World and Man in Russian Literature of the 18th–19th Centuries

The Fable Genre in Russian Literature of the 18th Century The eighteenth century was the heyday of the fable genre in Russian literature. This is no coincidence. The fable perfectly met the needs of educational literature. The epic genre required a reasonable comprehension

Sentimentalism in Russian Literature of the 18th Century

O. B. Lebedeva

History of Russian literature of the 18th century

Textbook for universities

Foreword

The proposed textbook on the history of Russian literature of the XVIII century. is focused on the program of higher education in the humanities, adopted and used in the practice of teaching the history of Russian literature in higher educational institutions of the Russian Federation. It differs from existing textbooks currently used in the pedagogical process in that the history of Russian literature of the 18th century. the author tried to consistently interpret in the aspect of historical poetics, paying primary attention to the originality of genre models and the genre system.

A similar approach to the study and teaching of the history of Russian literature of the XVIII century. was outlined in the scientific works of Russian philologists back in the 1920s-1930s.

Suffice it to mention at least the classic work of Yu. N. Tynyanov "Ode as an oratorical genre", articles by L. V. Pumpyansky and a number of studies by G. A. Gukovsky, ranging from the article "On the Sumarokov tragedy" (1926) to the monograph "Russian poetry 18th century (L., 1927), the problems of which were partly reflected in his textbook on the history of Russian literature of the 18th century.

In modern literary criticism, this trend has found its continuation in the works of Yu. M. Lotman, B. A. Uspensky, V. N. Toporov, N. D. Kochetkova and others. least of all is reflected in the existing textbooks on the history of Russian literature of the XVIII century.

The desire to bring the content of the textbook, addressed to teachers and students of higher education, closer to the main trend of modern philological science, obviously gravitating in its development towards cultural knowledge and the methodology of historical poetics, dictated the main aspect of the presentation of historical and literary facts, which the author of the proposed textbook tried to adhere to in all cases. .

Without departing from the traditionally established ideas about the historical and literary paradigm of the 18th century. and the generally accepted chronological principle of its deployment, the author tried to consistently interpret the history of Russian literature of the 18th century. in the aspect of historical poetics, that is, to present the literary process of the era under study as the history of the emergence, development, interaction and change of productive genre models of Russian literature, believing that this aspect in the existing educational literature has been given incomparably less attention than the ideological-ideological, problematic and sociological ones.

Thus, in the proposed textbook, Russian literature of the 18th century. presented not as a set of exhaustive descriptions of the creative heritage of individual writers, but as a dynamic genre system. It was this starting position that determined the basic principles for the selection of literary material and its composition.

First of all, the proposed angle of view forced the author to abandon the generally accepted principle of factual encyclopedism, as determining the thematic composition of the textbook, in particular, to omit biographical information about the writers, to introduce historical commentary only in certain cases necessary from the point of view of aesthetic factors in the interpretation of this text, and also to produce purposeful selection of texts from the totality of the creative heritage of Russian writers of the 18th century.

As a rule, the biographical empiricism of the life of the writer of the XVIII century. little connected with his literary personality, represented by the leading genres of his work and the scale of the functioning of his author's genre models in the literary consciousness of the era. On the contrary, it was the literary personality that was the fundamental aesthetic innovation that distinguished authorial Russian literature of the 18th century. from the anonymous bookishness of the Russian Middle Ages. Exceptions to the general regularity of the gap between the biographical and literary personality of the writer are very rare.

So, for talking about the literary position of Lomonosov, for example, information about his scientific activities is important, but for the analysis of the genre model of the solemn ode, they are in principle inapplicable, since the personality of the author of the ode appears in it in an underlined generalized human context. To characterize the satire of Cantemir, it is completely unimportant that he was a diplomat; the stylistic originality of Trediakovsky's lyrics and epic is in no way correlated with his academic activities. On the other hand, Emin's extraordinary biography directly determined the aesthetics and poetics of his novels, the autobiographical nature of Derzhavin's lyrics is an aesthetically determining factor in its originality, and Karamzin's life-building requires correlation of his texts with the facts of his biography. In these and all similar, aesthetically motivated, cases, the author tried to give the necessary biographical information, omitting them in other cases, not so important.

