As noted earlier, there is no consensus among literary scholars on how to distinguish between the concepts of “artistic system,” “literary movement,” and “literary movement.” Most often, scientists call “international literary communities” (Baroque, classicism, etc.) “systems,” and use the terms “direction” and “current” in a narrower sense.

The point of view of G.N. is quite common. Pospelov, who believed that literary movement - this 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 artistic activity(expressed in treatises, manifestos, slogans, etc.). Currents and directions in this sense of the words it is facts of selected national literatures(Theory of Literature - M., 1978, pp. 134 - 140).

In other words, direction represents literary concept, denoting a set of fundamental spiritual, substantive and aesthetic principles characteristic of the work of many writers, a number of groups, as well as the coincidence and correspondence of programmatic and creative attitudes, themes, passions and style determined by these most important principles.

According to Pospelov, literary direction appears when a group of writers from a particular country and era unites on the basis of a specific creative program and creates their own works, focusing on its provisions. This contributes to greater creative organization and completeness of their works. But it is not the program principles proclaimed by some group of writers that determine the features of their work, but, on the contrary, the ideological and artistic community creativity unites writers and inspires them to realize and proclaim the corresponding program principles.

In European literatures directions emerge only in modern times, when artistic creativity acquires relative independence and quality as “the art of words”, isolating itself from other non-artistic genres. The personal element powerfully enters into literature, it becomes possible to express the author’s point of view, to choose one or another life and creative position. The trends in the history of European literature are considered to be Renaissance realism, baroque, classicism, educational realism, sentimentalism, romanticism, critical realism, naturalism, symbolism, socialist realism. The existence of these major trends in a number of national literatures is more or less generally accepted. The legitimacy of highlighting others - rococo, pre-romanticism, neoclassicism, neo-romanticism, etc. – causes controversy.

The directions are not closed, but open; the transition from one to another usually involves intermediate forms (pre-romanticism in European literature of the 18th century). A new direction, replacing the old one, does not immediately eliminate it, but coexists with it for some time - creative and theoretical polemics take place between them.

The alternation and identical sequence of trends in European literature allow us to consider them as an international phenomenon; however, one or another direction in each literature appears from this point of view as a national version of the corresponding pan-European model. National-historical uniqueness of directions in individual countries sometimes so significant that classifying them as a single type turns out to be problematic, and the typological commonality of classicism, romanticism, etc. – very conditional and relative. Thus, when creating a general model of a literary movement, it is necessary to take into account the extent typological community his national forms– the fact that under the flag of one direction there are often directions that are qualitatively different.

Occurrence in national literatures literary movements does not mean that all writers necessarily belonged to one or another of them. There were also writers who did not rise to the level of programming their creativity, did not create literary theories, and their creativity, therefore, cannot be assigned designations arising from any program provisions. Such writers do not belong to any movement. They also, of course, have a certain commonality of ideological worldview, created by certain circumstances of the social life of their country and era, which determined the corresponding community ideological content of their works, and hence the forms of its expression. This means that the work of these writers also had some kind of socio-historical pattern. There was a similar group of writers, for example, in Russian literature - in the era of the dominance of the classicist movement in it. It was formed by M. Chulkov, A. Ablesimov, A. Izmailov and others. Such groups of writers, whose work is connected only ideological and artistic, but not by programmatic generality; the science of literature does not give any “proper names” like “classicism”, “sentimentalism”, etc.

According to Pospelov, the work of those groups of writers who have only ideological and artistic community, should call literary movement.

This does not mean that the difference between literary movements and trends lies only in the fact that representatives of the former, possessing an ideological and artistic commonality of creativity, created creative program, and representatives of the latter could not create it. The literary process is a more complex phenomenon. It often happens that the work of a group of writers, the definition of the country and era that created and proclaimed a single creative program, has, however, only relative And unilateral creative community, that these writers, in essence, belong not to one, but to two (sometimes more) literary movements.

Therefore, while recognizing one creative program, they understand its provisions differently and apply them differently. There are, in other words, literary movements that combine the creativity of writers different trends. Sometimes writers from different, but somewhat ideologically close, movements programmatically unite in the process of their common ideological and artistic polemics with writers from other movements that are sharply hostile to them.

