Sport

Postmodernism in Russian literature of the 21st century. Modernism and postmodernism in Russian literature. General topics and techniques

09.06.2021

Postmodernism as a literary movement originates at the end of the 20th century. It arises as a protest to the foundations, excluding any limitation of actions and techniques, erases the boundaries between styles and gives the authors absolute freedom of creativity. The main vector of development of postmodernism is the overthrow of any established norms, the confusion of "high" values ​​and "base" needs.

The convergence of elite modernist literature, which was difficult for most of society to understand, and primitivism, rejected by intellectuals due to its stereotyped, aimed to get rid of the shortcomings of each style.

(Irene Sheri "For the book")

The exact dates of the emergence of this style are uncertain. However, its origin is the reaction of society to the results of the era of modernism, the end of World War II, the horrors that took place in the concentration camps and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some of the first works are "Dismemberment of Orpheus" (Ihab Hassan), "Cannibal" (John Hawks) and "Howl" (Allen Ginsberg).

Postmodernity received its conceptual design and theoretical definition only in the 1980s. This was facilitated, first of all, by J.F. Lyotard. The Oktober magazine, published in the USA, actively promoted the postmodern ideas of prominent representatives of cultural studies, philosophy and literary criticism.

Postmodernism in Russian literature of the 20th century

Contrasting avant-garde and modern, where sentiments were felt Silver Age, in Russian postmodernism it was expressed by the rejection of realism. Writers in their works describe harmony as a utopia. They find a compromise with chaos and space. The first independent response of postmodernism in Russia is Andrey Bitov's "Pushkin House". However, the reader was able to enjoy it only 10 years after its release, since a ban was imposed on its seal.

(Andrey Anatolyevich Shustov "Ballad")

Russian postmodernism owes the versatility of images to Russian socialist realism. It is he who is the starting point for the reflection and development of the characters in the books of this direction.

Representatives

The ideas of comparing opposing concepts are clearly expressed in the work of the following writers:

  • S. Sokolov, A. Bitov, V. Erofeev - paradoxical compromises between life and death;
  • V. Pelevin, T. Tolstaya - contact of the real and the fantasy;
  • Petsukh - the border of foundations and absurdity;
  • V. Aksenov, A. Sinyavsky, L. Petrushevskaya, S. Dovlatov - denial of any authorities, organic chaos, a combination of several trends, genres and eras on the pages of one work.

(Nazim Hajiyev "Eight" (seven dogs, one cat))

Directions

Based on the concepts of "the world as a text", "the world as chaos", "the author's mask", "double move", the directions of postmodernism, by definition, have no specific boundaries. However, analyzing the domestic literature of the late 20th century, some features stand out:

  • Orientation of culture to itself, and not to the real world;
  • The texts originate from the drains of historical eras;
  • Ephemerality and ghostly, pretense of actions,
  • Metaphysical isolation;
  • Non-selection;
  • Fantastic parody and irony;
  • Logic and absurdity are combined in a single image;
  • Violation of the law of sufficient justification and exclusion of the third meaning.

Postmodernism in foreign literature of the XX century

The literary concepts of French post-structuralists are of particular interest to the American writing community. It is against this background that Western theories of postmodernism are formed.

(Portrait - collage from mosaics of works of art)

The point of no return to modernism is Leslie Fiedler's article in Playboy. In the very title of the text, the convergence of opposites is loudly demonstrated - "Cross the borders, fill the ditches." In the course of the formation of literary postmodernity, the tendency to overcome the boundaries between "books for intellectuals" and "stories for the ignorant" is gaining momentum. As a result of development, certain characteristic features are visible between foreign works.

Some features of postmodernism in the works of Western authors:

  • Decanonization of official norms;
  • Ironic attitude towards values;
  • Filling with quotes, short statements;
  • Denial of a single “I” in favor of a multitude;
  • Innovations in forms and ways of expressing thoughts, in the course of changing genres;
  • Hybridization of techniques;
  • A humorous look at everyday situations, laughter as one of the sides of life's disorder;
  • Theatricality. Play with plots, images, text and a reader;
  • Accepting the diversity of life through resignation to chaotic events. Pluralism.

Homeland of postmodernism as literary direction considered the United States. Postmodernism is most vividly reflected in the work of American writers, namely, followers of the "school of black humor" in the person of Thomas Pynchon, Donald Barthelemy, John Barth, James Patrick Dunleavy.

Lecture No. 16-17

Postmodern literature

Plan

1. Postmodernism in the literature of the twentieth century.

a) the reasons for the emergence of postmodernism;
b) postmodernism in modern literary criticism;
c) distinctive features of postmodernism.

2. “Perfume” by P. Suskind as a vivid example of postmodern literature.

1. Postmodernism in the literature of the twentieth century

A. Reasons behind the emergence of postmodernism

According to the majority of literary critics, postmodernism is "one of the leading (if not the main) trends in world literature and culture in the last third of the 20th century, reflecting the most important stage in the religious, philosophical and aesthetic development of human thought, which gave many brilliant names and works." But it arose not only as a phenomenon of aesthetics or literature; it is rather a kind of special type of thinking, which is based on the principle of pluralism - the leading feature of our era, a principle that excludes any suppression or restriction. Instead of the previous hierarchy of values ​​and canons, there is absolute relativity and plurality of meanings, techniques, styles, assessments. Postmodernism arose from the rejection of standardization, monotony and uniformity of official culture in the late 1950s. It was an explosion, a protest against the dull uniformity of the philistine consciousness. Postmodernism is a product of spiritual timelessness. Therefore, the early history of postmodernism turns out to be a history of overthrowing established tastes and criteria.

Its main feature is the destruction of any partitions, the erasure of boundaries, the mixing of styles and languages, cultural codes, etc., as a result, the "high" became identical to the "low" and vice versa.

B. Postmodernism in contemporary literary criticism

In literary criticism, the attitude towards postmodernism is ambiguous. V. Kuritsyn feels "pure delight" for him and calls him "heavy artillery", which left behind a trampled, "desecrated" "literary field". "New direction? Not only. This is also such a situation, - wrote Vl. Slavitsky, - such a state, such a diagnosis in culture, when an artist, who has lost the gift of imagination, perception of life and creativity, perceives the world as a text, is not engaged in creativity, but in the creation of structures from the components of the culture itself ... ". According to A. Zverev, this is literature of “very modest merits, or simply bad literature". “As for the term“ postmodernism ”, - reflects D. Zatonsky, - it seems to be only stating a certain continuity in time and therefore looks frankly ... meaningless”.

These opposite statements about the essence of postmodernism contain a grain of truth as much as the maximalist excesses. Like it or not, but today postmodernism is the most widespread and fashionable trend in world culture.

Postmodernism cannot yet be called art system, which has its own manifestos and aesthetic programs, it did not become either a theory or a method, although as a cultural and literary phenomenon it became the subject of study by many Western authors: R. Barth, J. Derrida, M. Foucault, L. Fiedler and others. Its conceptual apparatus is under development.

