The history of the emergence and essence of the concept of the lost generation. See what the "Lost Generation" is in other dictionaries

The theme of war in the work of E. Hemingway

“Lost Generation” “Lost Generation” is a definition applied to a group of foreign writers who published a series of books in the 1920s that expressed disappointment in capitalist civilization, exacerbated by the tragic experience of World War I. The expression "lost generation" was first used by the American writer Gertrude Stein in a conversation with E. Hemingway. Then the “lost generation” began to be called people who went through the First World War, spiritually traumatized, disbelieving in the jingoistic ideals that once fascinated them, sometimes internally devastated, acutely feeling their restlessness and alienation from society. The “Lost Generation” is so named because, having gone through the circles of an unnecessary, senseless war, it lost faith in the natural need to continue its kind, lost faith in its own and future life. [29;17]

The democratically minded intellectuals of America, France, England, Germany, Russia and other countries involved in the war were internally convinced that the war was wrong, unnecessary, not their own. This was felt by many, that's where this spiritual closeness between people who stood during the war along different sides barricade.

People who went through the meat grinder of the war, those who managed to survive it, returned home, leaving on the battlefields not only one arm, one leg - physical health -, but also something more. Ideals were lost, faith in life, in the future. What seemed solid and unshakable - culture, humanism, reason, individual freedom of the individual - fell apart like a house of cards, turned into a void.

The chain of times was broken and one of the most significant and profound changes in the moral and psychological atmosphere was the appearance of the "lost generation" - a generation that had lost faith in those lofty concepts and feelings, in respect of which it was brought up, rejected the devalued values. For this generation, "all gods are dead, all battles" are left behind, all "faith in man has been undermined."

Hemingway took the words "" You are all a lost generation!" epigraph to his novel "Fiesta (The Sun Also Rises)", and the formula began to walk around the world, gradually losing its real content and becoming a universal designation of the time and the people of this time. But between people who have experienced one and the same same life experience, lay a sharp boundary. Outwardly, everyone looked the same: demonstrative cynicism, faces twisted in an ironic smile, disappointed, tired intonations. But what for some was a true tragedy, for others became a mask, a game, a common style of behavior.

They were traumatized, they really experienced the loss of ideals, in which, first of all, they sacredly believed, as a personal, unrelenting pain, they experienced disorder, discord in the modern world. But cherish it carefully state of mind weren't going to; they wanted to work, not idly talk about losses and unfulfilled plans.

General meaning The creative efforts of representatives of the "lost generation" - writers can be defined as the desire to bring a person out of the power of ethical dogma, which requires total conformism and practically destroys the value of the human person. To do this, it was necessary to find, develop, create a new moral principle, a new ethical norm and even a new philosophy of being. They were united by a fierce disgust for the war itself and for those foundations and principles (social, economic, political, ideological, moral), which in their development inevitably led to a universal tragedy. They simply hated them and brushed them aside. In the minds of the writers of the "lost generation", the idea of ​​the need to fence off from the aforementioned principles, to bring a person out of the herd state, so that he could realize himself as a person and develop his own ideas, matured. life principles not subject to the "established values" of an antagonistic society. The heroes of these writers never resemble puppets submissive to someone else's will - lively, independent characters, with their own characteristics, with their own intonations, most often ostensibly indifferent and ostensibly ironic. What are the characteristics of those who are called the "lost generation"? Representatives of the "lost generation" are, in the overwhelming majority, young people who have just finished school, and sometimes have not had time to finish it. [ 20; 65]

Honest and somewhat naive young men, believing in the loud words of their teachers about progress and civilization, having read the corrupt press and heard a lot of chauvinistic speeches, went to the front with the consciousness that they were fulfilling a lofty and noble mission. Many went to war voluntarily. The epiphany was terrible; Faced with undisguised reality, fragile youthful ideals were shattered. The cruel and senseless war immediately dispelled their illusions, showed the emptiness and falsity of grandiloquent words about duty, justice, humanism. But refusing to believe the chauvinist propaganda, yesterday's schoolchildren do not understand the meaning of what is happening. They don't understand why people different nationalities must kill each other. They begin to gradually free themselves from nationalistic hatred for the soldiers of other armies, seeing in them the same unfortunate ordinary people, workers, peasants, which they themselves were. The spirit of internationalism awakens in the boys. Post-war encounters with former adversaries further strengthen internationalism in the "lost generation". [ 18; 37]

As a result of long discussions, the soldiers begin to understand that war serves as a means of enriching some people, they understand its unjust nature and come to the denial of war. . The experience of those who went through the meat grinder of the First World War determined for the rest of their lives their hatred for militarism, for cruel, senseless violence, contempt for the state system, which gives rise to and blesses murderous massacres. The writers of the "lost generation" created their anti-war works, considering this work as their moral duty not only to the fallen and the survivors, but also to future generations. [ 18; 43]

Best Representatives of the "lost generation" show firmness and courage in all life's trials, whether it be military everyday life with terrible shelling, mine explosions, cold and hunger, the death of comrades in trenches and hospitals, or difficult post-war years when there is no work, no money, no life itself. The heroes meet all difficulties in silence, supporting each other, fighting with all their might for their lives. The combination of "lostness" and personal courage in resisting hostile circumstances is the grain of the worldview that underlies their character. The "fulcrum" of people crippled by the war is front-line camaraderie, friendship. Comradeship is the only value generated by war. In the face of mortal danger and hardship, fellowship remains a strong force. The soldiers cling to this comradeship as the only thread that connects them with the pre-war past, with peaceful life.

After the return to civilian life, where the former front-line soldiers search for the "road to a new life" in different ways, and where class and other differences between them are revealed, the whole illusory nature of this concept is gradually revealed.

But those who remained faithful to front-line friendship strengthened and enriched it in the difficult years of peaceful and pre-war life. Comrades at the first call rushed to the aid of their friends in the fight against the emerging fascism.

After returning from the war, former soldiers feel confused. Many of them went to the front from school, they have no profession, it is difficult for them to find a job, they cannot get a job in life. former soldiers no one needs. Evil reigns in the world and its reign has no end. Once deceived, they are no longer able to believe in goodness. Surrounding reality is perceived by former warriors as a mosaic of large and small human tragedies, which embodied a man’s fruitless pursuit of happiness, a hopeless search for harmony within himself, doomed to failure of a person’s attempts to find some enduring spiritual values, a moral ideal. [ 20; 57]

Realizing that nothing had changed in the world, that all the beautiful slogans calling on them to die for "democracy", "motherland" were lies, that they were deceived - they became confused, lost faith in anything, lost their old illusions and did not found new ones, and, devastated, began to burn their lives, exchanging it for unrestrained drunkenness, debauchery, the search for more and more new sensations. All this gave rise to the loneliness of an individual among people, loneliness as a result of an unconscious desire to go beyond the world of conformists who accept the modern order of things as the norm or universal inevitability. Loneliness is tragic, it's not just living alone, but the inability to understand another and be understood. Lonely people are, as it were, surrounded by a blank wall through which it is impossible to get through either from inside or outside. Many of the "lost" could not stand the struggle for life, someone committed suicide, someone got into crazy house, someone adapted and became an accomplice of revanchists.

In 1929, the novel by E.M. Remarque (Erich Maria Remarque June 22, 1898, Osnabrück - September 25, 1970) “All Quiet on the Western Front” was published, in which the author sincerely and excitedly told the truth about the war. And to this day it is one of the most striking anti-war books. Remarque showed the war in all its terrible manifestations: pictures of attacks, artillery duels, many killed and maimed in this hellish meat grinder. This book is woven from the personal life experience of the writer. Together with other young men born in 1898, Remarque was drafted into the army in 1916 from school. Remarque, who participated in the battles in France and on other sectors of the Western Front, was wounded several times. [ eleven; 9] In August 1917, he ended up in the infirmary in Duisburg and, in letters sent from there to his front-line comrades, captured sad pictures that paved the way for creating such memorable episodes of the novel ten years later. This novel contains a strong and unconditional condemnation of the spirit of militarism that reigned in Kaiser Germany and contributed to the outbreak of war in 1914. This book is about the recent past, but it is turned to the future: life itself turned it into a warning, because the revolution of 1918, which overthrew the Kaiser regime, did not eradicate the spirit of militarism. Moreover, nationalist and other reactionary forces used Germany's defeat in World War I to propagate revanchism.

