Existentialism in 20th century literature
Existentialism is one of the darkest philosophical and aesthetic trends modernity. The man in the image of the existentialists is immensely burdened by his existence, he is the bearer of inner loneliness and fear of reality. Life is meaningless social activity fruitless, morality is untenable. There is no god in the world, there are no ideals, there is only existence, fate-calling, to which a person stoically and unquestioningly submits; existence is a concern that a person must accept, because the mind is not able to cope with the hostility of being: a person is doomed to absolute loneliness, no one will share his existence.
The practical conclusions of existentialism are monstrous: it makes no difference - to live or not to live, it makes no difference - who to become: an executioner or his victim, a hero or a coward, a conqueror or a slave.
Proclaiming absurdity human being, existentialism for the first time openly included "death" as a motive for proving mortality and an argument for the doom of a person and his "chosenness". Ethical problems are worked out in detail in existentialism: freedom and responsibility, conscience and sacrifice, the goals of existence and purpose, which are widely included in the lexicon of the art of the century. Existentialism attracts with the desire to understand a person, the tragedy of his destiny and existence.
Conventionally, existentialism is divided into two directions: atheistic - it would be more correct to say - secular, because feature their philosophy is not the denial of God, but agnosticism, the conviction of the impossibility of a rational proof of the existence of God and the refusal to resort to faith for such an assumption. The founder of German existentialism, Martin Heidegger (1889-1976).
The theme of effective humanism in the literature of the XX century. Roman A. de Saint-Exupery "Planet of people"
Effective humanism presupposes sympathy and complicity in the life of the one with whom one sympathizes.
A. De Saint - Exupery knew how to be moralistic without moralizing and sensitive without sentimentality, he strove for literature as a type of heroic personality and believed in the spiritual progress of mankind.
Exupery dedicated it to one of his fellow pilots, Henri Guillaume. A novel about pilots. main idea: a person reveals himself in the fight against obstacles.
A few moments that vividly illustrate humanism:
Nobody will replace the dead. And pilots experience the greatest happiness when the one who has already been mentally buried is suddenly resurrected. This happened to Guillaume, who disappeared during a voyage over the Andes. For five days, his comrades unsuccessfully searched for him, and there was no longer any doubt that he had died - either in a fall or from the cold. But Guillaume performed the miracle of his own salvation by passing through the snow and ice. He said later that he endured what no animal could endure - there is nothing nobler than these words, showing the measure of the greatness of man, determining his true place in nature.
Once Exupery managed to approach the very heart of the desert - this happened in 1935, when his plane crashed into the ground near the borders of Libya. Together with the mechanic Prevost, he spent three endless days among the sands. The pilots were saved by a Bedouin, who seemed to them an almighty deity.
On the Madrid front (apparently, there was a war), in third-class carriages, Exupery had a chance to see Polish workers being evicted from France. Whole people returned to his sorrows and poverty. These people were like ugly clods of clay - so compressed their life. But the face of the sleeping child was beautiful: he looked like a fairy-tale prince, like a baby Mozart, doomed to follow his parents through the same forging press.
“The truth of a man is what makes him a man. Whoever knows such nobility of human relations, such fidelity to the rules of the game, such respect for each other that is higher than life and death, will not equate these feelings with the miserable good nature of a demagogue who, as a sign of brotherly tenderness, would begin to pat the same Arabs on the shoulder, flattering them and at the same time humiliating them."
In 1939, the book "The Planet of the People" was awarded the French Academy Prize.
Writers of the existential genre philosophize in their novels on themes of uniqueness human existence, being and psychology of the individual. There are plenty of such speculations in the literature. Let's take a look at the top ten.
