Literature of the late 19th early 20th century. Literature of the late 19th century

As a result of studying this section, the student must:

• – know the originality of this period as an epoch of the assertion of the universal significance of Russian literature; the role of artistic geniuses in the historical and literary process of this period; dialectic of literary searches: truth artistic image life and the highest spirituality, elitism and democracy, religious and moral aspirations of writers, etc.;
• – be able to determine the general patterns inherent in a given literary period; justify the analysis artistic specificity works; indicate examples of innovative solutions of writers in the field of form;
• – own the conceptual apparatus associated with the study of the historical and literary process of the era and the change of its genre guidelines; the ability to distinguish in specific analyzes of works of the truth of life and the truth of fiction; methods of studying the poetics of the author or a separate work.

As applied to the history of Russian classical literature, "the end of the century" is a somewhat arbitrary concept. Firstly, this is not just a chronological definition, i.e. two three recent decades, but rather the temporal space of the literary process marked general rules, covering the period of 1860-1890s. Secondly, this literature generally goes beyond the limits of the 19th century, taking into its orbit a whole decade of the already new, 20th century.

The uniqueness of this period lies in a number of phenomena. First of all, it should be noted intensity historical and literary process at different moments of its formation. This process had two waves, two powerful bursts. At the beginning of the century - Pushkin, in which, according to A. N. Ostrovsky, Russian literature grew for a whole century, as he brought it to a new level, synthesizing in his creative impulse the previous eras of its development. The second wave came at the end of the century and was associated with three names: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov. This great trinity, quite in the Russian spirit, with an enormous, amazing concentration, concentration of creative energy marked the end of the century and the highest rise of the Russian genius.

Domestic literature for the first time received precisely at this time worldwide confession. Half-impoverished, "barbaric" Russia, without a single civilized drop of blood in its veins, as they condescendingly spoke of it, suddenly put forward a literature that caught fire as a star of the first magnitude and forced to reckon with itself, dictating the highest aesthetic and spiritual standards to the writers of the world. It began with Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and was a huge conquest of Russian culture, then Chekhov followed, but not only with prose, but also with dramaturgy, which made a whole revolution in this kind of creativity.

Previously, Russian literature sometimes attracted benevolent attention (for example, Turgenev), but such universal, enthusiastic worship never existed. In February 1886, a witty genre sketch by Maurice Bares appeared in the French magazine Revue illustree, which testified to a turning point in the opinions of Europeans: “Everyone knows that for two months now, as a person of good taste and knowledge, exclaims from the first steps greetings: "Ah, monsieur, do you know these Russians?" You take a step back and say, “Oh, that Tolstoy!” The one who presses on you replies: “Dostoevsky!” World recognition was won precisely by the literature of the end of the century. After the death of Dostoevsky, only five years passed, and Tolstoy continued his writing business in Yasnaya Polyana, preparing to write his third novel, Resurrection.

However, this phenomenon was only consequence efforts of several generations of Russian writers. In 1834, Gogol, while Pushkin was still alive, published an article about him (in Mirgorod), noting: "Pushkin is a Russian man in his full development, as he will be in two hundred years." A little more than 30 years have passed since a book was published in Moscow that attracted everyone's attention, and it soon became clear that another genius of the Renaissance warehouse had appeared, born, like Pushkin, in Russia. This book was the novel "War and Peace", the author - Count L. N. Tolstoy. It was also significant - and not accidental - that all, without exception, the luminaries of the classics of the 19th century. considered Pushkin their forerunner. In other words, Russian literature of this period could take such a place and play such a role in world culture because it was based on on tradition previous literature.

Another feature of the literary process is energy manifestations of creative efforts, uniting in an intense artistic flow the most diverse writers' personalities. For example, in 1862, Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" and L. N. Tolstoy's "1805" were published simultaneously in the Russkiy Vestnik ( magazine version the beginning of the future "War and Peace"), i.e. two great novels under one magazine cover. Even earlier, in the late 1850s. an agreement was signed by a number of writers on the publication of their works in the Sovremennik magazine. The parties to the agreement were the authors who, after two or three decades, became recognized as great and brilliant masters - Turgenev, Ostrovsky, Goncharov, Nekrasov, Tolstoy. In the 1880s–1890s the journal Severny Vestnik published works by Turgenev, Tolstoy, Korolenko, and Chekhov.

A characteristic feature of the literary process under consideration can also be traced in its vertical cut. This coordinate system gives an idea of ​​the extraordinary brightness and surprise conjugations when writers develop close themes, ideas, images. Early 1860s marked by the appearance of "anti-nihilistic" works: the novels "Nowhere", "On the Knives" by N. S. Leskov and "The Stirred Sea" by A. F. Pisemsky, the unfinished comedy "Infected Family" by L. N. Tolstoy. In 1868, A. N. Tolstoy's drama "Tsar Feodor Ioannovich" and F. M. Dostoevsky's novel "The Idiot" were written: both here and there - the heroes of the same warehouse in terms of worldview and the nature of the impact on others. In 1875, when Nekrasov, struggling with excruciating physical and moral suffering, wrote his "Last Songs", L. N. Tolstoy worked hard on "Anna Karenina", already knowing the tragic ending that awaited the heroine of the novel.

Undoubtedly, this period triumph of realism alienated, however, literal verisimilitude. Fidelity to life was affirmed as an unconditional law of creativity, deviation from it, even in details, was confirmation, from the point of view of the masters, either of the weakness of talent, or of hasty, rough work. L. N. Tolstoy expressed this idea in a paradoxical form, noting that art is more objective than science itself, in which there is the possibility of a gradual approach to the truth in formulations that clarify one or another regularity. In art, this is impossible, because for the artist there is no choice: what he creates is either true or false, there is no third.

However, with the indispensable requirement of fidelity to life, the literature of this time went on daring experiments, running far ahead and anticipating the innovations of avant-garde art. Vital truth was often violated in the name of artistic truth. For example, a moment could unfold into a disproportionately cumbersome, vast narrative space (the death of staff captain Praskukhin in Tolstoy's story "Sevastopol in May" and the episode of Prince Bolkonsky's injury in "War and Peace") or there was a contradiction between the author's view and the hero's perception (an obvious discrepancy of the exposition "Ward No. 6" with the finale, where Ragin sees what the narrator should have said when describing the neglected hospital yard in front of the field, where the ominous building he saw towered - a prison, but did not say, thereby creating an unexpectedly powerful emotional and a dramatic outburst at the conclusion of the story). Often, not only life's plausibility was destroyed, but also the laws of the genre. For example, the objective manner of novel narration was replaced by demonstrative intrusions of the author, who, using the right of the demiurge-creator, often left the plot movement, the story of fictitious persons and directly addressed the reader, explaining himself and his characters in detail (a favorite novel technique of Dostoevsky and L. N. . Tolstoy).

Ultimately, this was a manifestation of the demand for freedom of creativity, "freedom in the choice of inspiration," as Dostoevsky said, and opened up scope for artistic innovation.

Finally, feature historical and literary process - of course, in its highest manifestations - consisted in the fact that the cult dominated in the realistic method spirit, spirituality.“Art,” L. N. Tolstoy noted in one of his diary entries, “is a microscope that the artist points to the secrets of his soul and shows these secrets common to all people.” The scale of ideas and the perfection of their implementation, which was demonstrated by the luminaries of this time, became decisive for the fate of literary works.

Representatives of other literary movements developing at the same time did not reach a similar level. From fiction democratic directions (N. V. Uspensky, N. G. Pomyalovsky, F. M. Reshetnikov, V. A. Sleptsov, A. I. Levitov), ​​writers populist orientations (the most striking among them was G. I. Uspensky), from literature that captures the sharpness "current moment"in public life (in fiction - P. D. Boborykin, I. N. Potapenko, in drama - V. A. Krylov, also distinguished by incredible fertility), nothing has been preserved or individual works remain as vivid documents of the era and outstanding literary phenomena(stories and essays by G. I. Uspensky, V. M. Garshin, novels by D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak); at best, they became the subject of special studies.

At the same time, the literature of the late nineteenth century marked by its special drama, to some extent even tragic. The rise of her success coincided with the death of great writers. Turgenev, as if anticipating the near end of the road, turned to "Poems in Prose" and managed to prepare for printing carefully corrected "Notes of a Hunter". Others were snatched from life in the midst of the implementation of creative ideas. Dostoevsky, who almost simultaneously wrote The Brothers Karamazov and a speech about Pushkin that brought him immense popularity, continued The Writer's Diary, which had enjoyed great success in recent years. Chekhov, who achieved worldwide fame as a prose writer and playwright, died in the prime of life - at 44.

In this way, supreme wave literary upsurge was marked by losses. At the end of XIX - beginning of XX century. there is not just a change of generations: artistic achievements remain, but their creators pass away one by one. A new time is coming for the development of the historical and literary process - the era of Russian literature, but already in the 20th century.

Purpose: to acquaint students with the general characteristics and originality of Russian literature of the 19th century. in terms of history and literature; give an idea of ​​the main trends in the literature of the late XIX - early XX centuries; to show the significance of Russian literature of this period in the development of the Russian and world literary process; to cultivate a sense of belonging and empathy for the history of Russia, love for its culture. equipment: textbook, portraits of writers and poets of the turn of the century.

Projected

Results: students know the general characteristics and originality of Russian literature of the 19th century. in terms of history and literature; have an idea about the main trends in the literature of the late XIX - early XX centuries; determine the significance of Russian literature of this period in the development of the Russian and world literary process. lesson type: lesson learning new material.

DURING THE CLASSES

I. Organizational stage

II. Updating of basic knowledge homework(frontal)

III. Setting goals and objectives for the lesson.

Motivation for learning activities

Teacher. The twentieth century began at zero o'clock on January 1, 1901 - this is its calendar beginning, from which it counts its history and world art of the XX century. However, it does not follow from this that at one moment a general upheaval took place in art, which established a certain new style 20th century some of the processes that are essential for the history of art originate in the last century.

The last decade of the 19th century opens a new stage in Russian, and in world culture. For about a quarter of a century - from the beginning of the 1890s to October 1917 - literally all aspects of life in Russia have changed radically: the economy, politics, science, technology, culture, art. Compared to the social and to some extent literary stagnation of the 1880s. a new stage of historical and cultural development was characterized by rapid dynamics and sharpest drama. In terms of the pace and depth of change, as well as the catastrophic nature of internal conflicts, Russia at that time was ahead of any other country. Therefore, the transition from the era of classical Russian literature to the new literary time was accompanied by far from peaceful processes in general cultural and intra-literary life, unexpectedly fast - by the standards of the 19th century. - a change in aesthetic guidelines, a radical renewal of literary techniques.

Legacy of the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. is not limited to the work of one or two dozen significant artists of the word, but logic literary development this pore cannot be reduced to a single center or the simplest scheme changing directions. This legacy is a multi-tiered artistic reality in which individual writing talents, no matter how outstanding they may be, are only part of a grandiose whole. Starting to study the literature of the turn of the century, one cannot do without overview the social background and the general cultural context of this period (“context” is the environment, the external environment in which art exists).

IV. Work on the topic of the lesson 1. teacher's lecture

(Students write abstracts.)

Literature of the late XIX - early XX century. existed and developed under the powerful influence of the crisis, which covered almost all aspects of Russian life. The great 19th realist writers c., who ended their creative and life path: l. N. tolstoy and a. P. Chekhov. The successors of the realistic traditions of I. a. Bunin, a. I. Kuprin, l. N. andreev, a. N. Tolstoy, in turn, created magnificent examples of realistic art. However, the plots of their works became more and more disturbing and gloomy from year to year, the ideals that inspired them became more and more obscure. The life-affirming pathos characteristic of the Russian classics of the 19th century gradually disappeared from their work under the yoke of sad events.

At the end of XIX - beginning of XX century. Russian literature, which previously had a high degree worldview unity, has become aesthetically multilayered.

Realism at the turn of the century continued to be a large-scale and influential literary movement.

The most striking talents among the new realists were the writers who united in the 1890s. in the Moscow circle "Wednesday", and in the early 1900s. who made up the circle of permanent authors of the Znanie publishing house (one of its owners and the actual leader was M. Gorky). In addition to the leader of the association, in different years it included l. N. Andreev, I. a. Bunin, V.V. Veresaev, N. Garin-Mikhailovsky, a. I. Kuprin, I. S. Shmelev and other writers. With the exception of I. a. Bunin, there were no major poets among the realists; they showed themselves primarily in prose and, less noticeably, in dramaturgy.

The generation of realist writers of the early 20th century. inherited from a. P. Chekhov new principles of writing - with much greater than before, the author's freedom, with a much wider arsenal of artistic expression, with a sense of proportion, which is obligatory for the artist, which was provided by increased internal self-criticism.

In literary criticism, it is customary to call modernist, first of all, three literary movements that declared themselves in the period 1890–1917. These are symbolism, acmeism and futurism, which formed the basis of modernism as a literary movement.

