Realism is a literary trend in which the surrounding reality is portrayed specifically historically, in the variety of its contradictions, and "typical characters act in typical circumstances." Literature is understood by realist writers as a textbook of life. Therefore, they strive to comprehend life in all its contradictions, and a person - in psychological, social and other aspects of his personality. Features common to realism: Historicism of thinking. The focus is on the regularities operating in life, due to cause-and-effect relationships. Fidelity to reality becomes the leading criterion of artistry in realism. A person is portrayed in interaction with the environment in reliable life circumstances. Realism shows the influence of the social environment on the spiritual world of a person, the formation of his character. Characters and circumstances interact with each other: character is not only conditioned (determined) by circumstances, but also affects them (changes, opposes). In works of realism, deep conflicts are presented, life is given in dramatic collisions. Reality is given in development. Realism depicts not only the already established forms of social relations and types of characters, but also reveals the emerging, forming a tendency. The nature and type of realism depends on the socio-historical situation - in different epochs it manifests itself in different ways. In the second third of the XIX century. increased critical attitude of writers to the surrounding reality - and to the environment, society, and to humans. A critical understanding of life, aimed at denying its individual aspects, gave rise to the name realism of the 19th century. critical. The greatest Russian realists were L.N. Tolstoy, F.M. Dostoevsky, I.S. Turgenev, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, A.P. Chekhov. The depiction of the surrounding reality, of human characters from the point of view of the progressiveness of the socialist ideal, created the basis of socialist realism. The first work of socialist realism in Russian literature is considered the novel by M. Gorky "Mother". A. Fadeev, D. Furmanov, M. Sholokhov, A. Tvardovsky worked in the spirit of socialist realism.

15. French and English realistic novel (by choice).

French novel Stendhal(the literary pseudonym of Henri Marie Beil) (1783-1842). In 1830 Stendhal finished the novel "Red and Black", which marked the onset of the writer's maturity. Stendhal learned about them by looking through the chronicles of the Grenoble newspaper. As it turned out, a young man sentenced to death, the son of a peasant, who decided to make a career, became a tutor in the family of a local rich man Misha, but, convicted of having a love affair with the mother of his pupils, lost his job. Failures awaited him later. He was expelled from the theological seminary, and then from the service in the Parisian aristocratic mansion de Cardone, where he was compromised by his relationship with the owner's daughter and especially by a letter from Madame Misha, at whom the desperate Berthe shot in the church and then tried to commit suicide. attracted the attention of Stendhal, who conceived a novel about the tragic fate of a talented plebeian in France of the era of the Restoration. However, the real source only awakened the artist's creative imagination, who was always looking for opportunities to confirm the truth of fiction with reality. Instead of the petty ambitious, the heroic and tragic personality of Julien Sorel appears. Facts undergo no less metamorphosis in the plot of the novel, which recreates the typical features of an entire era in the main laws of its historical development.

English novel. Valentina Ivasheva ENGLISH REALISTIC NOVEL OF THE XIX CENTURY IN ITS MODERN SOUND

The book by Valentina Ivasheva (1908-1991), Doctor of Philology, traces the development of the English realistic novel from the end of the 18th century to the end of the 19th century. - from the works of J. Austen, W. Godwin and to the novels of George Eliot and E. Trollope. The author shows that new and peculiar that was introduced into its development by each of the classics of critical realism: Dickens and Thackeray, Gaskell and Bronte, Disraeli and Kingsley. The author traces how the legacy of the classics of the "Victorian" novel is being reinterpreted in modern England.

2) Sentimentalism
Sentimentalism is a literary movement that recognized feeling as the main criterion of the human personality. Sentimentalism originated in Europe and Russia at about the same time, in the second half of the 18th century, as a counterweight to the rigid classical theory prevailing at that time.
Sentimentalism was closely associated with the ideas of the Enlightenment. He gave priority to the manifestations of human mental qualities, psychological analysis, sought to awaken in the hearts of readers an understanding of human nature and love for it, along with a humane attitude towards all the weak, suffering and persecuted. Feelings and experiences of a person are worthy of attention regardless of his class affiliation - the idea of ​​universal equality of people.
The main genres of sentimentalism are:
story
elegy
novel
letters
travels
memoirs
England can be considered the birthplace of sentimentalism. Poets J. Thomson, T. Gray, E. Jung tried to awaken in their readers a love for the surrounding nature, painting in their works simple and peaceful rural landscapes, sympathy for the needs of poor people. S. Richardson was a prominent representative of English sentimentalism. In the first place, he put forward psychological analysis and drew the attention of readers to the fate of his heroes. The writer Lawrence Stern preached humanism as the highest value of man.
In French literature, sentimentalism is represented by the novels of the Abbe Prévost, P.C. de Chamblin de Marivaux, J.-J. Rousseau, A.B. de Saint-Pierre.
In German literature - the works of F. G. Klopstock, F. M. Klinger, I. V. Goethe, I. F. Schiller, S. Laroche.
Sentimentalism came to Russian literature with translations of the works of Western European sentimentalists. The first sentimental works of Russian literature can be called "Travel from St. Petersburg to Moscow" by A.N. Radishchev, "Letters of a Russian Traveler" and "Poor Liza" by N.I. Karamzin.

3) Romanticism
Romanticism originated in Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. as a counterbalance to the previously dominant classicism with its pragmatism and adherence to established laws. Romanticism, in contrast to classicism, advocated deviation from the rules. The prerequisites for romanticism lie in the Great French Revolution of 1789-1794, which overthrew the rule of the bourgeoisie, and with it, bourgeois laws and ideals.
Romanticism, like sentimentalism, paid great attention to the personality of a person, his feelings and experiences. The main conflict of romanticism was the confrontation between the individual and society. Against the background of scientific and technological progress, the increasingly complex social and political structure, there was a spiritual devastation of the individual. The romantics sought to draw the attention of readers to this circumstance, to cause a protest in society against lack of spirituality and selfishness.
Romantics became disillusioned with the world around them, and this disillusionment is clearly visible in their works. Some of them, such as F. R. Chateaubriand and V. A. Zhukovsky, believed that a person cannot resist mysterious forces, must obey them and not try to change his fate. Other romantics, such as J. Byron, P.B.Shelley, S. Petofi, A. Mitskevich, early A.S. Pushkin, believed that it was necessary to fight the so-called "world evil", and opposed it with the strength of the human spirit.
The inner world of the romantic hero was full of emotions and passions; throughout the entire work, the author forced him to fight the outside world, duty and conscience. Romantics portrayed feelings in their extreme manifestations: high and passionate love, cruel betrayal, despicable envy, base ambition. But the romantics were interested not only in the inner world of a person, but also in the secrets of being, the essence of all living things, perhaps that is why there is so much mystical and mysterious in their works.
In German literature, romanticism was most clearly expressed in the works of Novalis, W. Tieck, F. Hölderlin, G. Kleist, E. T. A. Hoffmann. English romanticism is represented by the works of W. Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge, R. Southey, W. Scott, J. Keats, J. G. Byron, P. B. Shelley. In France, romanticism appeared only in the early 1820s. The main representatives were F.R. Chateaubriand, J. Steel, E.P. Senancourt, P. Merimet, V. Hugo, J. Sand, A. Vigny, A. Dumas (father).
The development of Russian romanticism was greatly influenced by the Great French Revolution and the Patriotic War of 1812. Romanticism in Russia is usually divided into two periods - before and after the Decembrist uprising in 1825. Representatives of the first period (V.A. A.S. Pushkin of the period of southern exile), believed in the victory of spiritual freedom over ordinary life, but after the defeat of the Decembrists, executions and exile, the romantic hero turns into a person who is outcast and misunderstood by society, and the conflict between personality and society becomes insoluble. The outstanding representatives of the second period were M. Yu. Lermontov, E. A. Baratynsky, D. V. Venevitinov, A. S. Khomyakov, F. I. Tyutchev.
The main genres of romanticism:
Elegy
Idyll
Ballad
Novella
novel
Fantastic story
Aesthetic and theoretical canons of romanticism
The idea of ​​a double world is a struggle between objective reality and subjective perception of the world. This concept is absent in realism. The idea of ​​a double world has two modifications:
going into the world of fantasy;
travel concept, road.
Hero concept:
the romantic hero is always an exceptional person;
the hero is always in conflict with the surrounding reality;
the dissatisfaction of the hero, which manifests itself in the lyrical tonality;
aesthetic determination to an unattainable ideal.
Psychological parallelism is the identity of the hero's inner state with the surrounding nature.
Speech style of a romantic piece:
extreme expression;
the principle of contrast at the level of composition;
an abundance of symbols.
Aesthetic categories of romanticism:
rejection of bourgeois reality, its ideology and pragmatism; the romantics denied a system of values ​​that was based on stability, hierarchy, a strict system of values ​​(home, comfort, Christian morality);
cultivation of individuality and artistic perception of the world; the reality rejected by romanticism was subject to subjective worlds based on the artist's creative imagination.

4) Realism
Realism is a literary movement that objectively reflects the surrounding reality with the artistic means available to it. The main technique of realism is the typification of facts of reality, images and characters. Realist writers place their characters in certain conditions and show how these conditions influenced the personality.
While romantic writers were worried about the inconsistency of the world around them with their inner worldview, the realist writer is interested in how the world around them affects a person. The actions of the heroes of realistic works are determined by life circumstances, in other words, if a person lived at a different time, in a different place, in a different socio-cultural environment, then he himself would be different.
The foundations of realism were laid by Aristotle in the 4th century. BC e. Instead of the concept of "realism", he used the concept of "imitation" that was close to him in meaning. Then realism was revived during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. In the 40s. 19th century in Europe, Russia and America, realism replaced romanticism.
Depending on the meaningful motives recreated in the work, there are:
critical (social) realism;
realism of characters;
psychological realism;
grotesque realism.
Critical realism focused on real circumstances that affect a person. Examples of critical realism are the works of Stendhal, O. Balzac, C. Dickens, U. Thackeray, A. Pushkin, N. V. Gogol, I. S. Turgenev, F. M. Dostoevsky, L. N. Tolstoy, A. P. Chekhov.
Characteristic realism, on the other hand, showed a strong personality that can fight against circumstances. Psychological realism paid more attention to the inner world, the psychology of heroes. The main representatives of these varieties of realism are F. M. Dostoevsky, L. N. Tolstoy.

