Historical and literary process - a set of generally significant changes in the literature. Literature is constantly evolving. Each era enriches art with some new artistic discoveries. The study of the laws of development of literature is the concept of "historical and literary process". Development literary process determined by the following artistic systems: creative method, style, genre, literary trends and currents.
The continuous change of literature is an obvious fact, but significant changes do not occur every year, not even every decade. As a rule, they are associated with serious historical shifts (change of historical epochs and periods, wars, revolutions associated with the entry of new social forces into the historical arena, etc.). It is possible to single out the main stages in the development of European art, which determined the specifics of the historical and literary process: antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The development of the historical-literary process is conditioned by a number of factors, among which the historical situation (socio-political system, ideology, etc.), the influence of previous literary traditions, and the artistic experience of other peoples should be noted first of all. For example, Pushkin's work was seriously influenced by the work of his predecessors not only in Russian literature (Derzhavin, Batyushkov, Zhukovsky and others), but also in European literature (Voltaire, Rousseau, Byron and others).
literary process is a complex system of literary interactions. It represents the formation, functioning and change of various literary trends and trends.
Literary trends and currents:
classicism, sentimentalism, romanticism,
realism, modernism (symbolism, acmeism, futurism)
In modern literary criticism, the terms "direction" and "flow" can be interpreted in different ways. Sometimes they are used as synonyms (classicism, sentimentalism, romanticism, realism and modernism are called both trends and trends), and sometimes a trend is identified with a literary school or grouping, and a trend is identified with an artistic method or style (in this case, the trend incorporates two or more streams).
Usually, literary direction called a group of writers similar in type of artistic thinking. We can talk about the existence of a literary trend if writers are aware of theoretical basis their artistic activities, promote them in manifestos, program speeches, articles. So, the first program article of the Russian futurists was the manifesto "Slap in the Face of Public Taste", in which the main aesthetic principles of the new direction were declared.
Under certain circumstances, groups of writers who are especially close to each other in their aesthetic views can be formed within the framework of one literary movement. Such groups that form within any direction are usually called a literary trend. For example, within the framework of such a literary trend as symbolism, two currents can be distinguished: "senior" symbolists and "junior" symbolists (according to another classification - three: decadents, "senior" symbolists, "junior" symbolists).
Classicism(from lat. classicus- exemplary) - an artistic direction in European art turn of the XVII-XVIII - early XIX century, was formed in France at the end of the XVII century. Classicism asserted the primacy of state interests over personal interests, the predominance of civil, patriotic motives, the cult of moral duty. The aesthetics of classicism is characterized by the severity of artistic forms: compositional unity, normative style and plots. Representatives of Russian classicism: Kantemir, Trediakovsky, Lomonosov, Sumarokov, Knyaznin, Ozerov and others.
One of the most important features of classicism is the perception ancient art as a model, an aesthetic standard (hence the name of the direction). The goal is to create works of art in the image and likeness of antique ones. In addition, the ideas of the Enlightenment and the cult of reason (the belief in the omnipotence of the mind and that the world can be reorganized on a reasonable basis) had a huge influence on the formation of classicism.
Classicists (representatives of classicism) perceived artistic creativity as strict adherence to reasonable rules, eternal laws, created on the basis of studying the best examples of ancient literature. Based on these reasonable laws, they divided works into "correct" and "incorrect". For example, even Shakespeare's best plays were classified as "wrong". This was due to the fact that Shakespearean heroes combined positive and negative traits. And the creative method of classicism was formed on the basis of rationalistic thinking. There was a strict system of characters and genres: all characters and genres were distinguished by "purity" and unambiguity. So, in one hero it was strictly forbidden not only to combine vices and virtues (that is, positive and negative traits), but even several vices. The hero had to embody any one character trait: either a miser, or a braggart, or a hypocrite, or a hypocrite, or good, or evil, etc.
Main conflict classic works is the hero's struggle between reason and feeling. At the same time, the positive hero must always make a choice in favor of reason (for example, choosing between love and the need to completely surrender to the service of the state, he must choose the latter), and the negative one - in favor of feelings.
The same can be said about the genre system. All genres were divided into high (ode, epic poem, tragedy) and low (comedy, fable, epigram, satire). At the same time, touching episodes were not supposed to be introduced into comedy, and funny episodes into tragedy. AT high genres"exemplary" heroes were portrayed - monarchs, generals, who could serve as an example to follow. In the low ones, characters were drawn, captured by some kind of "passion", that is, a strong feeling.
Special rules existed for dramatic works. They had to observe three "unities" - places, times and actions. Unity of place: classicist dramaturgy did not allow a change of scene, that is, during the entire play, the characters had to be in the same place. The unity of time: the artistic time of a work should not exceed several hours, in extreme cases - one day. Unity of action implies the presence of only one storyline. All these requirements are connected with the fact that the classicists wanted to create a kind of illusion of life on the stage. Sumarokov: “Try to measure my hours in the game for hours, so that, forgetting, I can believe you”. So, character traits literary classicism:
- purity of the genre(in high genres, funny or everyday situations and heroes could not be depicted, and in low genres, tragic and sublime ones);
- purity of language(in high genres - high vocabulary, in low - vernacular);
- strict division of heroes into positive and negative, wherein goodies, choosing between feeling and reason, give preference to the latter;
- observance of the rule of "three unities";
- affirmation of positive values and state ideal.
Russian classicism is characterized by state pathos (the state - and not the person - was declared the highest value) in conjunction with faith in the theory of enlightened absolutism. According to the theory of enlightened absolutism, the state should be headed by a wise, enlightened monarch, who requires everyone to serve for the benefit of society. Russian classicists, inspired by the reforms of Peter the Great, believed in the possibility of further improvement of society, which seemed to them a rationally arranged organism. Sumarokov: “Peasants plow, merchants trade, warriors defend the fatherland, judges judge, scientists cultivate sciences.” The classicists treated human nature in the same rationalistic way. They believed that human nature is selfish, subject to passions, that is, feelings that oppose reason, but at the same time lend themselves to education.