1. "Nausea" Jean-Paul Sartre
The French author introduces the reader to the diaries of the protagonist, who traveled half the world in historical research. Since he began to lead sedentary life, Antoine begins to notice terrible changes in his psyche, up to bouts of insanity. The hero himself calls this state “nausea”. More and more nausea overtakes him. There are fewer and fewer places to escape from it. He tries to find an understanding of such feelings as love, hate, ideal, loneliness. But nausea brings Antoine to the point that he considers himself superfluous in this life. In his diaries, he talks about the numerous "search" for himself and the justification of his existence. And, as it seems to him, he finally finds. He is writing a novel...2. Happy Death by Albert Camus
This novel is the rise of Camus as a writer who was not published during his lifetime. The book is a kind of dialogue between the author and his favorite philosopher Nietzsche, who was a source of creative inspiration for him. The protagonist of the novel is looking for the meaning of life for himself, and finds it in ... death.3. "Notes from the underground" F. M. Dostoevsky
The story of the great thinker is the philosophical questions posed and an attempt to find answers to them. Puts and looks for them main character works - an official from St. Petersburg. He receives an inheritance, leaves the service, buys an apartment and almost stops leaving it. That is, it goes underground. IN eternal questions he opposes himself to everyone else, and thus, delivers torment and torment to himself and those around him. Will the retired official manage to leave his “underground”, and who or what will help him in this?4. Boredom by Alberto Moravia
The protagonist of the existential novel "Boredom" is the artist Dino, who, after participating in hostilities, is in constant "search for himself." This search, literally, paralyzes his will, corrodes him from the inside, deprives him of the ability to act, yes, just to live. He ceases to love and hate, not understanding the meaning of such feelings. At the same time, this search for oneself closes the artist from the world around him, his illusions, chaos and mistakes. The reader draws his own conclusions.5. "Notes to Malte Laurids Brigge" Rainer Maria Rilke
Russian culture had an overwhelming influence on the work of the Prague writer and poet. He came to Russia, and was personally acquainted with the best representatives Russian literature and painting.The protagonist of the novel, a young representative of a noble family, turns out to be poor and lonely by the will of fate. Now he has to watch the life of his new environment, the poor people, their illnesses, thinking, death. The young man concludes that these people are not able to resist the framework and standards imposed on them by the public worldview. He decides that in order to break out of this framework, he must act. Finally, he manages to get out of his life stupor, and he takes up writing a diary. For him, these notes are a kind of spiritual growth, and the answer to questions: what is life and what is death.
6. "Escape from freedom" Erich Fromm
On the example of the main character, the author considers freedom as an internal psychological condition person. The feeling of anxiety in which a person is shackled brings negative and destructive consequences for its owner. That is why freedom for some is a goal, and for others it is a fetter. To get away from this freedom, there are only two ways, according to the author: to serve totalitarian regime, “to be in the herd”, or to strive to realize one’s inner strength, will and potential.7. "On Madness" Leo Tolstoy
A madman is a person who is not understood by others. The author raises such important questions at all times: what is the meaning of life? Why does a person come into this world? Why does he need faith, what to do with it? Or is his life reduced to nothing but satisfaction own desires? It is necessary to realize your mission in life and strive to realize it. However, there is very little time for this. After all, life is a short moment between birth and death.8. "Tangerines" Simone de Beauvoir
The novel tells about the time of the Resistance in France and the collapse of the hopes of the intelligentsia, in connection with the expectations of the revolution. The author brings several main characters to the fore at the same time, who represent their own views on post-war life. Main intrigue novel - a quarrel with subsequent reconciliation of the characters. The writer is trying to determine the place of a woman in this world.9. Blurred by Philip Dick
In a semi-biographical novel American writer combines two genres: psychology and science fiction. The author describes the life of several drug addicts, one of which is completely destroyed by the psyche. He tries to commit suicide. It turns out that one of the "drug addicts" is an undercover special officer who is trying to find out where and who produces such a terrible drug that destroys a person. For the reality of the legend, he himself has to take this mysterious substance. As a result, the policeman has a split personality. He begins to monitor himself and ends up in a closed clinic, in which ... this very drug is produced. Will the brave hero on the verge of sanity be able to complete the task?10. Diary of a Seducer, Søren Kierkegaard
S. Kierkegaard is a famous Danish psychologist, writer, philosopher, founder of existentialism. This novel- the main part of the main philosophical work of the theologian "Either-Or". The work is written in the form of a diary of the protagonist, revealing his strategy of submission in love. The art of seduction, knowledge of the human psyche, dexterity, cunning, introspection - all this the hero combines and describes using the example of his relationship with a young girl seduced by him.
The immediate founders of existentialism are German philosophers Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), K. Jaspers (1883-1969); French philosophers and writers Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973), Albert Camus (1913-1960).
