All the lost generation. Lost generation

"Lost generation" (English Lost generation) is the concept got its name from a phrase allegedly uttered by G. Stein and taken by E. Hemingway as an epigraph to the novel The Sun Also Rises (1926). The origins of the worldview that united this informal literary community, were rooted in a sense of disillusionment with the course and results of the First World War, which gripped the writers of Western Europe and the United States, some of whom were directly involved in hostilities. The death of millions of people called into question the positivist doctrine of "beneficial progress" and undermined faith in the rationality of liberal democracy. The pessimistic tone that made the prose writers of The Lost Generation related to writers of the modernist type did not signify the identity of the general ideological and aesthetic aspirations. The specifics of the realistic depiction of the war and its consequences did not need speculative schematism. Although the heroes of the books of the writers of The Lost Generation are staunch individualists, they are not alien to front-line camaraderie, mutual assistance, and empathy. The highest values ​​they profess are sincere love and devoted friendship. The war appears in the works of The Lost Generation either as a direct reality with an abundance of repulsive details, or as an annoying reminder that stirs the psyche and interferes with the transition to a peaceful life. The books of The Lost Generation are not equal to the general stream of works about the First World War. Unlike "The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik" (1921-23) by J. Hasek, they do not have a clearly expressed satirical grotesque and front-line humor. The “Lost” not only listen to the naturalistically reproduced horrors of war and cherish the memories of it (Barbusse A. Fire, 1916; Celine L.F. Journey to the End of the Night, 1932), but introduce the experience gained into a wider channel of human experiences, colored by a kind romanticized bitterness. The “beaten-out” of the heroes of these books did not mean a conscious choice in favor of the “new” anti-liberal ideologies and regimes: socialism, fascism, Nazism. The heroes of The Lost Generation are completely apolitical and prefer to enter the sphere of illusions, intimate, deeply personal experiences to participate in the public struggle.

Chronologically "The Lost Generation" first made itself known with the novels "Three Soldiers"(1921) J. Dos Passos, "The Huge Camera" (1922) by E. E. Cummings, "Soldier's Award" (1926) by W. Faulkner. "Lostness" in the environment of post-war violent consumerism sometimes affected the memory of the war in O. Huxley's story "Yellow Chrome" (1921), F. Sk. Fitzgerald's novels "The Great Gatsby" (1925), E. Hemingway "And Rising sun" (1926). The culmination of the corresponding mentality came in 1929, when almost simultaneously the most artistically perfect works were published, embodying the spirit of “lostness”: “The Death of a Hero” by R. Aldington, “All Quiet on the Western Front” by E. M. Remarque, “Farewell, weapon!" Hemingway. By its frankness in conveying not so much the battle-like as the “trench” truth, the novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” echoed the book by A. Barbusse, distinguished by greater emotional warmth and humanity - qualities inherited by Remarque’s subsequent novels on a related topic - “Return” (1931 ) and Three Comrades (1938). The mass of soldiers in the novels of Barbusse and Remarque, the poems of E. Toller, the plays of G. Kaiser and M. Anderson were opposed by the individualized images of Hemingway's novel Farewell to Arms! Participating along with Dos Passos, M. Cowley and other Americans in operations on the European front, the writer largely summed up the “military theme”, immersed in an atmosphere of “lostness”. The adoption by Hemingway in the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) of the principle of the ideological and political responsibility of the artist marked not only a certain milestone in his own creativity, but also the exhaustion of the emotional and psychological message of The Lost Generation.

Tolmachev V.M. "The Lost Generation" and the work of E. Hemingway

Tolmachev V.M. – " Foreign literature XX century" - 2nd ed. - M., 2000

The 1920s - the period of "change of Vekhovism" in the literature of the United States. It is marked both by a versatile understanding of the historical and cultural shift, and by the entry into the rights of a new literary generation, the idea of ​​which was somehow associated with the image of the “lost generation”. These words (pronounced in French and then translated into English) are attributed to the writer G. Stein and were addressed to young people who visited the fronts of the First World War, were shocked by its cruelty and failed in the post-war period on the same grounds to "get back on track" peaceful life. E. Hemingway glorified Stein’s maxim (“You are all a lost generation”),

Who rendered it in the form of one of the epigraphs on title page his first novel, The Sun Also Rises (1926).

However, the meaning of this, as it turned out, epochal characterization was destined to outgrow the "hamletism" of restless young people. “Lost” in a broad sense is a consequence of a break both with the system of values ​​dating back to “puritanism”, “decency tradition”, etc., and with the pre-war idea of ​​what the subject matter and style of a work of art should be. In contrast to the generation of B. Shaw and G. Wells, the "lost" showed a pronounced individualistic skepticism in relation to any manifestations of progressivism. At the same time, the agonizing comprehension of the “decline of the West”, their own loneliness, as well as the awakened nostalgia for the organic integrity of the world, led them to a persistent search for a new ideality, which they formulated primarily in terms of artistic mastery. Hence the resonance that Eliot's "The Waste Land" received in America. The cruelty and chaos of the world can be resisted by the “fury” of creative effort - such is the subtext of the textbook works of the “lost generation”, the common features of which are tragic tonality, interest in the topic of self-knowledge, as well as lyrical tension.

The motifs of "lostness" manifested themselves in various ways in such novels as The Three Soldiers (1921) by J. Dos Passos, The Enormous Chamber (1922) by E. E. Cummings, The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. S. . Fitzgerald, "Soldier's Award" (1926) W. Faulkner, "The Sun Also Rises" (1926), "Farewell, Arms!" (1929) E. Hemingway. These include novels published in Europe, but which were very successful in the USA: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) by E. M. Remarque, Death of a Hero (1929) by R. Aldington.

Not all of these writers took part in the war (in particular, Fitzgerald, Faulkner), but even for them “lostness” is a more than weighty fact: an indicator of a person’s abandonment into history, which has lost its usual contours, and a heightened artistic susceptibility.

The cruelty of modernity could not help but be clothed in the metaphor of war. If at the beginning of the 1920s it was interpreted quite specifically, then by the end of the decade it becomes the personification of the most important dimension human existence at all. Such a combination of military and post-war experience under a common tragic sign is especially indicative of novels published in 1926-1929, that is, when the events of the past took place as an artistic event and received, in the words of one of his contemporaries, the status of a tragic "alibi ”: a person is constantly in a state of “military” actions with a world hostile and indifferent to him, the main attributes of which are the army, bureaucracy, plutocracy. "I grew up with my peers under

The drumming of the First World War, and since then our history has not ceased to be a history of murders, injustice or violence, ”A. Camus later wrote, as if seeing in American writers of the 1920s literary predecessors existentialism. Hemingway speaks most vividly about the protest against the "norms" of civilization in the light of the experience of the Somme and Verdun through the mouth of Lieutenant Frederick Henry, the central character of the novel A Farewell to Arms!: or "shrine", were obscene next to specific village names, road numbers, river names, regiment numbers, and dates."

Expressing rejection of the value system that allowed the massacre, and the loftiness of those values literary dictionary, Hemingway deliberately makes an apology for a kind of primitive and often declares himself to be anti-romantic. However, such a characterization should not call into question his "anti-romantic romanticism." Historical and literary contexts of his work speak in favor of this.

On the one hand, Hemingway, who with equal success created the myth of the hero rejected by society both in his writings and in life, is undoubtedly a figure of Byronian scale and style. On the other hand, the tragic "search for the absolute", which is referred to in Hemingway's work, unfolds not in the situation of "two worlds" characteristic of classical romanticism, but in the post-Nitzschean world of this world.

Cognition through denial, the search for an ideal in disappointment, the illusion of a “nightingale song” through the “wild voice of catastrophes” (Khodasevich) - these are the romantic signs of the “lost generation” worldview that help to understand the creative dependence of US writers of the 1920s on their older English contemporaries (R. Kipling, J. Conrad). Recognition of the debt to Konrad's ideas of "victory in defeat" and the picturesque style is the leitmotif of the creative aesthetics not only of Hemingway, but also of Fitzgerald.

Comparing the novels of these writers makes it possible to understand how the dispute between two influential versions of romantic thinking unfolded.

In the perception of contemporaries, Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) became one of the chroniclers of the Jazz Age, an era immediately preceding the Great Depression. Born in St. Paul (the Catholic capital of the Midwest), Fitzgerald retained a childishly naive and somewhat "carnival" idea of ​​success - that "anything is possible" for almost his entire life. The motive of wealth is central in Fitzgerald's works, but the writer's attitude to the two most

The symbols of prosperity that interest him (fatal woman, nouveau riche) are ambiguous, passed through his own experience of a teenager who dreamed of fame, hopelessly in love with Ginevra King (a girl from a wealthy St. Paul family), then a young man whose marriage to the southern beauty Zelda Sayre became possible due to the sensational success of his first novel, Beyond Paradise (1920), but ultimately did not bring him happiness. By the end of the 1920s, Zelda had developed a mental illness.

In their the best works- novels "The Great Gatsby" (1925), "Tender is the Night" (1934) - Fitzgerald strives to be a Flauberian, but by temperament he is too lyric, too fascinated by the poetry of the material excess of the world. Therefore, the character closest to the writer is himself, Fitzgerald, and the world of the rich is a world related to him by blood. This also permeates the meaning of his statement: “We owe our birth to the well-being of society. All the best is created when the rich rule.” Thus was born the romantic relationship that Fitzgerald's Dick Diver established between the writer's friend, wealthy expatriate Gerald Murphy, and the author of Tender is the Night.