In general, Russian culture of the late XIX - early XX centuries. strikes with its brightness, wealth, abundance of talents in the most different areas. And at the same time, it was the culture of a society doomed to death, a premonition of which was traced in many of her works.

2. familiarization with the article of the textbook on the topic of the lesson (in pairs)

3. Heuristic conversation

Š What new styles and trends emerged in Russian culture at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries? How were they related to a particular historical setting?

♦ What historical events late XIX - early XX centuries. influenced the fate of Russian writers, reflected in the works of literature?

♦ What philosophical concepts influenced Russian literature at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries? what explains special interest writers to philosophy a. Schopenhauer, F. Nietzsche?

♦ How did the craving for irrationalism, mysticism, and religious quest manifest itself in Russian literature of that time?

♦ Is it possible to say that in the late XIX - early XX centuries. Is realism losing its dominant role in the literary process that belonged to it in the 19th century?

♦ How do the traditions of classical literature and innovative aesthetic concepts correlate in the literature of the turn of the century?

♦ What is the originality of the late work of a. P. Chekhov? How justified is a. Bely that a. Is P. Chekhov “most of all a symbolist”? What features of Chekhov's realism allow modern researchers to call the writer the founder of the literature of the absurd?

♦ What character does the literary struggle take in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? Which publishing houses, magazines, almanacs played especially important role in the development of Russian literature?

♦ How is the problem of the relationship between man and the environment solved in Russian literature at the turn of the century? What traditions natural school» found development in the prose of this time?

♦ What place did journalism occupy in the literature of this period? What problems were most actively discussed on the pages of magazines and newspapers during these years?

V. Reflection. Summing up the lesson

1. "Press" (in groups)

The generalizing word of the teacher - thus, the deep aspirations of the modernist currents in conflict with each other turned out to be very similar, despite the sometimes striking stylistic dissimilarity, the difference in tastes and literary tactics. That is why the best poets of the era rarely closed themselves within a certain literary school or currents. almost rule them creative evolution was the overcoming of narrow for the creator of direction frameworks and declarations. That's why real picture literary process in the late XIX - early XX centuries. is determined to a much greater extent by the creative individualities of writers and poets than by the history of trends and trends.

Chronological framework of the period.

The main sign of the beginning of the new period in the history of world literature we are considering is the emergence of completely new literary trends: naturalism and symbolism, the first of which finally took shape in France in the late 1860s and early 1870s. The end of the new period is connected with the beginning of the First World War in 1914, which greatly influenced the history and culture of the whole world. It is with her, and not with the October Revolution in Russia, that the literature of the 20th century begins. Therefore, the period ends in 1914.

French Literature.

Naturalism.

Naturalism is a literary trend that most clearly manifested itself in the last third of the 19th century, formed in the 1860s. We can say that naturalism is an extreme degree of realism, bringing the principle of likelihood to the limit.

The main features of naturalism: 1) Naturalism - frank, detailed description previously forbidden, cruel, disgusting, base or intimate aspects of life. This trait was inherited from naturalists by many writers of the 20th century, and it was in the 20th century that it reached its limit, when there are absolutely no prohibitions for writers.

2) Biologism - an explanation of all social and spiritual phenomena, primarily human character traits, by biological, physiological causes. Naturalists considered man to be primarily a biological being, an animal, an organism. All human actions are conditioned, firstly, by innate, hereditary character traits, temperament, and secondly, by the external environment to which the human temperament adapts. Of course, to reduce everything only to physiology is nonsense, but the great merit of naturalists was that for the first time in the analysis of human behavior they began to take into account such an important factor as heredity. A person is already born with a certain set of traits, abilities and shortcomings that determine his life.

Emile Zola (1840-1902)

The most famous French naturalist and theorist of naturalism. In general, this is one of the most remarkable, brilliant writers of the 19th century. Zola knew how to write in a truly exciting, bright, colorful way. He can be compared to Hugo.

Zola's first significant novel, and the most naturalistic of all, is Teresa Raken» (1867). The heroes are simple people with a minimum level of spiritual, intellectual activity, so they are quite naturally shown in the novel primarily as biological individuals driven by instincts determined by temperament. “I simply examined two living bodies, just as surgeons examine corpses” (from the Preface to the novel).

This is precisely a novel-study: every action of the characters, every change in their lives are analyzed and explained in detail from the point of view of physiology and psychology, and this is quite interesting.

The main character, Teresa, is a woman whose strong, passionate temperament was suppressed by external circumstances from childhood, and she seemed cold, impassive, married her cousin, Camille, weak, sickly, indifferent to everything. They were married by Madame Raquin, mother of Camilla. But Teresa's true temperament woke up unexpectedly for herself when she met the right one for her. strong man Laurent, friend of Camille. They became lovers and were happy with each other (although their communication was limited only to the sexual sphere). After some time, they lost the opportunity to meet, and they could not live without each other. Soon they had the idea to eliminate the only obstacle between them, the husband. And while riding on the river in a boat, Laurent drowned him, so that no one suspected them. Everyone thought it was just an accident. Laurent visited the morgue several times to identify the corpse of Camille, which Zola described very vividly and in detail for the first time in world literature. The most terrible thing there was the corpse of Camillus, who had been in the water for a long time, turned green, swollen, half-decomposed.

And now, it would seem, the only obstacle to the happiness of lovers was removed, but love pleasure disappeared by itself, passion disappeared, they tried to artificially kindle it, nothing worked. It began to seem to them that a third person, the corpse of Camillus, was constantly lying in bed between them. The corpse is seen by him in all dark corners. They can't sleep, they can't live normally, they hate each other, but they can't separate either. Their very human nature, psyche and physiology does not accept killing.

Lady Raken is paralyzed, she understands everything, but she cannot speak or move. Laurent and Teresa, now husband and wife, are talking about their crime in front of her, blaming each other for it. Mrs. Raken suffers incredibly when she finds out who the killers of her son are, but she cannot do anything, and they enjoy it. In the end, both can not stand it and commit suicide together. There are many bright unusual descriptions in the novel, psychopathological situations, but also a lot, too much implausible, improbably disgusting. In describing the torments of criminals, Zola crossed the line of reasonable plausibility. In general, the novel makes an extremely difficult impression, there is no enlightenment in it, although it would seem that the criminals are punished according to the law of higher justice.

One of the important conclusions of the novel: confirmation of the irrationality, unpredictability of human nature. The killers assumed that their happiness would continue, but it disappeared. It is impossible to predict the reactions of one's own body. The man himself is a mystery.

One of the best novels in the series Germinal"Describes the life of miners, one of the Makarov, Etienne became a miner. It is useful to read it in order to know how terribly people lived in the 19th century. A family of ordinary miners of 10 people is described, almost all of them work at the mine (including children from the age of 10. They work in the most difficult conditions in the mine - it is terribly hot in summer, cold in winter. Collapses and explosions of accumulated gas are frequent in the mine. Old grandfather, when he spits, his saliva is black from coal dust. The salary is miserable, barely enough to live on. When there is an economic crisis, coal is poorly bought, wages are even reduced. The miners can not stand it and go on strike. In a fit of rage, women (the wives of miners) are literally torn to pieces a shopkeeper who profited from them for many years, selling them all products at exorbitant prices, forgave his debts if young girls were brought to him.One of the brightest scenes of the novel is that the mine is flooded as a result of a breakthrough of groundwater and it all (a very large structure) slowly sinks underground and a small lake is formed in its place, and people who have not had time to get out remain below, but some of them manage to survive, they went through the connecting passages, drifts, to another old abandoned mine.

The strike ends with the defeat of the miners. However, the author believes that the workers will definitely win a better life and a decent salary. Germinal is the name of the spring month, a symbol of hope for renewal. The meaning of the novel is to warn the owners of factories, factories, mines, if they do not improve the situation of their workers, a terrible bloody revolution awaits them.

Zola's best novel Dr. Pascal". The protagonist is a scientist biologist Dr. Pascal, a real ascetic of science who gave his whole life for the benefit of mankind, he set out to study the laws of heredity using the example of his own family (and he is Rougon) in order to learn how to manage them in order to fight hereditary diseases and shortcomings. He lives with his niece Clotilde, who was given to him for education, and an old maid. Both women are very religious and they really do not like that Pascal is an atheist, they love him and do not want him to go to hell, they consider his science and scientific works to be sinful, demonic, they dream of burning all his papers, all that in which he put his soul. Saving Pascal from a supposed hell, they turn his real life into hell, he is forced to quarrel with the closest people, to protect the main business of his life from them. But the most interesting thing begins when 59-year-old Pascal, a bachelor who has never known love or women, discovers to his horror that 25-year-old Clotilde, his own niece, loves him, and he loves her. Once they stop resisting their love, they will know true happiness. Zola describes this sinful, incestuous relationship precisely as true high love, before which everything else - age difference, family relationships, the opinions of others - is insignificant.

But after a while, Pascal was afraid of this love, he was afraid for the future of Clotilde, he would soon die, and she still had to live among people who did not understand this love. He insisted on separation, she went to Paris. But this did not bring anything good, both were terribly homesick, he soon fell ill and died. Conclusion - never, under any circumstances, you can not refuse true love which is above all. But the ending is optimistic. Clotilde has a son from Pascal, after his death, and in him is all hope. This child is a symbol of the victory of love, nature itself, life itself over all stupid laws and human fears. The most important thing in life is happiness, which is given to people by nature: to love and give birth to children, and everything else is nonsense. The finale of the novel is a real hymn to life, which overcomes everything. In general, many of Zola's pages are an emotional hymn to life. Zola calls: you must not refuse, leave life, you must live fully, rejoice and suffer, you must not be afraid of suffering, inconvenience, ridicule, otherwise you will never know life and true happiness.

In the novel "Doctor Pascal" there is a description of an unusual case - about how Uncle Macquart, a bitter drunkard, all already soaked in alcohol in the literal sense, having drunk again, fell asleep without putting out his pipe, smoldering tobacco got on his pants, burned them and caught fire the alcoholized body - with a quiet blue flame. And it burned down all, only a charred chair and a pile of ashes remained. The scene is generally very characteristic of Zola: naturalism on the verge of fantasy.

Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893).

It was rumored that Maupassant was Flaubert's illegitimate son, as his mother was very friendly with Flaubert. But these are just stupid rumors.

Until the age of 30, Maupassant was a simple official. He wrote, but did not publish his works, considering them insufficiently perfect. In 1880, he published a short story that brought him great fame - "Dumb". And since then he has been writing and publishing novels and short stories very much and very successfully. In his personal life, Maupassant was a typical Don Juan, he collected mistresses, and this was reflected in his work. But a cheerful lifestyle did not last long, he began to be haunted by diseases and not only venereal ones, he began to go blind and go crazy. From 1891 he was unable to write, in 1892 he attempted suicide in a fit of madness, and in 1893 he died in a lunatic asylum.

Maupassant is one of the brightest, most talented French writers, an excellent stylist, like Flaubert, who strove for artistic perfection, expressiveness, and at the same time, simplicity and accuracy of style.

He is also one of the most prominent representatives of the non-classical worldview in literature. In 1894, Leo Tolstoy, one of the most prominent representatives of the classical worldview, wrote an article "Foreword to the writings of Guy de Maupassant." Recognizing the real talent of the French writer, Tolstoy accused him of immorality. Maupassant "loved and portrayed what should not have been loved and portrayed", namely, how women seduce men, and men seduce women. Indeed, no one so much, frankly and purposefully in the 19th century described and sang the joy of physical love, sexual pleasure in itself. Maupassant knew how to do it brightly, excitingly, erotically. He justified and sang a terrible thing for Tolstoy - adultery. Or maybe just stating an obvious fact - quite often family bonds prevent people from being happy.

The second most important feature of the non-classical worldview is the deepest pessimism, the perception of life as a terrible Chaos.

Novels- the best part of Maupassant's work. Thematically, they can be divided into several groups.

1) Erotic novels. The main element of these short stories is a vivid description of the sexual experiences of the characters and the awakening of these experiences in the reader. The plot of these short stories is mainly a description of fleeting love adventures, not binding to anything, but decorating life. The best erotic novels: "Stranger", "Magnetism", "Awakening", "Rondoli Sisters".

« trip out of town". The novella horrified Tolstoy. The family - not yet old spouses, their young daughter - went on a Sunday picnic to the river. Two strong guys invited the women to ride on the river in boats, they agreed. The mother sat in one boat, the daughter in another. And then Maupassant described how it happened that, in general, an ordinary, completely moral girl entered into intimacy with a man whom she saw for the first time in her life. She succumbed to natural instinct, nothing more. First of all, her feelings are described. Mother didn't waste any time either. This made a strong and obviously positive impression on both of them, both remembered this a year later and were even grateful to their casual lovers. Tolstoy's comment: "A heinous crime is described as a funny joke."

