number of poems in the section. Just as the first Christians, dying, “begged with delight, not feeling wounds, / So that the executioners tormented them more strongly,” the lyrical hero is ready to “loudly 'Hosanna!' Have you read the legends about how they burned Christians ...”).

So, Merezhkovsky uses the socio-utopian myth of populist poetry, which goes back to the ideological postulates of Christian socialism, as a universal key, equally suitable for explaining phenomena of any level: from issues of social struggle to abstract ethical and even metaphysical problems. The populist mythologeme of the “redemptive sacrifice” in Merezhkovsky’s lyrics becomes a kind of matrix, on which figurative correspondences are boldly superimposed in plot-thematic rows that are far apart from each other. Merezhkovsky's artistic thinking tends to generalize, to fix a certain "eternal", enduring content in a motley kaleidoscope of phenomena taken from different spheres of life.

“A symbol is a fusion of meanings,” A. Blok once wrote. And then he clarified: "the meaning of the eternal is connected with the non-eternal, Merezhkovsky explains." Recording date - 1902. But, in fact, Blok clearly formulated what had been gradually preparing for a long time in the work of Merezhkovsky.

The second book of poems, published in 1892, was called "Symbols". The epigraph that precedes it consolidates the laws of Merezhkovsky's symbol aesthetics formulated above: "Everything that is transient is only a symbol." This is a quote from the II part of "Faust" by I.V. Goethe. Moreover, in Goethe's text the word "symbol" is literally translated as "parable", "equation".

All the diversity of Merezhkovsky's lyrical plots can be described with the help of a relatively small set of such "equations" - almost poster-like doublet images, doublet motifs, autoquotations and autoreminiscences. It is in the lyrics of Merezhkovsky and precisely because of its clichédness that the principles of the complex symbolic structure of his major novels will be laid, primarily those that made up the trilogy "Christ and Antichrist": "The Death of the Gods (Julian the Apostate)", "The Resurrected Gods (Leonardo da Vinci) ”, “Antichrist. Peter and Alexei. “The novels of the trilogy,” notes A.V. Lavrov, the author of the latest biography of Merezhkovsky, are built according to a single compositional and semantic plan, each of them depicts a transitional historical era (from paganism to Christianity, from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, from ancient to new Russia), torn apart by irreconcilable contradictions. The correspondences between them are emphasized by symbolic motifs and images that pass from novel to novel (an antique statue of Venus - the “white devil”, etc.), by the typological relationship of heroes performing similar ideological and plot functions - drawing “symmetrical lines” in the created “philosophical ballet” (Kogan P.)".

The desire to combine "symbol" with "logic" is the principle of Merezhkovsky's entire aesthetics. Already in the treatise “On the Causes of the Decline and New Trends in Modern Russian Literature” (1893), he raised the task of such a synthesis to the rank of the world-historical mission of his generation: “We must enter from a period of creative, direct and spontaneous poetry into a period of critical, conscious and cultural" . Merezhkovsky the critic dreams of a "new idealism" reconciling the spirit of two great cultural epochs - the old romantic (idealistic), and the new positivist (experimental-scientific) epoch. Relatively speaking - the "era of Zhukovsky" with the "era of Pisarev." He dreams of an idealism that derives the romantic impulses of the spirit towards the "infinite", the "divine" directly from the achievements of modern scientific knowledge. Such idealism, resolving the contradiction between Faith and Knowledge in some higher synthesis, will, by definition of the critic, be truly "free" - "divine" and "conscious" together. Merezhkovsky's symbol poetics rested on the idea of ​​this new, "synthetic" idealism.

In the composition and style of Merezhkovsky's lyrics, one can clearly feel the proximity of, at first glance, incompatible principles: "impressionistic" and "rhetorical". The method of fixation in the word image of instant impressions peacefully coexists with the deductive type of artistic generalizations. Figuratively speaking, "Zhukovsky" and "Fet" easily get along with "Lomonosov" and "Sumarokov". The transitions from impression to deduction are sometimes so abrupt and obvious that they have amazed more than one generation of readers and critics.

For example, the poem "Evening":

Burning and shining from above
Dawn scattered roses
On the pale green birch,
On dark pine velvet.
On red clay with lean moss
I wander along a slippery path;
The evening flows over me
Fragrant, warm breath.

