The literary process of the era as a set of newly created (including masterpieces of verbal art, and mediocre, epigonic, mass literature), their publications and discussions (primarily literary criticism), creative programs, acts of literary struggle. The functioning of previously created works as an aspect of the literary process of a given era. The interaction of fiction with other types of art, its connections with extra-artistic forms of culture (rites and rituals, everyday life with their corresponding objectivity and behavior), religious consciousness, currents of philosophical thought, socio-political movements as facets of the literary process in each era.

The literary process (the second meaning of the term) on a world-historical scale as a specific part of the socio-historical process. Experiences in correlating the development of literature with socio-economic formations. The specificity of the stages of literary creativity as cultural phenomena. Stages of development

verbal art. Folklore and mythological archaics. Ancient literatures, a special place in their ranks of European ancient literature. Medieval literature. The controversial distinction between ancient and medieval literatures outside Western Europe. Common features ancient and medieval literatures (synthesis of artistic and extra-artistic functions, traditional forms, the predominance of canonical genres and anonymity of creativity, instability of texts, lack of differentiation between translated and original literature). Literature of modern times in Western Europe and beyond; their personal character and intense historical dynamics; orientation of poets and writers towards the renewal of literature; their understanding of previous literature as a guide for original (innovative) solutions to modern creative problems. Distinction by scientists (S.S. Averintsev, A.V. Mikhailov, etc.) of three stages of literary development: ritual-mythological archaism (pre-reflective traditionalism); orientation of literature towards rhetorical culture (reflective traditionalism); free from genre and style canons, individual and personal creativity.

National and regional specificity of literature, determined by ethnic characteristics and paths of cultural and historical development of peoples and their groups. Repetitive and unique in the literature of different countries and regions. S. S. Averintsev on the difference between the paths of Middle Eastern literature and ancient Greek literature. Geographical boundaries of the Renaissance and specifics cultural development Western and Eastern regions as debatable problems of modern historical science and art history. The uniqueness of the Western European Renaissance. The works of N. I. Conrad and their discussion by historians and literary scholars. D. S. Likhachev on the significance of the Pre-Renaissance in the literature of the Eastern European region.

The main literary and artistic movements of modern times (from the Renaissance to realism and modernism). V. M. Zhirmunsky about international literary movements. D. S. Likhachev on the change of “great styles” in art and literature. Styles of traditional, canonical genres. Individual styles and stylistic trends in the literature of modern times. The term poetics as a designation for a totality artistic ideas and forms, creative principles, theoretical and literary concepts, characteristic either of a large-scale creative individual, or of a group of writers, or of national literature at a certain stage of its development. Distinguishing the concepts of “artistic system” (an international and globally significant phenomenon) and “direction” (a group of writers from a certain country, united by a creative program).

Types of artistic reflection of life, the concept of creative method. The consolidation of this term in Soviet criticism of the early 30s. and further development of the corresponding concept. Realism as a creative method. Engels' definition of realism. The predominance of historically abstract principles of life reproduction in the literature of antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times (XVI-XVIII centuries). Realism in the broad sense (universal) in the literature of the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Realism of the 19th-20th centuries, its connection with the expansion of the subject area of ​​literature, with the increased interest of writers in everyday life, everyday life, the “microenvironment”, the inner world of man, with the rooting of psychologism in art.

Specifics of the literary process in the 20th century. Modernism in avant-garde and “neo-traditionalist” variants. The ideological and artistic diversity of modernist literature, many directions within its framework. Socialist realism as a trend in Soviet literature, which took shape in the 30s. and his future fate. Renewal of realistic traditions in the literature of different countries and regions throughout the 20th century.

Recurrence of elements of literary creativity (themes, motifs, event patterns, compositional “moves”, etc.) in a large historical time and cultural-geographical space. The concept of topics.

Sources of commonality (repetition) in the literary development of different countries and regions. Convergence on the basis of cultural and historical development (typological convergence, convergence). Moments of similarity arising from international contacts (influences and borrowings). Interaction of literatures located at the same and different stages of cultural and historical development. Expanding and strengthening connections between the literatures of different countries and peoples as history moves forward. International literary connections as the most important source of enrichment of national literatures, as a condition for the full and broad identification of their original features.

World literature as a set of unique literatures of different regions, countries, peoples, fruitfully in contact with each other. The active influence of Western European literature on the literature of other regions as a feature of the culture of modern times. Accelerated development of literature (G. D. Gachev) in a number of

countries and regions. The threat of denationalization of literature in the process of its accelerated development and the further strengthening of its originality through the creative combination of other people's experience with one's own.

The evolution of meaningful forms (genre, plot, subject-shaped, stylistic), verbal and artistic motifs, literary consciousness and theoretical principles as the subject of historical poetics. A. N. Veselovsky as the creator of this scientific discipline. M. M. Bakhtin, D. S. Likhachev, S. S. Averintsev on the evolution of attitudes and forms of literary creativity. Modern problems of historical poetics and prospects for its development.

Fundamentals of Literary Theory

Literary process and its categories. (Seminar 7)

Question 1: The literary process as an integral part of the sociocultural process.

Question 2: Stages of development of the literary process, periodization.

In literary criticism, the idea of ​​the presence of moments of commonality (repetition) in the development of literatures of different countries and peoples, of its single “forward” movement in a long historical time, is rooted and no one disputes it. In the article “The Future of Literature as a Subject of Study” D.S. Likhachev speaks about the steady increase in the personal principle in literary creativity) about the strengthening of its humanistic character, about the growth of realistic tendencies and the increasing freedom of choice of forms by writers, as well as about the deepening historicism artistic consciousness. “The historicity of consciousness,” the scientist asserts, “requires a person to be aware of the historical relativity of his own consciousness. Historicity is associated with “self-denial,” with the mind’s ability to understand its own limitations.”

The stages of the literary process are usually thought of as corresponding to those stages of human history that manifested themselves most clearly and completely in Western European countries and especially clearly in the Romanesque countries. In this regard, ancient, medieval and modern literatures with their own stages are distinguished (following the Renaissance - baroque, classicism, the Enlightenment with its sentimentalist branch, romanticism, and finally, realism, with which modernism coexists and successfully competes in the 20th century) .

Scientists have understood to the greatest extent the stage differences between the literatures of modern times and the writing that preceded them. Ancient and medieval literature was characterized by the prevalence of works with non-artistic functions (religious, cult and ritual, informative and business, etc.); the widespread existence of anonymity; predominance of oral verbal creativity over writing, which resorted more to recording oral traditions and previously created texts than to “writing.” An important feature of ancient and medieval literature was also the instability of texts, the presence in them of bizarre alloys of “our own” and “foreign”, and as a result, the “blurring” of the boundaries between original and translated writing. In modern times, literature is emancipated as a strictly (358) artistic phenomenon; writing becomes the dominant form of verbal art; open individual authorship is activated; literary development acquires much greater dynamism. All this seems indisputable.

The situation is more complicated with the distinction between ancient and medieval literatures. It does not pose a problem in relation to Western Europe (ancient Greek and Roman antiquity are fundamentally different from the medieval culture of more “northern” countries), but it raises doubts and disputes when referring to the literature of other, especially eastern, regions. Yes, and the so-called Old Russian literature was essentially a medieval type of writing.

The key question in the history of world literature is debatable: what are the geographical boundaries of the Renaissance with its artistic culture and, in particular, literature? If N.I. Conrad and the scientists of his school consider the Renaissance to be a global phenomenon, repeating and varying not only in Western countries, but also in the eastern regions, while other experts, also authoritative, consider the Renaissance as a specific and unique phenomenon of Western European (mainly Italian) culture: “Worldwide The Italian Renaissance acquired significance not because it was the most typical and best among all the renaissances that happened, but because there were no other renaissances. This one turned out to be the only one.”

At the same time, modern scientists are moving away from the usual apologetic assessment of the Western European Renaissance and revealing its duality. On the one hand, the Renaissance enriched culture with the concept of complete freedom and independence of the individual, the idea of ​​unconditional trust in the creative capabilities of man, on the other hand, the Renaissance “philosophy of luck nourished<...>spirit of adventurism and immorality.”

Discussion of the problem of the geographical boundaries of the Renaissance revealed the insufficiency of the traditional scheme of the world literary process, which is focused mainly on Western European cultural and historical experience and is marked by limitations, which is usually called “Eurocentrism”. And scientists over the past two or three decades (the palm here belongs to S.S. Averintsev) have put forward and substantiated a concept that complements and, to some extent, revises the usual ideas about the stages of literary development. Here, to a greater extent than before, firstly, the specifics of verbal art and, secondly, the experience of non-European regions and countries are taken into account. In the final collective article of 1994 “Categories of Poetics in Shift literary eras” three stages of world literature are identified and characterized.

First stage– this is the “archaic period”, where the folklore tradition is undoubtedly influential. Mythopoetic artistic consciousness prevails here and there is still no reflection on verbal art, and therefore there is no literary criticism, no theoretical studies, no artistic and creative programs. All this appears only on second stage literary process, which began with the literary life of Ancient Greece in the mid-1st millennium BC. and which lasted until the middle of the 18th century. This very long period was marked by a predominance traditionalism artistic consciousness and “poetics of style and genre”: writers were guided by pre-made forms of speech that met the requirements of rhetoric (about it, see pp. 228–229), and were dependent on genre canons. Within the framework of this second stage, in turn, two stages are distinguished, the boundary between which was the Renaissance (here, we note, we are talking primarily about European artistic culture). At the second of these stages, which replaced the Middle Ages, literary consciousness takes a step from the impersonal to the personal (albeit still within the framework of traditionalism); literature becomes more secular.

And finally, on third stage, which began with the era of Enlightenment and romanticism, “individual creative artistic consciousness” comes to the fore. From now on, the “poetics of the author” dominates, freed from the omnipotence of the genre-style prescriptions of rhetoric. Here literature, as never before, “comes extremely close to the immediate and concrete existence of man, is imbued with his concerns, thoughts, feelings, and is created according to his standards”; the era of individual author's styles is coming; The literary process is closely linked “simultaneously with the personality of the writer and the reality surrounding him.” All this takes place in romanticism and realism of the 19th century, and to a large extent in the modernism of our century. We will turn to these phenomena of the literary process. (360)

The term "literary process" in domestic literary criticism arose in the late 1920s, although the concept itself was formed in criticism back in the 19th century. Belinsky’s famous reviews “A Look at Russian Literature of 1846” and others are one of the first attempts to present the features and patterns of literary development of a particular period of Russian literature, that is, the features and patterns of the literary process.

The term “literary process” denotes the historical existence of literature, its functioning and evolution both in a certain era and throughout the history of a nation.”

The chronological framework of the modern literary process is determined by the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries.

· Literature of the end of centuries uniquely sums up the artistic and aesthetic quests of the entire century;

· New literature helps to understand the complexity and debatability of our reality. Literature in general helps a person clarify the time of his existence.

· With his experiments he outlines the prospects for development.

· The uniqueness of SLP lies in multi-level, polyphony. There is no hierarchy in the literary system, since styles and genres exist simultaneously. That is why, when considering modern literature, it is necessary to move away from the usual attitudes that were applied to Russian literature of past centuries. It is important to feel the change in the literary code and imagine the literary process in an ongoing dialogue with previous literature. The space of modern literature is very colorful. Literature is created by people of different generations: those who existed in the depths of Soviet literature, those who worked in the literary underground, those who began to write more recently. Representatives of these generations have a fundamentally different attitude towards the word and its functioning in the text.

Writers of the sixties(E. Yevtushenko, A. Voznesensky, V. Aksenov, V. Voinovich, V. Astafiev and others) burst into literature during the thaw of the 1960s and, feeling a short-term freedom of speech, became symbols of their time. Later, their destinies turned out differently, but interest in their work remained constant. Today they are recognized classics of modern literature, distinguished by their intonation of ironic nostalgia and commitment to the memoir genre. The critic M. Remizova writes about this generation as follows: “The characteristic features of this generation are a certain gloominess and, oddly enough, a kind of sluggish relaxation, which is more conducive to contemplation than to active action and even insignificant deeds. Their rhythm is moderato. Their thought is reflection. Their spirit is irony. Their cry - but they don’t scream...”

