Although it is generally recognized that the art of the 20th century is the art of modernism, a significant role in the literary life of the last century has a realistic direction, which on the one hand represents a realistic type of creativity. On the other hand, it comes into contact with that new trend that has received a very conditional concept of "socialist realism" - more precisely, the literature of revolutionary and socialist ideology.
The realism of the 20th century is directly related to the realism of the previous century. And how did this artistic method develop in the middle of the 19th century, having received the rightful name of “classical realism” and having experienced various modifications in the literary work of the last third of the 19th century, was influenced by such unrealistic trends as naturalism, aestheticism, impressionism.
The realism of the 20th century takes shape in its definite history and has a destiny. If we cover the 20th century collectively, then realistic creativity manifested itself in diversity of nature, multi-composition in the first half of the 20th century. At this time, it is obvious that realism is changing under the influence of modernism and popular literature. He connects with these artistic phenomena as with revolutionary socialist literature. In the second half there is a dissolution of realism, which has lost its clear aesthetic principles and poetics of creativity in modernism and postmodernism.
The realism of the 20th century continues the traditions of classical realism at different levels - from aesthetic principles to the techniques of poetics, the traditions of which were inherent in the realism of the 20th century. The realism of the last century acquires new properties that distinguish it from this type of creativity of the previous time.
The realism of the 20th century is characterized by an appeal to the social phenomena of reality and the social motivation of the human character, the psychology of the individual, and the fate of art. As obvious is the appeal to the social topical problems of the era, which are not separated from the problems of society and politics.
Realistic art of the 20th century, like the classical realism of Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, is distinguished by a high degree of generalization and typification of phenomena. Realistic art tries to show the characteristic and regular in their causality and determinism. Therefore, realism is characterized by a different creative embodiment of the principle of depicting a typical character in typical circumstances, in the realism of the 20th century, which is keenly interested in a separate human personality. Character as a living person - and in this character the universal and typical has an individual refraction, or is combined with the individual properties of the personality. Along with these features of classical realism, new features are also obvious.
First of all, these are the features that manifested themselves in the realistic at the end of the 19th century. Literary creativity in this era takes on the character of philosophical and intellectual, when philosophical ideas underlay the modeling of artistic reality. At the same time, the manifestation of this philosophical principle is inseparable from the various properties of the intellectual. From the author's attitude to the intellectually active perception of the work in the process of reading, then the emotional perception. An intellectual novel, an intellectual drama, takes shape in its specific properties. A classic example of an intellectual realistic novel is provided by Thomas Mann (The Magic Mountain, The Confession of the Adventurer Felix Krul). This is also palpable in the dramaturgy of Bertolt Brecht.
The second feature of realism in the 20th century is the strengthening and deepening of the dramatic, more tragic beginning. This is evident in the work of F.S. Fitzgerald (“Tender is the Night”, “The Great Gatsby”).
As you know, the art of the 20th century lives by its special interest not just in a person, but in his inner world. The study of this world is connected with the desire of writers to ascertain, depict moments of the unconscious and subconscious. To this end, many writers use the stream of consciousness technique. This can be traced in Anna Zegers' short story "The Walk of the Dead Girls", W. Koeppen's work "Death in Rome", the dramatic work of Y. O'Neill "Love under the Elms" (influence of the Oedipus complex).
Another feature of the realism of the 20th century is the active use of conventional art forms. In particular, in realistic prose of the second half of the 20th century, artistic convention is extremely widespread and diverse (for example, Y. Brezan "Krabat, or the Transfiguration of the World").
Literature of revolutionary and socialist ideology. Henri Barbusse and his novel "Fire"
The realist trend in the literature of the 20th century is closely connected with another trend - socialist realism, or, more precisely, the literature of revolutionary and socialist ideology. In the literature of this trend, the first criterion is ideological and ideological (ideas of communism, socialism). In the background in the literature of this level is aesthetic and artistic. This principle is a truthful depiction of life under the influence of a certain ideological and ideological attitude of the author. The literature of the revolutionary and socialist ideology in its origins is connected with the literature of the revolutionary socialist and proletarian turn of the 19th-20th centuries, but the pressure of class views, ideological in socialist realism is more palpable.
Literature of this kind often appears in unity with realism (the image of a truthful, typical human character in typical circumstances). This direction received direction until the 70s of the XX century in the countries of the socialist camp (Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Germany), but also in the work of writers of the capitalist countries (panoramic-epic version of Dimitar Dimov's work "Tobacco"). In the work of socialist realism, the polarization of two worlds is noticeable - the bourgeois and the socialist. This is also noticeable in the system of images. Indicative in this regard is the work of the writer Erwin Stritmatter (GDR), who, under the influence of the socialist realist creativity of Sholokhov (“Virgin Soil Upturned”), created the work “Ole Binkop”. In this novel, like in Sholokhov's, the author's modern village is shown, in the image of which the author sought to reveal, not without drama and tragedy, the assertion of new, revolutionary socialist foundations of existence, just as Sholokhov, recognizing the importance of primarily the ideological principle, sought to depict life in its revolutionary development.
