About the book by Yu.M. Lotman "Conversations about Russian culture"

In blessed memory of my parents Alexandra Samoilovna and Mikhail Lvovich Lotmanov

The publication was published with the assistance of the Federal Target Program for Book Publishing in Russia and international fund"Cultural Initiative".

“Conversations about Russian Culture” was written by the brilliant researcher of Russian culture Yu. M. Lotman. At one time, the author responded with interest to the proposal of "Art - St. Petersburg" to prepare a publication based on a series of lectures with which he appeared on television. The work was carried out by him with great responsibility - the composition was specified, the chapters were expanded, new versions of them appeared. The author signed the book into a set, but did not see it published - on October 28, 1993, Yu. M. Lotman died. His living word, addressed to an audience of millions, has been preserved in this book. It immerses the reader into the world of the daily life of a Russian nobility XVIII- the beginning of the 19th century. We see people of a distant era in the nursery and in the ballroom, on the battlefield and at the card table, we can examine in detail the hairstyle, the cut of the dress, the gesture, the demeanor. However, everyday life for the author it is a historical-psychological category, a sign system, that is, a kind of text. He teaches to read and understand this text, where everyday and existential are inseparable.

"Assembly colorful chapters”, whose heroes are outstanding historical figures, royalty, ordinary people of the era, poets, literary characters, is connected together by the thought of the continuity of the cultural and historical process, the intellectual and spiritual connection of generations.

In a special issue of the Tartu “Russkaya Gazeta” dedicated to the death of Yu. Not titles, orders or royal favor, but the “independence of a person” turns him into a historical figure.

Publisher thanks State Hermitage and the State Russian Museum, which donated engravings stored in their funds for reproduction in this publication.

Having devoted conversations to Russian life and culture of the 18th - early 19th centuries, we must first of all determine the meaning of the concepts "life", "culture", "Russian culture XVIII- the beginning of the XIX century "and their relationship with each other. At the same time, we will make a reservation that the concept of “culture”, which belongs to the most fundamental in the cycle of human sciences, can itself become the subject of a separate monograph and has repeatedly become one. It would be strange if in this book we set ourselves the goal of deciding contentious issues associated with this concept. It is very capacious: it includes morality, and the whole range of ideas, and human creativity, and much more. It will be quite enough for us to confine ourselves to that aspect of the concept of "culture" which is necessary for elucidating our comparatively narrow topic.

Culture is first and foremost the concept of the collective. An individual person can be a bearer of culture, can actively participate in its development, nevertheless, by its nature, culture, like language, is a social phenomenon, that is, a social one.

Consequently, culture is something common to any collective - a group of people living at the same time and connected by a certain social organization. It follows from this that culture is form of communication between people and is possible only in a group in which people communicate. (The organizational structure that unites people living at the same time is called synchronous, and we will use this concept in the future when defining a number of aspects of the phenomenon of interest to us).

Any structure serving the sphere social communication, there is a language. This means that it forms a certain system of signs used in accordance with the rules known to the members of this collective. We call signs any material expression (words, pictures, things, etc.), which has the meaning and thus can serve as a means conveying meaning.

Consequently, culture has, firstly, a communicative and, secondly, symbolic nature. Let's focus on this last one. Think of something as simple and familiar as bread. Bread is material and visible. It has weight, shape, it can be cut, eaten. Eaten bread comes into physiological contact with a person. In this function, one cannot ask about it: what does it mean? It has a use, not a meaning. But when we say: “Give us our daily bread today,” the word “bread” means not just bread as a thing, but has a broader meaning: “food necessary for life.” And when in the Gospel of John we read the words of Christ: “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will not hunger” (John 6:35), then we have a complex symbolic meaning of both the object itself and the word denoting it.

The sword is also nothing more than an object. As a thing, it can be forged or broken, it can be placed in a museum display case, and it can kill a person. This is all - the use of it as an object, but when, being attached to a belt or supported by a sling, placed on the hip, the sword symbolizes a free man and is a "sign of freedom", it already appears as a symbol and belongs to culture.

In the 18th century, a Russian and European nobleman does not carry a sword - a sword hangs on his side (sometimes a tiny, almost toy front sword, which is practically not a weapon). In this case, the sword is a symbol of a symbol: it means a sword, and a sword means belonging to a privileged class.

Belonging to the nobility also means the obligatory nature of certain rules of conduct, principles of honor, even the cut of clothing. We know cases when “wearing clothes indecent for a nobleman” (that is, a peasant dress) or also a beard “indecent for a nobleman” became a matter of concern for the political police and the emperor himself.

A sword as a weapon, a sword as a piece of clothing, a sword as a symbol, a sign of nobility - all these are various functions of an object in the general context of culture.

In its various incarnations, a symbol can simultaneously be a weapon suitable for direct practical use, or completely separated from its immediate function. So, for example, a small sword specially designed for parades excluded practical use, actually being an image of a weapon, not a weapon. The parade realm was separated from the combat realm by emotion, body language, and function. Let us recall the words of Chatsky: "I will go to death as to a parade." At the same time, in Tolstoy's "War and Peace" we meet in the description of the battle an officer leading his soldiers into battle with a parade (that is, useless) sword in his hands. The very bipolar situation of "fight - a game of battle" created complicated relationship between weapons as symbols and weapons as reality. So the sword (sword) is woven into the system of the symbolic language of the era and becomes a fact of its culture.

And here is another example, in the Bible (Book of Judges, 7:13-14) we read: “Gideon came [and hears]. And so, one tells the other a dream, and says: I dreamed that round barley bread rolled along the camp of Midian and, rolling to the tent, hit it so that it fell, overturned it, and the tent fell apart. Another said in response to him: this is nothing but the sword of Gideon ... ”Here bread means the sword, and the sword means victory. And since the victory was won with a cry of “The Sword of the Lord and Gideon!”, Without a single blow (the Madianites themselves beat each other: “the Lord turned the sword of one against another in the whole camp”), then the sword here is a sign of the power of the Lord, and not a military victory .

So, the area of ​​culture is always the area of ​​symbolism.

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Control work on discipline

"Culturology"

according to the book by Lotman Yu.M.

"Conversations about Russian culture"

Part 1

1.1 Biography of Yu.M. Lotman

1.2 The main works of Yu.M. Lotman

1.4 Contribution to the study of culture

Part 2. Brief essay "Conversations about Russian culture"

Bibliography

Part 1

1.1 Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman

Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman was born on February 28, 1922, in a family of Petrograd intellectuals, in a famous house at the beginning of Nevsky Prospekt, where Wolf-Beranger's confectionery was located in Pushkin's time. My father was a famous lawyer, then a legal adviser in a publishing house. Mother worked as a doctor. He was the youngest in the family, besides him there were three sisters. Everyone lived together, very poor, but fun. Yuri Lotman graduated with honors from the famous Peterschule in Petrograd, which distinguished high level liberal education

Literary circle of friends older sister Lydia influenced the choice of profession. In 1939, Yuri Mikhailovich entered the Faculty of Philology of Leningrad University, where famous professors and academicians taught at that time: G.A. Gukovsky read an introduction to literary criticism, M.K. Azadovsky - Russian folklore, A.S. Orlov - ancient Russian literature, I.I. Tolstoy - ancient literature. In the folklore seminar V.Ya. Proppa Lotman wrote his first term paper. Classes at the University continued in the Public Library, and this laid the foundations for Lotman's colossal ability to work. In addition, there were student earnings, cargo work in the port, free lectures from patrons at dating enterprises and parties.

In October 1940, Lotman was drafted into the army. The fact that even before the start of the Great Patriotic War he became a regular military man may have saved his life. The unit in which Lotman served in the very first days was transferred to the front line and was in fierce battles for almost four years. Yuri Mikhailovich crossed with the retreating army the entire European part of the country, from Moldova to the Caucasus, and then advanced west, all the way to Berlin, he was in the most desperate situations. Under shelling, bombing, he received orders and medals for courage and steadfastness in battles, but fate surprisingly favored him: he was not even wounded, only once he was badly shell-shocked.

At the end of 1946, Lotman was demobilized and continued his studies at Leningrad University. Most of all, the student who resumed his studies was attracted by the special courses and special seminars of N.I. Mordovchenko, who was then working on his doctoral dissertation on Russian literary criticism of the first quarter of the 19th century. Already in student years Yuri Mikhailovich made the first scientific discoveries. In the manuscript department of the State Public Library. M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. In the notebook of Mason Maxim Nevzorov, he found a copy of the program document of one of the early Decembrist secret societies, the Union of Russian Knights, whose founders were Count M.A. Dmitriev-Mamonov and M.F. Orlov. The found source was known for a long time by the name “Brief Instructions to the Russian Knights”, it was mentioned in correspondence, appeared in the investigation files of the Decembrists, but the researchers searched in vain for the text itself, the document was already considered lost. university."

In 1950, Lotman graduated from the university, but as a Jew, the path to graduate school was closed to him. (an anti-Semitic company raged in the country). Yuri Mikhailovich managed to find a job in Estonia, he became a teacher and then head of the Department of Russian Language and Literature at the Tartu Teachers' Institute. Some bodies theoretically having nothing to do with science and pedagogy, but practically in charge of everything, turned Lotman into a “travel restriction”, closed his abroad - but the works of the scientist still crossed the border. They were translated into dozens of languages ​​and made the author's name world-famous.

In 1952, Lotman defended his Ph.D. thesis at Leningrad University on the creative relationship between Radishchev and Karamzin.

From 1954 until the end of his life, Yuri Mikhailovich worked at the University of Tartu. In 1961 he defended his doctoral dissertation. In 1960-1977 he headed the Department of Russian Literature at Tartu State University. The well-known literary critic Zara Grigoryevna Mints became Lotman's wife, children appeared in the family.

Yu.M. Lotman was distinguished by his incredible capacity for work, he managed to lead the department, study the Estonian language, and prepare new special courses. lecture, write scientific works to organize conferences. Lotman is the author of 800 scientific papers, including many fundamental monographs. He was a world-famous scientist, a Pushkin Prize winner of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a corresponding member of the British Academy, an academician of the Norwegian, Swedish, and Estonian academies. He was Vice President of the World Association of Semiotics. He possessed an encyclopedic erudition combined with a depth of professional knowledge. Literature and history, culturology and semiotics are only the briefest designation of those vast spaces to which labor, energy, abilities, mind, feelings of this remarkable researcher and amazing person were applied.

Yu.M. Lotman made a great contribution to the study of the history of Russian culture. According to his books about A.S. Pushkin, M.Yu. Lermontov, N.V. Gogol. N.M. Karamzin was studied by many generations of students. Each book is a significant event in the history of culture, because it differs from other works on literary criticism by its original approach and depth of analysis, the combination of the history of culture and the history of the soul.

Released in last years From prohibitions and restrictions, Yuri Mikhailovich traveled almost the entire Western world, making presentations at various conferences and lecturing at universities.

Chained to hospitals, blind, he last days was doing. The last book "Culture and explosion" was created under dictation - this is a kind of testament of the author.