Writers of the 70s generation– S. Dovlatov, I. Brodsky, V. Erofeev, A. Bitov, V. Makanin, L. Petrushevskaya. V. Tokareva, S. Sokolov, D. Prigov and others. They worked in conditions of creative lack of freedom. The writer of the seventies, in contrast to the sixties, linked his ideas about personal freedom with independence from official creative and social structures. One of the notable representatives of the generation, Viktor Erofeev, wrote about the features of the handwriting of these writers: “From the mid-70s, an era of hitherto unprecedented doubts began not only in the new person, but in man in general... literature doubted everything without exception: love, children , faith, church, culture, beauty, nobility, motherhood, folk wisdom..." It is this generation that begins to master postmodernism, Venedikt Erofeev’s poem “Moscow - Cockerels” appears in samizdat, the novels of Sasha Sokolov “School for Fools” and Andrei Bitov “Pushkin House”, the fiction of the Strugatsky brothers and the prose of the Russian Abroad.

With “perestroika” another large and bright generation of writers burst into literature- V. Pelevin, T. Tolstaya, L. Ulitskaya, V. Sorokin, A. Slapovsky, V. Tuchkov, O. Slavnikova, M. Paley, etc. They began to work in an uncensored space, were able to freely master the “various routes of literary experiment." The prose of S. Kaledin, O. Ermakov, L. Gabyshev, A. Terekhov, Yu. Mamleev, V. Erofeev, the stories of V. Astafiev and L. Petrushevskaya touched on previously forbidden topics of army “hazing”, the horrors of prison, the life of homeless people, prostitution, alcoholism, poverty, struggle for physical survival. “This prose revived interest in the “little man”, in the “humiliated and insulted” - motives that form the tradition of a sublime attitude towards the people and people’s suffering, going back to the 19th century. However, unlike the literature of the 19th century, the “chernukha” of the late 1980s showed the popular world as a concentration of social horror, accepted as the everyday norm. This prose expressed the feeling of the total dysfunction of modern life...”, write N.L. Leiderman and M.N. Lipovetsky.

At the end of the 1990s, another generation of very young writers appeared– A. Utkin, A. Gosteva, P. Krusanov, A. Gelasimov, E. Sadur, etc.), about whom Viktor Erofeev says: “Young writers are the first generation of free people in the entire history of Russia, without state and internal censorship, singing random commercial songs to themselves. New literature does not believe in “happy” social change and moral pathos, unlike the liberal literature of the 60s. She was tired of the endless disappointment in man and the world, the analysis of evil (underground literature of the 70-80s).”

First decade of the 21st century- so diverse, multi-voiced that you can hear extremely opposing opinions about the same writer. So, for example, Alexey Ivanov - the author of the novels “The Geographer Drank His Globe Away”, “Dorm-on-Blood”, “The Heart of Parma”, “The Gold of Revolt” - in the “Book Review” he was named the most brilliant writer to appear in Russian literature of the 21st century.” . And here is the opinion about Ivanov expressed by the writer Anna Kozlova: “Ivanov’s picture of the world is a section of the road that a chain dog sees from his booth. This is a world in which nothing can be changed and all you can do is joke over a glass of vodka in the full confidence that the meaning of life has just been revealed to you in all its ugly details. What I don’t like about Ivanov is his desire to be light and glossy... Although I cannot help but admit that he is an extremely gifted author. And I found my reader.”

· Despite the flourishing of various styles and genres, society is no longer literary-centric. Literature of the late XX early XXI almost loses its educational function.

· Changed the role of the writer.“Now the readers have fallen away from the writer like leeches and given him the opportunity to be in a situation of complete freedom. And those who still ascribe to the writer the role of a prophet in Russia are the most extreme conservatives. In the new situation, the role of the writer has changed. Previously, this workhorse was ridden by everyone who could, but now it itself must go and offer its working arms and legs.” Critics P. Weil and A. Genis accurately defined the transition from the traditional role of “teacher” to the role of “indifferent chronicler” as “zero degree of writing.” S. Kostyrko believes that the writer found himself in a role unusual for the Russian literary tradition: “It seems to be easier for today’s writers. Nobody demands ideological service from them. They are free to choose their own model of creative behavior. But, at the same time, this freedom complicated their tasks, depriving them of obvious points of application of forces. Each of them is left alone with the problems of existence - Love, Fear, Death, Time. And we need to work at the level of this problem.”

· Search new hero.“We have to admit that the face of a typical hero modern prose distorted by a grimace of a skeptical attitude towards the world, covered with youthful fluff and his features are rather sluggish, sometimes even anemic. His actions are frightening, and he is in no hurry to decide either on his own personality or on his destiny. He is gloomy and pre-irritated by everything in the world; for the most part, he seems to have absolutely nothing to live for.” M. Remizova

Plus talk about the works you read, plus your presentations on contemporary writers, plus notes in the margins. Whoosh!

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Historical and literary process - a set of generally significant changes in the literature. Literature is constantly evolving. Each era enriches art with some new artistic discoveries. The study of the patterns of development of literature constitutes the concept of “historical-literary process”. The development of the literary process is determined by the following artistic systems: creative method, style, genre, literary directions and movements.

Continuous change in literature is an obvious fact, but significant changes do not occur every year, or even every decade. As a rule, they are associated with serious historical shifts (changes in historical eras and periods, wars, revolutions associated with the entry of new social forces into the historical arena, etc.). We can identify the main stages in the development of European art, which determined the specifics of the historical and literary process: antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The development of the historical and literary process is determined by a number of factors, among which, first of all, the historical situation (socio-political system, ideology, etc.), the influence of previous literary traditions and the artistic experience of other peoples should be noted. For example, Pushkin’s work was seriously influenced by the work of his predecessors not only in Russian literature (Derzhavin, Batyushkov, Zhukovsky and others), but also in European literature (Voltaire, Rousseau, Byron and others).

Literary process is a complex system of literary interactions. It represents the formation, functioning and change of various literary trends and movements.

Literary directions and movements:
classicism, sentimentalism, romanticism,
realism, modernism (symbolism, acmeism, futurism)

In modern literary criticism, the terms “direction” and “current” can be interpreted differently. Sometimes they are used as synonyms (classicism, sentimentalism, romanticism, realism and modernism are called both movements and directions), and sometimes a movement is identified with a literary school or group, and a direction with an artistic method or style (in this case, the direction includes two or more currents).

Usually, literary direction call a group of writers similar in type of artistic thinking. We can talk about the existence of a literary movement if writers are aware of the theoretical foundations of their artistic activity and promote them in manifestos, program speeches, and articles. Thus, the first programmatic article of the Russian futurists was the manifesto “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste,” which stated the basic aesthetic principles of the new direction.

In certain circumstances, within the framework of one literary movement, groups of writers may be formed, especially close to each other in their aesthetic views. Such groups formed within a particular movement are usually called a literary movement. For example, within the framework of such a literary movement as symbolism, two movements can be distinguished: “senior” symbolists and “younger” symbolists (according to another classification - three: decadents, “senior” symbolists, “younger” symbolists).

Classicism(from lat. classicus- exemplary) - an artistic movement in European art at the turn of the 17th-18th - early 19th centuries, formed in France at the end of the 17th century. Classicism asserted the primacy of state interests over personal interests, the predominance of civil, patriotic motives, and the cult of moral duty. The aesthetics of classicism is characterized by the rigor of artistic forms: compositional unity, normative style and subjects. Representatives of Russian classicism: Kantemir, Trediakovsky, Lomonosov, Sumarokov, Knyazhnin, Ozerov and others.

One of the most important features of classicism is the perception of ancient art as a model, an aesthetic standard (hence the name of the movement). The goal is to create works of art in the image and likeness of ancient ones. In addition, the formation of classicism was greatly influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment and the cult of reason (the belief in the omnipotence of reason and that the world can be reorganized on a rational basis).

Classicists (representatives of classicism) perceived artistic creativity as strict adherence to reasonable rules, eternal laws, created on the basis of studying the best examples of ancient literature. Based on these reasonable laws, they divided works into “correct” and “incorrect”. For example, even Shakespeare’s best plays were classified as “incorrect.” This was due to the fact that Shakespeare’s heroes combined positive and negative traits. And the creative method of classicism was formed on the basis of rationalistic thinking. There was a strict system of characters and genres: all characters and genres were distinguished by “purity” and unambiguity. Thus, in one hero it was strictly forbidden not only to combine vices and virtues (that is, positive and negative traits), but even several vices. The hero had to embody one character trait: either a miser, or a braggart, or a hypocrite, or a hypocrite, or good, or evil, etc.

The main conflict of classic works is the hero’s struggle between reason and feeling. At the same time, a positive hero must always make a choice in favor of reason (for example, when choosing between love and the need to completely devote himself to serving the state, he must choose the latter), and a negative one - in favor of feeling.

The same can be said about the genre system. All genres were divided into high (ode, epic poem, tragedy) and low (comedy, fable, epigram, satire). At the same time, touching episodes were not supposed to be included in a comedy, and funny ones were not supposed to be included in a tragedy. IN high genres“exemplary” heroes were depicted - monarchs, generals who could serve as role models. In the low ones, characters were depicted who were seized by some kind of “passion,” that is, a strong feeling.

Special rules existed for dramatic works. They had to observe three “unities” - place, time and action. Unity of place: classical dramaturgy did not allow a change of location, that is, throughout the entire play the characters had to be in the same place. Unity of time: the artistic time of a work should not exceed several hours, or at most one day. Unity of action implies the presence of only one storyline. All these requirements are related to the fact that the classicists wanted to create a unique illusion of life on stage. Sumarokov: “Try to measure the clock for me in the game for hours, so that, having forgotten myself, I can believe you.”. So, the characteristic features of literary classicism:

• purity of the genre(in high genres funny or everyday situations and heroes could not be depicted, and in low genres tragic and sublime ones could not be depicted);
• purity of language(in high genres - high vocabulary, in low genres - colloquial);
• strict division of heroes into positive and negative, wherein goodies When choosing between feeling and reason, they give preference to the latter;
• compliance with the rule of “three unities”;
• affirmation of positive values ​​and the state ideal.

Russian classicism is characterized by state pathos (the state - and not the person - was declared the highest value) combined with faith in the theory of enlightened absolutism. According to the theory of enlightened absolutism, the state should be headed by a wise, enlightened monarch, requiring everyone to serve for the good of society. Russian classicists, inspired by Peter's reforms, believed in the possibility of further improvement of society, which they saw as a rationally structured organism. Sumarokov: “Peasants plow, merchants trade, warriors defend the fatherland, judges judge, scientists cultivate science.” The classicists treated human nature in the same rationalistic manner. They believed that human nature is selfish, subject to passions, that is, feelings that are opposed to reason, but at the same time amenable to education.

Sentimentalism(from English sentimental - sensitive, from French sentiment - feeling) - a literary movement of the second half of the 18th century, which replaced classicism. Sentimentalists proclaimed the primacy of feeling, not reason. A person was judged by his capacity for deep experiences. Hence the interest in the hero’s inner world, the depiction of the shades of his feelings (the beginning of psychologism).

Unlike classicists, sentimentalists consider the highest value not the state, but the person. They contrasted the unjust orders of the feudal world with the eternal and reasonable laws of nature. In this regard, nature for sentimentalists is the measure of all values, including man himself. It is no coincidence that they asserted the superiority of the “natural”, “natural” person, that is, living in harmony with nature.