In an attempt to be “not himself,” Fitzgerald always failed in his prose, which extremely resented Hemingway with his slogan “veracity of writing.” He believed that Murphy would never behave like a Fitzgerald, and therefore even earlier accused his friend of "cheap Irish love for defeat", of "idiotic tinsel romanticism."

However, beauty realized in wealth (ragtime, a packard sparkling with nickel, a fashionable bar) interests Fitzgerald not in itself, but in its fragility. The writer, through the prism of his idea of ​​the variability of success, is too attentive to beauty in order not to notice its duality: mystery, brilliance and fate, damnation. The contrasts of beauty as the material of modern tragedy is Fitzgerald's discovery. His wealth is subject to a kind of Spencerian equilibrium. Dick Diver and Nicole switch places with the same immutability that Hurstwood and Kerry do at Dreiser.

It is natural that Keats's odes touched the innermost strings of the writer's soul. He admitted that he could never read "Ode to a Nightingale" without tears in his eyes, and a line from this poem ("How tender the night!") was the title of the novel about the tragedy of the Divers couple. In turn, "Ode to a Greek Vase" was read by Fitzgerald in terms of an inexorable romantic question - as an attempt to explain the contradiction between reality, withering (transitory) and imperishable (eternity of beauty and imagination). "You saw, you died!" - Fitzgerald might say along with lyrical hero Keats ode. In an American writer, romantic skepticism about this takes on the image of “the beautiful and the damned” (the title of the second novel), “all sad young people.”

The clash of statics and dynamics, the experience of life as a fatal destiny in the spirit of Wilde, the intention to see the "I" in the mirror of the "other" - all this makes creative method Fitzgerald is quite holistic. “I would so much like readers to perceive my new novel as another variation on the theme of illusion (it will probably be the most important in my serious things), a variation that is much more ... thought out in a romantic key than the content of "According to this side of paradise," he wrote in connection with the release of The Great Gatsby. In the prospectus for Tender is the Night, Fitzgerald emphasizes the romantic accent even more strongly, calling his protagonist the Idealist and "The Priest."

Wealth in this perspective suddenly becomes the Fitzgeraddian equivalent of Hemingway's stoic code. His ambitions, driven by the opportunity to assert themselves in the "will to possess" - a paradoxical analogy to Hemingway's poor (matadors, gangsters, bartenders, etc.) and idealless era, always resonate with tragedy.

A comparison of the compositional principles of the story "Heart of Darkness" and "The Great Gatsby" (Nick Carraway performs the same function for Fitzgerald as the figure of Marlowe for Conrad) helps to understand what exactly the American writer is similar to, and what is strikingly different from the prose writers who gravitate towards , like the English neo-romantics, to a picturesque display of the world in the context of "here and now". The core of the best Fitzgeraddian novel is formed by the non-factual side of a rather traditional American melodrama - a description of an attempt by a mysteriously rich Gatsby to return the past, to connect his fate with a woman, an alliance with which was previously unthinkable due to social and material misalliance. Themes of self-knowledge and history, primarily related to the fate of Nick Carraway, turn the novel from vaudeville into a tragedy.

Nick is not only a narrator gathering information about his mysterious friend Gatsby, but also a writer who gradually begins to compose an autobiographical work in which Gatsby is the most reliable reference point, or, in accordance with G. James' dictionary, "point of view." The Carraway line (testing one's own views on life, one's honesty, as well as adherence to the traditionalist value system of the Midwest) develops in parallel with the Gatsby line, the collisions of which

Roy reveals an insoluble contradiction between the Platonic dream - in following it, Gatsby is really outstanding, “great” - and the grossly materialistic, “great”, perhaps in a purely ironic sense, means of achieving it.

Thanks to this parallelism, it turns out that Nick is the only character in the novel whose character and views change as the action progresses. The cognitive property of The Great Gatsby is, as it were, the lyrical ferment of this novel. Romantic dissatisfaction with the search for Eldorado, fatal belatedness and disappointing self-determination betrays in Fitzgerald not so much a student of Conrad as a continuer of the tradition of G. James. It is the ability to deeply understand that ultimately makes Nick not an inquisitive "naturalist" (like the butterfly collector Stein from Conrad's novel "Lord Jim"), but "the last puritan."

Carraway's path - from rigidity to flexibility, from too peremptory judgments in the spirit of James Winterbourne to vague regrets and warmth. He becomes an unwitting witness to the vulgarization of both the Platonic principle in man and his striving for the ideal, and the magic of wealth, this only kind of "religion" that an abundance society is capable of. Carraway's "Romance of Education" is subtly correlated by Fitzgeradd with the theme of America.

Gatsby's “guilt” is the common, generic guilt of all Americans who have lost the childishness and purity that were generally characteristic of the first New England settlers. On last pages In the novel, the true face of the "dream" is represented by the narrator's memories of the celebration of Christmas in the snowy depths of America. And Carraway, and Gatsby, and Daisy - they are all "prodigal children" of the Midwest, lost in the Babylon of the Northeast.

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) Studied writing under approximately the same literary mentors as Fitzgerald. In his work, he touched on approximately the same problems that his friend-rival touched on, but gave them a radically different reading. Accusing Fitzgerald of being in love with rock and creative indiscipline, as well as declaring his dislike for everything sublimely “romantic”, Hemingway created the concept of a fundamentally “non-bookish” style. The Fitzgerald/Hemingway antithesis allows us to recall the situation in English literature at the turn of the century. The change of the hero - Wilde's Pre-Raphaelite artist to a soldier of the colonial army by Kipling - spoke of a decrease in interest in the relatively traditional type of romantic personality and attention to the symbolism of the practically formulated question "how to live?" Laconically, this new mood is reflected in Kipling's poem The Queen (1896): "Romance, goodbye forever!"

Thematically, Hemingway owes a great deal to Conrad. In both writers, the character is abandoned, as Hemingway says, in “another country,” placed, regardless of his will, in conditions where a person is tested for strength on the stage of a certain space theater(depths of Africa, Civil War V Latin America, typhoon; bullring, the Latin Quarter in Paris, the Spanish Civil War), but primarily in a duel with himself.

“Victory in defeat”, according to Conrad and according to Hemingway, is a stoic adherence to a personally formulated concept of honor, which, by and large, cannot bring any practical advantages in a world that has lost the coordinates of a generally valid meaning. A comparison of the works of Conrad and Hemingway indicates that the American prose writer worked much more consistently than his predecessor on the idea of ​​a style that would convey the idea of ​​the cruelty of the world not directly, but in a symbolist suggestive way. Hemingway, on the emotional side, knew deeply what he was writing about.

In 1917, without going through a military commission, he went to Italy, was the driver of an ambulance on the Italian-Austrian front, and was seriously wounded. After the war, Hemingway briefly served as the Toronto Star's Middle East correspondent. He spent the 1920s mainly in Paris among artistic bohemia (H. Stein, J. Joyce, E. Pound) and purposefully studied the art of prose. It was extremely difficult for the writer to survive the suicide of his father.

The theme of war forms the nerve of Hemingway's first books of short stories, In Our Time (1925) and Men Without Women (1927). The composition of the book "In Our Time" indicates a clear acquaintance of its author with "Winesburg, Ohio" by S. Anderson. However, the line of the "novel of education" was carried out by Hemingway much more decisively than by his mentor. The main discovery that is made by Nick Adams and young men like him, who returned from the German war to the provincial silence of America (Krebs in the story “At Home”), is the discovery that the war never ends for those who have been on it in a certain sense. The most famous Hemingway novels (“Cat in the Rain”, “On the Big River”, “White Elephants”) are built on the same effect: the main thing in them is emotional point vision is not pronounced, taken out of brackets; this core content now comes into conflict with the impressionistic description of current events, then corresponds to it. The presence of "double vision" is ironically reflected in the title "In Our Time", which consists of a fragment of a prayer for "the peace of the whole world." The main lesson of Nick Adams' upbringing comes down to the fact that the fragility of life and human cruelty, characteristic of "our time", blur the line between "war" and "peace".

Hemingway liked to compare the principles of textual expressiveness to an iceberg only one-eighth above the surface of the water: if the writer really knows his topic, almost any fragment of the narrative can be omitted without compromising the overall emotional impact. Hemingway's illusionism is largely based on the idea of ​​abandoning "rhetoric", proclaimed in its time by the French symbolist poets. The writer prefers not to describe, but to name; it does not so much recreate reality as describe the conditions of its existence. The foundation of such a description is made up of verbs of motion, nouns, remarks of the same type, repeated use of the connecting union "and". Hemingway creates, as it were, a scheme for the perception of elementary stimuli (the heat of the sun, the cold of water, the taste of wine, etc.), which only in the reader's mind become a full-fledged fact of sensory experience. The writer's fascination with Cezanne and other post-impressionists in connection with this is natural.

As you know, the mature Cezanne strove to create canvases that would reveal in a somewhat exaggerated flatness not the impressionistic fluidity of life, but its “structures” that are not subject to change. Cezanne's artistic space (for example, "The Bridge over the River Crete") - a little heavy, almost deliberately compressed - is in motionless peace. This impression is not thematic. The natural colors of nature (green, yellow, blue), as if having outlined the volume with a strict pattern, "stop the moment" - they begin to symbolize the Form, a kind of light heavy thingness, but not ephemeral, but closed in itself, coldish-shiny, crystal, Cezanne's special thingness , which he himself clothed in the formula “nature-in-depth”, turned out to be close to the creative intentions of the American prose writer: “Cezanne’s painting taught me that real simple phrases alone are not enough to give the story the volume and depth that I was trying to achieve. I learned a lot from him, but I could not clearly explain what exactly. It seems that another Cezanne imperative is also important for Hemingway: "Impressionism should be given something ... museum-like."

