Russian realism of the 20th century in literature plum. Russian realism of the late 19th – early 20th centuries and its development
Realism, as we know, appeared in Russian literature in the first half of the 19th century and throughout the century existed within the framework of its critical movement. However, symbolism, which made itself known in the 1890s - the first modernist movement in Russian literature - sharply contrasted itself with realism. Following symbolism, other non-realistic trends arose. This inevitably led to qualitative transformation of realism as a method of depicting reality.
Symbolists expressed the opinion that realism only skims the surface of life and is not able to penetrate to the essence of things. Their position was not infallible, but since then it began in Russian art confrontation and mutual influence of modernism and realism.
It is noteworthy that modernists and realists, while outwardly striving for demarcation, internally had a common desire for a deep, essential knowledge of the world. It is not surprising, therefore, that the writers of the turn of the century, who considered themselves realists, understood how narrow the framework of consistent realism was, and began to master syncretic forms of storytelling that allowed them to combine realistic objectivity with romantic, impressionistic and symbolist principles.
If the realists of the 19th century paid close attention social human nature, then realists of the twentieth century correlated this social nature with psychological, subconscious processes, expressed in the clash of reason and instinct, intellect and feeling. Simply put, realism of the early twentieth century pointed to the complexity of human nature, which is by no means reducible only to his social existence. It is no coincidence that in Kuprin, Bunin, and Gorky, the plan of events and the surrounding situation are barely outlined, but a sophisticated analysis of the character’s mental life is given. The author's gaze is always directed beyond the spatial and temporal existence of the heroes. Hence the emergence of folklore, biblical, cultural motifs and images, which made it possible to expand the boundaries of the narrative and attract the reader to co-creation.
At the beginning of the 20th century, within the framework of realism, four currents:
1) critical realism continues the traditions of the 19th century and involves an emphasis on social nature phenomena (at the beginning of the 20th century these are the works of A.P. Chekhov and L.N. Tolstoy),
2) socialist realism - a term by Ivan Gronsky, denoting an image of reality in its historical and revolutionary development, an analysis of conflicts in the context of class struggle, and the actions of heroes - in the context of benefits for humanity ("Mother" by M. Gorky, and subsequently most of his works Soviet writers),
3) mythological realism took shape back in ancient literature, however, in the 20th century under M.R. began to understand the depiction and understanding of reality through the prism of well-known mythological plots (in foreign literature a shining example serves as the novel "Ulysses" by J. Joyce, and in Russian literature of the early 20th century - the story "Judas Iscariot" by L.N. Andreeva)
4) naturalism involves depicting reality with extreme plausibility and detail, often unsightly ("The Pit" by A.I. Kuprin, "Sanin" by M.P. Artsybashev, "Notes of a Doctor" by V.V. Veresaev)
The listed features of Russian realism caused numerous disputes about the creative method of writers who remained faithful to realistic traditions.
Bitter starts with neo-romantic prose and comes to the creation social plays and novels, becomes the founder of socialist realism.
Creation Andreeva was always in a borderline state: modernists considered him a “despicable realist,” and for realists, in turn, he was a “suspicious symbolist.” At the same time, it is generally accepted that his prose is realistic, and his dramaturgy gravitates toward modernism.
Zaitsev, showing interest in the microstates of the soul, created impressionistic prose.
Attempts by critics to define artistic method Bunina led to the writer himself comparing himself to a suitcase covered with a huge amount shortcuts.
The complex worldview of realist writers and the multidirectional poetics of their works testified to the qualitative transformation of realism as an artistic method. Thanks to a common goal - the search for the highest truth - at the beginning of the 20th century there was a rapprochement between literature and philosophy, which began in the works of Dostoevsky and L. Tolstoy.
19. THE MODERN ERA IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE. MAIN CURRENTS AND THEIR FEATURES...
Modernism is a single artistic stream. The branches of modernism: symbolism, acmeism and futurism - had their own characteristics.
In Russia, symbolism arose in the 90s. 19th century and at its initial stage (K. D. Balmont, early V. Ya. Bryusov and A. Dobrolyubov, and later B. Zaitsev, I. F. Annensky, Remizov) developed a style of decadent impressionism, similar to French symbolism.
Russian symbolists of the 1900s. (V. Ivanov, A. Bely, A. A. Blok, as well as D. S. Merezhkovsky, S. Solovyov and others), trying to overcome pessimism and passivity, proclaimed the slogan of effective art, the predominance of creativity over knowledge.
The material world is depicted by symbolists as a mask through which the otherworldly shines through. Dualism finds expression in the two-plane composition of novels, dramas and “symphonies”. The world of real phenomena, everyday life or conventional fiction is depicted grotesquely, discredited in the light of “transcendental irony”. Situations, images, their movement receive a double meaning: in terms of what is depicted and in terms of what is commemorated.
A symbol is a bundle of meanings that diverge in different directions. The symbol's task is to present matches.
Symbolism also creates its own words - symbols. First, high poetic words are used for such symbols, then simple ones. Symbolists believed that it was impossible to exhaust the meaning of a symbol.
Symbolism avoids the logical disclosure of the topic, turning to the symbolism of sensual forms, the elements of which receive a special semantic richness. Logically inexpressible “secret” meanings “shine through” the material world of art. By putting forward sensory elements, symbolism moves away at the same time from the impressionistic contemplation of scattered and self-sufficient sensory impressions, into the motley stream of which symbolization introduces a certain integrity, unity and continuity.
The task of the symbolists is to show that the world is full of secrets that cannot be discovered.
