National literature. National originality of literature

National literature

National literature

NATIONAL LITERATURE. - In bourgeois literary criticism and criticism, this term was usually used to designate the literature of national minorities, the literature of oppressed peoples, in contrast to the literature of the dominant nation. So, in pre-war Austria under N. l. meant the literature of all the peoples inhabiting this state except the Germans, whose literature was considered basic, dominant, and guiding. In old pre-October Russia under N. l. understood literature not in Russian, but in the language. other peoples oppressed by the tsarist government, Russian landowners and bourgeoisie. In the mouths of the ideologists of the property classes (landowners, bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie) of the ruling nation N. l. denoted second-class literature. The ideologists of the Russian autocracy, the landowners, in their attitude towards the literature of other peoples inhabiting Russia, showed their special zoological chauvinism, treated these literatures as barbaric dialects, like jargons, considered them carriers of all kinds of harmful tendencies, a manifestation of bad taste, a product of low culture and fought against these literatures not only and not so much as means of ideological influence, but rather through measures of police oppression and extermination. The most open forms of oppression of N. l. practiced by the Russian autocracy. This struggle was part of everything national policy tsarist government.
The ongoing policy of Russification of Poles, Ukrainians, Georgians, Tatars and many others. other peoples, restrictions on the most basic rights of a number of peoples, especially Jews, a ban on teaching in their native language in schools. or in general the language and literature of these peoples, the prohibition of using any other language other than Russian in government institutions, the prevention of the opening of Ukrainian, Georgian, Lithuanian or Polish universities and gymnasiums in a number of cities, or the establishment of a percentage norm for Jews when entering educational establishments, middle and higher education, the exceptionally ferocious persecution of the press in non-Russian languages, the frequent banning of theaters - this entire extremely complex system of persecution and eradication of non-Russian culture could not but affect the development of the literature of these peoples.
Hiding behind liberal phrases, the ideologists of the bourgeoisie of the dominant nation essentially always pursued an equally nationalistic policy of oppression in relation to the literature of the conquered peoples. The bourgeoisie of the ruling nation, or more precisely the dominant national bourgeoisie, shows some philanthropic concern and humanistic sympathy for literature, as in general for the culture of other peoples of the country, until it itself becomes in power. This was the case with the Russian liberals of the Cadet persuasion, with the Polish people's democrats. The behavior of the ideologists of the Russian bourgeoisie during the years of the Stolypin reaction and especially during the months when the Provisional Government was in power was extremely significant. Forgetting its former preaching of a fraternal attitude towards the culture of other peoples, the Russian bourgeoisie tried in every possible way to push back, squeeze, and delay the development of the culture of other peoples. And if the ideologists of the landowners, “Messrs. Purishkevich, would not even be averse to completely banning ‘dog dialects, which are spoken by up to 60% of the non-Russian population of Russia,” then “the position of the liberals is much more cultured and subtle” (Lenin, Is a mandatory state language?, 3rd ed., vol. XVII, p. 179). They express their sympathy in every possible way for the development of the culture of other peoples, but they defend the obligatory nature of the state language. from higher, supposedly state reasons.
Defense of the “state expediency of the Russian literary language“,” writes Lenin, “was a unique form of struggle against the culture and literature of other peoples, which extremely hampered the development of these cultures and literature. Lenin cites the current argument of national-liberal “defenders” of the culture and literature of foreigners: “The Russian people are great and powerful, the liberals tell us. So don’t you really want everyone who lives on any outskirts of Russia to know this great and powerful language? Don’t you see that the Russian language will enrich the literature of foreigners, give them the opportunity to become familiar with great cultural values, etc.?” (Vol. XVII, p. 180).
Lenin exposes the falsely hypocritical nature of this desire of Russian liberals to benefit the oppressed peoples and “enrich the literature of foreigners.” He writes: “All this is true, gentlemen liberals,” we answer them. We know better than you that the language of Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dobrolyubov, Chernyshevsky is great and powerful. We, more than you, want the closest possible communication and fraternal unity to be established between the oppressed classes of all the nations inhabiting Russia without distinction. And we, of course, stand for every resident of Russia to have the opportunity to learn the great Russian language. We don't want just one thing: an element of coercion. We don't want to drive people into heaven with a club. Because no matter how many beautiful phrases you say about “culture,” a compulsory state language is associated with coercion and indoctrination. We think that the great and powerful Russian language does not need anyone to study it under pressure” (vol. XVII, p. 180).
In the same way, the dominant German bourgeoisie in pre-Versailles Austria or the dominant Polish bourgeoisie in modern Poland, each in its own way expressing liberal sympathy and sympathy for the culture and literature of other peoples of old Austria or modern Poland, essentially treats these cultures and literatures as dubious values ​​of a third-rate kind. ; under the guise of phrases about the exceptional importance of the great German or Polish literature for the growth of Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian or Jewish “lesser brothers,” they carried out and are carrying out, both through measures of ideological struggle and by means of administrative and police influence, the Germanization or Polonization of these cultures and in every possible way hinder the development liter of these oppressed nations. If the ruling national bourgeoisie, boasting of the names of Goethe and Schiller, Pushkin and Tolstoy, sought to intimidate the peoples it oppressed with “great cultural values” of their literature, then the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie of the oppressed peoples presented their literature as a source of humanism, disinterested love for mankind, natural democracy and love of the people. They endlessly talked about the messianic role of their literature as the intercessor of all the oppressed. These motifs varied in different ways in classical Polish literature, Ukrainian, Georgian, Armenian, Jewish, Belarusian and a number of other literatures. But if in “Grandfathers” and “Pan Tadeusz” by Mickiewicz, in “The Nag” by Mendel-Moicher-Sforim, in the works of Shevchenko and many other poets of the oppressed peoples of old tsarist Russia, especially before the 60-70s. XIX century, all these motives, generated by the oppression of the tsarist autocracy and Russian landowners, and then the Russian bourgeoisie, were an expression of protest against the oppressors; if it's a fact literary design national identity in this literature was a kind of rebellion against rapists; if this literature at this stage to some extent nourished liberation sentiments, then already from the end of the 19th century, when the revolutionary proletariat entered the scene, and even more so after October revolution, this literature in the hands of the nationalist bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie became an instrument of chauvinist nationalist propaganda. The nationalist apologetics of the described motives, the epigonic variation of these motives by modern nationalist poets and writers of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie of the “small nations” become factors in the conservation of backwardness, the fascisation of the backward layers of the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie and the distraction of certain individual groups of the working class from the revolutionary struggle.
The ideologists of the ruling classes of great-power nations, as well as small oppressed peoples, all of them, in their own way, gave a chauvinistic reactionary formulation of the question of historical literature, and these metaphysical and ahistorical statements must be contrasted with a concrete historical formulation of the problem of scientific literature.
The very use of the term N. l. is incorrect. only to the literature of peoples oppressed by the ruling national bourgeoisie, or even to the literature of small liberated peoples, like ours in the USSR, but representing a minority in one or another republic of our Union. This is incorrect, first of all, because then the literature of one or another people of one era would have to be considered as national, and the literature of another era would have to be excluded from the category of literary literature. For example, Czech or Polish literature, which before the imperialist war was considered by German or Russian bourgeois historians and critics to be non-fiction, probably according to the logic of the same historians after the imperialist war can no longer be considered as non-fiction; It is also impossible to indicate any special signs and qualities that would characterize the so-called. N. l. and which, in one form or another, would not have been inherent in the literature of “big” nations during the period of their capitalist formation, during the period of their struggle for national unification or for national liberation.
N. l. The literature of any people is equally the literature of the oppressed and the literature of the oppressing nation, both those who represent the majority and those who are the minority in a given country. N. l., like the nations themselves, begins to primarily form together with the beginning of the formation of elements of capitalism within feudal society. It is a unique form of ideological consolidation in the images of the social struggle of a given people, the characteristics of the class struggle in it throughout its origin and development. Regarding the period of capitalist formation, when Ch. arr. modern nations took shape and took shape, Lenin established that “developing capitalism knows two historical trends in the national question. First: the awakening of national life and national movements, the struggle against all national oppression, the creation of national states. Second: the development and intensification of all kinds of relations between nations, the breaking down of national barriers, the creation of the international unity of capital, economic life in general, politics, science, etc.
Both trends are the world law of capitalism. The first predominates at the beginning of its development, the second characterizes capitalism that is mature and moving toward its transformation into a socialist society” (“Critical Notes on the National Question,” Vol. XVII, p. 140).
What Lenin said entirely applies to N. l. N. l. reflects these two historical trends. With the beginning of the penetration of capitalism into a given nation, its literature becomes a factor in the awakening of national life and the formation of national self-awareness. It is a factor in the struggle for the creation of a national state, a factor in the liberation of these peoples from dependence on foreign landowners, the bourgeoisie, in the struggle against any national oppression, since the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie that follows it are interested in constructing themselves into a separate state organism or defending themselves as a special national organism within the state, dominated by a stronger national bourgeoisie. This first period is characterized by intensive artistic consolidation of “national characteristics”. Hence the exceptional interest of the young bourgeoisie in the epic: among the Germans in the songs of the Nibelungs, Hildenbrand and Gudrun; among Russian Slavophiles - to collecting folk songs and fairy tales; The poets and writers of these young peoples, awakening to the national life, have a great interest in the poetic processing of folk art and the development of legends of the historical past, as well as in an artistic story about actual events of the historical past. These processes are revealed in different ways in N. l. various peoples in accordance with the characteristics of the class struggle of a given people and the general historical situation that determines the awakening of national life and the struggle against national oppression. All this leads to such diverse literary phenomena as Goethe's "Götz von Berlichengen", Pushkin's fairy tales or the already mentioned "Grandfathers" and "Pan Tadeusz" by Mickiewicz.
At this first stage, which characterizes the various degrees of penetration of capitalism into a given national environment, features appear in the literature that sharply distinguish one people from another and reflect the features of their centuries-old life behind strong feudal walls.