Like Verdun's handwriting, Hemingway's style is discharged. To some extent, this is achieved due to the fact that Hemingway's characters seem to have no soul. Their consciousness is presented decoratively, dissolving in the "patterns" of the outside world (the bar counter, the city in the rain, the grid of Parisian streets). Stringing facts, collecting them into a “landscape” is subject to a rather rigid logic, which indicates the limitedness of pleasures (the bar must be closed, the Pernod must be drunk, and the trip to the mountains is over), which gives a tragic character to the somewhat monotonous, monochrome naturalization of Hemingway’s inner world. The brightness of colors, the tangibility of forms (“Apollonian”) are the reverse side of “nothing” (“Dionysian” beginning), which has no outlines, which can only be represented in a reflected form and forms a kind of black lining for a pattern of words-pebbles.

In the suggestive description of death, in the reconstruction of the silhouette of the phenomenon against the background of the "black square" - one of the striking features of Hemingway's primitivism as the style of modern tragedy.

In essence, in the interpretation of "nothing" Hemingway acts as a writer, "on the contrary", approaching Christian issues in a parodic aspect. This did not escape the attention of J. Joyce: "Whether Hemingway shoots me or not, I would venture to say ... that I always considered him a deeply religious person." Also, the well-known American critic M. Cowley emphasized in the preface to the first edition of Hemingway's The Chosen One (1942) that his contemporary gives in the novel The Sun Also Rises an interpretation of the same problem that occupied T. S. Eliot in The Waste Land .

The Hemingway equivalent of "quest for the Grail" (the theme of "The Waste Land") is paradoxical. Ways to overcome the "blurring of the contours" and "illness" (this is also the theme of T. Mann's "Magic Mountain") are deliberately given by the American writer in a reduced, "domestic" series: the professional training of a matador or reporter, relations between a man and a woman, etc. .-in a number of facts, the right to real, and not "bookish" knowledge of which, according to the logic of Hemingway's work, is capable of providing only one thing: the experience of death as the main destiny of human existence, as a religious phenomenon.

The Sun Also Rises is a novel about the search for exactly the absolute meaning. This is indicated by two arguing epigraphs. The author of one is G. Stein, the other is represented by a verse from Ecclesiastes about the ever setting and rising sun.

Jake Barnes, the narrator and central character of the novel, is a principled "anti-romantic". In the war, he suffered a painful mutilation - Barnes was castrated by a "weapon". He tragically longs for love, which he is unable to share with a woman close to him. Striving for sobriety and fearing self-deception, Barnes tries to strictly control his emotions. Against the background of the stoic code of his behavior, which in the novel is consistently characterized as due, gradually becomes outlined and the position, perceived as "improper", "romantic".

Falsity, poses, verbosity in the novel are represented by Robert Cohn. The fatal lady Bret Ashley becomes the subject of the application of due and improper, and the "other country" of the Spanish fiesta becomes the scene of the collision. The pinnacle of Kohn's romanticism in Barnes' assessment is manifested in a tendency to self-dramatization, in dreams of fatal love. Cohn's unattractive features for Barnes are emphasized by his inability to be ironic and to follow the lifestyle of American expatriates in 1920s Paris: if a woman leaves a man, then it is not serious to demand an explanation about this; if you carry on a conversation, it is sure to be restrained, in the language of taxi drivers or jockeys, etc. The right of Jake and his friends to a special code of conduct has been earned. Unlike Kohn, who has never faced serious life trials, they are crippled by the war, which to some extent saves them from the “holiday” of free life in its purely bourgeois version.

The tragic tone of the story is not hidden even in the second, seemingly pastoral part of the novel, which tells about the trip of Barnes with his friend Bill Gorton to fish in the Spanish mountains. It is impossible not to notice that for Jake it is not so much the serenity of nature that is important, but the participation of a person in it - an initiate, an expert who enjoys being in the mountains not in any way "naturally", but according to a system of rules. Therefore, it is still not the beauty of the streams, but the presence of a friend close to Barnes that grants a temporary - carefully calculated by hours and minutes, the amount of food and drink - once or twice a year, overcoming loneliness.

Jake would have been able to become happy in Paris if he had always been near his desperately beloved Bret. His special sense of the aesthetic is capable of deriving the same pure pleasure from dining in a restaurant as from fishing: the essence of the matter is not in the influence of the environment - the environment does not have a decisive effect on the individualistic consciousness, although a person is biologically inseparable from it and suffers from his biological "inferiority ”, - and in a purely personal solution of the issue (“I don’t care what the world is. All I want to know is how to live in it”) about the “art of life”.

The beauty of nature in Burguet is somewhat outdated, too serene, hardly capable of fully satisfying a person who has been on the front lines and is confronted there with the "rampant" of nature, with the elements, the quintessence of which is "nothing". That is why the main value orientation of the novel is the reality of art, not nature - the aesthetic principles of bullfighting. Bullfighting is the central symbol of the novel, it combines tradition, canon (absolute purity of reception) and innovation. The matador is constantly obliged to invent new moves, otherwise his duel will only imitate danger (the story of the matador Belmonte).

The intensity of this ritualized action to the smallest detail gives the proximity of death. The matador fights in the bull zone. Should he for a moment deviate from the rules of the play - to allow the doomed animal to "charm", hypnotize himself - and death cannot be avoided. Thus, the bullfight and the behavioral code of the matador symbolize all the main facets of overcoming loss in the novel.

In this perspective, the brilliant matador Romero is not a folk hero at all, but a hero of art, the narrator strives to comprehend the principles of which and which is initially inaccessible to understanding Kon, who is bored both in the mountains in the bosom of nature and in a duel, but on the other hand, endlessly running to the hairdresser. Varna clearly brings something to its perception of bullfighting that ordinary Spaniards, lovers of the intricacies of bullfighting, hardly understand.

Jake considers himself a mystic in light of his close encounter with death in the war. In contrast to the front line, death in the arena of the stadium is enclosed in the framework of the "theater", where the absurd cruelty of life is denied by the system of rules and conditionally defeated by art. It is essential to note that for the inhabitants of Pamplona, ​​bullfighting is not valuable in itself, but is an integral part of the seven-day Catholic holiday. The narrator is only interested in the “carnival” aspects of festive events. In other words, the narrator intends to distinguish in what is happening not the traditional (the rite of a church holiday, which Barnes partly associates with public hypocrisy), but the non-traditional - a situation of reassessment of values. Bringing bullfighting to a religious pattern becomes apparent in the novel when it comes to Christianity, which is attractive to Barnes primarily as a “form” filled with purely personal content.

The Spanish experience is therefore unlikely to have changed anything in the narrator's life. Staying at a "holiday within a holiday" (whose priestess is Bret Ashley) only rooted him in the "art" of suffering. Barnes' stoic code is once again being tested in an increasingly cruel "love-torment". Having sacrificed Bret Ashley to the matador Romeo in accordance with the artistic spirit of the Dionysian-carnival fun, Varna cannot help but realize that he is able to gain, only constantly tragically losing. Accordingly, Bret Ashley sacrifices his passion for the “master of beauty” for the sake of a “cruel” love for Jake Barnes. The final lines of the novel (Varna and Ashley, who have met again, are circling in a car around the square) allude to the "eternal return" - the inexhaustible suffering of physical being, on the depth of awareness of which the shoots of the beauty of despair depend.

Barnes's "choice" is certainly a free choice according to existentialist concepts, the "hopeless" optimism of which anticipates the concept of action that was philosophically and aesthetically substantiated in France only at the turn of the 1930s and 1940s. Far from arbitrary, J.-P. Sartre (the rejection of love at the end of "Nausea" and the figure of the Self-Taught One allows us to recall the final chapters of "The Sun Also Rises" and the figure of Cohn), analyzing Camus's "The Outsider", found it possible to name Hemingway among the predecessors of his fellow writer.

The novel "Farewell to arms!" can be considered a prologue to the situation that is displayed in The Sun Also Rises. And in this work, Hemingway used a quote in the title of his book. It is taken from the poem of the English playwright and poet late XVI V. George Peel, written on the occasion of the retirement of the famous warrior. The irony of Hemingway is obvious: in his novel, it is not the glory of the weapon that is shown, but the tragic defeat. What kind of "weapon" are we talking about? First of all, about the romantic idea of ​​war associated with the figure of Napoleon, the war of systematic offensives and withdrawals, with the solemn surrender of cities, consecrated by ritual - in a word, about the idea, the content of which was brilliantly played out by L. N. Tolstoy in War and Peace. The illogicality, the cruel absurdity of the modern massacre (execution near Caporeto) destroys Lieutenant Frederick Henry's illusion of duty in relation to a system of military and social relations that allows the triumph of chaos, but at the same time is sanctified by loud, but insignificant slogans about "heroism".