Postmodernism is a special form of artistic vision of the world, which manifests itself in literature both at the substantive and formal levels and is associated with a revision of approaches to literature and the work of art itself.

Postmodernism is an international phenomenon. Critics attribute to him writers who are different in their worldview and aesthetic attitudes, which gives rise to different approaches to postmodern principles, variability and contradictions in their interpretation. Signs of this trend can be found in any of the modern national literatures: in the USA (K. Vonnegut, D. Bartelme), England (D. Fowles, P. Akroid), Germany (P. Suskind, G. Grass), France (" new romance", M. Houellebecq). However, the level of "presence" of postmodern stylistics among these and other writers is not the same; often in their works they do not go beyond the boundaries of the traditional plot, the system of images and other literary canons, and in such cases it is legitimate to speak only about the presence of elements characteristic of postmodernism. In other words, in all the variety of literary works offered by the second half of the 20th century, one can distinguish samples of “pure” postmodernism (novels by A. Robbe-Grillet and N. Sarrott) and mixed ones; the latter are still the majority, and it is they who provide the most interesting artistic examples.

The difficulty of systematizing postmodernism is explained, apparently, by its eclecticism. Rejecting all previous literature, he nevertheless synthesizes the previous artistic techniques- romantic, realistic, modernist - and creates his own style on their basis. When analyzing the work of this or that modern writer, the question inevitably arises about the degree of the presence of realistic and unrealistic elements in him. Although, on the other hand, the only reality for postmodernism is the reality of culture, "the world as text" and "text as the world."

B. Distinctive features of postmodernism

With all the uncertainty of the aesthetic system of postmodernism, some domestic researchers (V. Kuritsyn, V. Rudnev) made an attempt to build a number of the most characteristic signs of the direction.

1. The general in postmodernism is the special position of the author, his plurality, the presence of a mask or double. In M. Frisch's novel “I Will Call Myself Gantenbein,” a certain author’s “I”, starting from his observations, associations, thoughts, invents all sorts of “plots” (the story of the hero). “I try on stories like a dress,” the author says. The writer creates the plot of the work, creates its text in front of the reader. In "Elementary Particles" M. Houellebecq, the role of the narrator is assigned to a humanoid creature - a clone.

The author, at his own discretion, models the world order in his work, shifts and expands time and space at his own whim. He "plays" with the plot, creating a kind of virtual reality (it is no coincidence that postmodernism arose in the era of computer technology). The author sometimes connects with the reader: H. Borges has a miniature "Borges and I", in which the author claims that they are not enemies, not one person, but not different faces either. “I don’t know which of us is writing this page,” the writer admits. But the problem of splitting the author into many voices, into a second "I" in the history of literature is by no means new, it is enough to recall "Eugene Onegin" and "A Hero of Our Time" or any of the novels of Charles Dickens and L. Stern.

2. Intertextuality, which can be regarded as a kind of dialogue between the texts of different cultures, literatures and works, contributes to the mixing of eras, the expansion of the chronotope in the work. One of the components of this technique is neomythologism, which largely determines the appearance of the modern literary process, but it does not exhaust the diversity of the intertext. Each text, according to one of the theorists of postmodernism in the West, R. Barthes, is an intertext, because it relies on the entire potential of the culture of the past, therefore it contains well-known revised texts and plots at different levels and in different representations.

The “presence” of several “alien” texts in the text of a work in the form of variations, quotations, allusions, reminiscences can be observed in P. Suskind's novel “Perfume”, in which the author ironically plays up the romantic style through the stylization of Hoffmann and Chamisso. At the same time in the novel you can find allusions from G. Grasse, E. Zola. In the novel "The French Lieutenant's Woman" by J. Fowles, the writing style of the 19th century realist writers is ironically rethought.

Postmodernism became the first trend in the literature of the XX century, which "openly admitted that the text does not reflect reality, but creates a new reality, or rather, even many realities, often not at all dependent on each other." There is simply no reality, instead of it there is virtual reality, recreated by the intertext.

3. Quotation has become one of the main principles of postmodernism. “We live in an era when all the words have already been said,” said S. Averintsev. In other words, every word, even a letter in postmodernism is a quote. Quotes cease to play the role of additional information when the author makes a link to its source. It organically enters the text and becomes an inseparable part of it. A well-known tale comes to mind about an American student, who, having read "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare for the first time, was disappointed: nothing special, a collection of common winged words and expressions. In 1979, a quotation novel was published in France, which consisted of 750 quotations from 408 authors.

4. In the works about postmodernism, more and more talk about hypertext lately. V. Rudnev gives him the following definition: "Hypertext is a text arranged in such a way that it turns into a system, a hierarchy of texts, at the same time constituting a unity and a multitude of texts." The simplest example of hypertext is any dictionary or encyclopedia, where each article makes references to other articles in the same publication. The "Khazar Dictionary" by the Serbian writer Pavic is built as a hypertext. It consists of three books - red, green and yellow - in which, respectively, Christian, Islamic and Jewish sources on the adoption of the Khazars of the faith are collected, and each of the religions insists on its own version. The novel has developed a whole system of references, and in the preface the author writes that it can be read as you like: from the beginning or from the end, diagonally, selectively.

In the hypertext, the author's individuality completely disappears, it is blurred, for it is not the author that acquires predominant significance, but the "Mister Text", which provides for a multiple number of readings. In the preface to the novel "Open" N. Sarrott writes: " Characters these little dramas are words that act as independent living beings. When they have a meeting with other people's words, a fence, a wall is erected ... ". And therefore - "Open"!

5. One of the variations of hypertext is collage (or mosaic, or pastiche), when a combination of ready-made style codes or quotes is quite sufficient. But, as one of the researchers rightly noted, intertext and collage are alive until the meaning of their constituent elements has disappeared in the mind of the reader. You can understand a quote when its source is known.

6. The tendency towards syncretism was reflected in the linguistic manner of writing of postmodernism, which is deliberately complicated due to the violation of the norms of morphology and syntax, the introduction of an elaborate metaphorical style, “low”, profanity, vulgarisms or, on the contrary, a highly intellectual language of scientific fields (the novel “Elementary Particles "Houellebecq, the short story" The Party That Needs "by Welch). The entire work often resembles one large detailed metaphor or a tangled rebus (the novel by N. Sarrott "Open"). The situation of a language game characteristic of postmodernism arises - a concept introduced by L. Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations (1953), according to which the whole “human life is a set of language games,” the whole world is seen through the prism of language.

In postmodernism, the concept of “play” also receives a more extensive meaning - “literary play”. Play in literature is a deliberate "deception attitude." Its purpose is to free a person from the oppression of reality, to make him feel free and independent, for that it is a game. But ultimately it means the primacy of the artificial over the natural, the fictional over the real. The work takes on a theatrical and conventional character. It is built on the principle of "as it were": as if love, as if life; it reflects not what was in reality, but what "could have been if ...". The overwhelming majority of works of art of the last decades of the twentieth century is this "kind of" literature. It is not surprising, therefore, that such an important role in postmodernism is played by irony, mockery, a joke: the author "jokes" with his feelings and thoughts.