Sentimentalism(from English sentimental - sensitive, from French sentiment - feeling) - a literary movement of the second half of the 18th century, which replaced classicism. Sentimentalists proclaimed the primacy of feeling, not reason. A person was judged by his ability to deep feelings. Hence the interest in inner world the hero, the image of the shades of his feelings (the beginning of psychologism).
Unlike the classicists, sentimentalists consider not the state, but the individual, to be the highest value. They opposed the unjust orders of the feudal world with the eternal and reasonable laws of nature. In this regard, nature for sentimentalists is the measure of all values, including man himself. It is no coincidence that they asserted the superiority of the "natural", "natural" man, that is, living in harmony with nature.
Sensitivity is at the heart of creative method sentimentalism. If the classicists created generalized characters (a hypocrite, a braggart, a miser, a fool), then sentimentalists are interested in specific people with individual destiny. Heroes in their works are clearly divided into positive and negative. Positive endowed with natural sensitivity (responsive, kind, compassionate, capable of self-sacrifice). Negative- prudent, selfish, arrogant, cruel. The carriers of sensitivity, as a rule, are peasants, artisans, raznochintsy, rural clergy. Cruel - representatives of power, nobles, higher spiritual ranks (since despotic rule kills sensitivity in people). Manifestations of sensitivity in the works of sentimentalists often acquire a too external, even exaggerated character (exclamations, tears, fainting, suicides).
One of the main discoveries of sentimentalism is the individualization of the hero and the image of the rich spiritual world of a commoner (the image of Liza in Karamzin's story " Poor Lisa"). The main character of the works was ordinary person. In this regard, the plot of the work often represented individual situations of everyday life, while peasant life was often depicted in pastoral colors. The new content required a new form. The leading genres were the family novel, diary, confession, novel in letters, travel notes, elegy, message.
In Russia, sentimentalism originated in the 1760s ( the best representatives- Radishchev and Karamzin). As a rule, in the works of Russian sentimentalism, the conflict develops between a serf and a serf landowner, and the moral superiority of the former is persistently emphasized.
Romanticism- an artistic direction in European and American culture of the late 18th - first half of the 19th century. Romanticism arose in the 1790s, first in Germany and then spread throughout Western Europe. The prerequisites for the emergence were the crisis of rationalism of the Enlightenment, the artistic search for pre-romantic trends (sentimentalism), the Great French Revolution, and German classical philosophy.
The emergence of this literary trend, as well as any other, is inextricably linked with the socio-historical events of that time. Let's start with the prerequisites for the formation of romanticism in Western European literatures. The decisive influence on the formation of romanticism in Western Europe was exerted by the Great French Revolution of 1789-1799 and the reassessment of the educational ideology associated with it. As you know, the 18th century in France passed under the sign of the Enlightenment. For almost a whole century, French enlighteners led by Voltaire (Rousseau, Diderot, Montesquieu) argued that the world can be reorganized on a reasonable basis and proclaimed the idea of natural (natural) equality of all people. It was these educational ideas that inspired the French revolutionaries, whose slogan was the words: "Liberty, equality and fraternity." The result of the revolution was the establishment of a bourgeois republic. As a result, the winner was the bourgeois minority, which seized power (it used to belong to the aristocracy, the highest nobility), while the rest remained “with broken trough". Thus, the long-awaited "kingdom of reason" turned out to be an illusion, as well as the promised freedom, equality and fraternity. There was a general disappointment in the results and results of the revolution, a deep dissatisfaction with the surrounding reality, which became a prerequisite for the emergence of romanticism. Because the basis of romanticism is the principle of dissatisfaction with the existing order of things. This was followed by the emergence of the theory of romanticism in Germany.
As you know, Western European culture, in particular French, had a huge impact on Russian. This trend continued into the 19th century, so the French Revolution also shook Russia. But, in addition, there are actually Russian prerequisites for the emergence of Russian romanticism. First of all, this Patriotic War 1812, clearly showing the greatness and strength of the common people. It was to the people that Russia owed its victory over Napoleon, the people were the true heroes of the war. Meanwhile, both before the war and after it, the bulk of the people, the peasants, still remained serfs, in fact, slaves. What was perceived before progressive people of that time as an injustice, now it began to seem like a flagrant injustice, contrary to all logic and morality. But after the end of the war, Alexander I not only did not cancel serfdom, but also began to pursue a much tougher policy. As a result, a pronounced feeling of disappointment and dissatisfaction arose in Russian society. Thus, the ground for the emergence of romanticism arose.
The term "romanticism" in relation to the literary movement is accidental and inaccurate. In this regard, from the very beginning of its inception, it was interpreted in different ways: some believed that it comes from the word "roman", others - from knightly poetry created in countries that speak English. Romance languages. For the first time, the word "romanticism" as the name of a literary movement began to be used in Germany, where the first sufficiently detailed theory of romanticism was created.
Very important for understanding the essence of romanticism is the concept of romanticism. dual peace. As already mentioned, rejection, denial of reality is the main prerequisite for the emergence of romanticism. All romantics reject the world around them, hence their romantic escape from existing life and the search for an ideal outside of it. This gave rise to the emergence of a romantic dual world. The world for romantics was divided into two parts: here and there. “There” and “here” are antithesis (opposition), these categories are correlated as ideal and reality. The despised "here" is a modern reality, where evil and injustice triumph. “There” is a kind of poetic reality that the romantics opposed to reality. Many romantics believed that goodness, beauty and truth, ousted from public life, were still preserved in the souls of people. Hence their attention to the inner world of man, in-depth psychologism. The souls of people are their “there”. For example, Zhukovsky was looking for "there" in the other world; Pushkin and Lermontov, Fenimore Cooper - in the free life of uncivilized peoples (Pushkin's poems "Prisoner of the Caucasus", "Gypsies", Cooper's novels about the life of Indians).
Rejection, denial of reality determined the specifics of the romantic hero. It is fundamentally new hero, similar to him did not know the previous literature. He is in hostile relations with the surrounding society, opposed to it. This is an unusual, restless person, most often lonely and with a tragic fate. The romantic hero is the embodiment of romantic rebellion against reality.