The lyrics of symbolism are often dramatized or acquire epic features, revealing the structure of “generally significant” symbols, rethinking the images of ancient and Christian mythology. The genre of religious poem, symbolically interpreted legend is being created (S. Solovyov, D. S. Merezhkovsky). The poem loses its intimacy and becomes like a sermon, a prophecy (V. Ivanov, A. Bely).
New modernist movement acmeism, appeared in Russian poetry in the 1910s. as a contrast to extreme symbolism. Translated from Greek, the word “akme” means the highest degree of something, blossoming, maturity. The Acmeists advocated the return of images and words to their original meaning, for art for art's sake, for the poeticization of human feelings. Refusal of mysticism was the main feature of the Acmeists.
For the Symbolists, the main thing is rhythm and music, the sound of the word, while for the Acmeists it is form and eternity, objectivity.
In 1912, poets S. Gorodetsky, N. Gumilyov, O. Mandelstam, V. Narbut, A. Akhmatova, M. Zenkevich and some others united in the “Workshop of Poets” circle.
The founders of Acmeism were N. Gumilyov and S. Gorodetsky. The Acmeists called their work the highest point in achieving artistic truth. They did not deny symbolism, but were against the fact that the symbolists paid so much attention to the world of the mysterious and unknown. The Acmeists pointed out that the unknowable, by the very meaning of the word, cannot be known. Hence the desire of the Acmeists to free literature from those obscurities that were cultivated by the symbolists, and to restore clarity and accessibility to it. The Acmeists tried with all their might to return literature to life, to things, to man, to nature. Thus, Gumilev turned to the description of exotic animals and nature, Zenkevich - to the prehistoric life of the earth and man, Narbut - to everyday life, Anna Akhmatova - to in-depth love experiences.
The desire for nature, for the “earth” led the Acmeists to a naturalistic style, to specific imagery, objective realism, which determined whole line artistic techniques. In the poetry of the Acmeists, “heavy, weighty words” predominate; the number of nouns significantly exceeds the number of verbs.
Having carried out this reform, the Acmeists otherwise agreed with the Symbolists, declaring themselves their students. The other world for Acmeists remains the truth; only they do not make it the center of their poetry, although the latter is sometimes not alien to mystical elements. Gumilyov’s works “The Lost Tram” and “At the Gypsies” are completely permeated with mysticism, and in Akhmatova’s collections, like “The Rosary,” love-religious experiences predominate.
The Acmeists returned everyday scenes.
The Acmeists were by no means revolutionaries in relation to symbolism, and never considered themselves as such; They set as their main task only the smoothing out of contradictions and the introduction of amendments.
In the part where the Acmeists rebelled against the mysticism of symbolism, they did not oppose the latter to real real life. Having rejected mysticism as the main leitmotif of creativity, the Acmeists began to fetishize things as such, unable to approach reality synthetically and understand its dynamics. For Acmeists, things in reality have meaning in themselves, in a static state. They admire individual objects of existence, and perceive them as they are, without criticism, without attempts to understand them in relationship, but directly, in an animal way.
Basic principles of Acmeism:
Refusal of symbolist calls for the ideal, mystical nebula;
Acceptance of the earthly world as it is, in all its color and diversity;
Returning a word to its original meaning;
A depiction of a person with his true feelings;
Poeticization of the world;
Incorporating associations with previous eras into poetry.
Acmeism did not last very long, but made a great contribution to the development of poetry.
Futurism(translated as future) is one of the movements of modernism that originated in the 1910s. It is most clearly represented in the literature of Italy and Russia. On February 20, 1909, the article “Manifesto of Futurism” by T. F. Marinetti appeared in the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro. Marinetti in his manifesto called for abandoning the spiritual and cultural values of the past and building a new art. The main task of futurists is to identify the gap between the present and the future, to destroy everything old and build a new one. Provocations were part of their lives. They opposed bourgeois society.
In Russia, Marinetti's article was published on March 8, 1909 and marked the beginning of the development of its own futurism. The founders of the new trend in Russian literature were the brothers D. and N. Burliuk, M. Larionov, N. Goncharova, A. Ekster, N. Kulbin. In 1910, one of the first futuristic poems by V. Khlebnikov, “The Spell of Laughter,” appeared in the collection “Impressionist Studio.” In the same year, a collection of futurist poets, “The Judges’ Tank,” was published. It contained poems by D. Burliuk, N. Burliuk, E. Guro, V. Khlebnikov, V. Kamensky.
Futurists experience a deformation of language and grammar. Words pile on top of each other, rushing to convey the author’s momentary feelings, so the work looks like a telegraph text. Futurists abandoned syntax and stanzas and came up with new words that, in their opinion, better and more fully reflected reality.
The futurists attached special significance to the seemingly meaningless title of the collection. For them, the fish tank symbolized the cage into which the poets were driven, and they called themselves the judges.
In 1910, the Cubo-Futurists united into a group. It included the Burliuk brothers, V. Khlebnikov, V. Mayakovsky, E. Guro, A. E. Kruchenykh. Cubo-futurists defended the word as such, “the word is higher than the meaning,” “the abstruse word.” Cubo-futurists destroyed Russian grammar, replacing phrases with combinations of sounds. They believed that the more disorder in a sentence, the better.
In 1911, I. Severyanin was one of the first in Russia to proclaim himself an ego-futurist. He added the word “ego” to the term “futurism.” Egofuturism can literally be translated as “I am the future.” A circle of followers of egofuturism rallied around I. Severyanin; in January 1912 they proclaimed themselves the “Academy of Ego Poetry.” Egofuturists have enriched their vocabulary with a large number of foreign words and new formations.
In 1912, the futurists united around the publishing house “Petersburg Herald”. The group included: D. Kryuchkov, I. Severyanin, K. Olimpov, P. Shirokov, R. Ivnev, V. Gnedov, V. Shershenevich.