Martin Heidegger, attached to the analysis of the meaning of the category of being, defines being as the existence of things in time. Thus, he laid the foundation for existential philosophy.
The thinker denotes the existence of a person by the term “dasein”, which means the existence of consciousness. Only man knows about his mortality, and only he knows the temporality of his existence. Because of this, he is able to realize his being.
A person, getting into the world and being present in it, experiences a state of care. It appears as a unity of three moments: “being-in-the-world”, “running ahead” and “being-with-in-the-world-existing”. To be an existential being, Heidegger believed, means to be open to the knowledge of beings.
The structure of care, as it were, unites the past, the future and the present. Moreover, Heidegger's past appears as abandonment, the present as doomed to be enslaved by things, and the future as a “project” that affects us. Depending on the priority of one of these elements, being can be authentic or inauthentic.
“Inauthentic being is the world of 'manns'. This is the world of ordinary human existence. This is the world of rumors and ambiguity, the world of vanity, the world of the prosaic struggle for existence, mouse fuss and "cockroach" races. This is a world where a person is engaged in the implementation of a career, love, friendship, all kinds of hobbies. And all this is intended to disguise the true being of a person, which is revealed to him only in extreme situations, called "jaspers". Only in the face of irreversible death does a person discover his own true being, which is existence. The content of existence is the absolute freedom of man. But from the point of view of common sense, absolute freedom looks like complete absurdity. Freedom from natural laws turns out to be nothing but the freedom of suicide. This is how Heidegger understands this question. According to Heidegger, death is the hieroglyph of freedom. Suicide is the highest manifestation of human freedom, hence the famous Heideggerian “freedom for death” (2).
In general, the ideas of the thinker are an attempt to overcome the shortcomings of the old philosophy and find ways to solve the problems of human survival.
In addition to Heidegger, he had a decisive influence on existentialism K. Jaspers. He sought to combine the ideas of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche with the tradition of academic philosophy, but without accepting either Kierkegaard's "fanaticism", Nietzsche's "frenzy", or the "indifferent thinking" of university professors.
The specificity of Jaspers' existentialism comes through in his doctrine of "boundary situations", which subsequently served as the basis for the defense of "cultural-psychological value". According to Jaspers, the true meaning of being is revealed in a person only at moments of the deepest life upheavals (illness, death, inexcusable guilt, etc.). It is during these periods that the "collapse of the cipher" occurs: a person is freed from the burden of his everyday worries (from "existing being-in-the-world") and from his ideal interests and scientific ideas about reality (from "transcendental being-in-itself"). Before him opens the world of his deeply intimate existence ("illumination of existence") and his true experiences of God (transcendent).
The main theme of Jaspers's teachings is man and history as the original dimension of human existence. Unlike the natural sciences, history studies a person, and therefore the methods of study are also different. In order to understand history, it is necessary to be aware of what man is; in turn, human existence is revealed through time, through historicity. It is substantiated by the idea of "axial time" - the heyday of ancient and oriental cultures. According to Jaspers, the idea of unity operates in history, but the complete unification of mankind will never be completed.
Jean-Paul Sartre was a writer. His literary and philosophical works, starting with the novel "Nausea" (1938), are permeated with the ideas of existentialism. The humanity of existentialism according to Sartre, first of all, lies in the fact that this doctrine does not consider a person as an object, therefore, does not put him on a par with inanimate objects. According to Sartre, a person cannot be defined for the simple reason that initially he is nothing. He becomes a man, passing the distance of life and stuffing bumps on a thorny path. At the same time, it “creates itself” with the help of such tools as desire and will. Sartre called this subjectivity, thanks to which man rises above the rest of nature. The French thinker was an atheist, so the slogan "Man is the king of nature" is not at all alien to him.
A reasonable person acquires his essence only in the process of life, and therefore bears full responsibility for the "uselessly lived years."
Sartre conveys this idea very vividly and figuratively as a writer. Only in contrast to philosophical works, in his literary works, morality and politics are experimental testing grounds. Already in "Nausea" the writer seeks to convincingly prove that the world is not filled with meaning, and our "I" is simply aimless. Only through an act of consciousness and choice, "I" is able to give the world meaning and value: "Life acquires meaning if we ourselves give it to it" (6, p. 71).