Everything is here: shades of color, nuances of feeling, and metaphors based on subtle associative similarities. In principle, if Merezhkovsky wanted to follow the path of poetic impressionism, he could have turned out to be a completely “average” poet of the Zhukovsky school - Fet. In his lyrical legacy, one can find two or three texts entirely sustained in an "impressionistic" vein. For example, "November":

Pale month - on the damage.
Air is a call, dead and pure.
And on a bare, chilly willow
A wilted leaf rustles.
Freeze, heavy
In the abyss of a quiet pond
And blackens and thickens
Still water.

Sometimes the harmony of verse overcomes the algebra of thought with interesting strophic and rhythmic experiments (see: "March", "Autumn Leaves", "Silence"). Merezhkovsky is also familiar with the "decadent" imagery, clearly designed to shock the reader. So, Bryusov himself admired "The Moon with a Cursed Face" with "evil eyes" in the poem "Winter Evening".

And yet it must be admitted that such experiments in the work of Merezhkovsky the lyricist are more the exception than the rule.

More typical for him is the case when the aestheticized experience of the moment (Fetov’s “moment”) is not brought to an end and artistic thought, as if tired of wandering in the labyrinths of “nuances” and “shades”, soars sharply upwards, into the realm of abstract, “pure ideas”. This is the ending of "Evening":

Lost day, you were worthless
And empty and petty-disturbing;
Why on your quiet end
assigned by nature
Such a brilliant crown?

“Can it be said of the day in general that it was insignificant? - the critic K.P. asked the poet. Medvedsky (K. Govorov). - For Mr. Merezhkovsky, for me, for you - he could be very empty and miserable - but for many other people? Bold and original generalizations are a wonderful thing, but you need to know the measure and not report on them. But the fact of the matter is that it is not enough for Merezhkovsky to confine himself to an individually unique experience of the past day. He is not satisfied with the unconsciously idealistic "feeling into" the beauty of the evening. He wants to know not only the “relative”, limited by the momentary context of the lyrical situation, but also the absolute, so to speak, “universal” - meaning of what he has just experienced, to establish its place in the hierarchy of fundamental, extremely generalized categories. Moreover, a breakthrough to the allegorical-abstract meaning of the whole situation arises not so much from the spontaneous beginning of artistic thinking, but from the depth of metaphysical generalizations. Between these two levels of the compositional organization of the text, a clear boundary is visible - "gaping". They sharply join, but do not smoothly merge into one organic whole. Such compositional and stylistic flaws often gave critics reason to reproach Merezhkovsky for the inconsistency of the lyrical style, for the predetermined main idea, for the illustrativeness of the plots: “which is what needs to be proved!”

However, it should be emphasized that such inconsistency is a deeply organic feature of the artistic consciousness of the author of such poems as “By the Sea”, “On the Southern Coast of Crimea”, “White Night”, “In Autumn in the Summer Garden”, “Spring”, “The Sower” and many others. This trait goes back to his aesthetic ideal of "new idealism". According to Merezhkovsky, idealism should be called "new" because it will appear "in combination with the latest conclusions of scientific criticism and scientific naturalism, which has never been seen before" and at the same time "as a need of the human heart that is indestructible by no doubt."

Bryusov was deeply right when he saw in Merezhkovsky the poet "a classic in spirit." At the turn of the century, in the person of the author of such a poem as “God”, under the guise of a symbolist, a typical deist of the era of enlightenment of the 18th century resurrected, whose “creative style” makes one recall the spiritual poetry of M.V. Lomonosov and especially G.R. Derzhavin:

Oh my god thank you
For giving my eyes
You see the world, Your eternal temple,
And the night, and the waves, and the dawn...
Let torment threaten me, -
Thank you for this moment
For everything that my heart has comprehended,
What are the stars telling me...
Everywhere I feel, everywhere You, Lord, - in the silence of the night,
And in the most distant star
And in the depths of my soul.
I thirsted for God - and did not know;
Still did not believe, but, loving,
While the mind denied
I felt you in my heart.