In the first half of the 20th century, social realism became widespread in many countries of the "capitalist world" - in France, Great Britain, and the USA. The works of this literature include "10 days that shook the world" by J. Reed, A. Gide "return to the USSR", etc.
Just as Maxim Gorky was considered the founder of socialist realism in Soviet Russia, Henri Barbusse (1873-1935) is recognized in the West. This writer, very controversial, entered literature as a poet who felt the influence of symbolist lyrics ("Weepers"). The writer whom Barbusse admired was Emile Zola, to whom Barbusse dedicated the book Zola (1933) at the end of his life, which is considered by researchers as a model of Marxist literary criticism. At the turn of the century, the writer was significantly influenced by the Dreyfus Affair. Under its influence, Barbusse affirms in her work universal humanism, in which goodness, prudence, cordial responsiveness, a sense of justice, the ability to come to the aid of another person who is perishing in this world operate. This position is captured in the 1914 short story collection We.
In the literature of the revolutionary and socialist ideology, Henri Barbusse is known as the author of the novels "Fire", "Clarity", a collection of short stories of 1928 "True Tales", an essay book "Jesus" (1927). In the last work, the image of Christ is interpreted by the writer as the image of the world's first revolutionary, in that ideological and ideological certainty in which the word "revolutionary" was used in the 20-30s of the last century.
An example of a work of socialist realism in its unity with realism can be called Barbusse's novel "Fire". "Fire" is the first work about World War I, in which a new quality of conversation about this human tragedy was opened. The novel, which appeared in 1916, largely determined the direction of development of literature about World War I. The horrors of the war are described in the novel with a colossal amount of detail, his work pierced the picture of the war varnished by censorship. War is not an attack similar to a parade, it is super-monstrous fatigue, waist-deep water, mud. It was written under the direct influence of the impressions that the writer made while personally staying at the front on the eve of the war, as well as in the first months after it began. 40-year-old Henri Barbusse volunteered to go to the front, he knew the fate of a soldier as a private. He believed that he was saved from death by a wound (1915), after which Barbusse spent many months in the hospital, where he generally comprehended the war in its various manifestations, the specifics of events and facts.
One of the most important creative principles that Barbusse set for himself when creating the novel "Fire" is connected with the writer's desire to show with all obviousness and ruthlessness what war is. Barbusse does not build his work according to tradition, highlighting certain storylines, but writes about the life of ordinary soldiers, from time to time snatching and giving close-ups of some characters from the soldier mass. Either this is La Mousse, the farmhand, or Paradis, the driver. This principle of organizing the novel without highlighting the organizing plot beginning is noted in the subtitle of the novel "The Diary of a Platoon". In the form of a diary entry of a certain narrator, to whom the author is close, this story is built up as a series of diary fragments. This form of non-traditional novel compositional solution fits into a variety of artistic searches, landmarks of the literature of the 20th century. At the same time, these diary entries are authentic pictures, since what is imprinted on the pages of this diary of the first platoon is perceived artistically and reliably. Henri Barbusse purposefully in his novel depicts the simple life of soldiers with bad weather, hunger, death, disease and rare glimpses of relaxation. This appeal to everyday life is connected with the conviction of Barbusse, as his narrator says in one of the entries: “war is not waving banners, not the invocative voice of a horn at dawn, this is not heroism, not the courage of exploits, but diseases that torment a person, hunger, lice and death."
Barbusse here turns to naturalistic poetics, giving repulsive images, describing the corpses of soldiers who are floating in the stream of water among their dead comrades, unable to get out of the trench during weeks of rain. Naturalistic poetics is also palpable in the writer’s appeal to a special kind of naturalistic comparisons: Barbusse writes about one soldier getting out of a dugout as a bear moving backwards, about another, scratching his hair and suffering from lice, like a monkey. Thanks to the second part of the comparison, a person is likened to an animal, but Barbusse's naturalistic poetics is not an end in itself. Thanks to these techniques, the writer can show what war is, cause disgust, hostility. The humanistic beginning of Barbusse's prose is manifested in the fact that even in these people doomed to death and misfortune he shows the ability to show humanity.
Barbusse's second line of creative conception is connected with the desire to show the growth of the consciousness of the simple soldier masses. In order to trace the state of consciousness of the mass of soldiers, the writer turns to the method of non-personalized dialogue, and in the structure of the work, dialogue occupies such a significant place as the depiction of events in the life of the characters in reality, and as descriptions. The peculiarity of this technique lies in the fact that when fixing the replica of the character, the words of the author accompanying these replicas do not indicate exactly to whom personally, individually, the statement belongs (the narrator says “someone said”, “someone’s voice was heard”, “shouted out one of the soldiers, etc.).