A series of short stories about various relationships between men and women adjoins this group (although the actual erotic element is not always present in them): "Carelessness", "By the bed". "Sign" - a decent woman, unexpectedly for herself, wanted to imitate prostitutes who, from the windows of their rooms, gave special signs to passing men, and they rose for intimate communication. And the heroine, for the sake of experiment, makes the same sign, and one man reacted: in order to avoid noise and scandal, he had to play the role to the end.

2) Novels about love, about a real high feeling, without the realization of which one cannot say that a person has experienced true happiness. Maupassant implicitly, implicitly claims that it is not enough just to love (although this is already wonderful in itself), you must definitely strive to live with the one you love - to realize your love.

The best novella of this group, perhaps the best novella of Maupassant, is “Moonlight” (seminar). The short stories "Julie Romanin", "Farewell!" are wonderful. "Our letters": a woman will never destroy letters in which she was declared in love. “Our love letters are our right to beauty, grace, charm, this is our intimate feminine pride.”

The short story “Happiness” describes the happy life of a woman, the daughter of a rich man, who ran away from home with a simple soldier in her youth, then became an ordinary peasant wife, endured the brunt of peasant life, but lived life with her beloved. In the novel “Buatel”, the parents did not allow the guy to marry a black woman, and for some reason he truly loved only her, only when he saw her his heart sank sweetly. Then he and another woman had 14 children, but he did not know real happiness. "Regret": An elderly lonely man, remembering his life of meaninglessness, regrets that he did not dare to enter into a love affair with his friend's wife, whom he loved more than anything in the world. He suddenly remembered how one day they were alone on a walk, and she began to behave somehow strangely, but he did not understand what she was hinting at then, but understood this only now, many years later, it happens in life. And he realized that he had missed his only chance to become happy.

A separate subspecies of short stories about love - about unhappy, ugly, inconspicuous women, nevertheless, capable of deep love. An amazing story is told in the novel "Miss Harriette". Also not bad is the short story "Mademoiselle Pearl" (seminar).

3) Novels about injustice, horror and the absurdity of life, Maupassant has the vast majority of such short stories, from which we conclude that he was a pessimist. A lot of short stories about the rigidity, callousness, greed of people. Such is the famous "Dumpling", which wonderfully describes the time of the Franco-Prussian War (seminar).

"Christening" - the peasants went to baptize the child, on the way they went into a tavern, got drunk, dropped the child in the snow, and he died. "Beggar": a beggar cripple died from the fact that they refused to feed him and let him in for the night.

"Moiron" - the teacher's wife and three children died, he hated God, life, people, began to take revenge, kill his students, pouring crushed glass into their food. He believed that life is a nightmare, God is cruel, he loves to kill different ways. And Moiron began to kill in response.

Bright short stories of this group: "Jewels", "Little Rock", "Mug of beer, garcon!".

« Cupboard". When a prostitute receives clients in her room, she little son sits in the closet us a chair.

« Necklace". A young poor woman wanted to go to a ball, and for this she borrowed a beautiful, expensive necklace from her friend for a while, and lost it at the ball, she and her husband urgently folded everything they had, took on a huge debt, bought exactly the same necklace, and then, exhausted all their lives, they repaid their debts. After 10 years, the heroine is aged, grown ugly from hard life, meets this friend and tells her the whole truth, the answer is deadly: it turns out that the necklace was not real, but fake and actually cost a thousand times less than they paid. That's how, because of a stupid accident, life perished. The meaning of the story is not that this is a punishment for something, but that such is life and it is impossible to escape from such terrible accidents.

The amazing novella "Loneliness" is a cry of horror of the protagonist, who suddenly discovered that every person is always alone, it is impossible to overcome the barrier of misunderstanding between people. Until the end, no one will understand you - not a mother, not a wife, not a friend, no one - by and large, every person is always alone. This short story by Maupassant is very similar to Chekhov's wonderful, but unknown story "Fear", when the hero is suddenly seized by fear of life, which he cannot understand and begins to be afraid of it. He is passionately in love with his wife, the mother of his two children, but he knows for sure that she never loved him and lives with him out of mercy. This is terrible.

Several short stories very impressively describe various cases of insanity. The most famous is the big short story or even the story "Eagle". The hero is seized by a strange inexplicable fear, he feels that he has fallen into the power of some invisible, but omnipotent extraterrestrial, alien creature Orel, which feeds on his life forces. One day he woke up in the morning and found that the glass, which was full in the evening, was empty, and so several times. He is going crazy sure that soon these creatures will take over the earth completely. The same kind of short stories "He?", "Night", "Crazy?" etc.

4) optimistic - all other stories on a variety of topics that end well, there are fewer of them, but they exist. The best among them are "Papa Simon", "Idyll", "Paris Adventure", "Testament".

Novels.

Maupassant wrote 6 novels. First and best - Life". About what life really is. A very useful novel for young girls. The main character, Jeanne, just graduated from the monastery (like Emma Bovary) came home to her parents' estate, full of the most rosy romantic ideas about a life that she did not know. Zhanna is absolutely happy and believes that only even greater happiness awaits her - love. And love comes as it seems. She actually marries the first man she likes, without getting to know him well. A few months later it turned out that her husband did not love her, that he had married her parents' money, that he was callous and mean. He began to cheat on her with her own maid. Accidentally learning about this, she almost committed suicide, but then calmed down. Then it turned out that her parents, whom she considered the perfect couple, were cheating on each other, she found letters from her mother's lover. It was the second blow. Then she had a son, adored by Paul, whom she spoiled very much, and he grew up a dissolute good-for-nothing egoist who went to Paris and only demanded money from his mother. And she sent until she went bankrupt, sold her beloved family estate and ended her life in poverty and loneliness. By that time, the husband of his mistress had killed her husband. When Jeanne complains to her only faithful servant, Rosalie, she tells her that the life of peasant women, who are forced to work hard physically from morning to evening and from youth to death, is much worse.

But it cannot be said that there was no joy in Jeanne's life. The first months of marriage, she was very happy, and was grateful to her husband even for that. She was very happy during those 15 years that she raised her son until he left. In the end, the son gives her granddaughter to raise, and with this little screamer, life continues again. Rosalie sums up at the end: "Life is not as good as people think, but it's not as bad either."

The novel quite frankly describes the most important and intimate experiences of a young woman, for example, when Jeanne got married, she knew absolutely nothing about the physical side of love.

The second novel, not so interesting, but very instructive - " Dear friend". The career of the protagonist Georges Duroy is described. In the beginning he is almost a beggar, in the end he is the most famous rich journalist in Paris, married to the daughter of the richest banker. He is smart, cheeky and handsome. He knows how to please the right, influential people and especially women. He also has good human feelings, but he quickly realizes: “Every man for himself. Selfishness is everything." He is capable of any betrayal, if it is beneficial. At one time he had this situation: he is married to a woman who made him a journalist, he has two mistresses (one he really likes, the other is the elderly wife of his boss, banker Walter), and he also charms Walter's daughter, dreaming of marrying her. He cleverly and profitably managed to get a divorce and deceitfully married Walter's daughter, not loving her. There is no doubt that he will also leave her in due time. Most importantly, the novel shows the complete and unconditional victory of such people in life. At the end, Duroy triumphs.

Subsequent novels are distinguished by a deeper and more subtle psychologism, in which various cases of love are analyzed. But they are less interesting in terms of plot, the plot is not dynamic. Most of the novels are sad, even tragic. I will especially single out the last two novels - "Strong as Death" and "Our Heart".

Modernism. French symbolism.

Modernism(from the word modern - new, modern) is a set of new anti-realistic trends in world art of the late 19th - first half of the 20th century. What trends were included in modernism? French Symbolism, Russian Symbolism, English Aestheticism, Russian Acmeism, Futurism, etc. Modernism was clearly manifested in painting and music. In general, the turn of the century is sometimes called the "Modern" era. In this course, we will study the first, early stage in the development of modernism before 1914. After 1914, a mature, more sophisticated modernism began.

The main features of modernism: 1. All different modernists are united by the denial of realism, the denial of the principle of plausibility. All modernists strive to transform reality in their works, to depict it not as it is.

2. A great influence on modernists of a non-classical worldview, most modernists have its features. 3. Modernism is characterized by the desire for artistic experiment, for the deliberate complexity of form. Modernism is an elitist art, focused on the most educated and prepared part of the readers, simple people modernist works are difficult to understand.

French symbolism- the first direction of modernism. It finally took shape as a single literary movement in 1886, when the manifesto of symbolism came out, and the word itself began to be widely used. However, in fact, symbolism began to take shape much earlier, starting in 1857, when the Baudelaire collection was released. But then symbolism was the property of singles.

The main features of French symbolism. 1. A bold update of the content towards a non-classical worldview (in particular, the introduction into poetry of earlier absolutely forbidden topics, descriptions of intimate, erotic, disgusting, base aspects of life). 2. The inclination to express especially complex, refined, strange, often indefinite experiences, states, sensations, shades, halftones of feelings. 3. The widespread use of new artistic means, an unusual combination of words, unusual metaphors, epithets that destroy the direct, clear meaning of the verse, but create a general refined, indefinite feeling. The formation of the poetics of a hint, when instead of a direct clear meaning there is only a hint of what the poet wanted to express: a hint is a symbol.

Many French symbolists were called pr about cursed poets for their, to put it mildly, unhealthy lifestyle: alcohol, drugs, free love, prostitutes. Both in poetry and in life, they loved to break taboos.

All this fully and above all refers to the founder of symbolism Charles Baudelaire(1821-1867), although in general he does not belong to the Symbolists, but to the late Romantics. His love for hyperbole, deliberately bright epithets, metaphors, and bright contrasts makes him related to romanticism. It has a modernist sophistication, but it does not prevail. However, Baudelaire is important primarily because he was one of the first in European literature to frankly and very clearly express a non-classical worldview, and therefore he is still the founder of symbolism and modernism in general.

His main creation is the famous, legendary, scandalous collection " The flowers of Evil(1857), which marked the beginning of European modernism. The first thing that is characteristic of him is absolute pessimism, global disappointment in the world in the spirit of Byron. Life appears in Baudelaire's poems as something terrible, disgusting, meaningless, real Chaos, where death, debauchery, evil, old age, poverty, disease, hunger, and crime reign. This is how the world works, and there is no hope of changing it. Indestructible evil lives in the man himself, lyrical hero Baudelaire feels it in himself. The main question is: how does he feel about it? Differently. There are poems, bright, strong, more traditional, in which Baudelaire condemns evil in the world and in himself, suffers from internal and external evil. The very first poem of the collection "Foreword" plunges the reader into this terrible atmosphere of universal evil.

The wonderful poems "Atonement", "Confession", "Spleen", "The Merry Dead", "Swimming" have approximately the same meaning. In other poems, he glorifies love and beauty as the salvation and rebirth of the soul, such as the poem "The Living Torch".

But Baudelaire has other poems, real Baudelaire, rebellious, unconventional, where he has a different attitude to evil - these are poems where the poet finds the positive in the negative, beauty in death, decay, pleasure in sin and vice, describes all this beautifully, colorful. Baudelaire finds in evil that which attracts a person to it, hence the name of the collection: flowers, that is, the beauty of evil. The pleasure that evil and vice gives is strange, many opposite feelings are mixed in it - joy and horror, pleasure and disgust. And yet, a person is irresistibly drawn to these sensations.

One of Baudelaire's most famous poems, Carrion, is about how, walking on a beautiful summer day with a girlfriend outside the city, the author stumbles upon a decomposing horse corpse, and begins to describe it in detail, juicy description and sees in how worms swarm, a kind of beauty and harmony.

Hurrying to the feast, a buzzing cloud of flies

Over the vile heap hovered,

And the worms crawled and swarmed in the belly,

Like black thick slime.

All this moved, heaved and shone,

As if suddenly revived

The monstrous body grew and multiplied,

Full of vague breath.

That unsteady chaos was, devoid of forms and lines,

Like the first essay, like a stain,

Where the eye of the artist sees the camp of the goddess,

Ready to lay down on the canvas. (translated by V. Levik)

A vivid poem “Hymn to Beauty”, where beauty is glorified precisely as the beauty of evil, leading to crimes, to vice, to death, but giving unprecedented sensations.

But the most unprecedented, most monstrous poem by Baudelaire is “The Martyr. Drawing by an unknown master. In a luxurious boudoir in an intimate setting on a bed covered in blood in a shameless pose lies the headless corpse of a beautiful half-dressed woman - her head is right there on the table. There is a fair amount of sophisticated eroticism in the description. Death, horror, and obscene erotica are poeticized here.

Among silks, brocades, bottles, trinkets,

Pictures, and statues, and engravings,

Tempting sensuality sofas and pillows

And on the floor of stretched skins,

In a heated room, where the air is like in a greenhouse,

Where he is dangerous, spicy and deaf,

And where are the obsolete, in their crystal tomb,

Bouquets give off a breath, -

A headless female corpse streams onto a blanket

Crimson living blood,

And the white bed has already absorbed it,

Like water - thirsty new.