In grotesque realism, deviations from reality are allowed, in some works the deviations border on fantasy, and the more grotesque, the more the author criticizes reality. Grotesque realism is developed in the works of Aristophanes, F. Rabelais, J. Swift, E. Hoffmann, in the satirical stories of N. V. Gogol, in the works of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, M. A. Bulgakov.

5) Modernism
Modernism is a collection of artistic trends that promoted freedom of expression. Modernism originated in Western Europe in the second half of the 19th century. as a new form of creativity, opposed to traditional art. Modernism manifested itself in all types of art - painting, architecture, literature.
The main distinguishing feature of modernism is its ability to change the world around it. The author does not seek to realistically or allegorically depict reality, as it was in realism, or the inner world of the hero, as it was in sentimentalism and romanticism, but depicts his own inner world and his own attitude to the surrounding reality, expresses personal impressions and even fantasies.
Features of modernism:
denial of the classical artistic heritage;
the declared discrepancy with the theory and practice of realism;
orientation towards an individual, not social person;
increased attention to the spiritual, not the social sphere of human life;
focus on form at the expense of content.
The largest currents of modernism were impressionism, symbolism and modernity. Impressionism sought to capture the moment in the form in which the author saw or felt it. In this author's perception, the past, present and future can be intertwined, what is important is the impression that any object or phenomenon had on the author, and not the object itself.
The Symbolists tried to find a secret meaning in everything that was happening, endowing the usual images and words with a mystical meaning. The Art Nouveau style advocated the abandonment of regular geometric shapes and straight lines in favor of smooth and curved lines. Art Nouveau manifested itself especially vividly in architecture and applied art.
In the 80s. 19th century a new trend of modernism was born - decadence. In the art of decadence, a person is placed in unbearable circumstances, he is broken, doomed, has lost his taste for life.
The main features of decadence:
cynicism (nihilistic attitude to universal human values);
eroticism;
tonatos (according to Z. Freud - the desire for death, decline, decay of the personality).
In the literature, modernism is represented by the following trends:
acmeism;
symbolism;
futurism;
imagism.
The most prominent representatives of modernism in literature are the French poets C. Baudelaire, P. Verlaine, the Russian poets N. Gumilev, A. A. Blok, V. V. Mayakovsky, A. Akhmatova, I. Severyanin, the English writer O. Wilde, the American writer E. Poe, Scandinavian playwright G. Ibsen.

6) Naturalism
Naturalism is the name of a trend in European literature and art that arose in the 70s. XIX century. and especially widespread in the 80-90s, when naturalism became the most influential trend. The theoretical substantiation of the new trend was given by Emile Zola in the book "The Experimental Novel".
End of the 19th century (especially the 80s) marks the flourishing and strengthening of industrial capital, growing into financial capital. This corresponds, on the one hand, to a high level of technology and increased exploitation, on the other, to the growth of self-awareness and the class struggle of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie is turning into a reactionary class fighting a new revolutionary force - the proletariat. The petty bourgeoisie oscillates between these main classes, and these vacillations are reflected in the positions of petty-bourgeois writers who have joined naturalism.
The main requirements of naturalists for literature: scientific, objectivity, political apathy in the name of "universal human truth." Literature must be at the level of modern science, must be imbued with scientific character. It is clear that naturalists base their works only on that science that does not deny the existing social system. Naturalists base their theory on the mechanistic natural-scientific materialism of the type of E. Haeckel, H. Spencer and C. Lombroso, adapting to the interests of the ruling class the doctrine of heredity (heredity is declared to be the cause of social stratification, giving advantages to some over others), the philosophy of positivism by Auguste Comte, and petty-bourgeois utopians (Saint-Simon).
By objectively and scientifically showing the shortcomings of modern reality, French naturalists hope to influence the minds of people and thereby bring about a series of reforms in order to save the existing system from the impending revolution.
The theorist and leader of French naturalism, E. Zola ranked G. Flaubert, the Goncourt brothers, A. Daudet, and a number of other lesser-known writers among the natural school. Zola attributed the French realists O. Balzac and Stendhal to the immediate predecessors of naturalism. But in fact, none of these writers, not excluding Zola himself, was a naturalist in the sense in which the theoretician Zola understood this direction. For a time, writers who were very heterogeneous both in their artistic method and in belonging to various class groupings were introduced to naturalism as the style of the leading class. It is characteristic that the unifying point was not the artistic method, but the reformist tendencies of naturalism.
The followers of naturalism are characterized by only partial recognition of the complex of requirements put forward by the theorists of naturalism. Following one of the principles of this style, they are repelled from others, sharply differing from each other, representing both different social trends and different artistic methods. A number of followers of naturalism embraced its reformist essence, rejecting without hesitation even such a requirement typical of naturalism as the requirement of objectivity and accuracy. This is what the German "early naturalists" (M. Kretzer, B. Bille, W. Belsche and others) did.
Under the sign of decay, rapprochement with impressionism, the further development of naturalism went. Arising in Germany somewhat later than in France, German naturalism was a predominantly petty-bourgeois style. Here, the disintegration of the patriarchal petty bourgeoisie and the exacerbation of capitalization processes create more and more cadres of the intelligentsia, which by no means always find use for themselves. More and more disillusionment with the power of science is permeating their midst. Hopes for the resolution of social contradictions within the framework of the capitalist system are gradually collapsing.
German naturalism, as well as naturalism in Scandinavian literature, represent an entirely transitional stage from naturalism to impressionism. Thus, the famous German historian Lamprecht in his "History of the Germanic People" proposed to call this style "physiological impressionism". This term is further used by a number of historians of German literature. Indeed, from the naturalistic style known in France, only admiration for physiology remains. Many German naturalist writers do not even try to hide their tendentiousness. At the center of it is usually some problem, social or physiological, around which the facts illustrating it are grouped (alcoholism in Hauptmann's Before Sunrise, heredity in Ibsen's Ghosts).
The founders of German naturalism were A. Goltz and F. Schlyaf. Their basic principles are set out in Goltz's brochure "Art", where Goltz asserts that "art tends to become nature again, and it becomes it in accordance with the existing conditions of reproduction and practical application." The complexity of the plot is also denied. The eventful French novel (Zola) is replaced by a story or short story, an extremely poor plot. The main place here is given to the painstaking transmission of moods, visual and auditory sensations. The novel is also being replaced by a drama and a poem, which the French naturalists regarded extremely negatively as a "kind of entertainment art." Special attention is paid to the drama (G. Ibsen, G. Hauptmann, A. Goltz, F. Shlyaf, G. Zuderman), which also denies intensively developed action, only catastrophe and fixation of the heroes' experiences are given ("Nora", "Ghosts", "Before Sunrise", "Master Eltse" and others). In the future, the naturalistic drama is reborn into an impressionistic, symbolic drama.
Naturalism has not received any development in Russia. The early works of F. I. Panferov and M. A. Sholokhov were called naturalistic.

7) Natural school
Under the natural school, literary criticism understands the direction that originated in Russian literature in the 40s. 19th century This was an era of increasingly sharpening contradictions between the serf system and the growth of capitalist elements. The followers of the natural school in their works tried to reflect the contradictions and moods of that time. The term "natural school" itself appeared in criticism thanks to F. Bulgarin.
The natural school in the extended application of the term as it was used in the 40s does not denote a single direction, but is a largely conventional concept. The natural school included such heterogeneous writers as I.S. Turgenev and F.M.Dostoevsky, D.V. Grigorovich and I.A.Goncharov, N.A. Nekrasov and I.I. Panaev.
The most common features, on the basis of which the writer was considered to belong to the natural school, were the following: socially significant topics that captured a wider circle than even the circle of social observations (often in the "lower" strata of society), a critical attitude to social reality, the realism of artistic expressions, who fought against embellishment of reality, aesthetics, romantic rhetoric.
VG Belinsky singled out the realism of the natural school, affirming the most important feature of the "truth" and not the "falsehood" of the image. The natural school does not address ideal, invented heroes, but to the "crowd", to the "mass", to ordinary people, and most often to people of "low rank". Common in the 40s. all sorts of "physiological" sketches satisfied this need for a reflection of a different, non-noble life, even if only in an outward, everyday, superficial reflection.
N. G. Chernyshevsky especially sharply emphasizes as an essential and basic feature of the "literature of the Gogol period" its critical, "negative" attitude to reality - "literature of the Gogol period" is here another name for the same natural school: it is to N. V. Gogol - the author of "Dead Souls", "The Inspector General", "The Overcoat" - as the founder of the natural school was erected by VG Belinsky and a number of other critics. Indeed, many writers who belong to the natural school have experienced the powerful influence of various aspects of N.V. Gogol's work. In addition to Gogol, the natural school writers were influenced by such representatives of Western European petty-bourgeois and bourgeois literature as C. Dickens, O. Balzac, Georges Sand.
One of the currents of the natural school, represented by the liberal, capitalizing nobility and social strata adjacent to it, was distinguished by a superficial and cautious nature of criticism of reality: it was either a harmless irony in relation to certain aspects of noble reality or a noble-limited protest against serfdom. The circle of social observations of this group was limited to the manor house. Representatives of this trend of the natural school: I. S. Turgenev, D. V. Grigorovich, I. I. Panaev.
Another trend of the natural school relied mainly on the urban philistinism of the 40s, which was oppressed, on the one hand, by tenacious serfdom, and on the other, by growing industrial capitalism. A certain role here belonged to FM Dostoevsky, the author of a number of psychological novels and novellas (Poor People, The Double, and others).
The third trend in the natural school, represented by the so-called "commoners", ideologists of revolutionary peasant democracy, gives in its work the clearest expression of the tendencies that were associated by contemporaries (V.G. Belinsky) with the name of the natural school and opposed the noble aesthetics. These tendencies manifested themselves most fully and sharply in the work of N.A.Nekrasov. This group should include A. I. Herzen ("Who is to blame?"), M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin ("The Confused Case").