1.2 The main works of Yu.M. Lotman

The article "Radishchev and Mably" in 1958 opened a large series of works by the scientist devoted to Russian-Western European cultural ties.

The complex of Karamzin's works by Lotman is one of the most significant in his legacy.

In parallel, Lotman studied the life and work of writers and public figures of the early 19th century.

In 1958, thanks to the rector of the University of Tartu F.D. Clement began to publish "Works on Russian and Slavic mythology» new series"Scientific Notes" which included many of Lotman's works.

While working on his doctoral dissertation, Lotman begins to thoroughly study the Decembrists, Pushkin, Lermontov.

"The main stages in the development of Russian realism" 1960.

"The origins of the "Tolstoy trend" in Russian literature in 1830" 1962

"The ideological structure of the "Captain's Daughter" 1962

The pinnacle of Lotman's Pushkinianism are 3 books: "The novel in Pushkin's verse" Eugene Onegin "Special course. Introductory lectures in the study of the text "

"Pushkin's novel "Eugene Onegin" Commentary. Teacher's Guide»

"Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. Biography of the writer. A guide for students"

"On the metalanguage of typological descriptions of culture"

"Symeotics of Cinema and Problems of Film Aesthetics".

« Lectures on structural poetics. Issue 1. introduction, theory of verse "

"The structure of a literary text"

"Inside Thinking Worlds"

"Selected Articles" in 3 volumes, which contains scientific works on symeotics, typology of culture, about the text as a semiotic problem, about culture and programs of behavior, semiotic space, semiotics of various types of arts, semiotic mechanism of culture translation.

1.3 Belonging to a scientific school

Lotman became interested in structuralism and semiotics very early, on the verge of 1950-1960. This interest was facilitated by his invariable attraction to new methods, theoretical way of thinking and disgust for the vulgar sociological method (imposed from above)

Semiotics, the science of signs and sign systems, arose before World War II. In different areas, theoretical superstructures began to be created: for linguists - metalinguistics, for philosophers - metatheory, for mathematicians - metamathematics. Human culture is filled with signs, the further it develops, the more complex signs it operates with. The multi-storey and complexity of sign systems caused the birth of semiotics.

Structuralism is a branch of symeotics. Which studies the relationship of signs to each other. The main stimulus for its development was the emergence of electronic computers - the need to create mathematical linguistics. Lotman is the creator of literary structuralism. He took the main methodological and methodological prerequisites of linguistic innovators: the division of the studied text into content and expression, and plans into a system of levels (syntactic, morphological, phonetic) within the level - division into correlative and opposing elements, and studied the structure of the text in two aspects: syntagmatic and paradigmatic.

1.4 Contribution to the study of culture

The merit of Yu.M. Lotman is to reveal the sign-symbolic nature of culture and the mechanisms of its translation based on the application of the semiotic method and information theory.

The semiotics of culture is the main direction of culturological

research. It contributes to a deeper understanding of cultural texts, reveals the mechanisms of cultural continuity. Reveals the sign-symbolic nature of the languages ​​of culture, promotes the dialogue of cultures different countries and peoples.

Hast2 . Brief essay “Conversations about Russian culture. Life and traditions of the Russian nobility (18th - early 19th centuries)"

Introduction: Life and culture.

Culture has a communicative and symbolic nature. Culture is memory. A person is changing, and in order to imagine the logic of the actions of a literary hero or people of the past, one must imagine how they lived, what kind of world surrounded them, what were their general ideas and moral ideas, their duties, customs, clothes, why they acted this way, and not otherwise. This will be the topic of the proposed conversations.

Culture and way of life: doesn't the expression itself contain a contradiction, don't these phenomena lie on different planes? What is life?

Life is the usual flow of life in its real-practical forms. See history in the mirror of everyday life, and illuminate small disparate household details with the light of large historical events- the method of "Conversations about Russian culture" offered to the reader.

Life, in its symbolic key, is part of culture. Things have a memory, they are like words and notes that the past passes on to the future. On the other hand, things can powerfully dictate gestures, behavior and, ultimately, the psychological attitude of their owners, since they create a certain cultural context around them.

However, life is not only the life of things, it is also customs, the whole ritual of daily behavior, the structure of life that determines the daily routine, the time of various activities, the nature of work and leisure, forms of recreation, games, love ritual and funeral ritual.

History does not predict the future well, but it explains the present well. The time of revolutions is anti-historical, and the time of reforms turns people to reflections on the paths of history. True, history has many facets, and we still remember the dates of major historical events, the biographies of historical figures. But how did you live historical people? But it is in this nameless space that the real story most often unfolds. Tolstoy was profoundly right: without knowledge of simple life there is no understanding of history.

People act according to the motives of their era.

The 18th century is the time when the features of the new Russian culture took shape, the culture of the new time, to which we also belong. !8 - the beginning of the 19th century - is a family album of our current culture, its home archive.

History is not a menu where you can choose dishes to taste. This requires knowledge and understanding. Not only to restore the continuity of culture, but also to penetrate the texts of Pushkin and Tolstoy.

We will be interested in the culture and life of the Russian nobility, the culture that gave Fonvizin, Derzhavin, Radishchev, Novikov, Pushkin, Lermontov, Chaadaev ...

Part 1.

People and ranks.

Among the various consequences of the reforms of Peter I, the creation of the nobility in the function of the state and culturally dominant class occupies not the last place. Even earlier, the erasing of the differences between the estate and the patrimony began, and the decree of Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich in 1682, announcing the destruction of localism, showed that the dominant force in the ripening public order there will be nobility.

The psychology of the service class was the foundation of the self-consciousness of the nobleman of the 18th century. It was through service that he recognized himself as part of the class. Peter 1 in every possible way stimulated this feeling both by personal example and by a number of legislative acts. The apex of them was the Table of Ranks - it was the implementation of the general principle of the new Peter's statehood - regularity. The table divided all types of service into military, civilian and court, all ranks were divided into 14 classes. Military service was in a privileged position, 14 classes in military service gave the right to hereditary nobility. Civil service was not considered noble, for raznochintsy. Russian bureaucracy, being an important factor public life, left almost no trace in the spiritual life.

The Russian emperors were military men and received military upbringing and education; they were accustomed from childhood to look at the army as an ideal organization. In the life of the nobility there was a "cult of the uniform".

A person in Russia, if he did not belong to taxable estate, could not serve. Without service, it was impossible to get a rank, when paperwork had to indicate the rank, if there was none, they signed "Undergrowth". However, if the nobleman did not serve, his relatives arranged for him a fictitious service and a long vacation. Simultaneously with the distribution of ranks, there was a distribution of benefits and honors. The place of the rank in the official hierarchy was associated with the receipt of many real privileges.

The system of orders, having arisen under Peter1, replaced the previously existing types of royal awards - instead of an award-thing, an award-sign appeared. Later, a whole hierarchy of orders was created. In addition to the system of orders, one can name a hierarchy in a certain sense opposed to the ranks, formed by the system of nobility. The rank of count, baron appeared.

The cultural paradox of the current situation in Russia was that the rights of the ruling class were formulated in the terms in which the Enlightenment philosophers described the ideal of human rights. This is at a time when the peasants were practically reduced to the level of slaves.

Women's World.

The character of a woman is very peculiarly correlated with the culture of the era. This is the most sensitive barometer of social life. Women's influence is rarely seen as a historical issue in its own right. Of course, the women's world was very different from the men's, primarily in that it was excluded from the sphere of public service. The rank of a woman was determined by the rank of her husband or father, if she was not a courtier.

By the end of the 18th century, a completely new concept appeared - the women's library. Remaining as before the world of feelings, nursery and housekeeping, the female world becomes more spiritual. Women's life began to change rapidly in the era of Peter the Great. Peter 1 changed not only public life, but also the way of life. Artificiality reigned in fashion. Women spent a lot of time changing their appearance. The ladies flirted, led an evening lifestyle. Flies on the face and games with a fan created the language of coquetry. Evening make-up required a lot of cosmetics. It was fashionable to have a lover. Family, household, raising children were in the background.

And suddenly important changes took place - romanticism was born, it became customary to strive for nature, the naturalness of morals and behavior. Paul! tried to stop fashion - the simplicity of clothing was promoted by the era of the French Revolution. Dresses appeared, which later became known as Onegin. Paleness has become an indispensable element of female attractiveness - a sign of the depth of heartfelt feelings.

The world of woman played a special role in the fate of Russian romanticism. The Age of Enlightenment raised the issue of protecting women's rights.

The female character at the end of the 18th century was shaped by literature. It is especially important that a woman constantly and actively assimilated the roles assigned to her by poems and novels, so it is possible to evaluate the everyday and psychological reality of their life through the prism of literature.

The end of the era we are interested in created three types of female images: the image of an angel who accidentally visited the earth, a demonic character, and a female heroine.

Feminine abouteducation in the 18th - early 19th century

Knowledge has traditionally been considered the privilege of men - the education of women has turned into a problem of her place in a society created by men. The need for women's education and the nature of it became the subject of controversy and associated with a general revision of the type of life, the type of life. As a result, there was educational institution- Smolny Institute with a broad program. The training lasted 9 years in isolation. The training was superficial, with the exception of languages, dances and needlework. Court toys were made from tar. Smolyanki were famous for their sensitivity, their sentimental unpreparedness for life was evidence of their innocence. The exaltation of behavior was not a lack of sincerity - it was the language of the time.

The Smolny Institute was not the only female academic institution. Private boarding schools arose, they were foreign and the level of education was low. They systematically taught languages ​​and dances. The third type of women's education is at home. It was limited to languages, the ability to behave in society, dance, sing, play a musical instrument and draw, as well as the rudiments of history, geography and literature. With the beginning of trips to the world, training stopped.

The type of Russian educated woman began to take shape by the 30s of the 18th century. However, in general female education In the 18th and early 19th centuries, it had neither its own lyceum, nor Moscow or Derpt universities. The type of a highly spiritual Russian woman was formed under the influence of Russian literature and culture of the era.

Part 2.

Dancing was an important structural element of noble life. In the life of a Russian metropolitan nobleman, time was divided into two halves: staying at home (private person) and in the meeting, where social life was realized.

The ball was the opposite of service and the realm of public representation. The main element of the ball as a social and aesthetic action was dancing. Dance training began at the age of 5. Long-term training gave young people confidence in their movements, freedom and ease in posing a figure, which influenced the mental structure of a person. Grace was the hallmark good upbringing. The ball began with a polonaise, the second ballroom dance- waltz (in the 20s it had a reputation for being obscene), the center of the ball was the mazurka. Cotillion - a kind of quadrille, one of the dances concluding the ball, a dance game. The ball had a harmonious composition, obeyed firm laws and was a contrast to the two extreme poles: the parade and the masquerade.

Matchmaking. Marriage. Divorce.