7. Postmodern innovations also affected the genre side of a work of art. V. Kuritsyn believes that secondary literary genres have come to the fore: diaries, commentaries, letters. The novel form influences the organization of the plot of the works - it becomes fragmentary. This is not an accidental feature in the plot formation is a view of the novel as a mirror image of the very process of life, where there is nothing finished, there is also a certain philosophical perception of the world. In addition to the works of M. Frisch, similar phenomena can be found in the works of F. Dürrenmatt, G. Belle, G. Grass, A. Rob Grillet. There are works written in dictionary form, and such definitions as "novel-sandnich", which combines romanticism and realism, mythological prose and document, have appeared. There are other variants, the novels "Elementary Particles" by M. Houellebecq and "The Collector" by D. Fauz, in our opinion, can be defined as "centaur novels." There is a fusion at the genre level of the novel and the drama, the novel and the parable.

One of the varieties of postmodernism is kitsch - “ mass art for the elite ". Kitsch may be a "well done" piece with a fascinating and serious plot, with deep and subtle psychological observations, but it is only a clever imitation of high art. It usually lacks the present. artistic discovery... Kitsch uses the genres of melodrama, detective and thriller, he has an entertaining intrigue that keeps the reader and viewer in constant tension. Unlike postmodernism, which can provide samples of really deep talented works of literature, kitsch is set to be entertaining, and therefore it is closer to "mass culture".

A. Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky made a kitsch film from Homer's poem "The Odyssey". Kitsch has become an indispensable addition to the productions of Shakespeare's works, including Hamlet.

Postmodernism is an extremely variegated and extraordinary phenomenon in the literature of the second half of the twentieth century. In it there are many works of "passage", works of "one-day"; obviously, it is precisely such works that cause the greatest number of attacks on the direction as a whole. However, postmodernism has put forward and continues to put forward really bright, outstanding examples of fiction in the literature of Germany, Switzerland, France and England. Maybe the whole point is to what extent the author is carried away by "experimentation", in other words, in what capacity the "borderland" is presented in his work or in a separate work.

2. "Perfume" by P. Suskind as a vivid example of postmodern literature

novel Patrick Suskind Perfumer was first published in Russian translation in 1991. If you look for information about the author of the novel, then there will be few of them. As stated in many sources, "Patrick Suskind leads a secluded life, refuses literary awards, from any public appearances, on rare occasions when he agrees to a short interview."

P. Süskind was born on March 26, 1949 in the family of a professional publicist in the small West German town of Ambach. Here he graduated from high school, received a musical education, began to try himself in literature. Later, in 1968-1974, P. Süskind studied the history of the Middle Ages at the University of Munich. He lived in Munich, then in Paris, published exclusively in Switzerland. The world fame that came to the author of "Perfumer" did not force him to lift the curtain over his life.

P. Süskind began in the genre of miniatures. His true debut can be considered the monoplay "Contrabass", completed in the summer of 1980. For the last ten years P. Süskind has been writing screenplays for television, including scripts for feature series.

The novel "Perfumer" (in another translation into Russian - "Aroma") occupies a place in the world's ten bestsellers. It has been translated into over thirty languages. This work is unique in its own way.

P. Suskind's novel can be called without exaggeration the first truly postmodern German novel, a farewell to modernity and the cult of genius. For Wittstock, the novel is an elegantly disguised journey through literary history. The author is primarily interested in the problem of creativity, creative individuality, the cult of genius, which has been cultivated by German writers since the time of romanticism.

Undoubtedly, the problem of genius worried also romantics in England and France, and in "Perfume" there are allusions to the literary works of these countries. But in German literature, genius has become a cult figure; in the works of German writers, one can gradually trace the evolution of the image of a genius, its flowering and degradation. In Germany, the cult of genius turned out to be more tenacious and, finally, in the 20th century, in the perception of millions of Germans, it was embodied in the sinister and mysterious figure of Hitler and turned into an ideology. The post-war generation of writers was aware of the great deal of blame that lay with the literature that nurtured this cult. Suskind's novel destroys it, applying the favorite technique of postmodernism - "use and abuse", "use and insult", that is, the simultaneous use of a theme, style, tradition and demonstration of its inconsistency, undermining, doubt. Suskind uses a huge number of works by German, French, and English writers on the topic of genius, and with their help criticizes the traditional ideas about the originality and exclusivity of a creative person. Suskind inscribes his novel into the tradition of the cult of genius, undermining it from within.

The Perfume is a multilevel novel characteristic of postmodernism. Its genre, like any other postmodern work, is not easy to define, because the boundaries of genres in modern literature are blurred and constantly violated. On the surface, it can be attributed to the historical and detective genres. The subtitle "The Story of a Murderer" and a reproduction of Watteau's painting with a dead naked girl on the cover are clearly designed to attract the general public and make it clear that this is a detective story. The beginning of the novel, which indicates the exact time of the action, describes the life of Paris of that era, typical of a historical novel. The narration itself is aimed at a wide range of interests of readers: highly literary language, stylistic virtuosity, ironic play with the reader, description of private spheres of life and gloomy pictures crimes. The description of the birth, upbringing, study of the protagonist suggests the genre of the upbringing novel, and the constant references to the genius, originality of Grenouille, his extraordinary talent, which leads him through life and subordinates all other character traits and even the body, hint that we have a real novel about an artist, a genius.

However, none of the expectations of the reader, caused by allusions to one or another genre, is not justified. For the detective, it is necessary that the evil be punished, the criminal exposed, the world order restored, none of these conditions are fulfilled in the novel. V. Fritzen called "Perfumer" a requiem based on a crime novel. The value system of the upbringing novel is undermined. Grenouille's "teachers" have no feelings for him, except dislike. Grenouille's education boils down to recognizing and memorizing smells and mixing them in the imagination. Love, friendship, family relationships as factors of personality formation, without which it is impossible to imagine an upbringing novel, are generally absent here, the hero is completely isolated spiritually from the world around him. Until some time, Grenouille did not experience any feelings at all, as if of all the organs of perception he had only the sense of smell. The theme of love, compassion, friendship and other human feelings was closed by Grenouille from the very beginning, when he voted with his first cry “against love and still for life”. "He was a monster from the beginning." The only feeling that matures in Grenoye is aversion to people, but even this does not resonate with them. Having made people love himself, rejected and ugly, Grenouille realizes that they are disgusting to him, which means that he does not need their love. The tragedy of Grenouille is that he himself cannot find out who he is, and cannot even enjoy his masterpiece. He realized that people perceive and love only his mask of scent.

The novel “Perfume” can be called a programmatic work of postmodernism, because practically all the basic tenets of postmodernism are embodied in it with the help of a good literary language and an exciting narrative form. Here layeredness and criticism of enlightenment, ideas about originality, identity, playing with the reader, farewell to the modernist yearning for an all-encompassing order, integrity, aesthetic principles that oppose the chaos of reality, and, of course, intertextuality - allusions, quotes, semi-quotes - and stylization ... The novel embodies the rejection of the totalitarian power of reason, of novelty, free handling of the past, the principle of entertainment, recognition of a fictional literary work.