8) Constructivism
Constructivism is an art movement that originated in Western Europe after the First World War. The origins of constructivism lie in the thesis of the German architect G. Semper, who argued that the aesthetic value of any work of art is determined by the correspondence of its three elements: the work, the material from which it is made, and the technical processing of this material.
In this thesis, which was later adopted by functionalists and constructivist functionalists (L. Wright in America, J.J.P. Aud in Holland, W. Gropius in Germany), the material-technical and material-utilitarian side of art is brought to the fore and, in essence, the ideological side of it is being emasculated.
In the West, constructivist tendencies during the First World War and in the postwar period were expressed in various directions, more or less "orthodox" interpreting the main thesis of constructivism. Thus, in France and Holland, constructivism was expressed in "purism", in "aesthetics of machines", in "neoplasticism" (art), in the aestheticizing formalism of Corbusier (in architecture). In Germany - in the naked cult of the thing (pseudo-constructivism), the one-sided rationalism of the Gropius school (architecture), abstract formalism (in non-objective cinema).
In Russia, a group of constructivists appeared in 1922. It included A. N. Chicherin, K. L. Zelinsky, I. L. Selvinsky. Constructivism was originally a narrowly formal movement, highlighting the understanding of a literary work as a construction. Subsequently, the constructivists freed themselves from this narrowly aesthetic and formal bias and put forward much broader justifications for their creative platform.
A.N. Chicherin departs from constructivism, a number of authors (V. Inber, B. Agapov, A. Gabrilovich, N. Panov) are grouped around I. L. Selvinsky and K. L. Zelinsky, and in 1924 a literary center is organized constructivists (LCC). In its declaration, the LCC primarily proceeds from the statement about the need for art to participate as closely as possible in the "organizational onslaught of the working class," in the construction of socialist culture. Hence, the constructivism's attitude to saturation of art (in particular, poetry) with modern themes arises.
The main theme, which has always attracted the attention of constructivists, can be designated as follows: "The intelligentsia in revolution and construction." Paying special attention to the image of the intellectual in the civil war (I. L. Selvinsky, "Commander 2") and in construction (I. L. Selvinsky "Pushtorg"), constructivists first of all put forward in a painfully exaggerated form his specific weight and significance under construction. This is especially clear in "Pushtorg", where the incompetent communist Krol is opposed to the exceptional specialist Poluyarov, who interferes with his work and drives him to suicide. Here the pathos of work technique as such obscures the main social conflicts of modern reality.
This exaggeration of the role of the intelligentsia finds its theoretical development in the article of the main constructivist theorist Cornelius Zelinsky "Constructivism and Socialism", where he considers constructivism as a holistic worldview of the era transitioning to socialism, as a condensed expression in the literature of the period undergoing. At the same time, again, the main social contradictions of this period by Zelinsky are replaced by the struggle between man and nature, the pathos of bare technology, interpreted outside social conditions, outside the class struggle. These erroneous positions of Zelinsky, which provoked a sharp rebuff from Marxist criticism, were far from accidental and revealed with great clarity the social nature of constructivism, which is easy to outline in the creative practice of the entire group.
The social source that feeds constructivism is undoubtedly that stratum of the urban petty bourgeoisie, which can be designated as the technically qualified intelligentsia. It is no coincidence that in the work of Selvinsky (who is the largest poet of constructivism) of the first period, the image of a strong individuality, a powerful builder and conqueror of life, individualistic in its very essence, characteristic of the Russian bourgeois pre-war style, is undoubtedly revealed.
In 1930, the LCC disintegrated, in its place was formed the "Literary Brigade M. 1" previous mistakes of constructivism, although preserving its creative method.
However, the contradictoriness and zigzag nature of the advance of constructivism towards the working class makes itself felt here as well. This is evidenced by Selvinsky's poem "The Declaration of the Poet's Rights". This is also confirmed by the fact that the M. 1 brigade, having existed for less than a year, also dissolved in December 1930, admitting that it had not solved the tasks set for itself.

9)Postmodernism
Postmodernism literally means "what follows modernism" in German. This literary trend appeared in the second half of the 20th century. It reflects all the complexity of the surrounding reality, its dependence on the culture of previous centuries and the richness of information today.
Postmodernists did not like the fact that literature was divided into elite and mass. Postmodernism opposed any modernity in literature and denied popular culture. The first works of postmodernists appeared in the form of a detective, thriller, fantasy, behind which a serious content was hidden.
Postmodernists believed that higher art was over. To move on, you need to learn how to properly use the inferior genres of pop culture: thriller, western, fantasy, fantasy, erotica. Postmodernism finds in these genres the source of a new mythology. The works become oriented both to an elite reader and to an undemanding audience.
Signs of postmodernism:
the use of previous texts as a potential for one's own works (a large number of citations, it is impossible to understand a work if you do not know the literature of previous eras);
rethinking the elements of the culture of the past;
multilevel text organization;
special organization of the text (game element).
Postmodernism questioned the existence of meaning as such. On the other hand, the meaning of postmodern works is determined by its inherent pathos - criticism of mass culture. Postmodernism is trying to erase the border between art and life. Everything that exists and has ever existed is a text. Postmodernists said that everything had already been written before them, that nothing new could be invented and they could only play with words, take ready-made (already once invented and written by someone) ideas, phrases, texts and collect works from them. This makes no sense, because the author himself is not in the work.
Literary works are like a collage composed of disparate images and combined into a whole by the uniformity of technology. This technique is called pastish. This Italian word is translated as opera potpourri, and in literature it means the comparison of several styles in one work. At the first stages of postmodernism, pastiche is a specific form of parody or self-parody, but then it is a way of adapting to reality, a way of showing the illusory nature of mass culture.
The concept of intertextuality is associated with postmodernism. This term was introduced by Y. Kristeva in 1967. She believed that history and society can be considered as a text, then culture is a single intertext that serves as an avanttext (all texts that precede this one) for any newly appearing text, while here individuality is lost text that dissolves into quotes. For modernism, quotation thinking is characteristic.
Intertextuality- the presence of two or more texts in the text.
Paratext- the relation of the text to the title, epigraph, afterword, preface.
Metatextuality- it can be comments or a link to the pretext.
Hypertextuality- ridicule or parody of one text by another.
Architectuality- genre connection of texts.
A person in postmodernism is portrayed in a state of complete destruction (in this case, destruction can be understood as a violation of consciousness). There is no character development in the work, the image of the hero appears in a blurred form. This technique is called defocalization. It has two goals:
avoid unnecessary heroic pathos;
lead the hero into the shadows: the hero is not highlighted, he is not needed at all in the work.
The outstanding representatives of postmodernism in literature are J. Fowles, J. Barth, A. Robbe-Grillet, F. Sollers, H. Cortazar, M. Pavich, J. Joyce and others.

Realism (lat. realis- material, real) - a direction in art, whose figures seek to understand and depict the interaction of a person with his environment, and the concept of the latter includes both spiritual and material components.

The art of realism is based on the creation of characters, understood as the result of the influence of socio-historical events, individually interpreted by the artist, as a result of which a living, unique and at the same time carrying in itself and generic artistic image arises. "The cardinal problem of realism is the relationship plausibility and artistic truth. The external similarity of the image with its prototypes is in fact not the only form of expressing the truth for realism. More importantly, such similarities are not enough for true realism. Although plausibility is an important and most characteristic form of realism for the realization of artistic truth, the latter is ultimately determined not by plausibility, but by fidelity in comprehension and transmission. entities life, the significance of the ideas expressed by the artist. ”It does not follow from what has been said that realist writers do not use fiction at all - without fiction, artistic creativity is generally impossible. etc.

The chronological boundaries of the realistic direction in the works of various researchers are defined in different ways.

Some see the beginnings of realism in antiquity, others attribute its emergence to the Renaissance, others date back to the 18th century, and still others believe that realism as a trend in art arose no earlier than the first third of the 19th century.

For the first time in domestic criticism, the term "realism" was used by P. Annenkov in 1849, albeit without a detailed theoretical foundation, and entered into general use already in the 1860s. The French writers L. Duranty and Chanfleurie were the first to attempt to comprehend the experience of Balzac and (in the field of painting) G. Courbet, giving their art the definition of "realistic". "Realism" is the name of the journal and collection of articles by Chanfleury (1857) published by Duranty in 1856-1857. However, their theory was largely contradictory and did not exhaust the entire complexity of the new artistic direction. What are the basic principles of the realistic direction in art?

Until the first third of the 19th century, literature created artistically one-sided images. In antiquity, this is the ideal world of gods and heroes and the limitation of earthly existence opposed to it, the division of characters into "positive" and "negative" (echoes of such a gradation still make themselves felt in primitive aesthetic thinking). With some changes, this principle continues to exist in the Middle Ages, and in the period of classicism and romanticism. Only Shakespeare was far ahead of his time, creating "diverse and versatile characters" (A. Pushkin). It was precisely in overcoming the one-sidedness of the image of a person and his public relations that the most important shift in the aesthetics of European art consisted. Writers are beginning to realize that the thoughts and actions of characters often cannot be dictated only by the author's will, since they depend on specific historical circumstances.

The organic religiosity of society under the influence of the ideas of the Enlightenment, which proclaimed the human mind as the supreme judge of all that exists, has been supplanted throughout the 19th century by such a social model in which the place of God is gradually replaced by supposedly omnipotent productive forces and class struggle. The process of forming such a world outlook was long and complex, and its supporters, declaratively rejecting the aesthetic achievements of previous generations, in their artistic practice relied heavily on them.

The share of England and France in the late 18th - early 19th centuries was particularly affected by social upheavals, and the rapid change in political systems and psychological states allowed the artists of these countries to realize more clearly than others that each era imposes its own unique imprint on the feelings, thoughts and actions of people.

For writers and artists of the Renaissance and Classicism, biblical or ancient characters were only mouthpieces of modern ideas. No one was surprised that the apostles and prophets in the painting of the 17th century were dressed in the fashion of this century. Only at the beginning of the 19th century, painters and writers begin to monitor the correspondence of all everyday details of the depicted time, coming to the understanding that both the psychology of the heroes of ancient times and their actions cannot be completely adequate in the present. It was in capturing the "spirit of the times" that the first achievement of art at the beginning of the 19th century consisted.

The founder of literature, which interpreted the course of the historical development of society, was the English writer W. Scott. His merit is not so much in an accurate depiction of the details of the life of the past, but in the fact that, according to V. Belinsky, he gave "a historical direction to the art of the XIX century" and portrayed it as an indivisible common individual and universal. The heroes of V. Scott, involved in the epicenter of turbulent historical events, are endowed with memorable characters and at the same time are representatives of their class, with its social and national characteristics, although in general he perceives the world from a romantic standpoint. The outstanding English novelist also managed to find in his work that facet that reproduces the linguistic flavor of the past years, but does not literally copy archaic speech.