Closely tied to the anti-war spirit of All Quiet on the Western Front is its internationalism. Soldiers, heroes of the novel, are increasingly thinking about what (or who) makes them kill people of other nationalities. Many scenes in the novel tell of the camaraderie and friendship of the soldiers. Seven classmates got to the front, they fight in one company, together they spend rare hours of rest, train recruits together to protect them from imminent death in the very first minutes of the battle, endure the horrors of war together, go on attacks together, sit in the trenches during artillery shelling, they bury their dead comrades together. And out of seven classmates - the hero remains alone. [ 18; 56]

Its meaning is revealed in the first lines of the epilogue: when he was killed main character, on the entire front it was so quiet and calm that military reports consisted of only one phrase: "All Quiet on the Western Front". With the light hand of Remarque, this formula, imbued with bitter sarcasm, acquired the character phraseological turnover. Capacious, with a deep subtext, the title of the novel allows the reader to expand the scope of the narrative and think of the author's ideas: if in the days when, from the "high" point of view of the high command, everything remains unchanged at the front, so much terrible happens, then what can be said about periods of fierce , bloody battles? [ 19; 12]

Remarque's main novels are internally linked. It is, as it were, an ongoing chronicle of a single human destiny in a tragic era, the chronicle is largely autobiographical. Like his heroes, Remarque went through the meat grinder of the 1st World War, and this experience for the rest of his life determined their hatred for militarism, for cruel, senseless violence, contempt for the state system, which gives rise to and blesses murderous massacres.

Richard Aldington (Richard Aldington July 8, 1892 - July 27, 1962) belonged to the post-war or "lost" generation of writers, since the heyday of his work refers to the 20-30s. 20th century Poet, short story writer, novelist, biographer, translator, literary critic, Aldington was the spokesman for the "lost generation", the spiritual turmoil caused by the war. importance played in the work of Aldington the First World War. [ thirty; 2] "Death of a Hero" (1929) - the first novel of the writer, which immediately gained fame far beyond the borders of England. Outwardly, according to the plot design, the novel fits into the framework biographical novel(this is the story of the life of an individual from birth to death), and in terms of its problems it belongs to the anti-war novel. At the same time, the novel breaks the boundaries of all the usual genre definitions. So, considering the problem of a military catastrophe, getting to the bottom of its cause, one can notice that less than half of the space is allocated to the actual front-line scenes in it. The author analyzes the life story of his hero in fragments, groping his way through disparate influences, but traces it from beginning to end, warning in advance of a tragic outcome. However, individual history appears as a typical history, as the fate of a generation. The main stages of this development, the complex process of character formation, the path of individual destiny, taken in interconnections, are presented as an example of by no means a particular case. [ 9; 34]

The hero of the novel is a young man, George Winterbourne, who at the age of 16 read all the poets, starting with Chaucer, an individualist and esthete, who sees around him the hypocrisy of “family morality”, flashy social contrasts, and decadent art. Once on the front, he becomes serial number 31819, convinced of the criminal nature of the war. At the front, no personalities are needed, no talents are needed, only obedient soldiers are needed there. The hero could not and did not want to adapt, did not learn to lie and kill. Arriving on vacation, he looks at life and society in a completely different way, acutely feeling his loneliness: neither his parents, nor his wife, nor his girlfriend could comprehend the measure of his despair, understand his poetic soul, or at least not injure her with calculation and efficiency. The war broke him, the desire to live was gone, and in one of the attacks, he exposes himself to a bullet. The motives of George's "strange" and completely unheroic death are obscure to those around him: few people knew about his personal tragedy. His death was rather a suicide, a voluntary exit from the hell of cruelty and shamelessness, an honest choice of an uncompromising talent that did not fit into the war. Aldington seeks to analyze as deeply as possible psychological condition hero in the main moments of his life, to show how he parted with illusions and hopes. The family and the school, founded on lies, tried to mold Winterbhorn into the militant singer of imperialism. military theme and the consequences of the war run like a red thread through all the novels and stories of Aldington. All their heroes are connected with the war, all of them reflect its harmful effects.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896-1940) was an American writer best known for his novels and short stories depicting the so-called American Jazz Age of the 1920s. The work of F. S. Fitzgerald is one of the most remarkable pages of American literature of the 20th century at its highest peak. His contemporaries were Dreiser and Faulkner, Forest and Hemingway, Sandburg and T. Wolf. In this brilliant galaxy, through the efforts of which American literature in the 20s and 30s of the twentieth century turned into one of the largest literatures in the world, Fitzgerald plays a bright role. A writer of extraordinary subtlety, he chronologically opened new era in development domestic literature, the first to speak on behalf of the generation that entered into life after the global catastrophe of the First World War, capturing in deeply poetic, at the same time very expressive images not only his dreams and disappointments, but also the inevitability of the collapse of ideals that are far from genuine humanistic values.[ 31; 8]

Fitzgerald's literary success was indeed early and noisy. He wrote his first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), immediately after the end of his army service in Alabama. The novel expressed the mood of those who, without having time to get to the front, nevertheless survived the war as a turning point in history that affected everyone who had to live in these years when the usual order of things and the traditional system of values ​​were undermined. The book told of a "lost generation" for which "all gods have died, all wars have died down, all faith has disappeared." Realizing that after a historical catastrophe, the former forms of human relations became impossible, the characters of Fitzgerald's first novels and stories feel a spiritual vacuum around them and they convey the thirst for intense emotional life, freedom from traditional moral restrictions and taboos, characteristic of the Jazz Age, freedom from traditional moral restrictions and taboos, but also spiritual vulnerability. , uncertainty about the future, the outlines of which are lost behind the swiftness of the changes taking place in the world. [ 31; 23]

John Roderigo Dos Passos (January 14, 1896, Chicago - September 28, 1970, Baltimore) was an American writer. He was a nurse during the First World War. Participated in the war of 1914-1918 in the French, Italian and American armies, where he revealed himself as a pacifist. In his work "Three Soldiers" (1921), the author acts as a major realist artist. He gives a deep analysis of the psychology of Americans in the war era, describing with particular persuasiveness the state of social crisis that became typical of the advanced elements of the army towards the end of the war. His heroes were a musician, a farmer and a lens seller - people from different social strata, with different views and concepts, who lived in different parts of the country and were united by terrible army everyday life. Each of them, one way or another, rebelled against his destiny, against violent death, lawlessness and humiliation, against the suppression of individual will by a powerful army machine. An entire generation suffered in their face. The tragic "I" that sounded from the pages of the books of Dos Passos's contemporaries turned into a tragic "we" for the writer. [ 18; 22]

The best representatives of the "lost generation" have not lost their humanistic feelings: conscience, human dignity, a heightened sense of justice, compassion, fidelity to loved ones, self-sacrifice. These features of the "lost generation" manifested themselves in society at all times. critical moments history: during World War II and after it, during "local wars". The value of works about the "lost generation" is enormous. The writers told the truth about this generation, showed their heroes as they really were with all their positive and negative features. Writers influenced the worldview of readers, they condemned the foundations of an antagonistic society, resolutely and unconditionally condemned militarism, and called for internationalism. With their works, they wanted to prevent new wars, to warn people about their exceptional danger to humanity. At the same time, the work of the writers of the "lost generation" is full of humanistic aspirations, they call on a person to remain a person with high moral character: faith in the power of courage, honesty, in the value of stoicism, in the nobility of spirit, in the power of a high idea, true friendship, immutable ethical standards. [ 22; 102]

Ernest Hemingway as a representative of the "lost generation"

Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899 - 1961) - American writer, laureate Nobel Prize in Literature 1954. Ernest Hemingway took part in military operations on several occasions. Ernest Hemingway participated in World War I, which he volunteered for. In those years when Europe was already engulfed in war, in the United States, the consciousness of its power and invulnerability gave rise to a mood of self-satisfied isolationism and hypocritical pacifism. On the other hand, a conscious anti-militarism was also growing among the workers, among the intelligentsia. [ 16; 7] However, since the beginning of the century the United States has become an imperialist and even colonial power. Both the government and the biggest monopolies were interested in the markets, they jealously followed the redistribution of colonies, spheres of influence, etc. The biggest capitalists carried out increased exports of capital. The House of Morgan was quite openly an Entente banker. But official propaganda, this mouthpiece of monopolies, processing public opinion, screamed louder and louder about German atrocities: the attack on little Serbia, the destruction of Louvain, and finally, the submarine war and the sinking of the Lusitania. The newspapers insisted more and more insistently that the United States take part in the "war to save democracy," in the "war to end wars." Hemingway, like many of his peers, rushed to the front. But he was stubbornly not accepted into the American army, and therefore, together with a friend, in April 1918 he enlisted in one of the sanitary detachments that the United States sent to the Italian army. [33; 10]

It was one of the most unreliable sectors of the western front. And since the transfer of American units was slow, these voluntary medical columns were also supposed to display American uniforms and thereby lift the spirits of the reluctant Italian soldiers. Soon Hemingway's convoy came to a site near Foss Alta, on the Piave River. But he strove for the front line, and he was instructed to distribute gifts through the trenches - tobacco, mail, brochures. On the night of July 9, Hemingway climbed out to an advanced observation post. There he was covered by an Austrian mortar shell, which caused a severe shell shock and many minor wounds. Two Italians next to him were killed. After regaining consciousness, Hemingway dragged the third, who was badly wounded, to the trenches. He was discovered by a searchlight and hit by a machine-gun burst that injured his knee and shin. The wounded Italian was killed. Upon inspection, twenty-eight fragments were removed from Hemingway right there on the spot, and in total they counted two hundred and thirty-seven. In Milan, where he was being treated, Hemingway experienced his first serious feelings for Agnes von Kurowski, a tall, dark-haired New York-born nurse. Agnes von Kurowski was in many ways the "model" for nurse Catherine Barkley in A Farewell to Arms! Leaving the hospital, Hemingway secured an appointment as a lieutenant in an infantry shock unit, but it was already October, and a truce was soon concluded - Hemingway was awarded an Italian military cross and a silver medal for valor. Then, in Italy in 1918, Hemingway was not yet a writer, but a soldier, but there is no doubt that the impressions and experiences of this six months at the front not only left an indelible mark on his entire further way, but also directly reflected in a number of his works. In 1918, Hemingway returned home to the United States in the halo of a hero, one of the first wounded, one of the first awarded. Maybe for some time this flattered the pride of the young veteran, but very soon he got rid of this illusion as well. [33; eleven]

Later, he returned to the war more than once, sorting through the sensations experienced in his memory. Experienced at the front left in the memory of the writer, in the very worldview an unhealed wound. Hemingway was always attracted by the depiction of people in extreme situations, when the true human character manifests itself, at the “moment of truth”, as he liked to say, the highest physical and spiritual stress, a collision with mortal danger, when the true essence of a person is highlighted with special relief.

He argued that war is the most fertile topic, because it concentrates. The idea that military experience is extremely important for the writer, that a few front-line days can be more significant than many "peaceful" years, he repeatedly repeated. However, the process of gaining clarity of understanding true character and the nature of the catastrophe that broke out was not quick and easy for him. It happened gradually, throughout the first post-war decade, and was largely stimulated by reflections on the fate of the front-line soldiers, those who would be called the "lost generation." He constantly thought about his experiences at the front, evaluated, weighed, let his impressions "cool down", tried to be as objective as possible. [ 16; 38] Further, the theme of the First World War can be traced in his work - he works a lot in Germany, France, Lausanne. He writes about the unrest caused by the fascist regime, about a resigned France. Later, the author of the novels Farewell to Arms! and “For Whom the Bell Tolls” will take part in the Second World War, in the British aviation, which fought against the pilots of the “suicide bombers” V-1, will lead the movement of French partisans and will actively fight against Germany, for which in 1947 he will be awarded a bronze medal. Thus, a journalist with such rich military experience was able to delve deeper into the international problem than many of his contemporaries.

A brave reporter, better known as a talented writer, Ernest Hemingway wrote his reports from a hot spot - Spain, engulfed in civil war. Often he surprisingly accurately noticed all the features of the course of the war and even predicted its possible development. He proved himself not only as an author of impressive landscapes, but also as a capable analyst.

The problem of the "lost generation" is developed in full force in E. Hemingway's novel "Fiesta (The Sun Also Rises)", published in 1926. It was possible to write a novel in such a deadline only with the incredible capacity for work of Hemingway. But there was another circumstance, even more significant - he wrote a novel about his generation, about people whom he knew to the last trait of their character, whom he observed for several years, living next to them, drinking with them, arguing, having fun, going to a bullfight together in Spain. He wrote about himself, investing in the image of Jake Barnes (Jake Barnes) his personal experience, a lot experienced by himself. At one time, Hemingway decided to abandon the name of the novel "Fiesta" and decided to call it "The Lost Generation", but then changed his mind, put the words about the "lost generation" as an epigraph, and next to it he put another - a quote from Ecclesiastes about the land that abides forever. [ 17; 62]

Working on the novel, Hemingway came from life, from living characters, so the heroes of his novel are not one-dimensional, not smeared with the same paint - pink or black, they are living people who have both positive and negative traits character. Hemingway’s novel captures the characteristic features of a well-known part of the “lost generation”, that part of it that was really morally destroyed by the war. The "lost generation" is heterogeneous.

Characters appear on the pages of the novel - named and unnamed - who are indisputable and definable at first sight. The very ones who are fashionable with their "lostness", flaunting "courageous" lack of ideality, "soldier's" directness, even though they only know about the war by hearsay. The heroes of Hemingway's novel have absorbed the features of many people he knows; in the novel, a many-sided and beautiful image of the land arose, the image of Spain, which he knew and loved. [ 14; 76]

All Hemingway's work is autobiographical and his own experiences, worries, thoughts and views on events in the world are expressed in his works. So, the novel "A Farewell to Arms!" is dedicated to the events of the First World War, in which the main character deserts, but not because of his human qualities, but because the war is disgusting to him, all he wants is to live with his beloved woman, and in the war he only cripples himself. Lieutenant Frederick Henry is largely autobiographical. When creating this novel, Hemingway was in the highest degree self-critical, continuously corrected, reworked what was written. He made 32 versions of the novel's ending until he settled on a happy ending. It was, he admitted, a painful job. A lot of effort went into coming up with the name. [ 15; 17]

Immediately after its release, the novel topped the bestseller list. The novel marked the beginning of Hemingway's worldwide fame. This is one of the most read works literature of the 20th century. The novel "Farewell to arms!" people of all generations read with equal interest. The war occupied a significant place in the work of Hemingway. The attitude of the writer to the imperialist wars was unequivocal. In his novel, Hemingway shows all the horrors of war, which is a mosaic of large and small human tragedies. The story is told from Henry's point of view and begins with descriptions of front-line life in quiet days. There is a lot of personal, experienced and experienced by Hemingway in this image. Lieutenant Henry is not opposed to war as such. Moreover, in his view, this is the courageous craft of a real man. Once on the front, he experiences the loss of illusions, deep disappointment in the war. Personal experience, friendly communication with Italian soldiers and officers awaken him from chauvinistic frenzy and lead to the understanding that war is a senseless, brutal massacre. The disorderly retreat of the Italian army symbolizes the lack of harmony in the world. In order to avoid being shot by an absurd sentence scrawled with an indifferent hand in a pocket notebook, Frederick makes an attempt to escape. He succeeds. Henry's flight is a decision to get out of the game, to sever ridiculous ties with society. He breaks his oath, but his military duty is portrayed in the book as a duty to his subordinates. But neither Frederick himself nor his subordinates realized their own duty in relation to the war in general, did not see the point in it. They are united only by a sense of comradeship and genuine mutual respect. Whatever Hemingway wrote about, he always returned to his main problem - to a person in the tragic trials that befell him. Hemingway professed the philosophy of stoicism, paying tribute to human courage in the most disastrous circumstances.[ 21; 16]

The theme of the Civil War in Hemingway's work did not arise by chance. It grew out of reports about Italy on the basis of the author's hatred for the fascist regime and the desire to resist him in any way possible. It is surprising that an American, at first glance - an outside observer, so deeply and sincerely perceived the mentalities of completely different peoples. The danger of the nationalist ideas of fascist Italy and Germany became clear to him from the very beginning. The desire for the liberation of their territory by the patriots of Spain became close, and the lesser threat to humanity from communism became obvious.