The fiction of the protagonist, Grenouille, is emphasized from the very first lines: "... his genius and his phenomenal vanity were limited to a sphere that leaves no trace in history." Grenouille also could not leave traces because he was torn to pieces and eaten to the last shred in the finale of the novel.

In the very first paragraph, the author declares the genius of his hero, inextricably linked with evil, Grenouille is a “genius monster”. In general, in the image of Grenouille, the author combines many traits of genius, as he was represented from romanticism to modernism - from the messiah to the Fuhrer. The author borrows these inherent features of a gifted individual from various works - from Novalis to Grasse and Böll. The grotesque combination of these traits into one whole is reminiscent of Dr. Frankenstein's creation of his monster. The author calls his creation a "monster". It is devoid of almost all human qualities, except for hatred, a creature rejected by the world and itself turned away from it, striving to conquer humanity with the help of its talent. Grenouille's lack of his own scent means his lack of individuality, his own "I". His problem is that, faced with the inner emptiness, Grenouille does not try to find his "I". The search for a scent would have to symbolize the creative search for oneself. However, the genius of Grenouille is able to create only a clever fake of the human smell. He is not looking for his individuality, but only masks its absence, which turns into a collapse and self-destruction of genius in the finale.

On the image of Grenouille, V. Fritzen builds a whole history of the disease of a genius. Firstly, since a genius must and outwardly stand out from the crowd, he certainly has a certain physical handicap. The hero of Suskinda bears the grotesque features of degeneration. His mother is sick, which means that he received a bad heredity. Grenouille had a hump, a disfigured leg, all sorts of serious illnesses left their marks on his face, he came out of the cloaca, "he was even less than nothing."

Secondly, a genius is anti-rational, always remains a child, he cannot be brought up, since he follows his inner laws. True, the genius of romantics still had an educator - this is nature. However, Grenouille is his own work. He was born, lived and died as if contrary to all the laws of nature and fate, only at his own will. The genius of Suskinda creates himself. Moreover, nature for him is bare material, Grenouille seeks to rip out her soul, decompose it into its component parts and, combining in the right proportion, create his own work.

Third, genius and intelligence are not the same thing. Grenouille has a unique gift - his sense of smell. At the same time, everyone considers him imbecile. Only by the age of four did Grenouille learn to speak, but he had problems with abstract, ethical and moral concepts: "... conscience, God, joy, gratitude ... was and remained vague for him." According to Schopenhauer's definition, genius combines great willpower and a large share of sensuality - there is no question of reason. Grenouille is so obsessed with work and the desire to achieve power that it subjugates all his vital functions (for example, working for Baldini, in Grasse).

Fourthly, genius tends to madness, or at least to eccentricity, never accepting the norms of the layman's life. Therefore, in the eyes of a burgher, a romantic genius is always crazy, a child of nature, he does not take into account the foundations of society. Grenouille is a criminal a prіorі, the verdict is already in the subtitle - "The Story of a Murderer", and Grenouille commits the first murder when he was born, with his first cry, which became a death sentence for his mother. And in the future, murder will be something natural for him, devoid of any moral connotation. In addition to 26 murders committed already at a conscious age, Grenouille magically brings misfortune to the people associated with him: Grimal and Baldini die, the Marquis disappears, Druo is executed. Grenouille cannot be called immoral, since all moral concepts that he could deny are alien to him. He is beyond morality, above it. However, at first Grenouille does not oppose himself to the surrounding world, disguising himself with the help of spirits. The romantic conflict is transferred to the inner sphere - Grenouille collides with himself, or rather with the absence of himself, which is seen as a postmodern conflict.

Fifth, a genius is an outsider of society, an exile. The genius lives in an imaginary world, in the world of his fantasies. However, Grenouille's outsiderism turns into autism. Due to the lack of a smell, Grenouille is either simply ignored, or they feel an incomprehensible disgust for him. At first, Grenouille doesn't care, he lives in a world of smells. In the mountains, where he moves away from the world, Grenouille creates a kingdom of smells, lives in an air castle of fragrances. But after the crisis - the realization of the absence of his own scent - he returns to the world in order to enter it, and people, deceived by Grenouille's "human spirits", accept him.

Sixth, a genius needs autonomy, independence. This is required by the egocentrism of a genius: his inner "I" is always more valuable and richer than the world around him. Loneliness is required for a genius to improve himself. However, self-isolation is also a big problem for the artist. Forced isolation from the world of people was tragically perceived by the romantic hero-genius. Grenouille makes it not the surrounding world that rejects it, but the inner need that makes it closed in itself. With his first cry, the newborn Grenouille opposed himself to the outside world and then endured all the cruel blows of fate with inhuman stubbornness, from the first years of life moving towards the goal, without even realizing it.

Finally, in the image of Grenouille, one can also distinguish such a trait as the exclusivity of genius, messianism, which is emphasized throughout the entire narrative. Grenouille was born for a higher purpose, namely "to revolutionize the world of smells." After the first murder, his destiny was revealed to him, he realized his genius and the direction of his destiny: "... he had to become the Creator of smells ... the greatest perfumer of all time." V. Fritzen notes that in the image of the hero Süskind there is a myth about a foundling who must grow into the savior of his people, but a monster, the devil, grows up.

When Grenouille creates his first masterpiece - a human scent, likening himself to God, he realizes that he can achieve even more - to create a superhuman scent to make people love himself. Now he wants to become "the almighty god of fragrance ... - in the real world and over real people." In Grenouille's rivalry with God, there is an allusion to the myth of Prometheus, beloved by romantics. Grenouille steals from nature, from God, the secret of the soul-fragrance, but he uses this secret against people, stealing their souls. In addition, Prometheus did not want to replace the gods, he performed his feat out of pure love for people. Grenouille acts out of hatred and lust for power. Finally, in the scene of bacchanalia, the perfumer realizes himself as the "Great Grenouille", experiences "the greatest triumph of his life", "Promethean feat".

In addition to the fact that the hero of Suskind combines almost all the traits that writers from romanticism to modernism endowed genius with, Grenouille goes through several stages of development - from romanticism to postmodernism. Until leaving for the mountains, Grenouille is stylized as a romantic artist. In the beginning, he accumulates, absorbs odors, constantly composes new combinations of aromas in his imagination. However, he still creates without any aesthetic principle.

Grenouille as an artist develops and, having met his first victim, finds in her the highest principle on which the rest of the fragrances should be built. Having killed her, he realizes himself as a genius, recognizes his highest predestination. "He wanted to express outside his inner self, which he considered more worthwhile than anything the outside world could offer." Therefore, Grenouille retires in the mountains for seven years. However, there neither the secrets of the universe, nor the path of self-knowledge were revealed to him. Instead of renewal, Grenouille was faced with a lack of his own personality. There was no rebirth through death, since there was no “I” that could be reborn. This inner catastrophe destroyed his fantasy world and forced him to return to the real world. He is forced to make the opposite escape - from himself to the outside world. As V. Fritzen writes, Grenouille goes to the mountains as a romantic, but descends as a decadent: “On his“ magic mountain ”the original artist has grown old, turned into a decadent artist”.