But N. l. begin to lose many of their features in the second period of “capitalism that is mature and moving toward its transformation into a socialist society.” The features of the second period noted by Lenin: “the development and intensification of all kinds of relations between nations, the breaking down of national barriers, the creation of the international unity of capital, economic life in general, politics, science” (“Critical Notes on the National Question”, vol. XVII, p. 140), affected especially in the culture and literature of the same class of different peoples. That is why the petty-bourgeois Scandinavian writer Ibsen became so in tune with Russian literature already in the last 10 years before 1905 and especially during the years of reaction, and before the revolution he became close to the Russian bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie with some of his features, and during the years of reaction with others. These general tendencies of capitalism at the end of the industrial era and the beginning of imperialism explain the special closeness and similarity of the modernist literature of France, England, Germany or the modernist writers of these countries with the work of many Russian writers: symbolists and decadents. With the approach of imperialism. war, during the war years and after the Treaty of Versailles, when the imperialist governments of all countries began to prepare for the second round of imperialist wars, the bourgeoisie strengthened its social order for nationalist literature. N. l. They again began to cultivate nationalist, ultra-chauvinistic motives in every possible way. However, these literatures did not gain in any way in their national identity, because the pan-German or pan-English vestments of these literatures do not neutralize the imperialist fascist character common to all of them. Fundamental to all literature of the era “remains that world-historical tendency of capitalism to break down national barriers, to erase national differences, to assimilate nations, which manifests itself more and more powerfully with every decade, which constitutes one of the greatest engines transforming capitalism into socialism.” This does not mean that even under capitalism the boundaries between one literature and another will be erased and the process of assimilating the literature of different peoples into one literature will take place. Lenin, and then Stalin, relying on Lenin, always argued that this task would be solved only in a socialist society. Lenin wrote that “national and state differences between peoples and countries... will persist for a very, very long time, even after the implementation of the dictatorship of the proletariat on a worldwide scale” (i.e. XXV, p. 229). Based on this position of Lenin, Stalin will conclude. in a word on the political report of the Central Committee of the 16th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, he said: “As for the more distant perspective of national cultures and national languages, I have always held and continue to hold to the Leninist view that in the period of the victory of socialism on a global scale, when socialism will become stronger and enter into everyday life, national languages ​​must inevitably merge into one common language, which of course will be neither Great Russian nor German, but something new” (“Questions of Leninism”, p. 571, 9th ed.). “...The question of the withering away of national languages ​​and their merging into one common language is not a domestic question, not a question of the victory of socialism in one country, but an international question, a question of the victory of socialism on an international scale” (ibid., p. 572, ed. 9th).
The world-historical tendency of capitalism, indicated by Lenin, to break down national barriers and erase national differences is of great importance for N.L. in the sense of an ever-increasing increase in themes, motives, social types, ideological sentiments, character common to various literary artistic expression these motives and sentiments in the literature of the same classes, homogeneous social groups various peoples. This is where one of the most characteristic contradictions emerges between the current state of the productive forces of capitalist countries and the ideological tasks of the imperialist fascist bourgeoisie. The state of the productive forces and the entire economic life generated by them contributes to the erasure of national differences and the breakdown of national barriers. On the other hand, the struggle between the imperialist bourgeoisies dictates the N.L. the need to create nationalist, chauvinistic ideological barriers, the need to cultivate all kinds of ideas of national chosenness, racial exclusivity, the need to preserve the “purity” of the “national spirit.” Along all lines, interest is being cultivated in those phenomena of the past of N.L., when the features of national isolation and isolation were strong in them. Publishers are intensively re-publishing such literary monuments, literary historians and critics endlessly apologize them, poets and writers epigonously vary and modernize them in an imperialist fascist way.
Nationalist ideologists of the proprietary classes always sought and found in the features of the epic and the works of the classics of their people an expression and confirmation of national “chosenness”. Depending on trends of this class these ideologists revealed in these works the essence of the “national genius”, which coincides with their landowner-Black Hundred, bourgeois-liberal or petty-bourgeois-democratic ideal. Over the last decades of imperialism and fascism, ideologists of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie draw from the same sources arguments to affirm the imperialist and fascist essence of the “national genius,” revealing the unity of the “national spirit” of the song about the Nibelungs and Hildenbrand with the fascist anthem. By this openly class character of the interpretation of the “national genius” embodied in N. l., the “national spirit” revealed in N. l., the ideologists of the property classes expose the falsity of their metaphysical, reactionary-idealistic formulation of the question of the essence of N. l.
In essence, the features of a given national literature, from which nationalist ideologists derive their chauvinistic theories of “national genius,” are only an expression and reflection of those specific historical conditions in which the liquidation of feudalism and the formation of capitalism took place among a given people: expression features of the class struggle of a given people during the entire process of the elimination of feudalism and the development of capitalism, or in general the entire historical process of their existence, since we are talking about peoples whose development goes beyond the framework of feudal and capitalist formations and literature, which have managed to go through a number of significant historical stages . National literature is not the expression of some eternal, unchanging “national spirit”; it is not the revelation of some immanent “national genius”. This is also evident from the fact that essentially not a single N. l. At no stage of its development does it represent a single whole, but is sharply divided into very different literature of the oppressed and the oppressors, reactionary and progressive or revolutionary literature. Moreover, since the opportunity to create culture and create literary values ​​was incomparably greater among the exploiting classes, among the propertied property classes, the tendencies of these classes most determined the character of any literary work; then, as some classes were replaced by others, or as the same classes acquired new historical functions - they turned from revolutionary into reactionary, the character of any N. l. continuously changed in accordance with the specific alignment of class forces and the specific forms and conditions of the class struggle. Therefore, about no ahistorical character of N. l. how the revelation of the “eternal” “national genius” is out of the question. Any N. l. there is a specific class, specific historical category. Lenin wrote in the already cited work “Critical Notes on the National Question”: “There are two nations in each modern nation, - we will say to all National Socialists. There are two national cultures in every national culture. There is a Great Russian culture of the Purishkevichs, Guchkovs and Struves, but there is also a Great Russian culture characterized by the names of Chernyshevsky and Plekhanov. There are the same two cultures in Ukraine, as in Germany, France, England, among the Jews, etc.” (Vol. XVII., p. 143).
Therefore, Lenin insists that it is equally incorrect to talk about the complete reactionary nature of the culture of some nations, whose landowners and bourgeoisie are dominant in a given country, as it is to talk about the complete revolutionary nature of the literature of the oppressed peoples. He writes: “In every national culture there are, even if not developed, elements of a democratic and socialist culture, for in every nation there is a working and exploited mass, whose living conditions inevitably give rise to a democratic and socialist ideology. But in every nation there is also a bourgeois culture (and in the majority also Black Hundred and clerical), and not only in the form of “elements”, but in the form of the dominant culture. Therefore, “national culture in general is the culture of landowners, priests, and bourgeoisie” (ibid., p. 137).
What Lenin said about national culture applies entirely to N. l. In the main features of national cultures indicated by Lenin, all the features of the content and form of any national culture. If we talk about the capitalist formation, then the dominant literature, as part of the dominant culture in all countries and among all peoples in which capitalism has triumphed, is bourgeois literature. Bourgeois content is what is common to the capitalist literatures of all nations that dominate within their own nation. But these N. l. different from each other in their shape.
It is known that form is determined by content (see in detail about this Literature, section “Form and Content”, and in the article “Form and Content” specifically devoted to this issue).
Why, however, is the general bourgeois content of N. l. gives rise to very different national forms? This is explained by the peculiarities of the content itself. Over the past 200-300 years, all European peoples have made their way from feudalism to capitalism, through industrial capitalism to imperialism, and the peoples of our USSR - to the construction of socialism. But each of these peoples made this journey under very different conditions. In some conditions, the liquidation of feudalism took place in England or France, in others - in Germany or among the peoples that made up the Russian Empire. The elimination of feudalism in these countries, the struggle of the third estate against the old regime, the struggle of classes among themselves within the third estate for the forms and methods of eliminating the old order and for the paths of further capitalist development, for the greater or lesser triumph of one or another of the two main historical paths of capitalist development - all this represented specific content within the same basic process; It is not surprising that this content determined the forms of N. l. that were extremely different from each other. bourgeoisie. Only in the various conditions of the struggle of the English Puritan bourgeoisie against the English aristocracy of the 17th century, the French third estate against the old regime in the 18th century, the fragmented and weak German bourgeoisie against its feudal overlords, the extremely backward Russian bourgeoisie against the Russian autocracy and the landowners who managed to preserve serfdom until the middle of the 19th century, only in specific features social processes in England, France, Germany and Russia, only in the peculiarities of the content of the class struggle of these peoples lie the reasons for the identification of such different, different from each other forms of N. l., such as for example. the form of Milton's Paradise Lost and Regained or Richardson's novels in England, the work of the great encyclopedists and educators in France, the poets and writers of Sturm und Drang in Germany, or finally the work of the so-called. repentant nobles and commoners in Russia.
In the same way, all features further development lit-r of these peoples during the era of industrial capitalism and imperialism, and here, in the USSR, during the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the construction of socialism, all the features of the form of these N. l. are entirely determined by the peculiarities of the class struggle in these countries and among these peoples. Nationalist ideologists of the proprietary classes, based on these features and in every possible way denying the class genesis of these features, boasted of their national spirit, their national traditions, which had, to one degree or another, world-historical significance. Lenin sometimes spoke about the world-progressive features of certain national cultures, but he proceeded from the fact of the existence of two nations and two national cultures within every modern nation and every modern national culture. Polemicizing with the Bund, Lenin wrote that in that part of the Jewish nation that does not have “caste isolation, the great world-progressive features in Jewish culture were clearly reflected there: its internationalism, its responsiveness to the progressive movements of the era (the percentage of Jews in the democratic and proletarian movements everywhere higher than the percentage of Jews in the population in general)” (“Critical Notes on the National Question,” vol. XVII, p. 138).
Rejecting the Bundist formulation of the question of national culture as the formulation of “an enemy of the proletariat, a supporter of the old and caste in Jewry, an accomplice of the rabbis and the bourgeoisie” (ibid., p. 42), Lenin believes that those Jews who participate “in the creation of an international culture of the worker movements..." "making their contribution (both in Russian and in Jewish)..." "those Jews... continue the best traditions of Judaism" (ibid., p. 139).
Lenin rejects operating with the peculiarities of national culture in general: under capitalist conditions, “national culture” in general “is the culture of the landowners, priests, and bourgeoisie.” He talks about world-progressive features, about the best traditions of N. l. and culture, investing in them a certain historical, class meaning. World-progressive features, the best traditions in the Leninist sense, that’s how it should be. arr. look only along the line of Russian N.L., which comes from Chernyshevsky, but not along the line that comes from Dostoevsky’s “Demons”: the latter express a different tradition of “national culture” in general. The form of this national literature is determined by the content of the class existence of reactionary Russian forces.