Another discovery of the realists was the discovery of social contradictions caused not only by the passions or ideas of the "heroes", but also by the antagonistic aspirations of estates and classes. The Christian ideal dictated compassion for the humiliated and disadvantaged. Realistic art is also based on this principle, but the main thing in realism is the study and analysis of social relations and the very structure of society. In other words, the main conflict in a realistic work is the struggle between "humanity" and "inhumanity", which is conditioned by a number of social laws.

The psychological content of human characters is also explained by social reasons. When portraying a plebeian who does not want to come to terms with the fate destined for him from birth ("Red and Black", 1831), Stendhal abandons romantic subjectivism and analyzes the psychology of the hero seeking a place in the sun, mainly in the social aspect. Balzac in the cycle of novels and short stories "The Human Comedy" (1829-1848) is set with the grandiose goal of reconstructing the multi-figured panorama of modern society in its various modifications. Approaching his task as a scientist describing a complex and dynamic phenomenon, the writer traces the destinies of individuals over a number of years, discovering significant adjustments that the "zeitgeist" makes to the original qualities of the characters. At the same time, Balzac focuses on those socio-psychological problems that remain almost unchanged, despite the change in political and economic formations (the power of money, the moral fall of an outstanding personality, chasing success at any cost, the collapse of family ties, not sealed by love and mutual respect, and etc.). At the same time, Stendhal and Balzac reveal truly high feelings only among inconspicuous honest workers.

The moral superiority of the poor over the "high society" is also proved in the novels of Charles Dickens. The writer was not at all inclined to portray the "big world" as a bunch of scoundrels and moral monsters. “But all evil is, - wrote Dickens, - that this pampered world lives as in a case for jewels ... and therefore does not hear the noise of the broader worlds, does not see how they revolve around the sun. it is painful, because there is nothing to breathe in it. " In the work of the English novelist, psychological certainty, along with a somewhat sentimental resolution of conflicts, is combined with gentle humor, which sometimes develops into sharp social satire. Dickens outlined the main pain points of contemporary capitalism (the impoverishment of the working people, their ignorance, lawlessness and the spiritual crisis of the upper classes). It was not without reason that L. Tolstoy was sure: "Sift the world's prose, Dickens will remain."

The main inspiring force of realism is the ideas of individual freedom and universal social equality. Everything that hinders the free development of the individual, the realist writers denounced, seeing the root of evil in the unjust structure of social and economic institutions.

At the same time, most writers believed in the inevitability of scientific and social progress, which will gradually destroy the oppression of man by man and reveal his initially positive inclinations. A similar mood is typical for European and Russian literature, especially for the latter. So, Belinsky sincerely envied the "grandchildren and great-grandchildren" who would live in 1940. Dickens wrote in 1850: “We strive to take out from the seething world around us under the roofs of countless houses a message of a multitude of social miracles - both beneficial and harmful, but those that do not detract from our conviction and perseverance, condescension to each other, loyalty to the progress of mankind and gratitude for the honor that has fallen to us to live in the summer dawn of time. " N. Chernyshevsky in "What is to be done?" (1863) painted pictures of a wonderful future, when everyone will have the opportunity to become a harmonious personality. Even Chekhov's heroes, belonging to an era in which social optimism has already noticeably diminished, believe that they will see "the sky in diamonds."

And yet, first of all, the new direction in art focuses on criticism of the existing order. Realism of the 19th century in Russian literary criticism of the 1930s - early 1980s was usually called critical realism(definition proposed M. Bitter). However, this term does not cover all aspects of the phenomenon being defined, since, as already noted, the realism of the 19th century was not at all devoid of affirming pathos. In addition, the definition of realism as predominantly critical "is not entirely accurate in the sense that, emphasizing the concrete historical significance of the work, its connection with the social tasks of the moment, it leaves in the shadow the philosophical content and universal human significance of the masterpieces of realistic art."

A person in realistic art, in contrast to romantic art, is not considered as an autonomously existing individuality, interesting precisely for its uniqueness. In realism, especially at the first stage of its development, it is important to demonstrate the influence on the personality of the social environment; at the same time, realist writers strive to depict the way of thinking and feeling of characters changing over time ("Oblomov" and "An Ordinary History" by I. Goncharov). Thus, along with historicism, at the origins of which was V. Scott (the transfer of the color of place and time and the realization of the fact that the ancestors saw the world differently than the author himself), the rejection of static, the depiction of the inner world of the characters, depending on the conditions of their life and made up the most important discoveries of realistic art.

No less significant for its time was the general movement towards the nationality of art. For the first time, the problem of nationality was touched upon by romantics, who understood national identity by nationality, which was expressed in the transfer of customs, features of life and habits of the people. But Gogol already noticed that a truly popular poet remains so even when he looks at the "completely alien world" through the eyes of his people (for example, England is depicted from the standpoint of a Russian artisan from the provinces - "Lefty" N. Leskov, 1883).

In Russian literature, the problem of nationality has played a particularly important role. This problem was substantiated in the most detail in the works of Belinsky. The critic saw an example of a truly folk work in Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, where "folk" paintings as such take up little space, but the moral atmosphere in society in the first third of the 19th century is recreated.

By the middle of this century, nationality in the aesthetic program of most Russian writers becomes the central point in determining the social and artistic significance of a work. I. Turgenev, D. Grigorovich, A. Potekhin strive not only to reproduce and study various aspects of folk (i.e., peasant) life, but also directly address the people themselves. In the 60s, the same D. Grigorovich, V. Dal, V. Odoevsky, N. Shcherbina and many others published books for public reading, published magazines and brochures designed for a person who had just started reading. As a rule, these attempts were not very successful, because the cultural level of the lower strata of society and its educated minority was too different, due to which the writers looked at the peasant as a "little brother" who should be taught wisdom. Only A. Pisemsky ("The Carpenter's Artel", "Piterschik", "Leshy" 1852-1855) and N. Uspensky (stories and stories from 1858-1860) were able to show the true peasant life in its pristine simplicity and rudeness, but most writers preferred to sing the praises of the people's "soul I live".

In the post-reform era, the people and "nationality" in Russian literature turn into a kind of fetish. L. Tolstoy sees in Platon Karataev the focus of all the best human qualities. Dostoevsky calls to learn worldly wisdom and spiritual sensitivity from the "kufel muzhik". The life of the people is idealized in the works of N. Zlatovratsky and other writers of the 1870-1880s.

Gradually, the nationality, understood as an appeal to the problems of people's life from the point of view of the people themselves, becomes a dead canon, which nevertheless remained unshakable for many decades. Only I. Bunin and A. Chekhov allowed themselves to doubt the subject of worship of more than one generation of Russian writers.

By the middle of the 19th century, another feature of realistic literature was determined - tendentiousness, that is, the expression of the author's moral and ideological position. And before, artists in one way or another revealed their attitude towards their heroes, but basically they didactically preached the harmfulness of universal human vices, which do not depend on the place and time of their manifestation. Realist writers make their social and moral-ideological predilections an integral part of an artistic idea, gradually leading the reader to understand their position.

Tendentiousness in Russian literature gives rise to delimitation into two antagonistic camps: for the first, the so-called revolutionary-democratic, criticism of the state system was most important, the second defiantly declared political indifference, argued the primacy of "artistry" over "spite of the day" ("pure art"). The prevailing public mood - the dilapidation of the serf system and its morality was obvious - and the active and offensive actions of the revolutionary democrats formed in the public an idea of ​​those writers who did not agree with the need to immediately break all "foundations" as antipatriots and obscurantists. In the 1860s and 1870s, the writer's "civic position" was valued higher than his talent: this is evident in the example of A. Pisemsky, P. Melnikov-Pechersky, N. Leskov, whose work was regarded negatively or hushed up by revolutionary democratic criticism.

This approach to art was formulated by Belinsky. “And I need poetry and artistry no more than so much that the story is true ... - he declared in a letter to V. Botkin in 1847. - The main thing is that it raises questions, makes a moral impression on society. this goal and without poetry and creativity at all, - for me However interesting ... "Two decades later, this criterion in revolutionary democratic criticism became fundamental (N. Chernyshevsky, N. Dobrolyubov, M. Antonovich, D. Pisarev). At the same time, the general nature of criticism and the entire ideological struggle in general with its six to seven decades will pass, and in the era of socialist realism this tendency is realized in the literal sense.

However, all this is still far ahead. In the meantime, new thinking is being developed in realism, there is a search for new themes, images and style. The focus of attention of realistic literature is alternately "little man", "superfluous" and "new" people, folk types. The "Little Man" with his sorrows and joys, first appearing in the works of A. Pushkin ("The Stationmaster") and N. Gogol ("The Overcoat"), for a long time became an object of sympathy in Russian literature. The social humiliation of the "little man" atoned for all the narrowness of his interests. The property of a "little man", which was hardly outlined in "The Overcoat", under favorable circumstances, to turn into a predator (in the finale of the story, a ghost appears, robbing any passer-by without discrimination of rank and condition) was noted only by F. Dostoevsky ("The Double") and A. Chekhov (" The triumph of the winner "," Two in one "), but in general it remained unreported in literature. Only in the 20th century will M. Bulgakov ("Heart of a Dog") devote a whole story to this problem.

Following the "little" in Russian literature came the "superfluous person", the "clever uselessness" of Russian life, not yet ready to accept new social and philosophical ideas ("Rudin" by I. Turgenev, "Who is to blame?" By A. Herzen, "Hero of our time "M. Lermontov and others). "Superfluous people" mentally outgrew their environment and time, but due to their upbringing and property status, they are not capable of everyday work and can only expose smug vulgarity.

As a result of reflections on the capabilities of the nation, a gallery of images of "new people" appears, most vividly presented in "Fathers and Children" by I. Turgenev and "What is to be done?" N. Chernyshevsky. Characters of this type are presented as decisive overthrowers of outdated morality and state structure and are an example of honest work and zeal for the "common cause." These are, as their contemporaries called them, "nihilists," whose authority among the younger generation was very high.