Thus, the direction captures the commonality of deep spiritual and aesthetic foundations artistic content, conditioned by the unity of cultural and artistic tradition, the same type of worldview of writers and those standing before them life problems, and ultimately – the similarity of the epochal socio-cultural-historical situation. But the worldview itself, that is, the attitude to the problems posed, the idea of ​​ways and means of resolving them, ideological and artistic concepts, the ideals of writers belonging to the same direction, can be different.

Approaching the concepts of literary direction and flow from such positions, Pospelov raises the question of their existence in national literatures at various stages of their historical development. According to the researcher, at all stages of the development of fiction (starting with literature Ancient Greece) its source has always been the ideological worldview of writers who represent various social forces with their creativity and from here often create their works on the principle of antithesis. Therefore, if in national literatures up to XVII century There were no clearly defined directions, but there were always different currents in them.

Currents existed, for example, in ancient Greek literature of the classical era of its development. Attic democracy created in the 5th century BC. brilliant dramaturgy, anti-aristocratic in ideological orientation, authoritarian-mythological in ideals. This was one of the main trends ancient literature that era. But even earlier, from the 6th century BC. in those ancient Greek city-states where the slave-owning aristocracy dominated, lyric poetry actively developed - both civil in content (works of Theognis from Megara, odic choral lyrics of Tyrtaeus in Sparta, Pindar in Thebes), and purely personal, in particular love (Alcaeus and Sappho on Lesbos, Anacreon). This was another main trend or even trends in ancient literature of that era. The turn of the writers of militant Attic democracy to drama, and the aristocratic poets of other cities to lyric poetry, stemmed from the peculiarities of the creativity of both.

Roman classical literature, created in completely different conditions of social life - in the early period of the existence of imperial power, in the “Augustan Age” - was characterized by a certain duality of its tendencies. The poets of this time responded to the ideological and political demands of the new government and created literature that was to some extent official, turning to the genre of civil or philosophical poem(“Aeneid” by Virgil, “Metamorphoses” by Ovid) Mythological-authoritarian mentalities completely dominated them. But along with this, the same poets, as well as others, gravitated in their worldview towards an ideological “escape” from the bustle and vicissitudes of life in imperial Rome. They contrasted the heavy atmosphere of the capital with the imaginary joys of shepherd life (“Bucolics” by Virgil), the simplicity of village labor (his “Georgics”), the solitary enjoyment of the blessings of existence (“Satires” by Horace), the excitement of love experiences (“Love Poems” by Ovid) or they idealized the old, good morals (“Odes” by Horace, “Elegies” by Tibullus). Here, despite all the mythological authoritarian worldview, the spontaneous humanistic aspirations of these poets manifested themselves.

Various trends can be identified throughout the subsequent development of literature. For example, in English romanticism, researchers distinguish three movements: revolutionary (Byron, Shelley), conservative (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey) and London (Keats, Leigh Hunt) romantics. In relation to Russian romanticism they talk about “philosophical”, “psychological”, “civil” movements. In Russian realism, some researchers distinguish between “psychological” and “sociological” movements.

Thus, if literary trends existed in national literatures from the very beginning of their historical life, then literary trends took shape in them only at relatively late stages of development and always at basis ideological and artistic content literature of certain movements. Therefore, it is not literary movements that give life to literary movements and contain them within themselves, as some researchers believe, but, on the contrary, movements can form a single direction at some stage of their development, and before that or later exist outside its boundaries. Thus, the literary movement of Russian noble revolutionism began with the work of A.N. Radishchev, who was not a romantic. Later, motives of civil romance arose in it (Pushkin, Ryleev and others), and it entered the direction of romanticism together with poets and another, religious-romantic movement (Zhukovsky, Kozlov and others) (Pospelov G.N. Theory of Literature - M., 1987, pp. 140 – 160).

Along with the terms “direction” and “current”, the concept “ school" and "grouping". Literary groups and schools presuppose a direct ideological and artistic proximity and programmatic and aesthetic unity of its participants (“the lake school” in English romanticism, the “Parnassus” group in France, “ natural school"in Russia, etc.).

Poets silver age.

Atmosphere of the Silver Age

At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, Russia experienced an intense intellectual upsurge, especially clearly manifested in philosophy and poetry. The philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev called this time the Russian cultural renaissance.