Realism(from Latin realis- material, real) - a method (creative setting) or a literary trend that embodies the principles of a life-truthful attitude to reality, striving for the artistic knowledge of man and the world. Often the term "realism" is used in two senses:
- realism as a method;
- realism as a trend that emerged in the 19th century.
Both classicism, and romanticism, and symbolism strive for the knowledge of life and express their reaction to it in their own way, but only in realism does fidelity to reality become the defining criterion of artistry. This distinguishes realism, for example, from romanticism, which is characterized by the rejection of reality and the desire to “recreate” it, and not display it as it is. It is no coincidence that, referring to the realist Balzac, the romantic George Sand defined the difference between him and herself in this way: “You take a person as he appears to your eyes; I feel a calling to portray him the way I would like to see. Thus, we can say that the realists depict the real, and the romantics the desired.
The beginning of the formation of realism is usually associated with the Renaissance. The realism of this time is characterized by the scale of images (Don Quixote, Hamlet) and the poeticization of the human personality, the perception of man as the king of nature, the crown of creation. The next stage is enlightenment realism. In the literature of the Enlightenment, a democratic realistic hero appears, a man "from the bottom" (for example, Figaro in the plays of Beaumarchais " barber of seville and The Marriage of Figaro). New types of romanticism appeared in the 19th century: "fantastic" (Gogol, Dostoevsky), "grotesque" (Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin) and "critical" realism associated with the activities of the "natural school".
Basic requirements of realism: adherence to the principles
- peoples,
- historicism,
- high artistry,
- psychologism,
- depiction of life in its development.
Realist writers showed a direct dependence of the social, moral, religious ideas of heroes on social conditions, great attention devoted to the social aspect. Central problem realism- the ratio of plausibility and artistic truth. Plausibility, a plausible depiction of life is very important for realists, but artistic truth is determined not by plausibility, but by fidelity in comprehending and conveying the essence of life and the significance of the ideas expressed by the artist. One of the most important features of realism is the typification of characters (the fusion of the typical and the individual, the uniquely personal). The credibility of a realistic character directly depends on the degree of individualization achieved by the writer.
Realist writers create new types of heroes: the "little man" type (Vyrin, Bashmachkin, Marmeladov, Devushkin), the " extra person"(Chatsky, Onegin, Pechorin, Oblomov), the type of a "new" hero (nihilist Bazarov in Turgenev, "new people" Chernyshevsky).
Modernism(from French contemporary- the latest, modern) philosophical and aesthetic movement in literature and art that arose at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries.
This term has various interpretations:
- denotes a number of non-realistic trends in art and literature at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: symbolism, futurism, acmeism, expressionism, cubism, imaginism, surrealism, abstractionism, impressionism;
- used as symbol aesthetic searches of artists of non-realistic trends;
- denotes a complex set of aesthetic and ideological phenomena, including not only the modernist trends, but also the work of artists who do not completely fit into the framework of any direction (D. Joyce, M. Proust, F. Kafka and others).
Symbolism, acmeism and futurism became the most striking and significant trends in Russian modernism.
Symbolism- a non-realistic direction in art and literature of the 1870-1920s, focused mainly on artistic expression with the help of a symbol of intuitively comprehended essences and ideas. Symbolism made itself known in France in the 1860s and 1870s in poetry A. Rimbaud, P. Verlaine, S. Mallarme. Then, through poetry, symbolism connected itself not only with prose and dramaturgy, but also with other forms of art. The French writer C. Baudelaire is considered the ancestor, founder, "father" of symbolism.
At the heart of the worldview of symbolist artists lies the idea of the unknowability of the world and its laws. They considered the spiritual experience of a person and the creative intuition of the artist to be the only "tool" for understanding the world.
Symbolism was the first to put forward the idea of creating art free from the task of depicting reality. Symbolists argued that the purpose of art is not in the image real world, which they considered secondary, but in the transmission of "higher reality". They intended to achieve this with the help of a symbol. A symbol is an expression of the poet's supersensible intuition, to whom, in moments of insight, the true essence of things is revealed. Symbolists developed a new poetic language, which does not directly name the subject, but hints at its content through allegory, musicality, colors, free verse.
Symbolism is the first and most significant of the modernist movements that arose in Russia. The first manifesto of Russian symbolism was the article by D. S. Merezhkovsky “On the Causes of the Decline and New Trends in Modern Russian Literature”, published in 1893. It identified three main elements of the "new art": mystical content, symbolization and "expansion of artistic impressionability."
Symbolists are usually divided into two groups, or currents:
- "elder" symbolists (V. Bryusov, K. Balmont, D. Merezhkovsky, Z. Gippius, F. Sologub and others), who made their debut in the 1890s;
- "juniors" symbolists who started their creative activity in the 1900s and significantly updated the appearance of the current (A. Blok, A. Bely, V. Ivanov and others).
It should be noted that the "senior" and "junior" symbolists were separated not so much by age as by the difference in attitudes and the direction of creativity.
Symbolists believed that art is primarily "comprehension of the world in other, non-rational ways"(Bryusov). After all, only phenomena that are subject to the law of linear causality can be rationally comprehended, and such causality operates only in the lower forms of life (empirical reality, everyday life). Symbolists were interested higher spheres life (the area of "absolute ideas" in terms of Plato or "the world soul", according to V. Solovyov), not subject to rational knowledge. It is art that has the ability to penetrate into these spheres, and the images-symbols with their infinite ambiguity are able to reflect the entire complexity of the world universe. The Symbolists believed that the ability to comprehend the true, higher reality was given only to the elect, who, in moments of inspired insights, were able to comprehend the “higher” truth, absolute truth.
The image-symbol was considered by the symbolists as more effective than the artistic image, a tool that helps to “break through” through the cover of everyday life ( lower life) to a higher reality. The symbol differs from the realistic image in that it conveys not the objective essence of the phenomenon, but the poet's own, individual idea of the world. In addition, a symbol, as the Russian symbolists understood it, is not an allegory, but, first of all, a certain image that requires a response from the reader. creative work. The symbol, as it were, connects the author and the reader - this is the revolution produced by symbolism in art.