Sensitivity also underlies the creative method of sentimentalism. If classicists created generalized characters (prude, braggart, miser, fool), then sentimentalists are interested in specific people with individual fates. The heroes in their works are clearly divided into positive and negative. Positive endowed with natural sensitivity (responsive, kind, compassionate, capable of self-sacrifice). Negative- calculating, selfish, arrogant, cruel. The carriers of sensitivity, as a rule, are peasants, artisans, commoners, and rural clergy. Cruel - representatives of power, nobles, high clergy (since despotic rule kills sensitivity in people). Manifestations of sensitivity often acquire a too external, even exaggerated character in the works of sentimentalists (exclamations, tears, fainting, suicide).

One of the main discoveries of sentimentalism is the individualization of the hero and the image of the rich spiritual world of the commoner (the image of Liza in Karamzin’s story “Poor Liza”). The main character of the works was an ordinary person. In this regard, the plot of the work often represented individual situations of everyday life, while peasant life was often depicted in pastoral colors. New content required a new form. The leading genres were family romance, diary, confession, novel in letters, travel notes, elegy, message.

In Russia, sentimentalism originated in the 1760s (the best representatives are Radishchev and Karamzin). As a rule, in the works of Russian sentimentalism, the conflict develops between the serf peasant and the serf-owner landowner, and the moral superiority of the former is persistently emphasized.

Romanticism- artistic movement in European and American culture of the late 18th - first half of the 19th centuries. Romanticism arose in the 1790s, first in Germany, and then spread throughout Western Europe. The prerequisites for its emergence were the crisis of rationalism of the Enlightenment, the artistic search for pre-romantic movements (sentimentalism), the Great French revolution, German classical philosophy.

The emergence of this literary movement, like any other, is inextricably linked with the socio-historical events of that time. Let's start with the prerequisites for the formation of romanticism in Western European literature. The Great French Revolution of 1789-1799 and the associated revaluation of Enlightenment ideology had a decisive influence on the formation of romanticism in Western Europe. As you know, the 18th century in France passed under the sign of the Enlightenment. For almost a century, French educators led by Voltaire (Rousseau, Diderot, Montesquieu) argued that the world could be reorganized on a reasonable basis and proclaimed the idea of ​​natural equality of all people. It was these educational ideas that inspired the French revolutionaries, whose slogan was the words: “Liberty, equality and fraternity.” The result of the revolution was the establishment of a bourgeois republic. As a result, the winner was the bourgeois minority, which seized power (previously it belonged to the aristocracy, the highest nobility), the rest were left with nothing. Thus, the long-awaited “kingdom of reason” turned out to be an illusion, as were the promised freedom, equality and brotherhood. There was general disappointment in the results and results of the revolution, deep dissatisfaction with the surrounding reality, which became a prerequisite for the emergence of romanticism. Because at the heart of romanticism is the principle of dissatisfaction with the existing order of things. This was followed by the emergence of the theory of romanticism in Germany.

As you know, Western European culture, in particular French, had a huge influence on Russian. This trend continued into the 19th century, which is why the Great French Revolution also shocked Russia. But, in addition, there are actually Russian prerequisites for the emergence of Russian romanticism. First of all, this is the Patriotic War of 1812, which clearly showed the greatness and strength of common people. It was to the people that Russia owed the victory over Napoleon; the people were the true heroes of the war. Meanwhile, both before the war and after it, the bulk of the people, the peasants, still remained serfs, in fact, slaves. What had previously been perceived as injustice by progressive people of that time now began to seem like a blatant injustice, contrary to all logic and morality. But after the end of the war, Alexander I not only did not cancel serfdom, but also began to pursue a much tougher policy. As a result, a pronounced feeling of disappointment and dissatisfaction arose in Russian society. This is how the soil for the emergence of romanticism arose.

The term “romanticism” when applied to a literary movement is arbitrary and imprecise. In this regard, from the very beginning of its occurrence, it was interpreted in different ways: some believed that it comes from the word “romance”, others - from chivalric poetry created in countries speaking Romance languages. For the first time, the word “romanticism” as a name for a literary movement began to be used in Germany, where the first sufficiently detailed theory of romanticism was created.

Very important for understanding the essence of romanticism is the concept of romantic two worlds. As already mentioned, rejection, denial of reality is the main prerequisite for the emergence of romanticism. All romantics reject the world around them, hence their romantic escape from existing life and the search for an ideal outside of it. This gave rise to the emergence of a romantic dual world. The world for romantics was divided into two parts: here and there. “There” and “here” are an antithesis (opposition), these categories are correlated as ideal and reality. The despised “here” is modern reality, where evil and injustice triumph. “There” is a kind of poetic reality, which the romantics contrasted with real reality. Many romantics believed that goodness, beauty and truth, displaced from public life, are still preserved in the souls of people. Hence their attention to the inner world of a person, in-depth psychologism. The souls of people are their “there”. For example, Zhukovsky was looking for “there” in the other world; Pushkin and Lermontov, Fenimore Cooper - in the free life of uncivilized peoples (Pushkin’s poems “Prisoner of the Caucasus”, “Gypsies”, Cooper’s novels about the life of Indians).

Rejection and denial of reality determined the specifics of the romantic hero. This is a fundamentally new hero; previous literature has never seen anything like him. He is in a hostile relationship with the surrounding society and is opposed to it. This is an extraordinary person, restless, most often lonely and with tragic fate. Romantic hero- the embodiment of a romantic rebellion against reality.

Realism(from Latin realis- material, real) - a method (creative attitude) or literary direction that embodies the principles of a life-truthful attitude to reality, aimed at artistic knowledge of man and the world. The term “realism” is often used in two meanings:

1. realism as a method;
2. realism as a direction formed in the 19th century.

Both classicism, romanticism, and symbolism strive for knowledge of life and express their reaction to it in their own way, but only in realism does fidelity to reality become the defining criterion of artistry. This distinguishes realism, for example, from romanticism, which is characterized by rejection of reality and the desire to “recreate” it, rather than display it as it is. It is no coincidence that, turning to the realist Balzac, the romantic George Sand defined the difference between him and herself: “You take a person as he appears to your eyes; I feel a calling within myself to portray him the way I would like to see him.” Thus, we can say that realists depict the real, and romantics depict the desired.

The beginning of the formation of realism is usually associated with the Renaissance. The realism of this time is characterized by the scale of images (Don Quixote, Hamlet) and the poeticization of the human personality, the perception of man as the king of nature, the crown of creation. The next stage is educational realism. In the literature of the Enlightenment, a democratic realistic hero appears, a man “from the bottom” (for example, Figaro in Beaumarchais’s plays “The Barber of Seville” and “The Marriage of Figaro”). New types of romanticism appeared in the 19th century: “fantastic” (Gogol, Dostoevsky), “grotesque” (Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin) and “critical” realism associated with the activities of the “natural school”.

Basic requirements of realism: adherence to principles

• nationalities,
• historicism,
• high artistry,
• psychologism,
• depiction of life in its development.

Realist writers showed the direct dependence of the social, moral, and religious ideas of heroes on social conditions, and paid great attention to the social and everyday aspect. The Central Problem of Realism- the ratio of credibility and artistic truth. Plausibility, a plausible representation of life is very important for realists, but artistic truth is determined not by plausibility, but by fidelity in comprehending and conveying the essence of life and the significance of the ideas expressed by the artist. One of the most important features realism is the typification of characters (the fusion of the typical and individual, uniquely personal). The persuasiveness of a realistic character directly depends on the degree of individualization achieved by the writer.
Realist writers create new types of heroes: the “little man” type (Vyrin, Bashmachkin, Marmeladov, Devushkin), the “ extra person"(Chatsky, Onegin, Pechorin, Oblomov), a type of “new” hero (Turgenev’s nihilist Bazarov, Chernyshevsky’s “new people”).

Modernism(from French modern- the newest, modern) philosophical and aesthetic movement in literature and art that arose at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries.

This term has different interpretations:

1. denotes a number of non-realistic movements in art and literature turn of the XIX-XX centuries: symbolism, futurism, acmeism, expressionism, cubism, imagism, surrealism, abstract art, impressionism;
2. used as symbol aesthetic searches of artists of non-realistic movements;
3. denotes a complex complex of aesthetic and ideological phenomena, including not only the actual modernist movements, but also the work of artists who do not completely fit into the framework of any movement (D. Joyce, M. Proust, F. Kafka and others).

The most striking and significant directions of Russian modernism were symbolism, acmeism and futurism.

Symbolism- a non-realistic movement in art and literature of the 1870s-1920s, focused mainly on artistic expression through the symbol of intuitively comprehended entities and ideas. Symbolism made its presence felt in France in the 1860s and 1870s. poetic creativity A. Rimbaud, P. Verlaine, S. Mallarmé. Then, through poetry, symbolism connected itself not only with prose and drama, but also with other forms of art. The ancestor, founder, “father” of symbolism is considered to be the French writer Charles Baudelaire.

The worldview of symbolist artists is based on the idea of ​​the unknowability of the world and its laws. They considered the spiritual experience of man and the creative intuition of the artist to be the only “tool” for understanding the world.

Symbolism was the first to put forward the idea of ​​​​creating art, free from the task of depicting reality. Symbolists argued that the purpose of art is not to represent real world, which they considered secondary, but in the transmission of “higher reality.” They intended to achieve this with the help of a symbol. The symbol is an expression of the poet’s supersensible intuition, to whom in moments of insight the true essence of things is revealed. Symbolists developed a new poetic language that does not directly name the object, but hints at its content through allegory, musicality, color range, free verse.

Symbolism is the first and most significant of the modernist movements that arose in Russia. The first manifesto of Russian symbolism was the article by D. S. Merezhkovsky “On the causes of decline and new trends in modern Russian literature,” published in 1893. It identified three main elements of “new art”: mystical content, symbolization and “expansion of artistic impressionability.”

Symbolists are usually divided into two groups, or movements:

• "elder" symbolists (V. Bryusov, K. Balmont, D. Merezhkovsky, Z. Gippius, F. Sologub and others), who made their debut in the 1890s;
• "younger" symbolists who began their creative activity in the 1900s and significantly updated the appearance of the movement (A. Blok, A. Bely, V. Ivanov and others).

It should be noted that the “senior” and “younger” symbolists were separated not so much by age as by the difference in worldviews and the direction of creativity.

Symbolists believed that art is, first of all, “comprehension of the world by other, non-rational ways”(Bryusov). After all, only phenomena that are subject to the law of linear causality can be rationally comprehended, and such causality operates only in lower forms of life (empirical reality, everyday life). The symbolists were interested in the higher spheres of life (the area of ​​“absolute ideas” in terms of Plato or the “world soul”, according to V. Solovyov), not subject to rational knowledge. It is art that has the ability to penetrate into these spheres, and symbolic images with their endless polysemy are capable of reflecting the entire complexity of the world universe. The symbolists believed that the ability to comprehend the true, highest reality is given only to a select few who, in moments of inspired insight, are able to comprehend the “highest” truth, the absolute truth.

The symbol image was considered by the symbolists as a more effective tool than the artistic image, helping to “break through” the veil of everyday life (lower life) to a higher reality. A symbol differs from a realistic image in that it conveys not the objective essence of a phenomenon, but the poet’s own, individual idea of ​​the world. In addition, a symbol, as Russian symbolists understood it, is not an allegory, but, first of all, an image that requires creative response from the reader. The symbol, as it were, connects the author and the reader - this is the revolution brought about by symbolism in art.

The image-symbol is fundamentally polysemantic and contains the prospect of limitless development of meanings. This feature of his was repeatedly emphasized by the symbolists themselves: “A symbol is only a true symbol when it is inexhaustible in its meaning” (Vyach. Ivanov); "The symbol is a window to infinity"(F. Sologub).

Acmeism(from Greek Akme- highest degree something, blooming power, peak) - a modernist literary movement in Russian poetry of the 1910s. Representatives: S. Gorodetsky, early A. Akhmatova, L. Gumilev, O. Mandelstam. The term “Acmeism” belongs to Gumilyov. The aesthetic program was formulated in the articles by Gumilyov “The Heritage of Symbolism and Acmeism”, Gorodetsky “Some Trends in Modern Russian Poetry” and Mandelstam “The Morning of Acmeism”.