N. l. the oppressed revolutionary part of the nation differs from N. l. property classes not only in their content, but also in their form. At the 16th Party Congress, Stalin said: “What is national culture under the rule of the national bourgeoisie? A culture that is bourgeois in its content and national in its form, with the goal of poisoning the masses with the poison of nationalism and strengthening the dominance of the bourgeoisie. What is national culture under the dictatorship of the proletariat? A culture that is socialist in content and national in form, with the goal of educating the masses in the spirit of internationalism and strengthening the dictatorship of the proletariat” (“Questions of Leninism,” p. 565).
At the 16th Party Congress, Stalin raised the question of the culture of the proletariat under the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat. But even under the conditions of a bourgeois dictatorship, the proletariat creates its own proletarian socialist literature, which is distinguished by its qualities and is proletarian in content and national in form. This literature is not dominant in general scientific literature, and its share in all scientific literature is of course, much less than under the dictatorship of the proletariat, but, as Lenin established in his time, “in every national culture there are at least undeveloped elements of democratic and social-democratic culture, for in every nation there is a working and exploited mass, living conditions which inevitably give rise to democratic and socialist ideology.” It does not at all follow from Comrade Stalin’s formula that national cultures and literatures under the rule of the national bourgeoisie and under the dictatorship of the proletariat differ from each other only in their content and represent something uniform in their form. Not at all, because the national form manifests itself in one case as bourgeois, and in another as proletarian, socialist. Here it goes like this. arr. a common problem class analysis of form, class character of style.
The works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Chernyshevsky, Chekhov and Gorky differed from each other not only in their content, but also in their form. These differences are due to the fact that the work of these writers expressed the ideology of different classes and different ideological contents found their adequate expression in different forms. All these writers were Russian writers. Their work, contrasted with the work of Goethe, Schiller, Heine or Nikolai Baratashvili or Chavchavadze and Akaki Tseretelli, represents examples of Russian literary fiction. unlike the German N. l. or from Georgian N. l. But within the Russian N. l. itself. In each given era we distinguish special styles, artistic forms, generated by different and opposing class content. Therefore, it is impossible to talk about any single national form, such does not exist; in reality, there is a literary form among the various classes of a given people, representing a dialectical unity with the content of the literature of a given class, a given people. We therefore have to talk not in general about Russian, Belarusian or Ukrainian national literature and national form, but about Russian noble bourgeois or proletarian literature and about a special form of Russian noble literature, different from German or Polish noble literature; Russian bourgeois literature, which differs, say, from Jewish or Ukrainian bourgeois literature; Belarusian peasant literature, in contrast to Russian or Ukrainian peasant literature, and this class national form corresponds to a given class national content. In the same way we distinguish national proletarian literatures from each other by their national form. But here is a special form of, say, Russian proletarian literature, in contrast to a number of proletarian literatures - Ukrainian, Belarusian, Jewish or from proletarian literatures Turkic peoples- is determined by the peculiarities of the entire history of the struggle of the Russian proletariat with its oppressors, in contrast to those unique historical conditions in which the struggle of the working people of these peoples developed to overthrow the power of the landowners and bourgeoisie and in which the struggle for the construction of socialism is currently taking place.
Precisely because the characteristics of the form are determined by the specific conditions of the class struggle of a given people, the various forms of proletarian or bourgeois literature among different peoples are not reduced only to linguistic differences. Let's take this example: there is a struggle for the elimination of the kulaks and the collectivization of agriculture in our Union. The kulaks of all nations are resisting the revolution. But the process of collectivization and liquidation of the kulaks, on the one hand, as well as the resistance of the kulaks, on the other, are extremely unique among the various peoples of the USSR. The Ukrainian “kurkul” (fist) covers up its resistance with a phrase about national independence and seeks to discredit collectivization by treating the 25 thousand people who came from Leningrad or Ivanovo as “Muscovites.” The Jewish kulak, yesterday's small-town shopkeeper, covers up his resistance with lamentations and lamentations about the pogroms he experienced, about tsarist oppression, about anti-Semitism, etc., etc. The North Caucasian kulak, from former Cossacks, conducts his agitation against collective farms through the romanticization of the old Cossack way of life and praising the privileges of the Cossacks under the autocracy. The originality of the past kulaks of these various peoples, the peculiarities of their resistance to the revolution, the peculiarities of the struggle of the proletariat and the collective farm peasantry of these peoples against kulak counter-revolutionism, reflected in Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian, Georgian, Armenian or Jewish proletarian literature - all this is the dominant factor in the creation specific forms national proletarian literatures. This uniqueness of the class struggle of a given nation is rooted in its entire past. Proletarian literature seeks and finds an adequate expression of this uniqueness in the entire historically formed form of a given people in the process of class struggle and from it creates a new proletarian national form. Russian, Ukrainian or Jewish proletarian writers, whose work is an ideological factor in socialist construction, are doing an international socialist cause common to the entire proletariat. Their work is internationalist, socialist in its attitude, national in its form insofar as it reveals the uniqueness of the struggle for socialism in the conditions of a given people. This example clearly reveals the difference between the proletarian national form and the bourgeois one. Three kulak writers - Ukrainian, Russian and Jewish - developing the same theme of collectivization and liquidation of the kulaks, will create works imbued with the idea of ​​capitalist restoration, the idea of ​​defeating the revolution. They are united by a common bourgeois task, a common proprietary essence. But they will also be imbued with the spirit of mutual national hostility: anti-Semitism, Russophobia or Ukrainophobia. Their national form expresses and reflects their deeply chauvinistic essence.
The bourgeois national form, therefore, is a means of consolidating national isolation, narrow-mindedness, and cultivating national enmity, since it is determined by proprietary content. The proletarian national form is a means of overcoming national hatred, since it is imbued with internationalist content and socialist ideology.
The emphasized features of the historical fate of classes of various peoples are reflected in the entire artistic system of N. l., in particular and ch. arr. in the nature of assimilation of N. l. cultural heritage. While the bourgeois literature of our time varies the motifs of religious literature in every possible way, decorates its language in every possible way with biblical metaphors and images or various kinds of comparisons taken from religious and church everyday life, proletarian literature starts from these sources and uses them only in terms of exposure and denial. The literature of oppressed nations romanticized the national past. In many cases, this romanticization had some progressive significance, since it aroused protest against the oppressors of the dominant nation. This was the meaning of romance in Polish, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Georgian literature at the beginning, and in some literature throughout the first half of the 19th century. But this romance later, with the growth of the revolutionary movement of the working masses, acquired a definitely reactionary nationalist character. The literary epigones of the proprietary classes are still intensively cultivating this romance. It becomes an essential part of their national form precisely because it corresponds to their nationalistic content and serves the main goal of bourgeois N.L. “to poison the masses with the poison of nationalism and strengthen the rule of the bourgeoisie” (Stalin).
On the contrary, proletarian literature, precisely in terms of internationalist tasks, starts from nationalist romance and in every possible way protects its creativity from the idealistic-formal elements characteristic of bourgeois romantic literary fiction. Proletarskaya N. l. is looking for prototypes for his romance in world revolutionary literature on a large scale. Romantic elements of the form of proletarian N. l. therefore, they differ significantly from the form of romantic N. l. proprietary classes (for more information about this issue, as well as in general about the problem of N. l. under the dictatorship of the proletariat and under socialism, see Proletarskaya and socialist literature).
The national form, determined by bourgeois content, is a factor in the cultivation of national backwardness and isolation, national enmity and, consequently, reaction. The national form, determined by socialist content, imbued with international ideology, becomes a factor in the cooperation of working people of all nations, a factor in the revolution. That is why, under the conditions of the dominance of landowners and the bourgeoisie, the development of N. l. was possible. only the bourgeoisie and landowners of the dominant nationalities and in every possible way the development of the literature of the oppressed peoples was hampered, stifled, and persecuted. Under the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat, an exceptional flourishing of national cultures and literature becomes possible: “The flourishing of cultures that are national in form and socialist in content under the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat in one country for merging them into one common socialist (both in form and in content) culture with in one common language, when the proletariat wins throughout the world and socialism enters everyday life - this is precisely the dialectical nature of Lenin’s formulation of the question of national culture” (Stalin, Questions of Leninism, p. 566).
“...The flourishing of national cultures (and languages),” being international in its socialist content, prepares the conditions “for their withering away and merging into one common socialist culture (and into one common language) during the period of the victory of socialism throughout the world” (there same, pp. 566-567).
Bourgeois N. l. were born and took shape in the struggle for liberation from feudal rule and were factors in national unification, so important for creating conditions successful development capitalism. At this progressive stage, bourgeois N. l. put forward slogans of religious tolerance and brotherhood of peoples, created such masterpieces of propaganda for the unity of peoples as Lessing’s “Nathan the Wise”. Those days are long gone for N.L. proprietary classes. The conditions of capitalist competition, the imperialist struggle for the redivision of the world, the need to fight the international ideas of the revolutionary proletariat have long forced the bourgeoisie to betray the covenants of the brilliant fighters for its own liberation and replace the slogans of the “brotherhood of peoples” with the propaganda of zoological nationalism and chauvinism. The threat of the triumph of socialism long ago forced the bourgeoisie to begin cultivating “socialism for fools,” as Bebel called anti-Semitism, mutual national hatred. From “Nathan the Wise” to fascist pulp novels about the godlikeness of one’s own people and the bestial, devilish nature of other peoples - this is the path of bourgeois N.L. Nationalist fascist tendencies take on a different character in the literature of the property-owning classes of the ruling nations and in the literature of the property-owning classes of the oppressed nations. But the most characteristic feature of all national literature of the proprietary classes of the era of decay of capitalism is a clearly expressed fascist orientation. Tendencies of bourgeois N. l. capitalist countries in one disguised form or another are also found in the literature of the nationalities of the USSR, expressed mainly in great-power chauvinism, national democracy and national opportunism, in manifestations of anti-Semitism, etc.
Both great-power chauvinism and national democracy, national opportunism or anti-Semitism in N.L. represent a unique form of struggle of the class enemy, the bourgeoisie, the kulaks, against socialist construction, the struggle for the restoration of capitalism. Therefore, it is not accidental that this or that degree of closure between Russian writers, whose work was affected by manifestations of great-power chauvinism, with white emigration or the direct participation of a number of Belarusian and Ukrainian national democratic writers in counter-revolutionary organizations. On the other hand, it is extremely natural that the process of ideological restructuring of petty-bourgeois Ukrainian, Jewish, Belarusian writers or petty-bourgeois writers of a number of Turkic peoples was closely connected with their elimination of their nationalist sentiments, with their break with national democracy, with their renunciation of their nationalist opportunism.
Socialist N. l. on their internationalist basis they are fighting both great-power chauvinism and all kinds of manifestations of local nationalism, and this active struggle is developing all the more successfully the more this literature, socialist in content, is national in form, for “only if national cultures develop truly backward nationalities to the cause of socialist construction" (Stalin).

