Expressionism in literature features. Dudova L.V., Michalskaya N., Trykov V.P.: Modernism in foreign literature

German Expressionism and the Romantic Tradition; influence of Nietzsche. - Expressionism in various arts, the origin of the term. - Stages of development of expressionism. - Key categories of expressionist worldview (pathetic clairvoyance, deformation, search for being “at depth”, etc.). - Poetics of literary expressionism. - Expressionist drama.

In the history of German-speaking culture, the era of expressionism can be compared with the era of romanticism: just as the romantics determined the basic tone of the culture of the 19th century, the expressionists painted the past century with a unique color. German romanticism can be compared to a powerful volcanic eruption that lasted for several decades, gradually dying out. This fading movement of lava (still flaring up with a romantic flame in the works of F. Hebbel, R. Wagner, T. Storm) in our time is increasingly and, I think, quite rightly called the Biedermeier era (Das Biedermeier). If romanticism is like a reckless rush to new heights (abyses) of spirit and art, then Biedermeier is comparable to later attempts, which spanned the entire 19th century, to correlate this uncompromising audacity (and the corresponding artistic search) with the requirements of public morality.

After the unification of Germany under the auspices of Prussia in 1871, the era of Gründerism began ( Griindenit), which became a continuation of Biedermeier in German art, perfectly combined with local patriotism. Hence the literature of the “small homeland” ( Heimatliteratur), "blood and soil" ( Blut-und Bodenliteratur). The later work of Richard Wagner (1813-1883), who went from a revolutionary-minded romantic to a typical “Grunder” (only super-talented!), became very indicative of the second half of the century. In this context, the criticism of Wagnerian Christianity by F. Nietzsche (“Wagner’s Incident”, 1888) is understandable. Having switched from “Apollonian” positions to “Dionysian” ones, Nietzsche, without a doubt, revived the spirit of romanticism and entered into polemics with Biedermeier, with what he considered the religious, ethical and aesthetic falsehood of the entire Western European culture of the second half of the 19th century. Nietzsche is the most radical heir of F. Hölderlin and the Jena romantics. Having rejected the “Bayreuth” Wagner, assimilated by the empire, and himself rejected by official Germany and almost all of his contemporaries, he not only paved the way for expressionism, but also in his manner (“Thus Spake Zarathustra,” “Twilight of the Idols”) was already an expressionist before expressionism (like V. Van Gogh and E. Munch in painting). As we approach the 20th century. and the “prenatal” formation of expressionism, Nietzsche’s popularity increases sharply, emerging in the 1900s. to the level of almost universal fashion. T. and G. Mann, R. M. Rilke, G. von Hofmannsthal, G. Trakl, S. George, F. Kafka, R. Musil, G. Hesse, G. Bsnn, most of the expressionists fell into the orbit of his influence for a long time . Not all of them followed the path of Nietzsche’s “revaluation of values” to the end. And Nietzsche himself, having heralded the “death of God” and substantiated the need to stand “beyond good and evil,” but essentially left his neo-romantic hero at the pass.

“Freed” from all traditional moral and ethical norms and values, the superman himself had to decide for himself whether he needed any norms and values, and if he did need them, then which ones. This choice became a problem for the entire artistic 20th century. But one of the first (after Nietzsche) to come into close contact with him was the Expressionists - a generation that rebelled against everything “paternal” and caused a “volcanic eruption” in German-speaking culture, similar in its consequences to the romantic one. Expressionism is a phenomenon that swept through the 1910s - mid-1920s. most areas of art and culture in Germany (painting, literature, theater, philosophy, music, sculpture, dance, cinema, urban planning). It is based on a way of creative worldview, according to which European humanistic culture was recognized as having completely exhausted its ideological and stylistic potential. As a movement in painting, German expressionism announced itself in 1905 in Dresden (the group "Bridge", Die Bmcke, 1905-1913), flourished in the “New Association of Artists of Munich” (1909-1914), and found the most striking theoretical justification in the collective almanac “The Blue Rider” (Der Daie Reiter), published under the editorship of V. Kandinsky and F. Marc in 1912 and 1914. Dresden, Munich, Berlin, Leipzig and Vienna played an important role in the development of expressionist painting, since Austrian artists (A. Kubin, O. Kokoschka, A. Schoenberg) and others constantly participated in German exhibitions, illustrated German expressionist almanacs, magazines, and their own and other people's works of art published in German publishing houses. The term “expressionism” has precisely artistic origins. In 1911 in Germany, at the 22nd exhibition of the Berlin Secession, the paintings of the French artists presented there (J. Braque, M. Vlaminck, P. Picasso, R. Dufy, A. Derain) were called “expressionist”, whose style was clearly different from the impressionistic . At the same time, K. Hiller transferred this designation to literature: “We are expressionists. We return content, impulse, spirituality to poetry” (1911, July). For the philosophical justification of expressionism, the books and articles of V. Worringer were important (primarily “Abstraction and Empathy”, Abstraktion und Einfuhlung, 1907), who, together with V. Kandinsky, F. Marc, A. Macke, developed a new aesthetics and in the collective manifesto “In the Struggle for Art” (1911) for the first time gave a cultural and art historical justification for the term “expressionism”, and also associated this phenomenon with tradition of northern art and with Gothic. Literary expressionism is constituted in Germany as a movement among the employees of the Berlin magazines "Sturm" (Der Sturm, 1910-1932), edited by Herwarth Walden, and Aktion (Die Action, 1911-1932), supervised by Franz Pfemfert. The White Pages are also significant ( Die weissen Blatter, Leipzig, 1913-1920) R. Schickele, “New Pathos” ( Das neue Pathos, Berlin, 1913-1919) R. Schmidt, L. Maidner, P. Tsekh, “Brenner” (Der Brenner, Innsbruck, 1910-1954) L. von Ficker. Among the later expressionist magazines, it is necessary to highlight Neue Jugend (NeueJugend, Berlin, 1916-1917) W. Herzfelde. An important role in the spread of expressionism was played by the publishing houses Rowolt (founded in 1908 in Leipzig by E. Rowolt, 1887-1960) and Kurt Wolf Verlag (1912-1931). The Malik publishing house (1917-1939) also did a lot to promote expressionism and, more broadly, avant-garde art.

In the history of German expressionism, several stages of development can be distinguished. Stage 1 - until 1910, when expressionism was gaining strength, but did not identify itself culturally, did not have a self-name: in literature (the works of G. Mann, T. Deubler, F. Wedekind, G. Broch, F. Kafka, A. Mombert, E. Lasker-Schüler, E. Schgadler, A. Döblin); in painting (group “Bridge”, Die Briicke), in music (experiments of A. Schoenberg, A. Berg, A. Webern; elements of expressionism are already discernible in R. Wagner and especially in the songs of H. Wolf, who, as it turned out, introduced the texts of Goethe, Eichendorff, Mörike into an expressionist context), in sculpture (E. Barlach). Until 1910, expressionist subjects, motifs, and images in literature identified themselves spontaneously, within the first “phase of literary modernity, which reworked Nietzsche’s ideas about the revaluation of all values ​​and gravitated toward a unique religion of life” (H. Lehnert). Future expressionists, as a rule, visited decadent and aesthetic circles, bohemian cafes, and literary cabarets, gradually creating their own associations and presses. Thus, E. Stadler and R. Schickele joined the literary group “Youngest Alsace” back in 1902 and began with imitations of Jugendstil, S. George, G. von Hofmannsthal, A. de Regnier, P. Verlaine. In 1909, K. Hiller, E. Löwenzon and J. van Hoddis founded the “New Club” in Berlin, and then the “Neopathetic Cabaret”, which became a permanent platform for many future expressionists (H. Heim,

A. Lichtenstein, E. Unger). E. Lasker-Schüler and H. Walden had already been regulars at bohemian Berlin cafes since the beginning of the century, and in 1905 they organized the “Society of Artists” in one of them ( Verein fiirKunst), which was visited by II. Hills, II. Scheerbart, as well as A. Döblin, G. Benn, who since 1910 have become active employees of the Sturm magazine. F. Wedekind, who anticipated some of the discoveries of expressionism in the drama “Spring Awakening” (Fruhlings Enmchen, 1891, post. 1906), often visited bohemian cafes in Zurich, Leipzig, Berlin, Dresden, as well as Munich (“Eleven Executioners”, Die elf Scharfiichter).

• 2nd stage - in 1910-1918. Expressionism develops in breadth and depth, becoming the main event in the literary and artistic life of Germany. The number of expressionist magazines and publishing houses, collective and personal art exhibitions, theatrical performances, literary evenings, and attempts to theoretically understand the phenomenon of expressionism is growing. Within the framework of expressionism, multidirectional currents arise (political, ideological, aesthetic), but they have not yet destroyed the comparative integrity of the phenomenon.
• 3rd stage (1918-1923) - towards the end of the First World War, the heterogeneity of expressionism is becoming more and more clear. The political situation in Germany is pushing us towards this. It forces the expressionists to more clearly define their social positions. In general, German expressionism in these years was noticeably “moving to the left”, and many writers and artists - E. Toller, E. Mühsam, B. Brecht, I. R. Becher - actively participated in revolutionary events (Bavarian Soviet Republic in Munich, 1919) . As the Weimar Republic stabilized, expressionism increasingly lost its “passionary impulse”, either diverting its powerful flow into numerous channels of formal experimentation (Dadaism - since 1916; surrealism, gaining strength in 1917-1924), or trying to return to earlier ones rejected representation in the forms of “new businesslikeness” (or “new objectivity”, “new thingness”, neue Sachlichkeit, from 1923) and “magical realism” (magischer Realismus, since 1923).
• 4th stage - in 1923-1932. The division between the former expressionists is becoming increasingly irreconcilable. Some defend the principles of active, proletarian-revolutionary art (I. Becher, W. Herzfelde, G. Gross, F. Pfemfert, H. Walden, L. Rubiner, R. Leonhard, F. Wolf), others develop the ideas of the autonomy of art, on in practice, often retreating to national-conservative positions (G. Benn). Expressionism is being transformed, losing the abstract cosmic pathos of the universal brotherhood of “new people”, who united in an ecstatic “cry”-protest against the obsolete “old” world and in an equally ecstatic visionary vision of the “new” world and the “new” man. But disappearing as a formalized artistic phenomenon, expressionism remains as an integral part of the worldview of many German prose writers (A. Dsblin, L. Frank, G. Mann, F. Werfel), playwrights (E. Barlach, G. Kaiser, W. Hasenklever , K. Schgernheim, E. Toller, B. Brecht), poets (G. Heim, G. Trakl, G. Benn, J. van Hoddis, E. Lasker-Schuler), artists, sculptors, composers and film directors, which gives they have a unique personality. During the period of the fascist dictatorship, many expressionists emigrated and joined the anti-fascist struggle; those who remained in the Third Reich, as a rule, went into “internal emigration” (G. Kazak, G. Bein). After World War II, expressionism experienced a “second phase of development” (G. Benn) in prose (W. Borchert) and poetic (G. Eich, K. Krolov, S. Hermlin) genres. The expressionists have the highest achievements in establishing the genre of radio plays (G. Kazak, G. Aich, S. Hermlin). The main difference between expressionism and decadent styles is the pathetic denial of norms and values ​​- both generally accepted and those that have become fashionable, aesthetically cultivated (for example, the circle of S. George, Jugendstil in architecture and applied arts). Expressionism seemed to explode the gradual, smooth development of German culture. A new generation of artists and writers is visionarily rushing to the essence of things, tearing off the veil of appearances imposed on them by society. The “clairvoyance” of the Expressionists revealed, behind the completely “innocent” outer shell of the visible, phenomenal world, gaps and abysses - a terrifying deformation of its inner essence. This incompatibility of the visible and the essential required immediate action: a “cry,” a “cry,” a “breakthrough,” despair, an appeal, a passionate sermon—anything but calm contemplation. Such a pathetic and prophetic mood of expressionism excluded harmony, proportionality, compositional, rhythmic and color balance; the work was not supposed to please the eye and ear, but to excite, excite and, to a large extent, shock. Hence the inherent tendency towards caricature in expressionism (from Italian. sapsage- overload), to the grotesque and fantasy, to the deformation of everything objective (A. Kubin, O. Kokoschka, O. Dix, G. Gross). In the future, this opened the way for abstraction (abstract expressionism of V. Kandinsky, F. Marc), as well as surrealism (I. Gaulle, G. Arp).