“Now it’s hard to imagine the atmosphere of that time,” Nikolai Berdyaev wrote about the Silver Age in his “philosophical autobiography” “Self-Knowledge.” - Much of the creative upsurge of that time entered into the further development of Russian culture and is now the property of all Russians cultured people. But then there was the intoxication of creativity, novelty, tension, struggle, challenge. During these years, many gifts were sent to Russia. This was the era of the awakening of independent philosophical thought in Russia, the flowering of poetry and the intensification of aesthetic sensuality, religious anxiety and quest, interest in mysticism and the occult. New souls appeared, new sources were discovered creative life, saw new dawns, combined the feeling of decline and death with the hope of a transformation of life. But everything happened in a rather vicious circle...”

But the Silver Age is not only a chronological period. The concept of “Silver Age” is appropriate to apply to a way of thinking that, being characteristic of artists who were at odds with each other during their lifetime, ultimately merged them in the minds of their descendants into a kind of inseparable galaxy that formed the specific atmosphere of the Silver Age that Berdyaev wrote about.

The names of the poets who formed the spiritual core of the Silver Age are known to everyone: Valery Bryusov, Fyodor Sologub, Innokenty Annensky, Alexander Blok, Maximilian Voloshin, Andrei Bely, Konstantin Balmont, Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilev, Marina Tsvetaeva, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Igor Severyanin, Boris Pasternak , Georgy Ivanov and many others.

The poets of the Silver Age also sought to overcome the attempts of the second half of the 19th century centuries to explain human behavior by social conditions, environment and continued the traditions of Russian poetry, for which man was important in himself, his thoughts and feelings, his attitude to eternity, to God, to Love and Death in a philosophical, metaphysical sense were important. Poets of the Silver Age, both in their artistic work and in theoretical articles and statements, questioned the idea of ​​progress for literature. For example, one of the brightest creators of the Silver Age, Osip Mandelstam, wrote that the idea of ​​progress is “the most disgusting type of school ignorance.” And Alexander Blok in 1910 argued: “The sun of naive realism has set; it is impossible to comprehend anything outside of symbolism.”

The poets of the Silver Age believed in art, in the power of words. Therefore, immersion in the element of words and the search for new means of expression are indicative of their creativity. They cared not only about meaning, but also about style - sound, the music of words and full immersion into the elements. This immersion led to the cult of life-creativity (the inseparability of the personality of the creator and his art). And almost always because of this, the poets of the Silver Age were unhappy in personal life, and many of them ended badly.

LITERARY SCHOOLS AND TRENDS

SYMBOLISM- the first and most significant of the modernist movements in Russia. The philosophy and aesthetics of symbolism developed under the influence various teachings- from the views of the ancient philosopher Plato to the modern symbolist philosophical systems of V. Solovyov, F. Nietzsche, A. Bergson. The symbolists contrasted the traditional idea of ​​understanding the world in art with the idea of ​​constructing the world in the process of creativity. Creativity in the understanding of the symbolists is a subconscious-intuitive contemplation of secret meanings, accessible only to the artist-creator. Moreover, it is impossible to rationally convey the contemplated “secrets”. According to the greatest theorist among symbolists, Vyacheslav Ivanov, poetry is “the secret writing of the ineffable.” The artist is required not only to have super-rational sensitivity, but also to have the subtlest mastery of the art of allusion: the value of poetic speech lies in “understatement,” “hiddenness of meaning.” The main means of conveying the contemplated secret meanings and a symbol was called upon.

Symbolism tried to create new philosophy culture, sought, after going through a painful period of revaluation of values, to develop a new universal worldview. Having overcome the extremes of individualism and subjectivism, the symbolists at the dawn of the new century raised the question of public role artists, began to move towards the creation of such forms of art, the experience of which could unite people again.

Symbolist poets

Alexander Blok

Bryusov Valery

Gippius Zinaida

Ivanov Vyacheslav

Acmeism(from Greek akme - highest degree something, blossoming, maturity, peak, edge) is one of the modernist movements in Russian poetry of the 1910s, formed as a reaction to the extremes of symbolism.

The Acmeists strove for sensual plastic-material clarity of the image and accuracy, precision of the poetic word. Their “earthly” poetry is prone to intimacy, aestheticism and poeticization of the feelings of primordial man. Acmeism was characterized by extreme apoliticality, complete indifference to the pressing problems of our time.

If in the poetry of symbolism the determining factor was a certain mystery, covered with an aura of mysticism, then a realistic view of things was set as the cornerstone in the poetry of Acmeism. The vague vagueness and vagueness of the symbols was replaced by precise ones. verbal images. The word, according to Acmeists, should have acquired its original meaning.