As for morality, here the French thinker also could not overcome his individualism. While extolling human freedom, Sartre did not give a clear answer to the question: what to do with this freedom?
Gabriel Marcel wrote big number essays on this topic. According to Marcel, a person is an "embodied being", who, realizing his incarnation, feels the mystical connection of the spirit with the body.
“Existential philosophizing inevitably implies awareness of oneself as an embodied, bodily subject “captive” to space and time. For a person, Marcel believed, an ontological need is characteristic - the need to be. This existential being is attainable through concentration, the main objective which lies in the mystical comprehension of the Presence of God. According to Marcel, the only way out of a closed existential state is to know God, to feel one's connection with Him. This knowledge does not occur rationally, but through a personal mystical encounter with God. In comprehending the Mystery of being and gaining the Presence of God lies for a person the opportunity to conquer time and death. It is not rational theories that speak of the Presence of God, but the evidence of the very life of a person who gains faith and renounces the external world and its values ”(4, p. 116).
His principled focus on personal religious experience made dogmatic principles unnecessary, which led to the condemnation of existentialism in the Catholic Church.
Albert Camus does not raise the question of being in general, unlike Heidegger and Jaspers. Camus leaves being aside and focuses on the problem of meaning. What's the point? Human life, history, individual existence.
His views are developed in conditions when faith in God is lost, and it became clear that human existence is finite in the absolute sense, i.e., that the individual is waiting for complete annihilation, absolute nothingness.
In this situation, the conclusion suggests itself that there is no objective meaning human life No, because there is no one to give her this meaning. Indeed, for Camus, as for existentialism in general, the starting point is the individual. This philosophy, as we know, is imbued with the deepest individualism and subjectivism.
According to Camus, man initially appears in his absolute loneliness and finiteness. But if a person is lonely and goes to his inevitable and absolute end, then what sense of his existence can we talk about at all?
The main thesis of the philosopher is that human life is essentially meaningless. Most people live their petty worries, joys and do not give their lives a purposeful meaning. Those who fill life with meaning, sooner or later understand that ahead (where they go with all their might) is death, Nothing. Everyone is mortal - both those who fill life with meaning and those who do not.
The principle of the absurd is the initial postulate of Camus's concept. Camus gives two main proofs of the absurdity, groundlessness of life: contact with death - with it, much that previously seemed important to a person loses its relevance and seems meaningless; contact with the surrounding world, nature - a person is helpless in front of nature that has existed for millions of years.
Camus sees only 2 ways out of the alienated state of absurdity: Camus riot- this is actually a rebellion against reason, a struggle to debunk it, since reason is not able to comprehend the world. This is, first of all, the struggle of man for his human dignity. Pointing to suicide, he immediately rejects it, because. it is a cry of despair that is unable to break through the wall of the absurd. As a result, the meaning of life, according to Camus, is not in the external world (successes, failures, relationships), but in the very existence of a person.
Existentialism (from lat. existentia - existence) - philosophical, and later literary direction 40s - 60s XX century, formed in Western European literature on the eve of the Second World War, in the American and Japanese immediately after it. Based on the philosophy of those who lived in the XIX century. F. Nietzsche, S. Kierkegaard, later N. Berdyaev, on philosophical ideas F.M. Dostoevsky, existentialists depicted a person in a world of disintegrating ties, absurd, devoid of moral foundations past (for example, God), in a state of anxiety, a premonition of the end, that is, in a kind of "boundary state", for example, in the face of death. According to E., human behavior in society, among people, in historical space and time, is motivated not by external influences, but free choice the personality itself, which inevitably imposes on it the responsibility for everything that happens in the world. Endowed with freedom of this magnitude, the hero can either rebel against the meaninglessness surrounding reality or reconcile with it. In this intuitive (rather than rational) choice, according to the existentialists (who rejected the very principle of knowing the world with the help of reason), the true, essential properties of the personality are manifested. One of the leading motives in the literature of E. is the motive of the "tragic gesture": even without believing in the positive result of his act, the character - the bearer of existential consciousness, often nevertheless takes one or another step (feat) in order to "assert himself" in front of his own consciousness and conscience. The largest representatives E. were J.-P. Sartre, A. Camus in France, Abe Kobo in Japan, etc.