The ritual of marriage noble society The 18th-early 19th century bears traces of the same contradictions as all everyday life. Traditional Russian customs came into conflict with ideas about Europeanism. Violation of parental will and kidnapping of the bride was not part of the norms of European behavior, but it was a common place in romantic plots. Family relationships in serf life, they are inseparable from the relationship between the landowner and the peasant woman; this is an obligatory background, outside of which the relationship between husband and wife becomes incomprehensible. One of the manifestations of the oddities of life of this era were serf harems.

The ever-growing gap between the way of life of the nobility and the people causes a tragic attitude in the most thinking part of the nobles. If in the 18th century a cultured nobleman sought to move away from the people's everyday behavior, then in the 19th century an opposite impulse arises.

Noble weddings retained a certain connection with the tradition of marrying in the fall, but translated it into the language of Europeanized mores.

One of the innovations of post-Petrine reality was divorce. Divorce required the decision of the consistory - the spiritual office. A rare and scandalous form of divorce was often replaced by a practical divorce: the spouses separated, divided the property, after which the woman received freedom.

The home life of a nobleman of the 18th century developed as a complex interweaving of customs approved folk tradition, religious rites, philosophical free-thinking, Westernism, affecting the break with the surrounding reality. This disorder, which took on the character of ideological and everyday chaos, had positive side. To a large extent, the youth of a culture that had not yet exhausted its possibilities was manifested here.

Russian dandyism.

Born in England, dandyism included a national opposition to French fashions, which caused violent indignation among English patriots at the end of the 18th century. Dandyism took on the color of romantic rebellion. He was focused on extravagance of behavior, an offensive demeanor for society, swagger of gestures, demonstrative shocking - forms of destroying secular prohibitions were perceived as poetic. Karamzin in 1803 described a curious phenomenon of the fusion of rebellion and cynicism, the transformation of egoism into a kind of religion and a mocking attitude in all the principles of vulgar morality. In the prehistory of Russian dandyism, the so-called wheezing can be noted. Tightening the belt to rival the female waist gave the military fashionista the appearance of a strangled man and justified his name as a wheezer. Spectacles played an important role in the behavior of a dandy; lorgnette was perceived as a sign of Anglomania. The decency of the 18th century in Russia forbade the younger in age or rank to look at the elders through glasses: this was perceived as impudence. Another characteristic sign of dandyism is the posture of disappointment and satiety. Dandyism is primarily behavior, not theory or ideology. Inseparable from individualism and dependent on observers, dandyism constantly oscillates between a pretense of rebellion and various compromises with society. His limitations lie in the limitations and inconsistency of fashion, in the language of which he is forced to speak with his era.

Card game.

The card game has become a kind of life model. In the function of the card game, its dual nature is manifested: the cards are used in fortune-telling (forecasting, programming functions) and in the game, that is, it represents an image of a conflict situation. It is not comparable to other fashion games of the time. An essential role here was played by the fact that the card game covers two various types conflict situations- commercial and gambling.

The former are regarded as decent, for respectable people, surrounded by the halo of comfort of family life, the poetry of innocent entertainment, the latter - entailed an atmosphere of infernality, met with strong moral condemnation. It is known that gambling in Russia at the end of the 18th century was formally banned as immoral, although it practically flourished, turned into a general custom of the noble society and was actually canonized. The card game and chess are, as it were, antipodes of the gaming world. Gambling games are built in such a way that the player is forced to make a decision without actually having any information. Thus he plays with Chance. The intersection of the principles of regular statehood and arbitrariness creates a situation of unpredictability and the mechanism of a gambling card game becomes the image of statehood. In Russia, the most common were pharaoh and shtoss- games in which chance played the greatest role. Strict normalization, penetrating into the private life of a man of the empire, created a psychological need for explosions of unpredictability. It is no coincidence that desperate flashes of the card game inevitably accompanied the epochs of reaction: 1824, 25, 1830. Card terminology rapidly penetrated into other areas of culture. The problem of the card game was made for contemporaries as a symbolic expression of the conflicts of the era. Cheating became almost an official profession, and the society of the nobility treated dishonest card games, albeit with condemnation. But much more lenient than refusing to fight in a duel, for example. Cards were synonymous with dueling and antonymous with parade. These two poles outlined the border of the noble life of that era.

Duel.

A duel according to certain rules in order to restore honor. The assessment of the degree of insult - insignificant, bloody, deadly - must be correlated with the assessment from the social environment. The duel began with a challenge, after which the opponents were not supposed to enter into communication, the offended discussed the severity of the offense inflicted on him with the seconds, and the enemy was sent a written challenge (cartel). . A duel in Russia was a criminal offense, became the subject of a trial, the court sentenced duelists to death, which for officers was replaced by demotion to soldiers and transfer to the Caucasus.

The government treated fights negatively; in the official literature, duels were persecuted as a manifestation of love of freedom. Democratic thinkers criticized the duel, saw in it a manifestation of the class prejudice of the nobility and contrasted the honor of the nobility with human honor based on Reason and Nature.

Art of life.

1. Art and non-artistic reality are not comparable. Classicism.

2. The second approach to the relationship between art and reality. Romanticism.

Art as an area of ​​models and programs.

3. Life acts as an area of ​​modeling activity, creates patterns that art imitates. Can be compared with realism.

The theater played a special role in the culture of the early 19th century on a pan-European scale. Specific forms stage performances go off theater stage and take over life. The everyday behavior of a Russian nobleman of the late 18th and early 19th centuries is characterized by the attachment of a type of behavior to a certain stage area and a tendency to intermission - a break during which the theatricality of behavior is reduced to a minimum. The distinction between everyday and theatrical behavior is characteristic. However, the behavior of the nobility as a system presupposed certain deviations from the norm, which were equivalent to intermissions. Behavior fettered by decency and a system of theatrical gesture gave rise to a desire for freedom: hussar behavior, attraction to a dirty life, breakthroughs into the world of gypsies. The more strictly organized life is, the more attractive are the most extreme forms of domestic rebellion. The stiffness of the soldiers under Nicholas 1 was compensated by wild revelry. An interesting indicator of the theatricality of everyday life - amateur performances and home theaters were perceived as a departure from the world of the insincere life of light into the world genuine feelings. It is indicative of a steady desire to comprehend the laws of life through the prism of the most conditional forms of theatrical performance - a masquerade, a puppet comedy, a farce. Considering the spectacular culture of the early 19th century, one cannot bypass military operations and, as the antipode of battle, the parade.

There are eras when art imperiously invades everyday life, aestheticizing the daily course of life. This invasion has many consequences. Only against the background of the powerful intrusion of poetry into the life of the Russian nobility at the beginning of the 19th century is the colossal phenomenon of Pushkin understandable and explainable. Driven by the laws of custom, the everyday life of an ordinary nobleman of the 18th century was plotless. Looking at real life as a performance made it possible to choose the role of individual behavior and filled with expectation of events. It was the model of theatrical behavior that, turning a person into a character, freed him from the automatic power of group behavior, custom.

Theater and painting are two poles, mutually attractive and mutually repulsive. Opera gravitated more towards painting, drama - towards emphasized theatricality, ballet was difficult to locate in this space. Different types of art created different reality, and life, which aspired to become a copy of art, absorbed these differences. Only under the conditions of a functional connection between painting and the theater could such phenomena arise as, for example, the Yusupov theater (change of scenery by Gonzaga to special music), live paintings. A natural consequence of the rapprochement of theater and painting is the creation of a grammar of performing arts.

People perceive themselves through the prism of painting, poetry, theatre, cinema, circus, and at the same time see in these arts the most complete expression of reality itself, as if in focus. In such epochs, art and life merge together without destroying the immediacy of feeling and the sincerity of thought. Only by imagining a person of that time can we understand art and at the same time, only in the mirrors of art can we find the true face of a person of that time.

Outline of the path.

Death takes the individual out of the space allotted for life: from the realm of the historical and social, the individual passes into the realm of the eternal. By the middle of the 18th century, death had become one of the leading literary themes. The Petrine era was marked by the idea of ​​group existence, human death seemed insignificant in the face of state life. For people of the pre-Petrine era, death was only the end of life, which was accepted as inevitable. The end of the 18th century reconsidered this issue and, as a result, an epidemic of suicides.

The theme of death - voluntary sacrifice on the altar of the fatherland - is increasingly heard in the statements of members of the secret society. The tragic turn of ethical questions in the last years before the Decembrist uprising changed the attitude in the duel. The post-Decembrist period significantly changed the concept of death in the cultural system. Death brought true scale to career and state values. The face of the era was also reflected in the image of death. Death gave freedom and it was sought in the Caucasian war, in a duel. Where death came into its own, the power of the emperor ended.

Part 3

"Chicks of Petrov's Nest"

Ivan Ivanovich Neplyuev, an apologist for the reform, and Mikhail Petrovich Avramov, a critic of the reform, came from an old noble family and held high positions under Peter. Neplyuev studied abroad, worked in the Admiralty, was ambassador in Constantinople, in Turkey. After the death of Peter, he was persecuted and was assigned to Orenburg, where he developed a stormy activity. In the Elizabethan era - a senator, under Catherine was very close to the reigning person. Until the last days he remained a man of the Petrine era.

Abramov entered the service for 10 years in the Posolsky Prikaz and was associated with him all his life. At 18 - secretary of the Russian ambassador in Holland. In 1712, he was the director of the St. Petersburg printing house, published Vedomosti and many useful books, Neplyuev was an example of a person of exceptional integrity, who did not know bifurcation and was never tormented by doubts. In full contact with the times, he devoted his life to the practical state activities. Abramov's personality was deeply bifurcated; his practical activity clashed with utopian dreams. Having created an idealized image of antiquity in his imagination, he proposed innovative reforms, considering them to be the protection of tradition. After the death of Peter1 - a link to Kamchatka. For his projects more than once he ended up in the Secret Office. Died in prison. He belonged to those who dreamed up utopian plans for the future and utopian images of the past in order not to see the present. If they had received power, they would have stained the country with the blood of their opponents, but in a real situation they shed their own blood.

The era of the split of people into dogmatic dreamers and cynic practitioners

Age of the rich.

People of the last third of the 18th century, with all the variety of natures, were marked by one common feature- striving for a special individual path, specific personal behavior. They amaze with the unexpectedness of bright personalities. Time gave birth to heroes of selfless dedication and reckless adventurers.

A.N. Radishchev is one of the most enigmatic figures in Russian history. He possessed the most extensive knowledge in jurisprudence, geography, geology, and history. In Siberian exile, he instilled smallpox local residents. He wielded a sword very well, rode horseback, was an excellent dancer. Serving at customs, he did not take bribes, in St. Petersburg he seemed like an eccentric. The "encyclopedist" was convinced that fate made him a witness and participant in the new creation of the world. He believed that heroism should be educated and for this purpose all philosophical concepts that could be relied upon could be used. Radishchev developed a peculiar theory of the Russian revolution. Slavery is unnatural and the transition from slavery to freedom was conceived as an instant nationwide action. From the publication of Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, he expected not literary, but historical events. Radishchev created neither a conspiracy, nor a party, he pinned all his hopes on the truth. There was an idea about the blood of a philosopher who preaches the truth. People will believe, Radishchev believed, those words for which he paid with his life. Heroic suicide became the subject of Radishchev's thoughts. Readiness for death elevates the hero above the tyrant and takes a person of their ordinary life into the world of historical deeds. In this light, his own suicide appears in an unconventional light.