The image-symbol is fundamentally polysemantic and contains the prospect of an unlimited deployment of meanings. This trait of his was repeatedly emphasized by the symbolists themselves: “A symbol is only a true symbol when it is inexhaustible in its meaning” (Vyach. Ivanov); "The symbol is a window to infinity"(F. Sologub).
Acmeism(from Greek. akme— highest degree something, blooming power, pinnacle) is a modernist literary trend in Russian poetry of the 1910s. Representatives: S. Gorodetsky, early A. Akhmatova, L. Gumilyov, O. Mandelstam. The term "acmeism" belongs to Gumilyov. The aesthetic program was formulated in Gumilyov's articles "The Legacy of Symbolism and Acmeism", Gorodetsky's "Some Currents in Modern Russian Poetry" and Mandelstam's "Morning of Acmeism".
Acmeism stood out from symbolism, criticizing its mystical aspirations for the “unknowable”: “Among the Acmeists, the rose again became good in itself, with its petals, smell and color, and not with its conceivable similarities with mystical love or anything else” (Gorodetsky) . Acmeists proclaimed the liberation of poetry from symbolist impulses to the ideal, from the ambiguity and fluidity of images, complicated metaphor; talked about the need to return to the material world, the subject, the exact meaning of the word. Symbolism is based on the rejection of reality, and the acmeists believed that one should not abandon this world, one should look for some values in it and capture them in their works, and do this with the help of accurate and understandable images, and not vague symbols.
Actually, the acmeist movement was small in number, did not last long - about two years (1913-1914) - and was associated with the "Workshop of Poets". "Workshop of poets" was created in 1911 and at first united a fairly large number of people (not all of them later turned out to be involved in acmeism). This organization was much more cohesive than the disparate symbolist groups. At the meetings of the "Workshop" poems were analyzed, problems of poetic mastery were solved, and methods for analyzing works were substantiated. The idea of a new direction in poetry was first expressed by Kuzmin, although he himself did not enter the "Workshop". In his article "About Beautiful Clarity" Kuzmin anticipated many declarations of acmeism. In January 1913, the first manifestos of acmeism appeared. From this moment, the existence of a new direction begins.
Acmeism proclaimed "beautiful clarity" as the task of literature, or clarism(from lat. claris- clear). Acmeists called their current adamism, linking with the biblical Adam the idea of a clear and direct view of the world. Acmeism preached a clear, “simple” poetic language, where words would directly name objects, declare their love for objectivity. So, Gumilyov urged to look not for “unsteady words”, but for words “with a more stable content”. This principle was most consistently realized in Akhmatova's lyrics.
Futurism- one of the main avant-garde trends (avant-garde is an extreme manifestation of modernism) in European art of the early 20th century, which was most developed in Italy and Russia.
In 1909, in Italy, the poet F. Marinetti published the Futurist Manifesto. The main provisions of this manifesto: the rejection of traditional aesthetic values and the experience of all previous literature, bold experiments in the field of literature and art. As the main elements of futuristic poetry, Marinetti calls "courage, audacity, rebellion." In 1912, the Russian futurists V. Mayakovsky, A. Kruchenykh, V. Khlebnikov created their manifesto "Slap in the face of public taste". They also sought to break with traditional culture, welcomed literary experiments, sought to find new means of speech expressiveness (proclaiming a new free rhythm, loosening syntax, destroying punctuation marks). At the same time, Russian futurists rejected fascism and anarchism, which Marinetti declared in his manifestos, and turned mainly to aesthetic problems. They proclaimed a revolution of form, its independence from content (“what is important is not what, but how”) and the absolute freedom of poetic speech.
Futurism was a heterogeneous direction. Within its framework, four main groups or currents can be distinguished:
- "Gilea", which united cubo-futurists (V. Khlebnikov, V. Mayakovsky, A. Kruchenykh and others);
- "Association of Egofuturists"(I. Severyanin, I. Ignatiev and others);
- "Mezzanine of Poetry"(V. Shershenevich, R. Ivnev);
- "Centrifuge"(S. Bobrov, N. Aseev, B. Pasternak).
The most significant and influential group was the "Gilea": in fact, it was she who determined the face of Russian futurism. Its participants released many collections: "The Garden of Judges" (1910), "Slap in the Face of Public Taste" (1912), "Dead Moon" (1913), "Took" (1915).
The Futurists wrote in the name of the man of the crowd. At the heart of this movement was the feeling of "the inevitability of the collapse of the old" (Mayakovsky), the awareness of the birth of a "new humanity". Artistic creativity, according to the Futurists, should not be an imitation, but a continuation of nature, which through the creative will of man creates "a new world, today's, iron ..." (Malevich). This is the reason for the desire to destroy the "old" form, the desire for contrasts, the attraction to colloquial speech. Based on a living colloquial language, the futurists were engaged in "word-creation" (created neologisms). Their works were distinguished by complex semantic and compositional shifts - a contrast between the comic and the tragic, fantasy and lyrics.
Futurism began to disintegrate already in 1915-1916.
As noted earlier, among literary critics there is no consensus on how to distinguish between the concepts of " art system”, “literary direction” and “literary trend”. Most often, scholars refer to “systems” as “international literary communities” (baroque, classicism, etc.), while the terms “direction” and “flow” are used in a narrower sense.
The point of view of G.N. Pospelov, who believed that literary movement - ϶ᴛᴏ refraction in the work of writers and poets of certain social views (world outlook, ideologies), and directions - these are writers' groupings that arise on the basis of common aesthetic views and certain programs artistic activity(expressed in treatises, manifestos, slogans, etc.). Currents and directions in this meaning of words - ϶ᴛᴏ facts of individual national literatures(Theory of literature - M., 1978, pp. 134 - 140).