Barbusse traces how a new consciousness of ordinary soldiers is gradually being formed, who were brought to a state of despair by war with hunger, disease, and death. Barbusse's soldiers realize that the Boches, as they call the enemy Germans, are just as simple soldiers, just as unfortunate as they are, the French. Some who have realized this declare it openly, in their exalted utterances they declare that war is opposed to life. Some say that people are born in order to be husbands, fathers, children in this life, but not for the sake of death. Gradually, a frequently repeated thought emerges, expressed by various characters from the soldier mass: after this war there should be no wars.
Barbusse's soldiers realized that this war was being waged not in their human interests, not in the interests of the country and the people. The soldiers, in their understanding of this ongoing bloodshed, single out two reasons: the war is being waged solely in the interests of a select "bastard caste" whom the war helps to fill sacks of gold. War is in the careerist interests of other representatives of this "bastard caste" with gilded epaulettes, for whom war gives them the opportunity to climb a new step on the career ladder.
The democratic mass of Henri Barbusse, growing in its awareness of life, gradually not only feels, but also realizes the unity of all people from simple classes, doomed to war, in their aspiration they oppose anti-life and anti-human war. Moreover, Barbusse's soldiers mature in their international sentiments, as they realize that this war is not to blame for the militarism of a particular country and Germany as having unleashed the war, but for world militarism, therefore, ordinary people should, like world militarism, unite, since in this nationwide international unity they will be able to resist the war. Then one feels the desire that after this war there would be no more wars in the world.
In this novel, Barbusse is revealed as an artist who uses various artistic means to reveal the author's main idea. In connection with the depiction of the growth of consciousness and consciousness of the people, the writer does not turn to a new device of novelistic symbolism, which is manifested in the title of the last chapter, which contains the climax of the growth of the international consciousness of soldiers. This chapter is called "Dawn". In it, Barbusse uses the technique of a symbol, which appears as a symbolic coloring of the landscape: according to the plot, it rained endlessly for many months, the sky was completely covered with heavy clouds hanging to the ground, pressing on a person, and it is in this chapter, where the climax is contained, that the sky begins clear, the clouds disperse, and between them the first ray of the sun timidly breaks, indicating that the sun exists.
In Barbusse's novel, the realistic is organically combined with the properties of the literature of revolutionary and socialist ideology, in particular, this is manifested in the depiction of the growth of popular consciousness. This ideological stretch with his characteristic French humor was beaten by Romain Rolland in a review of "Fire", which appeared in March 1917. Revealing the different sides of the issue, Rolland speaks of the justification for a truthful and merciless depiction of the war and that, under the influence of military events, everyday life of war, there is a change in the consciousness of the simple soldier masses. This change in consciousness, Rolland notes, is symbolically emphasized by the timidly breaking first ray of the sun in the landscape. At the same time, Rolland declares that this ray does not yet make the weather: the certainty with which Barbusse strives to show and depict the growth of consciousness of the soldiers is still very far away.
“Fire” is a product of its time, the era of the spread of socialist and communist ideology, their implementation in life, when there was a holy faith in the possibility of their implementation in reality through revolutionary upheavals, to change life for the benefit of every person. In the spirit of the time, living with revolutionary socialist ideas, this novel was evaluated by contemporaries. A contemporary of Barbusse, communist writer Raymond Lefebvre called this work ("Fire") "an international epic", stating that this is a novel that reveals the philosophy of the proletariat of war, and the language of "Fire" is the language of proletarian war.
The novel "Fire" was translated and published in Russia at the time of the release in the country of the author. It was far from the establishment of social realism, but the novel was perceived as a new word about life in its cruel truth and movement towards progress. This is exactly how the leader of the world proletariat V.I. Lenin. In his reviews, he repeated the words of M. Gorky from the preface to the publication of the novel in Russia: "each page of his book is the blow of the iron hammer of truth on what is generally called war."
The literature of revolutionary and socialist ideology continues to exist in the socialist and capitalist countries until the end of the 1980s. This literature in the late period of its existence (60-70s) is associated with the work of the German writer from the GDR Herman Kant ("Assembly Hall" - a retro-style novel (70s), as well as returning the reader to the events of the Second World War " Stopover").
Of the writers of the capitalist countries of the West, the poetic and romantic works of Louis Aragon are associated with literature of this kind (a number of novels in the Real World cycle - the historical novel Holy Week, the novel The Communists). In English literature - J. Albridge (his works of socialist realism - “I don’t want him to die”, “Heroes of desert horizons”, the dilogy “Diplomat”, “Son of a foreign land (“Prisoner of a foreign land”)).
As you already know, at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, the aesthetic system of Russian realism was significantly updated. Traditional realism, in the form in which it had developed in the previous century, was engulfed by crisis phenomena. But the crisis was fruitful in this case, and realistic aesthetics came out of it renewed. The realism of the 20th century changed the traditional system of character motivation. The understanding of the environment that forms the personality has expanded to the utmost: history, global historical processes now acted as typical circumstances. The man (and the literary hero) was now face to face with history itself. This affected the confidence of realist artists in the individual. At the same time, in the process of artistic assimilation of the changing world, the dangers that confronted the personality were revealed. The most important thing for a person turned out to be under threat: his private being.