The dominant attitude of the Expressionists was that they perceived the imperfection of reality as a sign of an approaching universal catastrophe and sought to convey this apocalyptic vision to others. With such a visionary aggravated premonition of social cataclysms, the problem of expression (expression) - the special intensity or even “strength” of the artistic message - came to the fore. Therefore, many expressionists emphasized the priority of spiritual content, going so far as to deny form and style (K. Hiller, P. Kornfeld), highlighting abstract ethical values ​​- “conviction , will, intensity, revolution" (K. Hiller, 1913) or "visionary - protest - change » (G. Beni, 1933). The trends in the development of society and culture led in Germany to the fact that it was expressionism that became the highest peak of the crisis of the arts (in Russia and Italy it corresponds to futurism, in France - surrealism). German futurism, Dadaism, and surrealism were actually his companions, actualizing the multidimensional potential inherent in him. Although the central position of expressionism in German culture of the 20th century. it is undeniable - it was noticed by both the expressionists themselves (G. Benn, G. Kazak) and those who studied it - considerable difficulties arise with its typology: “From the standpoint of pure aesthetics, it is impossible to indicate what was truly exciting in this movement , exciting or even pioneering. We must finally admit that expressionism is not only art, but at the same time an ideological beacon. And this beacon will shine only for those who are able to take into account the totality of all expressionist tendencies and, in addition, realize their cultural and historical value. Only with such a look are the lines of historical development revealed” (R. Haman, I. Hermand). Two world wars started by Germany and ending catastrophically for it, the revolution and civil war of 1918-1923, the fascist dictatorship (1933-1945), post-war devastation and the split of the country (first into four zones of occupation, and then into two German zones hostile to each other). states, Germany and the GDR) - this is what, as it is seen now, the Expressionists prophetically foresaw, speaking about the “end of the world” and turning their “cry” to God, to the stars, to Man and Humanity, to their surroundings, or simply to Nowhere. Let us note that a significant contribution to the development of German expressionism, already in its original positions, was made by Russians (V. Kandinsky, M. Veryovkina, A. Jawlensky) and Austrians (A. Kubin, O. Kokoschka, T. Deubler, A. Schoenberg, M. Brod, F. Kafka) writers, artists and composers. Among the Expressionist writers there were many Jews who, although they felt themselves to be representatives of German culture, could not help but notice the rise of nationalism in Germany. To the visionary premonitions of the tragedies of Germany in the 20th century. they added a premonition of the tragedy of the Jewish people, as well as their own tragic fate (J. van Hoddis, A. Mombert, E. Lasker-Schuler, A. Wolfenstein, F. Werfel, E. Toller, E. Muhsam, G. K. Kulka) . The latter circumstance emphasizes a common feature of expressionism - the feeling of the unity of personal and universal catastrophe (it runs through the works of G. Geim, E. Stadler, G. Trakl, F. Mark, A. Stramm). The problems of German expressionism are in many ways similar to the problems of the entire European avant-garde, but, naturally, they also have special specifics. Expressionism has in common with the avant-garde the denial of bourgeois civilization and bourgeois culture. G. Benn emphasized: “What in other countries was called futurism, cubism, and later surrealism, in Germany was considered expressionism, diverse in its empirical variations, but united in its internal fundamental commitment to the destruction of reality, to a reckless breakthrough to the essence of all things. .." (1955). In terms of this destructive power, expressionism was not inferior to futurism, but the futurists were much more interested in the “technology of destruction” itself; The German expressionists (at least in the first two stages of the evolution of expressionism) have nothing similar to the manifestos of T. Marinetti. Futurism is unthinkable without faith in technological progress; the future technization of humanity is one of its leitmotifs. Many expressionists also hoped for the future, but their Hope was based primarily on faith in man himself, who, having rejected everything false in civilization and culture - including technology, if it distorts human nature - will with amazement discover in its depths a truly human essence, will merge with its own kind in an enthusiastic religious (religious but sensual filling, but not in the traditional religious sense) ecstasy, since around it there will be brothers in spirit, “comrades of humanity” ( Kameraden der Menschheit - this was the name of one of the final poetic anthologies of German expressionism, published by L. Rubiner in 1919). No less characteristic is the title of the best expressionist poetry collection by J.R. Becher - “Disintegration and Triumph” (Verf all und Triumph, 1914). The triumph of “disintegration” was proclaimed back in 1912 by J. van Hoddis, who was inspired in his anticipation of universal storms and apocalypses by the fear of the German burghers of any deviations from the norm and order. Vanhoddis poem "The End of the World" ( Weltende, 1911) became one of the favorite poems not only of Becher, but also of many expressionists. G. Benn also admired the upcoming “morgue” in his own way (“The Morgue and Other Poems”, Morgue und andere Gedichte, 1912 - another landmark collection of poems for Expressionism), recording the “decay” of mutilated human bodies with the composure of a professional anatomist and venereologist. The expressionists perceived the decline and collapse of bourgeois society as an inevitable punishment for the sins of European civilization. However, feeling almost forcibly drawn into the deadly cycle of history, the expressionists saw in it a cleansing hurricane, the approach of which they wanted to accelerate with their pathetic spells. They often perceived violence, destruction, deliberate deformation of all forms of bourgeoisness (both public and personal, creative in fact, which, in particular, is associated with the rejection of impressionism as bourgeois, “gastronomic” art) as a source of inspiration, a chance to feel Chaos (similar ideas are already found in Novalis and other Jena romantics), abysses, “night”, “archetypal” - in a word, that on the basis of which a brotherhood of individuals freed from all compulsions is capable of spontaneously (the anarchist element in the self-consciousness of many expressionists is quite obvious). This "new pathos" (Das neue Pathos - the name of one of the most representative expressionist magazines) gradually “grounded” during the First World War and gave way to an equally pathetic protest against the bloodbath, strengthening pacifist sentiments, enriching the abstract-ethical basis of expressionism with social motives. If in 1912, the most active participant in the movement, L. Rubiner, wrote: “A poet invades politics, this means: he opens up, he exposes himself, he believes in intensity, in his explosive power... The only important thing is that we are on the way. Now all that is important is movement and... the will to disaster,” then in 1919, in the afterword to his anthology “Comrades of Humanity,” he already calls for a practical struggle for “international socialism” and “world revolution.” Together with Rubiner, W. Herzfelde, G. Gross, E. Piscator, D. Hartfield, E. Toller, F. Wolf, B. Brecht, R. Leonhard, J. R. Becher went through a similar path. All of them made up the “activist” (from the name of the magazine “Action” - from the German “deed”, “action”, “action”), “left”, revolutionary wing of expressionism. Another group of expressionists was not so monolithic. Nevertheless, “magical realists” clearly stand out in it (magische Realisten), who decisively dissociated themselves from politics, but did not break with expressionism and transformed its spiritual heritage into a more comprehensive (philosophical and artistic) system of coordinates: G. Kazak, O. Lörke, W. Lehmann, E. Langgesser, later G. Eich, P Huchel, O. Schäfer, H. Lange. These writers united in the magazine Column (1929-1932), while representatives of left-wing expressionism, having joined mainly the German Communist Party, collaborated in the magazine Linksurve (1929-1932) and other revolutionary publications. G. Benn actually joined the “magical realists”. Like them, even during the general crisis of the movement, he remained faithful to the original pathos of expressionism, but - unlike his new comrades - went through the temptation of the national idea. Other prominent expressionists - E. Toller, W. Hasenklever, F. Jung, K. Edschmid and others - oscillated between “activism” and disappointment in their creative ideals, as a result of which they moved closer to the neo-naturalistic “new efficiency”, giving it something undeniably expressionist (see A. Döblin’s novel “Berlin, Alexanderplatz”). Only a few writers who took a direct part in the expressionist movement became propagandists of National Socialist ideas (R. Goering, H. Schilling). The most odious figure among the former expressionists was Hanne Jost (Harms Johst, 1890-1978), who dedicated his dramas Thomas Paine (1927) and Schlageter (1933) “to Adolf Hitler with love, respect and unfailing loyalty”; in 1935-1945 he was president of the Prussian Academy of Arts and the Imperial Chamber of Letters. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, he was prohibited from publishing his works until 1955.

The Expressionists' decisive break with the bourgeois worldview was especially reflected in the depiction of the irreconcilable conflict of generations and in the frequent appeal to the theme of parricide. These are the dramas "Beggar" (Der Bettler, 1912) R. Sorge, “Son” (DerSohriy 1913, publ. 1914, post. 1916) W. Hasenclever, “Parricide” ( Vatermord, 1920) A. Bronnen, novel “It’s not the murderer, but the murdered one is to blame” (Nicht der Мorder, der Ermordete ist schuldig, 1920) F. Werfel. Erotic and sexual conflicts in them were intended to reflect not only the hypocrisy of social norms, but also the difficulties of growth, maturation, and escape into another reality. The latter is associated with the use of fantastic elements that signal the reality of sleep, the personal and collective unconscious. Often the theme of duality is also addressed. The novel by Alfred Kubip is also indicative in this regard. (Alfred Kubiri)"Other side" (Die andere Seite y 1909), which is one of the first and best dystopias of the 20th century and one of the best science fiction novels in German literature, and the first short story by Franz Kafka (1883-1924) “Description of a Fight” (Beschreibung eines KampfeSy 1904-1905, publ. posthumously). The images of the subconscious (or dreams) in it become reality, characters, doubles, creating a diffusion of space and time, violating any logic of events and abolishing any specific meaning of numerous details and details. Both Kubin’s novel and Kafka’s short story especially clearly demonstrate a very characteristic feature of 20th-century art. the process of assimilation of pre-modern artistic elements by modernist (expressionist and surrealist) poetics. Social motives have been intensifying in expressionism since the end of the First World War - in B. Brecht’s “The Legend of the Dead Soldier” ( Legende vom toten Soldaten, 1918), in the dramaturgy of E. Toller (“Man-mass”, Masse Mensch, 1920), G. Kaiser (“Gas”, Gas, 1918) and others. The poetics developed by the expressionists are diverse and difficult to reduce to a common denominator, since the intensity of the image that they strived for could be achieved with the help of rhetorical intensification of pathos (F. Werfel, J. Becher, E. Toller) , and simultaneous™, montage techniques, suggestive expressiveness, bold metaphors (in the mature works of G. Geim, E. Stadler, G. Trakl), and due to the grotesque, alogism, aphoristic brevity (Brecht, early G. Beni, partly K. Sternheim). Overcoming, and sometimes a kind of strengthening of naturalism, led the expressionists to intensify details, grotesque, caricature, mask (G. Gross, G. Mann, A. Döblin, B. Brecht). For other authors, the rejection of representation was accompanied by the sublime metaphors of “absolute poems” and “absolute prose” (H. Benn), an intense dialectic of color spots (the paintings of V. Kandinsky and A. Macke), and an intricate labyrinth of lines (the late paintings of F. Marc).