This programmatic poem, which opens the collection "Symbols", translates the "synthetic" formula of the "new idealism" into the plane of the search for the "synthetic" formula of the "new Faith". According to Merezhkovsky, "consciously" believing means, first of all, to go through the art of doubt, through the verification of the Faith by the skeptic's experiential knowledge. “This, which you, not knowing, honor, I preach to you” - the poet put these words from the letter of the Apostle Paul to the Athenians as the second epigraph to the “Symbols”.

In the collection "Symbols" and especially in the book "New Poems", the motifs of denial and affirmation, death and salvation, unbelief and faith often go hand in hand, being an expression of different aspects of a single "new religious consciousness". In a lyrical style, this consciousness expresses itself primarily through the poetics of combining the incompatible - paradox and oxymoron:

The less he believed in the gods,
The more I believed in the truth
"Marcus Aurelius"

There is joy in the fact that people hate, Good is considered evil "Exiles"

But the soul does not want reconciliation And does not know what fear is.
To the people in it - great contempt,
And love, love in my eyes ("Poet")

“The romantic aesthetics of Merezhkovsky,” N. Berdyaev accurately formulated, “always requires extremes, abysses, poles, the latter and easily falls into rhetoric, which is unpleasant for many. Merezhkovsky absolutely cannot stand the transitional, the average, for him there is no individual, shades, multiple in the world. He is possessed by the pathos of universality, the forced universalism characteristic of the Latin spirit, the Roman idea. Indeed, the lyrical hero of Merezhkovsky likes to recall the "living duality" of the human heart (see the poem "Steel"). "Duality" is defiantly spelled out even in the paradoxical titles of some poems: "Love-enmity", "Foreign land-homeland", "Double abyss". It can be said that Merezhkovsky brings the search for correspondences in opposites to some kind of obsessive, almost maniacal artistic idea. And there are reasons for that. At first - a purely personal order.

In the autobiographical poem Old Octaves (included in the Collected Poems of 1910), the lyric author recounts a strange episode from his youth. He fell in love with two women at once. One appeared to his eyes when he loved the world "with a love alien to God" and "felt like a heathen." She was all in "white lace", seemed to be "Princess White Lilac". Her angelic appearance almost already returned the hero to the path of Faith. But then, quite unexpectedly for himself, he happened to see and fall in love with a completely opposite in spirit female image. It was ... "laundress Lena", "goddess of blue, soap and starch"! The half-joking, half-serious description of history ends with a conclusion that contains the kernel of all subsequent religious and ethical quests of Merezhkovsky:

Even then from infancy
Evil spirit, two-faced Janus,
Inexperienced my mind was tempted
And since then I have been with great horror
All my life I have delved into how the demon argues with God,
The spirit of sinful flesh with the angel of heaven.

No matter how "bold" and "original" these "generalizations" may seem to today's reader, we have no reason not to trust the author of "Old Octaves".

Strangely alluring with its mystical incomprehensibility and at the same time manifest evidence of the coexistence of two truths - "flesh" and "spirit", "paganism" and "Christianity", "Christ" and "Antichrist" - from his youth, Merezhkovsky seems to be a universal mythology, applicable hardly whether not to the entire history of world spiritual culture. This "dual power" seems to him everywhere. And in the Roman Pantheon, where the martyred face of the crucified Savior, who joyfully died for his brothers, looks at each other, and the faces of the Olympian gods, appealing to the joys of the earth, for some reason closed their eyes in confusion (“Pantheon”). And in the veneration of St. Constantius by the Roman Catholics - a ritual that is more reminiscent of a Bacchic orgy than the "spirit of Christ's church" ("The Feast of St. Constantius"). And in the song of the Bacchantes, when after the cry of "Evan-Evoe" the gospel "Despondency is the greatest sin" ("Song of the Bacchantes") is suddenly heard. And in the guise of an Old Testament prophet, “the destroyer and creator”, who, like a devout pagan hero, meets “the sun of a new life” “on the bones of his enemies” (“Lion”). Finally, in the spiritual portrait of the modern poet: in a Christian way, he is “sweet<...>dark crown of oblivion”, but the pagan feeling of “crazy freedom” is no less dear to him (“Poet”). The spirit of Bacchus (Dionysus), therefore, is miraculously known in the spirit of Christ - and vice versa.