In the 20th century, the right to private life was questioned. A person was drawn by reality into the cycle of historical events - often against his own will. History itself, as it were, formed typical circumstances, the aggressive influence of which the literary hero was subjected to.
In the literature of the 19th century, the right of private existence was declared as natural and inalienable: after all, it was the “extra person” like Onegin or Pechorin who asserted it with his fate and social behavior; Ilya Ilyich Oblomov claimed it, preferring a sofa in a house on Gorokhovaya Street to the prospect of public service; it was claimed by Fyodor Ivanovich Lavretsky, who retired to a noble nest from the hardships that befell him.
M. Gorky played an important role in the development of realism at the beginning of the 20th century. Perhaps for the first time in Russian literary history, this writer deprived his literary hero of the right to be Robinson - to be in society and at the same time out of society. Historical time has become the most important factor influencing the character in the Gorky epic. Interaction with him - sometimes positive, sometimes destructive - none of his heroes could avoid. Tolstoy also had characters who, as it were, did not notice the surroundings, stepping up the career ladder: Bergi, Drubetsky, Helen. But if the Bergis and Kuragins could close themselves within the limits of their social clan, then Gorky no longer left such a right to his heroes. His characters cannot escape reality, even if they really want to.
Klim Samghin, the hero of the four-volume epic "The Life of Klim Samghin", experiences the oppressive force of social circumstances, the real violence of the historical process, war, revolution. However, this historical "violence", studied by the writer, just became a factor that modified realism, giving it new and very powerful impulses of self-renewal. Having survived the painful crisis of the turn of the century, realism did not at all give up its positions in literature; on the contrary, it led to amazing artistic discoveries, without which not only Russian, but also European culture of the new century is inconceivable. Ho realism has become completely different than in the last century. The renewal of realism manifested itself primarily in the interpretation of the question of the interaction of characters and circumstances, which is primordial for this literary trend.
This interaction becomes truly bidirectional. Now not only the character experiences the influence of the environment: the possibility and even the necessity of a “reverse” influence - the hero on the environment - are affirmed. A new concept of personality is being formed: a person who is not reflective, but creative, who realizes himself not in the sphere of private intrigue, but in the public arena.
The prospects for a good re-creation of the world opened up before the hero and before the artist. But these hopes were not always destined to be realized. Perhaps future historians of Russian literature will call the period of the 1920s and 1930s a period of unfulfilled hopes, which were bitterly disappointed in the second half of the century. While asserting the rights of the individual to transform the world, the new literature also asserted the rights of the individual to violence in relation to this world - even if it was carried out for good purposes.
The bottom line is that revolution was conceived as the most accessible and natural form of this transformation. The next logical step was to justify revolutionary violence not only in relation to another person, but also in relation to the general foundations of being. Violence was justified by a high goal: on the ruins of the old unjust world, it was supposed to create a new, ideal world, a world based on goodness and justice.
Such a change in realistic aesthetics was associated with an attempt by realism to adapt to the worldview of a person of the 20th century, to new philosophical, aesthetic, and simply everyday realities. And the renewed realism, as we will conditionally call it, coped with this task, became adequate to the thinking of a man of the 20th century. In the 1930s, he reached his artistic pinnacle: the epics of M. Gorky “The Life of Klim Samgin”, M. Sholokhov “The Quiet Flows the Don”, A. Tolstoy “Walking Through the Pains”, novels by L. Leonov, K. Fedin and other realists appeared .
But next to renewed realism in the 1920s, an aesthetic different from it arises, genetically, however, also ascending to realism. In the 1920s, it did not yet dominate, but actively developed, as it were, in the shadow of a renewed realism, the formation of which gives undoubted artistic results. But it was the new direction that brought to literature, first of all, the anti-humanistic pathos of violence against the individual, society, the desire to destroy the whole world around him in the name of the revolutionary ideal.
Research functions, traditional for realism, give way to purely illustrative functions, when the mission of literature is seen in the creation of some ideal model of the social and natural world. Belief in tomorrow's ideal is so strong that a person struck by a utopian idea is ready to sacrifice the past and present just because they do not correspond to the ideal of the future. The principles of artistic typification are changing: it is no longer a study of typical characters in their interaction with a realistic environment, but the assertion of normative (should be from the standpoint of a certain social ideal) characters in normative circumstances. This aesthetic system, fundamentally different from the new realism, we will call normativism.
The paradox of the situation lay in the fact that neither in the public consciousness, nor in the literary-critical everyday life, these two tendencies did not differ. On the contrary, both renewed realism and normativism were comprehended in an undivided way - as a single Soviet literature. In 1934, this indistinguishability was consolidated by the general term - socialist realism. Since then, two different aesthetic systems, normative and realistic, in many respects opposed to each other, were conceived as an ideological and aesthetic unity.