Acmeists often turn to mythological subjects and images. Distinctive feature The Acmeist circle of poets was their “organizational cohesion.” Essentially, the Acmeists were not so much an organized movement with a common theoretical platform, but rather a group of talented and very different poets who were united by personal friendship. They gave their union the significant name “Workshop of Poets.”

The main ideas of Acmeism were presented in the program articles by N. Gumilyov “The Heritage of Symbolism and Acmeism” and S. Gorodetsky “Some Trends in Modern Russian Poetry.” S. Gorodetsky believed that “symbolism... having filled the world with “correspondences”, turned it into a phantom, important only insofar as it... shines through with other worlds, and belittled its high intrinsic value. Among the Acmeists, the rose again became good in itself, with its petals, scent and color, and not with its conceivable likenesses with mystical love or anything else.”

Basic principles of Acmeism:

Liberating poetry from symbolist appeals to the ideal, returning it to clarity;
- rejection of the mystical nebula, acceptance earthly world in its diversity, visible concreteness, sonority, colorfulness;
- the desire to give a word a specific, precise meaning;
- objectivity and clarity of images, precision of details;
- appeal to a person, to the “authenticity” of his feelings;
- poeticization of the world of primordial emotions, primitive biological natural principles;
- roll call with the past literary eras, the broadest aesthetic associations, “longing for world culture.”

Acmeist poets

Akhmatova Anna

Gumilev Nikolay

Mandelstam Osip

Sergey Gorodetsky

Mikhail Zenkevich

Vladimir Narbut

Futurism(from Latin futurum - future) - common name artistic avant-garde movements of the 1910s - early 1920s. XX century, primarily in Italy and Russia.

This movement claimed to build a new art - “the art of the future”, speaking under the slogan of a nihilistic negation of all previous artistic experience.

Futurists preached the destruction of the forms and conventions of art in order to merge it with the accelerated life process of the 20th century. They are characterized by a reverence for action, movement, speed, strength and aggression; exaltation of oneself and contempt for the weak; the priority of force, the rapture of war and destruction were asserted. In this regard, futurism in its ideology was very close to both right-wing and left-wing radicals: anarchists, fascists, communists, focused on the revolutionary overthrow of the past.

The idea of ​​the exhaustion of the cultural tradition of previous centuries was the starting point of the aesthetic platform of the Cubo-Futurists. Their manifesto, which bore the deliberately scandalous title “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste,” became the programmatic one. It declared a rejection of the art of the past, and there were calls to “throw out Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc., etc. from the steamship of modern times."

However, despite the rather harsh tone and polemical style of the manifesto, the almanac expressed many ideas about ways further development art, the convergence of poetry and painting. Behind the external bravado of its authors there was a serious attitude towards creativity. And the famous shocking phrase about Pushkin, which seemingly does not allow for other interpretations, was explained by Khlebnikov, to whom, in fact, it belonged, in a completely different way: “Budetlyanin is Pushkin in coverage of the world war, in the cloak of the new century, teaching the right of the century to laugh over Pushkin of the 19th century” and no longer sounded shocking. Russian futurism did not develop into a coherent artistic system; this term denoted a variety of trends in the Russian avant-garde. The system was the avant-garde itself. And it was dubbed futurism in Russia by analogy with Italian. And this movement turned out to be much more heterogeneous than the symbolism and acmeism that preceded it.

One of the founders of the movement, V. Khlebnikov was actively involved in revolutionary changes in the field of the Russian language. In an effort to expand the boundaries of the language and its capabilities, he worked hard to create new words. According to his theory, the word is deprived of its semantic meaning, acquiring a subjective coloring: “We understand vowels as time and space (the nature of aspiration), consonants - paint, sound, smell.”

Very soon the words “futurist” and “hooligan” became synonymous for the modern moderate public. The press followed with delight the “exploits” of the creators of new art. This contributed to their popularity among wide circles of the population, aroused increased interest, and attracted more and more attention.

The main features of futurism:

Rebellion, anarchy, expression of the mass mood of the crowd;
- denial of cultural traditions, an attempt to create art aimed at the future;
- rebellion against the usual norms of poetic speech, experimentation in the field of rhythm, rhyme, focus on the spoken verse;
- experiments to create an “abstruse” language;
- cult of technology, industrial cities;
- the pathos of shocking.