Existentialism is one of the darkest philosophical and aesthetic trends of our time. The man in the image of the existentialists is immensely burdened by his existence, he is the bearer of inner loneliness and fear of reality. Life is meaningless, social activity is fruitless, morality is untenable. There is no god in the world, there are no ideals, there is only existence, fate-calling, to which a person stoically and unquestioningly submits; existence is a concern that a person must accept, because the mind is not able to cope with the hostility of being: a person is doomed to absolute loneliness, no one will share his existence.
The practical conclusions of existentialism are monstrous: it makes no difference - to live or not to live, it makes no difference - who to become: an executioner or his victim, a hero or a coward, a conqueror or a slave.
Having proclaimed the absurdity of human existence, existentialism for the first time openly included "death" as a motive for proving mortality and an argument for the doom of a person and his "chosenness". Ethical problems are worked out in detail in existentialism: freedom and responsibility, conscience and sacrifice, the goals of existence and purpose, which are widely included in the lexicon of the art of the century. Existentialism attracts with the desire to understand a person, the tragedy of his destiny and existence; he was approached by many artists different directions and methods.
In the literature of the beginning of the century, existentialism was not so widespread, but it colored the worldview of such writers as Franz Kafka and William Faulkner, under its "auspices" absurdity was fixed in art as a device and as a view of human activity in the context of all history.
36. Stream of Consciousness Literature.
Stream of consciousness - a device in the literature of the 20th century mainly modernist direction, directly reproducing mental life, experiences, associations, claiming to directly reproduce the mental life of consciousness through the combination of all of the above, as well as often non-linearity, brokenness of syntax.
The term “stream of consciousness” belongs to the American idealist philosopher William James: consciousness is a stream, a river in which thoughts, sensations, memories, sudden associations constantly interrupt each other and are bizarrely, “illogically” intertwined (“Foundations of Psychology”, 1890). "Stream of consciousness" often represents the ultimate degree, extreme form"internal monologue", in which objective connections with the real environment are often difficult to restore.
The stream of consciousness creates the impression that the reader, as it were, "eavesdrops" on his experience in the minds of the characters, which gives him direct intimate access to their thoughts. It also includes the representation in the written text of what is neither purely verbal nor purely textual.
This is achieved mainly in two ways - narration and quotation, an internal monologue. At the same time, sensations, experiences, associations often interrupt and intertwine each other, just as it happens in a dream, which often, according to the author, our life actually is - after waking up from sleep, we still still sleep.
The narrative, narrative way of conveying the "stream of consciousness" for the most part consists of various types of sentences, including "psychological narration", which narratively describes the emotional and psychological state of one or another person. actor and free indirect discourse - indirect reasoning as a special manner of presenting thoughts and views fictional character from his position by combining the grammatical and other features of the style of his direct speech with the features of the author's indirect messages. For example, not directly - "She thought:" Tomorrow I will stay here "", and not indirectly - "She thought that she would stay here the next day", but by the combination - "She would stay here tomorrow", which allows, as it were, standing outside of the events and the third-person speaking author to express the point of view of his character in the first person, sometimes with the addition of irony, commentary, etc.
The internal monologue, on the other hand, is a direct quotation of the hero's silent oral speech, not necessarily in quotation marks. The term " internal monologue" is often mistaken for a synonym for the term "stream of consciousness". However, a complete understanding of this literary form is possible only upon reaching the state of "reading between the lines", that is, "non-verbal insight" into a given poetry or prose, which makes this genre related to other highly intellectual forms of art.
An example of one of the early attempts to use this technique is the interrupted and repetitive internal monologue. main character in the last parts of Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina.
IN classical works“stream of consciousness” (novels by M. Proust, W. Wolfe, J. Joyce), attention to the subjective, hidden in the human psyche, is sharpened to the limit; a violation of the traditional narrative structure, a shift in time plans take on the character of a formal experiment. Central work"stream of consciousness" in literature - "Ulysses" (1922) by Joyce, which demonstrated both the peak and the exhaustion of the possibilities of the "stream of consciousness" method: a study inner life of a person is combined in it with the blurring of the boundaries of character, psychological analysis often becomes an end in itself.