Literary encyclopedia. - At 11 t.; M.: Publishing House of the Communist Academy, Soviet Encyclopedia, Fiction. Edited by V. M. Fritsche, A. V. Lunacharsky. 1929-1939 .

Literary monuments are an important element in the culture of any civilized people. Literature reflects not only a certain historical situation, but also social consciousness and mood characteristic of this period. In addition, literature reproduces the very portrait of the people. Literature that expresses the spirit of the people is usually called "folk". However, in literary works, folk literature is often identified with national literature. But these are different concepts: the first includes the work of writers different nationalities, which cover topics of national life, raise the problems of the people (which are multinational). National literature is the literature of a certain nation, which also touches on folk themes, but with an emphasis on the peculiarities of mentality.

There is also another literary gradation. The territory of any state consists of several regions that differ from each other in relief, climate, way of life, social environment, etc. Works created in one area and reflecting its uniqueness belong to regional literature.

Works on the study of national and regional literature in domestic science appeared relatively recently (in the last quarter XX century). At the same time, the regional aspect has been studied less theoretically than the national one. However, in the work of many writers these aspects are found, consciously or not, included in the works. The term “national literature” is broader than regional literature. Following works literary scholars(identifying “folk” and “national” literature), we will define the main features of this concept.

The main component of national literature is its reflection of the characteristics of the mentality of any ethnic group. Psychological picture nations, moral standards, connections with nature - all this, one way or another, is present in works about the people as a single whole.

The historical component is also important. In the literature of any country, one can trace the attitude of society to its past directly through works of art, in particular, through the example of literary texts.

Russian national literature has always been distinguished by humanity, philanthropy, and the victory of good over evil. Works about the people are often based on Orthodox canons. Events most often occur against the backdrop of a specific historical situation. The characters are endowed with both negative (laziness, slowness) and positive (responsiveness, generosity) traits characteristic of the Russian mentality.

National literature includes regional literature. There are several opinions regarding the last term. For example, A.N. Vlasov includes in regional literature works “created by local authors and in demand by local readers.” IN“The Literary Encyclopedia of Terms and Concepts” (2001) understands regional literature as a set of “works of writers who concentrate their attention on depicting a certain area (usually rural) and the people inhabiting it.”

In addition, literary scholars offer synonymous concepts with the term “regional literature”. So, in “Literary encyclopedic dictionary"(1987) the concept of “local color” (from the French. couleur locale ) as “reproduction in fiction of features national life, landscape, language, characteristic of a particularly specific locality or region." The same publication provides a reference to the everyday descriptive tendency of Costumbrism (from Spanish with ostumbrismo, costumbre - character, custom), which captures “the desire for the most accurate descriptions of nature, the characteristics of national life, often with the idealization of patriarchal morals and customs.” Verism (from Italian. vero - truthful). Verists, when describing the life of low-income social strata, are known to have widely used vernacular and its dialectal manifestations, which was a necessary means of illustrating the naturalistic proximity of the described phenomena and events to the realities of true human nature, not embellished by artistic means. In addition, there are the concepts of “regionalism”, “veritism”, “zonal literature”, etc.

Despite the obvious differences, these definitions form a synonymous series of regional literature, where the common feature is the geographical and social description of a particular area.

The embodiment of the national and regional aspect can be traced through the example of the book by A.P. Chekhov (1860-1904) “Sakhalin Island” (1895). Known not only in Russia, but also abroad, this work revealed to the world the Russian soul, compassionate and sympathetic. Compassion and the ability to see the pain of another are Russian national traits. In “Sakhalin Island” these qualities are shown through the author’s feelings. From the writer’s first impressions of the island and throughout the entire work, one can grasp the experiences of A.P. Chekhov about convicts, free settlers, about the island as a part of Russia, as well as about Russia itself.

The book “Sakhalin Island” reflects, first of all, the hard life of convicts and settlers, who “feel the absence of something important.” The convicts “lack a past, traditions,” they “have no customs,” “and most importantly, no homeland.” This mood is promoted by climatic conditions (“Good weather is very rare here”) and terrain features (“the coast is completely steep, with dark gorges and coal seams... a gloomy coast!”). Almost everyone who arrives on Sakhalin is guided by the phrase: “It’s better here in Russia.” This comparison creates an even greater gap between the mainland and the island, separating Sakhalin from Russia.

In Chekhov's book there is often a hidden opposition between “Russian and non-Russian”, a kind of antithesis between “Russia and Sakhalin”. This artistic technique is stated on the first pages of the work during A.P.’s visit. Chekhov Nikolaevsk. Due to the lack of a hotel in the city, the writer dined at the meeting, where he became an involuntary witness to the conversations of the visitors there. “If you listen carefully and for a long time,” A.P. concludes. Chekhov, - then, my God, how far life here is from Russia!<…>in everything you feel something of your own, not Russian <…>not to mention the original one, not Russian nature, it always seemed to me that the way of our Russian life was completely alien to the native Amurians<…>and we, visitors from Russia, seem foreigners"even" the morality here is somehow special, not ours"(Italics are ours. - T.P.) A.P. Chekhov, like other residents of central Russia, does not associate the island with the mainland as part of Russian state. For him, Sakhalin is an unknown, different land.

A.P. Chekhov often uses the combinations “on our Russian arshin”, “in our Russian villages”, “Russian field”, “Russian Tsar”, etc., drawing a parallel between Russia And non-Russian, big and small land.

However, on the island the writer also sees what makes him in common with the Russian state - faith, thanks to which people do not allow themselves to sink, overcome inhuman torment, and, having overcome them, begin to live again. Churches have been built for believers on Sakhalin. And A.P. Chekhov often mentions them: “There are several houses and a church on the shore”; "six miles from Douai<…>in the neighborhood, little by little, a residence began to grow: premises for officials and offices, a church<…>" ; “the main essence of the post is its official part: church, house of the chief of the island, his office”; "gray wooden church"; “the church is white, old, simple and therefore beautiful architecture”, etc. As can be seen from the examples, the description of any settlement, post of A.P. Chekhov often begins by pointing out the presence or absence of a church, which indicates the importance of faith in the spiritual life of people. Let us note that representatives of various confessions and religions lived on Sakhalin (the island was and remains multinational), who, however, peacefully coexisted with each other. This is how A.P. writes about it. Chekhov: “Catholics complained to me that the priest comes very rarely, children remain unbaptized for a long time, and many parents, so that the child does not die without baptism, turn to an Orthodox priest<…>When a Catholic dies, in the absence of one of his own, they invite a Russian priest to sing “Holy God.”

Having touched on the religious topic, one cannot help but mention such a feature of Sakhalin as its multinationality (which is the reason for the large number of religions on the island). The rich ethnic composition of Sakhalin is due to the fact that people were sentenced to exile regardless of nationality. “The local residents,” describes A.P. Chekhov one of the villages is a disorderly rabble Russians, Poles, Finns, Georgians <…>". On the one hand, such mixing did not interfere with maintaining human relations, but, on the contrary, contributed to the assimilation of cultures; on the other hand, people did not strive to settle this land, since for everyone it was a stranger, a temporary place of residence, as people believed. “The rural residents here do not yet form societies. There are still no adult natives of Sakhalin for whom the island would be their homeland, there are very few old-timers, the majority are newcomers; the population changes every year; some arrive, others leave; and in many villages, as I have already said, the inhabitants give the impression not of a rural society, but of a random rabble. They call themselves brothers because they suffered together, but they still have little in common and are alien to each other. They do not believe the same and speak the same different languages. The old people despise this diversity and laughingly say that what kind of society can there be if Russians, crests, Tatars, Poles, Jews, Chukhons, Kyrgyz, Georgians, Gypsies live in the same village?...".

On Sakhalin, which A.P. saw Chekhov, there was no specific way of life, each of the settlers and convicts lived in their own way. An example of this is the description of A.P. Chekhov of Sakhalin life: “On Sakhalin you come across huts of all kinds, depending on who built it - a Siberian, a crest or a Chukhonian, but most often it is a small log house<…>without any external decoration, thatched<…>There is usually no yard. Not a single tree nearby.<…>If there are dogs, then they are lethargic, not angry.<…>And for some reason these quiet, harmless dogs are on a leash. If there is a pig, then with a block on the neck. The rooster is also tied by the leg.

Why are your dog and rooster tied? - I ask the owner.

“Everything is on a chain here on Sakhalin,” he jokes in response. “The earth is just like that.”

“Such” means different, different, alien. The reluctance of people to recognize the island as part of Russia can be explained by its purpose. Sakhalin as a place of exile at the border XIX - XX for centuries it evoked negative emotions, fear, and instilled horror in Russians. Heavy impressions contributed to the writer’s similar perception of Sakhalin nature. “From a high bank,” writes A.P. Chekhov, - stunted, diseased trees looked down; here on open place each of them alone wages a fierce struggle with frost and cold winds, and each of them has to sway restlessly from side to side in the fall and winter, on long terrible nights, bend to the ground, creak pitifully - and no one hears these complaints.” Just as natural complaints remain unanswered, so the groans of people, punished by the law and the surrounding reality, do not reach high authorities. But Chekhov’s Sakhalin residents, like trees, defend their right to life, and sometimes even to existence. The entire “Sakhalin Island” is permeated with such a depressing mood, because A.P. Sakhalin felt this way. Chekhov.