Court and exile found Radishchev a widower. Wife's sister E.A. Rubanovskaya was secretly in love with her sister's husband. It was she who saved Radishchev from torture by bribing the executioner Sheshkovsky. In the future, she foreshadowed the feat of the Decembrists, and although customs categorically prevented marriage with a close relative, she married Radishchev.

Radishchev strove to subordinate his whole life and even death to the doctrines of philosophers. He forced himself into the norms by force philosophical life and at the same time, by the force of will and self-education, he made such a life a model and a program real life. lotman culture russian nobility

A.S. Suvorov is an outstanding commander with high military qualities and the ability to control the souls of soldiers, a man of his era, the era of heroic individualism. The inconsistency of behavior was fundamental for Suvorov. In clashes with the enemy, he used it as a tactic. Starting to play, he flirted, in his behavior there were childish features, contradictory combined with behavior and thoughts.

military theorist and philosopher. Some saw this as a tactic of behavior, others as barbarism and deceit in the character of the commander. The change of masks was one of the features of his behavior. It is known that Suvorov did not tolerate mirrors, his tactics included the glory of man. Not reflected in mirrors. Suvorov's actions implied not spontaneous adherence to temperament and character, but their constant overcoming. From birth he was frail and in poor health. Married at the age of 45, by order of his father, to the imperious, large and beautiful V.I. Prozorovskaya. After breaking up with his wife, Suvorov left his daughter with him, and then sent her to the Smolny Institute. He did not accept French Revolution, until the end of his life he remained a man for whom the idea of ​​changing the political order was incompatible with a sense of patriotism.

Suvorov and Radishchev are people who belong, as it were, to the two poles of their era.

Two women.

Memoirs of Princess N.B. Dolgoruky and A.E. Karamysheva - covers the period from the 30s to the 80s of the 18th century and covers family life nobles. Life, the tragedy of Princess Natalya Borisovna became a plot that worried many poets. From the Sheremetev family, Natalya married I.A. Dolgoruky, favorite of Peter 2. After the death of the king, they were exiled to Siberia. In difficult conditions, the noble character of Dolgoruky manifested itself, life made her wiser, but did not break her. A deep religious feeling became the limiting basis of life and everyday behavior. The loss of all the material values ​​of life gave rise to a tense outburst of spirituality. In Siberia, Prince Ivan was tortured and quartered. Natalya was returned with her sons, and after raising the children, she took the veil as a nun.

Memoirs of A.E. Labzina (Karamysheva) - a naive photographic reproduction of reality. Karamyshev was an outstanding scientist, taught at the Mining Academy, close to Potemkin, but his devotion to science led him to the White Sea, to difficult living conditions, where he developed an energetic activity in organizing mines. Anna Evdokimovna was brought up by her husband in the spirit of the Enlightenment, he was helped by the writer Kheraskov. The experiment in natural education consisted in isolation, strict control of acquaintances, reading. She was not even allowed to see her husband, besides, he was always busy with work. But Karamysheva was convinced that he spent his time wallowing in debauchery. Karamyshev separated the moral feeling from sexual desire and, having married a 13-year-old girl, did not perceive her for a long time. Karamyshev introduced his wife to freethinking and freethinking, but did it with vigor. He offered to take a lover in order to introduce his wife to freedom - emphasizing that he loves her. With the same straightforwardness, he weaned her from fasting. His enlightenment was a sin for her, they were separated by the border of moral untranslatability. The conflict of mutual blindness of opposite cultures, the drama is that 2 people loved each other fenced off by a wall of misunderstanding. Labzina's memoirs are an instructive play, according to the canons of hagiographic stories.

People of 1812.

The Patriotic War blew up the life of all classes of Russian society. However, the experience of these events was not homogeneous. A large number of residents of Moscow fled to the provinces, those who had estates went there, and more often to provincial cities close to them. A distinctive feature of 1812 was the erasure of sharp contradictions between metropolitan and provincial life. Many, cut off from their estates occupied by the French, found themselves in distress. Many families were scattered throughout Russia.

Rapprochement of the city and the provinces, so palpable in Moscow. Almost did not affect the life of St. Petersburg, but he was not separated from the experiences of this time. Protected by Wittgenstein's army, in relative safety, he had the opportunity to comprehend events in some historical perspective. It was here that such epoch-making ideological phenomena arose as the independent patriotic magazine Son of the Fatherland, which in the future became the main publication of the Decembrist movement. The first shoots of Decembristism took shape precisely here, in the conversations of officers returning from military campaigns.

Decembrist in everyday life.

The Decembrists showed significant creative energy in the creation of a special type of Russian man. The specific, unusual behavior of a significant group of young people in the circle of the nobility, who are in the center of public attention due to their talents, origin, family and personal ties and career prospects, influenced a whole generation of Russian people. The ideological and political content of the noble revolutionism gave rise to special character traits and a special type of behavior

The Decembrists were people of action. This was reflected in their attitude towards a practical change in the political life of Russia. The Decembrists were characterized by a constant desire to express their opinion without equivocation, not recognizing the approved ritual and rules secular behavior. The emphasized non-secularism and tactlessness of speech behavior was defined in circles close to the Decembrists as Spartan, Roman behavior. The Decembrist, by his behavior, abolished the hierarchy and style diversity act, the distinction between oral and written speech was abolished: high orderliness, syntactic completeness of written speech was transferred to oral use. The Decembrists cultivated seriousness as a norm of behavior. Awareness of oneself as a historical person made one evaluate one's life as a chain of plots for future historians. It is characteristic that everyday behavior became one of the criteria for selecting candidates for society, on this basis a kind of chivalry arose, which determined the moral charm of the Decembrist tradition in Russian culture and did a disservice in tragic conditions (the Decembrists were not psychologically prepared to act in conditions legalized meanness). The Decembrists were romantic heroes.

The feat of the Decembrists and its truly great significance for the spiritual history of Russian society are well known. The act of the Decembrists was an act of protest and a challenge. "Guilty" was Russian literature, which created the idea of ​​a female equivalent of the heroic behavior of a citizen, and the moral norms of the Decembrist circle, which required a direct transfer of the behavior of literary heroes to life.

At the beginning of the 19th century, a special type of reckless behavior appeared, which was perceived not as the norm of army leisure, but as a variant of freethinking. The world of revelry became an independent sphere, immersion in which excluded service. Initiation to freethinking was conceived as a holiday, and in a feast and even an orgy, the realization of the ideal of liberty was seen. But there was another kind of freedom-loving morality - the ideal of stoicism, Roman virtue, heroic asceticism. Abolishing the division of everyday life into areas of service and recreation that prevailed in a noble society, the liberalists wanted to turn all life into a holiday, the conspirators into service. All types social entertainment are severely condemned by the Decembrists as a sign of spiritual emptiness. The hermitage of the Decembrists was accompanied by an unequivocal and open contempt for the usual pastime of a nobleman. The cult of brotherhood based on the unity of spiritual ideals, the exaltation of friendship. The revolutionaries of the next stages often believed that the Decembrists were more talking than acting. However, the concept of action is historically changeable and the Decembrists can be called practitioners. The creation of a completely new type of person for Russia, the contribution of the Decembrists to Russian culture turned out to be enduring. The Decembrists introduced unity into human behavior, but not by rehabilitating life's prose, but by passing life through the filters of heroic texts, they simply canceled what was not subject to being entered on the tablets of history.

Instead of a conclusion: "Between the double abyss ..."

We want to understand the history of the past and works of fiction from previous eras, but at the same time we naively believe that it is enough to pick up a book that interests us, put a dictionary next to us, and understanding is guaranteed. But each message consists of two parts: what is said and what is not said, because it is already known. The second part is omitted. A contemporary reader easily restores it himself, according to his life experience ... In past eras, without special study, we are aliens.

The history reflected in one person, in his life, way of life, gesture, is isomorphic to the history of mankind, they are reflected in each other and are known through each other.

3 part.

"Conversations about Russian Culture" dedicated to the study of the life and traditions of the Russian nobility of the 18th - early 19th centuries are of undoubted interest. This is the time when Russia embarked on the path of modernization and enlightened absolutism. This process was initiated by the reforms of Peter I, which covered many spheres of society. After the death of Peter 1, Catherine2 continued his reformist course. Under her leadership, the reform of education was continued, science, literature, and socio-political thought were further developed - the establishment of democratic traditions. Under Alexander1, for the first time, a sufficiently numerous political opposition was formed in society. Arise secret societies. Taking advantage of the death of Alexander1, the Decembrists decided on December 14, 1825 to seize power and proclaim the introduction of a constitution. The uprising was brutally suppressed. Already at the beginning of the century, Russian conservatism was formed as a political trend. A distinctive feature of the reign of Nicholas was the desire of the authorities to extinguish oppositional sentiments with the help of the theory of official nationality. In the formation of national identity, national culture, a large role belongs to the best representatives of the nobility, the emerging intelligentsia. Yu.M. Lotman immerses the reader into the daily life of this class, allowing you to see people of that era in the service, on military campaigns, reproduce the rituals of matchmaking, marriage, penetrate into the features of the female world and personal relationships, understand the meaning of masquerades and the card game of duel rules and the concept of honor.

For a long time, noble culture remained outside scientific research. Lotman sought to restore historical truth about the meaning noble culture, which gave Fonvizin and Derzhavin, Radishchev and Novikov, Pushkin and the Decembrists, Lermontov and Chaadaev, Tolstoy and Tyutchev. Belonging to the nobility had distinctive features: the obligatory rules of conduct, the principles of honor, the cut of clothing, office and home activities, holidays and entertainment. The whole life of the nobility is permeated with symbols and signs. Revealing its symbolic nature, the thing enters into a dialogue with modernity, discovers links with history and becomes priceless. The history of culture must necessarily be connected with feelings, be visible, tangible, audible, then its values ​​enter the human world and are fixed in it for a long time.

Listliterature

1. Ikonnikova S.N. History of cultural theories: Textbook. At 3 hours, Part 3 History of cultural studies in persons / Ikonnikova S.N., St. Petersburg State University of Culture and Arts. - St. Petersburg, 2001. - 152p.

2. Lotman Yu.M. Pushkin./ Yu.M. Lotman, introductory article. B.F. Egorov, art. D.M. Plaksin.- SPb.: Art- SPb, 1995.-847p.

3.Lotman Yu.M. Conversations about Russian culture: Life and traditions of the Russian nobility (18th-early 19th century) .- St. Petersburg: Art, 1996.-399p.

4. World of Russian culture. Encyclopedic Dictionary / ed. A.N. Myachin.-M.: Veche, 1997.-624p.

5. Radugin A.A. History of Russia: Textbook for universities / comp. And otv.red. A.A.Radugin.-M.: Center, 1998.-352p.

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The ball is associated only with the holiday. In fact, it had a complex structure - dances, conversations, customs.