Having got to the marquis-charlatan, Grenouille learns the art of illusion, creates a human scent, a mask that covered up the lack of his individuality and opened the way to the world of people. In Grasse, Grenouille masters the science of perfumery, the technique of scent extraction. However, Grenouille's goal is no longer to revolutionize the world of smells. The first successful masterpiece allowed Grenouille to be so confident in his own genius that he is not content with simply accepting him among people, he wants to make them love himself as God. The decadent genius degrades further - into the Fuhrer, when the desire for integrity and unity turns into totalitarianism. In the scene of the orgy in Grenoye, Napoleon, Bismarck and Hitler are recognized. After the collapse of the monarchy, society thirsted for a genius-Fuhrer and a teacher who was supposed to lead out of chaos and unite. The parallels with Hitler are quite clear here. Documentary footage of Hitler's public speeches testifies to the massive ecstasy into which he plunged his listeners. In the scene of the bacchanalia, Grenouille, which does not have its own individuality, makes the others lose it, people turn into a herd of wild animals. A work of art must withstand the chaos of reality, and Grenouille, on the contrary, sows chaos and destruction around itself.

Grenouille is finally a postmodern genius. He creates his masterpieces as a true postmodernist: not creating his own, but mixing the stolen from nature and living beings, nevertheless getting something original, and most importantly - having a strong impact on the viewer / reader. According to V. Fritzen, Grenouille, a pseudogeny of postmodernism, creates for his own purposes, steals someone else's in order to blind his own. The postmodernism of Grenouille's genius also lies in the fact that he combines in himself all the historical phases of the cult of genius with disappointment in him, the realization of his failure. Grenouille's creativity boils down to the fact that he steals the soul from nature, not differing slightly from Baldini, the philistine who steals the works themselves.

It is not by chance that the “Perfumer” has incurred accusations of epigony and fashionable eclectic stylization, if only because the author is just revising the idea of ​​genius individuality, originality, following the concept of postmodernism. Indeed, the novel is extremely polyphonic, the voices of different eras and genres sound quite distinctly. The novel is woven from allusions, quotations, semi-quotations, themes and motives of German and not only German literature. Suskind uses the technique of homogenizing quotations, themes, elements of other texts - according to the principle of perfume composition. The image of genius, the idea of ​​creativity, organize the narrative, and Hoffmann's novellas, mainly The Maid of Skudery, are the frame of reference for orienting the reader. Suskind's novel is not a conglomerate of quotations, but a carefully built dialogue-game with both the literary tradition and the reader, more precisely, with his literary baggage. As for decoding the text, here the German reader is in a more advantageous position: most of the allusions in the novel are to the literary canon, which is well known to Germans from childhood.

The Perfumer is a typical postmodern novel also because it is deliberately secondary. This is a pastiche novel, a play novel, it can be subjected to endless interpretations, to find ever new allusions. The secret of the reader's success for Suskind's novel is, of course, not only in widespread advertising, but also in skillful stylization, a high-quality counterfeit for a detective story and a historical novel. An entertaining plot and good literary language provide the novel with attention both from the intellectual public and from the general reader - a lover of trivial literature.

1. Anastasiev, N. Words have a long echo / N. Anastasiev // Questions of literature. - 1996. - No. 4.

2. Guchnik, A. Postmodernism and globalization: problem statement / A. Guchnik // World Literature. - 2005. - No. 3. - S. 196-203.

3. Foreign literature of the twentieth century: textbook. for universities / L. G. Andreev [and others]; ed. L. G. Andreeva. - M .: Higher. school: ed. Center Academy, 2000. - S. 19-23.

4. Zatonsky, D. The art of the novel and the twentieth century / D. Zatonsky. - M., 1973.

5. Zatonsky, D. Postmodernism in the historical interior / D. Zatonsky // Questions of literature. - 1996. - No. 3.

6. Ilyin, I. Poststructuralism. Deconstructivism. Postmodernism / I. Ilyin. - M., 1996.

7. Kubareva, N. P. Foreign literature of the second half of the twentieth century / N. P. Kubareva. - M .: Mosk. Lyceum, 2002 .-- S. 171-184.

8. Kuritsyn, V. Postmodernism: a new primitive culture / V. Kuritsyn // New world. - 1992. - No. 2.

9. Rudnev, V. Dictionary of literature of the twentieth century / V. Rudnev. - M., 1998.

10. Slavatsky, V. After postmodernism / V. Slavatsky // Questions of literature. - 1991. - No. 11-12.

11. Khalipov, V. Postmodernism in the system of world culture / V. Khalipov // Foreign literature. - 1994. - No. 1. - P. 235-240

Postmodernism

The end of World War II marked an important turn in the outlook of Western civilization. The war was not only a clash of states, but also a clash of ideas, each of which promised to make the world perfect, and in return brought rivers of blood. Hence - the feeling of the crisis of the idea, that is, disbelief in the possibility of any idea to make the world a better place. There was also a crisis in the idea of ​​art. On the other hand, the number of literary works has reached such a number that it seems that everything has already been written, each text contains links to previous texts, that is, it is a metatext.

In the course of the development of the literary process, the gap between elite and pop culture became too deep, the phenomenon of "works for philologists" appeared, for reading and understanding which one must have a very good philological education. Postmodernism was a reaction to this split, combining both spheres of the multi-layered work. For example, Suskind's Perfume can be read like a detective story, or maybe read like philosophical novel, revealing the issues of genius, artist and art.

Modernism, explored the world as the realization of certain absolutes, eternal truths, gave way to postmodernism, for which the whole world is a game without a happy ending. As a philosophical category, the term "postmodernism" spread thanks to the works of the philosophers Same. Derrida, J. Bataille, M. Foucault and especially the book of the French philosopher J.-F. Lyotard "The State of Postmodernity" (1979).

The principles of repeatability and compatibility turn into style artistic thinking with its inherent features of eclecticism, a tendency towards stylization, quoting, altering, reminiscences, allusions. The artist deals not with "pure" material, but with culturally assimilated, because the existence of art in the previous classical forms is impossible in a post-industrial society with its unlimited potential for serial reproduction and replication.

The Encyclopedia of Literary Trends and Trends provides the following list of postmodernism features:

1. The cult of an independent personality.

2. Craving for the archaic, for the myth, the collective unconscious.

3. The desire to combine, mutate the truths (sometimes polar opposite) of many people, nations, cultures, religions, philosophies, the vision of everyday real life as a theater of absurdity, an apocalyptic carnival.

4. The use of an emphatically playful style to emphasize abnormalities, non-authenticity, anti-nature of the prevailing lifestyle in reality.

5. Deliberately bizarre interweaving of different styles of narration (high classic and sentimental or crudely naturalistic and fabulous, etc.; the artistic style is often intertwined with scientific, journalistic, business, etc.).