The same can be said about the motivations for the introduction of historical essays of the era. Despite the fact that Russian history of the XVIII century. was very stormy throughout the century, only two of its periods have aesthetic richness, both are transitional eras in the development of Russian mentality, Russian statehood and Russian literature. This is the era of state reforms at the beginning of the century, associated with the name of Peter I, and the first decades of the reign of Catherine II. The first gave rise to a new type of personality and mass aesthetic consciousness, which determined the general direction of the literary process, the second - a new type of correlation between ideology and aesthetics. Therefore, an outline of the socio-political and spiritual atmosphere is given only for these two cultural and historical periods. The new quality of Russian literature at the origins of the new time of Russian culture and at the moment of the first deep crisis of the enlightenment worldview in these cases is deeply motivated by non-literary reality, which comes into direct contact with aesthetic activity. Of course, the historical facts, the realities of Russian and European life, necessary for understanding this or that artistic text, are constantly present on the pages of the textbook, but the nature of their aesthetic refraction is emphasized.

Finally, the criteria for selecting literary material are due to the obvious inequality of genre models within the totality of literary texts of one writer: with the general diversity of these models for each creative individuality, the literary personality of the writer is determined only by individual genre structures - namely, those that have the prospect of further existence not only in literature of the 18th century, but also beyond its chronological limits. In the case of Kantemir, whose name has become synonymous with the genre of satire, with Lomonosov, whose literary personality is isomorphic to the genre of solemn ode, with Bogdanovich - "the singer of Dushenka", with Chulkov - the author of the first original Russian novel, Fonvizin - "the writer of the Undergrowth", etc. . , such an approach probably does not need special motivation.

The author was guided by the same criteria when presenting the work of F. Prokopovich as a genre of sermon-word, limiting the conversation about the work of Sumarokov (who was a fundamental genre universalist) to his dramaturgy and lyrics, choosing from the totality of Fonvizin's texts his comedies, in which the most productive genre model of "high comedy" is formed. ”, presenting Kapnist as the author of the comedy “Yabeda”, focusing on the formation of the genre system of Russian sentimentalist prose in the work of Radishchev and Karamzin, etc.

It seems that the cross-cutting idea of ​​the proposed textbook also requires special motivation - namely, the emphasis on the existence of the tradition of older genres of satire and solemn ode and the study of their functions in the Russian literary process of the 18th century. Even Yu. N. Tynyanov showed the exceptional role of the oratorical solemn ode, which exhausted its genre existence in the work of the creator of this model, M. V. Lomonosov, but became an underlying trend in the Russian literary process not only in the 18th, but also in the first third of the 19th century. The same can be said about the laws of existence of the genre of satire, which has grown into a trend in the development of Russian literature already outside the work of Cantemir, where satire exists exclusively in its genre quality.

As the author of the proposed textbook tried to show, all advances in the genre system of Russian literature of the 18th century. connected with the moments of interaction, crossing and synthesis of odic and satirical genre settings and principles that give rise to new genre models of drama, lyrics, journalism and narrative prose, up to the work of Radishchev and Krylov, whose legacy is presented as a kind of synthetic culmination of the literary process of the 18th century. Aesthetic innovations, which are a qualitative transformation of this universal trend, the author is inclined to associate with the activities of N. M. Karamzin, who anticipates the aesthetic discoveries of the literature of the 19th century.