The ball was opposed to everyday life, service and, on the other hand, a military parade. And the ball itself was opposed to other ways to spend time - for example, drinking parties and masquerades. All this is in the book of a well-known culturologist.
Of course, it was not easy for us to edit the text of a well-known monograph. But we allowed ourselves to make subheadings (from Lotman's text) for the convenience of reading from the screen. Added editor's notes.

Part two

We now have something wrong in the subject:

We'd better hurry to the ball

Where headlong in a pit carriage

My Onegin has already galloped.

Before the faded houses

Along a sleepy street in rows

Double carriage lights

Cheerful pour out light ...

Here our hero drove up to the entrance;

Doorman past he's an arrow

Climbing up the marble steps

I straightened my hair with my hand,

Has entered. The hall is full of people;

The music is already tired of thundering;

The crowd is busy with the mazurka;

Loop and noise and tightness;

The spurs of the cavalry guard strum *;

The legs of lovely ladies are flying;

In their captivating footsteps

Fiery eyes fly.

And drowned out by the roar of violins

Jealous whisper of fashionable wives.

("Eugene Onegin", Chapter 1, XXVII-XXVIII)

Note. Pushkin: “Inaccuracy. - At the balls, cavalry guard officers appear in the same way as other guests, in uniform, in shoes. The remark is solid, but there is something poetic about the spurs. I refer to the opinion of A.I.V.” (VI, 528).

Dancing was an important structural element of noble life. Their role differed significantly both from the function of dances in the folk life of that time, and from the modern one.

In the life of a Russian metropolitan nobleman of the 18th - early 19th centuries, time was divided into two halves: staying at home was devoted to family and household concerns, here the nobleman acted as a private person; the other half was occupied by service - military or civilian, in which the nobleman acted as a loyal subject, serving the sovereign and the state, as a representative of the nobility in the face of other estates.

The opposition of these two forms of behavior was filmed in the “meeting” crowning the day - at a ball or a dinner party. Here the social life of a nobleman was realized: he was neither a private person in private life, nor a servant in the public service, he was a nobleman in the noble assembly, a man of his class among his own.

Thus, on the one hand, the ball turned out to be a sphere opposite to the service - an area of ​​easy communication, secular recreation, a place where the boundaries of the service hierarchy were weakened.

The presence of ladies, dances, the norms of secular communication introduced off-duty value criteria, and the young lieutenant, deftly dancing and able to make the ladies laugh, could feel superior to the aging colonel who had been in battles.

(Editor's note: Well, nothing has changed in dancing since then).

On the other hand, the ball was an area of ​​public representation, a form of social organization, one of the few forms of collective life permitted in Russia at that time. In this sense, secular life received the value of a public cause.

The answer of Catherine II to the question of Fonvizin is characteristic: “Why are we not ashamed to do nothing?” - "... in a society to live is not to do nothing."

Assembly. The author of the event was very flattered. And the interiors were at first simpler, and ladies with gentlemen, taken out of caftans and sundresses into uniforms (okay, a German caftan is almost a uniform) and corsets with a neckline (but this is horror) behaved more constrained. Petrovsky's documents on ballroom etiquette are written in a very intelligible way - just a pleasure to read.

Since the time of the Petrine assemblies, the question of the organizational forms of secular life has also become acute.

Forms of recreation, communication of youth, calendar ritual, which were basically common to both the people and the boyar-noble environment, had to give way to a specifically noble structure of life.

The internal organization of the ball was made a task of exceptional cultural importance, since it was called upon to give forms of communication between "gentlemen" and "ladies", to determine the type of social behavior within the noble culture. This entailed the ritualization of the ball, the creation of a strict sequence of parts, the allocation of stable and obligatory elements.

The grammar of the ball arose, and it itself formed into a kind of holistic theatrical performance, in which each element (from the entrance to the hall to the departure) corresponded to typical emotions, fixed values, behavior styles.

However, the strict ritual, which brought the ball closer to the parade, made possible retreats all the more significant, “ballroom liberties”, which increased compositionally towards its finale, building the ball as a struggle between “order” and “freedom”.

The main element of the ball as a social and aesthetic action was dancing.

They served as the organizing core of the evening, setting the type and style of the conversation. "Mazurochka chatter" required superficial, shallow topics, but also entertaining and acute conversation, the ability to quickly respond epigrammatically.

Ballroom conversation was far from that play of intellectual forces, “the fascinating conversation of the highest education” (Pushkin, VIII (1), 151), which was cultivated in the literary salons of Paris in the 18th century and which Pushkin complained about the absence of in Russia. Nevertheless, he had his own charm - the liveliness, freedom and ease of conversation between a man and a woman, who found themselves at the same time in the center of a noisy festivity, and in proximity impossible in other circumstances (“There is no more room for confessions ...” - 1, XXIX).

Dance training began early - from the age of five or six.

So, for example, Pushkin began to study dancing already in 1808. Until the summer of 1811, he and his sister attended dance evenings at the Trubetskoys, Buturlins and Sushkovs, and on Thursdays - children's balls at the Moscow dancing master Yogel.

Balls at Yogel's are described in the memoirs of the choreographer A.P. Glushkovsky. Early dance training was excruciating and resembled the tough training of an athlete or the training of a recruit by an industrious sergeant major.

The compiler of the "Rules", published in 1825, L. Petrovsky, himself an experienced dance master, describes some of the methods of initial training in this way, condemning not the method itself, but only its too harsh application:

“The teacher should pay attention to the fact that students do not suffer from severe stress in health. Someone told me that his teacher considered it an indispensable rule that the student, despite his natural inability, kept his legs sideways, like him, in a parallel line.

As a student, he was 22 years old, fairly decent in height and considerable legs, moreover, faulty; then the teacher, unable to do anything himself, considered it a duty to use four people, of whom two twisted their legs, and two held their knees. No matter how much this one shouted, they only laughed and did not want to hear about the pain - until finally it cracked in the leg, and then the tormentors left him.

I felt it my duty to tell this incident for the warning of others. It is not known who invented the leg machines; and machines with screws for the legs, knees and back: the invention is very good! However, it can also become harmless from excessive stress.

A long training gave the young man not only dexterity during dancing, but also confidence in movements, freedom and ease in setting the figure, which in a certain way. influenced the mental structure of a person: in the conditional world of secular communication, he felt confident and free, like an experienced actor on stage. Elegance, which is reflected in the accuracy of movements, was a sign of good education.

L. N. Tolstoy, describing in the novel "Decembrists" (Editor's note: Tolstoy's unfinished novel, on which he worked in 1860-1861 and from which he moved on to writing the novel "War and Peace"), the wife of a Decembrist who returned from Siberia, emphasizes that, despite the many years she spent in the most difficult conditions of voluntary exile,

“It was impossible to imagine her otherwise, as surrounded by reverence and all the comforts of life. That she should ever be hungry and eat greedily, or that she was wearing dirty laundry, or that she stumbled, or that she forgot to blow her nose - this could not happen to her. It was physically impossible.

Why it was so - I don’t know, but her every movement was majesty, grace, mercy for all those who could use her appearance ... ".

It is characteristic that the ability to stumble here is associated not with external conditions, but with the character and upbringing of a person. Mental and physical grace are connected and exclude the possibility of inaccurate or ugly movements and gestures.

The aristocratic simplicity of the movements of people of “good society” both in life and in literature is opposed by stiffness or excessive swagger (the result of a struggle with one’s own shyness) of the gestures of a commoner. Herzen's memoirs preserved a vivid example of this.

According to Herzen's memoirs, "Belinsky was very shy and generally lost in unfamiliar society."

Herzen describes a typical case on one of literary evenings at the book V. F. Odoevsky: “Belinsky was completely lost at these evenings between some Saxon envoy who did not understand a word of Russian and some official of the III department, who understood even those words that were hushed up. He usually fell ill afterwards for two or three days and cursed the one who persuaded him to go.

Once on Saturday, on the eve of the New Year, the host took it into his head to cook burnt en petit comite, when the main guests had left. Belinsky would certainly have left, but the barricade of furniture interfered with him, he somehow hid in a corner, and a small table with wine and glasses was placed in front of him. Zhukovsky, in white uniform trousers with a gold braid, sat down across from him.

Belinsky endured for a long time, but, seeing no improvement in his fate, he began to move the table somewhat; the table gave way at first, then swayed and slammed to the ground, a bottle of Bordeaux began seriously to pour over Zhukovsky. He jumped up, red wine streaming down his trousers; there was a hubbub, the servant rushed with a napkin to stain the rest of the pantaloons with wine, another picked up broken glasses ... During this turmoil, Belinsky disappeared and, close to death, ran home on foot.

Ball in early XIX century began with the Polish (polonaise), which in the solemn function of the first dance replaced the minuet.

The minuet became a thing of the past along with royal France. “From the time of the changes that followed among the Europeans, both in dress and in the way of thinking, there were news in dances; and then the Polish, which has more freedom and is danced by an indefinite number of couples, and therefore frees from the excessive and strict restraint characteristic of the minuet, took the place of the original dance.

Polonaise can probably be associated with the stanza of the eighth chapter, which was not included in the final text of "Eugene Onegin", introducing Grand Duchess Alexandra Feodorovna (future Empress) into the scene of the St. Petersburg ball; Pushkin calls her Lalla-Rook after the fancy dress of the heroine of T. Moore's poem, which she put on during a masquerade in Berlin. After Zhukovsky's poem "Lalla-Ruk", this name became the poetic nickname of Alexandra Fedorovna:

And in the hall bright and rich

When in a silent, tight circle,

Like a winged lily

Hesitating enters Lalla Rook

And over the drooping crowd

Shines with a royal head,

And quietly curls and glides

Star-Kharita between Harit,

And the gaze of mixed generations

Strives, with jealousy of grief,

Now at her, then at the king, -

For them, without eyes, one Evgenia.

One Tatyana is amazed,

He sees only Tatyana.

(Pushkin, VI, 637).

The ball does not appear in Pushkin as an official ceremonial celebration, and therefore the polonaise is not mentioned. In War and Peace, Tolstoy, describing Natasha’s first ball, contrasts the polonaise that opens “the sovereign, smiling and out of time leading the mistress of the house by the hand” (“the owner followed him with M. A. Naryshkina *, then ministers, various generals"), the second dance - a waltz, which becomes the moment of Natasha's triumph.

L. Petrovsky believes that “it would be superfluous to describe how M.A. Naryshkina is the mistress, and not the emperor’s wife, therefore she cannot open the ball in the first pair, while Pushkin’s Lalla-Ruk goes in the first pair with Alexander I.

The second ballroom dance is the waltz.

Pushkin described it like this:

Monotonous and insane

Like a whirlwind of young life,

The waltz whirl is whirling noisily;

The couple flashes by the couple.

The epithets "monotonous and insane" have not only an emotional meaning.

“Monotonous” - because, unlike the mazurka, in which solo dances and the invention of new figures played a huge role at that time, and even more so from the dance-game of the cotillion, the waltz consisted of the same constantly repeating movements. The feeling of monotony was also intensified by the fact that "at that time the waltz was danced in two, and not in three pas, as it is now."