Like a ghostly shadow in the darkness

(How pale the words seem!)

Under the weight of black braids and idle ornaments

severed head

On the table lies, like an unprecedented buttercup,

And staring into the void,

Like twilight in winter, whitish, dull, lethargic,

The eyes are meaningless.

On a white sheet, alluring and bold

Spreading my nakedness,

All seduction shows the body,

All fatal beauty.

Amethyst peephole leg garter,

As if marveling, he looks at the world,

And a pink stocking with a golden border

Left as a souvenir.

Here, in her extraordinary loneliness,

In a portrait - as herself

Attracting with charm and secret voluptuousness,

Driving sensuality crazy, -

All the festivities of sin, from sweet crimes,

To caresses, murderous, like poison,

All that for which in the night, hiding in the curtain folds,

With delight the demons are watching. (Translated by V. Levik)

Poems of frankly erotic content: “The Dancing Snake”, “Song of the Afternoon”, “Jewelry”, “Pr about damn women" describing lesbian love.

Baudelaire also writes clearly anti-Christian verses: "Rebellious", "The Denial of St. Peter", "Litany to Satan".

Baudelaire has a number of simply beautiful poems, entirely in the spirit of modernism, describing strange, subtle, complex sensations and experiences. "Cat". The unusual purring of a cat awakens strange sweet sensations in a person, extracted from the depths of the soul. "Anxious Sky"

Your gaze is mysterious, as if moistened.

Who will say whether it is blue, green, gray?

He is dreamy, then gentle, then cruel,

It is empty as heaven, scattered or deep.

You are like the witchcraft of those long white days,

When in a drowsy haze the soul is sadder,

And the nerves are inflated, and suddenly it runs,

Awakening the sleepy mind, a mysterious affliction.

Sometimes you are beautiful, like the horizon of the earth

Under the autumn sun, softened by a veil.

As given in the rain, when their depth

Illuminated by a ray of disturbed skies!

Oh, in this climate that captivates forever -

In a dangerous woman - will I accept the first snow,

And pleasures sharper than glass and ice

Will I find it in the winter, night cold?

So, Baudelaire fixed the complexity of the structure of life, his attitude towards evil is ambiguous. On the one hand, he knows that evil and vice lead to death, suffering, and spiritual devastation. On the other hand, evil is insurmountable, because it gives a person pleasure and other unusual experiences that a person cannot refuse.

Also, the predecessors of the Symbolists include a certain Lautreamont(1846-1870), little is known about him. He is known for his collection of lyrical prose, The Songs of Maldoror. These works are shocking, it seems to be the creation of a crazy, but smart person. Behind the outrageousness, of course, there is a rebellion against the philistinism and, in general, against the unjust structure of the world.

Paul Verlaine(1844-1896) - he is considered the first proper symbolist. As a person, he is known for his irresistible addiction to alcohol, as well as scandalous homosexual relationships - including with another symbolist Arthur Rimbaud, which will be discussed later. During a quarrel, the intemperate and drunk Verlaine shot Rimbaud, lightly wounded him, but he was imprisoned for the attempt. In prison, he sincerely repented of his sins, turned to God (which was seriously reflected in poetry). But religiosity did not save from alcoholism and a very frivolous lifestyle. Verlaine's character was quite different from Baudelaire's. Verlaine is a soft, gentle, sad, kind, weak person, he has no rebellious strength, he expressed the corresponding feelings in his poetry.

Verlaine was the first to widely and consciously apply symbolist poetics (bold phrases, metaphors, violations of logical meaning, allusion, uncertainty). Most of his poems express the subtlest nuances, feelings, undertones, elusive strange transitional states. That's what Verlaine is good for. There are many descriptions of nature, its transitional states - twilight, early morning, etc. These states are completely merged with the same indefinite state of the soul of the lyrical hero. Verlaine's poems are musical and filled with sound writing (but this can only be felt by knowing French, because half of the beauty of Verlaine's poetry is lost in translation). In general, the content of his poetry is quite traditional, classical. There are a few erotic poems, but not many.

Here is the poem "Prudence".

Give me your hand, don't breathe - let's sit down under the foliage,

Already the whole tree is ready for leaf fall,

But the gray foliage is still cool

And the light of the lunar shade of wax.

Let's forget. Look ahead.

Let the autumn wind take it as a reward

Tired love, forgotten joy,

And strokes her hair, hurt by an owl.

Let's get rid of hope. And, the soul is not a tyrant,

Hearts will learn the peace of dying

At the colors of the evening over the twilight of the crowns.

Be quiet before the dusk, as before the schema,

And remember: there is no need to disturb a prophetic dream

Unkind mother - unsociable nature.

Arthur Rimbaud(1854-1891) - very unusual person and a poet. Extremely emotional, quick-tempered, reckless, impudent violator of all sorts of norms and laws, a natural rebel, capable of any shocking, blasphemous deed (once he wrote “Death to God!” on the doors of the church). He hated the burghers with a fierce hatred. Most of all he liked to wander without a penny of money, to roam freely around the world. Freedom is its main principle of existence.

Rimbaud wrote all his best poems at the age of 15, 16, in 1870 and 1871 (he was born on October 20, 1854). Being a maximalist, he set himself the ultimate goal - to turn poetry into an instrument of the highest form of knowledge - clairvoyance. Clairvoyance is a direct, intuitive, super-logical knowledge of all the secrets of being, the maximum expansion of consciousness. First of all, the poet must know man and humanity, and for this he needs to fit into his soul all possible human thoughts, emotions, states. An excerpt from a letter from Rimbaud: “The poet becomes a clairvoyant as a result of a long and strictly deliberate disorder of all his feelings. He tries to experience for himself all kinds of love, suffering, madness, he absorbs all poisons and leaves for himself their quintessence. This is an indescribable torment, which can be endured only with the highest exertion of all faith and with inhuman efforts, torment that makes him a sufferer of sufferers, a criminal of criminals, an outcast of outcasts, but at the same time, a sage of sages. After all, he knows the unknown, and even if, having gone mad, he eventually lost the understanding of his visions, he still managed to contemplate them with his own eyes! Let him perish in this crazy flight under the burden of the unheard of and ineffable: he will be replaced by other stubborn workers; they will start from the place where he drooped helplessly! Rimbaud sought to artificially induce a state of clairvoyance - long insomnia, physical pain, alcohol, drugs. In this state, he wrote two cycles of poems in prose "Insight" (1872) and "It's time in hell" (1873). In fact, these are fragments, shreds of some incomprehensible, little connected with each other thoughts, feelings, pictures, images - beyond any logic. In general, nothing good.

In 1873, an incomprehensible, unprecedented event in the history of world literature takes place. 19-year-old Rimbaud, an extraordinarily talented, almost brilliant poet, became disillusioned with poetry as such and abandoned it forever. Clairvoyance did not reveal any secrets to him, his poetry is understandable and unnecessary to anyone, except for a bunch of crazy people like himself. Since that time, Rimbaud has not written a single line of poetry. He went on a trip to exotic countries Asia and Africa, he was a hired soldier, merchant, just a traveler. He died at the age of 37, from gangrene - blood poisoning, his leg was cut off, but this did not help.

So, Rimbaud wrote his best poems at the age of 15, 16. The main features of Rimbaud's poetry. 1. He develops the tradition of Baudelaire. Introduces new, indecent, prosaic themes into poetry. If Baudelaire poeticized evil, ugliness, death, then Rimbaud poeticized simply small, everyday indecent things. There are no taboo topics for him. For example, the poem "Evening Prayer" describes how the lyrical hero drinks beer in a tavern and ends like this:

I get up from the table, I feel the urge ... / Calm, like the creator of both cedars and hyssops,

I shoot up a stream, skillfully sprinkled / With amber liquid, a family of heliotropes.

2. Very bright, colorful, bold metaphors and other means of expression, sometimes reaching the destruction of logic. 3. Bold, fresh outlook on life.

One of Rimbaud's best poems, "Lice Seekers", the boy's two older sisters look for lice in his hair and immerse him in an unusual, half-asleep, blissful state.

When on a child's forehead, combed to the point of blood,

A transparent swarm of shadows descends in a cloud,

The child sees awake bowed at the ready

Two affectionate sisters with the hands of gentle fairies.

Here, having seated him near the window frame,

Where flowers bathe in the blue air

They fearlessly in his stubborn tangle

Stuck marvelous and terrible fingers.

He hears how he sings viscous and indistinctly

Breath of timid inexpressible honey,

As with a slight whistle it climbs back -

Saliva or kiss? - in a half-open mouth ...

Drunk, he hears in the silence with a stous

The beating of their eyelashes and thin fingers tremble,

Barely expires with a barely perceptible crunch

Under the royal nail crushed louse...

It awakens the wine of wonderful laziness,

Like a sigh of harmonica, like delirious grace,

And in the heart, thrilled by sweet desires,

It goes out, then the desire to sob burns.

Also good poems are "Ophelia" and "Asleep in a hollow."

Rimbaud's most famous poem, The Drunken Ship, describes an extraordinary journey on an unmanned ship - a fantasy-dream to see the beauty of the world.

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906).

The great Norwegian playwright who glorified Norway. Norway is one of the four Scandinavian countries (together with Sweden, Finland and Denmark). A narrow strip of land west coast Scandinavian Peninsula, covered with mountains and indented by fjords, deep sea bays in the mountains. Harsh and beautiful northern land. In ancient times, it was famous for the Vikings, fearless sailors and conquerors. In the 14th century it became dependent on Denmark, at the beginning of the 19th century it became dependent on Sweden. And only in 1905 Norway gained full independence.

general characteristics Ibsen's work.

1. His plays are interesting to read: a dynamic plot, intellectual saturation, the sharpest statement of real serious problems.

2. His favorite heroes are loners, rebels, always going against the majority, striving for independence, freedom from the opinions of other people. Often they aspire to the mountains, to the heights, not to people, but from people (which, by the way, is not typical for Russian literature).

3. One of the most important problems posed in Ibsen's work is the inhumanity of high equal demands on man

« Dollhouse"(1879) is one of Ibsen's most popular, interesting plays. In it, for the first time, a woman in world literature stated that, in addition to the duties of mother and wife, she “has ". The main character Nora stated: “I I can no longer be satisfied with what the majority says and what the books say. I need to think about these things myself.". She wants to reconsider everything - both religion and morality. Nora actually asserts the right of an individual to create their own moral rules and ideas about life, different from the generally accepted and traditional ones. That is, Ibsen again affirms the relativity of moral norms.

The main character - Nora - at first seems to be a carefree, frivolous young woman, a "doll", "squirrel", as her husband calls her, she does not think about anything except the domestic comfort of her apartment, she depends on her husband in everything. But gradually she becomes a real independent-thinking person, capable of serious deeds. Gradually it turns out that the external well-being of their family does not have solid, real grounds. She has a secret, it turns out that 8 years ago, at the beginning of their marriage, Nora saved her husband from death, from a dangerous illness, and he did not know about the severity of his illness (the doctors only told her, and she hid from him), she got money for required trip south, borrowed. But at the same time, she violated the law, forged her father's signature on the bill. She did this in the name of the health and tranquility of her closest people, her dying father and sick husband. And for all 8 years she hid it from her husband, slowly herself, denying herself everything, paid off the debt. At the same time, she naturally has to lie, which she does quite easily. But she is afraid to tell the truth. The fact is that her husband Helmer is very strict in terms of morality, he is an “irreproachable official” (his words), an impeccable person, irreconcilable to any violation of morality, including lies, so Nora feels guilty. When a wife is afraid to tell the truth to her husband, especially that she saved him, such a family can hardly be called real. But there comes a moment when the truth is inevitably revealed, moreover, everyone can recognize it. Upon learning of the "crime" of his wife, Helmer immediately began to accuse her of immorality, that she had ruined his reputation in the eyes of society, scolded her as a hypocrite, a criminal. He didn't even try to figure out why she did it. It turns out that he never truly loved her, as a person, it turns out that he is an ordinary egoist. He needs a wife as a decoration of life, nothing more. When the danger that everyone will find out about her “crime” suddenly disappears, and the husband tries to make peace, pretend that nothing happened (after all, he was only afraid of what people would say), Nora, unexpectedly, first of all for her husband, appears completely different, a serious, independent person, speaks calmly, balancedly. But in her words - rebellion.

In fact, this is a rebellion against all life surrounding it, against its basic foundations and rules. For that a short time that her husband scolded her, Nora learned a lot, rethought. She understood who her husband was, realized that her life with him, and in general her whole past life was not real, but puppet, deceitful. In her eyes, generally accepted traditional values ​​and laws have collapsed, she no longer believes in them, because she does not consider herself a criminal and from the point of view of humanity she is not such, but from the point of view of the law that rules in our world, from the point of view of society, she is a criminal and should be punished. Nora decides on an unheard of, rarest in those days, rebellious act, she leaves her husband, whom she does not love and cannot respect; leaves her three children, arguing that she does not feel able to truly raise them, because before raising children, you need to educate yourself, understand life yourself, become a person. For the first time, a woman in world literature stated that, in addition to the duties of a mother and wife, she has and other equally sacred duties" - "duties to oneself". "I I can no longer be satisfied with what the majority says and what the books say. I need to think about these things myself.". She wants to reconsider everything - both religion and morality. " I need to find out for myself who is right - society or me". Nora actually asserts the right of an individual to form their own moral rules and ideas about life, different from the generally accepted and traditional ones.