As conceived by the author, "Farewell to arms!" is not an anti-militarist novel like "Fire" by A. Barbusse. Lieutenant Henry is not against war as such - war in his view is the courageous craft of a real man. However, as Hemingway shows, this ritual completely loses its universal meaning against the backdrop of battles that are deadly illogical and play with people like puppets. The front line in this "new" war, where in fact there are no friends or foes (the Austrians are practically not personified in the novel), is purely arbitrary. The discovery of this dimension of war comes both under the influence of injury and as a result of the lieutenant's conversations with ordinary people who, as Hemingway often happens, are experts in the most reliable truths (“War is not won by victories”). It gives Frederick nothing but a lesson in self-knowledge: the war becomes an undeniable, existential event in his inner world. Of course, it is no longer possible to desert from this war, which once again emphasizes the ironic ambiguity of the novel's title.

As war begins to be identified with the absolute cruelty of the world, love is brought to the forefront of the narrative, which until then was considered a biological trap for a real man, in contrast to “glorious military deeds”. Rinaldi, Frederick's friend, for example, has syphilis. As a result of the development of the theme of love, the novel could rightfully be called “Farewell, love!”. That is, farewell to "romantic", sublime love, as impossible in the modern world as romantic war. Frederick and Katherine are aware of this when they talk about how the impersonal war machine ("they") kills the most deserving. Without building any illusions about their future, Hemingway's heroes are doomed, as in the novel The Sun Also Rises, to love-torment, love-loss.

The scenery changes, the gloomy mountain (rising above the front line) and the storm give way to sun-drenched Switzerland, but this does not abolish the tragic pattern: Katherine dies while performing an exclusively peaceful duty, in childbirth. Following the drama of rock turns Hemingway's characters into seekers of revelation, the essence of which they can only determine "by contradiction". “Losing - gaining” - this paradox, traditional for the works of the American writer, points to Hemingway’s intention to make the very absence of meaning meaning: the bitterer the defeat, the more persistently a person’s desire to assert his dignity asserts itself at all costs.

Hemingway's best works are about metaphysical hunger. This theme in the first two novels is placed in the context of the problems of art and love. In For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), the traditional Hemingway individualist is tested by politics.

Hemingway's book on Spain, perhaps, is not so perfect from a creative point of view (elements of self-repetition are noticeable in it), but this is compensated by the capacity of its generalizations. If the characters of early Hemingway felt the impossibility of escaping the glamor of war even in civilian life, then the characters of The Bell would probably agree with the words of T. S. Eliot from an essay on Milton: "The civil war never ends ..." As an eyewitness to the Spanish events, Hemingway considered it possible to put an epigraph to the novel, similar in content to Eliot's formula, a fragment from John Donne's sermon. “... I am one with all Humanity, and therefore never ask for whom the Bell tolls: it tolls for You” - in this statement of the poet, Hemingway found confirmation of his observations about the civil war in Spain: the human in a person is more important than his political affiliation. The writer seemed to foresee the criticism of Soviet propaganda for the impartial depiction of the Spanish communists and leaders of the International Brigades in the novel, when, through the mouth of his character, the Soviet journalist Karkov (his prototype was M. Koltsov), he accused Robert Jordan of “weak political development". In the 1960s, D. Ibarruri sent a special letter to the Politburo of the CPSU, where she spoke about the undesirability of publishing Hemingway's novel in the USSR. As a result, domestic readers are still familiar with the translation, which is full of censorship omissions, by inertia.

The depth of The Bell is that it is a novel both anti-fascist and anti-totalitarian. Anti-fascism in it is primarily not a political position, but a manifestation of personal courage and a category of personal freedom. Hemingway makes the opposition between Francoists and Republicans conditional in moments: both are distinguished by cruelty. Demagogy, cowardice, propaganda falsehood, the writer quite habitually confronts with the stoic courage of ordinary people (El Sordo, Anselmo), who fight like they plow the land, and kill, hating murder. The attentive reader cannot pass by the double paradox of the final pages of the narrative. From the position of military strategy, the death of Jordan - he alone covers the withdrawal of partisans - does not make much sense, but, as in similar novels by A. Malraux ("The Human Destiny"), which are devoted to "strange" civil wars, the hero wins when he refuses from any form of "selfishness" and sacrifices himself for the sake of others. But two worthy people, to varying degrees, must die at the bridge: both the "republican" Jordan, and the first who, by tragic irony, gets into the sight of his machine gun, the royalist Lieutenant Berrendo.

The central theme of the novel, as the author saw it, should therefore be formulated as a person's knowledge of himself in spite of society, which offers him only the appearance of a solution to the problem of freedom. In The Bell, we are actually talking about two wars: a war of ideologies (on the plains) and a guerrilla war (in the mountains). It is the double sacrifice - the "higher" test of death, as well as the love of a Spanish girl - that shows the price of true courage, allows the American dreamer-intellectual, who came to Spain as a volunteer, to get away from the beautiful-hearted ("bookish") idealism and assert himself, as Malraux would say, in the idealism of "anti-fate". In his artistic vision of the Spanish events, Hemingway was not alone. Somewhat similar accents are characteristic of the work of J. Orwell (“Tribute to Catalonia”, 1938), the poetry of W. H. Auden at the turn of the 1930s and 1940s.

Hemingway's post-war work (the novel "Across the River, in the Shade of the Trees", 1950; the story "The Old Man and the Sea", 1952) is inferior in level to his works of the 1920s and 1930s. However, this circumstance could no longer change the reputation of Hemingway (Nobel Prize in 1954) as one of the main creators of the artistic mythology of modern individualism.

The theme of war in the work of E. Hemingway

“Lost Generation” “Lost Generation” is a definition applied to a group of foreign writers who published a series of books in the 1920s that expressed disappointment in capitalist civilization, exacerbated by the tragic experience of World War I. The expression "lost generation" was first used by the American writer Gertrude Stein in a conversation with E. Hemingway. Then the “lost generation” began to be called people who went through the First World War, spiritually traumatized, disbelieving in the jingoistic ideals that once fascinated them, sometimes internally devastated, acutely feeling their restlessness and alienation from society. The “Lost Generation” is so named because, having gone through the circles of an unnecessary, senseless war, it lost faith in the natural need to continue its kind, lost faith in its own and future life. [29;17]

The democratically minded intellectuals of America, France, England, Germany, Russia and other countries involved in the war were internally convinced that the war was wrong, unnecessary, not their own. This was felt by many, that's where this spiritual closeness between people who stood during the war along different sides barricade.

People who went through the meat grinder of the war, those who managed to survive it, returned home, leaving on the battlefields not only one arm, one leg - physical health -, but also something more. Ideals were lost, faith in life, in the future. What seemed strong and unshakable - culture, humanism, reason, individual freedom of the individual - fell apart like a house of cards, turned into a void.

The chain of times was broken and one of the most significant and profound changes in the moral and psychological atmosphere was the appearance of the "lost generation" - a generation that had lost faith in those lofty concepts and feelings in respect of which it was brought up, and rejected devalued values. For this generation, "all gods are dead, all battles" are left behind, all "faith in man has been undermined."

Hemingway took the words "You are all a lost generation!" as an epigraph to his novel "Fiesta (The Sun Also Rises)", and the formula went around the world, gradually losing its real content and becoming a universal designation of the time and people of this time. But between people who have experienced the same life experience, there was a sharp boundary. Outwardly, they all looked the same: demonstrative cynicism, faces twisted in an ironic smile, disappointed, tired intonations. But what for some was a true tragedy, for others became a mask, game, a common style of behavior.

They were traumatized, they really experienced the loss of ideals, in which, first of all, they sacredly believed, as a personal, unceasing pain, they experienced disorder, discord. modern world. But they were not going to carefully cherish this state of mind; they wanted to work, not idly talk about losses and unfulfilled plans.

The general meaning of the creative efforts of representatives of the "lost generation" - writers can be defined as the desire to bring a person out of the power of ethical dogma, which requires total conformism and practically destroys the value human personality. For this, it was necessary to find, develop, create a new moral principle, a new ethical norm and even a new philosophy of being. They were united by a fierce disgust for the war itself and for those foundations and principles (social, economic, political, ideological, moral), which in their development inevitably led to a universal tragedy. They simply hated them and brushed them aside. In the minds of the writers of the "lost generation", the idea of ​​the need to fence off from the aforementioned principles, to bring a person out of the herd state, so that he could realize himself as a person and develop his own ideas, matured. life principles not subject to the "established values" of an antagonistic society. The heroes of these writers never resemble puppets submissive to someone else's will - lively, independent characters, with their own characteristics, with their own intonations, most often ostensibly indifferent and ostensibly ironic. What are the characteristics of those who are called the "lost generation"? Representatives of the "lost generation" are, in the overwhelming majority, young people who have just finished school, and sometimes have not had time to finish it. [ 20; 65]

Honest and somewhat naive young men, believing in the loud words of their teachers about progress and civilization, having read the corrupt press and heard a lot of chauvinistic speeches, went to the front with the consciousness that they were fulfilling a lofty and noble mission. Many went to war voluntarily. The epiphany was terrible; Faced with undisguised reality, fragile youthful ideals were shattered. The cruel and senseless war immediately dispelled their illusions, showed the emptiness and falsity of grandiloquent words about duty, justice, humanism. But refusing to believe the chauvinist propaganda, yesterday's schoolchildren do not understand the meaning of what is happening. They do not understand why people of different nationalities should kill each other. They begin to gradually free themselves from nationalist hatred for the soldiers of other armies, seeing in them the same unfortunate ordinary people, workers, peasants, as they themselves were. The spirit of internationalism awakens in the boys. Post-war encounters with former adversaries further strengthen internationalism in the "lost generation". [ 18; 37]

As a result of long discussions, the soldiers begin to understand that war serves as a means of enriching some people, they understand its unjust nature and come to the denial of war. . The experience of those who went through the meat grinder of the First World War determined for the rest of their lives their hatred for militarism, for cruel, senseless violence, contempt for the state system, which gives rise to and blesses murderous massacres. The writers of the "lost generation" created their anti-war works, considering this work as their moral duty not only to the fallen and the survivors, but also to future generations. [ 18; 43]

The best representatives of the "lost generation" show firmness and courage in all life's trials, whether it is military everyday life with terrible shelling, mine explosions, cold and hunger, the death of comrades in trenches and hospitals, or difficult post-war years, when there is no work, no money, no self life. The heroes meet all difficulties in silence, supporting each other, fighting with all their might for their lives. The combination of "lostness" and personal courage in resisting hostile circumstances is the grain of the worldview that underlies their character. The "fulcrum" of people crippled by the war is front-line camaraderie, friendship. Comradeship is the only value generated by war. In the face of mortal danger and hardship, fellowship remains a strong force. The soldiers cling to this comradeship as the only thread that connects them with the pre-war past, with peaceful life.