Futurist poets:

Burliuk David

Vvedensky Alexander

Kamensky Vasily

Mayakovsky Vladimir

Severyanin Igor

Khlebnikov Velimir

Imagism(from French and English image - image) - a literary and artistic movement that arose in Russia in the first post-revolutionary years on the basis of the literary practice of futurism.

Imagism was the last sensational school in Russian poetry of the 20th century. This direction was created two years after the revolution, but in all its content it had nothing in common with the revolution.

The theory of imagism proclaimed the primacy of the “image as such” as the main principle of poetry. Not a word-symbol with an infinite number of meanings (symbolism), not a word-sound (cubo-futurism), not a word-name of a thing (Acmeism), but a word-metaphor with one specific meaning is the basis of imagism. In their Declaration, the Imagists argued that “the only law of art, the only and incomparable method is the revelation of life through the image and rhythm of images... The image, and only the image, is the instrument of production of the master of art... Only the image, like mothballs pouring over the work, saves this latter from pray for time. The image is the armor of the line.” The theoretical justification for this principle was reduced by the Imagists to likening poetic creativity to the process of language development through metaphor.

Essentially, there was nothing particularly new in their techniques, as well as in their “imagery”. “Imagism” as one of the techniques of artistic creativity was widely used not only by futurism, but also by symbolism. What was new was only the tenacity with which the Imagists brought the image to the fore and reduced everything in poetry to it - both content and form.

A characteristic feature of the development of Russian poetry in the first decades of the 20th century was that each literary movement was born under the sign of an irreconcilable struggle and rivalry with its predecessors. And if the beginning of the 1910s passed under the sign of “overcoming symbolism” by the Acmeists and Futurists, then Imagism, which arose at the end of the decade, designated the ultimate goal of its struggle as “overcoming Futurism,” with which it essentially had a family relationship: “A baby, a loud-mouthed guy, died ten years old (born 1909 - died 1919) - Futurism died. Let’s strike out in unison: death to futurism and futurism!”

In five years active work The imagists were able to win a loud, although scandalous fame. Poetic debates constantly took place, where the masters of the new movement very successfully proved to others the superiority of the newly invented poetic system over all previous ones.

The actions of the Imagists sometimes went beyond the generally accepted norms of behavior. These include painting the walls of the Strastnoy Monastery with blasphemous inscriptions, and the “renaming” of Moscow streets (the “Tverskaya” sign was changed to “Yeseninskaya”), etc. In 1919, the Imagists demanded nothing less than “separation of the state from art” .

The relations of imagists with the authorities - due to the peculiarities of their creative position, extra-literary connections and historical moment - require special attention. Imagists, due to their scandalous, bohemian lifestyle, often fell into the hands of the police and Cheka workers. The only thing that helped them out was their numerous connections with the same security officers.

The main features of imagism:

Imagist poets

Yesenin Sergey

Ivnev Rurik

Mariengof Anatoly

Shershenevich Vadim

The pearls of the Silver Age were the poets, not belonging to any of the literary schools and movements.

Bunin Ivan

Pasternak Boris

Tsvetaeva Marina

The term literary movement usually denotes a group of writers connected by a common ideological position and artistic principles within the same direction or artistic movement. Thus, modernism is the general name for various groups in the art and literature of the 20th century, which distinguishes a departure from classical traditions, the search for new aesthetic principles, new approach to the depiction of existence - includes such movements as impressionism, expressionism, surrealism, existentialism, acmeism, futurism, imagism, etc.

The belonging of artists to one direction or current does not exclude deep differences their creative personalities. In turn, in the individual creativity of writers, the features of various literary movements and movements may appear. For example, O. Balzac, being a realist, creates romantic novel“Shagreen skin”, and M. Yu. Lermontov, along with romantic works, writes realistic novel"Hero of our time".

Current – ​​smaller unit literary process, often within a direction, is characterized by existence in a certain historical period and, as a rule, localization in certain literature. The movement is also based on a commonality of substantive principles, but the similarity of ideological and artistic concepts is more clearly manifested. Often the community of artistic principles in a flow forms an “artistic system.” Thus, within the framework of French classicism, two movements are distinguished. One is based on the tradition of the rationalistic philosophy of R. Descartes (“Cartesian rationalism”), which includes the work of P. Corneille, J. Racine, N. Boileau. Another movement, based primarily on the sensualist philosophy of P. Gassendi, expressed itself in ideological principles such writers as J. Lafontaine, J. B. Moliere. In addition, both movements differ in the system of artistic means used. In romanticism, two main movements are often distinguished - “progressive” and “conservative”, but there are other classifications.