In Russia, futurists called themselves “Budetlyans,” poets of the future. Futurists, captivated by dynamism, were no longer satisfied with the syntax and vocabulary of the previous era, when there were no cars, no telephones, no phonographs, no cinemas, no airplanes, no electric railways, no skyscrapers, no subways. The poet, filled with a new sense of the world, has a wireless imagination. The poet puts fleeting sensations into the accumulation of words.
Futurists were passionate about politics.
All these directions radically renew the language, the feeling that old literature cannot express the spirit of modernity.
Art Nouveau style is one of the early directions of such a global artistic trend as modernism in art. Thanks to modernism, the artist went beyond traditional realism, discovering something fundamentally new. Our modern culture owes much to such a concept as modernism in fine arts. Artists of the Art Nouveau era, for the most part, I’m not afraid of this word, are geniuses, and rightfully deserve their place in history. But first things first...
The Art Nouveau style in art arose at the end of the nineteenth century: then artists tried to create something original from disparate but generally accepted trends, to give their works some conventionality and abstraction. It is worth mentioning, however, that the term “modern” (French modern - new) is inherent only in Russian culture, since at the end of the nineteenth century Russia had its own modernity in art. In France this style was called Art Nouveau, in Germany and Scandinavia - Art Nouveau. The principles of modernism are based on the idea of the inability of the art of previous eras to fight unfreedom, inhumanity, social injustice, and the inability to capture all this. The main features of modernism are that the artist directs his subjective will to fight against cruel reality, thereby erasing the boundaries of previous ideals.
Modernism in fine art is a cultural layer that covers many concepts, such as impressionism, expressionism, cubism, futurism. And also some later movements: surrealism, Dadaism and so on. The following labored in this field: famous artists Art Nouveau era, such as: Alphonse Mucha, Paul Gauguin, Edvard Munch and others. All these fairly famous people are not just associated with the concept of modernity in the fine arts, but are already synonymous with it.
Here we should turn directly to the work of Alphonse Mucha, a Czech by birth, who gained worldwide fame in France. The so-called “Mukha style”, equated to official name Art Nouveau served as an example to follow for a whole generation of designers.
In the center of his posters, Mucha placed an idealized image of a woman: smooth lines, closeness to natural forms, rejection of pointed corners - these characteristic signs of Art Nouveau left an indelible impression in the minds of recipients. The female image itself was then used for advertising purposes for the first time, but history has shown how successful this experience has become, and is still used to this day by specialists from leading countries in the advertising industry such as the United States. However, we must pay tribute to Mucha: it is difficult to find the slightest hint of sweetness in his works, which cannot be said about his modern analogues. Perhaps the fact that aesthetics played a role here Czech artist was formed under the influence of medieval stories and Celtic mythology. This, on the one hand, introduced a variety of symbolism into his creations, and, on the other hand, contributed to the ornamental complexity of many posters. To organize the consideration of the background of Mucha’s works, it is necessary to introduce a conditional classification:
Floral motifs
Ornament
Ornament using mythical creatures
Mythological symbolism
Floral motifs borrowed from oriental culture, became an integral attribute of the paintings of the Art Nouveau era for many artists: floating stems and pale petals fully corresponded to the Art Nouveau concept, not only with their forms, but also with a combination of colors that had not been combined before. In Mukha’s works one can find clear confirmation of this: pastel colors, exotic outlines, as if repeating the image of a beautiful lady located in the foreground with her unrealistic flying long hair, dressed in light clothes, akin to Greek tunics - all this created a unique harmony and unity due to the interpenetration of elements female figure and background.
Moving on to the consideration of ornament, it should be noted that the most commonly used geometric figure in Mukha’s works the circle appears as a symbol of endless repetition, circulation, and also as a symbol of the feminine principle. Even the advertising inscriptions behind the image of the beautiful lady were located in a semicircle with smoothly outlined letters.
Another motif is a symbolic image of a horseshoe in an enlarged form, with a painted ornament inside. Here again lies a reference to the pagan worldview, not to mention the background images using mythical creatures. Mucha’s creative concept was reflected in every detail of the paintings and posters he created: an emotionally executed figure filled with strength, occupying most of the space, would be unfinished without an appropriate background, combining the features of pictorial and applied arts. Mucha consciously sought a compromise between the Byzantine and Eastern principles, between modernity and rich mythological subjects; he turned exquisite portraits of women into works of mass art and succeeded in this: everyday life has already absorbed new forms.
20. IMAGE OF A MAN AT A SHARP HISTORICAL TURN IN THE NOVEL "QUIET FON"
« Quiet Don» M. Sholokhov is an epic novel that reveals the fate of the people during the First World War and the Civil War. Russian reality has placed at the author's disposal conflicts of this kind that humanity has not yet known. The old world was completely destroyed by revolution, it is being replaced by a new one. social system. All this led to a qualitatively new solution to such “eternal” issues as man and history, war and peace, personality and people. The last problem for this work is especially relevant.
“Quiet Don” is a novel about the fate of the people at a turning point. M. Sholokhov truthfully expressed his view of the revolution not from one side, as was the case in most books of that time, but from both: the bitterness of the tragedy, thoughts and feelings of the whole people, universal to mankind. The dramatic fates of the main characters, the cruel lessons of the fate of Grigory Melekhov, the main character of the novel, as well as Aksinya and Natalya, form a unity in M. Sholokhov life truth people at a historical turning point.