Thus, in the travel notes of A.P. Chekhov's "Sakhalin Island" can be roughly distinguished "big"(Russia) and "small"(Sakhalin) worlds, “central” and “regional” concepts, which are embodied in the following features:

1) features of the Russian mentality. A.P.’s first impressions of a different, “non-Russian” life from Nikolaevsk change. Chekhov as we learn about the real situation on Sakhalin. A.P. Chekhov sees thieves, murderers, morally and physically degraded people. But, at the same time, a religious, tolerant convict is revealed to him, loving Russia. The writer sees on the island a unique model of the Russian state, where the church plays an important role and where representatives of different ethnic groups coexist peacefully. This reveals such traits of the Russian person as conciliarity and tolerance;

2) historical authenticity. A.P. Chekhov recorded in writing the history of hard labor in its most active period. The book made a revolution in public consciousness, as it was created by an eyewitness to those events;

“Nationalism” as a literary category appears relatively late in literature. Aristotle resolves issues of the specificity of a work of art mainly at the level of formal craftsmanship. Of the five requirements (“censures”) he presented to a work of art, only the requirement of compliance with moral standards is “external” to this work. The remaining requirements remain at the level of aesthetic “rules”. For Aristotle, a work that is “harmful to morality” is unacceptable. The concept of harm is based here on the general humanistic principles of good and evil.

Until the 17th century in literary theory, normativity in the interpretation of the specifics of works of art is preserved and even deepened. The requirement of morality remains unshakable. In "The Poetic Art" Boileau writes:

He deserves severe judgment

Who shamefully betrays morality and honor,

Painting us debauchery as tempting and sweet...

Only art history of the 18th century. takes a number of decisive steps forward on the path to defining the concept of “nationality”. A. G. Baumgarten in his unfinished treatise “Aesthetics” (1750s) not only includes the term “aesthetics” in scientific circulation, but also relies on the concept of “taste”. I. I. Winkelman in his work “History of Ancient Art” (1763) connects the successes of Greek art with the democracy of government.

A decisive turn in European art science took place in the 50s and 60s. XVIII century in the works of J.-J. Rousseau, G. E. Lessing, I. G. Herder. For Rousseau, this was a cycle of his “Discourses...” “On the Sciences and Arts” (1750), “On the Origin and Foundations of Inequality between People” (1754), “On the Social Contract” (1762), “Emile, or On Education "(1762), "Confession" (1782). In contrast to ancient and aristocratic norms of art, he puts forward the ideas of specific historicism and national originality of works of literature and art. In Lessing's works "Laocoon, or On the Limits of Painting and Poetry" (1766), "Hamburg Drama" (1769), as well as in his articles, Winckelmann's theory of aesthetic "tranquility" is criticized and the idea of ​​a German national theater is put forward.

The most important role in the formation of the concept of national literature in Europe and Russia was played by the works of: J.-J. Rousseau and I. G. Herder. These works were known in translation to the Russian reader. In the works of Rousseau, the main principle of classicism was first questioned and then rejected - the theory of imitation and “decorated” imitation of models. There are signs of a new, sentimental-romantic direction in literature, opened by Rousseau's novel "The New Heloise".

One of the largest literary scholars and theoreticians of the new philosophical school in Europe was the German scientist I. G. Herder (1744–1803). Author of the works “On Modern German Literature” (1768), “Critical Forests, or Reflections Concerning the Science of Beauty and Art, According to the Newest Research” (1769), “A Study on the Origin of Language” (1772), “Another Experience in Philosophy history for the education of humanity" (1773), "On folk songs" (1779). Herder studied with Kant and at the same time polemicized against his aesthetics. Personally acquainted with F. Klopstock, G. E. Lessing, J. W. Goethe, F. Schiller, he was one of the founders of the theory of romanticism. He was widely known in Russia, influenced A. N. Radishchev, N. M. Karamzin, V. A. Zhukovsky, S. P. Shevyrev, N. V. Gogol. He took part in the dispute between Winckelmann and Lessing on the specifics of art.

Along with romanticism, the concept of nationality came to Russian literature. Under the influence of Rousseau's ideas, Herder developed his doctrine of historicism and nationality as the main features and sources of literature of each nation. Herder’s philosophical and historical concepts, which were reflected in the development of new historiography, also go back to Rousseau and are based on the ideas of humanism and nationality: in contrast to the abstract rationalism of norms, the task of depicting a living personality from the people was put forward.

So, Rousseau was the first to orient public thought towards the idea of ​​the “naturalness” of the life of ancient generations, in contrast to the contemporary forms of feudal “civilization”. Kant introduced the principle of critical analysis into science as a mandatory principle, Herder laid the foundation for the study of folk art within the framework of national culture. This is the philosophical pedigree of the theory of folk literature at its origins.

Interest in the teachings of Rousseau came to Herder from his mentor Kant, who was an object of worship for Herder. Probably, the origins of Herder’s worldview should be sought in the complex of ideas of time, but Rousseau had the strongest influence on him.

Thus, both in the second and subsequent generations of German historical school The influence of Rousseau through Lessing, Kant, Herder, and Schiller is revealed, establishing a consistent chain of mutual influences and relationships that culminated in the formation of folk-historical literary theory. This path of development of social thought, however, is not a consequence of a quantitative increase in similar ideas, but ultimately serves as an indicator scientific progress at all.

Herder was a scientist of an encyclopedic nature. In addition to Rousseau and Kant, he knew Voltaire, the encyclopedists, and especially Montesquieu, the English philosophers Leibniz and Spinoza. German romanticism, the poetry of Goethe and Schiller, and the philosophy of Schelling and Hegel go back to Herder’s philosophical direction. Herder derives the law about the variability of human concepts over time in connection with the characteristics of everyday life, culture, etc. He correlates the “ages” of nations with the ages of man. Universal human traits (including humanity) develop, according to Herder, within the framework of national ones. He defines the national stage as the main one among the three conditions of human development: “human perfection is national, temporary, individual” (this position was put forward long before Taine’s famous formula about “race”, “environment” and “moment” as determining factors in the development of society). “People create nothing except what time, climate, needs, the world, fate give rise to,” says Herder. History is not an abstract process of self-improvement of humanity and not an “eternal revolution”, but progress dependent on very specific conditions, taking place within a national-temporal and individual framework. A person is not free in personal happiness, he depends on the conditions surrounding him, i.e. from Wednesday. That is why Herder was the first to deny “the right of the ancients to dominate modern literature,” i.e. against false classicism ("pseudo-classicism"). He called for the study of a national movement that would view poetry not as a repetition of foreign forms, but as an expression of national life. Herder argued that modern history, mythology, religion, language are completely different from the nature, history, mythology, religion of Ancient Greece and Rome. “There is no glory” in being “a second Horace” or a “second Lucretius,” he says. Herder's views on the history of literature are higher than the views of Lessing and Winckelmann, who exalted the ancient ideals of literature. The history of poetry, art, science, education, morals is the history of peoples, Herder believes.

But Herder does not at all want to share with Rousseau his idealization of the primitive state of humanity. Despite his deep respect for Rousseau, he calls his calls for a return to the past, to antiquity, “insane.” Herder accepts the idea of ​​national education put forward by the philosopher Montesquieu.

Long before Benfey, Herder had already outlined a method of comparative study historical phenomena, including literary ones at the international level. At the same time, the history of all peoples is considered within the framework of “one human brotherhood.”

Herder adhered open-minded on the development of literature, on the problems of the specifics of folk poetry. In his literary views, he relied on Rousseau's teaching about the naturalness of human aspirations, on Rousseau's deep interest in the situation of the masses. This largely explains the enormous attention Herder paid to folk poetry. Herder's works served as an impetus for the beginning of the study of folk poetry, and not only in Germany. After Herder, interest in studying folk monuments became ubiquitous in Europe. This interest was related to practical activities scientists on collecting ancient monuments and folk art. Herder speaks with grief about the absence of national literature and national character in fragmented Germany, and appeals to a sense of national dignity and patriotism. Herder’s merit also lies in his turn to “mythology” and to the study of folk legends. Herder calls for “knowing peoples” not superficially, “from the outside,” like “pragmatic historians,” but “from the inside, through their own soul, from their feelings, speech and deeds.” This was a turn in the study of folk antiquity and poetry and, at the same time, in the development of poetry itself. Important here was the appeal to ancient folk poetry at the earliest stages of its development, to folk life and the problem of folk character.

Herder studies the literature of little-studied European peoples - Estonians, Lithuanians, Wends, Slavs (Poles, Russians), Frisians, Prussians. Herder gives impetus to scientific research national characteristics of the poetry of Slavic tribes. Religion, philosophy and history for Herder are categories derived from folk poetry. According to Herder, each people, each nation had its own “way of thinking,” its own “mythical setting,” recorded in “its own monuments” in its own “poetic language.” The idea of ​​syncretism is especially close to Herder. primitive forms folk culture in which poetry was an integral element.

Herder puts forward a new view on the character of biblical poetry. He viewed the Bible as a collection of “national songs,” as a monument to “living folk poetry.” Herder considers Homer to be the great "people's poet". In his opinion, the poetry of the people reflects the character of the people: " Warlike people glorifies exploits, gentle - love." He attached importance to both the "most important" and secondary features of national life, presented in his own language, information about the concepts and customs of the nation, about its science, games and dances, music and mythology. Herder adds at the same time, using the method of classification and terminology of the “exact” (natural) sciences: “As natural history describes plants and animals, so here the peoples themselves describe themselves.”

Herder's main idea is about the fruitfulness of the development of literature in national forms and framework. The national-historical principle here appears as the main and only one. Herder extends the idea of ​​historical national development not only to literature, but also to language, history, and religion. He laid the foundation for a new science of language, with his philosophy that the origin of language is the factor determining the content and form of folk poetry. Herder came up with the idea that language is “developed” by the “thinking” of man. The primary purpose of language and its function, according to Herder, is “sensation,” and often an involuntary feeling caused by the direct influence of external forces of nature. However, the final goal of linguistics is “interpretation.” human soul"Herder understood that a truly scientific study of language and literature requires data from other sciences, including philosophy, history, philology. The main method is comparative study. Herder's works precede the subsequent phenomena of Western European philological science - the work of Wilhelm Humboldt, the brothers Grimm with their fanatical love for folk antiquity and poetry.