6. A mixture of many traditional genre equivalents.

7. Plots of works are easily disguised allusions (hints) to well-known plots of literature of previous eras.

8. Borrowings, roll-overs are observed not only at the plot-compositional, but also at the reverse, linguistic levels.

9. As a rule, the image of the narrator is present in the postmodern work.

10. Irony and parody.

The main features of the poetics of postmodernism are intertextuality (the creation of one's own text from strangers); collage and editing ("gluing" similar fragments); the use of allusions; gravitation towards prose of a complicated form, in particular, with free composition; bricolage (indirect achievement of the author's intention); saturation of the text of irony.

Postmodernism develops in the genres of a fantastic parable, a confession novel, a dystopia, short stories, a mythological story, a socio-philosophical and socio-psychological novel, etc. Genre forms can be combined, opening new artistic structures.

Gunther Grass (Tin Drum, 1959) is considered the first postmodernist. Outstanding representatives of postmodern literature: V. Eco, H.-L. Borges, M. Pavich, M. Kundera, P. Zuskind, V. Pelavin, I. Brodsky, F. Beigbeder.

In the second half of the XX century. the genre of science fiction is becoming more active, which at its best combines with forecasting (predictions for the future) and dystopia.

In the pre-war period, existentialism emerged, and after the Second World War, existentialism was actively developing. Existentialism (lat.existentiel - existence) is a trend in philosophy and the course of modernism, in which the artist himself is the source of a work of art, expressing the life of a person, creating an artistic reality that reveals the secret of being in general. The sources of existentialism were contained in the writings of the 19th century German thinker. From Kierkegaard.

Existentialism in works of art reflects the mood of the intelligentsia, disenchanted with social and ethical theories. Writers strive to understand the causes of the tragic disorder of human life. In the first place are the categories of the absurdity of being, fear, despair, loneliness, suffering, death. Representatives of this philosophy argued that the only thing that a person possesses is his inner world, the right to choose, free will.

Existentialism spreads in French (A. Camus, J.-P. Sartre and others), German (E. Nossack, A. Döblin), English (A. Murdoch, V. Golding), Spanish (M. de Unamuno), American (N. Mailer, J. Baldwin), Japanese (Kobo Abe) literature.

In the second half of the XX century. a "new novel" ("anti-novel") is developing - a genre equality of the French modern novel of the 1940-1970s, which emerges as a denial of existentialism. Representatives of this genre are N. Sarrott, A. Robbe-Grillet, M. Butor, K. Simon and others.

A significant phenomenon of the theatrical avant-garde of the second half of the XX century. is the so-called "theater of the absurd". The drama of this direction is characterized by the absence of place and time of action, destruction of the plot and composition, irrationalism, paradoxical collisions, a fusion of the tragic and the comic. The most talented representatives of the "theater of the absurd" are S. Beckett, E. Ionesco, E. Albee, G. Frisch and others.

A noticeable phenomenon in the world process of the second half of the XX century. became "magic realism" - a direction in which elements of reality and imagination, real and fantastic, everyday and mythological, probable and mysterious, everyday life and eternity are organically combined. The greatest development he acquired in Latin American literature (A. Carpent "єr, Zhe. Amadou, G. García Márquez, G. Vargas Llosa, M. Asturias, etc.). A special role in the work of these authors is played by the myth, which is the basis of the work. magic realism is the novel by G. García Márquez "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (1967), where the history of Colombia and all of Latin America is recreated in mythically real images.

In the second half of the XX century. traditional realism is also developing, which acquires new features. The depiction of individual being is combined with historical analysis, which is due to the desire of artists to understand the logic of social laws (G. Belle, E.-M. Remarque, V. Bykov, N. Dumbadze, etc.).

Literary process of the second half of the XX century. is determined primarily by the transition from modernism to postmodernism, as well as by the powerful development of intellectual tendencies, science fiction, "magic realism", avant-garde phenomena, etc.

Postmodernism was widely discussed in the West in the early 1980s. Some researchers consider the beginning of postmodernism Joyce's novel "Finnegan's Wake" (1939), others - the preliminary Joyce's novel "Ulysses", others - the American "new poetry" of the 40-50s, the fourth think that postmodernism is not a fixed chronological phenomenon, while the spiritual state “in any era has its own postmodernism” (Eco), the fifth generally speak of postmodernism as “one of the intellectual fictions of our time” (Yu. Andrukhovich). However, most scholars believe that the transition from modernism to postmodernism occurred in the mid-1950s. In the 60s and 70s, postmodernism embraces various national literatures, and in the 80s it becomes the dominant direction of modern literature and culture.

The first manifestations of postmodernism can be considered such currents as the American school of "black humor" (W. Burroughs, D. Wart, D. Bartelm, D. Donlivi, K. Kesey, K. Vonnegut, D. Heller and others), the French "new novel "(A. Robbe-Grillet, N. Sarrott, M. Butor, K. Simon, etc.)," ​​theater of the absurd "(E. Ionesco, S. Beckett, J. Gonit, F. Arrabal etc.) ...

The most prominent postmodernist writers include the British John Fowles ("The Collector", "The French Lieutenant's Woman"), Julian Barnes ("The History of the World in Nine and a Half Chapters") and Peter Ackroyd ("Milton in America"), the German Patrick Suskind (" Perfumer "), Austrian Karl Ransmayr (" The Last World "), Italians Italo Calvino (" Slowness ") and Umberto Eco (" The Name of the Rose "," Foucault's Pendulum "), Americans Thomas Pynchon (" Entropy "," For Sale No. 49 " ) and Vladimir Nabokov (English-language novels "Pale Fire", etc.), Argentines Jorge Luis Borges (short stories and essays) and Julio Cortazar ("The Classics Game").

An outstanding place in the history of the latest postmodern novel is also occupied by its Slavic representatives, in particular the Czech Milan Kundera and the Serb Milorad Pavic.

A specific phenomenon is Russian postmodernism, represented by both the authors of the metropolis (A. Bitov, V. Erofeev, Ven. Erofeev, L. Petrushevskaya, D. Prigov, T. Tolstaya, V. Sorokin, V. Pelavin), and representatives of the literary emigration ( V. Aksenov, I. Brodsky, Sasha Sokolov).

Postmodernism claims to express the general theoretical "superstructure" of contemporary art, philosophy, science, politics, economics, and fashion. Today they talk not only about "postmodernist creativity", but also about "postmodernist consciousness", "postmodernist mentality", "postmodernist mentality" and so on.

Postmodern creativity presupposes aesthetic pluralism at all levels (plot, compositional, image, characterological, chronotopic, etc.), completeness of presentation without evaluations, reading the text in a cultural context, co-creation of the reader and writer, mythology of thinking, a combination of historical and timeless categories, dialogue , irony.

The leading features of postmodern literature are irony, "citation not thinking", intertextuality, pastish, collage, the principle of play.

In postmodernism, total irony reigns, general ridicule and ridicule from everything. Numerous postmodern works of art are characterized by a conscious attitude towards an ironic comparison of various genres, styles, and artistic trends. The work of postmodernism is always a ridicule of the previous and unacceptable forms of aesthetic experience: realism, modernism, mass culture. Thus, irony triumphs over the serious modernist tragedy inherent, for example, in the works of F. Kafka.