The action in the novel develops on two levels - historical and everyday, personal. But both of these plans are given in indissoluble unity. The patriarchal idyll of Melekhov’s youth is destroyed on a personal level - by his love for Aksinya, on a social level - by Gregory’s clash with cruel contradictions historical reality. The denouement of the novel is also organic. In personal terms, this is the death of Aksinya. In socio-historical terms, this is the defeat of the White Cossack movement and the final triumph Soviet power on the Don.
At the center of the novel is a tragic character - Grigory Melekhov. He personifies the tragedy of the people: this is the tragedy of those who did not realize the meaning of the revolution and opposed it, and those who succumbed to deception, the tragedy of many Cossacks drawn into the Veshensky uprising in 1919, the tragedy of the defenders of the revolution dying for the people's cause.
Grigory Melekhov is a gifted son of the people. First of all, he is an honest man - even in his mistakes. He never sought his own benefit and did not succumb to the temptation of profit and career. Being mistaken, Grigory Melekhov shed a lot of blood. His guilt is undeniable. He himself is aware of it.
But Grigory Melekhov cannot be approached unambiguously. It is impossible not to notice that he has absorbed a whole series of folk traditions: here is the code of military honor, and intense peasant labor, and daring in folk games and festivities, and familiarization with the rich Cossack folklore. From generation to generation, cultivated courage and bravery, nobility and generosity towards the defeated, contempt for cowardice and cowardice determined the behavior of Grigory Melekhov in all life circumstances.
In the novel, Ilyinichna and Natalya are the embodiment of folk morality and unbreakable principles of life. Ilyinichna is the keeper of the family way of life. She consoles her Children when they feel bad, but she also judges them harshly when they commit unrighteous acts. Natalya suffers from Grigory’s dislike, and her suffering is marked by high moral purity.
The novel "Quiet Don" shows the greatest social change
in the fate of the people. Not only the death of the Cossacks as a class is depicted in the book. The greatness of M. Sholokhov lies in the fact that he traces the life of the entire nation, the national destiny. Two worlds of ideas and beliefs collided, and steep historical fault lines occurred. M. Sholokhov's heroes unite the fundamental contradictions of the era and embody national spiritual qualities. This is the strength of Sholokhov's realism.
"Quiet Don" is called an epic tragedy. And not only because the tragic character is placed in the center - Grigory Melekhov, but also because the novel is permeated from beginning to end by tragic motives. This is a tragedy both for those who did not realize the meaning of the revolution and opposed it, and for those who succumbed to deception. This is the tragedy of many Cossacks drawn into the Veshensky uprising in 1919, the tragedy of the defenders of the revolution dying for the people's cause. The people, their past, present and future, their happiness - this is the main theme of the writer’s thoughts.
“Melekhovsky yard is on the very edge of the farmstead” - this is how the epic novel begins, and throughout the entire narrative Sholokhov will tell us about its inhabitants. A line of defense passes through the Melekhovs’ yard; it is occupied either by Reds or Whites, but the father’s house forever remains the place where the closest people live, always ready to receive and warm. Their life appears from the pages of the epic in an interweaving of contradictions, attractions and struggles. One could say that the whole family found itself at the crossroads of major historical events and bloody clashes.
The Revolution and Civil War bring drastic changes to the established family and everyday life of the Melekhovs: the usual family ties are destroyed, new morals and morality are born. The author of "Quiet Don", like no one else, managed to reveal the inner world of a man from the people, to recreate the Russian national character of the era of revolutionary rift. First of all, we meet the head of the family - Pantelei Prokofievich. “Pantelei Prokofievich began to grow heavy down the slope of the sliding years: he spread out in width, slightly stooped, but still looked like a well-built old man.
He was bone-dry, lame (in his youth he broke his leg at an imperial horse racing show), wore a silver crescent-shaped earring in his left ear, his raven beard and hair did not fade into old age, and in anger he reached the point of unconsciousness...” Panteley Prokofievich stands guarding the old Cossack foundations, sometimes showing traits of a tough character that does not tolerate disobedience, but at the same time, at heart he is kind and sensitive. He knows how to manage the household efficiently, he works from dawn to dusk. He, and even more so his son Gregory, bears the reflection of the noble and proud nature of his grandfather Prokofy, who once challenged the patriarchal mores of the Tatarsky farm. Despite the intra-family split, Panteley Prokofievich tries to unite the pieces of the old way of life into one whole, if only for the sake of his grandchildren and children. And the fact that he dies outside the home that he loved more than anything in the world is the tragedy of a man from whom time has taken away the most precious things - family and shelter.
The father passed on the same all-consuming love for his home to his sons. "Senior, already married son his Petro resembled his mother: big, snub-nosed, with wild, wheat-colored hair, brown eyes, and the youngest, Grigory, looked like his father: half a head taller than Peter, at least six years younger, the same drooping kite nose as his father’s, in slightly slanting slits are the bluish almonds of hot eyes, the sharp slabs of cheekbones are covered with brown, ruddy skin. Grigory slouched in the same way as his father, even in their smile they both had something in common, a little beastly.”
With great skill, M. Sholokhov portrayed the complex character of Grigory Melekhov. He is a gifted son of the people, a sincere person, even in his delusions. He never sought his own benefit and did not succumb to the temptation of profit and career. Mistaken, Gregory shed a lot of blood from those who claimed new life on earth, His guilt is undeniable. He himself is aware of it. However, he cannot be judged unambiguously: an enemy, and nothing more. With special insight, Sholokhov showed the difficult path of the main character. At the beginning of the epic, he is an eighteen-year-old guy - cheerful, strong, handsome. Gregory is an exceptionally integral, pure nature. Here is the code of Cossack honor, and intense peasant labor, and daring in folk games and festivities, and familiarization with the rich Cossack folklore, and the feeling of first love. From generation to generation, cultivated courage and bravery, nobility and generosity towards the defeated, contempt for cowardice and cowardice determined Gregory’s behavior in all life circumstances. During the troubled days of revolutionary events, he makes many mistakes. But on the path of searching for truth, the Cossack is sometimes unable to comprehend the iron logic of the revolution, its internal laws. Grigory Melekhov is a proud, freedom-loving person and at the same time a truth-seeking philosopher. For him, the greatness and inevitability of the revolution must be revealed and proven by the entire subsequent course of life. Melekhov dreams of a system of life in which a person would be rewarded according to the measure of his intelligence, work and talent.