Acmeism stood out from symbolism, criticizing its mystical aspirations towards the “unknowable”: “With the Acmeists, the rose again became good in itself, with its petals, smell and color, and not with its conceivable likenesses with mystical love or anything else” (Gorodetsky) . The Acmeists proclaimed the liberation of poetry from symbolist impulses towards the ideal, from polysemy and fluidity of images, complicated metaphors; they talked about the need to return to the material world, the object, the exact meaning of the word. Symbolism is based on rejection of reality, and the Acmeists believed that one should not abandon this world, one should look for some values ​​in it and capture them in their works, and do this with the help of precise and understandable images, and not vague symbols.

The Acmeist movement itself was small in number, did not last long - about two years (1913-1914) - and was associated with the “Workshop of Poets”. "Workshop of Poets" was created in 1911 and at first united a fairly large number of people (not all of them later became involved in Acmeism). This organization was much more united than the scattered symbolist groups. At the “Workshop” meetings, poems were analyzed, problems of poetic mastery were solved, and methods for analyzing works were substantiated. The idea of ​​a new direction in poetry was first expressed by Kuzmin, although he himself was not included in the “Workshop”. In his article "On Beautiful Clarity" Kuzmin anticipated many declarations of Acmeism. In January 1913, the first manifestos of Acmeism appeared. From this moment the existence of a new direction begins.

Acmeism declared the task of literature to be “beautiful clarity,” or clarism(from lat. claris- clear). Acmeists called their movement Adamism, linking with the biblical Adam the idea of ​​a clear and direct view of the world. Acmeism preached a clear, “simple” poetic language, where words would directly name objects and declare their love for objectivity. Thus, Gumilyov called for looking not for “shaky words”, but for words “with a more stable content.” This principle was most consistently implemented in Akhmatova’s lyrics.

Futurism- one of the main avant-garde movements (avant-garde is an extreme manifestation of modernism) in European art of the early 20th century, which received its greatest development in Italy and Russia.

In 1909, in Italy, the poet F. Marinetti published the “Manifesto of Futurism.” The main provisions of this manifesto: the rejection of traditional aesthetic values ​​and the experience of all previous literature, bold experiments in the field of literature and art. Marinetti names “courage, audacity, rebellion” as the main elements of futurist poetry. In 1912, Russian futurists V. Mayakovsky, A. Kruchenykh, and V. Khlebnikov created their manifesto “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste.” They also sought to break with traditional culture, welcomed literary experiments, and sought to find new means of speech expression (proclamation of a new free rhythm, loosening of syntax, destruction of punctuation marks). At the same time, Russian futurists rejected fascism and anarchism, which Marinetti declared in his manifestos, and turned mainly to aesthetic problems. They proclaimed a revolution of form, its independence from content (“it is not what is important, but how”) and the absolute freedom of poetic speech.

Futurism was a heterogeneous movement. Within its framework, four main groups or movements can be distinguished:

1. "Gilea", which united the cubo-futurists (V. Khlebnikov, V. Mayakovsky, A. Kruchenykh and others);
2. "Association of Egofuturists"(I. Severyanin, I. Ignatiev and others);
3. "Mezzanine of Poetry"(V. Shershenevich, R. Ivnev);
4. "Centrifuge"(S. Bobrov, N. Aseev, B. Pasternak).

The most significant and influential group was “Gilea”: in fact, it was it that determined the face of Russian futurism. Its members released many collections: “The Judges’ Tank” (1910), “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste” (1912), “Dead Moon” (1913), “Took” (1915).

The futurists wrote in the name of the crowd man. At the heart of this movement was the feeling of “the inevitability of the collapse of old things” (Mayakovsky), the awareness of the birth of a “new humanity.” Artistic creativity, according to the futurists, should have become not an imitation, but a continuation of nature, which, through the creative will of man, creates “a new world, today’s, iron...” (Malevich). This determines the desire to destroy the “old” form, the desire for contrasts, and the attraction to colloquial speech. Relying on living spoken language, futurists were engaged in “word creation” (creating neologisms). Their works were distinguished by complex semantic and compositional shifts - the contrast of the comic and tragic, fantasy and lyricism.

Futurism began to disintegrate already in 1915-1916.

There is a third meaning of the word “genesis”, the most significant for literary criticism. This is the totality factors (incentives) writing activities that take place both in the field of literary literature and other types of art, and beyond (the spheres of individual biographical and socio-cultural, as well as the world of anthropological universals). We denote this aspect of literary life with the phrase genesis of literary creativity. The study of the incentives for the activity of writers is important both for understanding the essence of individual works and for understanding the literary process - the patterns of development of verbal art.

Mastering the genesis of literary creativity as part of the science of literature is secondary to the study of the works themselves. “Any genetic consideration of an object,” argued A.P. Skaftymov, - must be preceded by the comprehension of its internal and constitutive meaning." However, in the history of literary studies, genetic studies preceded the study of literary works themselves in their diversity and integrity. They almost dominated the science of literature until the 1910–1920s.

§ 2. On the history of the study of the genesis of literary creativity

Each of the literary schools focused on one group of factors in literary creativity. In this regard, let us turn to cultural-historical school(second half of the 19th century). Here the conditionality of writing activity by extra-artistic phenomena, primarily social psychology, was considered. “A work of literature,” wrote the leader of this school, the French scientist Hippolyte Taine, “is not just a play of the imagination, a willful whim of an ardent soul, but a snapshot of surrounding morals and evidence of a certain state of mind<…>It is possible to judge from literary monuments how people felt and thought many centuries ago.” And further: the study of literature “allows us to create a history of moral development and get closer to the knowledge of the psychological laws that govern events.” Taine emphasized that morals, thoughts and feelings reflected in literature depend on the national, social group and epochal characteristics of people. He called these three factors of creative creativity race, environment and historical moment. At the same time, a literary work was perceived more as a cultural and historical evidence than as an aesthetic phenomenon itself.

Genetic primarily and aimed at extra-artistic facts was also sociological literary criticism 1910–1920s, which represented the experience of applying the tenets of Marxism to literature. A literary work, argued V.F. Pereverzev arises not from the writer’s intentions, but from existence (which is understood as psychoideology social group), and therefore the scientist must first of all understand the “social origin” of a literary fact. The works were characterized “as a product of a certain social group”, as “an aesthetic embodiment of the life of a certain social unit.” (In other cases, the term “social stratum” was used.) Literary sociologists of the early 20th century. relied heavily on the concept classism of literature, understanding it as an expression of the interests and sentiments (“psychoideology”) of narrow social groups to which the writers belonged by origin and conditions of upbringing.

In subsequent decades, the socio-historical genesis of literary creativity began to be understood more broadly by Marxist scholars: works were seen as the embodiment of the author’s ideological position, his views, his worldview, which were perceived as being determined mainly (if not exclusively) by the socio-political contradictions of a given era in this country. In this regard, the social-class beginning of literary creativity appeared differently than in the 1910–1920s, in accordance with the judgments of V.I. Lenin about Tolstoy: not as an expression in the works of the psychology and interests of narrow social groups, but as a refraction of the views and sentiments of broad sections of society (the oppressed or ruling classes). At the same time, in literary criticism of the 1930s–1950s (and often later), the class principle in literature was one-sidedly emphasized to the detriment of the universal: the socio-political aspects of writers’ views were pushed to the center and pushed into the background their philosophical, moral, religious views, so that the writer was perceived primarily as a participant in the contemporary social struggle. As a result, literary creativity is straightforward and categorical was displayed from the ideological confrontations of his era.

The described literary trends studied mainly historical and at the same time extra-artistic genesis of literary creativity. But something else has happened in the history of science: the coming to the forefront intraliterary incentives the activities of writers, or, in other words, the immanent principles of literary development. That's how it was comparative direction in literary criticism of the second half of the 19th century. Scientists of this orientation (T. Benfey in Germany; in Russia - Alexey N. Veselovsky, partly F.I. Buslaev and Alexander N. Veselovsky) attached decisive importance to influences and borrowings; “vagrant” subjects migrating (wandering) from one region and country to another were carefully studied. The very fact of the writer’s acquaintance with some earlier literary facts was considered a significant stimulus for literary creativity.

Other types of experiments in the immanent consideration of literature have been undertaken formal school in the 1920s. The dominant stimulus for the activity of literary artists was considered to be their polemics with their predecessors, repulsion from previously used automated techniques, in particular, the desire to parody existing literary forms. About the participation of writers in literary struggle Yu.N. insistently spoke as the most important factor in creativity. Tynyanov. According to him, “every literary continuity is, first of all, a struggle,” in which “there are no guilty, but only vanquished.”

Literary creativity, further, has been repeatedly studied as stimulated by the general, universal (transhistorical) principles of human existence and consciousness. This aspect of the genesis of literature was emphasized mythological school, which has its origins in the work of J. Grimm “German Mythology” (1835), where as an eternal basis artistic images the creative spirit of peoples is realized, embodying itself in myths and traditions that constantly are in history. “The laws of logic and psychology common to all mankind,” argued the head of the Russian mythological school, “common phenomena in family life and practical life, and finally, common paths in the development of culture, naturally, should have been reflected in the same ways to understand the phenomena of life and equally express them in myth, fairy tale, legend, parable or proverb." The provisions of the mythological school, we note, are applicable to a greater extent to folklore and historically early artistic literature than to the literature of modern times. At the same time, the art of the 20th century. refers to myth and other kinds of universals of consciousness and existence (“archetypes”, “ eternal symbols") very persistently and actively, which stimulates the scientific study of such universals (such, in particular, psychoanalytic art criticism and literary criticism, based on the teachings of Freud and Jung about the unconscious).

Each of the concepts considered captures a certain facet of the genesis of writers’ activities and has enduring scientific significance. But to the extent that representatives of the named scientific schools absolutized the stimulus of literary creativity they studied, considering it the only important and invariably dominant one, they showed a tendency towards dogmatism and methodological narrowness.

The experiments in genetic examination of literature that were discussed are aimed mainly at understanding the general, supra-individual stimuli of literary creativity associated with the cultural-historical process and anthropological universals. Differed from similar approaches biographical method in criticism and literary criticism (C. Sainte-Beuve and his followers) and to some extent psychological school , presented by the works of D.N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky. Here works of art are placed in direct dependence on the inner world of the author, on his individual fate and personality traits.

The views of supporters of the biographical method were preceded by the hermeneutic teaching of F. Schleiermacher (on hermeneutics, see pp. 106–112), who argued that ideas and values, including artistic ones, cannot be understood without an in-depth analysis of their genesis, and therefore without addressing the facts of a particular person's life. Similar judgments took place later. According to the aphoristically apt words of A.N. Veselovsky, “an artist is brought up on human soil.” P.M. Bicilli, one of the brightest humanists of the post-revolutionary Russian diaspora, wrote: “A genuine genetic study of a work of art can only be one that aims to reduce it to the inner experiences of the artist.”

This kind of idea was substantiated in the article by A.P. Skaftymov, published in Saratov scientific periodicals (1923) and for a number of decades remained unnoticed. The scientist argued that the consideration of genesis, with inattention to the personality of the author, fatally reduces to a mechanical statement of purely external facts: “The picture of the general must necessarily grow from the study of the particular.” “There are many factors acting on the creative process,” he wrote, “and their effectiveness is not the same, they are all subordinate to the individuality of the author.<…>The relationship between life (cultural-historical and socio-psychological. - V.H.) and works of art should not be established directly, but through the personality of the author. Life is etched and peeled away in the composition of a work of art<…>by the will (consciously or subconsciously) of the artist.” Literary studies, Skaftymov believes, “opens the door to recognizing the need for general cultural, social and literary influences that affected the artist’s personality.” The scientist substantiated a consistently non-dogmatic and, one might say, strictly humanitarian approach to the genesis of literary creativity.