A bright exponent of the idea of ​​nationality in art in the second half of the 19th century. The French scientist Hippolyte Taine (1828–1893) appeared. Of the three sources of art, which he considered in his work “Philosophy of Art” (1869) - race, environment (geographical, climatic conditions), moment (historical conditions), - the “race” factor ( national characteristics) is the leader.

The main condition for the occurrence national art Ten considered the environment, and the main feature of the environment was the “nationality” (“tribe”) with its innate abilities. He already considered the tastes of the early eras of the development of peoples to be natural and universal. Thus, the reason for the flourishing of Italian Renaissance painting, according to Taine, was the “amazing” artistic abilities of all layers of the people, and the French national type reflects “the need for distinct and logically connected ideas,” “flexibility and quickness of mind.”

The fundamentally fruitful formulation of the question of “national character” by Taine and in general about the “characteristic” in art is overly sharpened by the position about the immutability, “inviolability” of national character. Therefore, the question of the “plebeian of our century” or “nobleman” classical era"is solved by Taine on an abstract plane, included in an anthropological system oversaturated with natural scientific terminology. The flourishing of national art is placed by Taine at the center of historical periods, between the stormy upheavals that characterize the formation of a nation and the periods of its decline. A century, a people, a school - this is the way of emergence and the development of art, according to Taine.In this case, the school can be national (Italian, Greek, French, Flemish) or determined by the name genius artist(Rubens, Rembrandt). National character is created by the “national genius” and expresses the characteristics of the race (Chinese, Aryans, Semites), in which the future form of religion, philosophy, society and art can be predicted by the structure of the language and the type of myths. Sometimes there are types of characters that express traits common to almost all nationalities, all “groups of humanity.” These are the heroes of the works of Shakespeare and Homer, Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe. These works go beyond ordinary limits, “live without end,” and are eternal. The “unshakable national basis” that creates “national geniuses” goes back to Taine’s random characteristics of a subjective plane. For example, the Spanish national character is characterized by exaltation and love for thrills. Art, according to Taine, is generated by the people, the mass as a collection of individuals with a certain “state of mind” in which “images” are not “distorted by ideas.” Talent, education, training, work and “chance” can lead an artist to create a type of national character. National character (such as Robinson or Don Quixote) carries within itself universal human traits“eternal” type: Robinson shows “a man torn from civilized society”; Don Quixote shows an “idealist of the highest order.” In great work of art literature reproduced features historical period, the fundamental characteristics of the "tribe", the traits of man "in general" and "those basic psychological forces that are last reasons human effort." Taine argues that the peculiarities of the psychology of peoples make it possible to transfer types of art from one nation to another (for example, Italian art to France).

Theory of nationality in Russia (Collecting, N. Dobrolyubov, A. Pypin, Russian writers)

Initially, Rousseau's activities were perceived in Russia only as educational, along with the works of French educators. Even in the time of Elizabeth, in the 1750s, Trediakovsky, a theoretician and practitioner of Russian classicism, in “The Tale of Wisdom, Prudence and Virtue,” rebelled with indignation against the teachings of Rousseau, calling him “the philistine of Geneva,” from

whose teachings “damage to good morals” occurred. Trediakovsky’s negative attitude towards the ideas of European enlightenment is emphasized here. Subsequently, the influence of Rousseau's philosophy on the plans of the young Catherine II is noted, although already in the 70s of the 18th century it became clear that this was only an ostentatious interest.

At first, Catherine, through Grigory Orlov, even offered Rousseau asylum in Russia. But then, especially after Pugachev and the French Revolution of 1789, this philosophy turned out to be unacceptable and even dangerous for her: Rousseau, as the author of the Social Contract and writings on Poland, did not at all contribute to the strengthening of Russian absolutism.

Catherine II, after the French Revolution, in 1795, wrote that “Rousseau will force the French to walk on all fours.” The fact is that Rousseau, expressing the interests of the petty bourgeoisie and, to a large extent, the broad masses of the people, opposed absolutism from a unique position: while denying the civilization of his day, he called back to the past, and saw a “healthy” grain in the initial steps of man , in ancient times, in the life of ordinary people.

This was the first step in the formation of the idea of ​​national culture, albeit in fantastic forms. Rousseau contrasted " natural state peoples of the newest, artificial" European civilization.

So, the idea of ​​nationality received its initial impetus in the above-mentioned controversial theory of Rousseau, which was a reaction to the outdated philosophical and aesthetic systems of classicism. This reaction against rationality and metaphysical materialism manifested itself in Germany and Russia in literary systems.

On the one hand, this speech by Rousseau is a protest against the rationality and normativity of the aesthetics of classicism, and on the other hand, the first sprouts of the idea of ​​nationality.

The social thought of Europe received this initial impetus, which led to a change in ideology, from Rousseau, who was the forerunner of a new direction in philosophy and literature. He influenced Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, A. Herzen, N. Novikov, A. Radishchev, N. Karamzin, and Russian romantics.

In Russia, the process of forming the theory of national literature was accompanied by the introduction and justification of basic literary concepts and the desire to comprehend fiction from the point of view of a system of interrelated phenomena. This process began with the reforms of Peter I, who introduced Russia to Western European science and culture.

This process accelerated more and more throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries, complicated by social and historical factors of a national and pan-European scale. First of all, it should be pointed out here French Revolution 1789 and Patriotic War 1812, which had a huge impact on the formation of Russian national culture and literature.

The influence of Rousseau and Herder, with his unique “philosophical-historical” theory, on Russian literary criticism undoubtedly. However, in the formation of the theory of nationality in Russia there was a period of unconscious spontaneous tendencies, when literary practice prevailed. This practice emerged in the works of writers of the 18th century and was characterized by two points.

First of all, it was an interest in the ancient period of poetry. Our first lovers of folk antiquity tried to understand its essence and meaning using their own means. The second trend is interest in folk art. This was a period of collecting and publishing folk art materials - songs, epics, proverbs, sayings. The names of N. I. Novikov, M. D. Chulkov, I. Pracha and others should be mentioned here.

By themselves, the above two features (interest in the ancient period of literature and folk art) cannot determine the specificity of the concept of nationality, since they are too general in nature.

If we consider these forms of literary criticism (collecting, comparing and processing texts, description and publication), then within the framework of the academic direction they are closest to the philological school, characterized by the simplest, elementary techniques of literary processing.

It is not always possible to talk here about the consistent application of the principle of historicism and nationality, but the general cultural significance of the works of scientists of this period, which enriched Russian science in quantitative terms, is undoubtedly.

The desire for a systematic study of fiction, clearly evident in the works of Russian writers of the 18th century, was the threshold of the emergence of scientific literary criticism in Russia.

Systematicity involves considering literary facts from the perspective of either one (leading) scientific principle, or a set, a system of principles (of varying degrees of complexity, depending on the number of levels, depth of analysis and breadth of generalization). At the same time, different degrees of validity and orderliness of literary phenomena are possible.

From the very beginning, literary science developed, like other sciences, from elementary to complex, from facts and phenomena to their connections and interrelations, from the study of connections to proof of their regularity. And finally, at a certain stage in the development of literary science, a tendency was revealed to give the conclusions the character of immutable laws.

The role and specific weight of the science of literature in the system of other sciences increases with the development of fiction itself as an object of literary studies. The level of development and state of fiction, in turn, were determined by the forms, conditions and circumstances of the historical development of Russian reality - the subject of the depiction of literature and the subject of study of literary science.

The beginning of systematic, scientific literary knowledge was laid in Russia XVIII century In the 17th century, one can find only elements of a scientific interpretation of historical and literary phenomena in the works of G.K. Kotoshikhin and I.T. Pososhkov. The emergence of systematic, conscious scientific research in Russia is associated with the establishment of the Academy of Sciences, and in particular, with the works of historians P. I. Rychkov, V. V. Krestinin, V. N. Tatishchev and others.

Russian literature of the 18th century notes the influence of Rousseau's philosophy on Novikov, who deeply sympathized with the so-called vile common people. Novikov mastered the heritage of Western European philosophy on his own.

Rousseau's literary activity (his novel "The New Heloise") marked the beginning of Karamzin's sentimentalism. Novikov took from Rousseau the ideas of nationality and enlightenment, and Karamzin adopted the idealistic sentimentality of Rousseau. Thus, the folk historical tradition was discovered in the 18th century through the works of Novikov, who adopted one of the sides of this tradition, dating back to Rousseau. “Sensibility” itself is not necessarily compatible with the idea of ​​the people of literature. In Rousseau, it is complemented by a feeling of love for nature, a spontaneous denial of civilization.

In another respect, close in his views to Novikov was A. N. Radishchev, whose views were also influenced by French philosophy, including Rousseau. At the same time, there is no indication of the influence on Radishchev of that side of Rousseau’s philosophy in which his interest in antiquity was expressed.

Radishchev, like D. Fonvizin and a number of other writers of the 18th century, is characterized by an interest in the modern situation of the people, in their social conditions. Rousseau's influence on Radishchev was not exceptional. It was noted, along with the influence of other French philosophers, apparently in the first period of Rousseau’s activity, the period of general education, when he was close to the encyclopedists. This was the period of formation of Radishchev’s views, the 60s of the 18th century. Among the students at the University of Leipzig, he became acquainted with the French philosophers Voltaire, C. A. Helvetius, Rousseau, Raynal, and G. B. Mably.

Herder has been known in Russia since the 18th century, although the essence of his works was not immediately understood. Karamzin, who visited him in 1789, admires his thoughts and sees him as a great scientist. It is known that the “Friendly Literary Society” founded in 1801 by Zhukovsky (with the participation of A.F. Merzlyakov, V.F. Voeikov, brothers Andrei and Alexander Turgenev) was reminiscent of the “Friendly Scientific Society” of I.V. Lopukhin and N.I. Novikov and that, having arrived in Mishenskoye in 1802, V. A. Zhukovsky brought there publications of Schiller, Herder, Lessing, as well as ideas of a new literary direction.