The definition of the waltz as "insane" has a different meaning: the waltz, despite its general distribution, for there is almost no person who has not danced it himself or has not seen how it is danced"), the waltz enjoyed a reputation in the 1820s as obscene or, at least, unnecessarily free dance.

"This dance, in which persons of both sexes are known to turn and approach each other, requires due care not to dance too close to each other, which would offend decency."

(Editor's note: In-in, we heard about the dream).

Genlis wrote even more clearly in Critical and Systematic Dictionary of Court Etiquette: “A young lady, lightly dressed, throws herself into the arms of a young man who presses her to his chest, who carries her away with such swiftness that her heart involuntarily begins to beat, and her head going around! That's what this waltz is!..Modern youth is so natural that, placing no value on sophistication, they dance waltzes with glorified simplicity and passion.

Not only the boring moralist Genlis, but the fiery Werther Goethe considered the waltz a dance so intimate that he swore that he would not allow his future wife to dance it with anyone but himself.

The waltz created a particularly comfortable environment for gentle explanations: the proximity of the dancers contributed to intimacy, and the contact of hands made it possible to pass notes. The waltz was danced for a long time, it could be interrupted, sit down and then join the next round again. Thus the dance created ideal conditions for gentle explanations:

In the days of fun and desires

I was crazy about balls:

There is no place for confessions

And for delivering a letter.

O you venerable spouses!

I will offer you my services;

I ask you to notice my speech:

I want to warn you.

You also, mothers, are stricter

Look after your daughters:

Keep your lorgnette straight!

However, the words of Genlis are also interesting in another respect: the waltz is opposed to classical dances as romantic; passionate, crazy, dangerous and close to nature, he opposes the etiquette dances of the old days.

The “simplicity” of the waltz was acutely felt: “Wiener Walz, consisting of two steps, which consist in stepping on the right and on the left foot and, moreover, as quickly as crazy, they danced; after which I leave it to the reader to judge whether he conforms to the noble assembly or to any other.

The waltz was admitted to the balls of Europe as a tribute to the new time. It was a fashionable and youthful dance.

The sequence of dances during the ball formed a dynamic composition. Each dance, having its own intonations and tempo, set a certain style not only for movements, but also for conversation.

In order to understand the essence of the ball, one must keep in mind that the dances were only an organizing core in it. The chain of dances also organized the sequence of moods. Each dance entailed decent topics of conversation for him.

At the same time, it should be borne in mind that conversation, conversation was no less a part of the dance than movement and music. The expression "mazurka chatter" was not disparaging. Involuntary jokes, tender confessions and decisive explanations were distributed over the composition of the dances that followed one after another.

An interesting example of a change of topic in a sequence of dances is found in Anna Karenina.

"Vronsky went through several waltz tours with Kitty."

Tolstoy introduces us to a decisive moment in the life of Kitty, who is in love with Vronsky. She expects words of recognition from him, which should decide her fate, but for important conversation a corresponding moment in the dynamics of the ball is needed. It is possible to lead it by no means at any moment and not at any dance.

"During the quadrille, nothing significant was said, there was an intermittent conversation." “But Kitty didn't expect more from a quadrille. She waited with bated breath for the mazurka. It seemed to her that everything should be decided in the mazurka.

The mazurka formed the center of the ball and marked its climax. The mazurka was danced with numerous bizarre figures and a male solo constituting the culmination of the dance. Both the soloist and the master of the mazurka had to show ingenuity and the ability to improvise.

“The chic of the mazurka lies in the fact that the gentleman takes the lady on his chest, immediately hitting himself with his heel in the center de gravit (not to say ass), flies to the other end of the hall and says: “Mazurechka, sir,” and the lady to him: “ Mazurechka, sir. Then they rushed in pairs, and did not dance calmly, as they do now.

There were several distinct styles within the mazurka. The difference between the capital and the provinces was expressed in the opposition of the "refined" and "bravura" performance of the mazurka:

The mazurka rang out. used to

When the mazurka thundered,

Everything in the great hall was trembling,

The parquet cracked under the heel,

The frames shook and rattled;

Now it's not that: and we, like ladies,

We slide on varnished boards.

“When horseshoes and high picks at boots appeared, taking steps, they mercilessly began to knock, so that when there were not too two hundred young males in one public meeting, the music of the mazurka began to play, they raised such a clatter that the music was drowned out.”

But there was another opposition as well. The old "French" manner of performing the mazurka demanded from the gentleman the lightness of jumps, the so-called entrecha (Onegin, as the reader remembers, "danced the mazurka easily").

Antrasha, according to one dance guide, "a leap in which the foot strikes three times while the body is in the air."

The French, "secular" and "amiable" manner of the mazurka in the 1820s began to be replaced by the English, associated with dandyism. The latter demanded languid, lazy movements from the gentleman, emphasizing that he was bored of dancing and he was doing it against his will. The cavalier refused mazurka chatter and was sullenly silent during the dance.

“... And in general, not a single fashionable gentleman is dancing now, this is not supposed to. - That's how? - asked Mr. Smith in surprise - No, I swear on my honor, no! muttered Mr. Ritson. - No, unless they walk in a quadrille or turn in a waltz, no, to hell with dancing, it's very vulgar!

In the memoirs of Smirnova-Rosset, an episode of her first meeting with Pushkin is told: while still a college student, she invited him to a mazurka. ( Editor's Note: SHE invited? Ooo!) Pushkin silently and lazily walked around the hall with her a couple of times.

The fact that Onegin "danced the mazurka with ease" shows that his dandyism and fashionable disappointment were half fake in the first chapter of the "novel in verse". For their sake, he could not refuse the pleasure of jumping in the mazurka.

The Decembrist and liberal of the 1820s adopted the "English" attitude towards dancing, bringing it to a complete rejection of them. In Pushkin's "Novel in Letters" Vladimir writes to a friend:

“Your speculative and important reasoning belongs to 1818. Rule strictness and political economy were all the rage at the time. We appeared at the balls without taking off our swords (it was impossible to dance with a sword, an officer who wanted to dance unfastened his sword and left it with the doorman. - Yu. L.) - it was indecent for us to dance and there was no time to deal with the ladies ”(VIII (1), 55 ).

At serious friendly evenings, Liprandi did not have dances. The Decembrist N. I. Turgenev wrote to his brother Sergei on March 25, 1819 about the surprise that caused him to learn that the latter was dancing at a ball in Paris (S. I. Turgenev was in France under the commander of the Russian expeditionary force, Count M. S. Vorontsov ): “You, I hear, are dancing. His daughter wrote to Count Golovin that she danced with you. And so, with some surprise, I learned that now in France they also dance! Une ecossaise constitutionelle, indpendante, ou une contredanse monarchique ou une dansc contre-monarchique ”(constitutional ecossaise, independent ecossaise, monarchist country dance or anti-monarchist dance - the play on words is to list political parties: constitutionalists, independents, monarchists - and the use of the prefix “counter” sometimes as a dance term, sometimes as a political term).

The complaint of Princess Tugoukhovskaya in “Woe from Wit” is connected with the same sentiments: “Dancers have become terribly rare!” The contrast between a man talking about Adam Smith and a man dancing a waltz or a mazurka was emphasized by a remark after Chatsky's program monologue: "Looks back, everyone is spinning in a waltz with the greatest zeal."

Pushkin's poems:

Buyanov, my fervent brother,

Led to our hero

Tatyana with Olga ... (5, XLIII, XLIV)

they mean one of the figures of the mazurka: two ladies (or gentlemen) are brought to the gentleman (or lady) with a proposal to choose. The choice of a mate for oneself was perceived as a sign of interest, favor, or (as Lensky interpreted) falling in love. Nicholas I reproached Smirnova-Rosset: "Why don't you choose me?"

In some cases, the choice was associated with guessing the qualities that the dancers thought of: “Three ladies who came up to them with questions - oubli ou regret * - interrupted the conversation ...” (Pushkin, VDI (1), 244).

Or in “After the Ball” by L. Tolstoy: ““... I did not dance the mazurka with her. When we were brought to her and she did not guess my quality, she, giving her hand not to me, shrugged her thin shoulders and, as a sign of regret and consolation, smiled to me".

Cotillion - a kind of quadrille, one of the dances concluding the ball - was danced to the tune of a waltz and was a dance-game, the most relaxed, varied and playful dance. “... There they make both a cross and a circle, and they plant a lady, triumphantly bringing gentlemen to her, so that she chooses with whom she wants to dance, and in other places they kneel before her; but in order to thank themselves mutually, the men also sit down in order to choose the ladies they like. Then there are figures with jokes, giving cards, bundles made of scarves, deceiving or jumping off in a dance from one another, jumping over a scarf high ... ".

The ball was not the only opportunity to have a fun and noisy night.

The alternative was

: ... games of riotous youths, Thunderstorms of sentry patrols ..

(Pushkin, VI, 621)

idle drinking parties in the company of young revelers, officers-breters, famous "naughty" and drunkards.

The ball, as a decent and quite secular pastime, was opposed to this revelry, which, although cultivated in certain guards circles, was generally perceived as a manifestation of "bad taste", acceptable for a young man only within certain, moderate limits.

(Editor's note: Yes perishing, in allowed, tell. But about "hussars" and "violence" there in another chapter).

M. D. Buturlin, prone to a free and wild life, recalled that there was a moment when he "did not miss a single ball." This, he writes, "greatly pleased my mother, as proof, que j'avais pris le gout de la bonne societe."** However, Oblivion or Regret (French). that I loved to be in good company (French). the taste for a reckless life took over:

“There were quite frequent lunches and dinners in my apartment. My guests were some of our officers and civilian Petersburg acquaintances, mostly foreigners; here, of course, there was a draft sea of ​​champagne and charcoal. But my main mistake was that after the first visits with my brother at the beginning of my visit to Princess Maria Vasilyevna Kochubey, Natalya Kirillovna Zagryazhskaya (who meant a lot then) and to others in kinship or former acquaintance with our family, I stopped attending this high society .

I remember how once, when leaving the French Kamennoostrovsky theater, my old friend Elisaveta Mikhailovna Khitrova, recognizing me, exclaimed: Ah, Michel! And I, in order to avoid meeting and explicating with her, rather than descend from the restyled staircase where this scene took place, turned sharply to the right past the columns of the facade; but since there was no exit to the street, I flew headlong to the ground from a very decent height, risking breaking an arm or leg.

Unfortunately, the habits of a wild and open life in the circle of army comrades with late drinking at restaurants were rooted in me, and therefore trips to high-society salons burdened me, as a result of which a few months passed, since the members of that society decided (and not without reason) that I am small, mired in the whirlpool of bad society.

Late drinking, starting in one of the Petersburg restaurants, ended somewhere in the "Red Tavern", which stood at the seventh verst along the Peterhof road and was a favorite place for officers' revelry. A cruel card game and noisy marches through the streets of St. Petersburg at night completed the picture. Noisy street adventures - "a thunderstorm of midnight patrols" (Pushkin, VIII, 3) - were the usual nighttime activities of "naughty".