A. Beletsky and M. Gabel

History of Russian literature of the XVIII century. Soviet literary criticism has to a large extent to build anew, in the fight against a number of stable prejudices about this era, which dominated the bourgeois history of Russian literature. Among them is primarily the characteristic of the entire R. l. 18th century as imitative, completely covered by the influence of French "pseudoclassicism", - a kind of disease that was difficult to overcome by individual writers - the pioneers of "nationality" and "originality". All the complex variety of literature of the 18th century, which reflected the complexity and acuteness of the class struggle, was reduced by bourgeois historians to the activities of several writers-"luminaries" - Kantemir, Lomonosov, Sumarokov, Fonvizin, Derzhavin, Karamzin - and some of them were interpreted as bright representatives of " classicism", and others - as timid initiators of "realism". Bourgeois "third estate" literature of the 18th century fell out of the field of view of researchers, as well as peasant oral art and literature, represented by numerous manuscript collections, indiscriminately related to the continuation of the traditions of "ancient" literature. In bourgeois literary criticism, of course, there were individual attempts to go beyond these established limits and begin the study of popular literature (Sipovsky's works on the novel, A. A. Veselovskaya on love lyrics, etc.); but the limitations of bourgeois research methods reduced them to the collection and preliminary classification of raw material, to the exposition of the content. The situation has not yet changed sufficiently even today: Soviet literary criticism has not yet paid due attention to this area. In the same cases when these questions were approached, the literary process of the 18th century. was covered from the erroneous positions of Plekhanov's "History of Russian Social Thought": the Menshevik theory of the class struggle of the 18th century, which allegedly remained in a "hidden state", exhibited there, led to a characterization of R. l. 17th century as literature exclusively of the nobility, driven forward thanks to the struggle of the best part of the Europeanizing nobility with the government and partly with the autocracy - a "supra-class" institution. Only recently has the sharply posed problem of the critical, Marxist-Leninist development of the literary heritage caused a revival in the study of the heritage of R. l. 18th century The need to revise the tradition, to reassess individual writers, to study the "grassroots" (as bourgeois historians called it) bourgeois, raznochinny, petty-bourgeois and peasant literature came to the fore. An indicator of this revival is the issue of the Literary Heritage, dedicated to the 18th century, with a number of fresh materials and articles of fundamental importance, reprints of poets of the 18th century. (Tredyakovsky, Lomonosov, Sumarokov, Derzhavin, heroic-comic poem, Vostokov, Radishchev poets), publication of Radishchev's works, works about Lomonosov, Radishchev, Chulkov, Komarov, etc.

History of literature of the XVIII century. represents the development of features that took shape from the middle of the 16th century, from the beginning of the absolutist-feudal period in the history of the country, and determined the main features of the literary movement throughout the entire time from the middle of the 16th century. until the end of the 18th century. But in the development of the literature of the era of feudalism, one can speak of a special period from the end of the 17th century to the end of the 18th century, when the triumph of the noble monarchy receives its complete expression in literature. She found her bright representative in the person of Peter I, who, according to Comrade Stalin, "did a lot to create and strengthen the national state of landowners and merchants ... did a lot to elevate the class of landowners and develop the emerging merchant class" (from a conversation with E. Ludwig, Bolshevik, 1932, No. 8, p. 33). Thus, Peter's activity turned out to be fraught with new contradictions, strengthening the "nascent merchant class", objectively creating a material basis for the growth of new capitalist relations and at the same time clearing the way for new cultural influences, "not stopping before barbaric means of struggle against barbarism" (Lenin. On "left" childishness and petty-bourgeoisness, Sochin., vol. XXII, p. 517). The entire history of the 18th century, especially since its middle, has been marked by the growth of class contradictions, the maturing crisis of the feudal system. The relatively sharp rise of capitalism marks the beginning of a new period from the 19th century.