« ghosts" (1881) is also one of Ibsen's best plays. Some secrets are constantly revealed in it, the characters are constantly discovering something new for themselves, hence the tension. The main character is the widow Fru Alving. In the town, her late husband, Captain Alving, was perceived as a noble, perfectly decent, generous person, and the two of them as an ideal married couple. Suddenly, she tells Pastor Manders the truth about their family life, which was " disguised abyss". All her life she skillfully concealed that her husband was actually a libertine and drunkard, creating a positive “image” for him. Sometimes she had to keep him company at night, drinking with him so that he would not leave the house. She lied and dodged all her life for the sake of her son, so that a stain of shame would not lie on him. And now, it seems, Mrs. Alving has achieved the desired result: her husband has died, he is well known. Nothing to worry about. But just now she begins to doubt the correctness of her behavior.

An adult son, Oswald, a poor artist, arrives from France. He turns out to be strikingly similar to his father - in everything, he also loves to drink very much. One day, when the mother hears how he molests the maid in the kitchen, she screamed, it seemed to her that she had in front of her the ghost of the late captain, who had once molested the maid in the same way.

Then another terrible secret is revealed, Oswald is ill with a severe mental illness - this is a direct result of his father's "fun" lifestyle. And at the end of the play, he goes crazy in front of his mother, turns into an idiot. So the son pays cruelly for the sins of his father. By the way, Ibsen was sure that there is such a law in life: if the punishment for sins and vices does not befall a person during his lifetime, then punishment will overtake his children or grandchildren. A Doll's House features a minor character, Dr. Rank, who dies from an illness caused by his father's drunkenness and debauchery. He says: " And in every family, in one way or another, a similar inexorable retribution affects».

In "Ghosts", of course, Ms. Alving is severely punished for lying. Any hidden trouble, illness, vice will someday manifest itself anyway and strike with a vengeance. The play exposes any lie.

But this is still not the most important thing in the play. The most important thing in it is the exposure of traditional Christian morality, which requires a person, first of all, to fulfill his duty. Frau Alving calls ghosts obsolete ideas, ideas that no longer correspond to living life, but still rule it out of habit, by tradition. First of all, this is Christian morality, the bearer of which is the highly moral and demanding pastor Manders, who is a bit like Brand. It was to him that the young Fru Alving once ran, after a year of marriage, she learned with horror about the vices of her husband, for whom she was given out without her desire. She loved the pastor, and he loved her, she wanted to live with him, but he severely sent her to her lawful husband with the words “ your duty is to humbly carry the cross placed upon you by the higher will". The pastor considers that his act the greatest victory over himself, over the sinful desire for his own happiness. " What right do we humans have to happiness? We must do our duty". It was he who doomed Fru Alving to a terrible existence with an unloved drinker, he deprived her of happiness, killed her life.

Gradually, talking with Oswald, Mrs. Alving finds the reason why her husband began to drink. The town has a gloomy religious outlook. “Here people are taught to look at labor as a curse and punishment for sins, and life as a vale of sorrow, from which the sooner the better to get rid of.” "And there (in France) people ... enjoy life." Captain Alving was a very cheerful person in his youth, for his "extraordinary cheerfulness (...) there was no real outlet here." “From childhood I was taught the fulfillment of duty, duties and the like. We only talked about duty, duties - about my duties, about his duties. And I'm afraid our house has become unbearable for your father, through my fault. Religious severity, moral exactingness kill the joy of life.

Fru Alving, like Nora, realized the need to free herself from ghosts, conventional religious ideas about life, to think independently and freely. " I can no longer put up with all these hand-binding conventions. I want to achieve freedom».

Thus, in this play, the confrontation between morality and humanity is most clearly reflected, where the author is already completely on the side of humanity.

« Builder Solnes"(1892) is one of Ibsen's best plays. It sings of rebellion against ordinary morality. Solnes is the brightest type of a strong person. He is a successful, wealthy architect whose strong will easily overwhelms the will of other people, whom he uses to his advantage. He likes to be always the first, the main, the best in everything. He also has a semi-mystical ability, thanks to which all his strong desires come true by themselves.

It seems that his life is absolutely prosperous and happy, then it is revealed what a terrible price he paid for his success. When he and his wife were young, they lived in an old house. Solness knew that the burning of the old house would give him the opportunity to show his talent as an architect, to start success (how exactly is not entirely clear). He strongly desired the fire, and the fire occurred, precisely because Solness strongly desired it. But as a result of the fire, two of his young sons fell ill and died. But immediately after that, success came to Solnes, as he expected. He paid for it with the lives of his sons, the happiness of his wife, and his personal happiness too. And he is absolutely sure of this and suffers from this, because since then his wife does not live, but mechanically exists, she is dead in soul. And Solnes, who loves life, dreams of happiness, is bound to it by the laws of morality.

And suddenly a young girl appears, who has been in love with Solnes since childhood - Hilda. They suit each other, she has a strong soul, she loves to be "breathtaking", i.e. strong, extreme emotions. And Solnes once conquered her with the power of his spirit. Hilda believes that one should always strive for maximum happiness, the most insane, fantastic, impossible. And as a symbol of such breathtaking happiness - a castle with a tower at a dizzying height, which she demands that Solnes build for her. “And at the very top of the tower there is a balcony. I want to stand there" "and look down." In fact, she demands from Solnes that he overcome his conscience and leave his wife, they would be happy together. Hilda hates the word duty, which wife S constantly pronounces. Debt, debt, debt." "It's so ridiculous." “That you dare not reach out to your own happiness. Just because you have a person you know on the road!” Solness: "And which you have no right to push off the road." Hilda: “Are you really not entitled, in fact? But, on the other hand, still ... ". Hilda herself has not yet fully decided whether, for the sake of the happiness of two people who know how to enjoy life, it is possible to hurt a third person who is no longer able to be truly happy. This is the main question of the play.

Solnes admits that he is afraid of heights, he is dizzy. Hilda asks him to do the impossible - to rise to the height and, according to tradition, hang a wreath on the spire of the high house he built, to overcome himself. And Solness decided to do it, he also decided to announce on the same day that he loved Hilda. This means that he decided to overcome traditional moral norms and become happy. He rose to the top, and this is shown in the play as a feat, a long-awaited turn to something new and better. But at the height he felt dizzy, and he fell. He decided on the impossible, showed fortitude, rose to age-old values, rose to such a height that turned out to be incompatible with life. He took a risk and died, but the very fact of risk and overcoming himself is much more important.

This play describes the characters who seek to overcome traditional morality, which it clearly interferes with living, the most important thing is that they are described with the author's obvious sympathy, and not with exposure. In fact, this play is about living in such a way that it takes your breath away, to the maximum, to be happy, and for this you can even step over eternal values.

Belgian Literature.

Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949).

The most famous writer of Belgium, as well as the most famous representative of the Symbolist dramaturgy. The most striking feature of his work is the dual world. Behind the visible earthly life lies something invisible, unknown and terrible. Maeterlinck is primarily a mystic.

Maeterlinck's most interesting play There inside"(1894), it is very short, is in the anthology. Two heroes are standing in front of the house, looking out the window at what is happening there, inside, talking and not daring to enter. The fact is that they are instructed to tell the inhabitants of the house the terrible news: their daughter suddenly drowned herself. There, outside the window, they don’t suspect anything, they go about their daily business, they laugh, and these two must come in and destroy it all. And for them, these daily activities outside the window, in the house acquire extraordinary interest and significance. The situation vividly conveys the tragedy of human life. Tragedy can knock on the door of everyone at any moment, because we do not know that even the people closest to us have it inside, in their souls. The drowned girl was very secretive, no one knew what was in her soul, no one could even think that she was capable of such a thing. When one of the standing people enters the house, half the village gathers at the window to look at the reaction of the parents.

Maeterlinck's later plays are more optimistic. The most famous among them Blue bird» (1908). The work is in many ways very naive, childishly optimistic, but at the same time wise. The idea of ​​two worlds manifested itself in the brightest way in it.

The main characters - the boy Tiltil and the girl Mitil - go in search of a blue bird for a sick neighbor girl. The blue bird is a symbol of happiness. An old neighbor turns into a fairy and gives them a hat with a magic diamond that helps them see hidden entity, the soul of all phenomena, objects and beings. They see the revived souls of a dog, a cat, bread, water, light, etc. Together they travel to other worlds. I will not talk about all the worlds they visited, only the most interesting ones. 1) First, they enter the Land of Remembrance, where their deceased grandparents live. It turns out that the dead only sleep, but wake up and rejoice as soon as the living remember them. Remember more often those who have died. 2) Cemetery. Something unexpected happened there. Tyltil turned the magic diamond and waited for the souls of the dead to come out of the graves, but bouquets of flowers rose from the opened graves. It turns out that there is no one in the graves. There are no dead, for people, their souls are immortal. 3) Gardens of Bliss. The beatitudes are living beings, they are of two kinds. Bad, fat, rough - Bliss to be rich, drunk, not knowing anything, etc. There is a Bliss that is too early for children to know about. Good beatitudes - The joy of being kind, just, etc. The main joy - the Joy of maternal love, appears in the form of mother Tiltil and Mitil, but only she is more elegant, more beautiful, younger. They want her to always be like this on earth. And she tells them that she is always like this, but only inside, in her soul: one must learn to see inner beauty through ordinary appearance. And this is the main idea of ​​the play. 4) The kingdom of the future - there live children awaiting their birth on earth. Every day they become younger, smaller, the smaller the child, the closer date his birth.

Returning home and waking up in the morning (and their entire journey lasted one earthly night), they see everything in a new light, everything seems unusual, beautiful, significant to them, they know that everything has a hidden living soul, a secret is hidden everywhere. They never found the blue bird, but suddenly it turned out that the blue bird is their home bluebird, but in the end it flies away from them, because they and people in general have not learned to be kind and love enough to be happy. So, happiness is in love and kindness.

In 1918, Maeterlinck wrote a sequel to The Blue Bird - “ betrothal". About how 16-year-old Tiltil is looking for a bride. The fairy collects 6 girls that he likes, and they all go to the land of ancestors and the land of children so that his ancestors and his children choose the best wife for him. The idea is as follows: a person does not exist by himself, he is a link in a huge chain of life, he is connected with ancestors and descendants, he is responsible to them. Being born, a person comes into the world, equipped with ancestors, uses everything that others have created and should be grateful to them. On the other hand, he is also responsible for the well-being of children and descendants in general, he must pass on the baton of life to them. And this responsibility to ancestors and descendants is the core of life that does not allow a person to fall, go astray and perish. That is the idea of ​​the play.

In 1911 Maeterlinck received the Nobel Prize.

English Aestheticism and Oscar Wilde.

English aestheticism is the second most important literary trend of modernism. The essence of aestheticism is simple - the main value is not goodness, not morality, but beauty. Beauty is superior to morality, or at least they are equal. Beauty cannot be judged in terms of morality, it is different phenomena lying in different planes. Beauty can be immoral, bring evil, but it will not lose its value for a person.

Human life should be built according to the laws of beauty, surrounded by beautiful things. And the highest beauty is found only in works of art. The meaning of human life is communication with art, one's own creativity or perception of works of art. The ordinary life of the average person is boring and meaningless. Salvation is only in art, there is real life. Art is higher than real life. It is always a beautiful lie, a fiction that has nothing to do with reality. Art, like beauty, is not subject to the judgment of morality. “There are no moral and immoral books. There are books written well and badly written” (Wilde’s famous words from the preface to his only novel).

Oscar Wilde(1854-1900) - the brightest representative of English aestheticism in literature. A very unusual, bright writer and person.

Biography. Irish by nationality, he lived most of his life in London. After graduating from Oxford, he, as the son of wealthy parents, led a typically secular frivolous life, wandered around in the evenings, had fun, preached aestheticism, hedonism (the meaning of life is pleasure), contempt for generally accepted norms, including moral ones. He loved provocative, unusual clothes. He said: "You must either be a work of art yourself, or wear a work of art." The main talent Wilde was witty, many English aristocrats considered it happiness to talk with him or even just listen, Wilde himself knew how to enjoy witty conversation and give pleasure to listeners. His name was the prince of the aesthetes.

True, he not only had fun, but also worked - he gave public lectures on the art of the Renaissance, traveled to different cities in England, and once he did a great deed, went on an almost year-long tour of lectures in America, the most unaesthetic country in the world, spoke to the simplest people, miners, and was successful. When asked at US customs what valuables he was carrying, Wilde said, "Nothing but his genius."