Study of artistic creations as stimulated first of all the author’s personality traits is especially vital when turning to the literature of the 19th–20th centuries, which has decisively freed itself from genre canons. At the same time, a personal consideration of genesis does not cancel, but complements those directional concepts that emphasize the non-individual determination of writing activity. After all, the author, despite the fact that his personality is unique and valuable in itself, thinks and feels, acts and speaks out on behalf of certain human communities, sometimes very broad (the current of social thought, estate and class, nation, confession, etc.). I.F. spoke about this (in our opinion, with irresistible conviction). Annensky in the article “Lecomte de Lisle and his “Erinnias””: “<…>the laws of history do not change to please the most passionate will (of the poet. - V.H.). None of us is given the opportunity to escape those ideas that, as another legacy and debt to the past, turn out to be part of our soul at our very entry into conscious life. And the more alive a person’s mind, the more selflessly he surrenders to something General and Necessary, although it seems to him that he is freely and myself I chose my task."

A genetic examination of literature, which actively takes into account the personality properties of the author, allows us to more broadly perceive and more deeply comprehend his works themselves: to see them in an artistic creation, as Vyach put it. I. Ivanov, not only art, but also the soul of the poet. “Our approach to contemporary art,” wrote G.P. Fedotov, formulating one of the most important principles of religious and philosophical aesthetics of the beginning of our century - not as a purely aesthetic sphere, but as evidence of the integrity or poverty of a person, of his life and death." Similar thoughts were expressed much earlier, in the era of romanticism. F. Schlegel wrote: “What is important to me is not any particular work of Goethe, but he himself in all his entirety.”

Understanding the connections of artistic creations with the personality of the author is in the closest connection with interpretive activity and is organically connected to it. For a “perfect understanding” of the text, G.G. noted. Shlet, it is urgent to combine its “immanent” interpretation and genetic correlation with the personality of the author.

Summarizing the rich experience of genetic review of the literature, we can conclude that heterogeneity and multiplicity of factors writing activity. It is legitimate to group these factors in a certain way. Firstly, direct direct incentives motivating people to write, which is primarily a creative and aesthetic impulse. This impulse is accompanied by the author’s need to embody his spiritual (and sometimes also psychological and everyday-biographical) experience in the work and thereby influence the consciousness and behavior of readers. According to T.S. Elista, a true poet, “is tormented by the need to communicate my experience to others.” Secondly, as part of the genesis of literary creativity, the totality of phenomena and factors influencing the author from the outside is significant, i.e. stimulating context artistic activity.

At the same time (contrary to what is often proclaimed by scientists of different schools) none of the factors of literary creativity is its strict determination: the artistic and creative act, by its very nature, is free and initiative, and therefore is not predetermined. A literary work is not a “snapshot” or “cast” of one or another phenomenon external to the author. It never acts as a “product” or “mirror” of any particular set of facts. The “components” of a stimulating context can hardly be built into some kind of universal scheme, hierarchically ordered: the genesis of literary creativity is historically and individually changeable, and any theoretical regulation of it inevitably turns into dogmatic one-sidedness.

The stimulating context of creativity is not completely certain. Its volume and boundaries cannot be precisely characterized. Mayakovsky’s answer to the question whether Nekrasov influenced him is significant: “Unknown.” “Let us not succumb to the temptation of petty vanity - to resort to formulas that a priori establish the genesis of creativity,” wrote a French scientist at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, polemicizing with the cultural-historical school. - We never know<…>all the elements that make up genius."

At the same time, a consideration of the genesis of literary facts, free from dogmatism, is of great importance for their understanding. Knowledge of the roots and origins of a work not only sheds light on its aesthetic and artistic properties, but also helps to understand how the author’s personality traits were embodied in it, and also encourages us to perceive the work as a certain cultural and historical evidence.

§ 3. Cultural tradition in its significance for literature

As part of the context that stimulates literary creativity, a responsible role belongs to the intermediate link between anthropological universals (archetypes and mythopoetics, on which literary criticism is now focused) and intra-epochal specifics (the modernity of the writer with its contradictions, which with excessive persistence came to the fore in our “pre-perestroika” decades). This middle link of the context of writing activity has not been sufficiently mastered by theoretical literary criticism, so we will dwell on it in more detail, turning to those meanings that are denoted by the terms “continuity”, “tradition”, “cultural memory”, “heritage”, “great historical time”.

In the article “Answer to a Question from the Editors of the New World” (1970) M.M. Bakhtin, challenging the officially proclaimed and generally accepted guidelines since the 1920s, used the phrases “small historical time” and “large historical time,” meaning by the first the writer’s modernity, by the second, the experience of previous eras. “Modernity,” he wrote, “retains all its enormous and in many respects decisive importance. Scientific analysis can only proceed from it and<…>I have to check with her all the time.” But, Bakhtin continued, “to close it (a literary work. - V.H.) in this era is impossible: its fullness is revealed only in big time" The last phrase becomes the supporting, pivotal one in the scientist’s judgments about the genesis of literary creativity: “... the work has its roots in the distant past. Great works of literature take centuries to prepare, and in the era of their creation only the ripe fruits of a long and complex ripening process are harvested.” Ultimately, the activity of a writer, according to Bakhtin, is determined by long-existing, “mighty currents of culture (especially grassroots, folk).”

It is legitimate to distinguish between two meanings of the word “tradition” (from lat. traditio - transmission, tradition). Firstly, it is a reliance on past experience in the form of its repetition and variation (here the words “traditionality” and “traditionalism” are usually used). These kinds of traditions are strictly regulated and take the form of rituals, etiquette, and ceremonies that are strictly observed. Traditionalism was influential in literary creativity for many centuries, until the middle of the 18th century, which was especially clearly reflected in the predominance of canonical genre forms(see pp. 333–337). Later, it lost its role and began to be perceived as a hindrance and brake on activity in the field of art: judgments about the “oppression of traditions”, about tradition as an “automated technique”, etc. came into use.

In the changed cultural and historical situation, when the ritual-regulatory principle has noticeably been squeezed out both in public and in privacy people, acquired relevance (this is especially clearly visible in the 20th century) another meaning of the term “tradition”, which began to mean proactive And creative(active-selective and enriching) inheritance cultural (and, in particular, verbal and artistic) experience, which involves the completion of the values ​​that constitute the property of society, the people, and humanity.

The subject of inheritance is both outstanding cultural monuments (philosophy and science, art and literature), and the inconspicuous “fabric of life”, saturated with “creative influences”, preserved and enriched from generation to generation. This is the sphere of beliefs, moral attitudes, forms of behavior and consciousness, communication style (not least within the family), everyday psychology, work skills and ways of spending leisure time, contacts with nature, speech culture, household habits.

An organically acquired tradition (namely, in this form it should exist) becomes a kind of guideline for individuals and their groups, one might say, a beacon, a kind of spiritual-practical strategy. Involvement in tradition is manifested not only in the form of a clearly conscious orientation towards a certain kind of value, but also in spontaneous, intuitive, and unintentional forms. The world of traditions is like the air that people breathe, most often without thinking about what invaluable benefits they have. According to the Russian philosopher of the early 20th century V.F. Erna, humanity exists thanks to the free adherence to traditions: “ Free tradition <…>there is nothing more than inner metaphysical unity of humanity". Later, I. Huizinga spoke in the same spirit: “ Healthy Mind is not afraid to take with him on the road a weighty load of values ​​of the past.”

For literature of the 19th–20th centuries. Traditions are undeniably important (naturally, primarily in the second meaning of the word) of both folk culture, mainly domestic (which J. Herder and the Heidelberg romantics insistently talked about in Germany), and the culture of the educated minority (mostly international). The era of romanticism brought about a synthesis of these cultural traditions; happened, according to V.F. Odoevsky, “the fusion of nationality with general education.” And this shift predetermined a lot in later literature, including modern literature.

Our scientists speak very persistently about the enormous importance of traditions (cultural memory) as a stimulus for any creativity. They argue that cultural creativity is marked primarily by the inheritance of past values, that “creative adherence to tradition involves a search for something living in the old, its continuation, and not mechanical imitation<…>dead" that the active role of cultural memory in the generation of the new constitutes a milestone in the scientific knowledge of historical and artistic process- the stage that followed the dominance of Hegelianism and positivism.

The cultural past, one way or another “coming” into the writer’s works, is diverse. These are, firstly, verbal and artistic means that were used before, as well as fragments of previous texts (in the form of reminiscences); secondly, worldviews, concepts) ideas that already exist both in non-artistic reality and in literature; and, finally, thirdly, forms of extra-artistic culture, which largely stimulate and predetermine the forms of literary creativity (generic and genre; subject-visual, compositional, speech itself). Thus, the narrative form of epic works is generated by the narration of what happened earlier, which is widespread in people’s real lives; the exchange of remarks between the heroes and the chorus in ancient drama is genetically correlated with the public principles of life of the ancient Greeks; a picaresque novel is the generation and artistic refraction of adventurism as a special kind of life behavior; the flourishing of psychologism in the literature of the last one and a half to two centuries is due to the activation of reflection as a phenomenon of human consciousness, and the like. F. Schleiermacher said the following about this kind of correspondence between artistic and extra-artistic (life) forms: “Even the inventor of a new form of image is not completely free to implement his intentions. Although it depends on his will whether this or that life form will or will not become the artistic form of his own works, he is in the process of creating something new in art in the face of the power of his analogues that are already present.” Writers, therefore, regardless of their conscious attitudes, are “doomed” to rely on certain forms of life that have become cultural tradition. Genre traditions are especially important in literary activity (see pp. 337–339).

So, the concept of tradition plays a very important role in the genetic consideration of literature (both in its formal-structural side and in its deep substantive aspects). However, in literary criticism of the 20th century. (mostly avant-garde-oriented) there is also another widely accepted, opposite idea of ​​tradition, continuity, cultural memory - as inevitably associated with epigonism and not having anything to do with the genuine, high literature. According to Yu.N. Tynyanov, tradition is “the basic concept of the old history of literature,” which “turns out to be an unlawful abstraction”: “ we have to talk about continuity only with the phenomenon of school, epigonism, but not with the phenomena of literary evolution, the principle of which is struggle and change».

To this day, the idea is sometimes expressed that literary criticism does not need this concept. “It should be noted,” writes M.O. Chudakov, - that one of the undoubted, most obvious consequences of the work of Tynyanov and his associates was the discrediting of the vague concept of “tradition,” which, after their critical assessment, hung in the air and then found refuge in texts that lie outside science. Instead, she received a “quote” (reminiscence) and “literary subtext” (mainly for poetic texts).”

This kind of mistrust of the word “tradition” and the deep meanings, which stand behind it and are expressed in it, goes back to the categorical “anti-traditionalism” of F. Nietzsche and his followers. Let us recall the demands that the hero of the mythical poem “Thus Spake Zarathustra” made to people: “Break<…>old tablets"; “I told them (people - V.Kh.) to laugh at their<…>saints and poets." Militant anti-traditionalist voices are still heard today. Here is a phrase that was heard not so long ago, interpreting Z. Freud in the Nietzschean spirit: “You can express yourself only by criticizing the strongest and most congenial of your predecessors - by killing your father, as the Oedipus complex dictates (my italics - V.H.).” Decisive anti-traditionalism in the 20th century. formed a kind of tradition, paradoxical in its own way. B. Groys, who believes that “Nietzsche now remains an unsurpassed reference point for modern thought,” states: “<…>a break with tradition is following it on a different level, because a break with models has its own tradition.” It's hard to disagree with the last phrase.

The concept of tradition is now an arena of serious differences and ideological confrontations that are directly related to literary studies.

Literary process

This term, firstly, denotes the literary life of a certain country and era (in the entirety of its phenomena and facts) and, secondly, the centuries-old development of literature on a global, worldwide scale. The literary process in the second meaning of the word (which will be discussed below) is the subject comparative historical literary criticism.