Spain unusual country. By itself, it represents the fragmentation known to the whole world - Catalonia, Valencia, Andalusia - all the inhabitants of the provinces have been competing with each other for a long history and in every possible way emphasize their own independence. But during the civil war, as Hemingway writes, this played significant role. It would seem that such a division should have a negative effect on the course of hostilities, the inability to contact neighboring provinces usually frightens and reduces the enthusiasm of the fighters. But in Spain, this fact played a diametrically opposite role - even in the war, representatives of different provinces compete with each other, and this leads to the fact that the isolation of the regions from each other only gave strength to the fighting spirit - everyone wanted to show their heroism, which has no equal among the heroism of his neighbors. Ernest Hemingway mentions this fact in a series of Spanish reports dedicated to Madrid. He writes about the enthusiasm that arose among the officers after the enemy cut them off from neighboring sectors of the front. The Spanish Civil War began during a conflict between the Communist Party backed by two great powers - Soviet Union and the US and the party led by General Franco - enlisted the support of Germany and Italy. And in fact, this was the first open opposition to the fascist regime. Hemingway, who fiercely hated this ideology and fought against it, instantly took the side of his like-minded people. Even then, the writer understood that these actions would not turn into a “small victorious war”, the fight against fascism would not end in Spain, and much larger military operations would unfold. [25; 31]

In the play "The Fifth Column" and the novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls" the author openly criticizes fascism. Hemingway criticizes everything in a dictator - from decisions to appearance to decisive action taken in the government of the people. He makes him a person who reads a French-English dictionary upside down, acting in front of peasant women duellist. In his articles, the writer repeatedly urged the world to pay attention to the emerging phenomenon in order to chop it off at the root. After all, the American understood that the fascist regime would not disappear in a year and a half, as many of his contemporaries believed. The writer was able to adequately assess the policies of Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. He hated fascism and fought against it in every possible way - both as a journalist and as a voluntary participant in hostilities. In his struggle against fascism, he even went so far as to join the Communist Party without sharing its views. Since communism was seen as the only equivalent opposition to the aggressor, to act on his side assumed greatest success in such a fight. In that Civil War had a dramatic character for him - he was forced to take the side of other people's views, moving away from his own. The writer transfers the same conflicting feelings to Robert Jordan, the main character of the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. His hero is given the task to cross the front line and, when the offensive of the Republican army begins, with the help of a partisan detachment, blow up the bridge in the rear of the Nazis in order to prevent them from sending reinforcements. It would seem that the plot is too simple and uncomplicated for a big novel, but Hemingway in this novel decided a number of moral problems, solved them for myself in a new way. And first of all, it was the problem of the value of human life in relation to the moral duty, voluntarily assumed in the name of a lofty idea. The novel is permeated with a sense of tragedy. His hero Robert Jordan lives with this feeling. The threat of death hovers over the entire partisan detachment either in the form of fascist planes or in the form of fascist patrols appearing at the location of the detachment. But this is not the tragedy of helplessness and doom in the face of death, as it was in the novel "A Farewell to Arms!"

Realizing that the fulfillment of the task may end in the death of Jordan, nevertheless, he claims that everyone must fulfill his duty, and much depends on the fulfillment of duty - the fate of the war, and maybe more. "So, in place of the individualism of Frederick Henry, who thinks only about saving his life and his love, the new hero Hemingway, in the conditions of a willow war, not imperialist, but revolutionary, the main thing is a sense of duty to humanity, to lofty idea struggle for freedom. Yes, and love in the novel rises to other heights, intertwined with the idea of ​​public duty. [33; thirty]

The idea of ​​duty to people permeates the entire work. And if in the novel "A Farewell to Arms!" Hemingway, through the mouth of his city, denied "high" words, then when applied to the war in Spain, these words regain their original value. The tragic sound of the novel ends in the epilogue - Jordan completes the task, the bridge is blown up, but he himself is seriously injured.

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In his new novel Fiesta, which was very important to him, Hemingway as an epigraph, as mentioned above, used the recent statement of the famous writer, his friend Gertrude Stein: "You are all a lost generation." For a while, he even considered calling the novel The Lost Generation. Different versions of Hemingway's account of the episode that brought to life Gertrude Stein's remark shed some light on the change in their relationship. In an unpublished preface, written in September 1925, when he had just finished editing the manuscript, he talks about this episode in a rather straightforward manner. Gertrude Stein traveled in the summer in the department of Ain and parked her car in a garage in a small village. One young mechanic seemed to her especially diligent. She complimented him on the garage owner and asked how he managed to find such good workers. The owner of the garage replied that he taught him himself; guys this age learn with alacrity. These are those who are now from twenty-two to thirty, those who went through the war - you can’t teach them anything. They are "une generation perdue", so the owner of the garage said. In his preface, Hemingway made it clear that his generation was "lost" in a different way than the "lost generations" of yesteryear.

The second version of the incident, given by Hemingway thirty years later in "A Holiday That Is Always With You," is told with a different mood, and the definition itself is perceived very ironically. According to this later version, the young mechanic is a representative of the "lost generation" who spent a year at the front. He wasn't "experienced" enough in his business, and Gertrude Stein complained about him to the owner of the garage, perhaps, Hemingway suggests, because the mechanic simply did not want to serve her out of turn. The patron reprimanded him, saying: "All of you are generation perdue!" According to this version, Gertrude Stein accused the entire "lost generation" - including Hemingway - of having no respect for anything and that they would all inevitably get drunk.

Gertrude Stein's account of the "lost generation" story is less detailed than Hemingway's. She first heard this expression from the owner of the Pernollet Hotel in Belle, a city in the department of Ain: “He said that every man becomes a civilized being between eighteen and twenty-five years old. If he does not go through the necessary experience at this age, he will not become a civilized person. Men who went to war at the age of eighteen have missed this period and can never become civilized. They are the Lost Generation.

After the end of the First World War, a whole literary trend developed in European and American literatures associated with the description of the tragedy of the “lost generation”. Its appearance was recorded in 1929, when three novels were published: "The Death of a Hero" by the Englishman Aldington, "On Western front without change" by the German Remarque and "Farewell to arms!" American Hemingway. In literature, the lost generation was defined, named so with the light hand of Hemingway, who put the epigraph to his first novel Fiesta. The Sun Also Rises" (1926) words by Gertrude Stein "You are all a lost generation." These words turned out to be an accurate definition of the general feeling of loss and longing that the authors of these books brought with them, having gone through the war. There was so much despair and pain in their novels that they were defined as a mournful cry for those killed in the war, even if the heroes were fleeing from bullets. This is a requiem for a whole generation that did not take place because of the war, on which the ideals and values ​​that were taught from childhood crumbled like fake castles. The war exposed the lies of many familiar dogmas and state institutions, such as the family and the school, turned false moral values ​​inside out and plunged young men who grew old into an abyss of unbelief and loneliness Foreign literature of the twentieth century. M., 1997, p.76.