The writer’s belonging to one direction or another (as well as the desire to remain outside the existing trends of literature) presupposes a free, personal expression of the author’s worldview, his aesthetic and ideological positions. This fact is associated with the rather late emergence of directions and trends in European literature - the period of the New Age, when the personal, authorial principle becomes the leading one in literary creativity. In that fundamental difference modern literary process from the development of literature of the Middle Ages, in which the content and formal features of texts were “predetermined” by tradition and “canon”. The peculiarity of directions and trends is that these communities are based on the deep unity of philosophical, aesthetic and other substantive principles of largely different, individually authored artistic systems.

Directions and currents should be distinguished from literary schools (and literary groups).

Literary school

A literary school is a small association of writers based on common artistic principles, formulated theoretically - in articles, manifestos, scientific and journalistic statements, formalized as “statutes” and “rules”. Often such an association of writers has a leader, the “head of the school” (“Shchedrin school”, poets of the “Nekrasov school”).

As a rule, writers who have created a number of literary phenomena with a high degree of generality – even to the point of common theme, style, and language. This, for example, was the case in the 16th century. group "Pleiad". It grew out of a circle of French humanist poets who united to study ancient literature, and finally took shape by the end of the 1540s. It was headed by the famous poet P. de Ronsard, and the main theorist was Joachin Du Bellay, who in 1549, in his treatise “Defense and Glorification of the French Language,” expressed the main principles of the school’s activities - the development of national poetry in the national language, the development of ancient and Italian poetic forms . The poetic practice of Ronsard, Jodel, Baif and Tillard - the poets of the Pleiades - not only brought glory to the school, but also laid the foundations for the development of French drama in the 17th–18th centuries, and developed French literary language and various genres of lyrics.

Unlike the movement, which is not always formalized by manifestos, declarations and other documents that reflect its basic principles, the school is almost always characterized by such speeches. What is important in it is not only the presence of common artistic principles shared by the writers, but also their theoretical awareness of their belonging to the school. "Pleiad" fits this perfectly.

But many associations of writers, called schools, are named after the place of their existence, although the similarity of the artistic principles of the writers of such associations may not be so obvious. For example, the “Lake School,” named after the place where it arose (north-west England, the Lake District), consisted of romantic poets who did not agree with each other on everything. The “Leucists” include W. Wordsworth, S. Coleridge, who created the collection “Lyrical Ballads,” as well as R. Southey, T. de Quincey and J. Wilson. But the poetic practice of the latter was in many ways different from the ideologist of the school, Wordsworth. De Quincey himself in his memoirs denied the existence of the “Lake School,” and Southey often criticized Wordsworth’s ideas and poems. But due to the fact that the association of leukist poets existed, had similar aesthetic and artistic principles reflected in poetic practice, and set out its “program,” literary historians traditionally call this group of poets the “lake school.”

The concept of "literary school" is primarily historical, not typological. In addition to the criteria of the unity of time and place of existence of the school, the presence of manifestos, declarations and similar artistic practices, literary circles are often groups united by a “leader” who has followers who successively develop or copy his artistic principles. A group of English religious poets of the early 17th century. formed the Spencer School. Influenced by the poetry of their teacher, the Fletcher brothers, W. Brown and J. Wither imitated the imagery, themes, and poetic forms of the creator of The Fairy Queen. The poets of Spenser's school even copied the type of stanza he created for this poem, directly borrowing the allegories and stylistic turns of their teacher. An interesting fact is that the work of the followers of Spencer’s poetic school remained on the periphery of the literary process, but the work of E. Spencer himself influenced the poetry of J. Milton, and later J. Keats.