The nephew of the poet Delvig recalls: “...Pushkin and Delvig told us about the walks that they took through the St. stopping others who are ten or more years older than us...

After reading the description of this walk, one might think that Pushkin, Delvig and all the other men who walked with them, with the exception of brother Alexander and me, were drunk, but I resolutely certify that this was not the case, but they simply wanted to shake the old one and show it to us , young generation as if in reproach to our more serious and deliberate behavior.

In the same spirit, although somewhat later - at the very end of the 1820s, Buturlin and his friends tore off the scepter and orb from the double-headed eagle (pharmacy sign) and marched with them through the city center. This “prank” already had a rather dangerous political connotation: it provided grounds for a criminal charge of “lese majesty”. It is no coincidence that the acquaintance to whom they appeared in this form "never could remember without fear this night of our visit."

If this adventure got away with it, then punishment followed for trying to feed the bust of the emperor with soup in the restaurant: Buturlin's civilian friends were exiled to the civil service in the Caucasus and Astrakhan, and he was transferred to the provincial army regiment. This is no coincidence: “crazy feasts”, youth revelry against the backdrop of the Arakcheev (later Nikolaev) capital was inevitably painted in oppositional tones (see the chapter “Decembrist in everyday life”).

The ball had a harmonious composition.

It was, as it were, some kind of festive whole, subordinated to the movement from the strict form of the solemn ballet to the variable forms of the choreographic game. However, in order to understand the meaning of the ball as a whole, it should be understood in opposition to the two extreme poles: the parade and the masquerade.

The parade, in the form that it received under the influence of the peculiar “creativity” of Paul I and the Pavlovichi: Alexander, Constantine and Nicholas, was a kind of carefully thought-out ritual. He was the opposite of fighting. And von Bock was right when he called it "the triumph of nothingness." The battle demanded initiative, the parade demanded submission, turning the army into a ballet.

In relation to the parade, the ball acted as something directly opposite. Submission, discipline, erasure of personality ball opposed fun, freedom, and severe depression of a person - his joyful excitement. In this sense, the chronological course of the day from a parade or preparation for it - an exercise, an arena and other types of "kings of science" (Pushkin) - to a ballet, a holiday, a ball was a movement from subordination to freedom and from rigid monotony to fun and diversity.

However, the ball was subject to firm laws. The degree of rigidity of this submission was different: between thousands of balls in the Winter Palace, timed to coincide with especially solemn dates, and small balls in the houses of provincial landowners with dancing to a serf orchestra or even to a violin played by a German teacher, there was a long and multi-stage path. The degree of freedom was different at different stages of this path. And yet, the fact that the ball assumed a composition and a strict internal organization limited the freedom within it.

This caused the need for another element that would play in this system the role of "organized disorganization", planned and provided for chaos. This role was taken over by the masquerade.

Masquerade dressing, in principle, was contrary to deep church traditions. In the Orthodox mind, this was one of the most enduring signs of demonism. Dressing up and elements of masquerade in folk culture were allowed only in those ritual actions of the Christmas and spring cycles that were supposed to imitate the exorcism of demons and in which the remnants of pagan ideas found refuge. Therefore, the European tradition of masquerade penetrated into the life of the nobility of the 18th century with difficulty or merged with folk mummers.

As a form of a noble festival, the masquerade was a closed and almost secret fun. Elements of blasphemy and rebellion appeared in two characteristic episodes: both Elizabeth Petrovna and Catherine II, when carrying out coup d'état, dressed up in men's guard uniforms and mounted horses like a man.

Here, dressing up took on a symbolic character: a woman - a contender for the throne - turned into an emperor. This can be compared with the use of Shcherbatov in relation to one person - Elizabeth - in different situations of naming, either in the masculine or in the feminine. With this, one could also compare the custom for the Empress to dress in the uniform of those regiments of the Guards who are honored with a visit.

From military-state disguise * the next step led to a masquerade game. One could recall in this respect the projects of Catherine II. If such masquerade masquerades were publicly held, such as, for example, the famous carousel, to which Grigory Orlov and other participants appeared in knightly costumes, then in pure secrecy, in the closed premises of the Small Hermitage, Catherine found it amusing to hold completely different masquerades.

So, for example, with her own hand she drew a detailed plan of the holiday, in which separate changing rooms would be made for men and women, so that all the ladies would suddenly appear in men's costumes, and all gentlemen in women's (Catherine was not disinterested here: such the costume emphasized her slimness, and the huge guardsmen, of course, would have looked comical).

The masquerade that we encounter when reading Lermontov's play - the St. Petersburg masquerade in Engelhardt's house on the corner of Nevsky and Moika - had the exact opposite character. It was the first public masquerade in Russia. Anyone who paid the entrance fee could visit it.

The fundamental confusion of visitors, social contrasts, the permitted licentiousness of behavior, which turned the Engelhardt masquerades into the center of scandalous stories and rumors - all this created a spicy counterweight to the severity of St. Petersburg balls.

Let us recall the joke that Pushkin put into the mouth of a foreigner who said that in St. Petersburg morality is guaranteed by the fact that the summer nights are bright and the winter ones are cold. For the Engelhardt balls, these obstacles did not exist.

Lermontov included a significant hint in "Masquerade": Arbenin

It would be good for both you and me to scatter

After all, today is the holidays and, of course, a masquerade

Engelhardt...

There are women there ... a miracle ...

And even there they say...

Let them say, what do we care?

Under the mask, all ranks are equal,

The mask has neither a soul nor a title, it has a body.

And if the features are hidden by the mask,

That mask from feelings is boldly torn off.

The role of the masquerade in prim and dressed-up St. Nicholas Petersburg can be compared to how satiated French courtiers of the Regency era, having exhausted all forms of refinement during a long night, went to some dirty tavern in a dubious district of Paris and greedily devoured fetid boiled unwashed intestines. It was the sharpness of the contrast that created here a refined and jaded experience.

To the words of the prince in the same drama by Lermontov: "All masks are stupid" - Arbenin answers with a monologue glorifying the unexpectedness and unpredictability that the mask brings to a stiff society:

Yes, there is no stupid mask:

She is silent ... mysterious, she will speak - so sweet.

You can give her words

A smile, a look, whatever you want ...

For example, take a look there -

How to act nobly

A tall Turkish woman ... how full,

How her chest breathes both passionately and freely!

Do you know who she is?

Perhaps a proud countess or princess,

Diana in society ... Venus in masquerade,

And it may also be that the same beauty

Tomorrow evening he will come to you for half an hour.

The parade and masquerade formed a brilliant frame of the picture, in the center of which was the ball.

Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman (1922 - 1993) - culturologist, founder of the Tartu-Moscow semiotic school. Author of numerous works on the history of Russian culture from the point of view of semiotics, developed his own general theory of culture, set out in the work "Culture and Explosion" (1992).

The text is printed according to the publication: Yu. M. Lotman Conversations about Russian culture. Life and traditions of the Russian nobility (XVIII-early XIX century). St. Petersburg, - "Art - St. Petersburg". – 1994.

Life and culture

Devoting conversations to Russian life and culture of the XVIII – beginning of the 19th century, we must first of all determine the meaning of the concepts of "everyday life", "culture", "Russian culture of the 18th – beginning of the 19th century” and their relationship with each other. At the same time, we will make a reservation that the concept of “culture”, which belongs to the most fundamental in the cycle of human sciences, can itself become the subject of a separate monograph and has repeatedly become one. It would be strange if in this book we set ourselves the goal of resolving controversial issues related to this concept. It is very capacious: it includes morality, and the whole range of ideas, and human creativity, and much more. It will be quite enough for us to confine ourselves to that aspect of the concept of "culture" which is necessary for elucidating our comparatively narrow topic.

Culture first of all is a collective concept. An individual person can be a bearer of culture, can actively participate in its development, however, by its very nature, culture, like language, – a public phenomenon, that is, a social one.

Therefore, culture is something common to any collective. – groups of people living at the same time and connected by a certain social organization. It follows from this that culture is form of communication between people and is possible only in a group in which people communicate. (The organizational structure that unites people living at the same time is called synchronous, and we will use this concept in the future when defining a number of aspects of the phenomenon of interest to us).

Any structure serving the sphere of social communication is a language. This means that it forms a certain system of signs used in accordance with the rules known to the members of this collective. We call signs any material expression (words, pictures, things, etc.), which has the meaning and thus can serve as a means conveying meaning.

Consequently, culture has, firstly, a communicative and, secondly, symbolic nature. Let's focus on this last one. Think of something as simple and familiar as bread. Bread is material and visible. It has weight, shape, it can be cut, eaten. Eaten bread comes into physiological contact with a person. In this function, one cannot ask about it: what does it mean? It has a use, not a meaning. But when we say, "Give us our daily bread," – the word "bread" means not just bread as a thing, but has a broader meaning: "food necessary for life." And when in the Gospel of John we read the words of Christ: “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to Me will not hunger” (John 6:35), we have – complex symbolic meaning of both the object itself and the word denoting it.

The sword is also nothing more than an object. As a thing, it can be forged or broken, it can be placed in a museum display case, and it can kill a person. This is all – using it as an object, but when, attached to a belt or supported by a sling, placed on the hip, the sword symbolizes a free man and is a "sign of freedom", it already appears as a symbol and belongs to culture.

In the 18th century, a Russian and European nobleman does not carry a sword – a sword hangs on his side (sometimes a tiny, almost toy parade sword, which is practically not a weapon). In this case, the sword – character symbol: it means a sword, and a sword means belonging to a privileged class.

Belonging to the nobility also means the obligatory nature of certain rules of conduct, principles of honor, even the cut of clothing. We know cases when “wearing clothes indecent for a nobleman” (that is, a peasant dress) or also a beard “indecent for a nobleman” became a matter of concern for the political police and the emperor himself.

A sword as a weapon, a sword as a piece of clothing, a sword as a symbol, a sign of the nobility – all these are different functions of the object in the general context of culture.

In its various incarnations, a symbol can simultaneously be a weapon suitable for direct practical use, or completely separated from its immediate function. So, for example, a small sword specially designed for parades excluded practical use, in fact, being an image of a weapon, and not a weapon. The parade realm was separated from the combat realm by emotion, body language, and function. Let us recall the words of Chatsky: "I will go to death as to a parade." At the same time, in Tolstoy's "War and Peace" we meet in the description of the battle an officer leading his soldiers into battle with a parade (that is, useless) sword in his hands. The bipolar situation itself – fighting game" created a complex relationship between the weapon as a symbol and the weapon as a reality. So the sword (sword) is woven into the system of the symbolic language of the era and becomes a fact of its culture.