One of the main principles of postmodernism is quotation, and for representatives of this trend, quotation thinking is characteristic. American researcher B. Morrissett called postmodern prose "quotation literature". A total postmodern quote replaces a graceful modernist reminiscence. An American student anecdote about how a philology student read Hamlet for the first time and was disappointed is quite postmodern: nothing special, a collection of common catchwords and expressions. Some of the works of postmodernism turn into quotation books. Thus, the novel by the French writer Jacques Rivet "Young Ladies from A." is a collection of 750 citations from 408 authors.

The concept of intertextuality is also associated with postmodern quotation thinking. The French researcher Julia Kristєva, who introduces this term into literary turnover, noted: "Any text is built like a mosaic of citations, any text is a product of absorption and transformation of some other text." The French semioticist Roland Karaulov wrote: “Each text is an intertext; other texts are present in it at various levels in more or less recognizable forms: the texts of the previous culture and the texts of the surrounding culture. Each text is a new fabric woven from old quotes. " Intertext in the art of postmodernism is the main way of constructing a text and consists in the fact that the text is built from quotes from other texts.

If there were also numerous modernist novels (“Ulysses” by J., Joyce, “The Master and Margarita” by Bulgakov, “Doctor Faustus” by T. Mann, “The Glass Bead Game” by G. Hesse) and even realistic works (as proved by Yu. Tynyanov, Dostoevsky's novel "The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants" is a parody of Gogol and his works), then the achievement of postmodernism with hypertext. This is a text constructed in such a way that it turns into a system, a hierarchy of texts, at the same time constituting a unity and a multitude of texts. An example of this is any dictionary or encyclopedia, where each article refers to other articles in the same publication. You can read such a text equally: from one article to another, ignoring hypertext links; read all articles in a row or moving from one link to another, carrying out "hypertext floating". Therefore, a flexible device such as hypertext can be manipulated at will. in 1976 the American writer Raymond Federman published a novel, which is called “At Your Choice”. It can be read at the request of the reader, from any place, by shuffling unnumbered and bound pages. The concept of hypertext is also associated with computer virtual realities. Today's hypertext is computer literature, which can only be read on a monitor: by pressing one key, you are transported into the hero's backstory, by pressing another, you change the bad end to the good, etc.

The hallmark of postmodern literature is the so-called pastish (from Italian pasbiccio - opera composed of excerpts from other operas, mixture, medley, stylization). It is a specific variant of parody, which changes its functions in postmodernism. It differs from the parody of pasties in that now there is nothing to parody, there is no serious object that can be ridiculed. OM Freudenberg wrote that only that which is "living and holy" can be parodied. In a day of non-postmodernism, nothing “lives”, much less “sacred”. Pastish is also understood as the same parody.

Postmodern art is fragmented, discrete, eclectic in nature. Hence such a sign of it as a collage. Postmodern collage may seem new form modernist montage, but it differs significantly from it. In modernism, the montage, although it was composed of incomparable images, was nevertheless united into a certain whole by the unity of style and technique. In the postmodern collage, on the contrary, various fragments of the collected objects remain unchanged, untransformed into a single whole, each of them retains its isolation.

Important for postmodernism with the principle of the game. Classical moral and ethical values ​​are transferred to the playing plane, as M. Ignatenko notes, “yesterday classical culture and spiritual values ​​live in postmodernism dead - his epoch does not live with them, she plays with them, she plays in them, she knows them ”.

Other characteristics of postmodernism include uncertainty, decanonization, cariavalization, theatricality, hybridization of genres, co-creation of the reader, saturation with cultural realities, “character dissolution” (complete destruction of the character as a psychologically and socially determined character), attitude to literature as a “first reality” (text does not reflect reality, but creates a new reality, even many realities, often independent of each other). And the most common images-metaphors of postmodernism are the centaur, carnival, labyrinth, library, madness.

Multiculturalism is also a phenomenon of modern literature and culture, through which the multi-component American nation naturally realized the shaky uncertainty of postmodernism. A more "grounded" multicult) has previously "sounded" thousands of equally unique living American voices of representatives of various racial, ethnic, gender, local and other specific streams. The literature of multiculturalism includes African American, Indian, "Chicano" (Mexicans and other Latin Americans, a significant number of whom live in the United States), the literature of various ethnic groups inhabiting America (including Ukrainians), American descendants of immigrants from Asia, Europe, minority literature of all stripes ...

It is generally accepted all over the world that postmodernism in literature is a special intellectual style, the texts of which are written as if outside of time, and where a certain hero (not the author) checks his own conclusions, playing non-binding games, getting into various life situations ... Critics regard postmodernism as the reaction of the elite to the widespread commercialization of culture, as an opposition to the general culture of cheap tinsel and glitter. In general, this is a rather interesting direction, and today we present to your attention the most famous literary works in the mentioned style.

10. Samuel Beckett "Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable"

Samuel Beckett is a recognized master of abstract minimalism, whose pen technique allows us to objectively survey our subjective world, taking into account the psychology of a separate character. The author's unforgettable work, "Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable", is recognized as one of the best - by the way, the translation can be found at lib.ru

9. Mark Danilewski "House of Leaves"

This book is a real work of literary art, since Danilewski plays not only with words, but also with the color of words, combining textual and emotional information. The associations caused by the color combination of different words help to feel the atmosphere of this book, which contains both elements of mythology and metaphysics. The idea of ​​coloring the author's words was prompted by the famous Rorschach color test.

8. Kurt Vonnegut "Breakfast of Champions"

Here is what the author himself says about his book: “This book is my gift to myself for my fiftieth birthday. At fifty I am so programmed that I behave like a child; I speak disrespectfully about the American anthem, I draw the Nazi flag with a felt-tip pen, and bad guys, and so on.

I think this is an attempt to get everything out of my head, so that it becomes completely empty, like that day fifty years ago, when I appeared on this badly damaged planet.

In my opinion, this is what all Americans should do - both whites and non-whites who imitate whites. In any case, other people have stuffed my head with all sorts of things - there is a lot of useless and ugly, and one does not fit with the other and does not correspond at all to the real life that goes outside me, outside my head. "

7. Jorge Luis Borges "Labyrinths"

This book cannot be described without deep analysis. In general, a similar characteristic is applicable to most of the author's works, many of which are still awaiting objective interpretation.

6. Hunter Thompson "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"

The book tells the story of the adventures of lovers of psychotropic drugs in Las Vegas. Through seemingly simple situations, the author creates a complex political satire of his era.

5. Bret Easton Ellis "American Psycho"

No other piece is capable of portraying the life of an ordinary Wall Street yuppie. Patrick Bateman, the main character of the work, lives an ordinary life, on which the author imposes interesting trick, in order to show the naked reality of such a way of existence.

4. Joseph Geller "Catch-22"

This is probably the most paradoxical novella ever written. Geller's work is widely recognized, and most importantly, recognized by the majority literary critics our time. It is safe to say that Geller is one of the greatest literary men of our time.