From poem to poem, from novel to novel, from article to article, Merezhkovsky wrestles with the solution to the "two-faced Janus" and his own "I", and the culture of all mankind as a whole. He interrogates this oracle with the religious ecstasy of either a pagan priest or a sectarian monk and makes us, the readers, plunge with him into the fatal abyss of this excitingly risky game of the writer's mind and imagination.

“The secret of doubling, doubling thoughts” (N. Berdyaev) certainly marked the spiritual appearance of all Merezhkovsky's favorite heroes, and above all, Leonardo da Vinci. This titan of the Renaissance “penetrated into the deepest temptations of everything that is dual” (“Leonardo da Vinci”). In the novel of the same name, the title character, as befits an “autocratic, god-like person”, takes a detached position - on the other side of the struggle of the “truth of Christ” and "the truth of the Antichrist". With equal calmness, Leonardo makes sketches of a raging crowd of Catholics, listening to the frantic preaching of Savonarola, and fanatics burning pagan "idols" at the stake, including his favorite painting, which depicts the ancient goddess, the "mother of Beauty" - white Leda:

“I am Leda, I am white Leda, I am the mother of beauty.
I love sleepy waters and night flowers.
Every evening, wife seduced,
I lie down by the pond, where it smells of water, -
In the stuffy darkness of a thunderstorm,
All criminal, all naked, -
There. where dampness, and bliss, and heat,
There. where it smells of water and baths,
Wet, pale herbs,
And mysterious silt in the pond, -
There I wait.
All criminal, all naked,
exhausted,
I lie down in warm dampness, in soft grasses
And I burn and languish.

The antiquity of Merezhkovsky's "Leda" is, of course, the antiquity of the Silver Age with its exquisitely voluptuous, intoxicating cult of Eros, in which many symbolists, following F. Nietzsche, were ready to see the deification of the "Dionysian", "orgiastic" beginning of being. Such a sensually excited, ecstatic experience of the "religion of the flesh", however, is not dominant in Merezhkovsky's work. Actually, in the poetry of "Ledoy" it is exhausted. Along with it, there is also its own special getting used to the spirit of ancient culture, its own special approach to pagan religious experience.

“I don’t know,” wrote Merezhkovsky about himself, “a sweeter and deeper feeling than that which you experience when you meet your own thoughts, not expressed to anyone, in the work of a person of a distant culture, separated from us by centuries. Only then do you stop feeling lonely for a moment and understand the commonality of the inner life of all people, the commonality of faith and suffering of all times. Since the spring of 1891, Merezhkovsky, together with his wife and like-minded Z.N. Gippius almost every year make trips to the countries of the Mediterranean, peering intently at the remains of a bygone ancient civilization, trying, as always, "to find the unexpected in the familiar, one's own in someone else's, the new in the old." The feeling of a single historical time powerfully captures the imagination of the writer. By an effort of creative will, trying to enter this stream, he performs a kind of work of an “artist-archaeologist” - he restores the spirit of an entire ancient era using separate, barely noticeable particulars, surviving details, objects. And the era, like a living dead, majestically rises from the ruins. This miracle is personally revealed in, perhaps, the best descriptive poem of the "antique cycle" - "Pompey":

Around - the last moment, eternal horror, -
In the overthrown gods with their careless smile,
In the remnants of clothes, from bread and fruits,
In silent rooms and empty shops
And even in a chest with a perfume bottle,
In a box of rouge, in wrists and pins;
As if yesterday a deep trace was dug
Loaded with a heavy wheel of wagons,
As if the marble of the baths had just been warmed
By the touch of bodies, anointed with oil.

The reader becomes a witness of the “stopped time” effect. In front of him is the resurrected Pompey, as she was a moment before her death. And then - everything is in slow motion. The poet stops this moment and lengthens it indefinitely in time, tearing out phenomena and objects from the fast-flowing historical past and placing them in a detached eternity. Before our eyes, they "freeze" in their enduring, immutable essence, turning into symbols. The poet is captivated by the charm of this "sepulchral beauty, / Not dead, not alive, but eternal, like jellyfish / Features petrified with horror ...".