In other words, direction is a literary concept denoting a set of fundamental spiritually meaningful and aesthetic principles characteristic of the work of many writers, a number of groups, as well as due to these most important principles of coincidence and correspondence of programmatic and creative settings, themes, heat and style.
According to Pospelov, literary direction appears when a group of writers of a particular country and era unites on the basis of some specific creative program and creates their own works, focusing on its provisions. This contributes to greater creative organization and completeness of their works. But it is not the program principles proclaimed by some group of writers that determine the features of their work, but, on the contrary, the ideological and artistic commonality creativity unites writers and inspires them to realize and proclaim the corresponding program principles.
In European literatures directions appear only in modern times when artistic creativity acquires relative independence and the quality of the "art of the word", separating itself from other non-artistic genres. Literature imperiously enters the personal beginning, it becomes possible to express the author's point of view, the choice of one or another life and creative position. Directions in the history of European literature are considered to be Renaissance realism, baroque, classicism, enlightenment realism sentimentalism, romanticism, critical realism, naturalism, symbolism, socialist realism. The existence of these major trends in a number of national literatures is more or less generally recognized. The legitimacy of singling out others - rococo, pre-romanticism, neoclassicism, neo-romanticism, etc. - causes controversy.
Directions are not closed, but open; the transition from one to another usually involves intermediate forms (pre-romanticism in European literature XVIII centuries). A new direction, replacing the old one, does not immediately eliminate it, but coexists with it for some time - a creative and theoretical debate takes place between them.
Alternation and the same sequence of directions in European literature allow us to consider them as an international phenomenon; however, this or that direction in each literature acts from this point of view as a national variant of the corresponding pan-European model. The national-historical originality of trends in individual countries is sometimes so significant that it is problematic to attribute them to a single type, and the typological commonality of classicism, romanticism, etc. – very conditional and relative. Τᴀᴋᴎᴍ ᴏϬᴩᴀᴈᴏᴍ, when creating a general model of a literary trend, one has to take into account the measure typological commonality of its national forms is the fact that under the flag of one direction there are often directions that are qualitatively different.
The emergence of literary trends in national literatures does not mean that all writers necessarily belonged to one or another of them. There were also such writers who did not rise to the level of programming their creativity, did not create literary theories, and their creativity, therefore, cannot be assigned designations arising from any program provisions. Such writers do not belong to any movement. They also, of course, have a certain commonality of ideological worldview, created by certain circumstances of the social life of their country and era, which determined the corresponding commonality the ideological content of their works, and hence the form of its expression. This means that the work of these writers also had some kind of socio-historical regularity. A similar group of writers was, for example, in Russian literature - in the era of the dominance of the classicist trend in it. It was formed by M. Chulkov, A. Ablesimov, A. Izmailov and others. To such groups of writers, whose work is connected only ideological and artistic, but not a program community, the science of literature does not give any "proper names" like "classicism", "sentimentalism", etc.
According to Pospelov, the work of those groups of writers who have only ideological and artistic community, follows call literary trend.
This does not mean that the difference between literary trends and currents is only that the representatives of the first, having an ideological and artistic community of creativity, created a creative program, while the representatives of the second could not create it. The literary process is a more complex phenomenon. It often happens that the work of a group of writers, the definition of a country and an era that created and proclaimed a single creative program, has, however, only relative and unilateral creative community, that these writers, in essence, belong not to one, but to two (sometimes more) literary movements.
For this reason, while recognizing one creative program, they understand its provisions in different ways and apply them in different ways. There are, in other words, literary trends that combine the work of writers different currents. Sometimes writers of different, but somehow ideologically close to each other currents programmatically unite in the process of their common ideological and artistic polemics with writers of other currents that are sharply hostile to them.
Τᴀᴋᴎᴍ ᴏϬᴩᴀᴈᴏᴍ, the direction fixes the commonality of deep spiritual and aesthetic foundations artistic content conditioned by the unity of the cultural and artistic tradition, the uniformity of the worldview of the writers and those facing them life problems and, ultimately, the similarity of the epochal socio-cultural-historical situation. But the world outlook itself, that is, the attitude to the problems posed, the idea of ways and means of resolving them, ideological and artistic concepts, the ideals of writers belonging to the same direction are different.
Proceeding from such positions to the concepts of a literary trend and trend, Pospelov raises the question of their existence in national literatures at various stages of their development. historical development. According to the researcher, at all stages of development fiction(starting with the literature of Ancient Greece), its source has always been the ideological worldview of writers representing various social forces and hence often creating their works on the principle of antithesis. For this reason, if in national literatures before XVII century there were no clearly defined directions, then there were always different currents in them.
Currents existed, for example, in ancient Greek literature classical era its development. Attic democracy created in the 5th century BC. brilliant dramaturgy, anti-aristocratic in ideological orientation, authoritarian-mythological in ideals. It was one of the basic currents of ancient literature of that era. But even earlier, from the VI century BC. in those ancient Greek policies where the slave-owning aristocracy dominated, lyric poetry was actively developing - both civil in content (the works of Theognis from Megara, the odic choral lyrics of Tyrtaeus in Sparta, Pindar in Thebes), and purely personal, in particular love (Alcaeus and Sappho on Lesbos e, Anacreon). It was a different mainstream or even currents in ancient literature of that era. The appeal of the writers of the militant Attic democracy to dramaturgy, and the aristocratic poets of other cities to lyricism, followed from the peculiarities of the work of both.
Roman classical literature, created in completely different conditions of public life - in the early period of the existence of imperial power, in the “age of Augustus”, was characterized by a certain duality of its tendencies. The poets of that time responded to the ideological and political demands of the new government and created literature to some extent official, referring to the genre of civil or philosophical poem("Aeneid" by Virgil, "Metamorphoses" by Ovid) They were dominated by mythologically authoritarian mindsets. But along with this, the same poets, as well as others, gravitated in their worldview towards an ideological "withdrawal" from the hustle and bustle of the life of imperial Rome. They contrasted the heavy atmosphere of the capital with the imaginary joys of shepherd life (Virgil's Bucolics), the simplicity of rural labor (his Georgics), the solitary enjoyment of the blessings of life (Horace's Satires), the worries love experiences(“Love poems” by Ovid) or they idealized the good old morals (“Odes” by Horace, “Elegies” by Tibullus). Here, despite the mythological authoritarian worldview, the spontaneous humanistic aspirations of these poets were manifested.