Expressionist theater gradually gained popularity, changing the audience's understanding of the role of the director, repertoire, and acting style. The stage was stripped bare, all attributes of life-likeness and the “fourth wall” disappeared from it. They were replaced by the famous stairs (designed to duplicate the motif of ascension, spiritual growth and choice), oblique planes, and geometrically asymmetrical elevations. Some of the plays were staged in city squares and circuses. Expressionism begins to actively use various stage mechanisms. In 1916-1919 Dresden became the center of the expressionist theater, where “The Son” by W. Hasenclever and three plays by the artist O. Kokoschka (including “The Murderer, the Hope of Women”, Morder, Hoffnung der Frauen, 1907, publ. 1908) in the dramatization and artistic design of the author, “Sea Battle” ( Seeschlacht, 1918) R. Goering. In 1919, B. Viertel staged F. Wolf’s drama “It’s You” ( Das bist Du). The huge success of this work was brought by the scenery of K. Felixmuller, in which expressiveness and caricature were combined with decorative colorfulness. Expressionist directors L. Jessner, J. Fehling, K. Martin staged not only plays by E. Toller, W. Hasenklever, G. Kaiser, but often remade classical plays in an expressionist manner. Erwin Piscator, who created in the 1920s. the aesthetics of propaganda revolutionary theater, successfully transferred to the stage the principles of montage introduced by the Expressionists; for example, in E. Toller’s play “Gop-la, we live” ( Hopp-la, wir leben, 1927) the action takes place on different floors (and in different rooms), for which the façade of the building with several small scenes on different levels was installed on the stage. The poetics of expressionist theater are still actively used by directors.

The artistic techniques developed by the expressionists are important not so much as a specific experiment, but for their synthetic nature, emotional expressiveness, which allowed the expressionists in their own way, with a pathos previously unprecedented in art, to predict future catastrophes in which a “new man” and a new human brotherhood should be born. However, wars and revolutions never gave birth to a “new man” (at least the one that the representatives of this movement dreamed of), expressionism by the end of the 1920s. lost his influence, although the creative possibilities he discovered retained their significance in German literature for many more decades.

Expressionism occupies a special place in the culture of Germany in the first third of the 20th century. If the development of German naturalism and impressionism was largely stimulated by foreign influence, primarily French, then expressionism as a special artistic movement emerges in line with the German aesthetic system and for the first time after a significant break begins to actively influence European art in the first decades of the 20th century.

Expressionism- a special direction among the artistic movements of the early 20th century. Its specificity is that it is emotional, ethical "explosion", "scream", generated by the deep crisis of the turn of the century and the eve of military and revolutionary upheavals. This feature was clearly recognized both by theorists of the new direction and by ordinary “activists” (a term used among the expressionists. - T.Sh.). Among the forerunners of the Expressionists, the playwrights of Sturm und Drang, F. Hölderlin, Kleist, Buchner, A. Rimbaud, G. Apollinaire, Husserl, and Nietzsche are usually named.

The direct predecessors of the Expressionists are usually called the Dutchman Van Gogh, the Belgian Ensor, and the Norwegian E. Munch (1863-1944). The latter's engraving "The Scream" (1893) could be chosen as a kind of emblem of this movement, since it is in fact the quintessence of expressionist expressiveness. Munch's canvases convey not so much the reality of the artist's surroundings, but rather sensually colored impressions. Munch's landscapes are uncomfortable, full of melancholy and pain. The characters are tormented by fear, loneliness and death and embody the suffering and sorrow of all humanity. In the engraving “The Scream,” the feeling of the inexorably approaching Apocalypse is conveyed not only by the image of the screaming figure on the bridge itself, but also by the entire system of compositional and graphic organization of the surface of the sheet.

However, the very technique of expressive expression with the help of color and form of certain extreme states of the human psyche, the deepest states of the soul and spirit of mankind has been found in the history of art since ancient times. The Expressionist manifestos repeatedly emphasized that their movement internationally and wears timeless character. Techniques of such self-expression can be found in the art of Africa and medieval German Gothic, El Greco, Goya, Gauguin, representatives of European symbolism and Art Nouveau style. As is clear from the statements of the expressionists (Casimir Edschmidt), the kinship of creative quests is reinterpreted by them as a kinship of souls, not bound by either time or national traditions: “Their origins are not in the previous generation, from which this art is dissociated in everything. The history of the soul does not move along a conveyor belt of the past so simply and consistently. Kinship is not limited. Tradition is not a national issue and is not connected with the history of any period. Expressionism has existed at all times.”

So, for the theorists of expressionism, this phenomenon is not artistic, but worldview. It manifests itself wherever great things happen. spiritual revolutions. It is no coincidence that many of their representatives were Esperantists. The disasters of the First World War cast doubt on the possibility of progress and exacerbated the crisis of public consciousness. Researchers noted that the movement that developed and strengthened during the war was created by those German youth who, in the pre-war and pre-revolutionary times, longed for spiritual cleansing. The works of the Expressionists are characterized, first of all, not by political, but by universal human pathos, although in general, this art conceived itself how rebellious, anti-bourgeois. Pathos a new movement in art was determined often with an emotional outburst, a rebellion against customary and established moral norms and public and social institutions - the political and governmental system, the injustice and cruelty of human existence. Representatives of this movement hoped for the spiritual revival and unification of humanity that survived the trenches of the First World War; they wanted to change man, to contribute to the emergence new, spiritually liberated person:

“There was a renewed sense that the connection that welded Europe together and was sealed by the war was so strong that for its inhabitants there would henceforth be no other fate than the common one, and that the appearance of the new world emerging from the ashes would not be Russian, or German, or Latin, but that this part of the world will now give birth from the bloody mists to that human “I”, which will grow in the coming millennia, develop, create a culture, enjoy, suffer and die again. What is being prepared is not the age of technology that the 19th century, intoxicated with its discoveries, predicted, but the age of the spirit, when man will plant a pious garden on earth with his own hands.”

We can rightfully call German expressionism the most “humanistically oriented” movement at the beginning of the 20th century. When we talk about expressionism, we mean not only and not so much an artistic movement. As he rightly put it Ivan Goll(1891 -1950), we mean “a state of mind that has spread, like an epidemic, to all types of intellectual activity: not only to poetry, but also to prose, not only to painting, but also to architecture and theater, music and science , University Education and Secondary School Reform".

The beginning of the artistic activity of the Expressionists is considered to be the formation by German artists in 1905 in Dresden of the group “Bridge” (“Die Braiske”). They advocated simple forms, new rhythms and rich colors. It included E.L. Kirchner, E. Heckel, E. Nolde, O. Müller and M. Pechstein, after moving to Berlin this group disbanded. In 1911, the second expressionist association was created in Munich - the Blue Rider group (Der Blaue Reiter). Among its figures are Franz Marc, August Macke, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and others.

It should be noted the international composition of this group, which is all the more important since Europe at that time was already enveloped in a pre-war nationalist frenzy. The expressionists wanted to destroy any existing barriers between people in order to find something common in the spiritual essence of humanity that would serve the universal unification of people. An important role in the development of the aesthetic principles of the new movement was played by the artistic practice of Russian artists, in particular V. Kandinsky, who tried to free the image from the power of the object. It was his image of the Blue Rider that was placed on the cover of the almanac of the same name, which contained the programmatic statements of the Expressionists.

The semantic content of the term “expressionism” is characteristic. It originates from the French “expressionisme expression”, “expressiveness”, and the Latin “expressio” - “expressiveness”, “the power of manifestation of sensory experience”. As a result, for the expressionists, “external impression” was repressed "expression" of the author's idea, positions, and the image of reality was replaced expression of individuality, the spiritual world of the creator. Denying the passivity and aestheticism of most artistic movements at the turn of the 20th century, representatives of the movement in question considered themselves responsible for the fate of humanity. A specific feature of the manifestos and creative practice of the Expressionists was the deliberate rejection of the entire previous artistic tradition, which was so uncharacteristic of German aesthetic thought. Rejecting the usual and narrow framework and standards of life, representatives of the German creative intelligentsia also reject the art of the past, if it has only aesthetic value. During the years of the pre-war crisis, war and revolution, customary morality, religion, and aesthetics were “exploded.” Representatives of this movement saw their task in revealing the essence of existence, neglecting details, halftones, “appearance”: “...The entire space of the expressionist artist becomes a vision. He doesn't have a look - he has a gaze. He doesn't describe - he empathizes. He doesn't reflect - he depicts. He doesn't take - he seeks. And now there is no longer a chain of facts: factories, houses, diseases, prostitutes, screaming and hunger. There is only a vision of it, a landscape of art<...>Everything becomes connected with eternity...”

The history of the emergence of the term itself in literary criticism is ambiguously covered. Some researchers consider it to be the author of Wilhelm Worringer, an art critic, author of the famous works “Abstraction and Empathy” (1911) and “Problems of the Form of Gothic Art.” These works posed the question of the essence of art in a new way. From Worringer’s point of view, in crisis epochs of existence, a person’s wary attitude towards the world is always born, as a result of which art arises that refuses to depict the incomprehensible and hostile concreteness of life. Abstraction at all levels of artistic representation becomes a defining feature of the style:

“The happy possibilities of art consisted... in snatching the object of the external world from its arbitrary apparent contingency, perpetuating it by approaching abstract form and thus finding peace.”

In the chaos of everyday life and global catastrophes, from Worringer’s point of view, only mathematical formulas and impulses of the human spirit remain unshakable. This is how the famous arises "the art of straight lines": Gothic and pyramids "grew out of the disharmony of the outside world." Criticism has repeatedly noted the fruitful influence of expressionist aesthetics on world theatrical and cinematic art. Simple and telling contrasts of black and white, light and dark, geometric lines cutting through planes, scenery and space were used with great success in silent cinema. Even a unique movement, “Caligarism,” arose, taking its name from director Robert Wiene’s acclaimed film “The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari” (1919). The entire visual system of the film was based on the unique use of simple geometric details and figures: verticals, diagonals, triangles, etc. Even the images of heroes were associated with the corresponding figures. The aesthetics of German expressionism was used by Sergei Eisenstein when creating the films Battleship Potemkin and Ivan the Terrible.

As N.S. rightly notes. Pavlova, “in expressionism, life is no longer perceived directly. It is perceptible only as a subject of interpretation, of the artist’s difficult reflection.” This is confirmed by the keynote speech of Casimir Edschmid (Eduard Schmid), delivered on December 17, 1917, “Expressionism in Poetry.” In a polemical frenzy, the author argues that even the image of a simple ordinary house under the pen of an expressionist loses its concreteness. From the attribute of human existence, “liberated from the musty dependence on reality,” the house appears in its “essence of essence.” The artist is called upon to reveal the hidden meaning, hidden purpose and purpose of things. As a consequence of this, deformation of the depicted object is possible in order to achieve the goal. Thus, the house, “even at the risk of its usual appearance,” “will be ready to reveal its character until it soars or collapses, until it begins to move or freezes, until everything that sleeps in it is fulfilled.”