In the first half of the 19th century, one can note the influence of Herder in the works of a number of Russian scientists. In his “History of Russian Literature” S.P. Shevyrev will refer to the works of the “great” German Herder. Following in his works the “unforgettable” Herder O. M. Bodyansky, he is studied by A. N. Pypin and N. S. Tikhonravov.

In Russia to mid-19th century, this new science was called “the science of folk studies” by such representatives of academic literary criticism as Pypin. For Pypin it is already clear that Russian literature, which for so long has been in forms of pseudo-classicism alien to it, can flourish only along the paths of national development, in which both its universal meaning and significance will be determined.

So, in the formation of the theory of folk literature in Russia, the first stage was an interest in the study of monuments of folk antiquity, noted in Russian literature by the activities of Novikov, Chulkov, and Prach.

Second stage of development new school- first third of the 19th century. And Herder’s work was important for this stage. After Herder, such theorists of nationality as I. I. Sreznevsky, Bodyansky, M. A. Maksimovich become understandable. The idea of ​​nationality came to Russia along with romanticism, in the aesthetics of which it occupied an important place, and romanticism, in turn, also goes back to Herder. Herder's works are the source of the ideas of nationality and romanticism of the early 19th century.

However, interest in the study of nationalities in Russia did not depend entirely on Western European influence and was determined by the conditions of Russian reality. It was a movement parallel to the development of European thought. Interest in folk poetry in Russia is associated with the publication of “songbooks” in the 70s XVIII century, simultaneously with Herder's Folk Songs. This was not a systematic scientific study, but rather a spontaneous gathering.

The formation of scientific ethnography and literary criticism in Russia was prepared precisely by the collectors of the 18th century, as well as by the collectors of the early 19th century - I. M. Snegirev, I. P. Sakharov and others. In the 40s-60s of the 19th century, according to Pypin, the third period of development of the theory of folk literature was characterized by the works of such “partisans of folk poetry” as F. Buslaev and A. Afanasyev.

Buslaev’s work is “On Teaching the Russian Language” (1844), Afanasyev’s is “Poetic Views of the Slavs on Nature” (1866-1869). Thus, both scientific schools in Russia: the academic (“folk studies”) and the philosophical-aesthetic (Hegelian-Schellingian) school of Belinsky correlate with the teachings of Herder and are also explained by the similarity of the conditions of national development of Germany and

Russia. In both cases, interest in “nationality” is associated with the peculiarities of the development of “national self-awareness.” The commonality of the philosophical sources of the two scientific schools The historical results of their development are also similar: on the one hand, the educational democracy of the academic direction, and on the other, the radical democracy of Belinsky and Dobrolyubov.

The German idealist school of I. Kant, I. G. Fichte, F. W. Schelling, G. F. Hegel took from Herder the “ideal” side of his teaching, which in Russia was the basis natural school Belinsky, who contributed to the study of “nationality” from the perspective of its socio-aesthetic meaning.

Hegel was a supporter of the idea of ​​“pure” nationality, independent of “ethnic” goals. According to Hegel (adopted in the 1930s by Belinsky), Herder’s form of “nationality” was artificial and was merely an imitation of genuine nationality.

At the same time, the German idealistic philosophy of art - Kant, Schelling, Hegel - promoting the ideas of freedom of creativity as opposed to the normative aesthetics of classicism, thereby inherited the corresponding ideas of Rousseau and Herder.

Only Belinsky’s refusal in the 1840s from the Hegelian idea of ​​creative freedom not only brought his concept of the nationality of literature closer to the academic theory of “ethnic studies,” but gave this theory a new socio-political meaning.

Introduction to literary criticism (N.L. Vershinina, E.V. Volkova, A.A. Ilyushin, etc.) / Ed. L.M. Krupchanov. - M, 2005

In order to highlight the national, its functions and methods of expression in a literary work, it is necessary to determine, firstly, what should be meant by national, and, secondly, how to understand the work, what its nature is.

Enough has been said about the latter to allow us to move on to the former. -

First of all, it should be noted that the category of national, being not an aesthetic category itself, requires consideration on various planes. It is important to focus on those that can be directly related to the work of art. The subject of my consideration is not so much the national as such, but the national in a literary and artistic work.

The question of the national in literature should also be considered taking into account the specifics of the aesthetic as a form public consciousness. The national in itself is not a form of social (and therefore individual) consciousness. National is a certain property of the psyche and consciousness, a property that “colors” all forms of social consciousness. The very presence of a person’s psyche and consciousness is, naturally, non-national. The ability for imaginative and scientific thinking is also non-national. However, the artistic world created imaginative thinking, may have pronounced national features. Why?

National identity consists of sociocultural and moral-psychological characteristics (common labor processes and skills, customs and, further, social life in all its forms: aesthetic, moral-religious, political, legal, etc.), which are formed on the basis of natural and climatic factors. and biological factors (common territory, natural conditions, ethnic characteristics, etc.). All this leads to the emergence of a national characteristic of people’s lives, to the emergence of a national mentality (an integral complex of natural, genetic and spiritual properties). National characters (also, I note, integral formations) are formed historically. How are they reproduced in literature?

Through the figurative concept of personality. Personality, being an individual manifestation of universal human spirituality, largely acquires individuality as a national characteristic. National identity, not being a form of social consciousness, is a predominantly psychological, adaptive, adaptive phenomenon. This is a way and tool for a person’s adaptation to nature, the individual’s adaptation to society. Since this is so, the most adequate form of reproduction of the national has become an image, a figurative concept of personality. The nature of the image and the nature of the national seemed to resonate: both are perceived primarily sensually and are integral formations. Moreover: the existence of the national is possible precisely - and exclusively - in figurative form. Concepts do not need national identity.

What exactly is in the structure literary image is the content and material carrier of the elusive national spirit? Or: what are national meanings, and what are the ways of conveying them?

The material for sculpting the “spirit,” that is, the arsenal of poetic figurative means, was borrowed by man from his environment. In order to “register” in the world, to humanize it, it became necessary, with the help of mythology, to populate it with gods, often anthropomorphic creatures. At the same time, the material of mythology - depending on the type of civilization being formed: agricultural, pastoral, coastal, etc. - was different. The image could only be copied from the surrounding reality (flora, fauna, as well as inanimate nature). Man was surrounded by the moon, the sun, water, bears, snakes, birches, etc. In the ancestral mythological thinking, all images were overgrown with specific symbolic plans, telling infinitely much to one ethnic group and almost devoid of information for another.

This is how the national picture of the world, the national system of vision was formed. The integral unity of the principles of organizing national material based on any dominant features characteristic of national life can be called a national artistic style of thinking. The formation of this style was accompanied by the crystallization of literary traditions. Subsequently, when aesthetic consciousness acquired highly developed forms, national mentality for its reproduction in verbal and artistic form, it required specific means of visualization and expressiveness: a range of themes, characters, genres, plots, chronotope, culture of detail, linguistic means, etc.

However, the specificity of the figurative fabric cannot yet be considered the basis of national content. The national, which is also inherent in individual consciousness, is nothing more than a form of the “collective unconscious” (C. G. Jung).

I believe that Jung, in his concept of the “collective unconscious” and its “archetypes,” came as close as possible to what could help understand the problem of national meaning in a work of art. Quoting Hauptmann’s words: “to be a poet means to allow the original word to be heard behind the words,” Jung writes: “Translated into the language of psychology, our first question should accordingly be: to what prototype of the collective unconscious can the image deployed in this work of art be traced?” 56

If we, literary critics, are interested in the national in a work, our question will obviously be formulated identically, but with one indispensable addition: what is aesthetic structure this image? Moreover, our addition shifts the emphasis: we are not so much interested in the meaning of the collective unconscious as in the artistically expressed meaning. We are interested in the connection between the type of artistry and the meaning hidden in the collective unconscious.

The image grows from the depths of unconscious psychological depths (I will not touch on the most complex problems of the psychology of creativity). Therefore, it requires an appropriate “apparatus” of perception, appeals to the “depths of the soul,” to the unconscious layers in the human psyche. Moreover, not to the personal unconscious, but to the collective. Jung strictly distinguishes between these two spheres of the unconscious in man. The basis of the collective unconscious is the prototype or “archetype”. It underlies typical situations, actions, ideals, and mythological figures. An archetype is a certain invariant of experiences that is realized in specific variants. An archetype is a canvas, a matrix, general drawing experiences repeated by an endless series of ancestors. Therefore, we easily respond to the archetypes we experience; the voice of the race, the voice of all humanity, awakens in us. And this voice, which includes us in the collective paradigm, gives enormous confidence to the artist and the reader. The speaker with archetypes speaks “as if with a thousand voices” (Jung). Ultimately, the archetype represents the individual appearance of universal human experiences. It is quite natural that the collective unconscious in the masterpieces of literature in its resonance goes far beyond national framework. Such works become in tune with the spirit of an entire era.

This is another - psychological - side of the impact of art on society. Perhaps it would be appropriate here to quote from Jung, which shows how an archetype can be connected with the national. “And what is “Faust”? “Faust” is (...) an expression of the originally vital, active principle in the German soul, the birth of which Goethe was destined to contribute. Is it conceivable that “Faust” or “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” was written by a non-German Both clearly hint at the same thing—that which vibrates in the German soul, the “elementary image,” as Jacob Burckhardt once put it—the figure of the healer and teacher on the one hand, and the sinister sorcerer on the other; the archetype of the sage, helper and savior, on the one hand, and the magician, swindler, seducer and devil - on the other. This image has been buried in the unconscious for centuries, where it sleeps until favorable or unfavorable circumstances of the era awaken it: this happens when the great error leads the people astray from the true path."57

Among developed nations with developed literature and culture, the arsenal of figurative means is infinitely enriched, refined, internationalized, while preserving recognizable national codes (mainly of sensory-psychological origin). It is easy to multiply examples. In Russian literature of the 19th century, one of the main archetypes is the figure of the “superfluous” person, the contemplator, who sees no way out of the contradictions of the era. Another example: the genesis of the literary heroes of the Karamazov brothers is rooted in folk tales. Another example: the concept of L.N. Tolstoy in “War and Peace” is actually a folk concept of defensive war, embodied in Russian military stories of the 13th-19th centuries. And the figure of Napoleon is a typical figure of an invader for these stories.