In contrast to works about "nihilists", "anti-nihilistic" literature also arises. Standard characters and situations are easily detected in works of both types. In the first category, the hero thinks independently and provides himself with intellectual labor, his courageous speeches and actions make young people want to imitate authority, he is close to the masses and knows how to change her life for the better, etc. In anti-nihilistic literature, "nihilists "are usually depicted as depraved and unscrupulous phrase-mongers who pursue their narrowly selfish goals and yearn for power and worship; traditionally, the connection between "nihilists" and "Polish rebels" was noted.

There were not so many works about the "new people", while among their opponents were such writers as F. Dostoevsky, L. Tolstoy, N. Leskov, A. Pisemsky, I. Goncharov, although it should be admitted that, for with the exception of "Demons" and "The Break", their books do not belong to the best creations of the named artists - and the reason for this is their sharpened tendentiousness.

Deprived of the opportunity to openly discuss the pressing problems of our time in representative state institutions, Russian society focuses its mental life in literature and journalism. The writer's word becomes very weighty and often serves as an impulse for making vital decisions. The hero of Dostoevsky's novel "The Teenager" admits that he left for the village in order to make life easier for the men under the influence of "Anton Goremyka" by D. Grigorovich. The sewing workshops described in "What to do?" Have spawned many similar establishments in real life.

At the same time, it is noteworthy that Russian literature practically did not create the image of an active and energetic person, busy with a specific task, but not thinking about a radical reorganization of the political system. Attempts in this direction (Kostanzhoglo and Murazov in Dead Souls, Stolz in Oblomov) were regarded by modern criticism as groundless. And if A. Ostrovsky's "dark kingdom" aroused a keen interest among the public and critics, then subsequently the playwright's desire to paint portraits of entrepreneurs of the new formation did not find such a response in society.

Solving the "damned questions" of its time in literature and art required a detailed substantiation of a whole complex of tasks that could be solved only in prose (due to its ability to touch upon political, philosophical, moral and aesthetic problems at the same time). In prose, however, priority is given to the novel, this "epic of modern times" (V. Belinsky), a genre that made it possible to create broad and multifaceted pictures of the life of various social strata. The realistic novel turned out to be incompatible with the plot situations that had already turned into cliches, which were so willingly exploited by romantics - the mystery of the hero's birth, fatal passions, extraordinary situations and exotic scenes of action in which the hero's will and courage are tested, etc.

Now writers are looking for plots in the everyday existence of ordinary people, which becomes the object of close study in all details (interior, clothing, professional occupations, etc.). Since the authors strive to give the most objective picture of reality, the emotional author-narrator either goes into the shadows, or uses the mask of one of the characters.

Poetry, which has receded into the background, is largely oriented towards prose: poets master some of the features of prose narration (civic consciousness, plot, description of everyday details), as was the case, for example, in the poetry of I. Turgenev, N. Nekrasov, N. Ogarev.

Realism portraiture also gravitates towards detailed description, as was also observed among romantics, but now it carries a different psychological burden. "Examining facial features, the writer finds the" main idea "of physiognomy and conveys it in all the fullness and universality of a person's inner life. A realistic portrait, as a rule, is analytical, there is no artificiality in it; everything in it is natural and conditioned by character." In this case, the so-called "material characteristic" of the character (costume, home decoration) plays an important role, which also contributes to an in-depth disclosure of the psychology of the characters. Such are the portraits of Sobakevich, Manilov, Plyushkin in Dead Souls. In the future, the enumeration of details is replaced by any detail that gives scope to the imagination of the reader, calling him to "co-authorship" when familiarizing himself with the work.

The depiction of everyday life leads to the rejection of complex metaphorical constructions and refined stylistics. All great rights in literary speech are won by vernacular, dialectal and professional expressions, which, as a rule, were used by classicists and romantics only to create a comic effect. In this respect, "Dead Souls", "Notes of a Hunter" and a number of other works by Russian writers of the 1840s-1850s are indicative.

The development of realism in Russia proceeded at a very rapid pace. In just less than two decades, Russian realism, starting with the "physiological sketches" of the 1840s, gave the world such writers as Gogol, Turgenev, Pisemsky, L. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky ... thoughts, going beyond the art of the word in a number of other arts. Literature "is imbued with moral and religious pathos, journalistic and philosophical, is complicated by a meaningful subtext; masters the" Aesopian language ", the spirit of opposition, protest; the burden of literature's responsibility to society, and its liberating, analytical, generalizing mission in the context of the entire culture, becomes fundamentally different. Literature turns into self-forming factor of culture, and above all, this circumstance (that is, cultural synthesis, functional universality, etc.) ultimately determined the worldwide significance of the Russian classics (and not its direct relation to the revolutionary liberation movement, as Herzen tried to show, and after Lenin - practically all Soviet criticism and the science of literature) ".

Closely following the development of Russian literature, P. Merimee once said to Turgenev: "Your poetry seeks first of all the truth, and then beauty is itself." Indeed, the mainstream of Russian classics is represented by characters who follow the path of moral searches, tormented by the consciousness that they have not fully used the opportunities provided to them by nature. Such are Onegin Pushkin, Pechorin Lermontov, Pierre Bezukhov and Levin L. Tolstoy, Rudin Turgeneva, such are the heroes of Dostoevsky. "The hero who acquires moral self-determination on the paths given to man" from the ages ", and thereby enriches his empirical nature, is elevated by Russian classical writers to the ideal of a personality involved in Christian ontologism." Is it because the idea of ​​social utopia at the beginning of the 20th century found such an effective response in Russian society that Christian (specifically Russian) searches for the "city of promise" transformed in the popular mind into a communist "bright future" Russia has such long and deep roots?

Abroad, the gravitation towards the ideal was expressed much weaker, despite the fact that the critical beginning in literature sounded no less weighty. This is reflected in the general orientation of Protestantism, which considers prosperity in the business sphere as the fulfillment of the will of God. The heroes of European writers suffer from injustice and vulgarity, but first of all they think about own happiness, while Turgenev's Rudin, Nekrasov's Grisha Dobrosklonov, Rakhmetov's in Chernyshevsky's are concerned not with personal success, but with general welfare.

Moral problems in Russian literature are inseparable from political problems and, directly or indirectly, are associated with Christian dogmas. Russian writers often take on a role similar to the role of Old Testament prophets - teachers of life (Gogol, Chernyshevsky, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy). "Russian artists," wrote N. Berdyaev, "will have a thirst to move from the creation of works of art to the creation of a perfect life. The theme of religious-metaphysical and religious-social torments all significant Russian writers."

Strengthening the role of fiction in public life entails the development of criticism. And here the palm also belongs to Pushkin, who passed from gustatory and normative assessments to the discovery of the general laws of the literary process of his day. Pushkin was the first to realize the need for a new way of depicting reality, "true romanticism", as he defined it. Belinsky was the first Russian critic who tried to create an integral historical and theoretical concept and periodization of Russian literature.

During the second half of the 19th century, it was the activities of critics (N. Chernyshevsky, N. Dobrolyubov, D. Pisarev, K. Aksakov, A. Druzhinin, A. Grigoriev and others) that contributed to the development of the theory of realism and the formation of Russian literary criticism (P. Annenkov, A. Pypin, A. Veselovsky, A. Potebnya, D. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky, etc.).

As you know, in art its main direction is laid by the achievements of outstanding artists, whose discoveries are used by "ordinary talents" (V. Belinsky). Let us characterize the main milestones in the formation and development of Russian realistic art, the conquests of which made it possible to call the second half of the century "the century of Russian literature."

I. Krylov and A. Griboyedov stand at the origins of Russian realism. The great fabulist was the first in Russian literature to be able to recreate the "Russian spirit" in his works. The lively colloquial speech of Krylov's fable characters, his thorough knowledge of folk life, the use of folk common sense as a moral standard made Krylov the first truly "folk" writer. Griboyedov expanded the sphere of interests of Krylov, placing in the center of attention the "drama of ideas" that lived the educated society of the first quarter of a century. His Chatsky in the fight against the "Old Believers" defends national interests from the same positions of "common sense" and popular morality. Krylov and Griboyedov still use the dilapidated principles of classicism (the didactic genre of Krylov's fable, "three unities" in Woe From Wit), but their creative power even within these outdated frameworks declares itself in full voice.

In the work of Pushkin, the main problems, the pathos, and the methodology of realism have already been outlined. Pushkin was the first to portray the "superfluous person" in Eugene Onegin, he also outlined the character of the "little man" ("The Station Keeper"), saw in the people the moral potential that determines the national character ("The Captain's Daughter", "Dubrovsky" ). Under the poet's pen, a hero such as Hermann ("The Queen of Spades"), a fanatic, obsessed with one idea and not stopping to implement it before any obstacles, also appeared for the first time; Pushkin touched upon the topic of emptiness and insignificance of the upper strata of society.

All these problems and images were picked up and developed by Pushkin's contemporaries and subsequent generations of writers. "Superfluous people" and their capabilities are analyzed in "A Hero of Our Time", and in "Dead Souls", and in "Who is to blame?" Herzen, and in "Rudin" by Turgenev, and in "Oblomov" by Goncharov, depending on the time and circumstances, acquiring new features and colors. "The little man" is described by Gogol ("The Overcoat"), Dostoevsky (Poor People). The tyrant landlords and "nebokoptiteli" were portrayed by Gogol ("Dead Souls"), Turgenev ("Notes of a Hunter"), Saltykov-Shchedrin ("Lord Golovlevs "), Melnikov-Pechersky (" Old Years "), Leskov (" Stupid Artist ") and many others. Of course, such types were supplied by the Russian reality itself, but it was Pushkin who identified them and developed the main methods of their depiction. relations between oneself and the masters arose in an objective light precisely in the work of Pushkin, later becoming the object of close study by Turgenev, Nekrasov, Pisemsky, L. Tolstoy, and populist writers.

Having passed the period of romantic portrayal of unusual characters in exceptional circumstances, Pushkin opened for the reader the poetry of everyday life, in which the place of the hero was taken by an "ordinary", "little" person.

Pushkin rarely describes the inner world of the characters, their psychology is often revealed through actions or commented on by the author. The characters depicted are perceived as a result of environmental influences, but most often they are not given in development, but as some already formed given. The process of formation and transformation of the psychology of characters will be mastered in literature in the second half of the century.