§ 1. Dynamics and stability in the composition of world literature

The fact that literary creativity is subject to change as history moves forward is self-evident. What attracts less attention is the fact that literary evolution takes place on a certain stable, stable basis. As part of culture (art and literature in particular), individualized and dynamic phenomena are distinguishable - on the one hand, and on the other hand - universal, transtemporal, static structures, often referred to as topic(from etc. - gr. topos - place, space). Topics among the ancients was one of the concepts of logic (theory of evidence) and rhetoric (the study of “commonplaces” in public speeches). In eras close to us, this concept came to literary criticism. According to A.M. Panchenko, culture (including verbal and artistic) “has a stock of stable forms that are relevant throughout its entire length,” and therefore the “view of art as an evolving topic” is legitimate and urgent.

The topic is heterogeneous. Invariably present in literary works are types of emotional mood (sublime, tragic, laughter, etc.), moral and philosophical problems (good and evil, truth and beauty), “eternal themes” associated with mythopoetic meanings, and, finally, an arsenal artistic forms that find application always and everywhere. The constants of world literature that we have identified, i.e. topoi (they are also called commonplaces - from lat. loci communes) constitute succession fund, without which the literary process would be impossible. The fund of literary continuity has its roots in the pre-literary archaic and is replenished from era to era. The latter is evidenced with maximum convincingness by the experience of European novelism of the last two or three centuries. New topoi associated with the artistic development of the inner world of man in its multifaceted connections with the surrounding reality have been strengthened here.

§ 2. Stages of literary development

The idea of ​​the presence of moments of commonality (repetition) in the development of literatures of different countries and peoples, of its unified “forward” movement in a long historical time, is rooted in literary criticism and no one disputes it. In the article “The Future of Literature as a Subject of Study” D.S. Likhachev speaks about the steady increase in the personal principle in literary creativity) about the strengthening of its humanistic character, about the growth of realistic tendencies and the increasing freedom of choice of forms by writers, as well as about the deepening historicism artistic consciousness. “The historicity of consciousness,” the scientist asserts, “requires a person to be aware of the historical relativity of his own consciousness. Historicity is associated with “self-denial,” with the mind’s ability to understand its own limitations.”

The stages of the literary process are usually thought of as corresponding to those stages of human history that manifested themselves most clearly and completely in Western European countries and especially clearly in the Romanesque countries. In this regard, ancient, medieval and modern literatures with their own stages are distinguished (following the Renaissance - baroque, classicism, the Enlightenment with its sentimentalist branch, romanticism, and finally, realism, with which modernism coexists and successfully competes in the 20th century) .

Scientists have understood to the greatest extent the stage differences between the literatures of modern times and the writing that preceded them. Ancient and medieval literature was characterized by the prevalence of works with non-artistic functions (religious-cult and ritual, informative and business, etc.); the widespread existence of anonymity; the predominance of oral verbal creativity over writing, which resorted more to recording oral traditions and previously created texts than to “writing”. An important feature of ancient and medieval literature was also the instability of texts, the presence in them of bizarre alloys of “our own” and “foreign”, and as a result, the “blurring” of the boundaries between original and translated writing. In modern times, literature is emancipated as a purely artistic phenomenon; writing becomes the dominant form of verbal art; open individual authorship is activated; literary development acquires much greater dynamism. All this seems indisputable.

The situation is more complicated with the distinction between ancient and medieval literatures. It does not pose a problem in relation to Western Europe (ancient Greek and Roman antiquity are fundamentally different from the medieval culture of more “northern” countries), but it raises doubts and disputes when referring to the literature of other, especially eastern, regions. And the so-called Old Russian literature was essentially writing of the medieval type.

The key question in the history of world literature is debatable: what are the geographical boundaries of the Renaissance with its artistic culture and, in particular, literature? If N.I. Conrad and the scientists of his school consider the Renaissance to be a global phenomenon, repeating and varying not only in Western countries, but also in the eastern regions, then other experts, also authoritative, consider the Renaissance as a specific and unique phenomenon of Western European (mainly Italian) culture: “Worldwide The Italian Renaissance acquired significance not because it was the most typical and best among all the renaissances that happened, but because there were no other renaissances. This one turned out to be the only one."

At the same time, modern scientists are moving away from the usual apologetic assessment of the Western European Renaissance and revealing its duality. On the one hand, the Renaissance enriched culture with the concept of complete freedom and independence of the individual, the idea of ​​unconditional trust in the creative capabilities of man, on the other hand, the Renaissance “philosophy of luck nourished<…>spirit of adventurism and immorality."

Discussion of the problem of the geographical boundaries of the Renaissance revealed the insufficiency of the traditional scheme of the world literary process, which is focused mainly on Western European cultural and historical experience and is marked by limitations, which is usually called “Eurocentrism”. And scientists over the past two or three decades (the palm here belongs to S.S. Averintsev) have put forward and substantiated a concept that complements and, to some extent, revises the usual ideas about the stages of literary development. Here, to a greater extent than before, firstly, the specifics of verbal art and, secondly, the experience of non-European regions and countries are taken into account. In the final collective article of 1994, “Categories of Poetics in the Change of Literary Epochs,” three stages of world literature are identified and characterized.

First stage- this is the “archaic period”, where the folklore tradition is undoubtedly influential. Mythopoetic artistic consciousness prevails here and there is still no reflection on verbal art, and therefore there is no literary criticism, no theoretical studies, no artistic and creative programs. All this appears only on second stage literary process, which began with the literary life of Ancient Greece in the mid-1st millennium BC. e. and which lasted until the middle of the 18th century. This very long period was marked by a predominance traditionalism artistic consciousness and “poetics of style and genre”: writers were guided by pre-made forms of speech that met the requirements of rhetoric (about it, see pp. 228–229), and were dependent on genre canons. Within the framework of this second stage, in turn, two stages are distinguished, the boundary between which was the Renaissance (here, we note, we are talking primarily about European artistic culture). At the second of these stages, which replaced the Middle Ages, literary consciousness takes a step from the impersonal to the personal (albeit still within the framework of traditionalism); literature becomes more secular.

And finally, on third stage, which began with the era of Enlightenment and romanticism, “individual creative artistic consciousness” comes to the fore. From now on, the “poetics of the author” dominates, freed from the omnipotence of the genre-style prescriptions of rhetoric. Here literature, as never before, “comes extremely close to the immediate and concrete existence of man, is imbued with his concerns, thoughts, feelings, and is created according to his standards”; the era of individual author's styles is coming; the literary process is closely linked “simultaneously with the personality of the writer and the reality surrounding him.” All this takes place in romanticism and realism of the 19th century, and to a large extent in the modernism of our century. We will turn to these phenomena of the literary process.

§ 3. Literary communities (art systems) of the 19th–20th centuries

In the 19th century (especially in its first third) the development of literature went under the sign of romanticism, which opposed classicist and enlightenment rationalism. Initially romanticism gained a foothold in Germany, having received a deep theoretical basis, and soon spread across the European continent and beyond. It was this artistic movement that marked a worldwide significant shift from traditionalism to the poetics of the author.

Romanticism (in particular, German) is very heterogeneous, which is convincingly shown in the early works of V.M. Zhirmunsky, which had a serious impact on the further study of this artistic system and are rightfully recognized as literary classics. The main thing in the romantic movement of the early 19th century. The scientist considered not two worlds and not the experience of a tragic discord with reality (in the spirit of Hoffmann and Heine), but the idea of ​​the spirituality of human existence, of its “permeation” with the divine principle - the dream of “enlightenment in God all my life, and every payment, and every individuality." At the same time, Zhirmunsky noted the limitations of early (Jenese) romanticism, prone to euphoria, not alien to individualistic self-will, which was later overcome in two ways. The first is an appeal to Christian asceticism of the medieval type (“religious renunciation”), the second is the development of the vital and good connections of a person with national-historical reality. The scientist positively assessed the movement of aesthetic thought from the dyad “personality - humanity (world order),” the meaning of which is cosmopolitan, to the understanding characteristic of the Heidelberg romantics of the enormous significance of the intermediary links between the individual and the universal, which are “national consciousness” and “peculiar forms of collective life individual peoples". The desire of the Heidelbergers for national and cultural unity, their involvement in the historical past of their country, was characterized by Zhirmunsky in high poetic tones. This is the article “The Problem of Aesthetic Culture in the Works of the Heidelberg Romantics,” written in a semi-essayistic manner, unusual for the author.

Following romanticism, inheriting it, and in some ways challenging it, in the 19th century. a new literary and artistic community, denoted by the word realism, which has a number of meanings, and therefore is not controversial as a scientific term. The essence of realism in relation to the literature of the last century (speaking about its best examples, the phrase “classical realism” is often used) and its place in literary process are perceived differently. During the period of dominance of Marxist ideology, realism was exorbitantly elevated to the detriment of everything else in art and literature. It was thought of as the artistic development of socio-historical specifics and the embodiment of the ideas of social determinism, the rigid external conditioning of people’s consciousness and behavior (“truthful reproduction of typical characters in typical circumstances,” according to F. Engels).

Nowadays, the importance of realism in the literature of the 19th–20th centuries, on the contrary, is often leveled out, or even denied altogether. This very concept is sometimes declared “bad” on the grounds that its nature (as if!) consists only of “social analysis” and “life-likeness.” At the same time, the literary period between romanticism and symbolism, usually called the era of the heyday of realism, is artificially included in the sphere of romanticism or is certified as the “era of the novel.”

There is no reason to banish the word “realism” from literary studies, reducing and discrediting its meaning. What is urgently needed is the purification of this term from primitive and vulgarizing layers. It is natural to take into account the tradition according to which this word (or the phrase “classical realism”) denotes the rich, multifaceted and ever-living artistic experience of the 19th century (in Russia - from Pushkin to Chekhov).

The essence of classical realism of the last century is not in social-critical pathos, although it played a significant role, but primarily in the broad development of living connections between a person and his close environment: the “microenvironment” in its specificity, national, epochal, class, purely local, etc. etc. Realism (unlike romanticism with its powerful “Byronic branch”) is inclined not to elevate and idealize the hero, alienated from reality, fallen away from the world and arrogantly opposing him, but rather to criticize (and very harshly) the isolation of his consciousness. Reality was perceived by realist writers as imperiously demanding from a person a responsible involvement in it.

At the same time, true realism (“in the highest sense,” as F.M. Dostoevsky put it) not only does not exclude, but, on the contrary, presupposes the interest of writers in “great modernity,” the formulation and discussion of moral, philosophical and religious problems, the clarification of human connections with cultural tradition, the destinies of peoples and all humanity, with the universe and world order. All this is irrefutably evidenced by the creativity of both the world-famous Russians writers of the 19th century century, and their successors in our century, such as I.A. Bunin, M.A. Bulgakov, A.A. Akhmatova, M.M. Prishvin, Are. A. Tarkovsky, A.I. Solzhenitsyn, G.N. Vladimov, V.P. Astafiev, V.G. Rasputin. Towards classical realism from among foreign writers Not only O. de Balzac, C. Dickens, G. Flaubert, E. Zola, but also J. Galsworthy, T. Mann, W. Faulkner are most directly related.

According to V.M. Markovich, domestic classical realism, mastering socio-historical specifics, “with almost the same force rushes beyond the boundaries of this reality - to the “ultimate” essences of society, history, humanity, the universe,” and in this it is similar to both previous romanticism and subsequent symbolism. The sphere of realism, which charges a person with the “energy of spiritual maximalism,” the scientist claims, includes the supernatural, and revelation, and religious and philosophical utopia, and myth, and the mysterious principle, so that “throwings of the human soul receive<…>transcendental meaning”, correlate with such categories as “eternity, supreme justice, the providential mission of Russia, the end of the world, the kingdom of God on earth.”