Late 17th century period until the 30s. 18th century does not create a particular style in literature. On the one hand, the traditions of the old church (Slavonic in language) literature are still very strong; on the other hand, a system of new thoughts and feelings is growing, timidly seeking verbal form and giving complex combinations of new elements with old ones, familiar from the literature of the 17th century. The literature of the "Petrine era" is in the same stage of "formation" as the language, which is sometimes a curious mixture of elements of Slavic and Russian with Polish, Latin, German, Dutch, etc. The growth of trade relations is not yet getting a vivid literary expression , except for the oratorical speeches of Feofan Prokopovich and his own play - the "tragedo-comedy" "Vladimir" (1705), which, incidentally, refers to the Ukrainian period of his activity. The development of trade is associated with aggressive tendencies in foreign policy (access to the sea, new markets was required): official literature was in a hurry to support and advertise the military undertakings of the authorities, creating for this a special repertoire that came out mainly from the "Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy" in Moscow, from - under the pen of professors, immigrants from Ukraine (such are allegorical plays - “A terrible image of the second coming of the Lord to earth”, 1702; “The liberation of Livonia and Ingermanland”, 1705; “God's humiliation of the proud humiliation”, 1702; " and etc.). Both these plays and panegyric verses on the occasion of victories are a direct continuation of school, “baroque” literature of the 17th century. More clearly, the psychological and everyday turning point in the life of the nobility - as a result of strengthening it and expanding the range of its social and state activities - is reflected in the unofficial narrative and lyrical work of the early 18th century. The handwritten anonymous story of the “Petrine era” bears distinct new features. Its hero is a service nobleman or merchant, a man who already lives in “Russian Europe”, and not in the Muscovite state, separated from the West by a protective wall of national and ecclesiastical exclusivity; he travels feeling at home abroad; he is successful in business and in particular in "affairs of love." The construction of the stories (“History of the Russian sailor Vasily Koriotsky”, “The story of the nobleman Alexander”, “The story of the Russian merchant John and the beautiful maiden Eleonora”) is biographical. A young man, seeking service, comes to St. Petersburg and enters the sailors. Having mastered the “sailor sciences”, he goes abroad “for a better knowledge of the sciences”, where he embarks on trade enterprises. In this initial part of the hero's biography - a noble or merchant's son - the features of reality, the everyday situation of the early 18th century, are scattered. With the transfer of action abroad, they give way to the stereotyped scheme of the old adventure novel. A "Russian merchant" or a nobleman abroad turns into a romantic hero who falls from the arms of love into the hands of robbers, is separated from his beloved during a shipwreck and finds her after a long search. What is interesting is not so much the assimilation of a pattern that originates in the West from the novels of the late Hellenistic era, but the introduction of details into the story, prompted by observation of living life. From this side, the verbal design is also interesting, in particular the vocabulary, where the Old Slavonic elements are squeezed out by barbarisms, technical expressions, words introduced by the new way of life (cavalier, flute, carriage, aria, “minovet”, etc.). One of the means of expressing the hero's love experiences is the lyrical monologues, romances and songs introduced into the story. By them, the story merges with the lyrics of this time - quantitatively significant, for the most part nameless (among the compilers of lyrical poems, we know, however, the Germans Gluck and Paus, Mons, favorite of Catherine I, his secretary Stoletov). Written either in syllabic or syllabic-tonic verse, these lyrical little pieces are a naive expression of the individualism of the noble elite, the result of the penetration of new principles into the old system of feudal relations. Freeing themselves from the "house-building fetters" in relations between the sexes, assimilating the "gallant" manners of the Western nobility, Mons and Stoletov seek expression for their intimate, almost exclusively love experiences in the forms of a conventional style, new to Russian literature and already completing its development in Europe: love - inextinguishable fire, disease, wound inflicted by the "Cupido's arrow"; beloved - "amiable lady", with a face-dawn, golden hair, eyes shining like rays, scarlet sugar lips; “fortune” rules over those who love, either in the traditional image of a mythological goddess, or with features reminiscent of the “fate-share” of oral art. Noble poetry of this time is not limited only to love lyrics. It also knows genres of greater social significance, for example, satire, significant examples of which were first given by Kantemir, although satirical elements appeared before him, for example, in the verses of Simeon of Polotsk, in the oratorical prose of Feofan Prokopovich, or in "interludes", which often caricatured the enemies of feudal politics. expansion. The satires of Cantemir served to propagate European cultural influences, which intensified sharply at the end of the 17th century. The satires of Cantemir went against the prevailing in the 30s. political tendencies and did not appear in print, spreading in manuscripts; they were published in 1762. Kantemir's satirical attacks are directed against all enemies of the feudal-absolutist Europeanization of Russia and against the distortion of this Europeanization: Kantemir denounces "ignorant", conservatives who see the cause of "heresies" in science, "evil-minded nobles" who believe merit in the nobility of origin , assimilating only the appearance of culture, schismatics, hypocrites, bribe-takers, bad education is one of the main causes of ignorance. Rebuking, he at the same time agitates for "science", proves the practical importance of mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and maritime affairs. Realistic in content, in everyday language, his satires formally follow the classical Latin (Horace, Juvenal) and French models - Boileau's satire, which required schematization of specific content to create generalized abstract images of "prudence", "dandy", "reveler", etc. P.