It is no coincidence that the dramaturgy of expressionism is included in the history of literature under the name "scream dramas" The deformation in it covers not only the stage design of performances, but the essence of the images themselves, the laws of language grammar. The author's idea becomes the regulating norm of expressionist self-expression. According to Edschmead, subject of the image in art there should be not a thinking hero, but thinking process. It is this approach, and the point of view of the theorists of expressionism, that “discipline the structure” of the work: “Sentences fit into rhythm differently than is usually done. They are subject to the same intention, the same flow of spirit, giving birth only to the true. They are at the mercy of melody and word creation, But this has no end in itself. Sentences united in a long single chain serve the spirit that shapes them<...>Likewise, the word receives a different power. The descriptive, sucking the object from all sides disappears. There is no more room for him. The word became an arrow. It strikes the inside of the object and is inspired by it. The true image of the thing crystallizes<...>The adjective merges into a single alloy with the carrier of verbal thought. It shouldn't describe either. It must express the essence, and only the essence, in the most concise way. And nothing more" .

In connection with the above, the increased importance of the symbol in the artistic system of expressionism and, as a consequence of this, the appeal to mythological subjects and images, biblical and ancient Greek, becomes clear.

The chronological framework of expressionism as a movement is quite narrow and incommensurate with the influence that it had on the artistic thinking of the 20th century. - approximately from 1910-1912 to 1924-1925. However, the lifetime of this flow can be divided into three stages. The first is associated with the period of its design - from the beginning of the 1910s to the First World War. This is the heyday of expressionist lyrics. The essence and nerve of the expressionist worldview were expressed in the poetic genres of this time. In 1919, the famous anthologies of expressionist poetry “Twilight of Humanity” (“Menschheitsdammerung”) and “Comrades of Humanity” (“Kameraden der Menschheit”) were published, burned in 1933 by the Nazis and republished unchanged as the most important documents of this vibrant movement. The titles of the collections themselves are ambiguous. As is known, the world was perceived by the Expressionists in a kind of dialectic: it is not only perishing, but also capable of renewal. The twilight will certainly be followed by the dawn of a spiritually reborn humanity.

The second stage - the years of war and revolution (1914-1923) - is the heyday of drama and prose, the least developed in line with this trend. In 1917, almost simultaneously, two landmark works for expressionism appeared: the famous book of short stories by Leonhard Frank “A Good Man!” (“DerMensch ist gut!”) and the program book of the prominent theorist of left-wing expressionism Ludwig Rubiner “The Man in the Center” (“Der Mensch in der MSe”). The very names of these works emphasize the humanistic aspiration of expressionism and its anti-war pathos.

The last stage of expressionism is 1923-1925, a time of fermentation, a transition to other positions in aesthetics. Only in drama do the principles developed by expressionism continue to be successfully implemented.

In the history of the formation and flourishing of expressionism, two associations played a special role. In 1910, the magazine began publishing in Berlin “The Storm” (“Der Sturm”), publisher Gerhart Walden, who united around himself many talented writers and artists (August Stramm, Rudolf Blumner, etc.) The figures of this group were focused mainly on artistic problems, considering art to be an intrinsically valuable and self-contained phenomenon.

Since 1911, another magazine and another association began its activities, the name of which is "Die Aktion" reflects their essence - “Action”. The central task of the “activists” is to assert the social significance of art. It was in line with this association that the famous slogan was first heard - “Man in the center!” The emphasized activity of the humanistic position attracted G. Mann to collaborate with the left expressionists. Among the participants of this association are such outstanding personalities as Johannes Becher, Ernst Toller, Rudolf Leonhard. The associations “Sturm” and “Aktsion” were in constant controversy, however, often the same writers were published in both publications. Subsequently, the fates of the Expressionists diverged in many ways. J. Becher and F. Wolf, R. Leonhard became communists, L. Frank, G. Kaiser, A. Zweig, E. Toller, W. Hasenclever became anti-militarists and anti-fascists, E. Muhsam anarchist, F. Werfel pacifist, Catholic anti-fascist A. Deblin. And only G. Noet, having abandoned humanistic ideals, takes the side of fascism.

As already noted, expressionism in literature began in the works of several prominent poets. This Georg Trakl, 1887-1914), Georg Heim, 1887-1912), Else Lasker-Schuler, 1869-1945), Ernst Schtadler (1883)-1914) and others. They were greatly influenced by the experience of French symbolism - Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarmé, Rimbaud. As N.S. rightly writes. Pavlova, Trakl and Geim introduced into Austrian and German poetry what can be called “absolute metaphor”: “These poets were no longer engaged in figurative representation of reality - they created a “second reality” 1. A typical example in this regard is the poem Traklya "Peace and Silence" the central symbol of which is the “funeral of the sun” in the dead world (“naked forest”). The feeling of the inevitability of a catastrophe is enhanced by the fact that the sun is buried by shepherds (“shepherds”), those who are called upon to meet it and protect it. Images of shepherds usually evoke biblical blissful associations, but it is these people who bury the hope of humanity (“the sun”), and the fisherman (also an evangelical image) catches the “month” (or moon) from a dead pond, which in many mythologies of the world is associated with death and decay:

The shepherds buried the sun in the bare forest Fisherman

I pulled out a month from a freezing pond with a hair net.

A pale man lives in blue crystal, pressing his cheek

to your stars.

Or he bows his head in a purple dream.

And those who watch are forever touched by the black flock of Birds, the holiness of blue flowers, a harbinger of the near silence of oblivion, extinct angels.

Again the forehead fades into lunar petrification.

A shining youth, his sister appears in the middle of autumn and

black decay.

(Translation by A. Nikolaev // Trakl Georg.

Song of the sunset country. M., 1995)

As stated by N.S. Pavlova, “Trakl’s metaphor embraces the whole world, recreates its state; essence and essence are brought out, presented visibly.” In the work of the Expressionists, both in poetry and in painting, there are genuine insights and amazing foresights. Ludwig Meidner's world-famous Apocalyptic Landscape appears long before the First World War. In 1911, a poem by an early deceased was published Georg Heim (1887-1912) “War”, the visible, picturesque images of which are not only based on biblical allusions (the plot of the death of Sodom and Gomorrah), but also well-known pictorial reminiscences. The reader literally sees the painting “Colossus” by F. Goya (1808-1812), created during the Napoleonic wars in Spain.

The one who slept soundly woke up.

Waking up, he left the vaulted basement,

He came out and stood, huge, in the distance,

Covered in smoke, the month clutched in his hand.

He releases a fiery dog ​​into the field.

The forests are full of clanging and barking.

Shadows jump wildly, scurrying in the light,

The reflection of lava licks and gnaws at their edges.

In the yellow smoke the city is white as a sheet,

For a moment, looking into the abyss, he threw himself to the bottom.

But he stands at the breakdown, tearing through the smoke,

The one who waves his torch to the sky.

And in the flashing of lightning, in the winking of clouds.

Under the fangs with the roots turned out,

Ash glades for a mile around,

He sends sulfur to Gomorrah from generous hands.

(Translation by B. Pasternak // Foreign poetry in translations by B. Pasternak. M., 1990)

Geim's poems are characterized by amazing subject-matter precision, softening the gloom of apocalyptic images and the feeling of hopeless horror at the dying moment of humanity, voluntarily throwing itself into the abyss of a future war.

The anti-war theme becomes the leading one in the work of expressionist poets. This is natural, since the war not only burst into their lives, but also broke it, and for many, cut it off. Thus, one of the most prominent expressionist poets, Georg Trakl, was unable to recover from the mental trauma caused by participation in military events, and committed suicide by taking an excessive dose of drugs. However, they depict the war not in real concreteness, but in vague symbolic grandiose images. In the preface to the anthology The Twilight of Humanity, critic Curt Pintus notes: “Even the war, the war that destroyed many of these poets, is not told in a materially realistic way: it is always present like a vision, swells like a universal horror, stretches like an inhuman evil " 1 .

They liken the war to an inexplicable natural disaster, an earthquake, a raging natural disaster, an “eternal night” that descended on Europe. In the poems of one of the most interesting poets of this period, A. Ersnshtsin, the image of a gigantic bloody stream that swept the world, a “bloody sea”, among which lost humanity “wanders,” “staggers,” appears (“walls are like waves, houses are like waves.” ).

The time of the highest rise of expressionistic drama coincides with the end of the First World War. The anti-war theme determines its content, as well as the content of the prose. In 1919, almost simultaneously, plays were staged that were considered the pinnacle of expressionist drama. These are “Gas” by Georg Kaiser (1878-1945), one of the most outstanding writers of this movement, “Kind” by Fritz von Upru (1885-1970), “Metamorphosis” by Ernst Toller (1893-1939), “Antigone” by Walter Hasenklsvsr . In 1919, the Tribune Theater, specially adapted for the production of expressionist dramas, opened. The manifesto dedicated to the opening of this stage clearly stated the purpose of the new theater: “Not a stage, but a pulpit.” This slogan clearly expresses the active position of the majority of expressionists, who saw in the theater primarily a means of ideological influence.

The most important element of all expressionistic dramas is the cry generated by an apocalyptic vision of the world. The scream was supposed to awaken the masses from moral slumber; the scream expressed the instant reactions and feelings of the characters. “Such a reduction of experience to a cry leaves the main feature of the new drama. Reality appears to the authors of plays as a kind of abstraction, and they become isolated in subjectivism. All that the expressionists longed to achieve was the independence of art. They perceived abstraction from reality as a step forward in aesthetics, which - along with a marginal social position - led to loneliness and a kind of internal emigration,” the Encyclopedia of Expressionism rightly states. Not by chance such a telling characteristic has been assigned to the dramatic works of the Expressionists - "scream drama" In German literary criticism there is an equally precise designation for such works, indicating the source of moral tension in these plays - “Ich-Drama” (drama of the “lyrical self”). Torn, torn, confused world of personality - an object of constant close attention of the expressionists. In all expressionist dramas we are faced with detachment from specific events and circumstances of reality. Characteristic in this regard are the stage directions in their plays: “The time is today. The place is the world"; “Time is mythical; place - Mycenae - Olympus - “kingdom of the dead”. The Expressionists were interested in man at the moment of exceptional tension of all his moral forces, when everything everyday, private, everyday receded and the eternal, universal humanity came to light. Not by chance one of the most common characters in expressionist dramas is the prophet , Messiah , martyr and redeemer for all the sins of mankind.

One of the most prominent playwrights of this movement was Walter Hasenclewer 1890 -1940), whose play “The Son” (“Der Sohn”) brought him extraordinary success in 1914 and opened with its production the “finest hour” of expressionist drama. The conflict of the play is based on the struggle of two generations - fathers and children - a conflict characteristic of German drama, starting with the drama of the Sturmsers, and one of the main ones in expressionist plays. A characteristic feature of this work by Hasenclever is that he resolves this conflict not in the spirit of Freudian complexes, as with most expressionists, but as a clash between progressive youth and the old reactionary order.