Let's add to this: realist writers do not take us to exotic distances and airless mysterious heights, to the world of abstractions and abstractions, which the romantics were often prone to (remember the dramatic poems of Byron). They discover the universal principles of human reality in the depths of “ordinary” life with its everyday life and “prosaic” everyday life, which brings people both severe trials and invaluable benefits. Thus, Ivan Karamazov, unimaginable without his tragic thoughts and the “Grand Inquisitor,” is completely unthinkable without his painfully complex relationship with Katerina Ivanovna, father and brothers.

In the 20th century With traditional realism other, new literary communities coexist and interact. This is, in particular, socialist realism, which was aggressively propagated by the political authorities in the USSR and the countries of the socialist camp and even spread beyond their borders. The works of writers who were guided by the principles of socialist realism, as a rule, did not rise above the level of fiction (see pp. 132–137). But such bright artists of words as M. Gorky and V.V. also worked in line with this method. Mayakovsky, M.A. Sholokhov and A.T. Tvardovsky, and to some extent also M. M. Prishvin with his “Osudareva Road” full of contradictions. The literature of socialist realism usually relied on the forms of depicting life characteristic of classical realism, but in its essence it opposed the creative attitudes and attitudes of most writers of the 19th century. In the 1930s and later, the opposition between the two stages proposed by M. Gorky was persistently repeated and varied. realistic method. This is, firstly, characteristic of the 19th century. critical realism, which was believed to reject the existing social existence with its class antagonisms and, secondly, socialist realism, which affirmed the re-emerging in the 20th century. reality, comprehended life in its revolutionary development towards socialism and communism.

To the forefront of literature and art in the 20th century. moved forward modernism, which grew organically from the cultural demands of its time. Unlike classical realism, it showed itself most clearly not in prose, but in poetry. The features of modernism are the most open and free self-disclosure of the authors, their persistent desire to update the artistic language, focus more on the universal and culturally-historically distant than on the close reality. In all this, modernism is closer to romanticism than to classical realism. At the same time, principles akin to experience are persistently intruding into the sphere of modernist literature. classical writers of the 19th century centuries. Vivid examples of this are the works of Vl. Khodasevich (especially his “post-Pushkin” white iambic pentameter: “Monkey”, “November 2”, “Home”, “Music”, etc.) and A. Akhmatova with her “Requiem” and “Poem without a Hero”, in which the pre-war literary and artistic environment that shaped her as a poet is presented harshly and critically, as a focus of tragic delusions.

Modernism is extremely heterogeneous. He declared himself in a number of directions and schools, especially numerous at the beginning of the century, among which the first place (not only chronologically, but also in terms of the role he played in art and culture) rightfully belongs to symbolism, primarily French and Russian. It is not surprising that the literature that replaced it is called post-symbolism, which has now become the subject close attention scientists (Acmeism, futurism and other literary movements and schools).

As part of modernism, which largely determined the face of literature in the 20th century, it is right to distinguish two trends, closely related to each other, but at the same time multidirectional. These are avant-garde, who survived its “peak” point in futurism, and (using the term of V. I. Tyupa) neotraditionalism: “The powerful opposition of these spiritual forces creates that productive tension of creative reflection, that field of gravity in which all more or less significant phenomena of art of the 20th century are located in one way or another. Such tension is often found within the works themselves, so it is hardly possible to draw an unambiguous line of demarcation between avant-garde artists and neo-traditionalists. The essence of the artistic paradigm of our century, apparently, lies in the non-merger and inseparability of the moments that form this opposition.” The author names T. S. Eliot, O.E. as prominent representatives of neo-traditionalism. Mandelstam, A.A. Akhmatov, B.L. Pasternak, I.A. Brodsky.

A comparative historical study of literature from different eras (not excluding modern ones), as can be seen, with irresistible persuasiveness reveals similarities between the literatures of different countries and regions. Based on such studies, the conclusion was sometimes made that “by nature” the literary phenomena of different peoples and countries are “united”. However, the unity of the global literary process does not at all signify its uniform quality, much less the identity of the literatures of different regions and countries. In world literature, not only the recurrence of phenomena is deeply significant, but also their regional, state and national uniqueness. We will move on to this facet of the literary life of mankind.

§ 4. Regional and national specificity of literature

The deep, essential differences between the cultures (and, in particular, literatures) of the countries of the West and the East, these two great regions, are self-evident. Latin American countries, the Middle Eastern region, Far Eastern cultures, as well as the Western and Eastern (mostly Slavic) parts of Europe have original and distinctive features. National literatures belonging to the Western European region, in turn, differ markedly from each other. So, it’s hard to imagine, say, something like this “ Posthumous notes The Pickwick Club" by Charles Dickens, which appeared on German soil, and something akin to T. Mann's "The Magic Mountain" - in France.

The culture of humanity, including its artistic side, is not unitary, not one-quality cosmopolitan, not “unison”. She has symphonic character: each national culture with its distinctive features plays the role of a certain instrument necessary for the full sound of the orchestra.

To understand the culture of mankind and, in particular, the world literary process, the concept non-mechanical whole, the components of which, according to the modern orientalist, “are not similar to each other, they are always unique, individual, irreplaceable and independent.” Therefore, cultures (countries, peoples, regions) are always related as complementary: “A culture that becomes similar to another disappears as unnecessary.” The same idea in relation to literary creativity was expressed by B. G. Reizov: “National literatures live a common life only because they are not similar to one another.”

All this determines the specificity of the evolution of literatures of different peoples, countries, and regions. Over the past five or six centuries, Western Europe has discovered a dynamism of cultural and artistic life unprecedented in the history of mankind; the evolution of other regions is associated with much greater stability. But no matter how diverse the paths and rates of development of individual literatures are, they all move from era to era in the same direction: they go through the stages that we talked about.

§ 5. International literary connections

The symphonic unity that was discussed is ensured by world literature, first of all, by a single fund of continuity (about the topic, see pp. 356–357), as well as by the commonality of stages of development (from archaic mythopoetics and rigid traditionalism to the free identification of the author's individuality). The beginnings of essential closeness between the literatures of different countries and eras are called typological convergences, or conventions. Along with the latter, a unifying role in the literary process is played by international literary connections(contacts: influences and borrowings).

Influence It is customary to call the influence on literary creativity of previous worldviews, ideas, artistic principles (mainly the ideological influence of Rousseau on L.N. Tolstoy; the refraction of the genre and stylistic features of Byron’s poems in romantic poems Pushkin). Borrowing same - this is the writer’s use (in some cases - passive and mechanical, in others - creative and initiative) of individual plots, motifs, text fragments, speech patterns, etc. Borrowings, as a rule, are embodied in reminiscences, which were discussed above (see pp. 253–259).

The influence on writers of the literary experience of other countries and peoples, as noted by A.N. Veselovsky (polemicizing with traditional comparative studies), “presumes in the perceiver not an empty place, but countercurrents, a similar direction of thinking, analogous images of fantasy.” Fruitful influences and borrowings from “outside” represent creative contact between different literatures that are in many ways dissimilar to each other. According to B. G. Reizov, international literary connections (in their most significant manifestations), “stimulating the development<…>literature<…>develop their national identity."

At the same time, at sharp turns of historical development, the intensive familiarization of this or that literature with a foreign, hitherto alien artistic experience sometimes conceals the danger of subordination to foreign influences, the threat of cultural and artistic assimilation. For world artistic culture, broad and multifaceted contacts between the literatures of different countries and peoples are essential (as Goethe spoke about), but at the same time, the “cultural hegemony” of literatures that have a reputation of worldwide significance is unfavorable. An easy “step over” of national literature through one’s own cultural experience to someone else’s, perceived as something higher and universal, is fraught with negative consequences. “At the heights of cultural creativity,” according to the philosopher and culturologist N.S. Arsenyev, there is a “combination of spiritual openness with spiritual rootedness.”

Perhaps the most large-scale phenomenon in the field of international literary relations of modern times is the intense impact of Western European experience on other regions ( Eastern Europe and non-European countries and peoples). This globally significant cultural phenomenon, called Europeanization, or westernization, or modernization, is interpreted and assessed in different ways, becoming the subject of endless discussions and debates.

Modern scientists pay close attention to both the crisis and even negative aspects of Europeanization, as well as its positive significance for “non-Western European” cultures and literatures. In this regard, the article “Some Features of the Literary Process in the East” (1972) by G.S. is very representative. Pomerantz, one of the brightest modern cultural scientists. According to the scientist, ideas customary for Western European countries are deformed on “non-European soil”; As a result of copying someone else’s experience, “spiritual chaos” arises. The consequence of modernization is the “enclaveness” (focality) of culture: “islands” of the new based on someone else’s model are strengthened, contrasting with the traditional and stable world of the majority, so that the nation and the state risk losing their integrity. And in connection with all this, a split occurs in the field of social thought: a confrontation arises between Westerners (Westernizers-enlighteners) and ethnophiles (soilers-romantics) - guardians of domestic traditions who are forced to defend themselves against the erosion of national life by “colorless cosmopolitanism.”

The prospect of overcoming such conflicts G.S. Pomerantz sees in the awareness of the “average European” the values ​​of the cultures of the East. And he regards Westernization as a deeply positive phenomenon of world culture.

In many ways, similar thoughts were expressed much earlier (and with a greater degree of criticism of Eurocentrism) in the book of the famous philologist and culturologist N.S. Trubetskoy “Europe and humanity” (1920). Paying tribute to Romano-Germanic culture and noting its global significance, the scientist at the same time emphasized that it is far from identical to the culture of all mankind, that the complete familiarization of an entire people with the culture created by another people is, in principle, impossible and that a mixture of cultures is dangerous . Europeanization comes from top to bottom and affects only part of the people, and therefore, as a result, cultural layers are isolated from each other and the class struggle intensifies. In this regard, the introduction of peoples to European culture is carried out hastily: galloping evolution “wastes national strength.” And a harsh conclusion is drawn: “One of the most severe consequences of Europeanization is the destruction of national unity, the dismemberment of the national body of the people.” Note that another, positive side of introducing a number of regions to Western European culture is also important: the prospect organic connections of primordial, soil - and assimilated principles from the outside. G.D. spoke well about her. Gachev. In history Not Western European literatures, he noted, there were moments and stages when they were “energetically, sometimes violently, brought into line with the modern European way of life, which at first could not but lead to a certain denationalization of life and literature.” But over time, a culture that has experienced strong foreign influence, as a rule, “discovers its national content, elasticity, conscious, critical attitude and selection of foreign material.”

About this kind of cultural synthesis in relation to Russia in the 19th century. wrote N.S. Arsenyev: the development of Western European experience was increasing here, “hand in hand with an extraordinary rise national identity, with boiling creative forces, rising from the depths of people's life<…>The best in Russian cultural and spiritual life was born from here.” The scientist sees the highest result of cultural synthesis in the works of Pushkin and Tyutchev, L.N. Tolstoy and A.K. Tolstoy. Something similar in the 17th–19th centuries. was also observed in other Slavic literatures) where, according to A.V. Lipatov, there was “interweaving” and “combining” of elements of literary trends that came from the West with “traditions of local writing and culture,” which marked “the awakening of national consciousness, the revival of national culture and the creation of national literature modern type» .

International connections (cultural, artistic and literary), as can be seen, constitute (along with typological convergences) the most important factor in the formation and strengthening of the symphonic unity of regional and national literatures.

§ 6. Basic concepts and terms of the theory of the literary process

In the comparative historical study of literature, terminological issues turn out to be very serious and difficult to resolve. Traditionally allocated international literary communities(Baroque, classicism, Enlightenment, etc.) are sometimes called literary movements, sometimes literary movements, sometimes artistic systems. At the same time, the terms “literary movement” and “literary movement” are sometimes filled with a narrower, more specific meaning. Thus, in the works of G.N. Pospelov literary movements is the refraction in the work of writers and poets of certain social views (worldviews, ideologies), and directions- these are writer groups that arise on the basis of common aesthetic views and certain programs of artistic activity (expressed in treatises, manifestos, slogans). Currents and directions in this meaning of words are facts of individual national literatures, but not international communities.