Traditionally, the origin of Russian realism is associated with the “natural school” that existed in the 1840–1850s, which was successively associated with the work of N.V. Gogol and developed his artistic principles. The “natural school” is characterized by many of the features of the concept “literary school,” and it was precisely as a “literary school” that it was recognized by its contemporaries. The main ideologist of the “natural school” was V. G. Belinsky. It includes the early works of I. A. Goncharov, N. A. Nekrasov, A. I. Herzen, V. I. Dahl, A. N. Ostrovsky, I. I. Panaev, F. M. Dostoevsky. Representatives of the “natural school” were grouped around leading literary magazines of that time - first "Notes of the Fatherland", and then "Contemporary". The program collections for the school were “Physiology of St. Petersburg” and “Petersburg Collection”, in which the works of these writers and articles by V. G. Belinsky were published. The school had its own system of artistic principles, which was most clearly manifested in a special genre - the physiological essay, as well as in the realistic development of the genres of the story and novel. “The content of the novel,” wrote V. G. Belinsky, “is an artistic analysis modern society, the revelation of those invisible foundations of him, which are hidden from him by habit and unconsciousness." The features of the "natural school" were also manifested in its poetics: love for details, professional, everyday features, extremely accurate recording social types, the desire for documentation, and the emphasized use of statistical and ethnographic data became integral features of the works of the “natural school.” In the novels and stories of Goncharov, Herzen, early work Saltykov-Shchedrin revealed the evolution of the character, which occurs under the influence of the social environment. Of course, the style and language of the authors of the “natural school” were different in many ways, but the common themes, positivist-oriented philosophy, and similarity of poetics can be traced in many of their works. Thus, the “natural school” is an example of a combination of many principles of school education - a certain time and space framework, unity of aesthetic and philosophical attitudes, common formal features, continuity in relation to the “leader,” the presence of theoretical declarations.

Examples of schools in the modern literary process are the “Lianozov Group of Poets”, the “Order of Courtly Mannerists” and many other literary associations.

However, it should be noted that the literary process is not limited to the coexistence and struggle of literary groups, schools, movements and trends. To consider it in this way means to schematize the literary life of the era, to impoverish the history of literature, since with such a “directional” approach the most important individual features of the writer’s work remain outside the field of view of the researcher looking for general, often schematic moments. Even the leading direction of any period, the aesthetic basis of which has become a platform for the artistic practice of many authors, cannot exhaust the entire variety of literary facts. Many prominent writers deliberately stood aloof from the literary struggle, asserting their ideological, aesthetic and artistic principles outside the framework of schools, movements, and leading directions of a certain era. Directions, trends, schools are, in the words of V. M. Zhirmunsky, “not shelves or boxes”, “on which we “arrange” poets.” “If a poet, for example, is a representative of the era of romanticism, this does not mean that there cannot be realistic tendencies in his work.” The literary process is a complex and diverse phenomenon, therefore one should operate with such categories as “flow” and “direction” with extreme caution. In addition to them, scientists use other terms when studying the literary process, for example style.

• Belinsky V. G. Complete collection works: in 13 volumes. T. 10. M., 1956. P. 106.
• Zhirmunsky V. M. Introduction to literary criticism. St. Petersburg, 1996. P. 419.

Literature lesson in 9th grade No. 1. Introduction. Literary trends, schools, movements.

Goals :

introduce students to the textbook, program and objectives of the literature course in 9th grade;

generalize knowledge, expand ideas about the stages of development of domestic literature;

begin to review literary types and genres, generalize and systematize what was learned in 8th grade.

Lesson type: Lecture with elements of conversation.

Teaching methods: Frontal survey, work with a textbook, thesis notes.

Theoretical and literary concepts: literary situation, historical and literary process, literary direction.

Repetition: literary genera and genres.

During the classes:

Repetition of what has been covered:

What is literature?

Define the concept of “literature” (the art of words).

What's happened classic literature? Give examples of classics of the 18th -19th centuries.

To which literary family and genre include the works of A.S. Pushkin: “Winter Morning”, “Song of the Prophetic Oleg”, “The Tale of Tsar Saltan”, “Dubrovsky”, “ Stationmaster»?

Work with the textbook (part 1, pp. 3-5); write down theses.

A word from the teacher about the features of S.A. Zimin’s educational complex.

What's new in the content of the textbook?

On what principle is it located? educational material? (chronology)

What writers and genres of works are of interest?

Lecture. Recording theses and definitions.

4.1.Historical and literary process

***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 development of the literary process is determined by the following artistic systems: creative method, style, genre, literary directions and trends.

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.).

*** Can be selected main stages 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, it should be noted historical situation (socio-political system, ideology, etc.), the influence of previous literary traditions and the artistic experience of other peoples . 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 - This a complex system literary interactions. It represents the formation, functioning and change of various literary trends and trends.

***Literary direction - a stable and repeating circle of the main features of creativity in one or another period of the historical development of literature, expressed in the nature of the selection of phenomena of reality and in the corresponding principles for the choice of means of artistic depiction among a number of writers.