The heroes of the books of the writers of the “lost generation”, as a rule, are very young, one might say, from the school bench and belong to the intelligentsia. For them, the path of Barbusse and his "clarity" seem unattainable. They are individualists and, like the heroes of Hemingway, rely only on themselves, on their own will, and if they are capable of a decisive social act, then separately concluding a “treaty with the war” and deserting. Remarque's heroes find solace in love and friendship without giving up Calvados. This is their peculiar form of protection from the world, which accepts war as a way to resolve political conflicts. The heroes of the literature of the “lost generation” are inaccessible to unity with the people, the state, the class, as was observed in Barbusse. The Lost Generation countered the world that deceived them with bitter irony, rage, uncompromising and all-encompassing criticism of the foundations of a false civilization, which determined the place of this literature in realism, despite the pessimism that it has in common with the literature of modernism.

Erich Maria Remarque (1898 - 1970) belongs to a generation of writers whose views were formed under the influence of the First World War, which for many years determined the range of topics, the characters of his characters, their worldview and life path. Right from the school bench, Remarque stepped into the trenches. Returning from the front, he could not find himself for a long time: he was a journalist, a small trader, a school teacher, and worked in a car repair shop.

From a deep inner need to tell what shocked and horrified him, what turned his ideas about good and evil upside down, his first novel All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) was born, which brought him success.

In the epigraph to the novel, he writes: "This book is neither an accusation nor a confession, it is only an attempt to tell about the generation that was destroyed by the war, about those who became its victims, even if they escaped the shells." But the novel went beyond these limits, becoming both a confession and an accusation.

The young heroes of the novel, yesterday's schoolchildren who fell into the heat of war, are only nineteen years old. Everything that seemed holy and unshakable, in the face of a hurricane of fire and mass graves, is insignificant and worthless. They have no life experience, what they learned at school cannot help alleviate the last torment of the dying, teach them to crawl under fire, drag the wounded, sit in a funnel.

The novel became an accusatory document that Remarque so vividly revealed the tragedy of a whole generation. Remarque stigmatizes war, showing its cruel bestial face. His hero dies not in an attack, not in a battle, he is killed on one of the days of calm. died human life, once given and unique. Paul Bäumer always says “we”, he has the right to do so: there were many like him. He speaks on behalf of a whole generation - the living, but spiritually killed by the war, and the dead, left on the fields of Russia and France. They would later be called the "lost generation". “The war has made us worthless people ... We are cut off from rational activity, from human aspirations, from progress. We don't believe in them anymore,” says E.M. Remarque Boymer. No change on the western front. M., 1989, p.92.

Remarque's novels The Return (1931) and Three Comrades (1938) will continue the front-line theme. true stories about the victims of the war, who were bypassed by shells. Tired, devastated, having lost hope, they will not be able to take root in the post-war everyday life, although they profess the morality of survival - friendship and brotherhood.

The scene of the novel "Three Comrades" (1938) is Germany in the 20-30s: unemployment, inflation, suicides, hungry, pale shadows in front of the sparkling windows of grocery stores. Against this gray, bleak background, the story of three comrades unfolds - representatives of the "lost generation", whose hopes are killed by the war, incapable of resistance and struggle. Friends who are ready to go through fire and water for each other are powerless to change anything because they are convinced that nothing can be changed. “And what, in fact, prevents us from living, Otto?” Lokamp asks, but gets no answer. Remarque E.M. Three comrades does not answer this question either. M., 1997. With. 70.

Remarque rejected the war, was an anti-fascist, but his anti-fascism, unlike, say, the position of Barbusse, did not include collective resistance.

In 1946, Remarque published the Arc de Triomphe novel about Paris in 1938, in which again anti-fascist resistance appears as an individual act of revenge. In Remarque's novel, the idea that human life is meaningless sounds more and more insistently. The image of Ravik, who entered the novel, fell apart, a completely different person acts in the novel. This is one of the people of the "lost generation" without faith in life, in man, in progress, even without faith in friends.

Pacifist individualism prevails in Remarque over open anti-fascism. In the novel "A Time to Live and a Time to Die" (1954), we first get acquainted with Remarque's new hero - this is a person who thinks and looks for an answer, aware of his responsibility for what is happening.

Graeber from the first day of the war on the front of France, Africa, Russia. He goes on vacation, and there, in a city shaken by fear, a great selfless love to Elizabeth. "A little happiness was drowning in a bottomless quagmire of common disasters and despair."

Graeber begins to wonder if he is guilty of crimes against humanity, should he return to the front in order to increase the number of crimes with his participation than to atone for his guilt. At the end of the novel, Graeber guards the captured partisans and finally, after painful reflections, decides to let them out of the basement to freedom. But the Russian partisan kills him with the rifle that Graeber killed the Nazi with a minute before. Such is Remarque's sentence to a man who has decided to take the path of active struggle. In all his novels, Remarque claims that for everyone who follows the path of political struggle, the “time to die” will come.

The hero of the novel is a young man, George Winterbourne, who at the age of 16 read all the poets, starting with Chaucer, an individualist and esthete, who sees around him the hypocrisy of “family morality”, flashy social contrasts, and decadent art.

Once on the front, he becomes serial number 31819, convinced of the criminal nature of the war. At the front, no personalities are needed, no talents are needed, only obedient soldiers are needed there. The hero could not and did not want to adapt, did not learn to lie and kill. Arriving on vacation, he looks at life and society in a completely different way, acutely feeling his loneliness: neither his parents, nor his wife, nor his girlfriend could comprehend the measure of his despair, understand his poetic soul, or at least not injure her with calculation and efficiency. The war broke him, the desire to live was gone, and in one of the attacks, he exposes himself to a bullet. The motives of George's "strange" and completely unheroic death are obscure to those around him: few people knew about his personal tragedy. His death was rather a suicide, a voluntary exit from the hell of cruelty and shamelessness, an honest choice of an uncompromising talent. His suicide is a recognition of his inability to change the world, a recognition of weakness and hopelessness.

Aldington's novel is a "tomb lament" Foreign literature of the twentieth century. M., 1997, p.79. Despair overwhelms the author so much that neither compassion, nor sympathy, nor even love, so saving for the heroes of Remarque and Hemingway, can help. Even among other books of the "lost generation", uncompromising and harsh, Aldington's novel has no equal in terms of the power of denying the notorious Victorian values.

The difference between Hemingway and other writers who covered the topic of the “lost generation” is that Hemingway, belonging to the “lost generation”, unlike Aldington and Remarque, not only does not resign himself to his lot - he argues with the very concept of “lost generation” as a synonym doom. Heroes of Hemingway courageously resist fate, stoically overcome alienation. Such is the core of the writer's moral quest - the famous Hemingway code or canon of stoic opposition to the tragedy of being. He is followed by Jake Barnes, Frederick Henry, Harry Morgan, Robert Jordan, old man Santiago, the colonel - all the real heroes of Hemingway.

The First World War left an indelible mark on the destinies of many generations, changed the moral foundations of many countries and nationalities, but did not bypass those lands that were far from the center of hostilities. The war that broke out across the ocean shocked the younger generation of Americans with thousands of deaths and horrific destruction, struck with its senselessness and barbaric weapons that were used against all living things. The post-war country that they previously considered their home, a reliable bastion built on a sense of patriotism and faith, collapsed like a house of cards. Only a handful of young people remained, so unnecessary and scattered, living aimlessly allotted days.

Such sentiments flooded many cultural aspects of life in the 1920s, including literature. Many writers have realized that the old norms are no longer appropriate, and the old criteria for writing have become completely obsolete. They criticized the country and the government, having lost the remnants of hope in war among other values, and in the end they themselves felt lost. Finding meaning in anything has become an insoluble problem for them.

The term lost generation

The concept of the "lost generation" belongs to the authorship of Gertrude Stein, a representative of American modernism, who lived in Paris. It is believed that a certain auto mechanic was extremely dissatisfied with his young assistant, who repaired Gertrude Stein's car. At the moment of censure, he said the following: “You are all a lost generation,” thereby explaining the inability of his assistant to do his job well.

Ernest Hemingway, a close friend of Gertrude Stein, adopted this expression by including it in the epigraph of his novel "". In fact, the term “lost generation” refers to those young people who grew up in the times of , and later became disillusioned with such an alien post-war world.