Different currents can also be identified throughout the subsequent development of the literature. So, for example, in English romanticism, researchers distinguish three currents: revolutionary (Byron, Shelley), conservative (Wordsworth, Coleridge. Southey) and London (Keats, Lee Hunt) romantics. In relation to Russian romanticism, they speak of "philosophical", "psychological", "civil" currents. In Russian realism, some researchers distinguish between "psychological" and "sociological" trends.
Τᴀᴋᴎᴍ ᴏϬᴩᴀᴈᴏᴍ, if literary trends existed in national literatures from the very beginning of their historical life, then literary trends took shape in them only at relatively late stages of development and always on basis ideological and artistic content literature of one kind or another. For this reason, it is not literary trends that give life to literary movements and contain them, as some researchers believe, but vice versa - currents can form a single direction at some stage of their development, and before that or later exist outside of its limits. Thus, the literary trend of Russian noble revolutionism began with the work of A.N. Radishchev, who was not a romantic. Later, motives of civil romance arose in it (Pushkin, Ryleev and others), and it entered the direction of romanticism, along with poets and another, religious-romantic movement (Zhukovsky, Kozlov and others) (Pospelov G.N. Theory of Literature - M., 1987, pp. 140 - 160).
Along with the terms "direction" and "flow" to characterize the associations of writers, the concept " school' and 'grouping'. Literary groupings and schools presuppose a direct ideological and artistic affinity and programmatic and aesthetic unity of its participants (the "lake school" in English romanticism, the "Parnassus" group in France, the "natural school" in Russia, etc.).
Direction, flow, school is artistic communities that are historically formed in the course of the literary process. The direction was originally understood as the general character of all national literature or some period of it, as well as the goal towards which it should strive. In 1821, a professor at Moscow University, I. I. Davydov, declared that “Russian literature can and should receive its true direction” from learned societies; in 1822 Professor A.F. Merzlyakov called on to determine the direction and successes of Russian literature; in 1824, V.K. Küchelbecker published an article “On the direction of our poetry, especially lyrical, in last decade". In I.V. Kireevsky's article "The Nineteenth Century" (1832), the "dominant direction of minds" of the late 18th century. was defined as destructive, and the new as consisting “in the desire for a soothing equation of the new spirit with the ruins of old times ... In literature, the result of this trend was the desire to reconcile imagination with reality, the correctness of forms with freedom of content ... in a word, what is in vain called classicism with what is even more incorrectly called romanticism. As a result of the direction of minds, the last works of I.V. Goethe and the novels of V. Skotg were mentioned. KL Polevoy directly applied the word "direction" to certain stages of literature, without abandoning its broader meanings. In the article “On Directions and Parties in Literature,” he called the direction “that inner striving of literature, often invisible to contemporaries, which gives character to all, or at least to very many of its works in the known, given time... its foundation, in general sense, there is an idea of the modern era or the direction of the whole people. The criticism of those years mentioned different directions: "folk", "Byronic", "historical", "German", "French". P.A. Vyazemsky in the book “Fon-Vizin” (1830) singled out the satirical direction in the Russian theater from A.P. Sumarokov to A.S. Griboyedov. The central concept of the direction became in the criticism of V. G. Belinsky, N. G. Chernyshevsky, N. A. Dobrolyubov. In colloquial speech, "a writer with a direction" meant a writer with a tendency. At the same time, a variety of literary communities were understood under the direction. F.M. Dostoevsky in the anti-Dobrolyubov article "Gn - bov and the question of art" (1861) recognizes the existence of literary parties "in the sense of dissenting convictions" and "the need for a sensible direction in literature" ("we ourselves are thirsty, hungry for good direction and highly value it"), but he is against the narrow understanding of the public utility of art by the "utilitarian trend".
Flow
Gradually, along with the concept of "direction", an almost synonymous, but more neutral, not associated with demonstrative tendentiousness, concept of "flow" begins to be used. It is also characterized by uncertainty, sometimes even more than the "direction" - as in D.S. Merezhkovsky's pamphlet "On the Causes of the Decline and New Trends in Modern Russian Literature" (1893). K.D. Balmont in the article “Elementary words about symbolic poetry” (1904) closely connected symbolism “with two other varieties of modern literary creativity, known as decadence and impressionism", believing that in fact "all these currents either run in parallel, then diverge, then merge into one stream, but, in any case, they strive in the same direction." Literary criticism of the first third of the 20th century. willingly used in relation to the most significant literary communities the term style in a broad art history sense (P.N. Sakulin, V.M. Friche, I.A. Vinogradov, etc.), sometimes - “the style of the era”; the “styles of the era” were remembered much later (D.S. Likhachev, A.V. Mikhailov). Soviet theorists tried to streamline the use of the words "direction" and "flow" based not so much on their historical functioning as on their own logical constructions. The most widespread point of view, according to which the direction - large literary and artistic communities, formed by the unity of the creative method: classicism, sentimentalism, romanticism, realism. It was also customary to consider the direction: Renaissance and Enlightenment "realism", baroque, naturalism, symbolism, socialist realism. Mannerism, Rococo, pre-romanticism (identified with sentimentalism), impressionism, expressionism, futurism raised doubts in this sense. Uncertain was the status of modernism, which orthodox Soviet theory preferred not to deal with. A.N. Sokolov made adjustments to the common elementary scheme. He admitted that at the heart of the direction is the proximity of substantive principles. But, for example, the romantic period can continue to exist outside the romantic direction (the works of A.A. Fet, A.K. Tolstoy, Ya.P. Polonsky); there are also trends that have not developed their own method, like sentimentalism, which took shape in the struggle against classicism and prepared a new, romantic method.