International literary communities ( art systems, as I.F. called them. Volkov) clear chronological framework they do not: often in the same era various literary and general artistic “trends” coexist, which seriously complicates their systematic, logically ordered consideration. B.G. Reizov wrote: “Some major writer of the era of romanticism may be a classic (classicist - V.H.) or a critical realist, a writer of the era of realism can be a romantic or a naturalist." Moreover, the literary process of a given country and a given era cannot be reduced to the coexistence of literary movements and trends. MM. Bakhtin reasonably warned scholars against “reducing” the literature of a given period “to a superficial struggle of literary trends.” With a narrowly focused approach to literature, the scientist notes, its most important aspects, “which determine the creativity of writers, remain undiscovered.” (Recall that Bakhtin considered genres to be the “main characters” of the literary process.)

The literary life of the 20th century confirms these considerations: many major writers (M.A. Bulgakov, A.P. Platonov) carried out their creative tasks while staying away from the literary groups of their time. The hypothesis of D.S. deserves close attention. Likhachev, according to which the acceleration of the pace of change of directions in the literature of our century is “an expressive sign of their approaching end.” The change of international literary movements (art systems), as can be seen, far from exhausts the essence of the literary process (neither Western European, nor even less so worldwide). There were, strictly speaking, no eras of the Renaissance, Baroque, Enlightenment, etc., but there were periods in the history of art and literature that were marked by the noticeable and sometimes decisive significance of the corresponding principles. It is unthinkable that the literature of one or another chronological period be completely identical with any one ideological and artistic tendency, even if it is of paramount importance at a given time. The terms “literary movement”, or “direction”, or “artistic system” therefore should be used with caution. Judgments about changes in currents and directions are not a “master key” to the laws of the literary process, but only a very approximate schematization of it (even in relation to Western European literature, not to mention the artistic literature of other countries and regions).

When studying the literary process, scientists rely on other theoretical concepts, in particular - method and style. Over the course of several decades (since the 1930s), the term creative method as a characteristic of literature as knowledge (mastery) of social life. Changing currents and directions were considered as marked by a greater or lesser degree of presence in them realism. So, I.F. Volkov analyzed artistic systems mainly from the point of view of the creative method underlying them.

There is a rich tradition of examining literature and its evolution in terms of style, understood very broadly, as a stable complex of formal artistic properties (the concept of artistic style was developed by J. Winckelmann, Goethe, Hegel; it has attracted the attention of scientists in our century). International literary communities D.S. Likhachev is called "great styles", distinguishing in their composition primary(gravitating towards simplicity and plausibility) and secondary(more decorative, formalized, conditional). The scientist views the centuries-old literary process as a kind of oscillatory movement between primary (longer-lasting) and secondary (short-term) styles. He includes the Romanesque style, Renaissance, classicism, and realism as the first; to the second - Gothic, Baroque, Romanticism.

For recent years the study of the literary process on a global scale is increasingly emerging as a development historical poetics. (For the meaning of the term “poetics”, see pp. 143–145.) The subject of this scientific discipline, which exists as part of comparative historical literary criticism, is the evolution of verbal and artistic forms (possessing content), as well as the creative principles of writers: their aesthetic attitudes and artistic worldview.

The founder and creator of historical poetics A.N. Veselovsky defined its subject in the following words: “the evolution of poetic consciousness and its forms” Recent decades The scientist dedicated his life to the development of this scientific discipline (“Three chapters from historical poetics”, articles on epithet, epic repetitions, psychological parallelism, unfinished research “Poetics of Plots”). Subsequently, the patterns of evolution of literary forms were discussed by representatives of the formal school (“On literary evolution” and other articles by Yu.N. Tynyanov). In line with Veselovsky’s traditions, M.M. worked. Bakhtin [these are his works on Rabelais and the chronotope (“Forms of time and chronotope in the novel”); the latter is subtitled "essays on historical poetics"]. In the 1980s, the development of historical poetics became increasingly active.

Modern scientists are faced with the task of creating monumental research on historical poetics: they have to constructively (taking into account the rich experience of the 20th century, both artistic and scientific) to continue the work begun a century ago by A.N. Veselovsky. The final work on historical poetics can be rightfully presented in the form of a history of world literature, which will not have a chronological-descriptive form (from era to era, from country to country, from writer to writer, such as the recently completed eight-volume “History of World Literature”). This monumental work will probably be a study consistently structured on the basis of the concepts of theoretical poetics and summarizing the centuries-old literary and artistic experience of different peoples, countries, and regions.

Notes:

We do not consider the history of literary criticism as such in any detail. Dedicated to her special work. Cm.: Nikolaev P.A., Kurilov A.S., Grishunin A.L. History of Russian literary criticism. M., 1980; Kosikov G.K. Foreign literary criticism and theoretical problems of the science of literature // Foreign aesthetics and theory of literature of the 19th–20th centuries: Treatises, articles, essays. M., 1987. Summative coverage of the destinies of the domestic theoretical literary criticism XX century, I hope, will be undertaken in the coming years.

Saparov M.A. Understanding a work of art and terminology of literary criticism // Interaction of sciences in the study of literature. L., 1981. P. 235.

Belinsky V.G. Poly. collection cit.: In 13 volumes. M., 1953. T. 3. P. 53.

Cm.: Pospelov G.N. Art and aesthetics. M., 1984. pp. 81–82.

Cm.: Mikhailov A.V. The problem of character in art: painting, sculpture, music // Mikhailov A.V. Languages ​​of culture: Textbook. handbook on cultural studies. M., 1997.

Davydov Yu.N. Culture - nature - tradition // Tradition in the history of culture. M., 1978. P. 60.

Likhachev D.S.. Past to the future: Articles and essays. L., 1985. S. 52, 64–67.

Lotman Yu.M.. Memory in cultural studies // Wiener Slawistischert Almanach. Bd. 16. Wien, 1985.

Schleiermacher F. D. E. Henneutik und Kritik. Fr. a. M., 1977. S. 184.

Tynyanov Yu.N. Poetics. History of literature. Movie. pp. 272, 258. Such a rapprochement of continuity and epigony, in our opinion, is one-sided and vulnerable, because it gives rise to incorrectly counting among the “imitators” such bright and original traditionalist writers as I.S. Shmelev and B.K. Zaitsev, M.A. Sholokhov and A.T. Tvardovsky, V.G. Rasputin and V.I. Belov, V.P. Astafiev and E.I. Nosov.

Chudakova M.O. To the concept of genesis // Revue des études slaves. Fascicule 3, Paris, 1983, pp. 410–411.

Likhachev D.S.. Past to the future: Articles and essays. P. 175.

Cm.: Konrad N.I. About the Renaissance // Konrad N.I. West and East: Articles. L., 1972 (end of § 1, § 7–8).

Botkin L.M.. Type of culture as historical integrity: Methodological notes in connection with the Italian Renaissance // Issue. philosophy. 1969. No. 9. P. 108.

Lotman Yu.M.. Technical progress as a cultural problem//Scientific Notes/University of Tartu. Vol. 831. Tartu, 1988. P. 104. For the same see: Losev A.F.. Renaissance aesthetics. M., 1978 (“The other side of titanism” and other sections).

Averintsev S.S., Andreev M.L., Gasparov M.L., Grintser P.A., Mikhailov A.V. Categories of poetics in changing literary eras. P. 33.

On romanticism as an international phenomenon, see the corresponding section (author I.A. Terteryan) in: History of World Literature: In 8 volumes. M., 1989. Vol. 6.

Zhirmunsky V.M.. Heine and romanticism // Russian thought. 1914. No. 5. P. 116. See. Also: Zhirmunsky V.M.. German romanticism and modern mysticism. St. Petersburg, 1996 (1st ed.–1914).

Zhirmunsky V.M. Religious renunciation in the history of romanticism: Materials for the characterization of C. Brentano and the Heidelberg romantics. M., 1919. P. 25.

Cm.: Zhirmunsky V.M.. From the history of Western European literature. L., 1981. From the multitude later works about romanticism see: Vanslov V.V. Aesthetics of Romanticism. M., 1966; Berkovsky N.Ya. Romanticism in Germany. L., 1973; Fedorov F.P.. Romantic artistic world: space and time. Riga, 1988; Mann Yu.V.. Dynamics of Russian romanticism. M., 1995.

Cm.: Jacobson R. O. About artistic realism//Yakobson P.O. Works on poetics. pp. 387–393.

Marx K., Engels F. Op. 2nd ed. M., 1965. T. 37. P. 35.

Cm.: Zatonsky D.V.. What should the history of literature not be like? // Question. literature. 1998. January - February. pp. 6, 28–29.

Markovich V.M.. Question about literary trends and construction of the history of Russian literature of the 19th century // Izvestia / RAS. Dept. literature and language. 1993. No. 3. P. 28.

See: Getting rid of mirages. Socialist realism today. M., 1990.

See: Materials of international scientific conferences at the Russian State University for the Humanities: Post-symbolism as a cultural phenomenon. Vol. 1–2. M., 1995,1998.

Cm.: Tyupa V.I.. Polarization of literary consciousness // Liteiatura rosyjska XX wieku. Nowadays. Now that's a problem. Seria "Literatura na pograniczach". No. 1. Warszawa, 1992. P. 89; see also: Tyupa V.I.. Post-symbolism. Theoretical essays on Russian poetry of the 20th century. Samara, 1998.

Konrad N.I. On some issues in the history of world literature // Konrad N.I.. West and East. P. 427.

I use the expression of art critic Yu.D. Kolpinsky. See: History of culture ancient world. M., 1977. P. 82.

On the inextricable connection between creativity in people’s lives and their national involvement and rootedness, see: Bulgakov S.N.. Nation and humanity (1934) // Bulgakov S.N.. Works: In 2 vols. M., 1993. T. 2.

Grigorieva T.P.. Tao and Logos (meeting of cultures). M., 1992. S. 39, 27.

Questions of methodology of literary criticism. M.; L., 1966. P. 183. On the essential differences between the ancient literatures of the Middle East and Greece, which largely determined the fate of the entire European culture (including art), see: Averintsev S.S.. Ancient Greek literature and Middle Eastern literature (confrontation and meeting of two creative principles) // Typology and relationships of literature of the ancient world. M., 1971 (especially pp. 251–252).

Cm.: Zhirmunsky V.M. Literary movements as an international phenomenon // Zhirmunsky V.M. Comparative literature. East and West. L'1979. pp. 137–138.

Veselovsky A.N.. Research in the field of Russian spiritual verse. Vol. 5. St. Petersburg, 1889. P. 115.

Reizov B.G.. History and theory of literature. L., 1986. P. 284.

Cm.: Goethe I.V.. West-east sofa. pp. 668–669.

Arsenyev D. S. From the Russian cultural and creative tradition. Fr.a. M., 1959.S. 151. About the fact that international cultural contacts are marked by juxtaposition (comparison) of “one’s own” and “alien” (in optimal cases, with awareness of their equivalence), see: Toporov V.N.. Space of culture and meetings in it // East - West: Research. Translations. Publications. Vol. 4. M., 1989.

Literature and culture of China. M., 1972. S. 296–299, 302. See also: Pomerantz G.S.

Likhachev D.S.. The past is for the future. P. 200.

Cm.: Volkov I.F.. Creative Methods and Art Systems, 2nd ed. M., 1989. pp. 31–32, 41–42, 64–70.

See: Introduction to Literary Studies: Reader // Ed. P.A. Nikolaev. M., 1997. pp. 267–277.

Cm.: Likhachev D.S.. Development of Russian literature X - XVII centuries: Epochs and styles. M., 1973. pp. 172–183.

Cm.: Veselovsky A.N.. From an introduction to historical poetics (1893)// Veselovsky A.N.. Historical poetics. P. 42.

See: Historical poetics: Results and prospects for study. M., 1986. We also point out the book: Mikhailov A.V.. Problems of historical poetics in the history of German culture: Essays from the history of philological science. M., 1989.