After the return to civilian life, where the former front-line soldiers search for the "road to a new life" in different ways, and where class and other differences between them are revealed, the whole illusory nature of this concept is gradually revealed.

But those who remained faithful to front-line friendship strengthened and enriched it in the difficult years of peaceful and pre-war life. Comrades at the first call rushed to the aid of their friends in the fight against the emerging fascism.

After returning from the war, former soldiers feel confused. Many of them went to the front from school, they have no profession, it is difficult for them to find a job, they cannot get a job in life. No one wants ex-soldiers. Evil reigns in the world and its reign has no end. Once deceived, they are no longer able to believe in goodness. The surrounding reality is perceived by the former warriors as a mosaic of large and small human tragedies, which embodied the fruitless pursuit of happiness, the hopeless search for harmony within oneself, the doomed attempts of a person to find some enduring spiritual values, moral ideal. [ 20; 57]

Realizing that nothing had changed in the world, that all the beautiful slogans calling on them to die for "democracy", "motherland" were lies, that they were deceived - they became confused, lost faith in anything, lost their old illusions and did not found new ones, and, devastated, began to burn their lives, exchanging it for unrestrained drunkenness, debauchery, the search for more and more new sensations. All this gave rise to the loneliness of an individual among people, loneliness as a result of an unconscious desire to go beyond the world of conformists who accept the modern order of things as the norm or universal inevitability. Loneliness is tragic, it's not just living alone, but the inability to understand another and be understood. Lonely people are, as it were, surrounded by a blank wall through which it is impossible to get through either from inside or outside. Many of the "lost" could not stand the struggle for life, someone committed suicide, someone ended up in a lunatic asylum, someone adapted and became an accomplice of revanchists.

In 1929, the novel by E.M. Remarque (Erich Maria Remarque June 22, 1898, Osnabrück - September 25, 1970) “All Quiet on the Western Front” was published, in which the author sincerely and excitedly told the truth about the war. And to this day it is one of the most striking anti-war books. Remarque showed the war in all its terrible manifestations: pictures of attacks, artillery duels, many killed and maimed in this hellish meat grinder. This book is woven from the personal life experience of the writer. Together with other young men born in 1898, Remarque was drafted into the army in 1916 from school. Remarque, who fought in France and other sectors of the Western Front, was wounded several times. [ eleven; 9] In August 1917, he ended up in the infirmary in Duisburg and, in letters sent from there to his front-line comrades, captured gloomy pictures that paved the way for creating such memorable episodes of the novel ten years later. This novel contains a strong and unconditional condemnation of the spirit of militarism that reigned in Kaiser Germany and contributed to the outbreak of war in 1914. This book is about the recent past, but it is turned to the future: life itself turned it into a warning, because the revolution of 1918, which overthrew the Kaiser regime, did not eradicate the spirit of militarism. Moreover, nationalist and other reactionary forces used Germany's defeat in World War I to propagate revanchism.

Closely tied to the anti-war spirit of All Quiet on the Western Front is its internationalism. Soldiers, heroes of the novel, are increasingly thinking about what (or who) makes them kill people of other nationalities. Many scenes in the novel tell of the camaraderie and friendship of the soldiers. Seven classmates got to the front, they fight in one company, together they spend rare hours of rest, train recruits together to protect them from imminent death in the very first minutes of the battle, endure the horrors of war together, go on attacks together, sit in the trenches during artillery shelling, they bury their dead comrades together. And out of seven classmates - the hero remains alone. [ 18; 56]

Its meaning is revealed in the first lines of the epilogue: when the main character was killed, it was so quiet and calm on the entire front that military reports consisted of only one phrase: “All Quiet on the Western Front”. With the light hand of Remarque, this formula, imbued with bitter sarcasm, acquired the character of a phraseological turn. Capacious, with a deep subtext, the title of the novel allows the reader to expand the scope of the narrative and think of the author's ideas: if in the days when, from the "high" point of view of the high command, everything remains unchanged at the front, so much terrible happens, then what can be said about the periods of fierce , bloody battles? [ 19; 12]

Remarque's main novels are internally linked. It is, as it were, an ongoing chronicle of a single human destiny in a tragic era, the chronicle is largely autobiographical. Like his heroes, Remarque went through the meat grinder of the 1st World War, and this experience for the rest of his life determined their hatred for militarism, for cruel, senseless violence, contempt for the state system, which gives rise to and blesses murderous massacres.

Richard Aldington (Richard Aldington July 8, 1892 - July 27, 1962) belonged to the post-war or "lost" generation of writers, since the heyday of his work refers to the 20-30s. 20th century Poet, short story writer, novelist, biographer, translator, literary critic, Aldington was the spokesman for the "lost generation", the spiritual turmoil caused by the war. played a significant role in the work of Aldington First World War. [ thirty; 2] "Death of a Hero" (1929) - the first novel of the writer, which immediately gained fame far beyond the borders of England. Outwardly, according to the plot design, the novel fits into the framework of a biographical novel (this is the story of the life of an individual from birth to death), and in terms of its problems it belongs to an anti-war novel. At the same time, the novel breaks the boundaries of all the usual genre definitions. So, considering the problem of a military catastrophe, getting to the bottom of its cause, one can notice that less than half of the space is allocated to the actual front-line scenes in it. The author analyzes the life story of his hero in fragments, groping his way through disparate influences, but traces it from beginning to end, warning in advance of a tragic outcome. However, individual history appears as a typical history, as the fate of a generation. The main stages of this development, the complex process of character formation, the path of individual destiny, taken in interconnections, are presented as an example of by no means a particular case. [ 9; 34]

The hero of the novel is a young man, George Winterbourne, who at the age of 16 read all the poets, starting with Chaucer, an individualist and esthete, who sees around him the hypocrisy of “family morality”, flashy social contrasts, and decadent art. Once on the front, he becomes serial number 31819, convinced of the criminal nature of the war. At the front, no personalities are needed, no talents are needed, only obedient soldiers are needed there. The hero could not and did not want to adapt, did not learn to lie and kill. Arriving on vacation, he looks at life and society in a completely different way, acutely feeling his loneliness: neither his parents, nor his wife, nor his girlfriend could comprehend the measure of his despair, understand his poetic soul, or at least not injure her with calculation and efficiency. The war broke him, the desire to live was gone, and in one of the attacks, he exposes himself to a bullet. The motives for George's "strange" and completely unheroic death are obscure to those around him: few people knew about his personal tragedy. His death was rather a suicide, a voluntary exit from the hell of cruelty and shamelessness, an honest choice of an uncompromising talent that did not fit into the war. Aldington seeks to analyze as deeply as possible the psychological state of the hero in the main moments of his life, to show how he parted with illusions and hopes. The family and the school, founded on lies, tried to mold Winterbhorn into the militant singer of imperialism. military theme and the consequences of the war run like a red thread through all the novels and stories of Aldington. All their heroes are connected with the war, all of them reflect its harmful effects.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896-1940) was an American writer best known for his novels and short stories depicting the so-called American Jazz Age of the 1920s. The work of F. S. Fitzgerald is one of the most remarkable pages of American literature of the 20th century at its highest peak. His contemporaries were Dreiser and Faulkner, Forest and Hemingway, Sandburg and T. Wolf. In this brilliant galaxy, through the efforts of which American literature in the 20s and 30s of the twentieth century turned into one of the largest literatures in the world, Fitzgerald plays a bright role. A writer of extraordinary subtlety, he chronologically opened new era in the development of Russian literature, being the first to speak on behalf of the generation that entered into life after the global catastrophe of the First World War, capturing in deeply poetic images, filled at the same time with great expressiveness, not only his dreams and disappointments, but also the inevitability of the collapse of ideals that are far from genuine humanistic values.[ 31; 8]

Fitzgerald's literary success was indeed early and noisy. He wrote his first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), immediately after the end of his military service in Alabama. The novel expressed the mood of those who, without having time to get to the front, nevertheless survived the war as a turning point in history that affected everyone who had to live in these years when the usual order of things and the traditional system of values ​​were undermined. The book told of a "lost generation" for which "all gods have died, all wars have died down, all faith has disappeared." Realizing that after a historical catastrophe, the former forms of human relations became impossible, the characters of the first novels and stories of Fitzgerald feel a spiritual vacuum around them and they convey the thirst for intense emotional life, freedom from traditional moral restrictions and taboos, characteristic of the Jazz Age, freedom from traditional moral restrictions and taboos, but also spiritual vulnerability. , uncertainty about the future, the outlines of which are lost behind the swiftness of the changes taking place in the world. [ 31; 23]