He was married and had two sons. And yet secular entertainment was in the first place, the wife turned out to be ordinary and uninteresting. “I threw the pearl of my soul into a goblet of wine and walked the path of pleasures to the sweet sounds of flutes.” And this path led him to death. It soon became clear that Wilde preferred not feminine beauty, but masculine beauty. Wilde was friends with many young people younger than himself, and not only friends. However, addiction to homosexual relationships was at that time quite common in London in certain circles - a decadent atmosphere reigned, an atmosphere of refined, perverted pleasures. 2 months after the release of the novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray" in 1891, Wilde met an unusually handsome young man Alfred and fell in love with him, fell under the spell of his charm, just as the artist Basil in the novel fell under the influence of Dorian. It turned out that in the novel, Wilde predicted his own fate in the form of Basil. Both attachment to a handsome young man leads to death. The worst thing happened at the very peak of Wilde's popularity and fame - in 1895, when he was glorified by 4 comedies that were played with resounding success in theaters in England. Wilde inevitably came into conflict with Father Bosie, as he called Alfred, a squabbler and a rude man, who sued Wilde and accused him of violating public morality. There was a difficult, shameful trial, during which Wilde was deliberately humiliated and destroyed. It turned out that many hated him, hated his success, his dissimilarity to the majority, his contempt for people like them. The townsfolk could not forgive him for the fact that he knows how to enjoy life, but they do not. He was sentenced to 2 years in prison, all his personal property was confiscated, all the things he loved, books, favorite trinkets, which were of no value to anyone except Wilde himself, were taken away, he was deprived of the right of paternity. All this is done to further humiliate and offend. Everyone turned away from him and his family, his mother died from the experiences. The wife was forced to change her surname and leave England. It was a complete collapse, the destruction of man.

Wilde was placed in the most ordinary prison, along with the most common criminals, thieves, murderers, etc. He is the prince of aesthetes, accustomed to comfort, to ideal cleanliness, he was forced to constantly be in the dirt, in the most humiliating conditions, to sleep on bare boards. The regime in prison was the most cruel. Heavy stupefying physical labor (Wilde never did it), corporal punishment for the slightest offense, constant bullying.

But all this was typical for the first year of serving the term, then the head of the prison changed, he became more humane to Wilde. Then he was allowed to read and write. And then he wrote "Confession", in the form of a large letter to Bozi, to the one whom he continued to love. The whole of it is not interesting, but its most important part is where Wilde describes the changes in his outlook on life. Previously, he valued only pleasures, now he understood the value of suffering, felt that the highest beauty lies in suffering and sorrow. He realized that the only thing that can save in the most unbearable circumstances is humility before life as it is. Humility is the understanding that nothing happens for nothing, suffering is always a fair punishment for your own sins. Therefore, we must be able to be happy and content with what we have. You need to see the wisdom of life in everything. Wilde understood and began to preach that the main thing in life is love for people, and not for oneself. This is the highest happiness. In fact, Wilde became a Christian, although he did not officially accept Christianity.

Before leaving prison, he was full of hope, believed that real creativity was only now beginning, but everything turned out differently. After prison, he, a beggar, not finding support in anyone, was forced to leave for France, he lived all alone, downcast, sick, broken. He turned out to be too weak a person, lost his firmness of spirit and soon died.

His last work, which he began while still in prison, "The Ballad of Reading Prison" is a stunning, emotional description of prison as a place where they humiliate, destroy any person, even accidentally stumbled.

Prison drove some mad / In others shame killed,

Children are beaten there, deaths are expected there, / Justice sleeps there,

There is a human law / the tears of the weak are full.

Someone else's pupil looks into the peephole / Ruthless, like a whip.

There, forgotten by people / We must die.

There we are destined to rot forever, / To decay alive.

(Translated by N. Voronel)

The focus is on the execution of a prisoner who, in a fit of jealousy, killed his wife. Wilde describes his feelings, his horror of death. He seems to be asking the question: is it good to multiply death and suffering - to pay for death with death.

main feature works of Wilde, because of which it is worth reading - an unusual, bright wit, irony and an abundance of paradoxes. A paradox is a bright, spectacular unexpected thought that contradicts the traditional, generally accepted opinion, or which itself contains some contradiction, reflecting the inconsistency of life. Basically, Wilde's paradoxes reflected a non-classical worldview. For example: “The only way to get rid of temptation (the temptation to sin) is to give in to it.”

By the way, the classical and non-classical worldview are combined in his work.

For example, his wonderful fairy tales, subtle, lyrical, basically affirm the most traditional, Christian moral values: love, kindness, compassion, altruistic self-sacrifice. The best of them are: "The Happy Prince", "The Giant-Egoist" (in this fairy tale one of the heroes - a little boy, because of which the giant got rid of his selfishness - suddenly turns out to be the future savior, Christ), "The Nightingale and the Rose", " Loyal friend." In the last tale, one of the heroes, in my opinion, is one of the most striking personifications, symbols of human hypocrisy.

The best work of O. Wilde is the novel “ The Picture of Dorian Grey».

The protagonist - an unusually handsome young man Dorian Gray, with the help of Lord Henry, suddenly realized his beauty and youth, which will pass very quickly. Seeing his portrait, he very much wanted to change places with the portrait: so that his portrait would grow old, and he himself would remain young and beautiful forever. And his wish came true. The portrait not only grew old, but also reflected all the evil, immoral deeds of Dorian.

Lord Henry, the second protagonist of the novel, is an unusually intelligent man, an interesting interlocutor, fascinated Dorian and revealed to him his philosophy of life. Hedonism, a doctrine declaring that the only meaning of life is pleasure, joy. There is no need to be afraid to be an egoist, why is altruism better than egoism: why is it better to inflict suffering on yourself than on another person, than on another better than me? Do not be afraid to break the rules of morality, if necessary. Youth and beauty open up great opportunities for enjoyment for a person, and it is necessary to have time to enjoy it, because youth passes quickly.

Dorian learned all this very well, began to enjoy life, and every now and then hurt other people. Because of him, the girl who loved him and was rudely rejected by him died. He seduced girls, married ladies, and then easily abandoned them, he visited dirty dens where they sold drugs and love for money. At the same time, he himself remained for 18 years as a 20-year-old, and his portrait, which he locked in a secret room, became more and more terrible and disgusting. Once Dorian went so far as to kill his friend, the artist who painted the portrait.

He was met by the brother of that first dead girl and wanted to take revenge, he almost killed Dorian, but he himself accidentally died. Having experienced the fear of death for the first time, Dorian, who had been continuously enjoying for 18 years, suddenly lost the ability to enjoy life, he became afraid of everything. To be afraid that they will find a portrait, that they will find out who killed the artist, etc. In the end, he wanted to destroy the portrait so that no one would know about his hidden immorality, stuck a knife into it and immediately fell down as a dead and ugly old man, and the portrait became whole and young Dorian Gray flaunted on it.

The meaning of the novel: Dorian was touched by the most important law of life: you have to pay for everything, you have to pay for pleasure with suffering, for crime with punishment. That's how life works. Lord Henry also enjoyed life all his life, only he never committed crimes, and, unlike Dorian, he did not lose the ability to enjoy. In the end, he told Dorian: "You should never do anything that you can't talk to people about after dinner." That is, what needs to be hidden, which means being afraid that someone will find out. Committing major crimes (murder or theft) is not beneficial for the people themselves, who seek pleasure. My advice to you: enjoy life (this is the only meaning of life), you can commit minor sins, lie, offend someone, etc. But do not complicate your pleasure with large nasty things, you will have to pay for them.

H. G. Wells (1866-1946).

One of the founders of science fiction. The first samples were given by Edgar Allan Poe. Then the Frenchman Jules Verne (1828-1905) became famous in this genre, but in Verne the element of adventure and entertainment predominates. H. G. Wells is more serious, he puts social, moral issues but it doesn't lose its charm either.

His most famous novels " Time Machine» (1895). It was after Wells' novel that the phrase became widely used. The heroes travel to the distant future and discover something strange and terrible there. This is interesting, but has nothing to do with the real future, as it seems to me.

« Island of Doctor Moreau» (1896). A talented but power-hungry scientist on a desert island created his own kingdom from half-humans, half-beasts, which he himself created surgically from gorillas and forced to serve him. But then they finished him off.

« Invisible Man» (1897). The talented, but very proud and irritable physicist Griffin made an incredible discovery, learned to make the human body invisible, he set up an experiment on himself, but he did not have invisible clothes and he could not return to normal condition. Soon he entered into an inevitable conflict with people, he has a crazy idea - to seize power over the world, using his invisibility. He commits crimes with impunity, but he is soon killed. In this and previous novel the thought is this: not to love people and desire power over them is bad, it turns against you yourself.

« War of the Worlds» (1898). Earth was attacked by aggressive Martians. Martians are almost the same people, only after many millions of years. They are unusually mentally developed, they have a powerful technique, but in the process of development, human feelings, conscience, etc. have disappeared as unnecessary. They are going to feed on human blood, as humans feed on animal flesh. But soon they all die from the simplest terrestrial infection, like the flu.

Wells also wrote good stories. I especially recommend that you read the story "The Door in the Wall." A door in the wall suddenly appears where it never was - this is a chance to get into the world of your dreams. But a person, immersed in his ordinary life, is afraid to break it, change it abruptly and enter the door in the wall in order to live the way he really wants, a person is actually afraid of the realization of his true desires.

English neo-romantics.

The English neo-romantics of this period made a huge contribution to the development of adventure literature. Robert Stevenson. He has written several adventure novels for teenagers. The most famous is Treasure Island (1883). The cycle of stories "The Adventures of Prince Florizel" (1882) was well filmed in Soviet times.

But Stevenson's best work is the story " The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”(1886) about how one scientist learned to divide himself into good and evil, at night he turned into an evil Mr. Hyde and went to do evil, but during the day he became ideally good. But soon he completely began to turn into Hyde and committed suicide. There is an excellent Hollywood film adaptation called "Mary Reilly" (which adds another character, a maid in Mr. Jekyll's house).

American Literature.

It is necessary to say a few words about the most important event in American history of the 19th century. In 1861-65 there was Civil War between North and South, the northern states under President Abraham Lincoln wanted to force the southern states to give up slavery so that they would recognize blacks as equal citizens, and the southerners resisted. The northerners won, but the problem of the relationship between whites and blacks has remained to this day, and many whites still consider blacks to be people of an inferior race. And blacks tend to see whites as their enemies and take revenge on them.

Mark Twain (1835-1910).

Classic of American Literature. Real name Samuel Clemens. When he was a pilot on the Mississippi River, he had the nickname "Two measures" (Mark Twain), such is the average depth of the river.

Mark Twain is a satirist and humorist. His humor is coarse, direct, folk, not subtle, not always smart, but cheerful.

Tale " Prince and the Pauper» (1882). England in the 16th century, two very similar boys - one prince, the other a beggar - exchanged clothes for fun, and no one noticed this change. The beggar became a prince, and the prince became a beggar. Medieval court ceremonies are described through the eyes of a beggar and look ridiculous and ridiculous. But the prince has a very hard time, he experienced in his own skin the terrible life of the common people.

Novel " A Yankee in King Arthur's Court» (1889). Yankee - a skilled American worker from a mechanical factory ends up in England in the 6th century, during the time of the legendary King Arthur, his round table, knights, etc. And through the eyes of this Yankee Twain ridicules the Middle Ages as such, the way of life of people, traditions, customs, social injustice, religion, manner of dressing, etc. The Yankee, armed with the technical knowledge and skills of the 19th century, seems to be a great magician in the 6th century, he intervenes in medieval life, trying to turn it into America of the 19th century both in a technical and political sense. But none of this works.

There are a lot of really funny moments in both books, but in general they are completely unconvincing, implausible, uninteresting.

Mark Twain wrote good stories, the funniest: "The Famous Prancing Frog of Calaveras", "The Hours", "Journalism in Tennessee", "How I Edited the Agricultural Newspaper".

The best works of Twain. " The Adventures of Tom Sawyer a ”(1876) - a classic of children's literature. The main characters are essentially naughty hooligans, constantly breaking the rules, every order, doing everything the other way around, starting fights, mocking the teacher and the priest. Their bright life is a protest against everything boring, inanimate, against any violence, lack of freedom, lies and hypocrisy. And the school was and still is in many respects the accumulation of all these negative qualities. Studying this book at school puts the teacher in a difficult position, one must admire the hero who protests against the school. We have to pretend that the school has changed a lot for the better since then.