What struck me most about the novel was female images: Ilyinichna, Aksinya and Natalya. These women are completely different, but they are united by sublime moral beauty. The image of old Ilyinichna in the novel is filled with charm, personifying the difficult lot of a Cossack woman, her tall moral qualities. Pantelei Melekhov’s wife, Vasilisa Ilyinichna, is a native Cossack woman of the Upper Don region. Life with her husband was not sweet: sometimes, having flared up, he severely beat her; she grew old early, gained weight, suffered from illnesses, but remained a caring, energetic housewife. The reader is captivated by the image of Natalya, a woman of high moral purity and feeling: “her eyes shone with a radiant, quivering warmth.” Strong in character, she put up with the position of an unloved wife for a long time and still hoped for a better life. But he can decisively stand up for himself and his children, and powerfully declare his right to a bright, real life. She curses and loves Gregory endlessly. With unprecedented depth in last days her life reveals the strength of spirit and the captivating moral purity of this heroine. Her happiness came to her. The family was restored, and thanks to Natalya’s asceticism, harmony and love reigned in it. She gave birth to twins: a son and a daughter. Natalya turned out to be just as loving, devoted and caring a mother as she was a wife. This beautiful woman is the embodiment dramatic fate a strong, beautiful, selflessly loving nature that can sacrifice everything, even life, in the name of a high feeling.
Aksinya’s love for Gregory on the pages of the novel borders on feat. And even though we have before us a simple semi-literate Cossack woman, we cannot forget how beautiful the inner world of this woman with a difficult fate is.
The heroes of Sholokhov's epic entered our lives as real people, they live with us and among us. Unfortunately, the Melekhov family still fell apart, but its members were able to create a hearth where the flame of love, warmth and mutual understanding will always glimmer, which will never go out.
For Sholokhov, a person is the most valuable thing on our planet, and the most important thing that helps shape a person’s soul is, first of all, his family, the house in which he was born, grew up, where he will always be expected and loved, and where he will definitely go will return. Two worlds of ideas and beliefs collided, and steep historical fault lines occurred. The heroes of the epic are contemporaries and participants in the turning points of the era, each of whom faced the need to determine their place in a new life, to find their truth. Using the example of the Melekhov family in “Quiet Don”, the greatest social turning point in the fate of the entire people, in the life of the entire nation, is shown.
21. IMAGE OF THE COSSACKS IN SHOLOKHOV’S NOVEL “QUIET FON”
Epic novel by M.A. Sholokhov's "Quiet Don" is rightfully considered his most significant and serious work. The author surprisingly well managed to convey the life and way of life of the Don Cossacks, their very spirit and connect all this with specific historical events. The epic captures a series of great upheavals in Russia. The shocks described in the novel greatly affected the fate of the Don Cossacks. They could not have more clearly defined the life of the Cossacks in that difficult historical period, which Sholokhov reflected in the novel, Eternal values. Love to native land, respect for the older generation, love for women, the need for freedom - these are the basic values without which a free Cossack cannot imagine himself.
Cossacks are warriors and grain growers at the same time. These two concepts define the life of the Cossacks. It must be said that historically the Cossacks developed on the borders of Russia, where enemy raids were frequent, so the Cossacks were forced to take up arms in defense of their land, which was particularly fertile and rewarded the labor invested in it a hundredfold. Later, already under the rule of the Russian Tsar, the Cossacks existed as a privileged military class, which largely determined the preservation of ancient customs and traditions among the Cossacks. Sholokhov shows the Cossacks as very traditional. For example, from an early age, Cossacks get used to a horse, which is not just a tool for them, but a faithful friend in battle and comrade (the description of the crying hero Christoni after Voronok, taken away by the Reds, touches the heart). All of them are brought up in respect for their elders and unquestioning submission to them (Panteley Prokofievich could punish Grigory even when the latter had hundreds and thousands of people under his command). The Cossacks are governed by an ataman, elected by the military Cossack Circle, where Sholokhov’s Panteley Prokofievich is heading.
Teme civil war, which unfolded on the Don land, is dedicated to M. A. Sholokhov’s novel “Quiet Don”. Here we found a deep and comprehensive reflection and unique way of life of the Cossacks, and their traditions, culture, way of life, language, and unique Don nature. The novel is populated by many heroes, full of events in socio-political life, and pictures of peaceful labor. The epic depicts the history of the Cossacks during the turbulent decade from 1912 to 1922. The beginning of the novel depicts the life and customs of the Cossack village on the eve of the First World War, introducing readers into the world of intimate, personal problems of the heroes. Two epigraphs prefacing the novel reveal ideologically artistic design author. Old words Cossack song precede the story of bloody battles, about the class division of the inhabitants of the Tatarsky farm, about the intense search by the heroes for their place in the turbulent revolutionary reality, about their ineradicable attraction to simple human happiness, to peaceful peasant labor on the breadwinner of the earth.