One of the most striking dramas of Hasenclever, and indeed of all expressionist dramaturgy, is “Antigone” (“Antigone”, 1917, published 1920), written at the height of the First World War and first staged in a circus building converted specifically for this spectacle, accommodating up to three thousand people. Hasenclever's play is distinguished by passionate rebellion and frank journalisticism; it is a play-call for a revolutionary, but above all from a moral point of view, reorganization of the world. The political alignment of class forces is extremely exposed, the historical accents sound so accurately that the viewer and reader will unmistakably determine the place of action - Germany, the time of action - the height of the First World War and the pre-revolutionary elements. Hasenclever's Antigone (Messiah version) feels like the Mother of humanity, lost and weak, but worthy of salvation. Before us is an interesting symbiosis of an ancient plot and the Christian humanistic tradition. The Christian theme in Antigone also has its own special specificity. The path of Christian martyrdom, the apostolic path, is prepared not only for the Eternal Mother Antigone, but also for the entire intelligentsia - the bearer, according to Hasenclever, of a high spiritual principle, sometimes inaccessible to the understanding of the crowd. The success of the spiritual revolution can depend, according to the playwright, only on the moral feat of the intelligentsia. Hasenclever's idea of ​​revolution is very vague, as the final scenes of the tragedy prove. The departure of the tyrant Creon plunges the crowd into confusion and fear, people are ready to destroy and rob. Only mystical insight (an indispensable attribute of expressionist dramas) stops the rampant nature. The image of the people, the masses, as is typical of the expressionists, occupies a special place in the poetics of the play. It is no coincidence that in the list of characters “The Theban People” is placed in first place. The play is replete with crowd scenes and stage effects designed for the participation of a large cast. The circus arena is the most suitable place for such an action. The mass is led by a hero-preacher, captivating the crowd with his fiery speech. In the play, this is Antigone.

Possessing all the hallmarks of an expressionist drama (rapid change of scenes, “visions”, details, “frames”, the intensity of all-encompassing impulses), Hasenclever’s work also presents to the audience the effect of an instant moral “explosion” - the epiphany of the tyrant Creoite. Like the Roman Nero, who ordered to set fire to his own city, not disdaining murders and crimes, the hero in the blink of an eye, at the sight of the corpse of his own son, begins to see clearly and voluntarily lays down the royal regalia, leaves the palace, beginning the path of moral purification. Gazenklsvsr's work is journalistic in its essence and embodies the best trends of expressionist drama, and also has an educational, moralizing, in the best sense of the word, characteristic of all German literature, which manifested itself so clearly in the dramaturgy of one of the most prominent figures of German culture of the 20th century. - Bertolt Brecht.

LITERATURE

Calling a spade a spade: keynote speeches by masters of Western European literature of the 20th century. M., 1986.

Pavlova N.S. Expressionism // History of German literature: in 5 volumes. M., 1968. Vol. 4.

Pestova N.V. German literary expressionism. Ekaterinburg. 2004. Twilight of Humanity. Lyrics of German Expressionism. M., 1990. Expressionism: Drama. Painting. Graphic arts. Film art. M., 1966. Encyclopedia of expressionism: Painting and graphics. Sculpture. Architecture. Literature. Dramaturgy. Theater. Movie. Music. M., 2003.

• Expressionism / Ed. E. Braude and N. Radlova. Pg.; M., 1923. P. 63.
• Encyclopedia of Expressionism: Painting and Graphics. Sculpture. Architecture. Literature. Dramaturgy. Theater. Movie. Music. M., 2003. P. 5.
• Calling a spade a spade: Program of presentations by masters of Western European literature of the 20th century. M., 1986. P. 306.
• History of German literature. M., 1968. T. 4. P. 537.
• History of German literature. M., 1968. T. 4. P. 538.
• Calling a spade a spade... P. 306.
• Calling a spade a spade... P. 309.
• Encyclopedia of Expressionism. pp. 224-225.

In the mid-900s - early 10s, expressionism entered German culture. Its heyday is short-lived. Expressionism is much stronger in German culture than in Austrian culture. For the first time after a long break, a new artistic movement arose in Germany itself, which had a significant influence on world art. The rapid rise of expressionism was determined by the rare correspondence of the new direction to the characteristic features of the era. The extreme, screaming contradictions of imperialist Germany in the pre-war years, then the war and the brewing revolutionary indignation, destroyed for millions of people the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe inviolability of the existing order. The premonition of inevitable changes, the death of the old world, the birth of a new one became more and more clear.

Literary expressionism began with the work of several great poets - Elsa Lasker-Schüler (1876-1945), Ernst Stadler (1883-1914), Georg Heim (1887-1912), Gottfried Benn (1886-1956), Johannes Becher (1891-1958) .

The poetry of Georg Heim (collection “Eternal Day”, 1911, and “Umbra vitae”, 1912) did not know large forms. But even in small ones it was distinguished by its monumental epicness. Game sometimes saw the earth from an unimaginable height, crossed by rivers, along one of which the drowned Ophelia floated. On the eve of the World War, he depicted large cities falling to their knees (the poem “God of Cities”). He wrote about how crowds of people - humanity - stand motionless, having left their homes, on the streets and look in horror at the sky.

Even before the outbreak of the First World War, expressionist poetry developed techniques that were later widely developed - montage, dissolve, sudden “close-up”.

So, in the poem “Demons of the Cities,” Game wrote how huge black shadows slowly feel around the house behind the house and blow out the light on the streets. The backs of the houses bend under their weight. From here, from these heights, there is a rapid leap down: a woman in labor on a shaking bed, her bloody womb, a child born without a head... After the gloomy voids of the sky, the “lens” enlarges a barely noticeable point. The point is connected with the world.

It was expressionism that introduced into poetry what is commonly called “absolute metaphor.” These poets did not reflect reality in images - they created a second reality.

The poet draws connecting threads between the most distant objects and phenomena. What all these random details and images have in common is found in the higher sphere - the state in which the world was.

Not only van Goddis, but also the greatest expressionist poets - G. Heim, E. Stadler, G. Trakl - as if taking a drawing from an unusual object - the future, wrote in their poems about historical upheavals that had not yet occurred, including the world war, as if it had already taken place. But the power of expressionist poetry lies not only in prophecies. This poetry also prophesied where there was no mention of a future war. This art is highly characterized by a sense of the tragic conflict of existence. Love no longer seems like salvation, death no longer seems like a peaceful sleep.

Landscape occupied a large place in early expressionist poetry. However, nature has ceased to be perceived as a reliable refuge for humans: it has been removed from the position of apparent isolation from the human world. “The sand has opened its mouth and can no longer,” wrote the poet and prose writer Albert Ehrenstein (1886-1950) during the First World War.

Under the influence of the upheavals of time, the expressionists keenly perceived the coexistence in nature of the living and the dead, the organic and the inorganic, the tragedy of their mutual transitions and collisions. This art seems to still hold in memory a certain initial state of the world. Expressionist artists are not interested in a detailed depiction of the subject. Often outlined in a thick and rough outline, the figures and things in their paintings are indicated as if in rough outline - with large strokes and bright spots of color. It was as if the bodies had not been cast forever into forms that were organic to them: they had not yet exhausted the possibilities of cardinal transformations.

The intensity of color in their literature and painting is deeply connected with the expressionists’ worldview. The colors, as in the children's drawings, seem to be something earlier than the form. In expressionist poetry, color often replaces the description of an object: it seems to precede concepts.

Movement was perceived as a natural state. It also implied shifts in history. The bourgeois world seemed frozen in immobility. The capitalist city that squeezed him threatened man with forced immobility. Injustice was the result of circumstances that paralyzed people.

The living often threatens to turn into motionless, material, dead. On the contrary, inanimate objects can heal, move, and tremble. “The houses vibrate under the whip... the cobblestones move in an imaginary calm,” wrote the poet Alfred Wolfenstein (1883-1945) in his poem “Cursed Youth.” There is no finality anywhere, no definite boundaries...

The world was perceived by the Expressionists both as dilapidated, outdated, decrepit, and as capable of renewal. This dual perception is noticeable even in the title of a representative anthology of expressionist lyrics published in 1919: “Menschheitsdämmerung”, which means either the sunset or the dawn before which humanity faces.

The conquest of expressionistic lyrics is considered to be poems about cities. The young expressionist Johannes Becher wrote a lot about cities. All representative anthologies of German poetry include Heim’s poems “Berlin”, “Demons of the City”, “Suburb”. Cities were depicted differently by the Expressionists than by naturalists, who were also attentive to urban life. The expressionists were not interested in urban life - they showed the expansion of the city into the sphere of human consciousness, inner life, psyche, and captured it as a landscape of the soul. This soul is sensitive to the pain and ulcers of time, and that is why in the expressionistic city wealth, splendor and poverty, poverty with its “basement face” (L. Rubiner) collide so sharply. In the cities of the Expressionists, one can hear grinding and clanging and there is no admiration for the power of technology. This movement is completely alien to the admiration for the “motorized century”, airplanes, balloons, airships, which was so characteristic of Italian futurism.

But the idea of ​​man himself - this center of the universe - is far from unambiguous. Gottfried Benn's early expressionistic collections ("Morgue", 1912) provoke the reader's thought: a beautiful woman - but her body, like an inanimate object, lies on the table in the morgue ("The Negro's Bride"). Soul? But where to look for it in the weak body of an old woman, incapable of the simplest physiological functions (“Doctor”)? And although the vast majority of Expressionists passionately believed in the straightening of people, their optimism related to possibilities, but not to the modern condition of man and humanity.

For the expressionists, war is primarily the moral decline of humanity. “Godless Years” is what A. Wolfenstein calls his 1914 collection of lyrics. Before art, which inscribed the word “Man” on its banner, there arose a picture of the obedient submission of millions to the order of mutual extermination. A person lost the right to think, was deprived of individuality.

The boundaries of expressionistic art expanded widely. But at the same time, exactly as much as the spirit of the time corresponded to the feelings of the writer. Expressionism often reflected important social sentiments (horror and disgust for war, revolutionary indignation), but sometimes, when some phenomena were just emerging, left-wing expressionist literature, which did not know how to extract something new from a patient study of life, did not catch them.

Poetry of German Expressionism

Nature is one world, art is another, there can be nothing in common between them.

From the policy statement of the magazine “Sturm”.

Not individual, but characteristic of all people, not dividing, but connecting.

From the preface by K. Pintus to the anthology of expressionist poetry.

Today many people laugh at expressionism, but back then it was a necessary art form. It was directed against an artistic movement that was content to string together impressions without raising the question of essence, responsibility, or idea. Expressionism wanted more than photography... Reality had to be permeated with the light of ideas. ( Toller E. Quer Durch! Reisebilder und Reden. - Berlin, 1930. - S. 280.)

« <...>Impressionism was only a fashion, while expressionism was a worldview” (Sturm magazine).

« <...>The Deepest Meaning of All Expressionist Art<...>in an attempt to break through to God through all the barbed wire barriers of the laws of nature” (W. Worringer).

“A work of art, as an independent organism, is equivalent to nature, and in its deepest inner essence stands out of connection with it, since by nature we mean the visible surface of things” (W. Worringer).