Pushkin's role is also great in developing norms and expanding the boundaries of literary speech. The spoken element of the language, which clearly manifested itself in the work of Krylov and Griboyedov, has not yet fully asserted its rights, it is not for nothing that Pushkin urged to learn the language from Moscow educated ones.

The simplicity and precision, the "transparency" of Pushkin's style at first seemed like a loss of the high aesthetic criteria of previous times. But later "the structure of Pushkin's prose, its style-forming principles were perceived by the writers who followed him - with all the individual originality of each of them."

It is necessary to note one more feature of Pushkin's genius - his universalism. Poetry and prose, drama, journalism and historical studies - there was no genre in which he would not have said a weighty word. Subsequent generations of artists, no matter how great their talent, still mostly gravitate towards any one genus.

The development of Russian realism was, of course, not a straightforward and unambiguous process, in the course of which romanticism was consistently and inevitably superseded by realistic art. On the example of M. Lermontov's work, this can be seen especially clearly.

In his early works, Lermontov creates romantic images, coming to the "Hero of Our Time" to the conclusion that "the history of the human soul, at least the smallest soul almost more curious and not more useful than the history of an entire people ... ". The object of close attention in the novel is not only the hero - Pechorin. With no less diligence, the author peers into the experiences of people" ordinary "(Maxim Maksimych, Grushnitsky). Method of research of psychology Pechorin - confession - is associated with a romantic outlook, however, the general author's attitude towards an objective depiction of characters determines the constant comparison of Pechorin with other actors, which allows convincingly motivate those actions of the hero that the romantic would have remained only declared. In different situations and in clashes with different people Every time Pechorin opens up from new sides, revealing strength and effeminacy, decisiveness and apathy, disinterestedness and selfishness ... Pechorin, like a romantic hero, experienced everything, lost faith in everything, but the author is not inclined to either accuse or justify his hero - a position for a romantic artist is unacceptable.

In A Hero of Our Time, the dynamism of the plot, which would be quite appropriate in an adventure genre, is combined with a deep psychological analysis. This is how the romantic outlook of Lermontov, who embarked on the path of realism, was manifested here. And having created "A Hero of Our Time", the poet did not completely abandon the poetics of romanticism. The heroes of "Mtsyri" and "The Demon", in essence, solve the same problems as Pechorin (achieving independence, freedom), only in the poems the experiment is put, as they say, in its pure form. Almost everything is available to the demon, Mtsyri sacrifices everything for the sake of freedom, but the sad result of striving for the absolute ideal in these works is already summed up by a realist artist.

Lermontov completed "... the process of elimination of genre boundaries in poetry, begun by GR Derzhavin and continued by Pushkin. Most of his poetic texts are" poems "in general, often synthesizing the features of different genres."

And Gogol started out as a romantic (Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka), but even after Dead Souls, his most mature realistic creation, romantic situations and characters never cease to attract the writer (Rome, second edition of The Portrait).

At the same time, Gogol refuses the romantic style. Like Pushkin, he prefers to convey the inner world of the characters not through their monologues or "confessions." Gogol's characters attest themselves through their actions or by means of "material" characteristics. Gogol's narrator plays the role of a commentator, allowing him to reveal shades of feelings or details of events. But the writer is not limited only to the visible side of what is happening. For him, what is hidden behind the outer shell is much more important - the "soul". True, Gogol, like Pushkin, basically depicts already established characters.

Gogol laid the foundation for the revival of the religious and edifying tendency in Russian literature. Already in the romantic "Evenings" dark forces, demonic, retreat before kindness and religious firmness of spirit. "Taras Bulba" is inspired by the idea of ​​direct protection of Orthodoxy. And "Dead Souls", inhabited by characters who neglected their spiritual development, should, according to the author's plan, show the way to the rebirth of a fallen man. The appointment of a writer in Russia for Gogol at the end of his career becomes inseparable from spiritual service to God and people who cannot be limited only by material interests. Gogol's "Reflections on the Divine Liturgy" and "Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends" are dictated by a sincere desire to educate oneself in the spirit of highly moral Christianity. However, it was the last book that was perceived even by Gogol's admirers as a creative failure, since social progress, as many then thought, was incompatible with religious "prejudices."

The writers of the "natural school" also did not perceive this aspect of Gogol's work, assimilating only his critical pathos, which in Gogol serves as the affirmation of the spiritual ideal. The "natural school" was limited only, so to speak, to the "material sphere" of the writer's interests.

And subsequently, the realistic trend in literature makes the fidelity of the depiction of reality reproduced "in the forms of life itself" as the main criterion of artistry. For its time, this was a huge achievement, since it made it possible to achieve in the art of the word such a degree of vitality that literary characters begin to be perceived as real people and become an integral part of national and even world culture (Onegin, Pechorin, Khlestakov, Manilov, Oblomov, Tartarin, Madame Bovary, Mr. Dombey, Raskolnikov, etc.).

As already noted, a high degree of verity in literature by no means excludes fiction and fantasy. For example, Gogol's famous story "The Overcoat", from which, according to Dostoevsky, all Russian literature of the 19th century came out, contains a fantastic story of a ghost that terrifies passers-by. Realism does not refuse from the grotesque, symbol, allegory, etc., although all these pictorial means do not determine the basic tonality of the work. In those cases when the work is based on fantastic assumptions ("The History of a City" by M. Saltykov-Shchedrin), there is no room for an irrational principle, without which romanticism cannot do.

Factual orientation was a strong point of realism, but as you know, "our shortcomings are an extension of our merits." In the 1870s and 1890s, a movement called "naturalism" emerged within European realism. Under the influence of the success of the natural sciences and positivism (the philosophical doctrine of O. Comte), writers want to achieve complete objectivity of the reproduced reality. “I don’t want, like Balzac, to decide what the structure of human life should be, to be a politician, philosopher, moralist ... The picture I paint is a simple analysis of a piece of reality as it is,” said one of the ideologists of “naturalism” E. Zola.

Despite the internal contradictions, the group of French naturalist writers that had developed around Zola (brothers E. and J. Goncourt, C. Huysmans and others) professed a common view of the task of art: depicting the inevitability and irresistibility of rough social reality and cruel human instincts, which everyone is drawn in the stormy and chaotic "stream of life" into the abyss of passions and actions unpredictable in their consequences.

The human psychology of "naturalists" is rigidly determined by the environment. Hence the attention to the smallest details of everyday life, captured with the dispassionateness of the camera, and at the same time, the biological predestination of the fate of the characters is emphasized. In an effort to write "under the dictation of life", naturalists tried to etch out any manifestation of subjective vision of problems and objects of the image. At the same time, pictures of the most unattractive sides of reality appear in their works. A writer, naturalists argued, like a doctor, has no right to ignore any phenomenon, no matter how disgusting it may be. With this attitude, the biological principle involuntarily began to look more important than the social. The books of naturalists shocked the adherents of traditional aesthetics, but nevertheless, in the future, writers (S. Crane, F. Norris, G. Hauptmann, etc.) used some of the discoveries of naturalism - first of all, the expansion of the field of view of art.

Naturalism has not received much development in Russia. We can only talk about some naturalistic tendencies in the works of A. Pisemsky and D. Mamin-Sibiryak. The only Russian writer declaratively professing the principles of French naturalism is P. Boborykin.

Literature and journalism of the post-reform era gave rise to the conviction in the thinking part of Russian society that the revolutionary reorganization of society would immediately lead to the flourishing of all the best sides of the personality, since there would be no oppression and lies. Very few did not share this confidence, and first of all F. Dostoevsky.

The author of Poor People was aware that abandoning the norms of traditional morality and the precepts of Christianity would lead to anarchy and a bloody war of all against all. As a Christian, Dostoevsky knew that in every human soul,

God or the devil, and that depends on each, whom he will give preference to. But the path to God is not easy. To get closer to him, you need to be imbued with the suffering of others. Without understanding and compassion for others, no one will be able to become a full-fledged person. With all his creativity Dostoevsky proved: “A man on the earthly surface has no right to turn away and ignore what is happening on earth, and there are higher moral reasons for that. "

Unlike his predecessors, Dostoevsky sought to capture not the established, typical, forms of life and psychology, but to capture and designate social collisions and types that were still incipient. In his works, crisis situations and characters always dominate, outlined in large, sharp strokes. To the fore in his novels are "dramas of ideas", intellectual and psychological duels of characters, and the individual is inseparable from the universal, behind a single fact there are "world questions."

Revealing the loss of moral guidelines in modern society, the impotence and fear of the individual in the grip of an unspiritual reality, Dostoevsky did not believe that a person should capitulate to "external circumstances." He, according to Dostoevsky, can and must overcome "chaos" - and then, as a result of the common efforts of everyone, "world harmony" will reign, based on overcoming unbelief, selfishness and anarchic willfulness. A person who has embarked on the thorny road of self-improvement will face material hardships, moral suffering, and misunderstanding of his neighbors ("The Idiot"). The most difficult thing is not to become a "superman", like Raskolnikov, and, seeing in others only a "rag", indulge any desire, but learn to forgive and love without demanding a reward, like Prince Myshkin or Alyosha Karamazov.

Like no other leading artist of his time, Dostoevsky is close to the spirit of Christianity. In his work, the problem of the primordial sinfulness of man is analyzed in various aspects ("Demons", "Teenager", "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man", "The Brothers Karamazov"). According to the writer, the result of the original fall is a world evil, which gives rise to one of the most acute social problems - the problem of fighting against God. "Atheistic expressions of unprecedented power" are contained in the images of Stavrogin, Versilov, Ivan Karamazov, but their throwing does not prove the victory of evil and pride. This is the way to God through His initial denial, the proof of God's existence in a way from the opposite. Dostoevsky's ideal hero must inevitably set himself the life and teaching of the One who for the writer is the only moral guideline in the world of doubt and hesitation (Prince Myshkin, Alyosha Karamazov).