Sholokhov the artist defeated Sholokhov the politician, showing the Cossacks in the revolution. What Soviet literary critics saw as the ideological weakness of the novel turned out to be its greatest achievement. The life reflected in the novel turned out to be much more complex, confusing, and contradictory. Her palette was by no means limited to two colors - red and white. And the brightest, strongest and most attractive hero of the novel - the “irresponsible” middle peasant Grigory Melekhov - deeply feels and understands this truth, but in the most difficult conditions he cannot find a way out of the moral impasse. This is what makes him a tragically complex person. His image went down in the history of Russian literature as Pushkin’s Onegin, Lermontov’s Pechorin, Turgenev’s Bazarov, for it combined the best typical qualities of the Don Cossacks during the years of wars and upheavals of the early 20th century. His fate reflected the tragedy of millions captured by the formidable revolutionary elements. Grigory Melekhov serves either the Reds or the Whites. So, at the end of January 1918, he fought against Kaledin in the ranks of the Red Guard, and then for six months he fought against the Reds as part of the All-Great Don Army, subordinate to General Krasnov, and at the end of the winter of 1920/21 he went to Fomin’s gang.
Realism as a method arose in Russian literature in the first third of the 19th century. The main principle of realism is the principle of life truth, the reproduction of characters and circumstances explained socio-historically (typical characters in typical circumstances).
Realist writers deeply, truthfully depicted different sides their contemporary reality, they recreated life in the forms of life itself.
The basis of the realistic method of the early 19th century are positive ideals: humanism, sympathy for the humiliated and offended, the search for positive hero in life, optimism and patriotism.
By the end of the 19th century, realism reached its peak in the works of such writers as F. M. Dostoevsky, L. N. Tolstoy, A. P. Chekhov.
The twentieth century set new tasks for realist writers and forced them to look for new ways to master life material. In the conditions of rising revolutionary sentiments, literature was increasingly imbued with forebodings and expectations of impending changes, “unheard-of rebellions.”
The feeling of approaching social changes evoked such an intensity of artistic life that had never before been known Russian art. This is what L.N. Tolstoy wrote about the turn of the century: “ New Age brings the end of one worldview, one faith, one way of communicating between people and the beginning of another worldview, another way of communication. M. Gorky called the 20th century the century of spiritual renewal.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, they continued their search for the secrets of existence, the secrets human existence and consciousness of the classics of Russian realism L.N. Tolstoy, A.P. Chekhov, L.N. Andreev, I.A. Bunin and others.
However, the principle of old realism was increasingly criticized by various literary communities, which demanded a more active intervention of the writer into life and influence on it.
This revision was started by L. N. Tolstoy himself, in last years in his life he called for strengthening the didactic, instructive, preaching principle in literature.
If A.P. Chekhov believed that the “court” (i.e., the artist) is obliged only to raise questions, to focus the attention of the thinking reader on important problems, and the “jury” (social structures) is obliged to answer, then for the realist writers of the early twentieth century century, this no longer seemed sufficient.
Thus, M. Gorky directly stated that “for some reason the luxurious mirror of Russian literature did not reflect the outbursts of popular anger ...”, and accused literature of the fact that “it did not look for heroes, it loved to talk about people who were strong only in patience, meek , soft, dreaming of paradise in heaven, silently suffering on earth.”
It was M. Gorky, a realist writer younger generation, was the founder of a new literary direction, which later received the name “socialist realism”.
The literary and social activities of M. Gorky played a significant role in uniting realist writers of the new generation. In the 1890s, on the initiative of M. Gorky, a literary circle"Sreda", and then the publishing house "Znanie". Young, talented writers A.I. gather around this publishing house. Kuprii, I.A. Bunin, L.N. Andreev, A. Serafimovich, D. Bedny and others.
Dispute with traditional realism was conducted at different poles of literature. There were writers who followed the traditional direction, seeking to update it. But there were also those who simply rejected realism as an outdated direction.
In these difficult conditions, in the confrontation of polar methods and trends, the creativity of writers traditionally called realists continued to develop.
The originality of Russian realistic literature of the early twentieth century lies not only in the significance of the content and acute social themes, but also in artistic quests, perfection of technology, and stylistic diversity.
First half. 20th century - an abundance of experiments in literature, new forms, new techniques, new religions are invented. Modernism of the 20th century enters a new stage, which is called. "avant-garde" But the most striking direction is Realism. Along with tard. Classic Forms of realism in the 20th century. In this direction, fantastic absurdity, dream poetics, and deformation are widely used. 20th century realism is distinguished by its use of previously incompatible techniques. In the literature, a concept of man is emerging. The concept's range has expanded throughout the century. Discoveries occur in the field of psychology - Freud, existentialism and the teachings of Marxists appear. Paraliterature, that is, mass literature, appears. It is not art, it is popular commercial literature that brings instant income. Mass art is a convenient means of manipulating consciousness. Mass culture must be controlled.
The main themes are the theme of war, socio-political catastrophes, the tragedy of the individual (the tragedy of the individual who seeks justice and loses spiritual harmony), the problem of faith and unbelief, the relationship between the personal and the collective, morality and politics, problems of the spiritual and ethical.
Features of realism of the 20th century - abandoned the priority of the principle of imitation. Realism began to use methods of indirect knowledge of the world. In the 19th century, a descriptive form was used, in the 20th century - analytical research (the effect of detachment, irony, subtext, grotesque, fantastic and conditional modeling. Realism of the 20th century began to actively use many modernist techniques - stream of consciousness, suggestiveness, absurdity. Realism becomes more philosophical, philosophy enters literature as a technique deeply penetrating into the structure of a work, which means the genre of parables develops (Camus, Kafka).