Existentialism in Literature (Literature of Existentialism) - literary movement, unfolding in the 30 -60s. 20th century and having as its core the most important concepts and ideas of the philosophy of existentialism. Representatives of this philosophical trend (M. Heidegger, K. Jaspers, G. Marcel, N. Berdyaev, L. Shestov, J.-P. Sartre, A. Camus, etc.) put the problem of the meaning of human existence in the center of attention (the word " ex(s)istentia" translates from Latin as "existence"), the state of experiencing by the individual of his "being in the world". According to existentialism, a lonely, “abandoned” person in the world usually lives in the absurd, i.e. unconscious and covered with false goals life. A person discovers the true essence of his being in moments of crisis, when he finds himself on the border of life and death (the so-called existential borderline situation), i.e. is experiencing a serious illness, mortal danger, loss of loved ones, etc. It was then that the deceptive veil of meaningless everyday life falls from his existence, and a person realizes his loneliness, makes a moral and / or existential choice, for which he is responsible with all his life. later life. Existentialist mentality left a vivid imprint on the lyrics, prose and dramaturgy of this period. They, in particular, are clearly seen in the artistic work of A. Camus, J.-P. Sartre, A. Malraux, J. Anuya, M. de Unamuno, A. Murdoch, W. Golding, G. Nossac, Kobo Abe, E. Ionesco, S. Beckett, M. Frisch, F. Dürrenmatt and others. Existentialist ideas were a factor and source of intellectualization of literature and artistic experiments related to this process, aimed at adequately conveying the corresponding complex of worldview concepts.
existentialism (lat. exsistentia - existence), a philosophical and literary trend in Western Europe during the 2nd World War and after it. The philosophy of existentialism implies an understanding of a person as an existence that determines its own existence: a person is left to himself, only he decides what to do, and only he is responsible for his actions. Existentialist philosophers were J.P. Sartre, K. Jaspers, M. Heidegger, M. de Unamuno, and others. Existentialism in literature involves the analysis of human behavior in crisis situations, when responsibility for one's actions is manifested most clearly. For example, the heroes of A. Camus are depicted at a moment of extreme tension: in the story "The Outsider" the protagonist committed an unreasonable murder, in the novel "The Plague" modern city suddenly it turns out to be covered by an epidemic of plague, it is closed and they try to fight the disease, and in this situation the human qualities of the heroes, their personal characteristics become obvious. One of the main themes of existentialism in literature is the loss of the meaning of life, the deterioration of spiritual values that are no longer valuable to anyone, the crisis of the worldview. So, the protagonist of the novel Nausea by J. P. Sartre, Antoine Roquentin, ceases to perceive the world around him as normal, all objects seem to him a sticky and viscous mass that causes disgust. The all-consuming loneliness of a person, his unrestricted freedom leads to permissiveness and, ultimately, to death. The allegorical drama by A. Camus "Caligula" is dedicated to this idea. A crisis situation, often fictional or far-fetched, exposes human nature, and this nature is not always attractive. So, in the novel by W. Golding "Lord of the Flies" on a desert island as a result of a plane crash there are many teenagers, without a single adult. Their joy of freedom, initially a cheerful life, soon turns into a feud, ending in murder. Sometimes fantastic, grotesque images are used to depict the tragic freedom, “abandonment” of a person in the world: in B. Viana’s Foam of Days, the hero, in order to cure his wife (a lily grows inside her and strangles her), works at an arms factory: he warms with his body a weapon planted in the ground to grow. The absurdity of the actions and remarks of the heroes further emphasizes the loneliness and tragedy of their situation.
Existentialism is not literary school, only J.P. Sartre and A. Camus recognized their belonging to it. The mood of existentialism can be found in the prose of S. de Beauvoir, N. Mailer, A. Murdoch, W. Golding, H. E. Nossak and others. The writers F. M. Dostoevsky and F. Kafka, philosophers L. Shestov, N. A. Berdyaev, S. Kierkegaard. In the second floor. 1950s existentialism is gradually losing its influence and popularity, but its main motives have been inherited " new novel"," theater of the absurd ", etc.
Literature and language. Modern illustrated encyclopedia. - M.: Rosman. Under the editorship of prof. Gorkina A.P. 2006.