Moreover, sometimes they coexisted in the work of the same author or even in the same work. An example of the latter is A. Fadeev's novel "The Rout" (1927).
Like Gorky's Pavel Vlasov, Fadeev's favorite characters are on the way to a moral rebirth. Having seen only bad and dirty things in life, Morozka joined the partisan detachment, as he himself says, not for the sake of the commander's beautiful eyes, but in order to build a better, righteous life. By the end of the novel, he gets rid of his inherent anarchism, for the first time he experiences an unexpected feeling of love for Vara. The team has become dear to him, and Frost, without hesitation, gives his life for his comrades, warning the detachment of the danger. The scout Metelitsa, who believed that people were deeply indifferent to him, stood up for the shepherd boy and, before his death, discovers for himself that he loves the people around him.
A. Fadeev trusts the role of an active educator of the masses to the commander of the detachment, Levinson, behind whose frail appearance he sees spiritual strength, conviction in the need to transform the world in a revolutionary way.
It is quite traditional for Russian realistic literature that A. Fadeev debunks the individualist Mechi-ka. Mechik's romantic maximalism, his soaring above reality, his constant search for the exceptional - whether in private or social life - lead him to deny real life, show inattention to the essential, inability to appreciate it and see beauty. So he rejects Varya's love in the name of a beautiful stranger in the photograph, rejects the friendship of ordinary partisans and, as a result, remains a romantic in splendid isolation. In essence, the author punishes him with betrayal precisely for this (as well as, however, for his social alienation from ordinary partisans).
It is characteristic that the strongest passages of the novel contain a psychological analysis of the behavior of the characters. It is no coincidence that critics unanimously noted the influence of the traditions of L. Tolstoy on the young Soviet writer.
At the same time, the idea of "social humanism", when a person, a person can be sacrificed in the name of a higher goal, brings A. Fadeev's novel closer to normativism.
If the revolution is being made in the name and for the working people, then why does the arrival of Levinson's detachment promise starvation to the Korean peasant and his entire family? Because the highest social necessity (to feed the detachment and continue the journey to their own) is more important than "abstract humanism": the life of the members of the detachment means more than the life of one Korean (or even his entire family). Yes, there is arithmetic! - I want to exclaim after Raskolnikov.
Dr. Stashinsky and Levinson come to the idea of the need to finish off the wounded partisan Frolov. His death is inevitable: the wound is fatal, and it is impossible to carry him with you - this will slow down the movement of the detachment and can kill everyone. Leave - it will fall to the Japanese and take an even more terrible death. Facilitating his hero's decision, Fadeev forces Frolov himself to take poison, which looks almost like suicide.
In this part of the novel, Fadeev broke with the humanistic tradition of Russian realism, declaring a fundamentally new ethical system based on a rigidly rational attitude towards both man and the world as a whole.
The ending of the novel also sounds less ambiguous. Levinson will live "and fulfill his duties." In order to gather another detachment from the distant people whom he sees after the death of the detachment, people working on the ground, threshing bread. Levinson’s idea seems indisputable to Fadeev “to make [these peasants] as close as they were to those eighteen who silently followed” and lead them along the roads of the Civil War - to a new defeat, because in such a war there are no winners and the final general destruction is inevitable.
However, it is possible that the artist triumphed in Fadeev-politics. After all, the novel is called "Defeat", not "Victory".
If A. Fadeev's book bears both the features of genuine realism and normativism, then Y. Libedinsky's story "The Week" (1922) was written exclusively in the traditions of normativism and utopianism. One of its heroes, the Bolshevik Stelmakhov, utters the following monologue-confession: “I hated the revolution before I fell in love ... And only then, after I was beaten for Bolshevik agitation, after I was in Moscow, in October , stormed the Kremlin and shot the cadets, when I was not yet in the party and did not understand anything politically, then in moments of fatigue I began to imagine a distant rest ahead, that's how the kingdom of heaven for a Christian, distant, but certainly promised, if not to me, then to the future people, my sons or grandchildren... This is what communism will be... I don’t know what it will be like...”
The heroes of the story give all their strength to the service of a beautiful, but completely obscure mythical future. This idea gives them the strength to overcome natural human feelings, such as, for example, pity for a defeated enemy, disgust for cruelty, fear of murder: my warm word is communism, and exactly who will wave a red handkerchief to me.
Behind this monstrous confession, which the hero and the author perceive as sublimely romantic, stands a utopian worldview in its most terrible and cruel form. It was it that became the ideological justification for socialist realism.
Reality in the new aesthetics was perceived as a hostile, inert, conservative beginning, in need of a radical alteration. The highest value for the writer of the new direction was the future, ideal and devoid of contradictions, existing, of course, only in the project. This project was also poorly detailed, but justified any violence against the present.