Twain's best book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn» (1885). The main character is actually a bum, he is used to living in the wild, without any benefits of civilization. He runs away from the old maid who took him to her upbringing, as well as from his father's drunkard, and together with the runaway slave, Negro Jim, they sail along the Mississippi River on a raft across America. A lot of unusual, funny, sometimes scary things happen to them. The most terrible episode of the book - Huck becomes a witness to one inhuman custom. This is a vendetta - a blood feud. Two farming families are destroying each other, because 30 years ago, one of the representatives of one family in a drunken fight accidentally killed a representative of another family, he was killed in revenge by the relatives of the murdered one, the killer of that first killer was also killed in turn by the relatives of that one, and so in front of Huck almost the entire family was destroyed, one of the two ill-fated families, including a boy who was the same age as Huck.

Still, the book as a whole is funny. The funniest episode is at the very end, as Tom and Huck free Jim, who was caught by the owners and put in an ordinary barn. To free him, it is enough to tear off one board. But Tom does not like it, he has read adventure books about robbers, knights and pirates, and wants to subordinate real life to the rules of book life so that everything is as it is. Tom makes the unfortunate Jim do everything that noble prisoners do in these books, escaping impregnable prisons, dungeons. He must keep a diary on his shirt either with blood or with a mixture of rust and tears (Tom doesn’t care that Jim is illiterate), gouge pathetic inscriptions on the stone wall (“Unhappy so-and-so languished here”), since the walls of the shed are wooden, then Jim they let him out for a while so that he can drag a huge stone into his dungeon, on which it will be possible to make the necessary inscriptions. All of them are digging with old aluminum spoons. Tom and Huck cook a monster pie in which they bake a rope ladder made from stolen sheets. And all this instead of breaking one board and freeing the unfortunate Jim, who is so stupid and downtrodden that he obeys the boys in everything. It's impossible to read this without laughing.

Jack London (1876 – 1916).

The famous American writer, one of the few truly beloved, read all over the world. His books are interesting, evoke strong vivid emotions, because they are written emotionally.

Biography. He lived quite bright life. He was born into an educated, but very poor family. Jack knew humiliating poverty, at the age of 10 he began to earn a living, at the age of 15 he learned the stupefying factory work (this is described in the story "The Renegade"). At 16, he was a sailor on a fishing schooner.

In 1896, gold was found in Alaska, and the second gold rush began (the first began in 1848, when gold was found in California), many Americans who decided to get rich quickly rushed to look for gold, including young London, he was in Alaska for less than a year, I didn’t find anything and left without a salty slurp, but the impressions were enough for a long time. After this trip, he felt a literary talent in himself and began to write stories about the life of gold prospectors in Alaska - northern stories that brought him great popularity. The first of them appeared in print in 1899, since then London has been writing a lot and successfully.

The end of the writer's life was sad, he was disappointed in life in general, in a person, in himself, became a pessimist, regularly fell into long-term depression, abused alcohol, developed severe kidney disease, experienced bouts of severe pain, drank strong painkillers, and once drank a lethal dose painkillers, whether by accident or on purpose - is unknown, but most researchers are inclined to the version of conscious suicide. Life in London was clearly not nice.

The most important feature of London's creativity is love for everything unusual, bright, exotic. London is mainly interested in unusual, outstanding, especially strong in body and spirit people. Often in his works there is an adventure story. Bright, detailed, impressive descriptions.

Stories.

Most of London's best stories are similar - they sing of the courage of strong-willed people overcoming the hardest obstacles, inhuman conditions, stubbornly striving for their goal or fighting for their lives. London's most famous and really powerful story is " Love of life". A wounded man, dying of hunger and fatigue, first wanders, then crawls along the tundra with his last strength (it takes place in Alaska) in the hope of finding people. He did not give up to the end and won, survived in a hopeless situation. The same meaning in other situations - in the stories "The Mexican" and "The Courage of a Woman".

The story "A Thousand Dozens" is interesting. The hero overcomes a lot of obstacles, shows perseverance and courage to deliver a thousand dozen eggs to Alaska, which he bought cheaply in America, and plans to sell expensively in Alaska. At the very end, when he already considered himself a rich man, it turned out that all the eggs were rotten. He hanged himself.

The story "The Path of False Suns" is remarkable, bright, strange, mysterious, philosophical. About the oddities of human nature.

Among the northern stories, the Indian cycle stands out, stories about the life of the northern Indians.

« Law of life". The Indians have such a law: the old people, who became a burden for the tribe, when moving from one parking lot to another, were simply thrown to starvation. The main character is such an old man who was abandoned. In winter, they left him a handful of brushwood. Here he sits near a small fire and remembers his life, he really wants his son to come back for him, but he understands that this is impossible, such is the law of life. The fire goes out, and hungry wolves approach him, he is doomed. From the point of view of London, this law of life is universal: only the strong, adapted, dexterous win and triumph, while the weak, old, sick are doomed to death, to poverty. This is what happens in nature, and this is what happens in human society.

Two stories about animals are remarkable - “ call of the ancestors», « White Fang". About the struggle for life, from the point of view of a wolf and a dog. Very interesting, a classic of teenage literature.

Novel "Sea Wolf"(1904) - also very interesting. The protagonist, named Van Weyden, is a literary critic who finds himself in an unusual situation, on the fishing schooner "Ghost" among completely uneducated, rude, cruel sailors. It is not easy for a pampered intellectual to survive where brute force reigns, on this schooner the hero goes through a harsh school of life.

The most striking image of the novel is the captain of the "Ghost" - Larsen, nicknamed the Sea Wolf. The brightest example of a strong man. He is unusually strong physically, incredibly cruel, for any disobedience he immediately hits in the face, it doesn’t cost him anything to kill anyone and throw him overboard, he is the complete master on the schooner. Most of the sailors hate him, fear him, want to kill him (one of the attempts to rebel is described in the novel), but he only laughs, despises everyone, enjoys his strength, power and complete loneliness.

Quite unexpectedly, Larsen became friends with Van Weyden. It turned out that he is an educated and intelligent person, he reads books. During the first part of the novel, they argue: an idealist and a rough materialist. Larsen is convinced that the basic mass of people are rude animals who first of all need to satisfy their most primitive selfish instincts. Egoism is invested in us by nature, which means that doing good to our own detriment is unnatural. Life is completely meaningless, it is a meaningless fuss, even Larsen calls it disgusting. The life of an individual is the cheapest thing in the world, useless people are born in huge numbers continuously (Larsen means, first of all, the poor, workers), there are too many of them, there is not even enough work and food for everyone.

Van Weyden defends classical idealism - the immortality of the soul, faith in goodness, in traditional ideals, altruism, etc.

It is felt that London itself, partially sharing the views of Larsen, is still more on the side of Van Weyden. As a result, no one wins in disputes, but Van Weyden wins the plot. At the end of the novel, he finds love and happiness, and Larsen is abandoned by the team, he remains completely alone and dies of a serious illness, in agony. All this is the result of the philanthropy of one and the inhumanity of the other.

London's best novel, without a doubt, " Martin Eden» (1909). One of the best works world literature. The novel is largely autobiographical - about how Jack London himself turned from a simple guy into a great world-famous writer.

Once Martin Eden, a sailor, for twenty years protected Arthur Morse from a gang of hooligans, who belonged to wealthy and educated people. As a token of gratitude, Arthur invites Martin to dinner. The atmosphere of the house - paintings on the walls, lots of books, playing the piano - delights and fascinates Martin. Ruth, Arthur's sister, makes a special impression on him. She seems to him the embodiment of purity, spirituality. Martin decides to become worthy of this girl. He goes to the library in order to join the wisdom available to Ruth, Arthur and the like (both Ruth and her brother study at the university).

Martin is a gifted and deep nature. He enthusiastically plunges into reading a variety of books. 5 hours a day he sleeps, the remaining 19 hours he satisfies his thirst for knowledge. He is simply interested in learning how the world works as a whole, the causes and essence of all processes, natural, social, psychological, and their relationship. He's just curious to know. He is especially interested in literature, he has a desire to become a writer, he felt a talent in himself and began to write stories and novels and sends it to the editors of various magazines, but no one prints it, simply because he is not known to anyone, and to evaluate Martin’s talent himself editors are out of their minds.

He is running out of money, he is starving, he lives in poverty, but he continues to read and write, because he considers it his calling. At this time, he is experiencing a real spiritual uplift, he is happy, because he has a goal and he goes to it.

No one believes in him, in his talent, no one supports him, does not help, even Ruth, with whom Martin is in love and with whom he was at first simply interesting, and then she was drawn to him as a strong man, for some time they were considered a bride and the groom, although Ruth's parents were clearly against it, but so far they endured. Martin considered their relationship to be love, but he was wrong, there was no true understanding between them. The more Martin learned, the more educated he became, the less Ruth and her family understood him. Martin generally began to feel more and more alone, because it turned out that most people, and even such educated people as Ruth and her relatives, are completely unable and unwilling to think independently, to penetrate into the essence and meaning of ongoing events. The thinking of most people is superficial, they are used to relying on generally accepted and generally accepted opinions. For them, what is right is what is recognized by the majority, what is written in textbooks, in government newspapers. Martin, on all matters, had his own opinion. She and Ruth understood each other less and less, she dreamed that he would become a lawyer, like her father, that he would have a constant, solid income, she needed a husband to ensure her comfort. She is an ordinary bourgeois, but he is an unusual person. They are not a couple. He should have left her. But he was blinded by the original image of the ideal girl that he created for himself during the first meeting. Ruth abandoned him when a scandal broke out around Martin: he was accidentally called by mistake in one newspaper a socialist-revolutionary, an enemy of American society (which was not so). Ruth stopped communicating with him after that.

In addition, his only friend commits suicide. Martin sinks into a deep depression. And at this moment he becomes famous, all his works, which he sent to different editions, begin to appear one after another, his name becomes known, he receives fees from everywhere, he is invited everywhere. He achieved what he wanted, he is rich and famous, but now he does not need it. He realized that most people are not able to truly appreciate his works, his talent, his original mind, people do not need, and he has already lost all desire to write for them, to reveal certain truths for them. They began to print him not because of his talent, but because his name accidentally became famous, became famous. When he became rich, Ruth tried to return to him, offered herself. But Martin is only more annoyed. And Martin Eden commits suicide.

The meaning of the novel. 1. Sharp, angry criticism of the philistine, bourgeois world, in which everything is measured by money and social status, and no one needs real talent, intelligence. London criticizes the philistines who do not know how and do not want to really, independently think, do not want to understand the essence of ongoing events, they prefer to adhere to the generally accepted opinion, which is held by the majority. 2. Talented, intelligent, deeply thinking people like Eden are almost always alone in this society, their life is tragic.

The novel is rather not realistic, but romantic, it has a lot of exaggerations. For example, American society is described in too black, condensed colors. It is still able to appreciate such talented people as London itself was. However, the novel tells a lot of bitter truth about the townspeople.

O.Henry (1862-1910).

One of the best storytellers (writers of stories) in world literature, along with Chekhov, Maupassant. Real name William Porter. His life was sad. His beloved wife died early from tuberculosis. He himself, being a bank teller, was convicted of embezzlement of government money, this is a very dark story, but most likely he was really guilty, he was in prison for three years, the prison made about the same impression on him as on Wilde - terrible. But it was after prison that he began to write his wonderful, funny, bright stories. He acquired money, fame, but not happiness, he himself remained sad, lonely, began to drink, and soon died.

The main features of his stories: 1. vivid stylistic skill - an abundance of unusual, unexpected metaphors, phrases, puns (a pun is a play on the ambiguity of a word), ironic paraphrases - when what can be said briefly is said through a long description. For example, instead of saying he had no money at all, it is said: "he and the smallest coin have nothing in common with each other."

2. Bright plot with unexpected twists and an unexpected ending. It is very difficult to guess how O. Henry's next story will end. This fact is based on the belief that life is very complex, unpredictable. Any situation can end in anything. Heroes may not be who they say they are; when the hero really wants to go to prison, because apart from prison he has nowhere to spend the night, they don’t take him, the passerby himself gives him an umbrella that he wants to steal. But when the desire to go to prison disappears, he is taken by force (the story "The Pharaoh and the Choral").

3. Brevity, conciseness in style and plot development. There is no extra chatter.

4. The use of a very interesting technique - the exposure of the technique. Direct appeal of the author to the reader about the features of the literary form this story- an apology for a hackneyed or overly complicated metaphor, an argument about how another writer would build a story, etc.

5. A combination of naive romantic idealism - faith in higher spiritual values, optimism with realistic, bitter, skeptical irony.

Best Stories: The Pharaoh and the Chant, The Gift of the Magi, Gold and Love, While the Car Waits, The Pig Ethic, Jimmy Valentine's Conversation, The Altitude Matter, Force of Habit, Burning Lamp.