With the artist's ingenious instinct, Dostoevsky felt that socialism, under the banner of which many honest and intelligent people are rushing, is the result of the decline of religion ("The Demons"). The writer predicted that on the path of social progress, mankind will face the hardest shocks, and directly linked them with the loss of faith and its replacement by socialist doctrine. The depth of Dostoevsky's insight was confirmed in the 20th century by S. Bulgakov, who already had reason to assert: “... Socialism today appears not only as a neutral area of ​​social policy, but, usually, as a religion based on atheism and humanism, on self-deification of man and human labor and on the recognition of the elemental forces of nature and social life as the only generating beginning of history. " In the USSR, all this was realized in practice. All means of propaganda and agitation, among which literature played one of the leading roles, introduced into the consciousness of the masses that the proletariat, always led by the right in any endeavors by the leader and the party, and creative labor are forces designed to transform the world and create a society of universal happiness (a kind of Kingdom of God on earth). The only thing Dostoevsky was wrong about was his assumption that a moral crisis and subsequent spiritual and social cataclysms would break out primarily in Europe.

Along with "eternal questions", the realist Dostoevsky is also characterized by attention to the most ordinary and at the same time hidden from the mass consciousness of the facts of our time. Together with the author, it is given to the heroes of the writer's works to solve these problems, and it is very difficult for them to comprehend the truth. The struggle of the individual with the social environment and with himself determines the special polyphonic form of Dostoevsky's novels.

The author-narrator takes part in the action as an equal or even a minor character ("chronicler" in "Demons"). Dostoevsky's hero not only possesses an inner, hidden world that the reader has to learn; he, according to M. Bakhtin's definition, “most of all thinks about what others think and can think of him; tries to anticipate the possible definition and assessment of him by others, to guess these possible other people's words about him, interrupting his speech with imaginary foreign remarks. " Seeking to guess other people's opinions and arguing with them in advance, Dostoevsky's heroes seem to bring to life their counterparts, in whose speeches and actions the reader receives justification or denial of the position of the characters (Raskolnikov - Luzhin and Svidrigailov in Crime and Punishment, Stavrogin - Shatov and Kirillov in "Demons").

The dramatic intensity of action in Dostoevsky's novels is also due to the fact that he brings events as close as possible to the "spite of the day", sometimes drawing plots from newspaper articles. Almost always at the center of Dostoevsky's work is crime. However, behind the sharp, almost detective plot, there is not a desire to solve a clever logical problem. Criminal events and motives are elevated by the writer to the level of capacious philosophical symbols ("Crime and Punishment", "Demons", "The Brothers Karamazov").

The place of action of Dostoevsky's novels is Russia, and often only its capital, and at the same time the writer received world recognition, for for many decades to come he anticipated the general interest in global problems for the 20th century ("superman" and the rest of the mass, "man of the crowd" and state machine, faith and spiritual anarchy, etc.). The writer created a world inhabited by complex, contradictory characters, saturated with dramatic conflicts, for the solution of which there are not and cannot be simple recipes - one of the reasons that in Soviet times Dostoevsky's work was either declared reactionary or hushed up.

Dostoevsky's work outlined the main direction of literature and culture of the 20th century. Dostoevsky inspired Z. Freud in many ways, A. Einstein, T. Mann, W. Faulkner, F. Fellini, A. Camus, Akutagawa and other outstanding thinkers and artists spoke about the enormous influence of the works of the Russian writer on them.

L. Tolstoy also made an enormous contribution to the development of Russian literature. Already in his first published story "Childhood" (1852), Tolstoy acted as an innovative artist.

The detail and clarity of his description of everyday life are combined with a microanalysis of the complex and mobile psychology of the child.

Tolstoy uses his own method of depicting the human psyche, observing the "dialectic of the soul." The writer seeks to trace the formation of character and does not emphasize its "positive" and "negative" sides. He argued that there was no point in talking about some kind of "defining trait" of the character. "... Β in my life I have not met any evil, nor proud, nor kind, nor intelligent person. In humility I always find a suppressed desire for pride, in the cleverest book I find stupidity, in the conversation of the stupidest person I find clever things, etc. etc., etc. ".

The writer was sure that if people learn to understand the multi-layered thoughts and feelings of others, then most psychological and social conflicts will lose their acuteness. The task of a writer, according to Tolstoy, is to teach others to understand. And for this it is necessary that truth in all its manifestations should become the hero of literature. This goal is already declared in the "Sevastopol Tales" (1855-1856), which combine the documentary accuracy of the depicted and the depth of psychological analysis.

The tendentiousness of art promoted by Chernyshevsky and his supporters turned out to be unacceptable for Tolstoy already because the a priori idea was put at the forefront of the work, determining the selection of facts and the angle of view. The writer almost defiantly adheres to the camp of "pure art", which rejects all "didactics". But the position "above the fight" turned out to be unacceptable for him. In 1864 he wrote the play "Infected Family" (it was not published and staged in the theater), in which he expressed his sharp rejection of "nihilism." Subsequently, all of Tolstoy's work was devoted to the overthrow of hypocritical bourgeois morality and social inequality, although he did not adhere to any specific political doctrine.

Already at the beginning of his creative career, having lost faith in the possibility of changing social orders, especially in a violent way, the writer seeks at least personal happiness in the family circle ("The Novel of a Russian Landowner", 1859), however, having constructed his ideal of a woman capable of selflessness in the name of her husband and children, comes to the conclusion that this ideal is impracticable.

Tolstoy longed to find a model of life in which there would be no place at all for any artificiality, no falsehood. For some time he believed that one can be happy among simple undemanding people close to nature. It is only necessary to completely separate their way of life and be content with what little is the basis of the "correct" existence (free labor, love, duty, family ties - "Cossacks", 1863). And Tolstoy is striving in real life to be imbued with the interests of the people, but his direct contacts with peasants and the work of the 1860s and 1870s reveal an ever-deepening abyss between a peasant and a gentleman.

Tolstoy is trying to discover the meaning of modernity that eludes him by going deeper into the historical past, by returning to the sources of the national perception of the world. He conceived the idea of ​​a huge epic canvas, which would reflect and comprehend the most significant moments of the life of Russia. In War and Peace (1863–1869), Tolstoy's heroes strive painfully to comprehend the meaning of life and, together with the author, are imbued with the conviction that comprehending the thoughts and feelings of people is possible only at the cost of detachment from their own selfish desires and gaining the experience of suffering. Some, like Andrei Bolkonsky, recognize this truth before their death; others - Pierre Bezukhov - find it, rejecting skepticism and conquering the power of the flesh by the power of reason, find themselves in high love; the third - Platon Karataev - this truth is given from birth, since "simplicity" and "truth" are embodied in them. According to the author, the life of Karataev "as he himself looked at it, did not make sense as a separate life. It made sense only as a part of the whole that he constantly felt." This moral position is illustrated by the example of Napoleon and Kutuzov. The gigantic will and passions of the French emperor succumb to the actions of the Russian commander devoid of external effect, for the latter expresses the will of the entire nation, united in the face of a formidable danger.

In his work and life, Tolstoy strove for harmony of thought and feeling, which could be achieved with a universal understanding of individual particulars and the general picture of the universe. The path to such harmony is long and thorny, but it is impossible to shorten it. Tolstoy, like Dostoevsky, did not accept the revolutionary teaching. Paying tribute to the disinterested faith of the "socialists", the writer nevertheless saw salvation not in the revolutionary breakdown of the state system, but in unswerving adherence to the Gospel commandments, how simple, just as difficult to fulfill. He was convinced that one should not "invent life and demand its implementation."

But the restless soul and mind of Tolstoy could not accept the Christian doctrine as a whole. At the end of the 19th century, the writer opposes the official church, in many ways akin to the state bureaucratic apparatus, and tries to correct Christianity, create his own doctrine, which, despite numerous followers ("Tolstoyism"), did not have any prospects in the future.

In his declining years, having become in the fatherland and far beyond its borders, the "teacher of life" for millions, Tolstoy still constantly doubted his own righteousness. Only in one thing he was unshakable: the people, with their simplicity and naturalness, are the keeper of the highest truth. The interest of the decadents in the dark and secret twists of the human psyche meant for the writer a departure from art, which actively serves humanistic ideals. True, in the last years of his life, Tolstoy was inclined to think that art is a luxury that is not required by everyone: first of all, society needs to comprehend the simplest moral truths, the strict observance of which would eliminate many "damned questions."

And one more name cannot be dispensed with when speaking of the evolution of Russian realism. This is A. Chekhov. He refuses to recognize the complete dependence of the individual on the environment. "Chekhov's dramatic and conflicting positions do not consist in opposing the volitional orientation of different sides, but in objectively caused contradictions, before which the individual will is powerless." In other words, the writer gropes for those pain points of human nature, which will later be explained by innate complexes, genetic programming, etc. Chekhov also refuses to study the possibilities and desires of the "little man", the object of his study is "average" in all respects. Like the characters of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Chekhov's heroes are also woven from contradictions; their thought also strives to cognize the Truth, but they do it badly, and almost none of them thinks about God.

Chekhov discovers a new type of personality generated by Russian reality - the type of an honest but limited doctrinaire who firmly believes in the power of social "progress" and judges living life using socio-literary templates (Dr. Lvov in Ivanov, Lida in Dom with a mezzanine ", etc.). Such people talk a lot and willingly about duty and the need for honest labor, about virtue, although it is clear that behind all their tirades there is a lack of genuine feeling - their tireless activity is akin to mechanical activity.

Those characters whom Chekhov sympathizes with do not like loud words and meaningful gestures, even if they are experiencing genuine drama. The tragic in the understanding of the writer is not something exceptional. In modern times, it is everyday and commonplace. A person gets used to the fact that there is no other life and cannot be, and this, according to Chekhov, is the most terrible social ailment. At the same time, the tragic in Chekhov is inseparable from the funny, satire is fused with the lyrics, vulgarity coexists with the sublime, as a result of which a "undercurrent" appears in Chekhov's works, the subtext becomes no less significant than the text.

Dealing with the "little things" of life, Chekhov gravitates towards an almost unfunded narration ("Ionych", "Steppe", "The Cherry Orchard"), towards the imaginary incompleteness of the action. The center of gravity in his works is transferred to the story of the spiritual hardening of the character ("Gooseberry", "Man in a Case") or, on the contrary, his awakening ("Bride", "Duel").

Chekhov invites the reader to empathize, not expressing everything the author knows, but pointing to the direction of the "search" only in individual details, which he often grows into symbols (a killed bird in "The Seagull", a berry in "Gooseberry"). "Both symbols and subtext, combining opposite aesthetic properties (of a concrete image and abstract generalization, a real text and" inner "thought in a subtext), reflect the general tendency of realism, intensified in Chekhov's work, towards the interpenetration of heterogeneous artistic elements."