GEORGE HEIM

Where the carousels were just making noise

Where the carousels were just making noise,
A giant gramophone was playing,
Lanterns were shining from all sides,
Posters and names were colorful

Where crowds gathered at the kiosks
And the barkers called them to come in,
Where did the idle paths lie?
Men and women, elders and teenagers,

There was silence. Through the clouds
The sickle of the month ripped open the womb of darkness
Birches are like the signs of the zodiac,
And the marble of darkness rose for centuries

Per. V. Toporova

On the outskirts

In your neighborhood, in the street dirt,
Where is the low and close moon
Through the stench of digestion and sleep
He threatens with a pale, deathly grin,

They stick out. Constellations beauty,
Basement rats, blinds them at night,
Clothes are falling apart at the seams
And nakedness rots in the holes.

Here the toothless mouth squishes like mucus,
Here they know how to beat with stumps;
The bad ones start to cry
The old man will not erase the leprosy from his forehead.

Jumping on homemade crutches,
Crippled children howl with sadness -
If they were fleas, they would have jumped long ago
A passerby who has money.

In the basement, where the ceiling is peeling,
Two beggars with rage and anger
A blind man is treated to a fish bone -
And he vomits blood onto a handkerchief.

With old women on a dirty sheet
The elders are plagued by smoldering lust.
The baby, like an old woman, began to groan,
Looking for sucked breasts in a dream.

Blind old man on the edge of his bed
A slut is entertained with a barrel organ
And the pale young man twirls the lame thing
Faster than the free carousel.

And finally, in the hour of black shame,
Walking ruins, drunks
Left the underground shacks,
Having erected a lamp in his forehead, like miners.

But morning... The bells sang:
Once you have sinned, repent, you scoundrel.
The gates are wide open. But the brothels will be locked,
It's high time for all the eunuchs to bye-bye.

That skull on the tavern sign
It's swinging...Every step is crooked and haphazard.
Those who fell asleep fell into disgust
From the depths of the feast that emerged.

And at the wall, in his squalor,
Particularly susceptible to vanity, -
In silk, but nevertheless in the channel, -
A red gnome is watching the meteor.

Per. V. Toporova

Night

The whole West is in clouds, the whole East is in clouds,
Only a short ray will flash and die,
Lost in the darkness. Above a river
The old town has become ruffled

In pointed hats. It's pouring from the sky
On the streets, in crooked alleys -
Isn't it a voice? But we are in the land of the dumb.
It just pours and pours all night long.

Above the waters, in the blurry light
Night lantern stands alone
Gloomy wanderer. Damp on the bridge.

Yes, here and there a light flickers
In the little houses. But it flows forever into the darkness
A slow, deathly stream.

Per. V. Toporova

Everywhere you look, cities are in ruins

Everywhere you look, cities are in ruins.
All tiled roofs are covered in weeds.
Only the bells are forever shuddering
And the whisper of river waters near the ancient walls.

In the half-light from the darkness of the sky,
Sad, in the evening lines,
They go out and start a round dance -
Visions, torment, adversity.

The flowers in their hands have withered, and on their faces -
Either timid horror or bewilderment.
The fiery burial has arrived
And the sun destroys all living things.

Per. V. Toporova

Georg Heim (1887-1912) - one of the founders of expressionism, a representative of a group of poets united around the magazine "Storm". During his lifetime, he was published mainly in periodicals; G. Geim's poems were included in the first anthology of expressionist poets, “Twilight of Humanity” (1919). The first complete collection of poems was published in 1944. One of the theorists of expressionism, K. Edschmid, noted that G. Geim “with a monumental gesture cast down” “blocks of poetry” on his contemporaries and “forged his visions from images and stanzas.” The poems of G. Geim were translated by the young B. Pasternak; The given translations belong to V. Toporov.

GEORGE TRACKL

Autumn of the lonely

She, generous and illusory, has arrived,
The short-lived radiance of days has faded.
Thick blue without a cover,
Birds fly away, like ancient legends.
The wine is ripe; whispered quietly
The solution to the mystery is dark silence.
Here and there - crosses along the gloomy hills,
The herd got lost in the scarlet forest.
The moon floats over the river, over the bucket,
The reaper's hand dropped wearily,
And the blue-winged dusk with a quiet flutter
It swept over the rooftops; the darkness deepened.

Constellations twine on your forehead
Their nesting places; everything is full of peace,
And the angels fly silently
From the lips of a lover, merging with the blue;
Death sweat appears
Dew glistening over the mown grass.

Per. V. Toporova

Human race

The human race was built before the abyss of fire,
The beat of the drum, the battle in the greasy fire,
Through the scarlet darkness the sound of horseshoes is dull;
The mind cries, betrothed to the darkness of the world, -
Eve's shadow is here, chervontsy, dashing rut.
The beam pierced the cloudy filament.
Wine and bread are the path of silent sacrifice,
Behold, the Twelve meekly pay tribute
And they cry out, having fallen asleep under the olive tree;
Saint Thomas puts his hand into the wounds.

Per. A. Solyanova

Menschheit

Menschheit vor Feuerschlunden aufgestellt,
Ein Trommel wirbel, dunkler Krieger Stirnen,
Schritte (lurch Blutnebel; schwarzes Eisen schellt,
Verzweiflung, Nacht in traurigen Gehirnen:
Hier Evas Schatten, Jagd und rotes Geld.
Gewölk, das Licht durchbricht, das Abendmahl.
Es wohnt in Brot und Wein ein sanftes Schweigen
Und jene sind versammelt zwölf an Zahl.
Nachts schrein im Schlafsie unter Ölbaumzweigen;
Sankt Thomas taucht die Hand ins Wundenmal.

Sonya

Evening, who grew up in nomads,
Flips through notes.
The birds are crying in the trees.
Your life is a dull note.

The blue light of distant vespers
Life hovers above yours.
Wounds glow in a dark bedroom
And they live a separate life.

An important and poignant evening...
Why are you crying, what are you, what are you?
White beast, slaughtered in a thicket,
Your pain is a dull note.

The gray sun of ancient days
These eyebrows were singed.
It will snow, the sun will go out,
The blizzard will sit at the head of the room.

Per. V. Toporova

Delirium

The snow fell like a rustling drop on the roof,
The crimson finger pierces the forehead stubbornly,
Azure across the bedroom like ice grains,
In their mirror of lovers there is a quiet face.
A double bursts under the cracked skull,
Falling like a shadow into the ice grains,
And a cold whore with a pernicious grin.
And the tears are hidden by the wind in the dream of carnations.

Per. A. Solyanova

Delirium

Der schwarze Schnee, der von den Dachcrn rinnt;
Ein roter Finger taucht in deine Stirne
Ins kahle Zimmer sinken blaue Firne,
Die Liebender ersrtorbene Spiegel sind.
In schwere Stücke bricht das Haupt und sinnt
Den Schatten nach im Spiegel blauer Firne,
Dem kalten Lächein einer toten Dime.
In Nelkendürfen weint der Abendwind.

Georg Trakl (1887-1914) - Austrian, one of the most significant lyricists of expressionism, belonging to the school of visionaries. The first poems were published in the monthly magazine “Der Brenner”. In August 1914, G. Trakl left for the eastern front. The war shocked the poet, and he, finding himself in the infirmary, takes an increased dose of drugs. In a conversation with G. Janouch, Franz Kafka said that G. Trakl poisoned himself to escape the horrors of war (“He had too strong an imagination. Therefore, he could not bear the war, which arose mainly due to an unheard-of lack of imagination”).

Trakl's lyrics are distinguished by a combination of pictorial and musical principles. The poems “Autumn of the Lonely,” “Childhood,” “Romances for the Night,” and others are imbued with sadness, despair and subtle lyricism. Trakl’s poetry is marked by the assimilation of classical traditions coming from Hölderlin, contact with the poetry of the end of the century and especially the works of S. Gheorghe. In turn, the work of G. Trakl had a noticeable influence on German-language poetry of the 20th century.

During G. Trakl's lifetime, the only collection of his works, “Gedichte” (1913), was published. Trakl was able to read the second collection “Sebastian im Traum” (1915) only in proof.

CONTEMPORARIES ABOUT THE WORK OF G. TRACKL

P. M. Rilke about G. Trakl

Only yesterday evening in the package from which I took Kierkegaard out, I found Trakl’s “Helian” and am eternally grateful to you for the parcel. The melodic rise and fall in this beautiful poem are filled with indescribable charm; I was especially struck by its internal intervals; It’s as if it’s all built on pauses—several pegs bordering the boundless wordless: that’s how the lines are arranged in it. It is like fences on a flat area, over which the enclosed space rolls, continuously merging with the great plain that belongs to no one.

(From a letter from P. M. Rilke to Ludwig von Ficker dated February 8, 1915. Quoted from: Rilke P. M. Worpswede. Auguste Rodin. Letters. Poetry. - M., 1994. - P. 210.)

<...>In the meantime, I received Sebastian in a Dream and read it a lot: with enthusiasm, amazement, foreboding and confusion. You quickly understand that the conditions that brought these melodic ups and downs to life were unique and unique - like those circumstances that lead to the appearance of this or that dream in our consciousness. I think that even a person internally close to him should perceive these images and ideas as if he were looking at them, pressed against the window glass, that is, being outside of this world. Trakl's experiences pass before us like mirror reflections, filling the entire space, which is as inaccessible to us as the space in the mirror (who was this man after all?).<...>

Martin Heidegger about G. Trakl

What is the nature of language in Trakl’s poetic structure? It corresponds to the path along which the alien leaves. The path he takes leads away from the old, dying race. It leads to the sunset, to the preserved earlyness of the unborn race. The language of poetry, the point of which is detachment, speaks of the return of the unborn human race home to the quiet beginning of quiet existence.

The language of this poetry is the language of transition. His path leads from the sunset of death to the sunset in the twilight blue of holiness. This language is swimming over and through the misty pond of spiritual night. This language sings the song of a detached return - from the late time of decay to the early days of a calm, yet unknown beginning. This is the language of the path on which the singing-radiant harmony of the spiritual year of the renounced stranger appears. “The Song of the Detached” sings, in the words of the poem “Revelation and Decline,” “the beauty of the homecoming race.”

Since the language of this poetry is generated by the path of the detached, it is determined by what the latter leaves behind when leaving, and by what his departure leads to. The language of poetry is polysemantic in its essence, and polysemantic in its own way. We cannot hear a poetic statement if, due to our own stupidity, we are determined to perceive it in any one meaning.

Twilight and night, sunset and death, madness and beast, pond and stone, bird flock and boat, stranger and brother, God and spirit, as well as the names of the colors: blue and green, white and black, red and silver, gold and dark, they talk about multiple again and again.

“Green” means: decaying and blossoming, “white” - deathly and pure, “black” - darkly closing and darkly melting, “red” - purple-carnal and pink-meek. “Silver” is the pallor of death and the twinkling of stars. “Golden” is the radiance of truth and “golden sinister laughter.” The polysemy mentioned here is, first of all, ambivalence. But this ambivalence shows only one side of the whole, the other side of which is dictated by the hidden starting point of the poetic structure

{Heidegger M. Georg Trakl: clarification of the poetic structure // G. Trakl. Favorites. - M. 1994. - P. 193-194).

ELSA LASKER-SCHÜLER

End of the world

There is a cry and a groan in the world,
It's as if God died with his kindness,
And the lead shadow of the hanging board
Crushes with a gravestone.

Oh come, we could take shelter closer...
Life lay motionless in all hearts,
Like in tombs.