4.2. Literary movements: classicism, sentimentalism, romanticism, realism, modernism (symbolism, acmeism, futurism), postmodernism

Classicism (from Latin classicus - exemplary) - artistic direction in European art of the turn of the XVII-XVIII - early XIX century, formed in France at the end of the 17th century. Classicism asserted the primacy of state interests over personal interests, the predominance of civil, patriotic motives, 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, D.I. Fonvizin and others.

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 genre system. All genres were divided into high (ode, epic poem, tragedy) and low (comedy, fable, epigram, satire).

Special rules existed for dramatic works. They had to observe three “unities” - place, time and action. · 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, while 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.

Sentimentalism (from English sentimental - sensitive, from French sentiment - feeling) - literary direction of the second half of the XVIII century, which replaced classicism. Sentimentalists proclaimed the primacy of feeling, not reason. Unlike classicists, sentimentalists consider the highest value not the state, but the person. The heroes in their works are clearly divided into positive and negative. Positive people are endowed with natural sensitivity (responsive, kind, compassionate, capable of self-sacrifice). Negative - calculating, selfish, arrogant, cruel. 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 century. Romanticism arose in the 1790s, first in Germany, and then spread throughout Western Europe.

All romantics reject the world, hence their romantic escape from existing life and the search for an ideal outside of it. This gave rise to the emergence of a romantic dual world.

Rejection and denial of reality determined the specifics of the romantic hero. 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. The romantic hero is the embodiment of romantic rebellion against reality.

Realism (from the Latin realis - material, real) - a literary movement that embodies the principles of a life-truthful attitude to reality, aimed at artistic knowledge of man and the world.

Realist writers showed the direct dependence of the social, moral, religious ideas of heroes on social conditions, much attention was paid to the social and everyday aspect. The central problem of realism is the relationship between verisimilitude and artistic truth.

Realist writers create new types of heroes: the “ little man“(Vyrin, Bashmachkin, Marmeladov, Devushkin), the type of “superfluous man” (Chatsky, Onegin, Pechorin, Oblomov), the type of “new” hero (nihilist Bazarov in Turgenev, “new people” of Chernyshevsky).

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

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 known in France in the 1860s and 1870s.

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.

The image-symbol is fundamentally polysemantic and contains the prospect of limitless development of meanings

Acmeism (from the Greek akme - the highest degree of 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 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.

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 greatest development in Italy and Russia.

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 “ new world, today, 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.

POSTMODERNISM - a literary movement that replaced modernism and differs from it not so much in originality as in the variety of elements, quotation, immersion in culture, reflecting the complexity, chaos of the modern world; “spirit of literature” of the late 20th century; literature of the era of world wars, scientific and technological revolution and information “explosion”.

5. Lesson summary. What is the power and potential of literature? Why has reading books become a thing today? a rare occurrence? Try to assess this situation.

6.Homework :

1.p.6-9 (write out theses. Specifics of Old Russian literature);

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 trends.

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 trends.

Literary directions and trends:

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 grouping, 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 main aesthetic principles 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, there are 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, while positive heroes, choosing between feeling and reason, 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 is at the core creative method 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 bearers 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 often depicted in pastoral colors. New content required new form. The leading genres were family novel, diary, confession, novel in letters, travel notes, elegy, epistle.

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- an 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 upper nobility), while 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 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 Patriotic War 1812, clearly showing greatness and strength 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, crowded out of public life, were 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 looked for “there” in 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 a tragic fate. The romantic hero is the embodiment of 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 a 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 the plays of Beaumarchais “ 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 of realism is the typification of characters (the fusion of the typical and the individual, the 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 type of “little man” (Vyrin, Bashmachkin, Marmeladov, Devushkin), the type of “superfluous man” (Chatsky, Onegin, Pechorin, Oblomov), the type of “new” hero (nihilist Bazarov in Turgenev, “ new people" by Chernyshevsky).

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

This term has different interpretations:

1. denotes a number of non-realistic movements in art and literature at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries: symbolism, futurism, acmeism, expressionism, cubism, imagism, surrealism, abstractionism, 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 modernist movements themselves, 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-realist movement in art and literature of the 1870s-1920s, focused mainly on artistic expression through symbols 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. The symbolists argued that the purpose of art was not to depict the real world, which they considered secondary, but to convey a “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 did not directly name the object, but hinted at its content through allegory, musicality, colors, and 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 the “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 symbolists as a more effective tool than an 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- the highest degree of 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: 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.