By the end of the 19th century, Russian literature had accumulated a huge aesthetic and ethical experience that won worldwide recognition. And yet, many writers saw this experience as dead. Some (V. Korolenko, M. Gorky) tend to merge realism with romance, others (K. Balmont, F. Sologub, V. Bryusov, etc.) believe that "copying" reality has outlived its usefulness.

The loss of clear criteria in aesthetics is accompanied by a "crisis of consciousness" in the philosophical and social spheres. D. Merezhkovsky, in his brochure "On the causes of decline and new trends in modern Russian literature" (1893), comes to the conclusion that the crisis state of Russian literature is due to excessive enthusiasm for the ideals of revolutionary democracy, which requires art from above all civil acuteness. The obvious failure of the precepts of the sixties gave rise to social pessimism and gravitation towards individualism. Merezhkovsky wrote: “The newest theory of knowledge has erected an indestructible dam, which forever separated the solid earth, accessible to people, from the boundless and dark ocean that lies beyond our knowledge. And the waves of this ocean can no longer invade the inhabited earth, into the area of ​​precise knowledge. .. Never before has the borderline between science and faith been so sharp and inexorable ... Wherever we go, no matter how we hide behind the dam of scientific criticism, with all our being we feel the closeness of mystery, the closeness of the ocean. No enslaved mysticism of past centuries can compare with this horror. Never before have people so felt the need to believe and so have not understood with reason the impossibility of believing. " L. Tolstoy also spoke of the crisis in art in a slightly different way: "Literature was a blank sheet, but now it is all written up. It is necessary to turn it over or get another one."

Realism, which had reached the highest point of flourishing, seemed to many to have finally exhausted its possibilities. Symbolism, which originated in France, claimed a new word in art.

Russian symbolism, like all previous trends in art, dissociated itself from the old tradition. Yet Russian Symbolists grew up on the soil prepared by such giants as Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov, and could not ignore their experience and artistic discoveries. "... Symbolic prose actively involved the ideas, themes, images, techniques of the great Russian realists in their own artistic world, forming by this constant juxtaposition one of the defining properties of symbolic art and thereby giving many themes of realistic literature of the 19th century a second reflected life in the art of the 20th century ". And later, "critical" realism, which in Soviet times was declared abolished, continued to feed the aesthetics of L. Leonov, M. Sholokhov, V. Grossman, V. Belov, V. Rasputin, F. Abramov and many other writers.

Bulgakov S. Early Christianity and modern socialism. Two hail. Μ., 1911. P.S. 36.

A. P. Skaftmov Articles about Russian literature. Saratov, 1958.S. 330.

The development of realism in Russian literature. T. 3.P. 106.

The development of realism in Russian literature. T. 3.P. 246.

Realism as a direction was a response not only to the Age of Enlightenment (), with its hopes for the human Reason, but also to romantic indignation at man and society. The world turned out not to be the way the classicists portrayed it and.

It was necessary not only to enlighten the world, not only to show its lofty ideals, but also to understand reality.

The answer to this request was the realistic trend that arose in Europe and in Russia in the 30s of the XIX century.

Realism is understood as a truthful attitude to reality in a work of art of a particular historical period. In this sense, its features can be found in literary texts of the Renaissance or Enlightenment. But as a literary trend, Russian realism became the leading one precisely in the second third of the 19th century.

The main features of realism

Its main features are:

• objectivism in depicting life

(this does not mean that the text is a "splinter" of reality. This is the author's vision of reality, which he describes)

• moral ideal of the author

• typical characters with the undoubted individuality of the heroes

(such are, for example, the heroes of Pushkin's Onegin or Gogol's landowners)

• typical situations and conflicts

(the most common is a conflict between an extra person and society, a little person and society, etc.)

(for example, circumstances of upbringing, etc.)

• attention to the psychological reliability of characters

(psychological characteristics of heroes or)

• everyday and everyday life of heroes

(the hero is not an outstanding personality, as in romanticism, but one who is recognizable by readers as, for example, their contemporary)

• attention to the accuracy and reliability of the detail

(for details in "Eugene Onegin" you can study the era)

• ambiguity of the author's attitude towards heroes

(there is no division into positive and negative characters - for example, attitude towards Pechorin)

• the importance of social problems: society and the individual, the role of the individual in history, the "little man" and society, etc.

(for example, in the novel "Resurrection" by Leo Tolstoy)

• approximation of the language of a work of art to living speech

• the ability to use a symbol, myth, grotesque, etc. as a means of disclosing character

(when creating the image of Napoleon in Tolstoy or the images of landowners and officials in Gogol).
Our short video presentation on the topic

Major genres of realism

• story,
• story,
• novel.

However, the boundaries between them are gradually blurring.

According to scientists, the first realistic novel in Russia was Pushkin's Eugene Onegin.

The heyday of this literary movement in Russia - the entire second half of the 19th century. The works of the writers of this era entered the treasury of world artistic culture.

From the point of view of I. Brodsky, this became possible due to the height of the achievements of Russian poetry of the previous period.

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Themes and heroes of realistic literature

The thematic spectrum of representatives of realism at the turn of the century is wider than that of their predecessors. For most writers of this period, thematic constancy is uncharacteristic: rapid changes in Russia forced them vary the theme, intrude into previously reserved thematic layers. At that time, the spirit of artels was strong in the Gorky writers' environment: through joint efforts, the "knowledgeists" created a large-scale panorama of the country undergoing renewal. Large-scale thematic capture was palpable in the titles of the works that made up the next collections of "Knowledge" (it was this type of publications - collections and almanacs - that spread in the literature of the beginning of the century). For example, the table of contents of the 12th collection "Knowledge" resembled the sections of a certain sociological study: the names of the same type "In the City", "In the Family", "In Prison", "In the Village" designated the spheres of life being examined.

The elements of sociological descriptiveness in realism are not yet overcome legacy of the socio-essay prose of the 1860s-1880s, in which the focus on empirical research of reality was strong. However, the prose of the "Znanievites" was distinguished by more acute artistic problems: crisis of all forms of life - this is the conclusion that most of their works lead readers to. What was important was the changed attitude of realists to the possibility of transforming life. In the literature of the 1860-1880s. the living environment was portrayed as sedentary, possessing a terrible force of inertia. Now the circumstances of a person's existence are interpreted as devoid of stability and subject to his will. In relations between man and the environment, the realists of the turn of the century emphasized the ability of man to withstand adverse influences and, in turn, actively recreate the environment.

Remarkably updated in realism and typology of characters. Outwardly, the writers followed tradition: in their works one can find recognizable types of a "little man" or an intellectual experiencing a spiritual drama. The peasant remained one of the central figures in their prose. But even the traditional "peasant" characterology has changed: more and more often a new type of "pensive" muzhik appears in stories and novellas. The characters got rid of the sociological averaged ™, became more diverse in psychological characteristics and attitudes. "The diversity of the soul" of the Russian person is a constant motif in the prose of I. L. Bunin. The creative work of A.I. Kuprin was unusually wide in terms of the variety of subjects and human characters.

Genres and stylistic features of realistic prose

The genre system and stylistics of realistic prose at the beginning of the 20th century have been significantly updated. The increased personal activity of writers (wandering, research mobility, the search for heroes "with a twist") was partly explained by the reaction to the loss of integrity in the perception of life. The fragmentary, discrete vision of the world was reflected in the genre restructuring of realistic prose. The central place in the genre hierarchy was occupied at this time by the most mobile genres - story and feature article. The novel practically disappeared from the genre repertoire of realism: story.

Starting with the work of A.P. Chekhov, the significance of formal organization of the text. Certain methods and elements of form received greater independence in the artistic structure of the work than before. In particular, the artistic detail was used more variedly, while the plot usually lost its significance as the main compositional means and began to play a subordinate role. The expressiveness in conveying the details of the visible and audible world deepened: the writers learned to use more subtle artistic optics and acoustics than before. In this respect, I. A. Bunin, B. K. Zaitsev, I. S. Shmelev stood out. Thus, a specific feature of the Bunin style was the amazing fusion of visual and auditory, olfactory and tactile characteristics in the transmission of the surrounding world. More often and more expressively than before, realist writers used the rhythmic and phonetic effects of artistic speech. Increased sensitivity in conveying the individual characteristics of the characters' oral speech (mastery of this element of form was characteristic of I.S.Shmelev).

Having lost in comparison with the classics of the XIX century. the epic scale and integrity of the vision of the world, the realists of the beginning of the century compensated for these losses with a heightened perception of life and greater expression in expressing the author's position. The general logic of the development of realism at the beginning of the century was to strengthen the role of heightened-expressive forms of realism. The writer was now important not so much the proportions of the reproduced fragment of life, but the "power of the cry", the intensity of the expression of the author's emotions. This was achieved by sharpening plot situations, when extremely dramatic, borderline states in the life of the characters were described in close-up. The figurative series of works was built on a system of contrasts, sometimes extremely sharp, screaming; the frequency of figurative and lexical repetitions was forced.

However, within the limits of the work of one writer, a single style was rarely maintained: more often writers combined several style options. For example, in the works of L.I. Kuprin, M. Gorky, L.N. Andreev, precise depiction coexisted with generalized romantic imagery, and elements of life-likeness - with the use of artistic convention. A fairy tale with its deliberate convention and an essay striving for ultimate reliability are two genre and stylistic poles in M. Gorky's prose. LN Andreev's early stories about the life of the urban poor differ greatly in style from such works as the stories "Red Laughter" or "Judas Iscariot". Of the major writers of this time, only I. A. Bunin avoided the multi-style in his work: both his poetic and prose works preserved the harmony of accurate descriptive and author's lyricism. Style instability of realism was a consequence of the transition and the well-known artistic compromise of the direction: on the one hand, the traditions bequeathed by the previous century were strong, on the other, realism began to interact with new trends in art.

Writers gradually adapted to new forms of artistic search, although this process was far from peaceful in realism. Further along the path of rapprochement with modernist aesthetics went LN Andreev, SN Sergeev-Tsenskiy, somewhat later - EI Zamyatin. Most of them were often criticized by critics brought up in the old traditions of artistic apostasy, and even ideological desertion. However, the process of renewal of realism as a whole was artistically fruitful, and the total achievements of the trend at the turn of the century turned out to be significant.