Understand! We want to kiss passionately.
Longing is knocking on this world -
As if we wouldn't have to die from it.

Per. A. Parina

From "Jewish Ballads"

My people

The cliff is crumbling
Where do I start from?
And my song about God began to sound...
I rushed abruptly out of the way
And, withdrawing into myself, I flow
Alone, through the stones of lamentation,
To sea.
I really wanted to get rid of
In your blood
The bitterness of fermented wines.
But every time I echo with my heart,
I scream from the depths
When, look at the sunrise,
My people,
The cliff is crumbled dust,
He calls God heart-rendingly.

Per. A. Larina

My blue piano

There is a blue piano in my house,
Yes, I couldn’t understand the notes.

It is hidden in the basement, in lifeless darkness,
Since the earth became rough.
Starry hands strum out of tune.
(The full moon sang in the boat!)
Rats dance in a crowd to the sound of tinkling.

The keys are broken, the order is disrupted.
I will pay for the blue body.

Oh, the angel will take me with him
(Have I not eaten bitter bread?)
I'll enter the heavenly doors alive -
And then I disdained the prohibitions.

Per. A. Parina

Elsa Lasker-Schüler (1869-1945) is “poetry itself,” as her contemporary K. Edschmid defined the essence of this amazing poetess’ talent. The granddaughter of a rabbi and the daughter of an architect, Elsa Lasker-Schüler lived a life full of hardships and wanderings. She stood at the origins of expressionism and remained faithful to it throughout her entire creative career. Lasker-Schüler collaborated with the leading expressionist magazines Action and Sturm, and was familiar with poets and artists who stood in the positions of avant-garde art: Hille, Kraus, Werfel, Trakl, Fr. Mark.

A recognized leader of expressionist poetry, she was distinguished by her emphatically individual vision and sense of the world. Her poetry is characterized by emotional intensity, passion, a combination of exoticism and fantasy, longing for lost harmony and despair from the chaos and madness reigning around. The poems of Elsa Lasker-Schüler are a cry from the soul. who realized the severance of centuries-old ties with the world, space, homeland, and relatives (poems “The End of the World,” “Prayer,” “Memorial Day,” etc.). The cycle “Jewish Ballads” occupies a special place in Lasker-Schuler’s work. This is evidence of the poetess’s search for ways that would lead to the restoration of once broken family ties, the experience of poetic understanding of the tragic history of the Jewish people, of which Elsa Lasker-Schuler always felt herself a part and whose return to the homeland was so tragically bitter.

During the years of fascism, the poetess's work was outlawed, and the winner of one of the prestigious awards (Kleist-Preis, 1932) was forced to leave Germany. The roads of wanderings ran through the countries of Europe, and her life’s journey was completed in the homeland of her ancestors in Palestine, where she died in poverty and obscurity. But real poetry, and the poetry of Lasker-Schüler is just that, is immortal. The collections of her poems “Hebraische Balladen” (1913) and “Mein blaues Klavier” (1943) are still included in the golden treasure of world poetry.

GOTFRID BENN

Maternity hospital

By conception crucified again -
On a rusty nail,
Lying, distraught,
Knees apart.

In a position, weakly generous, -
As if shouting:
- Finish it, stop it! — The depths have been revealed
And the depths rumble.

The whole body is tossing and grumbling,
Dream Sword:
May there be a flood after us, and to those who stop,
Be you, be you...

Chamber in laughing gas,
Bloody, white:
Childbirth, scum from scum,
And death is like a doctor at the table.

Per. V. Toporova

Cretan bowl

Lips of scarlet wine,
A gang of roses on blue clay,
The moon is clear from Mycenae,
Sung, deprived of embodiment,
Thirst, thirst.

Weathered. Birth cry -
Without effort. In the loose light
Animals, rocks, a swarm of nonsense,
A handful of violets, a bare skull
They are blossoming.

A wave against reason
The heat of deep bacchanalia,
Against the lofty canals,
Against the truth of the head!

Brain, fall apart! Brain, unwind!
iridescent body
Let it flow back.
There Leda calls to the feast,
There is a fall, there is a victory,
Life, conception and decline!

Per. V. Toporova

FROM THE BOOK “LATER “I”

(From the lyrics of the twenties - fifties)

Acheron

I dreamed about you. You walked in a crowd of shadows
Guided by an invisible thread
In the cycle of glare and lights
And I couldn’t stop the procession.

The deceased were attracted by emptiness,
Seducing with narcotic dreams;
The boys walked with their eyes closed
And spots of decay near the mouth.

You brought two children - who is their father?
This has never happened to you and me.
You walked and walked until you disappeared,
Who is everyone who is nearby, like any dead person.

But you are the queen of the Greek chorus -
With death, and not with life on an equal basis,
Walked in a caravan of sorrow and shame
And - such a dream! — suffered in this dream.

Per. V. Toporova

Poetry

What does writing paper mean?
Fire? Despair? Calculation?
Why poetry? Where does the craving come from?
Where does sadness take you?

What are you up to? Bury
In the suffering of everyone - and live inside?
I took a grain here, a grain there -
Pick up another grain.

Alas, not everything is under your control.
Protect your goods
And fence it off at all times—
And banish mistrust.

Seek not glory, but employment,
Melt down other people's pains
And into indifferent arms
Set life like a pearl.

Per. V. Toporova

Last spring

Become a brother of the blooming roses
And the groom of the shy lilac
And your blood - without complaints and without tears
Turn on blood circulation in nature.

Everything is lost. Slow days.
Don't ask if it's the end or the beginning.
Live like everything that blossomed nearby,
And maybe hold out until June.

Per. V. Toporova

Gottfried Benn (1886-1956) is a prominent German poet who retained the features of expressionist poetics throughout his work. The son of a priest, he studied German studies in Marburg and then medicine in Berlin. Venereologist. During the years of the First and Second World Wars he was a military doctor, and his impressions of them were reflected in his works. The collection of poems “Morg”, published in 1912, was like a bomb exploding; the poet was called “the singer of corpses and guts” (the poem “The Cancer Barracks”). The poeticization of the ugly is especially characteristic of the early period of Benn’s work and is an artistic device that convincingly proves the illogicality and cruelty of the modern world. Denying any form of social order, any form of statehood, Benn nevertheless welcomed the Nazis' coming to power. The Nazis outlawed Benn's work. In post-war Germany, Gottfried Benn is a recognized master. His post-war work reflected both the despair of the “generation of those who returned” and the tragedy of the worldview of a person of the 20th century, who had the opportunity to be convinced many times of the boundlessness of human madness. Hence the strengthening of nihilistic and existentialist principles in Benn’s poetry. At the same time, it should be noted that the poems of the late G. Benn are marked by a diverse emotional palette and are distinguished by intellectual complexity and rhythmic artistry.

Benn is a winner of several literary awards and the author of essays and short stories.

FRANZ WERFEL

To the reader

To be your family, man, is my dream!
Whoever you are - a baby, a black man or an acrobat,
Is it a maid's song, or a raft on the stars?
Looking rafter, pilot or soldier.

Did you play with a green gun as a child?
Braid and cork? Has the trigger gone bad?
When immersed in memories,
I sing, cry like me, don’t be cruel!

I knew everyone's fate. I understand.
How do the performers on the stage feel?
And the Bonnies, having moved into an alien family,
And the debutants, looking at the prompter.

I lived in the forest, worked as a clerk,
At the stop station I sold tickets,
He stoked boilers and was a laborer
And he received a handful of garbage for it.

I am yours, I am everyone, truly we are brothers!
So don't resist me to spite me!
Oh, if only this could happen once,
That we would throw ourselves into each other's arms!

Per. B. Pasternak

We are all strangers on earth

Kill yourself with steam and knives,
Fear the word of a patriot,
Sacrifice your life for this land!
Darling will not rush after you.
Countries are turning into swamps
If you take a step, water will splash out like a fountain.
Let the capitals be filled with chimeras.
Nineveh stone threat,
You can't drown despondency in vanity...
It is not destiny to always stand strong,
It becomes too much to know in moderation,
The only thing in our power is tears.
Patient mountains and valleys
And they marvel at our confusion.
Drowning everywhere, we barely pass by.
The word “my” is incompatible with anything
We are all in debt and guilty of everything.
Our business is debt repayment.
Mother is the guarantee that we will be sires.
The house is a dilapidated faithful emblem.
The sign of love is an unequal sign everywhere.
Even heart cramps - loans!
We are all strangers on earth,
Everything that attaches to the world is mortal.

Per. B. Pasternak

Franz Werfel (1890-1945) - representative of the Prague school of German poets. Born in Prague in the family of a merchant, studied in Prague, Leipzig, Hamburg, and served in the First World War. In his youth, he experienced a strong religious passion, which was reflected in his creativity. As a free artist, he begins his creative journey in Berlin and Vienna. In the Austrian capital, he met many musicians, which contributed to the deepening of his knowledge in this area and was reflected in a number of his works and, in particular, in the novel about Verdi. Werfel's expressionistic exercises connect him with the activities of V. Hasenclever and K. Pintus, with whom he published the almanac “Derjungste Tag”. The expressionist stage of Werfel’s work was reflected in the collections “Weltfreund” (1911), “Wirsind” (1913), “Einander” (1915). The hero of Werfel’s lyrical works strives to overcome the all-separating alienation, but these aspirations are in vain (poems “To the Reader”, “We are all strangers on earth”). Characterizing Werfel's poetry, K. Edschmid wrote: “Franz Werfel, the most outstanding. His music is thunderous: love. The gestures of his poetry are spontaneous and majestic.” Werfel's work was also recognized by his being awarded the Grillparzer Prize in 1925. With the Nazis coming to power, Werfel was forced to emigrate first to France and then to the USA, where he ended his life.

In the world of literature, Franz Werfel is known not only as a poet, but also as the author of short stories, novels, and dramatic works. In Russia, the works of F. Werfel were translated by O. Mandelstam, B. Pasternak, V. Neustadt, G. Ratgauz and others.

KASIMIR EDSHMID

From the work “Expressionism in Poetry”

Expressionism has had many predecessors all over the world at all times, according to the great and comprehensive that lies at its basis.

Artists of a new movement appeared. They were no longer the cause of mild excitement. They were no longer bearers of bare fact. An instant, a second of impressionistic creation was for them just an empty grain in the mill of time. They were no longer slaves to ideas, troubles and personal tragedies in the spirit of bourgeois and capitalist thinking.

They didn't look.
They looked.
They weren't photographers.
They had their own personality.

Instead of a flash, they created a lasting disturbance. Instead of a moment, there is an action in time. They didn't put on a brilliant circus show. They wanted an ongoing event.

Facts matter only enough to enable the artist to reach through them what is hidden behind them.

The great transformative universal feeling was directed primarily against the molecular crushed world of the Impressionists. The earth, existence, appeared as a majestic vision that included people with their feelings. They had to be realized in their primordial essence. The poet's great music is his heroes. For him, they are majestic only when their surroundings are majestic. They are not of a heroic format - this would only lead to decorativeness - no, they are majestic in the sense that their existence, their experiences are part of the great existence of heaven and earth, that their heart, related to everything that happens, beats in the same rhythm with the world. For this, truly new artistic forms were needed. A new world system had to be created...