The current was recognized as a kind of direction, distinguished by aesthetic, and more often ideological principle. Romanticism was divided into revolutionary (in a softened version - progressive) and reactionary (in a softened version - conservative). In French classicism, they distinguished between the currents based on the tradition of rationalism by R. Descartes (P. Corneille, J. Racine, N. Boileau), and the currents that more assimilated the sensualist tradition of P. Gassendi (J. La Fontaine, J. B. Molière). In Russian realism of the 19th century, U.R. Focht contrasted the psychological and sociological trends. different features identified several trends in socialist realism. G.N. Pospelov separated “literary trends” and “ideological and literary currents”: the latter are not components of the former, both of them only intersect. Currents seem to be more important. They differ in the ideological and artistic area, first of all, in the commonality of the problematics. Directions, according to Pospelov, are distinguished on the basis of the presence creative programs, and before classicism they were not. Currents are recognized in the early stages of literary development, starting from antiquity. Realism is divided both into currents and directions - according to various criteria. Western literary criticism generally ignores the notion of direction and flow as scholastic. R. Welleck and O. Warren emphasize the discrepancy between the self-consciousness of literary communities and their designations by researchers: in English language the name "Era of Humanism" was first recorded in 1832, "Renaissance" - in 1840, "romanticism" - in 1831 (by T. Carlyle) and then in 1844 (the English romantics did not call themselves that; c. 1849 they included S.T. .Coleridge and W. Wordsworth). However, in view of the presence of programs, manifestos, facts of similarity between national literatures, Welleck and Warren insist on the need for the concept of a period.
School
School is a small association of writers based on common artistic principles, more or less clearly formulated theoretically. The school was in the 16th century. Group " ". In the 18th century the German classicist J.H. Gottsched opposed the baroque pomposity of the “second Silesian school”. At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, the "lake school" of English romantics developed. In the early 1820s, the concepts of "romantic poetry", "romantic genre", "romantic school" spread. V.A. Zhukovsky was later called the founder of the Russian “romantic school”. Russian realism matured within the framework of the "natural school"
Literary direction - often identified with artistic method. Denotes a set of fundamental spiritual and aesthetic principles of many writers, as well as a number of groups and schools, their programmatic aesthetic attitudes, and the means used. In the struggle and change of direction, the laws of the literary process are most clearly expressed. It is customary to single out the following literary directions:
Classicism
Romanticism
Sentimentalism
Naturalism
Realism
Symbolism (fr.) is one of the largest trends in art (in literature, music and painting), which arose in France in the 1870s and 80s. and reached greatest development at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, primarily in France itself, Belgium and Russia. The Symbolists radically changed not only different kinds art, but also the attitude towards it. Their experimental nature, desire for innovation, cosmopolitanism and wide range of influences have become a model for most modern trends art.
Acmeism (from Greek - “highest degree, peak, flowering, flowering time”) is a literary movement that opposes symbolism and arose at the beginning of the 20th century in Russia. Acmeists proclaimed materiality, objectivity of themes and images, the accuracy of the word.
The formation of acmeism is closely connected with the activities of the "Workshop of poets", central figure which was the organizer of acmeism N. S. Gumilyov.
The term "acmeism" was proposed in 1912 by N. Gumilyov and S. M. Gorodetsky: in their opinion, symbolism in crisis is being replaced by a direction that generalizes the experience of predecessors and leads the poet to new heights of creative achievements.
Futurism. The author of the word and the founder of the direction is the Italian poet Filippo Marinetti (the poem "Red Sugar"). The name itself implies a cult of the future and discrimination of the past along with the present. Futurism can be viewed as a kind of fusion of Nietzscheanism and the manifesto of the communist party. The dynamics of movement should replace the static of posing sculptures, paintings and portraits. The camera and the movie camera will replace the imperfection of painting and the eye.
Imagism
Literary current- often identified with literary group and school. Denotes a collection creative people, which are characterized ideological and artistic proximity and program-aesthetic unity. Otherwise, a literary movement is a kind of literary movement.
Postmodernism(French postmodernisme - after modernism) - a term denoting structurally similar phenomena in world public life and culture of the second half of the 20th century. The origin of postmodernism is the 60s - 70s, connected and logically follows from the processes of Modernism as a reaction to the crisis of its ideas, as well as to the so-called death of foundations: God (Nietzsche), author (Bart), man (humanities). The term appears during the First World War in the work of R. Panwitz “Crisis European culture» (1914). In 1934, in his book An Anthology of Spanish and Latin American Poetry, the literary critic F. de Onis uses it to denote a reaction to modernism.
Expressionism(from lat. expressio, "expression") - avant-garde movement in European art, developed at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, characterized by a tendency to express the emotional characteristics of the image (s) (usually a person or group of people) or emotional state the artist himself. Expressionism is represented in a variety of art forms, including painting, literature, theatre, cinema, architecture, and music.
Decadence (decadence)
Decadence (from late Latin - decline) is the general name for the crisis phenomena of European culture of the 2nd half of the 19th - early 20th centuries, marked by moods of hopelessness, rejection of life, and tendencies of individualism. A complex and contradictory phenomenon, has a source of crisis public consciousness, the confusion of many artists before the sharp social antagonisms of reality. Art's rejection of political and civic themes was considered by decadent artists to be a manifestation and an indispensable condition for freedom of creativity. Constant themes are the motives of non-existence and death, longing for spiritual values and ideals.
Avant-garde (fr. Avant-garde, “advanced detachment”) is a generalized name for the trends in European art that arose at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, expressed in a polemical-combat form (hence the name itself, taken from the military-political vocabulary). Its time frame is considered to be the period from 1870 to 1938 [source not specified 167 days]. The avant-garde is characterized by an experimental approach to artistic creativity that goes beyond classical aesthetics, using original, innovative means of expression, emphasized by the symbolism of artistic images.
The concept of avant-garde is largely eclectical in its essence. This term refers to a number of schools and trends in art, sometimes having a diametrically opposed ideological basis.