How was the formation of a new view of the world in socialist realism? First of all, it should be noted that in the literature of the 1920s a new concept of personality emerged. The inclusion of a person in the historical process, the assertion of his direct contacts with the "macro environment" paradoxically devalues the hero, he seems to be deprived of intrinsic value and turns out to be significant only insofar as it contributes to the historical movement forward. Such a devaluation is possible because of the finalist concept of history, which is more and more spreading in society. History in this interpretation acquires meaning and significance only insofar as it moves towards a "golden age", localized somewhere far ahead.
Moreover, the hero himself is aware of the absolute value of the future and the very relative value of his own personality, he is ready to consciously and completely calmly sacrifice himself. The extreme form of such an anti-humanistic position was embodied (quite sympathetically in relation to the ideas of the hero) by the writer A. Tarasov-Rodionov in the story “Chocolate”, which tells how Chekist Zudin decides to sacrifice his life, but not to cast even a small shadow on the uniform of the Cheka. Accused of bribery, Zudin was sentenced to death. And for his comrades, confident in his innocence, but nevertheless sentenced to death, and for himself, this decision seems to be the only true one: it is better to sacrifice life than to give even the slightest reason for philistine rumors.
The romanticization of the future, its sharp opposition to the present, and ultimately the creation of the myth of the "golden age" are the most important features of the aesthetics of socialist realism. In the most naked form, this idea was stated by A. V. Lunacharsky in the article “Socialist Realism”.
Only the future, from the point of view of the Marxist theoretician, is the only worthy subject of depiction. “Imagine,” says A. V. Lunacharsky, as if substantiating the aesthetic principles of the “golden age,” that a house is being built, and when it is built, it will be a magnificent palace. But it is still unfinished, and you draw it in this form and say: “Here is your socialism,” but there is no roof. You will, of course, be a realist, you will tell the truth: but it is immediately evident that this truth is in fact not true. The socialist truth can only be told by those who understand what kind of house is being built, how it is being built, who understands that it will have a roof. A person who does not understand development will never see the truth, because the truth is not like itself, it does not sit still, the truth flies, the truth is development, the truth is a conflict, the truth is a struggle, the truth is tomorrow, and it is necessary to see it in this way, and whoever does not see it in this way is a bourgeois realist, and therefore a pessimist, a whiner and often a swindler and a falsifier, and in any case a voluntary or involuntary counter-revolutionary and a pest.
This quote is very important for understanding the basic idea of socialist realism. First of all, new functions of art compared to traditional realism are affirmed: not the study of real conflicts and contradictions of the time, but the creation of a model of an ideal future, a model of a “magnificent palace”. The research, cognitive function of literature goes to the background or even to the third plan; the main function is to promote what a beautiful house will someday be built on the site of real, now existing dwellings.
These ideas, immediately embedded in the program of the new direction, awakening and developing more and more actively, turned out to be a kind of "cancer cells" of the new art. It was they who led to the rebirth of new realism into a normative non-realistic aesthetics during the 1920s and 1950s. It is the order to see not reality, but a project, not what is, but what should be, that leads to the loss of realistic principles of typification: the artist no longer explores characters, but creates them in accordance with the prescribed norm, and thereby turns them into primitive social masks (enemy, friend, communist, philistine, middle peasant, kulak, specialist, pest, etc.).
Normativity transforms the very concept of artistic truth. The monopoly on the truth now belongs to those who can see the "truth of tomorrow." And the one who cannot do this depicts reality as it is - "often a swindler and a falsifier, and in any case a voluntary or involuntary counter-revolutionary and saboteur." Normativity is interpreted not only as an aesthetic, but also as a political requirement.
Thus, art turns out to be a tool for creating an artistic myth capable of organizing society and distracting it from the real problems of life. Its goal is precisely defined: it is violence against reality with the aim of its reorganization, "education of a new person", because "art has not only the ability to orient, but also to form." Later, in 1934, this provision would be included in an amended form in the Charter of the Writers' Union of the USSR: "the task of ideologically reshaping and educating working people in the spirit of socialism" will be declared as the most important for socialist realism.
A special place in normative aesthetics was occupied by the question of the creative freedom of the artist. "Socialist realism provides artistic creativity with an exceptional opportunity to display creative initiative, to choose diverse forms, styles, and genres," the Charter of the Writers' Union said. Characteristically, the artist's freedom is localized only in the sphere of form, but not in content. The content sphere is strictly regulated by ideas about the functions of art, which are seen in the creation of an idealized image of the future. Such a super-task determines the style of a particular work, its entire poetics. The conflict is predetermined, the ways of its resolution. The social roles of the characters are predetermined: a leader, a specialist, a communist, a sneaking enemy, a woman gaining her human dignity...
...for me, imagination has always beenhigher than existence, and the strongest loveI experienced in a dream.
L.N. Andreev
Realism, as is known, appeared in Russian literature in the first half of the 19th century and throughout the century existed within the framework of its critical current. However, symbolism, which made itself known in the 1890s - the first modernist trend in Russian literature - sharply opposed itself to realism. Following symbolism, other non-realist movements arose. This inevitably led to qualitative transformation of realism as a method of depicting reality.