The entire space of the expressionist artist becomes a vision. He doesn't have a look - he has a gaze. He doesn't describe - he empathizes. It doesn't reflect - it depicts. He doesn't take - he seeks. And now there is no longer a chain of facts: factories, houses, diseases, prostitutes, screaming and hunger. There is only a vision of this, a landscape of art, penetration into the depth, pristineness and spiritual beauty...

Everything becomes connected with eternity.

Per. V. Weber

Edschmid K. Expressionism in poetry // Calling a spade a spade:
Keynote speeches by masters of Western European literature of the 20th century. -M., 1986.

V. KANDINSKY

From the work “On the Spiritual in Art”

Our soul, just beginning to awaken after a long materialistic period, hides within itself the beginnings of despair, disbelief, aimlessness and causelessness. The nightmare of materialistic views, which have made the life of the universe an evil, aimless joke, has not yet passed. The awakening soul is still almost entirely under the impression of this nightmare. Only a faint light glimmers. Like a tiny dot in the vast blackness. This faint light is just a premonition. There is no bright courage to surrender to: perhaps this light is a dream, and the blackness is reality? This doubt and oppressive suffering from materialistic philosophy deeply separates our soul from the soul of the “primitive”. Our soul is cracked, and if anyone manages to touch it, it sounds like a valuable, cracked vase found in the depths of the earth. Because of this, the attraction to the primitive in the form we are now experiencing and sufficiently imitative cannot last long.

These two types of similarity between new art and the forms of past periods are diametrically opposed, as can be seen at first glance. The first type is external in nature and therefore has no future. The second type is of an internal nature and therefore the germ of the future is hidden in it. After a period of materialistic temptation, which apparently enslaved the soul and which it nevertheless shook off as the temptation of the evil one, the soul is reborn, refined by struggle and suffering. The artist will become less and less attracted to rougher feelings - fear, joy, sadness, etc. - which can become the content of art even during this period of temptation. The artist will seek to awaken more subtle feelings that currently have no name. He himself lives a more complex, comparatively more refined life, and the creation that has grown from him will certainly evoke in the viewer, who is capable of it, more subtle emotions for which words cannot be found in our language.

But the viewer of our days is rarely capable of such spiritual vibrations. In artistic creation he seeks either pure imitation of nature. Which can serve practical purposes (in the everyday sense, a portrait, etc.), or in a certain way interpreted, but still imitation of nature, impressionist painting, or, finally, mental states hidden in the forms of nature (what we call “mood”). All these forms, if they are truly artistic, fulfill their purpose and serve<...>spiritual food.<...>In any case, such works keep the soul from becoming coarser. They hold it at a certain height, like a tuning fork holding the strings of an instrument. Nevertheless, the refinement and spread of this sound in time and space will be one-sided and does not exhaust all the possibilities of the influence of art.

The roots of another art capable of further education also lie in its modern spiritual era. But this other art at the same time is not only an echo of this era and its mirror, but it carries within itself an awakening prophetic power (emphasized by V.K.), pouring out in the distance and in the depths.

Kandinsky V. About the spiritual in art (painting). —L., 1990. - p. 9-11..

An imperative need arose to find “new forms.” And today these “new” forms are only the same “eternal” ... “pure” forms of art, its pure language, scraped off from a thick layer of too material matter. Gradually and yet, as if in an instant, the arts began to turn not to elements of expression that are accidental in art and in essence, perhaps alien to it, but to those of its means without which we did not know this art, cannot imagine and we recognize his eternal language; in literature - the word, in music - sound, in sculpture - volume, in architecture - line, in painting - paint.

And forced to turn to the limiting moments of the primary elements, we find in this forced limitation new opportunities, new wealth (emphasis added - L.D.).

Right there. — P. 17.

Drawing attention to the fact that modern art strives to make maximum use of the capabilities of its inherent language, V. Kandinsky, as one of the ideologists of expressionist aesthetics and an active member of the Blue Rider group, emphasizes one of the important aspects of new art - its tendency towards synthesis. “...never in recent times,” notes the author of the work “On the Spiritual in Art” in the chapter “Pyramid,” “the arts, as such, stood closer to each other than in this last hour of the spiritual turn.

In everything... one can see the sprouts of a desire for the unnatural, the abstract, to inner nature(emphasis added by V.K.). Consciously or unconsciously, the arts obey the words of Socrates, “know thyself.” Consciously or unconsciously, artists of all arts gradually turn primarily to their material and examine, test it, weigh on spiritual scales the inner value of those elements with the power of which their art is called upon to create.

And from this desire naturally follows a natural consequence - comparison(highlighted by V.K.) own elements with elements of other art.

This is a comparison of the means of various arts and this teaching of one art from another only then and in that case can it be full of success and victory if this teaching is not external, but fundamentally. That is, one art must learn from another how it uses its means, it must learn how to use it in a fundamentally uniform manner. your own(emphasized by V.K.), that is, in the principle that is unique to him alone.<...>

Such deepening into oneself delimits one art from another. This comparison connects one art to another in internal(highlighted by V.K.) aspiration. Thus, it becomes obvious that each art has its own powers, which cannot be replaced by others of another art. So in the end we come to the fusion of these specific powers of the various arts. From this fusion, over time, art emerges, which we already sense today, true art. monumental(highlighted by V.K.) art.

Right there. — P. 19-2 0.

V. Kandinsky’s work “On the Spiritual in Art” ends with the chapter “Creation and the Artist,” which formulates the requirements for art and the artist. Taking as a postulate the idea of ​​the mysticism of emergence<творения>, Kandinsky, however, is not inclined to regard the process of creating a work as an act of aimless creation of things (regardless of what type of art this thing is created in). According to his deep conviction, “art... is strength and power, full of goals, and should serve the development and refinement of the human soul... It is a language in which they speak, in a form accessible only to him and peculiar to the soul, about things that are the soul’s daily bread and which it can only receive in this form(emphasis added by V.K.).

When art abandons this task, the void remains unfilled. Since there is no other power and force in the world that could replace art.”

Right there. — P. 63.

Expressionism is a modernist movement in European art of the early 20th century. It spread primarily in Germany and Austria. Artists within this movement expressed their own emotional state, mood or internal processes occurring in the soul or psyche. They do not copy reality, but project their inner world in painting, literature, theater, music and dance. By the way, expressionism was one of the first to manifest itself in cinema.

How and why did expressionism appear?

Its emergence was due to increased social tension in the society of that time. The First World War, local conflicts, revolutionary upheavals and the reactionary regimes that followed on their heels did their job: people of the old formation were replaced by a lost generation that perceived what was happening extremely subjectively. The new creators were disappointed, angry, broken by trials and psychological pressure. Their fear and despair, replacing each other, became the main motives in the art of that time. Descriptions of pain, screaming, groaning and death - “Gorgias figures” of the early 20th century.

Expressionism in painting: examples, signs, representatives

In Germany, expressionism took shape early and declared itself louder than anyone else. In 1905, the Bridge group appeared, in opposition to the Impressionists, who devoted their energies to depicting the superficial beauty of colors, shades and light. The new creators believed that art should regain its semantic palette, rather than its colorful one. The rebels deliberately gave preference to bright, flashy colors, which hurt the eyes and crack the strained nerves. In this way they gave an ordinary landscape emotional depth, mood traits and signs of time. Among the representatives, Max Pechstein and Otto Müller stood out.

Edmond Munch, "The Scream"

The petty-bourgeois kitsch gloss and aggressive attacks of modern life caused frustration, agony, irritation to the point of hatred and alienation to the point of complete opposition in the expressionists, which they depicted with the help of angular lines, crazy in zigzags, lines, careless and thick strokes, not bright, but furious coloring.

In 1910, an association of expressionist artists led by Pechstein acted independently, in the format of the ideological group “New Secession”. In 1912, the “Blue Rider”, founded by the Russian abstractionist Wassily Kandinsky, announced itself in Munich, although non-researchers believe that this heterogeneous composition of artists is precisely expressionist.

Marc Chagall, "Above the City"

Expressionism includes such famous and, of course, talented artists as Edmond Munch and Marc Chagall. Munch's painting The Scream, for example, is the most famous Norwegian work of art. It was the expressionist who introduced this Scandinavian country to the arena of world art.

Expressionism in literature: examples, signs, representatives

Expressionism became widespread in the literature of Eastern European countries. For example, in Poland in the work of Michinsky, in Czechoslovakia in the brilliant prose of Capek, in Ukraine in Stefanik’s repertoire this trend was realized with one or another admixture of national flavor. The expressionist writer Leonid Andreev is widely known in Russia. an incredibly emotional outburst of the writer’s tension, his inner abyss that gave him no rest. In a work full of anthropological pessimism, the author does not so much tell a story as give vent to his gloomy worldview, painting images of Bosch, where each hero is an unfulfilled funeral feast for the soul and therefore a complete monster.

States of obsessive claustrophobia, interest in fantastic dreams, descriptions of hallucinations - all these signs distinguish the Prague school of expressionists - Franz Kafka, Gustav Meyrink, Leo Perutz and other writers. In this regard, those related to Kafka’s work are also interesting.

Expressionist poets include, for example, Georg Traklä, Franz Werfel and Ernst Stadler, whose imagery incomparably expresses the mental and emotional disorders of a person.

Expressionism in theater and dance: examples, signs, representatives

Mainly, this is the dramaturgy of A. Strindberg and F. Wedekind. The subtleties of Rosin's psychologism and the humorous truth of Moliere's life give way to schematic and generalized symbolic figures (Son and Father, for example). The main character, in conditions of general blindness, manages to see the light and is not lucky enough to rebel against this, which determines the inevitable tragic outcome.

The new drama found its audience not only in Germany, but also in the USA (under the strict guidance of Eugene O'Neill) and Russia (the same Leonid Andreev), where Meyerhold taught artists to depict states of mind with sharp movements and impetuous gestures (this technique was called "biomechanics").

Ballet "The Rite of Spring"

Visualization of the soul through plasticity took the form of the expressionist dance of Mary Wigman and Pina Bausch. The explosive aesthetic of Expressionism seeped into the austere classical ballet performed by Vaslav Nijinsky in his 1913 production of The Rite of Spring. The innovation penetrated into conservative culture at the cost of a huge scandal.

Expressionism in cinema: examples, signs, representatives

From 1920 to 1925, the phenomenon of expressionist cinema appeared in Berlin film studios. Asymmetrical distortions of space, flashy symbolic decorations, an emphasis on non-verbal communication, psychologization of events, an emphasis on gestures and facial expressions - all these are signs of a new trend on the screen. Famous representatives of expressionist cinema, in whose work all these trends can be traced: F. W. Murnau, F. Lang, P. Leni. A certain continuity with this modernist cinema can be felt by analyzing the famous work of Lars von Trier “Dogville”.

Expressionism in music: examples, signs, representatives

Examples of expressionist music include the late symphonies of Gustav Mahler, the early works of Bartok, and the works of Richard Strauss.

Johann Richard Strauss, "Loneliness"

But most often, the expressionists mean the composers of the new Viennese school led by Arnold Schoenberg. By the way, it is known that Schoenberg actively corresponded with V. Kandinsky (founder of the expressionist group “Blue Rider”). In fact, the influence of expressionist aesthetics can also be found in the work of modern musical groups, for example, the Canadian group Three Days Grace, where the lead singer expresses the emotional intensity of the song through powerful vocal parts.