In terms of literature, the Lost Generation is a group of American writers, most of whom emigrated to Europe and worked there between the end of World War I and . As a result, America brought up a generation of cynical people who could hardly imagine their future in this country. But what in the end prompted them to move across the ocean? The answer is quite simple: many of these writers realized that their home and life were unlikely to be restored, and the United States they knew before disappeared without a trace.

The bohemian way of life among intellectuals turned out to be much closer and more pleasant than a miserable existence in a society devoid of faith, and the existence of morality was in great doubt. Thus, emigre writers living in Europe wrote about the trials and tribulations of this most lost generation, being, most interestingly, an integral part of this generation.

Prominent figures of the Lost Generation

Among the most famous representatives of the lost generation, it is worth noting such as Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Gertrude Stein and. These names are not limited to the entire list, one can also mention Sherwood Anderson and others who belong to the lost generation, but to a lesser extent than their comrades. To get a better idea of ​​this phenomenon, let's take a closer look at some of these writers.

Gertrude Stein born and raised in the United States but moved to Paris in 1903. She was
a great connoisseur and lover of painting and literature, was considered by many (and herself personally) to be a real expert in this art. She began holding meetings at her home in Paris, mentoring young writers and critiquing their work. Contrary to her well-established authority among modernists, she was not among the most influential writers of the day. At the same time, many writers considered it a great fortune to be part of her club.

Ernest Hemingway served as an ambulance driver on the Italian front during the First World War, where he was wounded. He married and moved to Paris, where he very soon became part of the expatriate community. For the most part, he is known for his unusual way of writing, being the first to deviate from the standard norms of storytelling. Sparing in eloquence, but skillful in his use of dialogue, Hemingway made a conscious choice, abandoning the colors of speech turns that prevailed in literature before him. Of course, his mentor was Gertrude Stein.

Scott Fitzgerald was a junior lieutenant; but no matter how strange it may sound, he never served
in a foreign land. On the contrary, he married rich girl from Alabama, whom he met during his service. Fitzgerald, as a writer, was struck by the post-war culture of America, eventually becoming the basis of his work, which so attracted the new younger generation. Having achieved fame, he constantly travels between Europe and America and becomes an important part of the literary community led by Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway. In many ways, Fitzgerald repeated the fate of the people described in his works: his life was filled with money, parties, aimlessness and alcohol, which ruined the great writer. Hemingway, in his memoirs A Holiday That Is Always With You, speaks with incredible warmth of the works of Fitzgerald, although it is known that in certain period their friendship took on a tinge of hostility.

Against the background of the above figures, the figure stands out somewhat Erich Mary remark. His story is different in that, being a German, he was hard pressed by the consequences of the First World War, having personally experienced all the burden and senselessness of the horrifying events of those times. Remarque's military experience is incomparable with any of the writers already mentioned, and his novels remain forever the best illustration anti-fascist literature. Persecuted at home for his Political Views, Remarque was forced to emigrate, but this did not force him to abandon his language in a foreign land, where he continued to create.

Lost Generation Theme

The literary style of Lost Generation writers is actually very individual, though common features can be traced both in content and in the form of expression. Full of hope and love stories of times Victorian era gone without a trace. The tone and mood of the letter changed dramatically.

Now the reader can feel the whole cynicism of life through the text and those feelings that fill the unstructured world, devoid of faith and purpose. The past is drawn in bright and happy colors, creating an almost ideal world. While the present looks like a kind of gray environment, devoid of traditions and faith, and everyone is trying to find their individuality in this new world.

Many writers, like Scott Fitzgerald in his work "", illuminated the superficial aspects of life along with hidden dark feelings. younger generation. They are characterized, often, by a spoiled style of behavior, a materialistic outlook on life and a complete lack of restrictions and self-control. In Fitzgerald's work, you can see how the writer criticizes the nature of this lifestyle, as excess and irresponsibility lead to destruction (an example of the novel "Tender is the Night").

As a result, a feeling of dissatisfaction with the traditional model of storytelling took possession of the entire literary community. For example, Hemingway denied the need to use descriptive prose to convey emotions and concepts. In support of this, he preferred to write in a more complex and dry manner, paying great attention to dialogue and silence as meaningful techniques. Other writers, such as John Dos Passos, have experimented with incorporating stream-of-consciousness paragraphs. Such writing techniques were used for the first time, largely reflecting the impact of the First World War on the younger generation.

The theme of the First World War often finds application in the works of writers of the lost generation, who directly visited its battlefields. Sometimes the work literally reflects the character of the participant in the War (for example, "Three Soldiers" by Dos Passos or "" Hemingway), or conveys abstract painting what America and its citizens have become since the war (Thomas Eliot's Waste Land or Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio). Often the action is fraught with despair and inner doubts, with occasional sparks of hope from the main characters.

Summing up, it should be noted that the term lost generation refers to those young writers who matured during the First World War, which thereby, directly or indirectly, influenced the formation of their creative ideals. Realizing that the United States can no longer be the safe home it used to be, many of them move to Europe, forming a literary community of expatriate writers led, if somewhat controversially, by Gertrude Stein. Like something aching from the past, their work is filled with heavy losses, and the main idea was a critique of the materialism and immorality that flooded post-war America.

The innovation of the emerging community was a break with traditional literary forms: many writers experimented with the structure of sentences, dialogues and narrative in general. The fact that the writers of the Lost Generation were themselves part of the change they experienced and the search for meaning in life in a new world for them qualitatively sets them apart from many other literary movements. Having lost the meaning of life after the war and being in constant search for it, these writers showed the world unique masterpieces of word-creating art, and we, in turn, at any moment can turn to their heritage and not repeat the mistakes of the past, because history is cyclical, and in such a fickle In a changing world, we need to try not to become another lost generation.

Every time the beginning of the century brings us special culture"Lost Generation" We used to read their books, listen to their music, now we still watch their films and series - as well as films and series about them.

2014 is a special year. The whole world remembers one of the terrible pages in the history of not only Europe, but also humanity - the beginning of the First World War. A hundred years ago, the Old World, together with Russia, entered an era of endless territorial disputes and geopolitical intrigues that covered up the exorbitantly growing human greed. Of course, in the language of economists, this should be called the natural development of the capitalist way of life, but the fact remains: due to the political and mercantile ambitions of the powerful, millions of innocent victims suffered.

In fact, the year 1914 continues to this day, because humanity has already experienced two terrible World Wars, and today, according to experts, it is on the verge of a new one. One way or another, a hundred years ago, the First World War brought people not only grief, death and suffering, but, no matter how paradoxical it may sound, gave civilization such a phenomenon as the literature of the “lost generation”.

In any textbook of history or literature, we will find a textbook description of this direction of human thought. Lost generation(fr. generation perdue, English Lost generation) - a concept that arose between the two wars (World War I and World War II). It has become the leitmotif of the work of such writers as Ernest Hemingway, Erich Maria Remarque, Henri Barbusse, Richard Aldington, Ezra Pound, John Dos Passos, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, Thomas Wolfe, Nathaniel West, John O "Hara. The lost generation is young people called to the front at the age of 18, often not yet finished school, who started killing early.After the war, such people often could not adapt to civilian life, took to drink, committed suicide, some went crazy.

The figurative expression "writers of the lost generation" came into use thanks to Gertrude Stein, who called the Parisian bohemia of the first quarter of the last century, which included those very classics of world literature. This term was popularized by the brightest representative of the "lost generation" - the great Ernest Hemingway in his autobiographical novel"A holiday that is always with you. The expression quickly spread in the West, and the Lost Generation came to be called the young front-line soldiers who fought between 1914 and 1918 and returned home mentally or physically crippled. They are also called "unrecorded victims of the war." After returning from the front, these people could not live a normal life again. After the horrors of the war they had experienced, everything else seemed to them petty and unworthy of attention. After some time, Remarque in his novel "Three Comrades" gave an exhaustive description of the representatives of the "lost generation" themselves. These people are tough, resolute, recognizing only concrete help, ironic with women. Sensuality is ahead of the senses.