John Roderigo Dos Passos (January 14, 1896, Chicago - September 28, 1970, Baltimore) was an American writer. He was a nurse during the First World War. Participated in the war of 1914-1918 in the French, Italian and American armies, where he revealed himself as a pacifist. In his work "Three Soldiers" (1921), the author acts as a major realist artist. He gives a deep analysis of the psychology of Americans in the war era, describing with particular persuasiveness the state of social crisis that became typical of the advanced elements of the army towards the end of the war. His heroes were a musician, a farmer and a lens seller - people from different social strata, with different views and concepts, who lived in different parts of the country and were united by terrible army everyday life. Each of them, one way or another, rebelled against his destiny, against violent death, lawlessness and humiliation, against the suppression of individual will by a powerful army machine. An entire generation suffered in their face. The tragic "I" that sounded from the pages of the books of Dos Passos's contemporaries turned into a tragic "we" for the writer. [ 18; 22]

The best representatives of the "lost generation" have not lost their humanistic feelings: conscience, human dignity, a heightened sense of justice, compassion, fidelity to loved ones, self-sacrifice. These features of the "lost generation" manifested themselves in society at all critical moments in history: during World War II and after it, during the "local wars." The value of works about the "lost generation" is enormous. The writers told the truth about this generation, showed their heroes as they really were with all their positive and negative features. Writers influenced the worldview of readers, they condemned the foundations of an antagonistic society, resolutely and unconditionally condemned militarism, and called for internationalism. With their works, they wanted to prevent new wars, to warn people about their exceptional danger to humanity. At the same time, the work of the writers of the "lost generation" is full of humanistic aspirations, they urge a person to remain a person with high moral qualities in any conditions: faith in the strength of courage, honesty, in the value of stoicism, in the nobility of spirit, in the strength of a lofty idea, true friendship, immutable ethical standards. [22; 102]

Ernest Hemingway as a representative of the "lost generation"

Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899–1961) was an American writer who won the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature. Ernest Hemingway took part in military operations on several occasions. Ernest Hemingway participated in World War I, which he volunteered for. In those years when Europe was already engulfed in war, in the United States, the consciousness of its power and invulnerability gave rise to a mood of self-satisfied isolationism and hypocritical pacifism. On the other hand, a conscious anti-militarism was also growing among the workers, among the intelligentsia. [ 16; 7] However, since the beginning of the century the United States has become an imperialist and even colonial power. Both the government and the biggest monopolies were interested in the markets, they jealously followed the redistribution of colonies, spheres of influence, etc. The biggest capitalists carried out increased exports of capital. The House of Morgan was quite openly an Entente banker. But the official propaganda, this mouthpiece of the monopolies, cultivating public opinion, screamed louder and louder about German atrocities: the attack on little Serbia, the destruction of Louvain, and finally, the submarine war and the sinking of the Lusitania. The newspapers insisted more and more insistently that the United States take part in the "war to save democracy", in the "war to end wars." Hemingway, like many of his peers, rushed to the front. But in American army he was stubbornly rejected, and therefore, together with a comrade, he enlisted in April 1918 in one of the sanitary detachments that the United States sent to the Italian army. [33; 10]

It was one of the most unreliable sites western front. And since the transfer of American units was slow, these voluntary medical columns were also supposed to display American uniforms and thereby lift the spirits of the reluctant Italian soldiers. Soon Hemingway's convoy came to a site near Foss Alta, on the Piave River. But he strove for the front line, and he was instructed to distribute gifts through the trenches - tobacco, mail, brochures. On the night of July 9, Hemingway climbed out to an advanced observation post. There he was covered by an Austrian mortar shell, which caused a severe shell shock and many minor wounds. Two Italians next to him were killed. After regaining consciousness, Hemingway dragged the third, who was badly wounded, to the trenches. He was discovered by a searchlight and hit by a machine-gun burst that injured his knee and shin. The wounded Italian was killed. Upon inspection, twenty-eight fragments were removed from Hemingway right there on the spot, and in total they counted two hundred and thirty-seven. In Milan, where he was being treated, Hemingway experienced his first serious feelings for Agnes von Kurowski, a tall, dark-haired New York-born nurse. Agnes von Kurowski was in many ways the "model" for nurse Catherine Barkley in A Farewell to Arms! Leaving the hospital, Hemingway secured an appointment as a lieutenant in an infantry shock unit, but it was already October, and a truce was soon concluded - Hemingway was awarded an Italian military cross and a silver medal for valor. Then, in Italy in 1918, Hemingway was not yet a writer, but a soldier, but, undoubtedly, the impressions and experiences of this six months at the front not only left an indelible mark on his entire future path, but were also directly reflected in a number of his works. In 1918 Hemingway returned home to the United States in a hero's halo, one of the first wounded, one of the first to be decorated. Maybe for some time this flattered the pride of the young veteran, but very soon he got rid of this illusion as well. [33; eleven]

Later, he returned to the war more than once, sorting through the sensations experienced in his memory. Experienced at the front left in the memory of the writer, in the very worldview an unhealed wound. Hemingway has always been drawn to the portrayal of people in extreme situations, when the true human character, in the "moment of truth," as he liked to say, the highest physical and spiritual tension, a collision with mortal danger, when the true essence of a person is highlighted with special relief.

He argued that war is the most fertile topic, because it concentrates. The idea that military experience is extremely important for the writer, that a few front-line days can be more significant than many "peaceful" years, he repeatedly repeated. However, the process of gaining clarity of understanding of the true nature and nature of the catastrophe that broke out was not quick and easy for him. It happened gradually, throughout the first post-war decade, and was largely stimulated by reflections on the fate of the front-line soldiers, those who will be called the "lost generation". He constantly thought about his experiences at the front, evaluated, weighed, let his impressions "cool down", tried to be as objective as possible. [ 16; 38] Further, the theme of the First World War can be traced in his work - he works a lot in Germany, France, Lausanne. He writes about the unrest caused by the fascist regime, about a resigned France. Later, the author of the novels Farewell to Arms! and “For Whom the Bell Tolls” will take part in the Second World War, in the British aviation, which fought against the pilots of the “suicide bombers” V-1, will lead the movement of French partisans and will actively fight against Germany, for which in 1947 he will be awarded a bronze medal. Thus, a journalist with such rich military experience was able to delve deeper into the international problem than many of his contemporaries.

A brave reporter, better known as a talented writer, Ernest Hemingway wrote his reports from a hot spot - Spain, engulfed in civil war. Often he surprisingly accurately noticed all the features of the course of the war and even predicted its possible development. He proved himself not only as an author of impressive landscapes, but also as a capable analyst.

The problem of the "lost generation" is developed in full force in E. Hemingway's novel "Fiesta (The Sun Also Rises)", published in 1926. It was possible to write a novel in such a deadline only with the incredible capacity for work of Hemingway. But there was another circumstance, even more significant - he wrote a novel about his generation, about people whom he knew to the last trait of their character, whom he observed for several years, living next to them, drinking with them, arguing, having fun, going to a bullfight together in Spain. He wrote about himself, investing in the image of Jake Barnes (Jake Barnes) his personal experience, a lot experienced by himself. At one time, Hemingway decided to abandon the name of the novel "Fiesta" and decided to call it "The Lost Generation", but then changed his mind, put the words about the "lost generation" as an epigraph, and next to it he put another - a quote from Ecclesiastes about the land that abides forever. [ 17; 62]

Working on the novel, Hemingway came from life, from living characters, so the heroes of his novel are not one-dimensional, not smeared with the same paint - pink or black, they are living people who have both positive and negative character traits. Hemingway's novel captures the characteristic features of the well-known part " lost generation", that part of it that was really morally destroyed by the war. But Hemingway did not want to rank himself, and many people close to him in spirit, among the "lost generation". But the "lost generation" is heterogeneous.