Modernism (Italian modernismo - " modern trend»; from lat. modernus - "modern, recent") - a trend in the art and literature of the 20th century, characterized by a break with the previous historical experience of artistic creativity, the desire to establish new non-traditional beginnings in art, the continuous renewal of artistic forms, as well as the conventionality (schematization, abstraction) of style. The modernist paradigm was one of the leading Western civilization the first half of the 20th century; in the second half of the century, it was subjected to extensive criticism. The term "modernism" is inherent only in the domestic art history school, in Western sources it is the term "modern". Since in Russian aesthetics "modern" means an artistic style that precedes modernism, it is necessary to distinguish between these two concepts in order to avoid confusion.
The concepts of "direction", "flow", "school" refer to terms that describe the literary process - the development and functioning of literature on a historical scale. Their definitions are debatable in literary science.
In the 19th century, the direction was understood as the general nature of the content, ideas of all national literature or any period of its development. At the beginning 19th century the literary movement was generally associated with the "mainstream of minds".
So, I. V. Kireevsky in the article "The Nineteenth Century" (1832) wrote that the dominant direction of minds late XVIII of the century is destructive, and the new consists in “the striving for a soothing equation of the new spirit with the ruins of old times ...
In literature, the result of this trend was the desire to harmonize imagination with reality, the correctness of forms with freedom of content ... in a word, what is called classicism in vain, with what is even more incorrectly called romanticism.
Even earlier, in 1824, V. K. Küchelbecker declared the direction of poetry as its main content in the article “On the direction of our poetry, especially lyric poetry, in the last decade.” Ks. A. Polevoi was the first in Russian criticism to use the word "direction" to certain stages in the development of literature.
In the article “On Directions and Parties in Literature”, he called the direction “that inner striving of literature, often invisible to contemporaries, which gives character to all, or at least to very many of its works at a certain given time ... Its basis, in a general sense, there is an idea of the modern era.
For " real criticism"- N. G. Chernyshevsky, N. A. Dobrolyubov - the direction was correlated with the ideological position of the writer or a group of writers. In general, the direction was understood as a variety of literary communities.
But the main feature that unites them is that the direction fixes the unity of the most general principles for the embodiment of artistic content, the commonality of the deep foundations of the artistic worldview.
This unity is often due to the similarity of cultural and historical traditions, often associated with the type of consciousness literary era, some scholars believe that the unity of direction is due to the unity of the creative method of writers.
There is no set list of literary trends, since the development of literature is associated with the specifics of the historical, cultural, social life of society, national and regional characteristics of a particular literature. However, traditionally there are such areas as classicism, sentimentalism, romanticism, realism, symbolism, each of which is characterized by its own set of formal and meaningful features.
For example, within the framework of a romantic worldview, general-purpose features of romanticism can be distinguished, such as the motives for the destruction of familiar boundaries and hierarchies, the ideas of “inspiring” synthesis that replaced the rationalistic concept of “connection” and “order”, awareness of man as the center and mystery of being , personality open and creative, etc.
But the concrete expression of these general philosophical and aesthetic foundations of the world outlook in the works of writers and their very outlook is different.
So, within romanticism, the problem of embodying universal, new, non-rational ideals was embodied, on the one hand, in the idea of rebellion, a radical reorganization of the existing world order (D. G. Byron, A. Mickiewicz, P. B. Shelley, K. F. Ryleev) , and on the other hand, in the search for one’s inner “I” (V. A. Zhukovsky), the harmony of nature and spirit (W. Wordsworth), religious self-improvement (F. R. Chateaubriand).
As you can see, such a commonality of principles is international, in many respects of different quality, and exists in rather vague chronological framework, which is largely due to the national and regional specifics of the literary process.
The same sequence of changing directions in different countries usually serves as proof of their supranational character. This or that direction in each country acts as a national variety of the corresponding international (European) literary community.
According to this point of view, French, German, Russian classicism are considered varieties of the international literary movement - European classicism, which is a set of the most common typological features inherent in all varieties of direction.
But it must be taken into account that often national characteristics of one direction or another can manifest themselves much more clearly than the typological similarity of varieties. In the generalization, there is some schematism that can distort real historical facts literary process.
For example, classicism manifested itself most clearly in France, where it is presented as a complete system of both content and formal features of works, codified by theoretical normative poetics (The Poetic Art by N. Boileau). In addition, it is represented by significant artistic achievements that have influenced other European literature.
In Spain and Italy, where the historical situation developed differently, classicism turned out to be a direction largely imitative. Baroque literature turned out to be the leading one in these countries.
Russian classicism becomes a central trend in literature, also not without influence. French classicism, but acquires its own national sound, crystallizes in the struggle between the "Lomonosov" and "Sumarok" currents. There are many differences in the national varieties of classicism, and even more problems are connected with the definition of romanticism as a single pan-European trend, within which very different quality phenomena are often encountered.
Thus, the construction of pan-European and "world" models of trends as the largest units of the functioning and development of literature seems to be a very difficult task.
Gradually, along with “direction”, the term “flow” comes into circulation, often used synonymously with “direction”. So, D. S. Merezhkovsky in an extensive article “On the Causes of the Decline and New Trends in Modern Russian Literature” (1893) writes that “between writers with different, sometimes opposite temperaments, special mental currents, a special air, are established, as between opposite poles, brimming with creativity." It is he, according to the critic, that determines the similarity of "poetic phenomena", the works of different writers.
Often "direction" is recognized as a generic concept in relation to "flow". Both concepts denote the unity of leading spiritual-content and aesthetic principles arising at a certain stage of the literary process, covering the work of many writers.
The term "direction" in literature is understood as the creative unity of writers of a certain historical era, using common ideological and aesthetic principles for depicting reality.
The direction in literature is considered as a generalizing category of the literary process, as one of the forms of artistic worldview, aesthetic views, ways of displaying life associated with a peculiar artistic style. In the history of national literatures European nations allocate such directions as classicism, sentimentalism, romanticism, realism, naturalism, symbolism.
Introduction to Literary Studies (N.L. Vershinina, E.V. Volkova, A.A. Ilyushin and others) / Ed. L.M. Krupchanov. - M, 2005