The literary diversity of this period is not limited to the literature of the nobility. Late 17th and early 18th centuries - the time is not yet so much printed as handwritten literature, numerous collections, where, passing from reader to reader, works of the previous era (legends, lives, walks, old translated and original stories, etc.) are preserved. According to the memoirs and the inscriptions on the books themselves, it can be argued that this handwritten literature was the favorite reading of both the conservative landowner and the old-fashioned merchant - all those groups that were not on the way to the growth of European trade relations. The creative output of these groups in the early 18th century. little studied and not even all known. But the material published so far is of great historical value. Opposition to the new forms of the ruling class of landlords and the emerging class of merchants was provided not only by a certain part of the nobility, but also by the patriarchal merchant class and, above all, by the peasantry, who languished under the unbearable yoke of recruitment duty, taxes, corvée, work in serf factories. Part of the protest of these latter groups was their withdrawal into schism and sectarianism. The schismatic literature of the “Petrine era” is the most striking expression of resistance to the Petrine reforms, which contained not only the aspirations of conservative groups, but, to a certain extent, the protest of the peasantry. A prominent place in it belongs to satire protesting against innovations: the new calendar, new science, poll tax, "vile potions" - tobacco, tea, coffee, etc. In the popular print with the text "Mice bury the cat" you can see a satire on Peter , depicted in the form of a cat Alabris, “a Kazan cat, Astrakhan mind, Siberian mind” (a parody of the royal title), who died on “gray (winter) Thursday, on the sixth or fifth number” (Peter died on Thursday of the winter month - January - between fifth and sixth hours of the day). The same satirical allusions to Peter are seen in the illustrations for the "Explanatory Apocalypse" (manuscript of the Historical Museum in Moscow), in the "folk drama" about "Tsar Maximilian", which remained in folklore until almost the end of the 19th century. Along with satire, the oral art of the same groups created a number of new "spiritual verses" imbued with a mood of gloomy despair in view of the approach of the "end times", the "antichrist kingdom" and calling for flight into the "desert", for suicide, self-immolation, etc. Many of the typical images and themes of this poetry survived in the everyday life of oral art until the 19th century.