Characters appear on the pages of the novel - named and unnamed - who are indisputable and definable at first sight. The very ones who are fashionable with their "lostness", flaunting "courageous" lack of ideality, "soldier's" directness, even though they only know about the war by hearsay. The heroes of Hemingway's novel have absorbed the features of many people he knows; in the novel a multifaceted and beautiful image land, the image of the Spain he knew and loved. [ 14; 76]

All Hemingway's work is autobiographical and his own experiences, worries, thoughts and views on events in the world are expressed in his works. So, the novel "A Farewell to Arms!" is dedicated to the events of the First World War, in which the main character deserts, but not because of his human qualities, but because the war is disgusting to him, all he wants is to live with his beloved woman, and in the war he only cripples himself. Lieutenant Frederick Henry is largely autobiographical. In creating this novel, Hemingway was extremely self-critical, constantly correcting, reworking what was written. He made 32 versions of the novel's ending until he settled on a happy ending. It was, he admitted, a painful job. A lot of effort went into coming up with the name. [ 15; 17]

Immediately after its release, the novel topped the bestseller list. The novel marked the beginning of Hemingway's worldwide fame. It is one of the most widely read works of literature of the 20th century. The novel "Farewell to arms!" people of all generations read with equal interest. The war occupied a significant place in the work of Hemingway. The attitude of the writer to the imperialist wars was unambiguous. In his novel, Hemingway shows all the horrors of war, which is a mosaic of large and small human tragedies. The story is told from Henry's point of view and begins with descriptions of front-line life in quiet days. There is a lot of personal, experienced and experienced by Hemingway in this image. Lieutenant Henry is not opposed to war as such. Moreover, in his view, this is the courageous craft of a real man. Once on the front, he experiences the loss of illusions, deep disappointment in the war. Personal experience, friendly communication with Italian soldiers and officers awaken him from chauvinistic frenzy and lead to the understanding that war is a senseless, brutal massacre. The disorderly retreat of the Italian army symbolizes the lack of harmony in the world. In order to avoid being shot by an absurd sentence scrawled with an indifferent hand in a pocket notebook, Frederick makes an attempt to escape. He succeeds. Henry's flight is a decision to get out of the game, to sever ridiculous ties with society. He breaks his oath, but his military duty is portrayed in the book as a duty to his subordinates. But neither Frederick himself nor his subordinates realized their own duty in relation to the war in general, did not see the point in it. They are united only by a sense of comradeship and genuine mutual respect. Whatever Hemingway wrote about, he always returned to his main problem - to a person in the tragic trials that befell him. Hemingway professed the philosophy of stoicism, paying tribute to human courage in the most disastrous circumstances.[ 21; 16]

The theme of the Civil War in Hemingway's work did not arise by chance. It grew out of reports about Italy on the basis of the author's hatred for the fascist regime and the desire to resist him in any way possible. It is surprising that an American, at first glance - an outside observer, so deeply and sincerely perceived the mentalities of completely different peoples. The danger of the nationalist ideas of fascist Italy and Germany became clear to him from the very beginning. The desire for the liberation of their territory by the patriots of Spain became close, and the lesser threat to humanity from communism became obvious.

Spain unusual country. By itself, it represents the fragmentation known to the whole world - Catalonia, Valencia, Andalusia - all the inhabitants of the provinces have been competing with each other for a long history and in every possible way emphasize their own independence. But during the civil war, as Hemingway writes, it played a significant role. It would seem that such a division should have a negative effect on the course of hostilities, the inability to contact neighboring provinces usually frightens and reduces the enthusiasm of the fighters. But in Spain, this fact played a diametrically opposite role - even in the war, representatives of different provinces compete with each other, and this leads to the fact that the isolation of the regions from each other only gave strength to the fighting spirit - everyone wanted to show their heroism, which has no equal among the heroism of his neighbors. Ernest Hemingway mentions this fact in a series of Spanish reports dedicated to Madrid. He writes about the enthusiasm that arose among the officers after the enemy cut them off from neighboring sectors of the front. The Spanish Civil War began during the conflict between the Communist Party, supported by two great powers - the Soviet Union and the United States, and a party led by General Franco - enlisted the support of Germany and Italy. And in fact, this was the first open opposition to the fascist regime. Hemingway, who fiercely hated this ideology and fought against it, instantly took the side of his like-minded people. Even then, the writer understood that these actions would not turn into a “small victorious war”, the fight against fascism would not end in Spain, and much larger military operations would unfold. [25; 31]

In the play "The Fifth Column" and the novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls" the author openly criticizes fascism. Hemingway criticizes everything in a dictator - from decisions in appearance to decisive actions taken in governing the people. He makes him a person who reads a French-English dictionary upside down, acting in front of peasant women duellist. In his articles, the writer repeatedly urged the world to pay attention to the emerging phenomenon in order to chop it off at the root. After all, the American understood that the fascist regime would not disappear in a year and a half, as many of his contemporaries believed. The writer was able to adequately assess the policies of Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. He hated fascism and fought against it in every possible way - both as a journalist and as a voluntary participant in hostilities. In his struggle against fascism, he even went so far as to join the Communist Party without sharing its views. Since communism was seen as the only equivalent opposition to the aggressor, to act on his side assumed greatest success in such a fight. In this, the civil war was dramatic for him - he was forced to take the side of other people's views, moving away from his own. The writer transfers the same conflicting feelings to Robert Jordan, the main character of the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. His hero is given the task to cross the front line and, when the offensive of the Republican army begins, with the help of a partisan detachment, blow up the bridge in the rear of the Nazis in order to prevent them from sending reinforcements. It would seem that the plot is too simple and uncomplicated for a big novel, but Hemingway in this novel decided a number of moral problems, solved them for myself in a new way. And first of all, it was the problem of the value of human life in relation to the moral duty, voluntarily assumed in the name of a lofty idea. The novel is permeated with a sense of tragedy. His hero Robert Jordan lives with this feeling. The threat of death hovers over the entire partisan detachment either in the form of fascist planes or in the form of fascist patrols appearing at the location of the detachment. But this is not the tragedy of helplessness and doom in the face of death, as it was in the novel "A Farewell to Arms!"

Realizing that the fulfillment of the task may end in the death of Jordan, nevertheless, he claims that everyone must fulfill his duty, and much depends on the fulfillment of duty - the fate of the war, and maybe more. So, in place of the individualism of Frederick Henry, who thinks only about saving his life and his love, the new hero Hemingway, in the conditions of a willow war, not an imperialist, but a revolutionary one, turns out to be a sense of duty to humanity, to the lofty idea of ​​​​struggle for freedom. Yes, and love in the novel rises to other heights, intertwined with the idea of ​​public duty.[33; 30]

The idea of ​​duty to people permeates the entire work. And if in the novel "A Farewell to Arms!" Hemingway, through the mouth of his city, denied "high" words, then when applied to the war in Spain, these words regain their original value. The tragic sound of the novel ends in the epilogue - Jordan completes the task, the bridge is blown up, but he himself is seriously injured.

©2015-2019 site
All rights belong to their authors. This site does not claim authorship, but provides free use.
Page creation date: 2016-08-20

By occupation, as a psychologist, I have to work with the difficulties and problems of people. Working with any particular problem, you don't think in general about this generation and the time from which they are. But I could not fail to notice one recurring situation. Especially since it concerned the generation from which I myself am. This generation was born in the late 70's early 80's.

Why did I title the article the lost generation and what exactly was lost?

Let's go in order.
These our citizens were born in the late 70s and early 80s. They went to school in 1985-1990. That is, the period of growth, maturation, puberty, the formation and formation of personality took place in the dashing 90s.

What are these years? And what did I notice as a psychologist and experienced myself?

During these years, crime was the norm. Moreover, it was considered very cool, and many teenagers aspired to a criminal lifestyle. The price of this lifestyle was appropriate. Alcoholism, drug addiction, places not so remote "mowed down" (I'm not afraid of this word) many of my peers. Some died at that time, while still teenagers (from an overdose, violence in the army, criminal showdowns). Others later from alcohol and drugs.

Until recently, I thought that these were our only losses (of our generation). Until I realized the next thing. In the 90s, Western culture broke into our information field very powerfully. And not the best part of it. And she promoted the "cool" life. Expensive cars, sex, alcohol, beautiful restaurants and hotels. Money took center stage. And being a "hard worker" was a disgrace. At the same time, our traditional values ​​were completely devalued.

This process of devaluation of our values ​​began earlier and became one of the elements of the collapse of the USSR. And he ruined not only the USSR, but also the lives of specific people and continues to do so to this day.
The resulting substitution of values ​​left a negative imprint on this entire generation.
If some fell under the rink of crime, alcohol and drugs. The others who were good girls and boys, came under information processing.

What kind of information processing is this, and what harm does it still cause?

These are destroyed and warped family values. These people do not know, do not know how and do not value family relationships. They grew up in the fact that it doesn't matter who you are, what matters is what you have. The cult of consumption came out on top, and spirituality went by the wayside.
Many of these people can look chic, but have several divorces behind them. They can earn, but the atmosphere in the house leaves much to be desired. In many families it is not clear who does what, what is the distribution of roles in the family. The woman ceased to be a wife and mother, and the man ceased to be a father and husband.
They grew up in what's cool is a white Mercedes. But the reality is that only a few can afford it. And as a result, many of them experience a sense of their own inadequacy, inferiority. And at the same time they devalue their partner.
Having been in societies where people consciously work on family values ​​and culture family relations(various Christian, Muslim, Vedic, etc.), you understand how much my generation has missed. And how pruned their roots are.
Blurred family values ​​lead to unhappy families. If the value of the role of the family decreases, then the whole human race, for the person himself, becomes not so important. If you don't appreciate the family, you don't appreciate the small homeland, and then the big homeland. Many of them dream of Las Vegas, Paris, etc. The connection I-Family-Kin-Motherland was seriously broken. And devaluing any element from this bundle, a person devalues ​​himself.

For such people, the “to be” mode of existence has been replaced by the “have” mode of existence.
But that's not the whole problem. And the fact that their children grow up in this environment. And the imprint received by their children will still manifest itself.
This is how the events of the distant 90s break lives in the 10s and will continue in the 20s.
Of course, not everything is so bad. The situation is improving. And it is in our power to change ourselves and our lives. And our changes, of course, will be reflected in our loved ones. But it won't happen by itself. This must be done purposefully, responsibly and constantly.

The creative experiment begun by the Parisian expatriates, the pre-war modernists Gertrude Stein and Sherwood Anderson, was continued by young prose writers and poets, who entered American literature in the 1920s and subsequently brought it worldwide fame. Their names throughout the twentieth century were strongly associated in the minds of foreign readers with the idea of ​​US literature as a whole. These are Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Thornton Wilder and others, mostly modernist writers.