The symbolists expressed the opinion that realism only glides over the surface of life and is not able to penetrate the essence of things. Their position was not infallible, but since then began in Russian art confrontation and mutual influence of modernism and realism.
It is noteworthy that modernists and realists, outwardly striving for delimitation, internally had a common aspiration for a deep, essential knowledge of the world. It is not surprising, therefore, that the writers of the turn of the century, who considered themselves realists, understood how narrow the framework of consistent realism was, and began to master syncretic forms of narration that made it possible to combine realistic objectivity with romantic, impressionistic and symbolist principles.
If the realists of the nineteenth century paid close attention to the social nature of man then the realists of the twentieth century correlated this social nature with psychological, subconscious processes expressed in the clash of reason and instinct, intellect and feeling. Simply put, the realism of the early twentieth century pointed to the complexity of human nature, which is by no means reducible only to his social being. It is no coincidence that Kuprin, Bunin, and Gorky have a plan of events, the environment is barely indicated, but a refined analysis of the character's spiritual life is given. The author's gaze is always directed beyond the limits of the characters' spatial and temporal existence. Hence - the appearance of folklore, biblical, cultural motifs and images, which made it possible to expand the boundaries of the narrative, to attract the reader to co-creation.
At the beginning of the 20th century, within the framework of realism, four currents:
1) critical realism continues the traditions of the 19th century and involves an emphasis on the social nature of phenomena (at the beginning of the 20th century, these were the works of A.P. Chekhov and L.N. Tolstoy),
2) socialist realism - the term of Ivan Gronsky, denoting the image of reality in its historical and revolutionary development, the analysis of conflicts in the context of the class struggle, and the actions of heroes - in the context of benefit for humanity ("Mother" by M. Gorky, and later - most of the works of Soviet writers),
3) mythological realism formed in ancient literature, but in the 20th century under M.R. began to understand the image and understanding of reality through the prism of well-known mythological plots (in foreign literature, the novel by J. Joyce "Ulysses" is a vivid example, and in Russian literature of the early 20th century - the story "Judas Iscariot" by L.N. Andreev)
4) naturalism involves depicting reality with the utmost plausibility and detail, often unsightly ("Pit" by A.I. Kuprin, "Sanin" by M.P. Artsybashev, "Notes of a Doctor" by V.V. Veresaev)
The listed features of Russian realism caused numerous disputes about the creative method of writers who remained faithful to realistic traditions.
Bitter begins with neo-romantic prose and comes to the creation of social plays and novels, becomes the ancestor of socialist realism.
Creation Andreeva was always in a borderline state: the modernists considered him a "contemptible realist", and for the realists, in turn, he was a "suspicious symbolist". At the same time, it is generally accepted that his prose is realistic, and his dramaturgy gravitates towards modernism.
Zaitsev, showing interest in the microstates of the soul, created impressionistic prose.
Attempts by critics to define the artistic method Bunin led to the fact that the writer himself compared himself to a suitcase pasted over with a huge number of labels.
The complex worldview of realist writers, the multidirectional poetics of their works testified to the qualitative transformation of realism as an artistic method. Thanks to a common goal - the search for the highest truth - at the beginning of the 20th century there was a convergence of literature and philosophy, which was already outlined in the work of Dostoevsky and L. Tolstoy.
The realistic model in the literature of "cultural inquiry" occupies a prominent place. The fate of realism in the XX century. are determined by its transformation from a direction into a model of artistic creativity. Realism is the general name for heterogeneous trends (critical realism, socialist realism, Italian neorealism, Latin American "magic" realism, etc.). Among the principles that have received the greatest development in the realism of the 20th century, first of all, psychologism, historicism, philosophicism, and documentary character stand out. Each of them was formed before this century, but acquired new shades, functions, forms of expression. Some principles of realism of the 19th century, on the contrary, lose their leading positions, fade into the background, for example, critical pathos, concrete social analysis (with the exception of socialist realism, where it even dominates in special forms, such as the depiction of reality in revolutionary development) . For various reasons, in all varieties of realism, satire as a form of critical understanding of reality, so vividly represented in the realism of the 19th century, noticeably loses its position. In a certain sense, after the First World War, satirical pathos becomes of little relevance. However, satire also receives new forms of expression. New forms of typification through satire are found in the world-famous novel by the Czech writer Jaroslav Hasek (1883-1923) "The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik during the World War" (1921, 1923; not finished). In it, in the traditions of folk art, a grotesque and at the same time real world is recreated, which is opposed by Schweik, a kind of embodiment of the “fool” from folk tales, designed to reveal the true “stupidity”, absurdity and cruelty of the bourgeois world order, its “war and peace”, presented through the prism humor and merciless satire. realism and humanism. Humanism in the 20th century - the century of world social catastrophes - is experiencing a crisis that has affected realism as well. This crisis is anticipated in the works of G. Flaubert, his Madame Bovary, Education of the Senses, Lexicon of Common