Let me generalize: the basis of almost any character in literature - not only individual, but also national character - is a moral and social type (mean, hypocritical, etc.) and even a mask, which is the basis of the type. Behind the most complex, original combination of psychological properties there is always a national version of the universal human type. Therefore, it is not surprising that the simplest mythological or fairy-tale motifs can “come back to haunt” the most complex artistic and philosophical paintings of modern times.

Now let's look at the pressing issue of national identification of works. Both the mentality and the imagery that embodies it (internal form), and the language that embodies the images (external form) can be relatively independent in a work. (By the way, the principle of literary translation is based on this thesis.) The autonomy of mentality in relation to figurative fabric is palpable, for example, in Tolstoy’s Hadji Murat. Mentality, as we see, can be expressed not only through “native” material, but also through the appropriate interpretation of foreign material. This is possible because the exotic material is conveyed through details that are selected, arranged and evaluated by the subject of the story from his own national point of view and in his own national language.

However, such cases are quite rare. Much more often, mentality and images are inseparably fused. In their unity, they can “peel away” from the language, demonstrating relative independence. It's hard to argue with that. There are English, Spanish and other literatures - literatures different nations and nations in one language.

On the other hand, national mentality can be expressed in different languages. Finally, there are works, for example, by Nabokov, which are generally difficult to identify as national, since they are devoid of any tangible national ideology. (Let me make a small digression. The independence of material and language can have very interesting aspects. Any original, or even unique, national material is fraught with artistic potential. Moreover, different potential. Due to the fact that individual expressiveness is important for an image, original material is always is valuable in itself, that is, in a certain sense - valuable in itself. Therefore, as the basis for a future type of artistry, different national material is unequal: taking into account different artistic tasks, the material, so to speak, is more or less advantageous. The richness of national life, history , from natural speech, from my unconstrained, rich, infinitely obedient Russian syllable for the sake of a second-grade English language, deprived in my case of all the equipment - a tricky mirror, a black velvet backdrop, implied associations and traditions - which a native magician with flying coattails can It’s so magical to use to overcome the legacy of your fathers in your own way.” (“About the book entitled “Lolita.”)

Aitmatov made a Russian and, more broadly, European “graft” on the Kyrgyz mentality. In a creative sense, it is a unique and fruitful symbiosis. Approximately the same can be said about Polish-language and Latin-language literature in Belarus. The debate about how to carry out national identification of literature: by language or by mentality seems to me scholastic and speculative. And mentality, and imagery, and artistic expression are different aspects of the “collective unconscious”. Consequently, when mentality lives organically in a non-native word, there is an overlap of one collective unconscious with another. A new organic whole, a nationally ambivalent symbiosis, is emerging. How, in this case, to resolve the question of the nationality of the symbiosis? Look for where there is more of the collective unconscious - in language or in images?

Such a formulation of the question provokes an inadequate approach to the problem. All this is reminiscent of the well-known insoluble dilemma about the chicken and the egg. After all, it is obvious that the factor of language, while not the main one in the transmission of national identity, is decisive in the sense of classifying a work as one or another national literature (the concept of national literature in this case can be supplemented by the concept of English-, German-language literature, etc.). Literature in one national language, expressing different mentalities (including cosmopolitan ones), has greater organic integrity than literature of the “same mentality” in different languages.

Literature, according to Nabokov, is a “phenomenon of language.” This, of course, is not entirely true, but it is not an empty declaration either. Perhaps language, like nothing else, draws you into cultural space, creates it and in this sense is the conventional border of the national in literature. Since a literary work always exists in a national language, it can be argued that the national, in a certain sense, is an immanent property of a work of art.

Industrial society and the development of urban culture have marked a trend towards leveling national

differences in culture in general and literature in particular.

The bottom of the trends in the development of literature is characterized by the fact that works are beginning to be created that are increasingly supranational, non-national, cosmopolitan (but by no means more artistic). This direction has its own achievements that cannot be ignored - just mention the name of Nabokov. The “nature” of the artistry of such literature, its material and means of expression are completely different.

In principle, the non-national trend in the development of literature has its own logic. Human spirituality cannot be demarcated by focusing only on certain national cultural patterns. However, spirituality cannot be expressed in general, outside of a specific literary language. And in this case, it is language that becomes the criterion for classifying writers as one or another national literature.

nature. It is highly characteristic that when Nabokov was still Sirin and wrote in Russian, he was considered a Russian writer (although he did not join the Russian spiritual tradition). When he left for the USA and began to write in English, he began American writer(although American spiritual and literary tradition were alien to him).

As we see, literature can be national, international, and non-national. Of course, I am far from the idea of ​​​​providing a prescription schematization for all occasions. I have only outlined patterns that can manifest themselves differently in different cultural and linguistic contexts. "The degree of national participation in literature" depends on many factors. The formation of Belarusian self-awareness in Polish language has its own characteristics. Perhaps the origins of some Belarusian literary and artistic traditions (heroes, themes, plots, etc.) originated precisely in Polish literature. In this case, factors of both linguistic and cultural proximity are important. And if, say, a highly qualified Pushkin scholar should know French and French literature of the corresponding period, then it is quite possible that in order to fully perceive the work of some Belarusian writers, it is necessary to know Polish ones. The latter are becoming a factor in Belarusian literature. Consider the works of Polish writers Belarusian literature Seems like an obvious stretch to me.

Finally, let us touch upon the issue of the national as a factor in the artistic value of a work. The national in itself is a property of imagery, but not its essence. Therefore, art can be both “more” and “less” national - this does not make it cease to be art. At the same time, the question of the quality of literature is closely related to the question of the degree of nationality in it.

In conclusion, I would like to note the following. The national in literature can be revealed in its entirety only in the esthetional; it is a property of imagery, but not its essence. Therefore, art can be both “more” and “less” national - this does not make it cease to be art. At the same time, the question of the quality of literature is closely related to the question of the degree of nationality in it.

A “wasteful” denial of the national at the lower levels of consciousness can hardly benefit art, just like an exaggerated national one. To deny the national means to deny individual expressiveness, singularity, and uniqueness of the image. To absolutize the national means to deny the generalizing (ideological and mental) function of the image. Both are detrimental to the figurative nature of art.

The national by its nature gravitates towards the pole of the psyche; it consists mainly of a system of psychological codes. Scientific knowledge is much less national than religious, ethical or aesthetic consciousness. Literature, therefore, can be located on a national spectrum: between the cosmopolitan pole (as a rule, with the predominance of the rational over the sensory-psychological, but not necessarily) and the nationally conservative (correspondingly, vice versa).

Neither one nor the other in itself can be artistic merit. A national picture of the world can be a form of solving universal human problems. At the same time, the national-individual can only more clearly identify universal human problems. Nationally colored aesthetic consciousness, “working” at the philosophical level (or gravitating towards this level), seems to remove its national limitations, because it is fully aware of itself as a form of the universal. The closer the national consciousness is to the ideological and psychological level, the more inexpressible, “unfolding the soul,” the more “reserved” national.

Therefore, very often “very national” writers are difficult to translate. In Russian literature, these include, to varying degrees, Leskov, Shmelev, Remizov, Platonov, and others.

The national relates to the universal as a phenomenon to an essence. The national is good to the extent that it allows the universal to manifest itself. Any bias towards phenomenology, exaltation of a phenomenon as such without correlating it with the essence that it is intended to express, turns the national into “information noise”, obscuring the essence and preventing it from being perceived.

This is the dialectic of the national and the universal. It is important not to go to the vulgar extreme and not raise the question of a verified “dosage” of the national. This is as meaningless as the absolutization of the national or its denial. It's about about the proportions of the rational and the sensory-emotional (and the national represents one of the sides of the latter). The “golden section point”, indicating proportionality close to harmony, is always guessed by the artist, felt, but not calculated. I am in no way advocating the “rationalization” of the creative act.

Aesthetic perception is indivisible. It is impossible to appreciate "beauty" artistic creation, abstracting from national specifics. The perception of “beauty” includes as a component the moment of national self-actualization. It is impossible to remove national material and leave “something” created according to the laws of beauty. Artistic value becomes a property of the national material (this also reveals the integrity of the work).

It is not surprising that at every step there is a substitution of artistic criteria for national ones, or, in any case, a failure to differentiate between them. There is no doubt: great artists become symbols of the nation - and this convincingly demonstrates the inextricable connection between the national and the artistically significant. However, great works become national treasures not so much because they express the national mentality, but because this mentality is expressed highly artistically. The mere presence (or absence) of a national element in a work does not yet indicate artistic merits and is not a direct criterion of artistry. The same can be said about ideological, moral, etc. criteria. I think it is impossible to discard these judgments without falling into the hermeneutic extreme in assessing a work, again forgetting about its fundamental feature - integrity.

I would like to emphasize that national issues and poetics have become especially relevant in the art of realism. And this is no coincidence. First of all, this is due to the fact that, say, “classicists” or “romantics”, due to the peculiarities of their method and poetics, did not have the opportunity to reveal in their works the contradictory complexity of the national characters of their characters belonging to different layers societies professing different ideals.

In conclusion, I would like to note the following. The national in literature can be revealed in its entirety only in aesthetic experiences. Scientific analysis of artistic integrity does not allow us to adequately perceive the “national potential” of a work.

Non-rational, psychological comprehension of the national code of a work is the most complex problem in the sociology of literature. The actualization of the collective unconscious itself plays a huge role in the life of nations. True, it can serve both as a means of productive self-identification and “work” for a complex of national superiority.

Ultimately, the question of the national in literature is a question of the connection between language, psychology and consciousness; this is a question about the collective unconscious and its archetypes; this is a question about the strength of their influence, about the inability of a person to do without them, etc. These questions, perhaps, are among the most unclear in science.

Registration of the collective unconscious, its rationalization, translation into the language of concepts is a task that has not yet been solved. Meanwhile, one of the secrets of art lies in the effectiveness of its impact on society. And yet this is not what makes art a form of human spiritual activity. The spiritual core in a person is forced to reckon with the collective unconscious, but the latter does not fatally limit human freedom. Spirituality in its highest form is rational; it rather opposes the element of the unconscious, although it does not deny it.