The heroes of realism also change. The person is portrayed as more complex, unpredictable. The literature of realism poses more complex tasks - to penetrate into the sphere of the irrational, into the sphere of the subconscious, exploring the sphere of instincts.
The novel remains a genre, but its genre palette changes. It becomes more diverse, uses other genre varieties. There is an interpenetration of genres. In the 20th century, the structure of the novel loses its normativity. There is a turn from society to the individual, from the social to the individual, and interest in the subject dominates. A subjective epic appears (Proust) - individual consciousness is at the center and it is the object of study.
Along with new trends, the trend of classical realism continues to exist. Realism is a living and developing method, a discovery of past masters and constantly enriched with new techniques and images.
For a long time, literary criticism was dominated by the assertion that in the end XIX century Russian realism was experiencing a deep crisis, a period of decline, under the sign of which realistic literature of the beginning of the new century developed until the emergence of a new creative method - socialist realism.
However, the state of literature itself contradicts this statement. The crisis of bourgeois culture, which sharply manifested itself at the end of the century on a global scale, cannot be mechanically identified with the development of art and literature.
Russian culture of this time had its own negative sides, but they were not comprehensive. Russian literature, always associated in its peak phenomena with progressive social thought, did not change this in the 1890-1900s, marked by the rise of social protest.
The growth of the labor movement, which showed the emergence of a revolutionary proletariat, the emergence of a Social Democratic Party, peasant unrest, the all-Russian scale of student uprisings, frequent expressions of protest by the progressive intelligentsia, one of which was a demonstration at the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg in 1901 - all this spoke of a decisive a turning point in public sentiment in all layers of Russian society.
A new revolutionary situation arose. Passivity and pessimism of the 80s. were overcome. Everyone was filled with anticipation of decisive changes.
To talk about the crisis of realism at the time of the heyday of Chekhov’s talent, the emergence of a talented galaxy of young democratic writers (M. Gorky, V. Veresaev, I. Bunin, A. Kuprin, A. Serafimovich, etc.), at the time of Leo Tolstoy’s appearance with the novel “ Resurrection" is impossible. In the 1890-1900s. literature was not experiencing a crisis, but a period of intense creative search.
Realism was changing (the problems of literature and its artistic principles), but did not lose its strength and its significance. His critical pathos, which reached its utmost power in “Resurrection,” did not dry out either. Tolstoy gave in his novel a comprehensive analysis of Russian life, its social institutions, its morality, its “virtue” and everywhere he discovered social injustice, hypocrisy and lies.
G. A. Byaly rightly wrote: “The revealing power of the Russian critical realism at the end of the 19th century, during the years of immediate preparation for the first revolution, it reached such a degree that not only major events in people’s lives, but also the smallest everyday facts began to appear as symptoms of a completely dysfunctional social order.”
Life had not yet settled down after the reform of 1861, but it was already becoming clear that capitalism in the person of the proletariat was beginning to be confronted by a strong enemy and that the social and economic contradictions in the development of the country were becoming more and more complicated. Russia stood on the threshold of new complex changes and upheavals.
New heroes, showing how the old worldview is collapsing, how established traditions, the foundations of the family, the relationship between fathers and children are being broken - all this spoke of a radical change in the problem of “man and environment”. The hero begins to confront her, and this phenomenon is no longer isolated. Anyone who did not notice these phenomena, who did not overcome the positivistic determinism of his characters, lost the attention of readers.
Russian literature reflected acute dissatisfaction with life, and hope for its transformation, and the volitional tension ripening among the masses. Young M. Voloshin wrote to his mother on May 16 (29), 1901, that the future historian of the Russian revolution “will look for its causes, symptoms and trends in Tolstoy, and in Gorky, and in the plays of Chekhov, just as historians of the French revolution see them in Rousseau and Voltaire and Beaumarchais."
To the fore in realistic literature the beginning of the century, the awakening civic consciousness of people, the thirst for activity, social and moral renewal of society are emerging. V.I. Lenin wrote that in the 70s. “The mass was still sleeping. Only in the early 90s did its awakening begin, and at the same time a new and more glorious period began in the history of all Russian democracy.”
The turn of the century was sometimes filled with romantic expectations that usually preceded major historical events. It was as if the very air was charged with a call to action. The judgment of A. S. Suvorin is noteworthy, who, although not a supporter of progressive views, nevertheless followed Gorky’s work in the 90s with great interest: “Sometimes you read a work by Gorky and feel that you are being lifted out of your chair, that the previous drowsiness is impossible that something needs to be done! And this needs to be done in his writings - it was necessary.”
The tone of literature changed noticeably. Gorky’s words are widely known that the time has come for the heroic. He himself acts as a revolutionary romantic, as a singer of the heroic principle in life. The feeling of a new tone of life was also characteristic of other contemporaries. There is a lot of evidence that readers expected a call to cheerfulness and struggle from writers, and publishers, who caught these sentiments, wanted to promote the emergence of such calls.
Here is one such evidence. On February 8, 1904, the aspiring writer N. M. Kataev reported to Gorky’s friend at the Znanie publishing house K. P. Pyatnitsky that the publisher Orekhov refused to publish a volume of his plays and stories: the publisher’s goal was to print books of “heroic content,” and in Kataev’s works do not even have a “cheerful tone”.
Russian literature reflected the development that began in the 90s. the process of straightening a previously oppressed personality, revealing it in the awakening of the consciousness of workers, and in spontaneous protest against the old world order, and in anarchic rejection of reality, like Gorky’s tramps.
The process of straightening was complex and covered not only the “lower classes” of society. The literature has covered this phenomenon in a variety of ways, showing what unexpected forms it sometimes takes. In this regard, Chekhov turned out to be insufficiently understood, as he sought to show with what difficulty—“bit by drop”—a man overcomes the slave within himself.