Truths, Bouvard and Pécuchet. G. Maupassant in the novel "Dear Friend" and a number of his short stories, and at the beginning of the 20th century. G. Mann in "The Loyal Subject" emphasizes extremely unattractive features in the "statistically average" hero. Jean Christophe in the epic of the same name by R. Rolland, the creator and a rich, heroic personality, is rather an exception. Such a character is not typical for the realistic literature of that time. Belief in man, his nobility and kindness, in the fact that he is the “crown of all living things,” as the humanists of the Renaissance believed, in the fact that he is the embodiment of Reason, as the Enlighteners believed, has been undermined. Freud, who revealed the base content of the unconscious in man, further strengthened this disappointment. The glorification of a person within the framework of a realistic manner of creativity is the prerogative of the literature of socialist realism (images of a revolutionary, anti-fascist, worker, leader, leader). There are both outstanding achievements and extremely primitive schemes. Among the outstanding monuments of humanism of the XX century. - works of Saint-Exupery, Hemingway (top - "The Old Man and the Sea"). Principles of realism of the XX century. turn out to be insufficient for the approval of the humanistic concept, and realist writers often resort to the traditions of classicism with its assertion of a proper life and romanticism with its craving for exceptional, spiritually rich personalities. Saint Exupery. The combination of the features of realism, romanticism and classicism in their harmonious unity is characteristic of the work of the outstanding French humanist writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900 - 1944). Coming from an aristocratic family, he participated in the First World War, chose the profession of a pilot. Starting from the first story (“The Pilot”, 1926), the work of the pilot, considered in everyday, lyric-romantic and philosophical terms, becomes the main theme of Saint-Exupery's work (the novels “Southern Postal”, 1929; “Night Flight”, 1931; “ Planet of people", 1939). In 1935 he made a trip to the USSR. During the Second World War, he fought against the Nazis, during forced emigration to the United States he wrote the novels "Military Pilot" (1942) and "Letter to the Hostage" (1943), which became part of the literature of the French resistance movement. The most famous work of the writer is the philosophical fairy tale "The Little Prince" (1942, published in 1943). The dedication to Leon Werth outlines the concept of the tale, shows the connection between its abstract and allegorical images and the tragic situation of the French people under the conditions of fascist occupation. The peculiarity of Saint-Exupery's work is that in his works an understanding of duty close to classicism, romance, poetry and a description of the latest technological achievements occupy an equal place. The work of Saint-Exupery gave a new impetus to the development of humanistic art of the 20th century.
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Modern realism is an improved, complicated, new realism. The means and techniques are becoming more complicated, but the basic principle of realism will remain unchanged - the reflection of a real person in real objective circumstances, the influence of these circumstances on the formation of the character and behavior of the hero.
Features of realism: objectivity, typification, consideration of reality in development (historicism), a view of art as a means of knowing reality, the educational function of art. Realism of the second half of the twentieth century. returns to the old classical hero, while postmodernism includes him in the intellectual game. The classic hero in realism is placed in new circumstances, usually existential, and is described using new techniques from the arsenal of modernism and postmodernism. Also in modern realism, new ways of plotting are used, for example, the intersection of different time plans (in Faulkner's prose). Realistic literature of the twentieth century. differs in the diversity and complexity of the content, increased intelligence. In addition, an appeal to myth (for example, Christa Wolf's novels "Cassandra", "Medea"); to the subconscious spheres of the psyche; science, mysticism; the use of conventional devices, allegory, parables, symbols, etc. Modern realists strive to study all the possibilities of the human soul, all the contradictory states in which a person can be in modern society. But in a realistic text, these states and actions are not simply shown, but an attempt is made to explain them for the sake of a humanistic, educational goal, to promote understanding of a person by a person.
The main themes of realistic literature, first of all, depend on the era that realists seek to describe objectively, but “eternal themes” are no less important, because realistic literature is associated with didactic goals:
1. personality as a "super-myth of the twentieth century"; 2. search for spiritual support; 3.movement for civil rights, especially women and national minorities (in America - "Negro literature");
Genres: science fiction (Ray Bradbury and others); documentary genres (Norman Mailer); intellectual novel (Saul Bellow); novel-myth (John Updike "Centaur"), novel-parable (William Faulkner "Parable", 1954), family novel (novels by Herve Bazin).
In France - Herve Bazin, Robert Merle, Romain Gary.
In England - Graham Greene (with a predominance of postmodern aesthetics).
In Germany - Heinrich Belle, Siegfried Lenz.
In America - William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway.
In Japan - Kenzaburo Oe, Kobo Abe.
Neorealism. After the Second World War, neorealism appears. In the narrowest sense of the term, neorealism is a trend in Italian literature and art of the 1940s and 1950s. 20th century A new form of critical realism that emerged as a reaction to fascist ideology. The influence of M. Gorky, American prose of the 30s. (Hemingway, Faulkner). In the center of "neorealism" is the fate of the common man. Style and language - simplicity, restraint, intelligibility. Ideas - the desire for social justice and democracy.