3. Thomas Pynchon "Gravity's Rainbow"

All attempts to describe the plot of this novel will obviously fail: it is a symbiosis of paranoia, pop culture, sex and politics. All these elements merge in a special way, creating an unsurpassed literary work of a new era.

2. William Burroughs "Naked Lunch"

Too much has been written about the influence of this work on the minds of our time to write about it again. This work takes its rightful place in literary heritage contemporaries of the era - here you can find elements of science fiction, eroticism and detective stories. All this wild mixture in some mysterious way captivates the reader, forcing him to read everything from the first to the last page - however, it is not a fact that the reader will understand all this the first time.

1. David Foster Wallace "Infinite Jest"

This work is a classic of the genre, of course, if that can be said about the literature of postmodernism. Again, here you can find sadness and fun, intelligence and stupidity, intrigue and vulgarity. The juxtaposition of two large organizations is the main plot line that leads to an understanding of some of the factors in our lives.

All in all, these pieces are very complex, and this is what makes them extremely popular. I would like to hear objective reviews from our readers who have read some of these works - perhaps this will allow others to pay attention to books of this genre.

The emergence of postmodernism in Russian literature dates back to the early 1970s. It was only at the end of the 1980s that it became possible to speak of postmodernism as an irreplaceable literary and cultural reality, and by the beginning of the 21st century, the end of the “postmodern era” had to be noted. Postmodernism cannot be characterized as an exclusively literary phenomenon. It is directly related to the very principles of perception of the world, which manifest themselves not only in artistic culture, in science, but also in various spheres of social life. It would be more accurate to define postmodernism as a complex of ideological attitudes and aesthetic principles, moreover, in opposition to the traditional, classical picture of the world and the ways of its presentation in works of art.

Three periods can be conventionally distinguished in the development of postmodernism in Russian literature:

1. Late 60's - 70's. (A. Terts, A. Bitov, V. Erofeev, Vs. Nekrasov, L. Rubinstein, etc.)

2.70s - 80s assertion as a literary trend, the aesthetics of which is based on the post-structural thesis "the world (consciousness) as a text", and the basis of artistic practice of which is the demonstration of cultural intertext (E. Popov, Vik. Erofeev, Sasha Sokolov, V. Sorokin, etc. )

3. Late 80's - 90's. the period of legalization (T. Kibirov, L. Petrushevskaya, D. Galkovsky, V. Pelevin, etc.).

Modern postmodernism it is rooted in the art of the avant-garde of the beginning of the century, in the poetics and aesthetics of expressionism, the literature of the absurd, the world of V. Rozanov, the Zoshchenko story, the work of V. Nabokov. The picture of postmodern prose is very variegated, multifaceted, there are many transitional phenomena. Stable stereotypes of postmodern works have formed, a certain set of artistic techniques that have become a kind of cliché, designed to express the crisis state of the world at the end of the century and the millennium: “world as chaos”, “world as text”, “crisis of authority”, narrative essayism, eclecticism, play, total irony, "exposure of the reception", "the power of writing", its shocking and grotesque character, etc.

Postmodernism is an attempt to overcome realism with its absolute values. The irony of postmodernism lies, first of all, in the impossibility of its existence, both without modernism and without realism, which give this phenomenon a certain depth and significance.

Patriotic postmodern literature went through a certain process of "crystallization" before it took shape in accordance with the new canons. At first it was “different,” “new,” “tough,” “alternative” Wen's prose. Erofeev, A. Bitov, L. Petrushevskaya, S. Kaledin, V. Pelevin, V. Makanin, V. Petsukh, and others. This prose was polemical, opposition to tradition, it was sometimes even a "slap in the face of public taste" with its anti-utopianism, nihilistic consciousness and hero, rigid, negative, anti-aesthetic stylistics, all-embracing irony, quotation, excessive associativity, intertextuality. Gradually, it was postmodern literature with its own postmodern sensitivity and absolutization of wordplay that emerged from the general stream of alternative prose.

Russian postmodernism carried the main features of postmodern aesthetics, such as:

1. rejection of the truth, rejection of hierarchy, assessments, from any comparison with the past, the absence of restrictions;

2. gravitation towards uncertainty, rejection of thinking based on binary oppositions;

4. focus on deconstruction, i.e. restructuring and destruction of the previous structure of intellectual practice and culture in general; the phenomenon of double presence, the "virtuality" of the world of the postmodern era;

5. the text allows for an infinite number of interpretations, the loss of the semantic center, which creates a space for dialogue between the author and the reader, and vice versa. It becomes important how the information is expressed, focusing on the context; the text is a multidimensional space composed of quotations referring to many cultural sources;

Totalitarian system and national characteristics cultures determined the striking differences between Russian postmodernism and the West, namely:

1. Russian postmodernism differs from Western postmodernism in a more distinct presence of the author through a sense of the idea he is pursuing;

2. it is paralogical (from the Greek. Paralogy answers out of place) in its essence and contains semantic oppositions of categories between which there can be no compromise;

3. Russian postmodernism combines avant-garde utopianism and echoes of the aesthetic ideal of classical realism;

4. Russian postmodernism is born of the contradictory consciousness of the split of the cultural whole, not into a metaphysical, but into a literal “death of the author” and is made up of attempts to restore cultural organics within a single text through a dialogue of heterogeneous cultural languages;

Regarding postmodernism in Russia, Mikhail Epstein in his interview for the Russian magazine said: “In fact, postmodernism has penetrated much deeper into Russian culture than it might seem at first glance. Russian culture was late for the New Time holiday. Therefore, she was already born in the forms of Newmodern, Postmodern, starting from St. Petersburg<…>... Petersburg - brilliant with quotes, collected from the best examples. Russian culture, distinguished by the intertextual and quotation phenomenon of Pushkin, in which Peter's reforms were responded. He was the first example of a great postmodernism in Russian literature. In general, Russian culture was built on the model of a simulacrum (simulacrum is a "copy" that does not have an original in reality).

The signifiers have always prevailed over the signified here. And there were no signified here as such. Sign systems were built from themselves. What was assumed by the modern - the paradigm of the New Time (that there is a certain self-significant reality, there is a subject who objectively cognizes it, there are values ​​of rationalism) - was never appreciated in Russia and was very cheap. Therefore, Russia had its own predisposition to postmodernism. "

In postmodern aesthetics, the integrity of the subject, the human “I”, traditional even for modernism, is also destroyed: mobility, the indefiniteness of the boundaries of the “I” leads almost to the loss of the face, to its replacement with many masks, the “blurring” of individuality hidden behind other people's quotes. The motto of postmodernism could be the saying “I am not I”: in the absence of absolute values, neither the author, nor the narrator, nor the hero are responsible for everything said; the text is made reversible - parody and irony become "intonation norms" that make it possible to give exactly the opposite meaning to what was stated a line ago.

Output: Russian postmodernism, isolated from the West, a complex of ideological attitudes and aesthetic principles different from the traditional picture of the world. Postmodernism in Russian literature is paralogical; there can be no compromise between its oppositions. Representatives of this trend, within the framework of one text, conduct a dialogue with “heterogeneous cultural languages”.