A hundred years have passed since then, more than one generation has changed, but in 2014 the term “lost generation” again attracted attention. The expression again began to be actively used in relation to those who are about 30 years old today: in America it is yuppies, in Europe - Generation Y, and in Russia - generation NEXT. Children born in the 80s, who grew up in the revolutionary 90s, entered the “zero” in such a way that they can easily be united with the front-line soldiers of the First World War - these are people with no meaning for their later life, without a purpose for existence, people doomed to nothing. for what. On the one hand, the children of the turn of the century are the most advanced generation in the history of mankind. They grew up in the conditions of incredible computer achievements, as they say - in the age of high technologies, when information rules the world. But, on the other hand, this generation had the happiest childhood, because it did not know military conflicts, did not know the horrors of hunger and deprivation, it is a product of greenhouse conditions. This is the most apathetic generation that is not interested in anything but consumerism and "cute stuff" on Youtube, their social media accounts and cool "selfies". The Youtube generation is an extremely positive mindset with no inclinations towards non-conformity. Because he doesn't really need it.

For more than a year, at the suggestion of sociologists and other representatives of the concerned public, journalists and psychologists have been exploring the most trouble-free generation in history. Experienced people, adults are sure: each next generation is more stupid and immoral than the previous one. The old people are especially ashamed of the last generation, the so-called children of the Internet, a mobile phone and a cloudless air conditioner over their heads. Fashion magazines, which flourished just at the time of the formation of the new lost generation, formulated 10 main signs modern youth. First, the authoritative edition of Time gave birth to an article about the generation "ЯЯЯ" (English - MeMeMe). As befits a self-respecting publication, it did not discover anything new, it only brought together the available facts.

The fact that the planet is beginning to be inhabited by people who are very different from their mothers, fathers, grandparents has been talked about for a long time and a lot. But now the time has come when we can draw the first conclusions. The “YAYAYA” generation (it is also called millennials - the Millennium Generation) includes citizens born in 1980–2000, that is, the older ones have already reached the age of Christ, and the younger ones have entered the turbulent time of teenagers. In Russia, the “millenniums” are younger: the upheavals of the late 80s and early 90s made their own adjustments to the upbringing of children born then, so many sociologists believe that our “millenniums” begin around the year 1989. One way or another, the MAXIM magazine read by the "millenniums" singled out the very 10 main features of the "YAYAYA" generation.

1. This is the first non-rebellious generation in observed history.
2. They are friends with their parents
3. They are non-aggressive and cautious
4. They are accustomed to approval and absolutely confident in their own worth and importance, no matter what they do and what they have achieved.
5. They want to live in a zone of absolute comfort and do not tolerate serious inconveniences.
6. They actively dislike responsibility
7. They are obsessed with fame
8. They are uncreative and unerudite, prefer to use ready-made schemes and do not seek to invent something new.
9. They don't like to make decisions
10. They are sweet, positive and unproblematic

One can agree or not with such conclusions, but cinema exists for that, in order to reflect on what worries modern society. Hollywood decided to draw the image of the "Prozac generation" itself. As a result, the air of TV channels was flooded with serials in which the "millenniums" appeared without cuts.

"American Horror Story" (American Horror Story)

It would seem that the most non-youthful series of the modern horror genre caused an unprecedented surge in popularity among the audience of 12-35 years old. The third season of "American Horror Story" - "Coven" - was a peremptory sentence to the generation of the 90s. Showing the three main types of modern girls, the authors of the series in a harsh manner drew the attention of society to those who will replace the current 50-year-olds. In the mouth of one of the young witches, the scriptwriters put the quintessence of the whole image of the YAYYA generation:

“I am Generation Y, born between AIDS and 9/11. We are called Generation NEXT. We are selfish and narcissistic. Perhaps because we are the first generation where every child receives awards simply for participation. Or perhaps because social media allows us to put every fart or sandwich on public display. But perhaps our main feature is indifference, indifference to suffering. Personally, I did everything not to feel: sex, drugs, booze - just to get rid of the pain, not to think about my mother, about the ugly father, about all those boys who did not love me back. And, in general, I was raped, and two days later, as if nothing had happened, I came to the lessons. Most people would not be able to survive this. And I'm like, the show must go on! I would give everything that I have or will have to feel pain again, to suffer again.

"Gossip Girl"

If in the 90s the main television bible for everyone who was born in the 70s were two cult series, now considered television classics - "Beverly Hills 90210" and "Melrose Place", then the generation of "millennials" grew up on the now cult "Gossip". The American television teen drama, based on the popular eponymous series of novels by writer Cecily von Ziegezar, showed the wrong side of the world of "golden youth" in six seasons. The plot develops around the life of young people living in an elite area of ​​New York and attending a privileged school. In addition to studying, they make friends, quarrel, take drugs, get jealous, suffer, love, hate, and everything else that is inherent in the heroes of teenage dramas. The audience and the heroes themselves learn about all this daily from the popular blog of the mysterious "Gossip Girl", voiced by Kristen Bell. None of the characters knows who is hiding under this nickname, and the actress herself appears in the frame only in the finale. In fact, we have witnessed an outside perspective on the Lost Generation of the 2000s.

"How to succeed in America" ​​(How to Make It in America)

Whether you are rich or poor, whether you live in Upper Manhattan or the Bronx, no one has canceled such a thing as the "American Dream" or more of its international significance. catchphrase- "from dirt to Kings". The dramedy How to Succeed in America lasted 2 seasons on the air of the HBO television network executive producer Mark Wahlberg, who gave the yuppie generation the glamorous series Handsome. How to Make It in America is a series about two young businessmen, Cam and Ben, pursuing the American Dream. They understand fashionable clothes, go to stylish parties, but have not yet found themselves in life. They make a living by illegally reselling all sorts of stylish exclusive clothes, which is how they make a living. As a result, they main dream- to create his own clothing brand in casual style - stumbles upon the treachery of large showrooms and sales companies, and the guys, disappointed in everything, and, above all, in themselves, give up on their own idea. The inability to fight for a place in the sun is one of the main features of the YAYYA generation.

"Girls" (Girls)

After the promising series How to Succeed in America suffered its ratings fiasco, HBO launched new project from Judd Apatow himself - "Girls". Another dramedy about four girlfriends, stuck in a transitional age around 25 years in New York, was created by the most talented student of the famous comedian - Lena Dunham. The actress never hid that she made the series about herself, about her peers who cannot achieve anything in life. They were staring at "Sex in big city”, But in practice everything turned out not like in the life of the cult Carrie Bradshaw and her motley girlfriends. Girls just aired a full third season, HBO successfully renewed it for a fourth, and all TV critics and viewers recognized the third season as the best. Lena Dunham finished off everyone with her own conclusion about generation Y - nothing will help him! According to the apt statement of film journalists, in the eyes of the characters, the silent question “What the fuck am I doing?” - his experience and comprehension in this or that context is the content of "Girls", becomes the experience that the heroines gain. But the process of accumulating this experience in Manhattan, after all, was somewhat delayed, and soon 25-year-old girls will turn into 40-year-old losers. But this is the plot of a completely different television series.

"Looking" (Looking)

The novelty of this TV season is another HBO drama on the topic now fashionable - how difficult it is for gays to live: "The Search". The first season of the new series died down, and to the delight of the respective audience, the show was renewed for a second season. This is the story of three gay friends, one of whom is an artist, the second is a waiter in a restaurant, and the third is a developer computer games. With friends during the show happen incredible stories, and the main scene was the famous gay Mission district in San Francisco, where this trio lives, looking for their happiness and love, and someone just for sexual adventures in the asphalt jungle. It is noticeable to the naked eye that “Looking for” is another version of “Sex and the City”, which was already cloned with LGBT themes into two iconic series of the early 2000s - “Close Friends” and “Sex and Another City”. Russian film critics were unanimous in their opinion about the novelty of American television. Nevertheless, after the series “In Search”, the gay theme on television will no longer be the same - before our eyes, it ceases to be a rattle for minority rights activists, a scarecrow for anxious guards and a trump card for demagogues in expensive suits. It becomes natural - what else do you need? The gay theme has long been a must have for all foreign television series - from sitcoms to creepy dramas, but in the case of "Looking" Generation NEXT, it is shown here in the most terrible despair - the characters are under 30, but there is still no happiness, a complete misunderstanding of all fronts!