"The eternal present" - this is how one can characterize the feeling of the passage of time in Merezhkovsky's historiosophy. Such a time is fundamentally ahistorical. It obeys the law of "eternal repetition" - but not development! - the once emerged core of the cultural self-consciousness of mankind (now it is customary to say - "archetype") and its continuous reproduction in the further course of world evolution under the guise of different, sometimes diametrically opposed cultural entities. Including - "paganism" and "Christianity", "Antichrist" and "Christ", etc.

And then there arises, for the first time clearly in the poem "The Future Rome" (1891) and in the finale of the novel "The Death of the Gods (Julian the Apostate)" (1896) - the thought of the coming great synthesis of the "religion of the spirit" and the "religion of the flesh", of their single spiritual a bosom that never lost its totality, but was artificially divided by the spiritual experience of mankind into two equal-sized halves-half-truths yearning for each other. And now the moment must come when these half-truths will stop demonically flickering through each other, stop treacherously “doubling” and already irresistibly, by the creative feat of the same humanity will merge into a single, this time full truth. This synthesis is conceived by Merezhkovsky in different ways: either in the religion of the “Third Testament”, then in the religion of “St. Spirit”, which combines the religion of “St. Father" and "St. Son", then in the image of the "Holy Trinity". "Two in one" will become "three in one". But every time at the end of this Hegelian triad (“thesis” - “antithesis” - “synthesis”), the bearer of the coming “synthesis” turns out to be the enigmatic figure of the new, “unknown God” powerfully attracting the writer’s imagination: “And which of the people, my brother who will understand and tell the world how the wisdom of the Crowned with grapes is similar to the wisdom of the Crowned with thorns, the one who said: "I am the true vine" - and just like the god Dionysus, intoxicates the world with his love.

Many frankly laughed at the "synthesis" of Merezhkovsky. This "synthesis" was considered stillborn. "A synodal official from the world of an unknown church, offended by something," Andrei Bely called Merezhkovsky in his clever and evil memoirs. Such assessments can be given for a long time. But they are not the point. Let us recall Pushkin's: "The writer must be judged according to the laws that he himself has recognized over himself." Our essay on Merezhkovsky's poetry, we dare to hope, does not sin against this "golden rule" of criticism.

Yes, what to say: Merezhkovsky's poetry does not belong to the best part of his creative heritage. There are, and often - especially in the first two collections - things are simply weak. The poet himself felt it. Having released in 1904 (re-edition - in 1910) a small volume of selected poems, he completely switched to prose and journalism, which determined his main contribution to national culture. Nevertheless, it would be an unforgivable mistake to ignore the experience of Merezhkovsky as a poet. In poetry, the aesthetic and historiosophical thought of Merezhkovsky was strengthened and honed. The poet's lyrical style tenaciously keeps rough traces - "notches" of this hard and painful "cutting". Many poems ("God", "Leda", "Children of the Night", "Leonardo da Vinci" and others) became a fact of the culture of their time. Without them, it is impossible to imagine a general picture of the formation of aesthetics and poetry of modernism in Russia. As for the opinion of many critics regarding the "inorganic" nature of the resulting "synthesis", the best answer to these accusations is contained in Merezhkovsky's famous historical elegy "Children of the Night" (1894). In the mournfully restrained rhythm of a lyrical requiem, Merezhkovsky glorified the fate of his own generation - to pave the way of the cross for descendants to a truly living "synthesis" of culture:

We are the temptation of the unsatisfied,
We are the laughing stock of people
A spark in the ashes of the offended
And extinct altars.
We are steps above the abyss,
Children of darkness, we are waiting for the sun,
We will see the light - and, like shadows,
We will die in its rays.

“Ravelins of history” – such a metaphor Merezhkovsky once designated cultural gaps, “moats”, which have to be overcome at the cost of the spiritual death of an entire generation. As a poet, he invariably felt himself at the foot of the altar of such a redemptive sacrifice, opening the way for the heirs of the era of the 1880s-1890s to the unprecedented cultural Renaissance of the early 20th century. Thus, Dostoevsky's testament is "one must suffer, suffer!" - fully embodied in the poetry of his grateful listener and admirer.

L-ra: literature at school. - 2000. - No. 8. - S. 6-11.