At the same time, modernism in the American turn differs from European in a more obvious involvement in social and political events epoch: the shock military experience of most authors could not be silenced or bypassed, it required an artistic embodiment. This invariably misled Soviet scholars, who declared these writers "critical realists." American critics labeled them as "lost generation".

The very definition of "lost generation" was casually dropped by G. Stein in a conversation with her driver. She said, "You're all a lost generation, all the youth that's been in the war. You have no respect for anything. You'll all get drunk." This saying was accidentally heard by E. Hemingway and put into use by him. The words "You are all a lost generation" he put one of two epigraphs to his first novel "The Sun Also Rises" ("Fiesta", 1926). With time this definition, accurate and capacious, received the status of a literary term.

What are the origins of the "lostness" of an entire generation? The First World War was a test for all mankind. One can imagine what she has become for boys full of optimism, hopes and patriotic illusions. In addition to the fact that they directly fell into the "meat grinder", as this war was called, their biography began immediately from the culmination, from the maximum overstrain of mental and physical strength, from the most difficult test, for which they were absolutely unprepared. Of course, it was a breakdown. The war forever knocked them out of their usual rut, determined the warehouse of their worldview - an exacerbated tragic one. A vivid illustration of what has been said is the beginning of the poem Ash Wednesday (1930) by expatriate Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965).

Other programmatic poetic works of the "lost generation" - T. Eliot's poems "The Waste Land" (1922) and "The Hollow Men" (1925) are characterized by the same feeling of emptiness and hopelessness and the same stylistic virtuosity.

However, Gertrude Stein, who claimed that the "lost" had no respect for "nothing", turned out to be too categorical in her judgments. The rich experience of suffering, death and overcoming beyond their years not only made this generation very persistent (none of the writing brethren "drunk themselves" as they predicted), but also taught them to accurately distinguish and highly honor the enduring values ​​of life: communication with nature , love for a woman, male friendship and creativity.

The writers of the "lost generation" never constituted any literary group and did not have a single theoretical platform, but the common destinies and impressions formed their similar life positions: disappointment in social ideals, the search for enduring values, stoic individualism. Together with the same, aggravated tragic worldview, this determined the presence in the prose of the "lost" series common features obvious, despite the diversity of individual artistic styles of individual authors.

The commonality is manifested in everything, starting with the subject matter and ending with the form of their works. The main themes of the writers of this generation are war, everyday life at the front ("Farewell to Arms" (1929) by Hemingway, "Three Soldiers" (1921) by Dos Passos, a collection of short stories "These Thirteen" (1926) by Faulkner, etc.) and post-war reality - "the century jazz" ("The Sun Also Rises" (1926) by Hemingway, "Soldier's Award" (1926) and "Mosquitoes" (1927) by Faulkner, novels "Beautiful but Doomed" (1922) and "The Great Gatsby" (1925), novelistic collections "Tales of the Jazz Age" (1922) and "All the Sad Young Men" (1926) by Scott Fitzgerald).

Both themes in the works of the "lost" are interconnected, and this relationship has a causal nature. The "military" works show the origins of the loss of a generation: front-line episodes are presented by all authors harshly and unadorned - contrary to the trend of romanticizing the First World War in official literature. In the works about the "world after the war" the consequences are shown - the convulsive fun of the "jazz age", reminiscent of a dance on the edge of the abyss or a feast during the plague. This is a world of destinies crippled by war and broken human relationships.

The problem that occupies the "lost" gravitates towards the original mythological oppositions of human thinking: war and peace, life and death, love and death. It is symptomatic that death (and war as its synonym) is certainly one of the elements of these oppositions. It is also symptomatic that these questions are resolved by the "lost" not at all in a mythopoetic and not in an abstract-philosophical way, but in the most concrete and, to a greater or lesser extent, socially definite.

All the heroes of "military" works feel that they were fooled and then betrayed. The lieutenant of the Italian army, American Frederick Henry ("Farewell to Arms!" by E. Hemingway) bluntly says that he no longer believes the crackling phrases about "glory", "sacred duty" and "greatness of the nation". All the heroes of the writers of the "lost generation" are losing faith in a society that has sacrificed its children to "commercial calculations", and defiantly break with it. Concludes a "separate peace" (that is, deserts from the army) Lieutenant Henry, plunges headlong into drinking, revelry and intimate experiences Jacob Barnes ("The Sun Also Rises" by Hemingway), Jay Gatsby ("The Great Gatsby" by Fitzgerald) and "all the sad young people" by Fitzgerald, Hemingway and other prose writers of the "lost generation".

What do the heroes of their works who survived the war see the meaning of being? In life itself as it is, in the life of each individual person, and, above all, in love. It is love that occupies a dominant place in their system of values. Love, understood as a perfect, harmonious union with a woman, is both creativity, camaraderie (human warmth is nearby), and a natural principle. This is the concentrated joy of being, a kind of quintessence of everything that is worthwhile in life, the quintessence of life itself. In addition, love is the most individual, the most personal, the only experience that belongs to you, which is very important for the "lost". In fact, the dominant idea of ​​their works is the idea of ​​the undivided domination of the private world.

All the heroes of the "lost" are building their own, alternative world, where there should be no place for "commercial calculations", political ambitions, wars and deaths, all the madness that is going on around. "I'm not made to fight. I'm made to eat, drink and sleep with Katherine," says Frederick Henry. This is the creed of all the "lost". However, they themselves feel the fragility and vulnerability of their position. It is impossible to completely isolate themselves from the big hostile world: it constantly invades their lives. It is no coincidence that love in the works of the writers of the "lost generation" is soldered with death: it is almost always stopped by death. Catherine, beloved of Frederick Henry, dies ("Farewell to Arms!"), the accidental death of an unfamiliar woman entails the death of Jay Gatsby ("The Great Gatsby"), etc.

Not only the death of the hero on the front line, but also the death of Catherine from childbirth, and the death of a woman under the wheels of a car in The Great Gatsby, and the death of Jay Gatsby himself, at first glance, having nothing to do with the war, turn out to be firmly connected with it. These untimely and meaningless deaths appear in the novels of the "lost" as a kind of artistic expression of the thought about the unreasonableness and cruelty of the world, about the impossibility of getting away from it, about the fragility of happiness. And this idea, in turn, is a direct consequence of the military experience of the authors, their mental breakdown, their trauma. Death for them is a synonym for war, and both of them - war and death - act in their works as a kind of apocalyptic metaphor for the modern world. The world of the works of young writers of the twenties is a world cut off by the First World War from the past, changed, gloomy, doomed.

The prose of the "lost generation" is characterized by an unmistakably recognizable poetics. This is lyrical prose, where the facts of reality are passed through the prism of perception of the confused hero, who is very close to the author. It is no coincidence that the favorite form of the "lost" is a first-person narrative, which suggests, instead of an epic detailed description of events, an excited, emotional response to them.

The prose of the "lost" is centripetal: it does not unfold human destinies in time and space, but, on the contrary, thickens and thickens the action. It is characterized by a short time period, as a rule, a crisis in the fate of the hero; it can also include memories of the past, due to which there is an expansion of the subject and clarification of circumstances, which distinguishes the works of Faulkner and Fitzgerald. The leading compositional principle of American prose of the twenties is the principle of "compressed time", the discovery of the English writer James Joyce, one of the three "whales" European modernism(along with M. Proust and F. Kafka).

It is impossible not to notice a certain similarity in the plot solutions of the works of writers of the "lost generation". Among the most frequently recurring motifs (elementary plot units) are the short-term but complete happiness of love (“Farewell to Arms!” by Hemingway, “The Great Gatsby” by Fitzgerald), the futile search by a former front-line soldier for his place in post-war life (“The Great Gatsby” and “Night tender" by Fitzgerald, "The Soldier's Award" by Faulkner, "The Sun Also Rises" by Hemingway), the absurd and untimely death of one of the heroes ("The Great Gatsby", "Farewell to Arms!").

All these motives were later replicated by the "lost" themselves (Hemingway and Fitzgerald), and most importantly, by their imitators, who did not sniff gunpowder and did not live at the turn of the epochs. As a result, they are sometimes perceived as some kind of cliché. However, life itself prompted similar plot decisions to the writers of the “lost generation”: at the front they saw senseless and untimely death every day, they themselves painfully felt the lack of solid ground under their feet in the post-war period, and they, like no one else, knew how to be happy, but their happiness often was fleeting, because the war divorced people and broke destinies. A heightened sense of the tragic and artistic flair, characteristic of the "lost generation", dictated their appeal to the limiting situations of human life.

The style of the "lost" is also recognizable. Their typical prose is an outwardly impartial account with deep lyrical overtones. The works of E. Hemingway are especially distinguished by extreme conciseness, sometimes laconic phrases, simplicity of vocabulary and great restraint of emotions. Laconically and almost dryly resolved in his novels, even love scenes, which obviously excludes any falsehood in the relationship between the characters and, ultimately, has an exceptionally strong impact on the reader.

Most of the writers of the "lost generation" were destined for years, and some (Hemingway, Faulkner, Wilder) and decades of creativity, but only Faulkner managed to break out of the circle of topics, problems, poetics and style, defined in the 20s, from the magic circle of nagging sadness and the doom of the "lost generation". The community of the "lost", their spiritual brotherhood, mixed with young hot blood, turned out to be stronger than the thoughtful calculations of various literary groups, which disintegrated, leaving no trace in the work of their participants.