The last decade of the 19th century opens a new stage in Russian, and in world culture. Major fundamental discoveries in the natural sciences, including Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, dramatically shook the previous ideas about the structure of the world, formed in the traditions European Enlightenment and based on judgments about unambiguous regularities, on the fundamental principle of predictability natural phenomenon. The repeatability and predictability of processes were considered as generic properties of causality in general. On this basis, formed positivist principles of thinking, dominating world science in the 19th century. These principles also apply to social sphere: human life was understood as completely determined by external circumstances, by one or another chain of effective causes. Although not everything in human life could be satisfactorily explained, it was assumed that science would someday achieve universal omniscience, be able to understand and subordinate the whole world to human reason. New discoveries sharply contradicted ideas about the structural completeness of the world. What once seemed stable turned into instability and endless mobility. It turned out that any explanation is not universal and requires additions - this is ideological consequence of the complementarity principle, born in the mainstream of theoretical physics. Moreover, the idea of ​​the knowability of the world, which was previously considered an axiom, turned out to be in doubt.

The complication of ideas about physical picture peace was accompanied reassessment of the principles of understanding history. The previously unshakable model of historical progress, based on ideas about linear dependence causes and effects, was replaced by an understanding of the conventionality and approximation of any historiosophical logic. The crisis of historical ideas was expressed, first of all, in the loss of a universal starting point, one or another worldview foundation. Various theories have emerged community development. In particular, widespread Marxism, who relied on the development of industry and the emergence of a new revolutionary class - the proletariat, free from property, united by the conditions of common labor in a team and ready to actively fight for social justice. In the political sphere, this meant the rejection of the enlightenment of the early and the terrorism of the late populists and the transition to the organized struggle of the masses - up to the violent overthrow of the system and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat over all other classes.

On the turn of XIX-XX centuries the idea of ​​a man not only rebellious, but also capable of remaking the era, creating history, in addition to the philosophy of Marxism, is developed in the work of M. Gorky and his followers, who persistently brought to the fore the Man with capital letter, master of the earth. Gorky's favorite heroes were the semi-legendary Novgorod merchant Vaska Buslaev and the biblical character Job, who challenged God himself. Gorky believed that revolutionary activity on the restructuring of the world transforms and enriches the inner world of man. So, the heroine of his novel "Mother" (1907) Pelageya Nilovpa, becoming a member revolutionary movement, feels a maternal feeling of love not only for his son, but also for all oppressed and disenfranchised people.

The rebellious beginning sounded more anarchic in the early poetry of V.V. Mayakovsky, in the poems and poems of V. Khlebnikov, A.N. Kruchenykh, D.D. industrial utopias.

Other large group writers, making sure after tragic events March 1, 1881 (the assassination of the liberator tsar), and especially after the defeat of the 1905 revolution in the futility of violent methods of influencing society, came to the idea of ​​​​spiritual transformation, albeit slow, but consistent improvement inner world person. The guiding worldview star for them was Pushkin's idea of ​​the inner harmony of man. They considered close to themselves in spirit the writers of the post-Pushkin era - N. V. Gogol, M. Yu. Lermontov, F. I. Tyutchev, F. M. Dostoevsky, who felt the tragedy of the destruction of world harmony, but longed for it and foresaw its restoration in the future .

It was these writers who saw Pushkin era golden age national culture and taking into account the fundamental changes in the socio-cultural context, they sought to develop its traditions, nevertheless realizing the dramatic complexity of such a task. And although the culture of the turn of the century is much more contradictory and internally conflicted than the culture of the first half of XIX century, the new literary era will later receive (in the memoirs, literary criticism and journalism of the Russian emigration of the 1920-1930s) a bright appraisal name - "Silver Age". This historical and literary metaphor, linking the literature of the beginning of the century with literature XIX century, in the second half of the 20th century. will acquire a terminological status and will be extended, in fact, to the entire literature of the turn of the century: this is how it is customary to call the era of M. Gorky and A. A. Blok, I. I. Bunin and A. A. Akhmatova in our time. Although these writers looked at the world and the place of man in it very differently, there was something that united them: an awareness of the crisis, the transition of an era that was supposed to lead Russian society to new horizons of life.

The pluralism of political and philosophical views, shared by different writers, led to a radical change in the overall picture of artistic trends and trends. The former smooth stadiality, when, for example, classicism in literature gave way to sentimentalism, and that, in turn, was replaced by romanticism; when at each stage of the history of literature a dominant position was occupied by some one direction, such a stage-by-stage nature is a thing of the past. Now different aesthetic systems existed at the same time.

In parallel and, as a rule, in struggle with each other, realism and modernism developed, the largest literary trends, while realism was not a homogeneous formation in terms of style, but was a complex complex of several "realisms" (each variety requires an additional definition from the literary historian). Modernism, in turn, was characterized by extreme internal instability: various currents and groupings were continuously transformed, emerged and disintegrated, united and differentiated. The new situation created the ground for the most unexpected combinations and interactions: stylistically intermediate works appeared, short-lived associations arose that tried to combine in their artistic practice principles of realism and modernism. That is why, in relation to the art of the beginning of the 20th century. the classification of phenomena on the basis of "directions" and "currents" is obviously conditional, non-absolute.

I. Early 1890s - 1905 1892 Code of laws Russian Empire: "the duty of complete obedience to the king", whose power was declared "autocratic and unlimited" industrial production. growing social consciousness new class - the proletariat. The first political strike of the Orekhovo-Zuevskaya manufactory. The court recognized the workers' demands as fair. Emperor Nicholas II. The first political parties: 1898 - Social Democrats, 1905 - Constitutional Democrats, 1901 - Social Revolutionaries

Genre - novel and short story. Weakened story line. Interested in the subconscious, and not the "dialetics of the soul", the dark, instinctive sides of the personality, elemental feelings that are not understood by the person himself. The image of the author comes to the fore, the task is to show his own, subjective perception of life. There is no direct author's position - everything goes into the subtext (philosophical, ideological) The role of the detail increases. Poetic devices turn into prose. Realism (neorealism)

Modernism. Symbolism of the year. In D.S. Merezhkovsky's article "On the Causes of the Decline and New Trends in Modern Russian Literature", modernism receives a theoretical justification. The older generation of symbolists: Merezhkovsky, Gippius, Bryusov, Balmont, Fyodor Sologub. The Young Symbolists: Blok, A. Bely The World of Art Journal, Ed. Princess M. K. Tenisheva and S. I. Mamontov, eds. S. P. Diaghilev, A. N. Benois (Petersburg) K. Balmont V. Bryusov Merezhkovsky D

Symbolism Focused mainly through the symbol of intuitively comprehended entities and ideas, vague feelings and visions; The desire to penetrate the secrets of being and consciousness, to see through the visible reality the supertemporal ideal essence of the world and its Beauty. Eternal Femininity World Soul “Mirror to mirror, compare two reflections, and put a candle between them. Two depths without a bottom, colored by the flame of a candle, will deepen themselves, mutually deepen one another, enrich the flame of the candle and merge into one. This is the image of the verse. (K. Balmont) Dear friend, don't you see that everything we see is only a reflection, only shadows From invisible eyes? Dear friend, do you not hear That the noise of life is crackling - Only a distorted response Of triumphant consonances (Soloviev) Pale young man with burning eyes, Now I give you three testaments: First accept: do not live in the present, Only the future is the domain of the poet. Remember the second: do not sympathize with anyone, Love yourself infinitely. Keep the third: worship art, Only him, undividedly, aimlessly (Bryusov)

1905 - one of the key years in the history of Russia. This year a revolution took place, which began with "Bloody Sunday" on January 9, the first tsarist manifesto was published, limiting the power of the monarchy in favor of subjects, proclaiming the Duma as the legislative authorities, approving civil liberties, creating a council of ministers in led by Witte, the armed uprising in Moscow, which was the peak of the revolution, the uprising in Sevastopol, etc.

Years. Russo-Japanese War

III - 1920s

Crisis of Symbolism. Article by A. Blok “On state of the art Russian symbolism" 1911. The most radical direction appears, denying all previous culture, the avant-garde - futurism. In Khlebnikov, V. Mayakovsky, I. Severyanin.

Futurism is the desire to create "the art of the future", the denial of the heritage of the "past" - the traditions of culture. language experimentation "zaum" Manor at night, Genghis Khan! Make some noise, blue birches. Dawn of the night, zaratustr! And the sky is blue, mozart! And, dusk clouds, be Goya! You are at night, cloud, roops!

A slap in the face of public taste Reading our New First Unexpected. Only we are the face of our Time. The horn of time blows us in verbal art. The past is tight. The Academy and Pushkin are more incomprehensible than hieroglyphs. Throw Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and so on. from the steamer of modern times. Whoever does not forget his first love will not recognize his last. Who, gullible, will turn last love to the perfumery fornication of Balmont? Does it reflect the courageous soul of today? Who, cowardly, will be afraid to steal paper armor from the black tailcoat of Bryusov's warrior? Or are they the dawn of unknown beauties? Wash your hands that have touched the filthy slime of the books written by those innumerable Leonid Andreevs. To all these Maxim Gorky, Kuprin, Blok, Sollogub, Remizov, Averchenko, Cherny, Kuzmin, Bunin and so on. and so on. All you need is a cottage on the river. Such an award is given by fate to tailors. From the height of skyscrapers, we look at their insignificance! ... We order to honor the rights of poets: 1. To increase the vocabulary in its volume with arbitrary and derivative words (Word-innovation). 2. An irresistible hatred for the language that existed before them. 3. With horror, remove from your proud forehead from bath brooms the Wreath of penny glory you made. 4. To stand on a block of the word "we" in the midst of a sea of ​​whistling and indignation. And if the dirty stigmas of your “common sense” and “good taste” still remain in our lines, then for the first time the Lightning Lightnings of the New Coming Beauty of the Self-valuable (self-sufficient) Word are already trembling on them. D. Burliuk, Alexander Kruchenykh, V. Mayakovsky, Viktor Khlebnikov Moscow December

Features of the "Silver Age" 1. Elitism of literature, designed for a narrow circle of readers. Reminiscences and allusions. 2. The development of literature is connected with other types of art: 1. Theater: its own direction in the world theater - Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, Vakhtangov, M. Chekhov, Tairov 2. Painting: futurism (Malevich), symbolism (Vrubel), realism (Serov), acmeism (“World of Art”) 3. Huge influence of philosophy, many new world trends: N. Berdyaev, P. Florensky, S. Bulgakov, V. Solovyov; Nietzsche, Schopenhauer. 4. Discovery in psychology - Freud's theory of the subconscious. 5. Predominant development of poetry. Opening in the field of verse. - musical sound verse. – Revival of genres – sonnet, madrigal, ballad, etc. 6. Innovation in prose: novel-symphony (A. Bely), modernist novel (F. Sollogub) 7. Isoteric teachings (spiritualism, occultism) – elements of mysticism in literature.

Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky The key concepts of his famous system: the stages of the artist's work on the role, the method of transforming into a character, playing "ensembles" under the direction of the director, who performs a "role" similar to that of a conductor in an orchestra, the troupe as a living organism passing different stages development; and most importantly, the theory of cause-and-effect relationships of character An actor, entering the stage, performs a certain task within the logic of his character. But at the same time, each character exists in the general logic of the work, laid down by the author. The author created the work in accordance with some purpose, having some main idea. And the actor, in addition to performing a specific task associated with the character, should strive to convey the main idea to the viewer, try to achieve the main goal. the main idea works or its main goal is the most important task. Acting is divided into three technologies: - craft (based on the use of ready-made stamps, by which the viewer can clearly understand what emotions the actor has in mind), - performance (in the process of long rehearsals, the actor experiences genuine experiences that automatically create a form of manifestation of these experiences , but at the performance itself the actor does not experience these feelings, but only reproduces the form, the finished external drawing of the role). -experience (the actor in the process of playing experiences genuine experiences, and this gives rise to the life of the image on stage).

Alexander Yakovlevich Tairov The idea of ​​the Free Theatre, which was supposed to combine tragedy and operetta, drama and farce, opera and pantomime The actor had to be a true creator, not constrained by either other people's thoughts or other people's words. The principle of "emotional gesture" instead of a pictorial or worldly authentic gesture. The performance should not follow the play in everything, because the performance itself is “a valuable work of art”. the main task director - to give the performer the opportunity to be liberated, to free the actor from everyday life. An eternal holiday should reign in the theater, it doesn’t matter if it’s a tragedy or comedy holiday, if only not to let the routine into the theater - “theatricalization of the theater”

Vsevolod Emilievich Meyerhold Craving for line, pattern, for a kind of visualization of music, turning the acting into a phantasmogorical symphony of lines and colors. "Biomechanics seeks to experimentally establish the laws of the actor's movement on the stage, working out the training exercises of the actor's game based on the norms of human behavior." (the psychological concept of W. James (about the primacy of the physical reaction in relation to the emotional reaction), on the reflexology of V. M. Bekhterev and the experiments of I. P. Pavlov.

Evgeny Bagrationovich Vakhtangov, the search for "modern ways to resolve the performance in a form that would sound theatrical" the idea of ​​​​the inseparable unity of the ethical and aesthetic purpose of the theater, the unity of the artist and the people, sharp feeling modernity, corresponding to the content dramatic work, his artistic features defining a unique stage form