"New Girl" (New Girl)

At the end of the last century, television series were different. Those who today approached the Rubicon at the age of 30, without exaggeration, grew up on the greatest sitcom of all time - "Friends". 10 years after their finale, the creators of Friends gave Generation Y the sitcom New Girl. The characters are new, the scene is not a high-rise building in New York in Manhattan, but a loft somewhere in Los Angeles, but the principle of action is still the same. Four subjects - three guys and one girl - rent one apartment, one of them seems to be a successful manager, but the other three are complete losers and rogues. The plot of "The New Girl" is outwardly built on the love experiences of all the characters, each of which, as a result, will end up with the character with whom it is necessary, but the subtext of the series is frighteningly relevant: these 30-year-old heroes, who, by and large, are nothing in life they never achieved it, they live one day and do not strive for anything, or they are afraid to strive for something, because the society of the turn of the century brought them up too weak-willed. But let's not talk about sad things: the series "New Girl" was renewed for the fourth season, which means that there is hope that the characters will come to their senses.

120 years ago, on June 22, 1898, Erich Maria Remarque was born - one of the most famous writers of the 1920-1930s, the author of the best novel about the First World War “All Quiet on the Western Front”, designed to “tell about the generation that was ruined by the war, about those who became its victims, even if they escaped the shells. the site tells about Remarque and other writers who received the generalized name "lost generation" in the literature.

The term "lost generation" was introduced by the American writer Gertrude Stein, who lived in Paris and borrowed the expression from a certain auto mechanic who was dissatisfied with her young assistant who repaired Gertrude's car. “You are all a lost generation,” the mechanic allegedly declared, explaining the inability of his assistant to complete the work assigned to him. Shortly after Stein's close friend and student Ernest Hemingway included the expression in the epigraph of Fiesta, it took on a broader meaning, denoting young people who grew up on the fronts of the world war and became disillusioned with the post-war world. This also affected writers who realized that the former literary norms out of place, and the old styles of writing have become obsolete. Many of them emigrated to Europe and worked there until the Great Depression.

“We saw that there was nothing left of their world. We suddenly found ourselves in terrible loneliness, and we had to find a way out of this loneliness ourselves, ”says the hero of the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Bäumer. Subsequently, this novel was repeatedly filmed and became one of the favorite books of the generation of Soviet sixties. Its author, Erich Maria Remarque, who spent three years in the trenches, managed to especially vividly express all the horror of the First World War, which greater impression the more detached the narrator's tone becomes.

“We will return tired, at odds with ourselves, devastated, uprooted from the soil and lost hope. We can no longer settle down. Yes, they won’t understand us, because we have an older generation before us, which, although it spent all these years with us at the front, already had its own family hearth and profession and now will again take its place in society and forget about the war, and for they raise a generation that resembles us as we used to be; and for him we will be strangers, it will push us astray. We do not need ourselves, we will live and grow old - some will adapt, others will submit to fate, and many will not find a place for themselves, ”Paul prophesies on the last pages of the novel. This is exactly what Remarque's book is about - "The Return": one of Paul's front-line comrades commits suicide, the other becomes a school teacher, but feels just as lost in front of the students.

“Here I stand in front of you, one of the hundreds of thousands of bankrupts whose faith and strength was destroyed by the war... Here I stand in front of you and feel how much more life is in you, how much more threads connect you with it... Here I stand in front of you, your teacher and mentor. What am I to teach you? To tell you that at twenty you will turn into a cripple with empty souls, that all your free aspirations will ruthlessly corrode until you are reduced to the level of gray mediocrity? What can I teach you? Show you how to take the ring off a hand grenade and throw it at a man? Show you how a person is stabbed to death with a bayonet, killed with a butt or a sapper shovel? Show how a rifle is aimed at such an incomprehensible miracle as a breathing chest, pulsating lungs, a beating heart? Tell what is tetanus, opened spinal cord, plucked skull? Can I describe to you what a splattered brain looks like, crushed bones, viscera protruding? Depict how they moan when a bullet hits the stomach, how they wheeze when the lungs are shot, and what kind of whistle comes out of the throat of the wounded in the head? Other than that, I don't know anything! Other than that, I didn’t learn anything!”

America entered the war relatively late, but many writers of the lost generation still managed to visit it, reflecting this experience in their books. One of the most famous writers lost generation and another icon of the sixties was Ernest Hemingway, who served as an ambulance driver on the Italian front. His novel A Farewell to Arms is about sad love of an American soldier-architect and a front-line nurse was also repeatedly filmed and revealed to the readers a new unusual style, accurate, naturalistic and even somewhat dry. Hemingway abandoned descriptive prose and colorful speech patterns to convey emotions and concepts and preferred to use dialogue and silence more actively as literary devices. At the same time, its dryness is only apparent: the title "A farewell to arms" means not only farewell to weapons, but also farewell to hugs, setting the tragic context for the whole story.

Other famous representative of the lost generation was Francis Scott Fitzgerald, who volunteered for the army in 1917 and rose to the rank of aide-de-camp to General Ryan, acting as his secretary. During his service, he met Zelda Sayre, the daughter of an Alabama judge destined to become "a brilliant prototype of the heroines of his novels." With the writers of the lost generation, Fitzgerald has a deep pessimism in common: he admitted that all the ideas that ever came to his mind had a shade of disaster, and one of the most characteristic features works - a feeling of impending disaster or catastrophe as a retribution for the outward lightness and carelessness of existence. The clearest example of this is Fitzgerald's main works Tender is the Night and The Great Gatsby. In contrast to Hemingway with his telegraphic style, Fitzgerald remained in literature as a master of lyrical prose: in one of his letters he admits that he always begins with an emotion that is accessible to him and that he can understand. And the more inevitable is the catastrophe that awaits his heroes.

Other writers have experimented with sentence structure, dialogue, and storytelling in general. Thus, John Dos Passos was one of the first to write in a stream of consciousness style, anticipating James Joyce's Ulysses. Another feature of it is a broken composition: gluing pieces of the narrative is achieved with the help of editing, and songs and excerpts from the chronicle and newspaper articles are included in the artistic text. Combination fiction with documentary accuracy, the narrative is intended to show the spiritual break that the nation suffered during the war years, and to illustrate the common idea for the lost generation about the death of spiritual values.

In poetry, the ideology of the lost generation was anticipated by Thomas Stearns Eliot, whose early poems focused on the loneliness, homelessness and inferiority of man. The hero of the “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” written by him longs to “squeeze the globe into a ball with his hand / And roll it to the murderous question”, imagines himself as Lazarus, that he “rose from the grave, / Returned to open everything, in the end”, however, at the same time, he reflects, like Hamlet, and does nothing in exactly the same way: “In short, I did not dare.” Semantic shifts in his poetry reflect the disorder and nonsense of the world, and the unity of the poem is created by repetitions and variations. The philosophical understanding of what the world came to after the First World War was famous poem"Badlands" about the tragedy of life, and the poem adjoining it "Hollow people". “We are hollow people, / Stuffed effigies, / Converged in one place, - / Straw in our heads! / Dry voices rustle, / When we whisper together, / Rustling senselessly, / Like dry wind in the grass, / Like big rats in an old basement / They scurry over broken glass.

“This thing gives an accurate picture of the mood of educated people during the psychological catastrophe that followed the world war,” the poet Day Lewis wrote in the 1930s. “She shows nervous exhaustion, the disintegration of consciousness, delving into oneself, boredom, a touching search for fragments of a broken faith - all symptoms of the mental illness that raged in Europe.”

And yet, the contribution of the “lost generation” to literature is not limited to a sense of desperation: many call Hemingway and Fitzgerald among their teachers in literature, Eliot’s poem gave the name to one of the volumes of Stephen King’s epic The Dark Tower, and their stylistic finds inspired them into American literature new life. The very same personalities of the authors of these books and still become the subject of research in dissertations and comprehension - in the cinema.