The literary activity of Kantemir, Feofan Prokopovich and, to some extent, semi-official poets was the preparation for Russian classicism, which dominated a certain part of literature for almost a century, which was transformed at the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries. and left a noticeable imprint in the work of Batyushkov, Griboyedov, Pushkin, Baratynsky, and others. The design of this style in R. l. went under the influence of French classicism (partly German, the influence of which Lomonosov experienced). However, many individual elements of Russian classicism are rooted in the school “baroque” Russian and Ukrainian literature of the 17th century. Classicism flourished most brightly in France in the 17th century. in the conditions of the growth of the big bourgeoisie, which gravitated towards the "court". Russian classicism received a different content, different from French, despite its formal imitativeness. The Russian bourgeoisie did not take part, as in France, in the creation of court classicism. It arose among the Russian nobility, its court elite, interested in strengthening feudal relations. The most aristocratic theory of Russian classicism was created by writers of non-noble origin - the commoner Tredyakovsky and the son of a peasant Lomonosov; the phenomenon is quite understandable - the result of the subjugation by the ruling class of individual people from the class of the exploited. The noble theoretician of classicism, Sumarokov, having mastered basically the same principles, reworked and “lowered” classical poetics in essential details and particulars, adapting it to the aesthetic needs of wider circles of the nobility, not only the courtier. This decline took place in an atmosphere of acute literary struggle. The aristocratic principles of Russian classicism consist, firstly, in the requirement that the poet choose “high” subjects: persons of “low” rank were allowed only in comedy, where, in turn, it was unacceptable to display persons of high origin. According to the subject of the image, the language of the work should also be “high”: the persons acting in it speak “the language of the court, the most prudent ministers, the wisest clergymen and the noblest nobility” (Tredyakovsky). To write on "high" topics, a poet must have an elegant and good "taste"; the development of taste is conditioned by an appropriate education: the poet is recommended a thorough knowledge of rhetoric, versification, mythology - the source of themes and images - and the study of literary images - Greek, Roman, French. The poetics of classicism, noble by its nature, perceives some elements of bourgeois ideology, making "reason", "common sense" the main guide of poetic inspiration. From the point of view of rationalism, the incredible is rejected, the principle of "plausibility", "imitation of nature" is put forward. But “imitation of nature” is still far from later realism: by “nature” is meant not real, changing reality, but the essence of phenomena, in the depiction of which everything individual, temporal, local is discarded. This "high" poetry, built on "common sense", seeking mathematical precision of expression, has high goals: it must teach, and classicism especially cultivates didactic genres. First of all, Russian classical poetics took up the development of questions of poetic language, which had to be adapted to new tasks. Lomonosov gave the theory of "three calms" - high, medium and low: the starting point is the use of "Slavic sayings". The theory provoked severe criticism of Sumarokov, but it held its own and determined poetic practice. Lomonosov, on the other hand, finally legitimized the transition from the syllabic system of versification to the syllabic-tonic system, which had been proposed even earlier by Tredyakovsky and practically carried out by the anonymous poets of the “Petrine era”. Classicism is most vividly represented by the works of Lomonosov, who promoted in his theoretical works (“Letter on the Rules of Russian Poetry”, “On the Usefulness of Church Books in the Russian Language”, “Rhetoric”, etc.) order. In the work of Lomonosov, problems were posed and artistically resolved, which were timidly and naively put forward by the literature of the beginning of the century, advocating the expansion and strengthening of the socio-economic base of feudal Russia. Without leaving the genre framework of high poetry, he used the ode, and partly tragedy and epic to propagate the trend of the feudal-absolutist, military-bureaucratic monarchy in its European "cultural" forms.

Since Peter I firmly and decisively outlined this program, he becomes an ideal for Lomonosov, a role model for subsequent monarchs. The differences between Lomonosov and Sumarokov and his school are, of course, explained not by their personal relations, but by the difference in their group, intra-class positions. The classicism of Sumarokov and his group is reduced and partly vulgarized. The performance of this last group is already characteristic of the second period of R. l. 18th century Sumarokov's school (Elagin, Rzhevsky, Ablesimov, Bogdanovich, and others) vigorously fights the Lomonosov system, parodying and ridiculing the poet's "high" style, leading a literal polemic with him. By the 60s. The "Sumarokovites" are defeating Lomonosov: his literary principles, temporarily broken, will be partially revived only in the 70s. in the ode of V. Petrov. In contrast to Lomonosov, who demanded "high soaring" (in works not intended for publication, Lomonosov himself did not follow these requirements, by the way), Sumarokov's literary theory seeks simplicity and naturalness. Lomonosov put forward mainly "high" genres - ode, tragedy, epic; Sumarokov implants "medium" and even "low" genres - a song, a romance, an idyll, a fable, a comedy, etc. In contrast to Lomonosov's pathetic speech, replete with tropes and figures, obstructed by Slavicisms, Sumarokov uses a simple language that is not alien to vulgarisms. Instead of high problems of national importance, the Sumarokov school develops intimate, mostly love themes, creates "light poetry". However, there is no complete rejection of the "high" style: from the genres of "high" poetry, Sumarokov's tragedy has been preserved and enjoys special attention. The classical tragedy, despite the psychological schematism in the depiction of faces, despite the timelessness of the plot, was saturated with lively political content. Despite its "abstract", the Russian tragedy of the XVIII century. - a vivid display of the struggle of various currents in the nobility. Sumarokov himself and his followers saturated the tragedy with monarchical tendencies in the spirit of "enlightened absolutism", revealing in it the "heroic virtues" of the monarch and the idea of ​​"honor" of the subjects, which consisted in devoted service to the throne, in the rejection of personal feelings if they come into conflict with duty. loyal subject. In turn, the monarch must be a "father" (of course for the nobility), and not a "tyrant" and zealously guard the interests of those who are his support.