Usually the scene of Lopakhin’s return from the auction with the news that the cherry orchard now belonged to him was interpreted in the spirit of the new owner’s intoxication with his material power. But Chekhov has something else behind this.
Lopakhin buys the estate where the gentlemen tortured his powerless relatives, where he himself spent a joyless childhood, where his relative Firs still servilely serves. Lopakhin is intoxicated, but not so much with his profitable purchase, but with the consciousness that he, a descendant of serfs, a former barefoot boy, is becoming superior to those who previously claimed to completely depersonalize their “slaves.” Lopakhin is intoxicated by the consciousness of his equality with the bars, which separates his generation from the first buyers of forests and estates of the bankrupt nobility.
History of Russian literature: in 4 volumes / Edited by N.I. Prutskov and others - L., 1980-1983.
The originality of the era of the late 19th - early. 20th century reflected in every national culture. The increasingly widespread spread of decadent literary movements in the art and literature of bourgeois society became in the last decades of the 19th century a kind of sign of the times. At the beginning of the 20th century, realism became naturalized. It consists in dispassionate photography of reality, typification (E. Zola). If realism not only studies phenomena, but also tries to understand the dialectic of good and evil, then naturalism focuses only on facts.
Naturalism. In the last third of the 19th century, the literary movement “Naturalism” became widespread. This movement developed in France, but subsequently spread to America, where it comes under the name “veritism.” He declared himself as a method akin to realism, developing and deepening the principles of realistic art. The naturalistic method differs from the realistic one, since it is associated with the rejection of typification, selection and generalization of material. Naturalism is based on the philosophy and aesthetics of positivism (O. Comte’s theory of facts). The theory of naturalism is based on natural science without philosophy. The main thing for representatives of naturalism is facts. And the improvement of society is evolution, like that of a living organism (I. Tern). The sociological side of positivism received its most complete development in the works of the head of the English positivists and supporter of Charles Darwin, G. Spencer. He believed that the division of society into classes is carried out for biological reasons. Spencer extended the struggle for existence to human society, laying the foundation for “social Darwinism,” which received further and even more reactionary development in the writings of F. Nietzsche and his followers. His influence in literature was reflected in the work of a number of writers, including D. London.
Impressionism. The emergence of impressionism in France dates back to the 60-70s of the 19th century, and somewhat later in Germany, Austria and a number of other countries. The term "impressionism" translated from French means impression. Having originally emerged in painting (E. Manet, O. Renoir), impressionism then developed in literature, mainly in poetry. Impressionist art opened up opportunities for penetration into the inner world of man and developed a system of principles for its development.
Intuitionism.
The intuitionist philosophy of A. Bergson, outlined by him in his “Creative Evolution” (1907) and other works, was distinguished by the cult of the subconscious and the theory of “spontaneous”, i.e. voluntary memory, which formed the basis of the aesthetic constructions of many late decadent, or modernist movements (the “stream of consciousness” school, etc.).
Freudianism.
At the same time, i.e. at the most later years In the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud took shape, reducing all the complex mental, social and artistic activity of a person to primitive subconscious impulses, to the sphere of manifestation of the sex instinct.
Decadence. The word “decadence” translated into Russian means “decline.” Initially, this term was used in relation to themselves by the French symbolists who spoke in the 70-80s. 19th century, and then it began to be used in an expanded manner to designate crisis phenomena in the field of culture of the late 19th - early. 20th century This is a special worldview, characterized by deep pessimism, disappointment in reality due to the oversaturation of culture. Decadence was influenced by such philosophical movements as the teachings of Nietzsche, A. Schopenhauer, A. Bergson and Z. Freud.
The first decadent movements are symbolism, the birthplace of which was France in the 70-80s. (P. Verlaine, A. Rimbaud, S. Malarme), and aestheticism, which took shape in England in the 90s. 19th century.
Symbolism, which soon became widespread not only in France, but also in Belgium, Germany, and also in Russia, soon reveals its own. Anti-realistic orientation, manifested in the desire to substitute in place of images reflecting objective reality, symbolic images expressing unclear and unsteady shades of subjective moods (Verlaine), the mysterious and irrational life of the soul, or the no less mysterious “singing of infinity”, the majestic tread of an inexorable fate ( Maeterlinck). Symbolists call for depicting the other world, refusing to depict the real world and using irrational symbols for this. Symbolists protest against vulgar satiety and reject the principle of typification. Individualism comes; there is disappointment in ideals due to the aggravation of social contradictions.
Unlike romanticism, symbolism denies absolute values and humanism; everything is gray, small, hopeless; there is a deep withdrawal into oneself. Prominent representatives of symbolism are R. Wagner (mythological symbolism), C. Baudelaire (concept of correspondence), J. C. Huysmas (philosophy of dandyism), P. Verlaine (sound painting), A. Rimbaud (concept of clairvoyance), S. Malarme (symbolist drama), Paul Faure (the first symbolist theater), G. Ibsen (“ New drama"), representatives of English symbolism: D. Resken (“New”), Dante G. Rassetti (author of the Pre-Raphaelite Commonwealth), W. Pater, O. Wild. At the end of the 19th century comes the end of Victorianism. The first wave of the anti-Victorian process arises (D. Meredith “The Egoist” - ridiculing the code of the English gentleman), S. Butler. Then the second wave of the anti-Victorian process arises - neo-romanticism.
Neo-romanticism. This is action literature. Longing for beauty, dissatisfaction with prosaic consciousness, glorification of strength and courage. Representatives of neo-romanticism: R. Stevenson, R. Kipling