We have used the expression "secular building of culture". It is not accidental. We talked about the synchronous organization of culture. But it must immediately be emphasized that culture always implies the preservation of previous experience. Moreover, one of the most important definitions of culture characterizes it as the "non-genetic" memory of the collective. Culture is memory. Therefore, it is always connected with history, always implies the continuity of the moral, intellectual, spiritual life of a person, society and mankind. And therefore, when we talk about our modern culture, we, perhaps without suspecting it ourselves, are also talking about the huge path that this culture has traveled. This path has millennia, crosses the boundaries of historical eras, national cultures and immerses us in one culture. – the culture of mankind.

Therefore, culture is always, on the one hand, – a certain number of inherited texts, and on the other – inherited characters.

Symbols of a culture rarely appear in its synchronic slice. As a rule, they come from the depths of centuries and, changing their meaning (but without losing the memory of their previous meanings), are transferred to the future states of culture. Such simple symbols as a circle, a cross, a triangle, a wavy line, more complex ones: a hand, an eye, a house – and even more complex ones (for example, rituals) accompany humanity throughout its many thousands of years of culture.

Therefore, culture is historical in nature. Its very present always exists in relation to the past (real or constructed in the order of some mythology) and to forecasts of the future. These historical links of culture are called diachronic. As you can see, culture is eternal and universal, but at the same time it is always mobile and changeable. This is the difficulty of understanding the past (after all, it is gone, moved away from us). But this is also the need for understanding a bygone culture: it always has what we need now, today.

A person changes, and in order to imagine the logic of the actions of a literary hero or people of the past – but we look up to them, and they somehow maintain our connection with the past, – one must imagine how they lived, what kind of world surrounded them, what were their general ideas and moral ideas, their official duties, customs, clothes, why they acted this way and not otherwise. This will be the topic of the proposed conversations.

Having thus determined the aspects of culture that interest us, we have the right, however, to ask the question: does the expression “culture and way of life” itself contain a contradiction, do these phenomena lie on different planes? Indeed, what is life? Life – it is the ordinary course of life in its real-practical forms; life – these are the things that surround us, our habits and everyday behavior. Life surrounds us like air, and, like air, it is noticeable to us only when it is not enough or it deteriorates. We notice the features of someone else's life, but our life is elusive for us. – we tend to consider it "just life", the natural norm of practical existence. So, everyday life is always in the sphere of practice, it is the world of things first of all. How can he come into contact with the world of symbols and signs that make up the space of culture?

Turning to the history of everyday life, we easily distinguish in it deep forms, the connection of which with ideas, with the intellectual, moral, spiritual development of the era is self-evident. Thus, ideas about noble honor or court etiquette, although they belong to the history of everyday life, are also inseparable from the history of ideas. But what about such seemingly external features of the time as fashions, the customs of everyday life, the details of practical behavior and the objects in which it is embodied? Is it really important for us to know what they looked like? "Lepage fatal trunks", from which Onegin killed Lensky, or – wider – imagine Onegin's objective world?

However, the two types of everyday details and phenomena identified above are closely related. The world of ideas is inseparable from the world of people, and ideas – from everyday reality. Alexander Blok wrote:

Accidentally on a pocket knife

Find a speck of dust from distant lands –

And the world will look strange again...

"Motes of distant lands" of history are reflected in the texts that have survived for us – including in “texts in the language of everyday life”. Recognizing them and imbued with them, we comprehend the living past. From here – method offered to the reader "Conversations about Russian culture" – to see history in the mirror of everyday life, and to illuminate small, sometimes seemingly disparate everyday details with the light of great historical events.

What are the ways Is there an interpenetration of life and culture? For the objects or customs of "ideologized everyday life" this is self-evident: the language of court etiquette, for example, is impossible without real things, gestures, etc., in which it is embodied and which belong to everyday life. But how are those endless objects of everyday life, which were mentioned above, associated with culture, with the ideas of the era?

Our doubts will be dispelled if we remember that All the things around us are included not only in practice in general, but also in public practice, become, as it were, clots of relations between people and in this function they are able to acquire a symbolic character.

In Pushkin's The Miserly Knight, Albert waits for the moment when his father's treasures pass into his hands in order to give them a "true", that is, practical use. But the baron himself is content with symbolic possession, because for him gold – not yellow circles for which you can buy certain things, but a symbol of sovereignty. Makar Devushkin in Dostoevsky's "Poor People" invents a special gait so that his holey soles are not visible. Leaky sole – real object; as a thing, it can cause trouble to the owner of the boots: wet feet, a cold. But for an outside observer, a torn outsole – This sign, whose content is Poverty, and Poverty – one of the defining symbols of Petersburg culture. And Dostoevsky's hero accepts the "view of culture": he suffers not because he is cold, but because he is ashamed. shame – one of the most powerful psychological levers of culture. So, life, in its symbolic key, is part of culture.

But this issue has another side. A thing does not exist separately, as something isolated in the context of its time. Things are connected. In some cases, we have in mind a functional connection and then we talk about "unity of style." The unity of style is belonging, for example, to furniture, to a single artistic and cultural layer, a "common language" that allows things to "speak among themselves." When you enter a ridiculously furnished room filled with all sorts of different styles, you get the feeling that you have entered a market where everyone is screaming and no one is listening to the other. But there may be another connection. For example, you say: "These are my grandmother's things." Thus, you establish some kind of intimate connection between objects, due to the memory of a person dear to you, of his long gone time, of your childhood. It is no coincidence that there is a custom to give things "as a keepsake" – things have memory. It is like words and notes that the past passes on to the future.

On the other hand, things imperiously dictate gestures, behavioral style and, ultimately, the psychological attitude of their owners. So, for example, since women began to wear trousers, their gait has changed, it has become more athletic, more “masculine”. At the same time, a typical “male” gesture invaded female behavior (for example, the habit of throwing high legs while sitting – the gesture is not only masculine, but also "American", in Europe it has traditionally been considered a sign of indecent swagger). A careful observer may notice that the previously sharply different male and female manners of laughing have now lost their distinction, and precisely because women in the mass have adopted the male manner of laughter.

Things impose a manner of behavior on us, because they create a certain cultural context around them. After all, one must be able to hold an ax, a shovel, a dueling pistol, a modern machine gun, a fan or a steering wheel of a car in one's hands. In the old days they said: "He knows how (or does not know how) to wear a tailcoat." It is not enough to sew a tailcoat at the best tailor – for this it is enough to have money. One must also be able to wear it, and this, as the hero of Bulwer-Lytton's novel Pelham, or the Gentleman's Adventure, reasoned, – a whole art, given only to a true dandy. Anyone who held in his hand both modern weapons and an old dueling pistol cannot help but be amazed at how well, how well the latter fits in his hand. Heaviness is not felt – it becomes like an extension of the body. The point is that things ancient life were made by hand, their shape was worked out for decades, and sometimes for centuries, the secrets of production were passed from master to master. This not only worked out the most convenient form, but also inevitably turned the thing into the history of the thing in memory of the gestures associated with it. The thing, on the one hand, gave the human body new opportunities, and on the other – included a person in the tradition, that is, it developed and limited his individuality.

However, life – it is not only the life of things, it is also customs, the whole ritual of daily behavior, the structure of life that determines the daily routine, the time of various activities, the nature of work and leisure, forms of recreation, games, love ritual and funeral ritual. The connection of this side of everyday life with culture does not require explanation. After all, it is in it that those features are revealed by which we usually recognize our own and others, a person of one era or another, an Englishman or a Spaniard.

Custom has another function. Not all laws of behavior are fixed in writing. Writing dominates in the legal, religious, and ethical spheres. However, in human life there is a vast area of ​​customs and propriety. “There is a way of thinking and feeling, there is a mass of customs, beliefs and habits that belong exclusively to some people.” These norms belong to culture, they are fixed in the forms of everyday behavior, everything that is said: "it's accepted, it's so decent." These norms are transmitted through everyday life and are in close contact with the sphere of folk poetry. They become part of the cultural memory.

Questions to the text:

1. How Yu. Lotman defines the meaning of the concepts of "everyday life", "culture"?

2. What, from the point of view of Yu. Lotman, is the symbolic nature of culture?

3. How is the interpenetration of life and culture?

4. Prove with examples from modern life that the things around us are included in social practice, and in this function they acquire a symbolic character.

microhistory

The author is an outstanding theorist and historian of culture, the founder of the Tartu-Moscow semiotic school. Its readership is huge - from specialists to whom works on the typology of culture are addressed, to schoolchildren who have taken the "Commentary" to "Eugene Onegin" in their hands. The book was created on the basis of a series of television lectures about the culture of the Russian nobility. The past era is presented through the realities of everyday life, brilliantly recreated in the chapters "Duel", "Card Game", "Ball" and others. The book is populated by the heroes of Russian literature and historical figures - among them Peter I, Suvorov, Alexander I, the Decembrists. The factual novelty and a wide range of literary associations, the fundamental nature and liveliness of the presentation make it the most valuable publication in which any reader will find something interesting and useful for himself.
For students, the book will become a necessary addition to the course of Russian history and literature. The publication was published with the assistance of the Federal Target Program of Book Publishing in Russia and the International Foundation "Cultural Initiative".
“Conversations about Russian Culture” was written by the brilliant researcher of Russian culture Yu. M. Lotman. At one time, the author responded with interest to the proposal of "Art - St. Petersburg" to prepare a publication based on a series of lectures with which he appeared on television. The work was carried out by him with great responsibility - the composition was specified, the chapters were expanded, new versions of them appeared. The author signed the book into a set, but did not see it published - on October 28, 1993, Yu. M. Lotman died. His living word, addressed to an audience of millions, has been preserved in this book. It immerses the reader into the world of everyday life of the Russian nobility of the 18th - early 19th centuries. We see people of a distant era in the nursery and in the ballroom, on the battlefield and at the card table, we can examine in detail the hairstyle, the cut of the dress, the gesture, the demeanor. At the same time, everyday life for the author is a historical-psychological category, a sign system, that is, a kind of text. He teaches to read and understand this text, where everyday and existential are inseparable.
The “Collection of Motley Chapters”, whose heroes are prominent historical figures, royal persons, ordinary people of the era, poets, literary characters, is linked together by the thought of the continuity of the cultural and historical process, the intellectual and spiritual connection of generations.
In a special issue of the Tartu “Russkaya Gazeta” dedicated to the death of Yu. Not titles, orders or royal favor, but the “independence of a person” turns him into a historical figure.
The publishing house would like to thank the State Hermitage Museum and the State Russian Museum for providing free of charge the engravings kept in their collections for reproduction in this publication.--

Hidden text
INTRODUCTION: Life and culturePART ONEPeople and ranks
Women's World
Women's education in the 18th - early 19th centuriesPART TWOBall
Matchmaking. Marriage. Divorce
Russian dandyism
Card game
Duel
art of living
The result of the pathPART THREE"Chicks of Petrov's nest"
Ivan Ivanovich Neplyuev - reform apologist
Mikhail Petrovich Avramov - critic of the reform
Age of heroes
A. N. Radishchev
A. V. Suvorov
Two women
People of 1812
Decembrist in everyday life INSTEAD OF CONCLUSION"Between the double abyss ..."

Add. Information:Cover: Vasya s MarsaThanks for the book Naina Kievna (AudioBook Lovers Club)--