In the last third of the XVIII century. the crisis of the feudal-serf system is brewing. It is based on the crisis of the landlord economy, which is faced with growing capitalist relations, the growth of new class contradictions in the collision with the emerging bourgeois class, which comes forward with its demands and declares its rights. The search for a way out of the crisis in the growth of feudal exploitation leads to an explosion of acute class struggle: the national liberation movement and the peasant war of 1773-1775 shook the entire feudal system to its foundations.

On this basis, a kind of noble opposition grows, which is looking for a culprit in the bureaucratic apparatus of power. In the tragedy, the image of the tyrant king and the defender of freedom fighting against him appears, but in a specific noble interpretation of the plot. Comedy takes the clerk as its object. The new genre created in our country in the 18th century, the utopia, has the same orientation. Finally, a reflection of the emerging new social relations is the "decrease in style", its adaptation to new tastes.

Without touching on the tragedy, the "decrease" of the high style went on with Sumarokov and his followers along the line of lyrics and especially along the line of comedy. Lomonosov's theory attributed comedy to the category of low genres, allowing it greater freedom from "rules" and thereby "reducing" classicism in it. The broad literature of the nobility did not fail to exploit this relative freedom. In his Epistle on Poetry, Sumarokov pays much attention to comedy. She was given a didactic task: “the property of a comedy to correct temper with a mockery is to make people laugh and use its direct charter.” If the courtly-aristocratic theory of Boileau rebelled against buffoonery, condemning Molière for his passion for the people and rude jokes, Sumarokov willingly admits an element of rude comic into his comedy. The classical theory demanded that the action of the comedy be centered around the vicious passion of the human character, outside of its social and everyday coloring and outside of its individual reigns. The psychological schematism that followed from the classical understanding of "nature" and "plausibility" appeared like this. arr. the main method of comedy of characters with a strictly defined circle of characters (stingy, ignoramus, hypocrite, dandy, pedant, crooked judgment, etc.). The plot of the comedy, already outlined by the Roman comedians and repeated with variations in the comedies of Molière, Regnard, Detouche and others, is also limited. elements of the Italian comedy of masks (commedia dell'arte), which existed in the Russian theater in the first half of the 18th century. Exposing to ridicule dandies and dandies, pedants, ignoramuses, superstitious people, misers, Sumarokov's comedy does not forget about its didactic task: its heroes are representatives of the noble class, and "mocking" of them should "rule noble morals." Sumarokov's comedy knows only one enemy - the clerk, who, thanks to the Peter's table of ranks, could climb the social ladder, make his way into the ranks of the service nobility and sometimes even turn into a nobleman. The sense of caste makes Sumarokov hate clerks. Sumarokov in the circle of admirers very soon became known as the “Russian Molière”: however, despite the “decrease” of the genre, his comedy with narrowly noble educational tendencies did not satisfy the bourgeois-petty-bourgeois audience, almost simultaneously with its appearance met with sharp criticism. Lukin spoke out against the Sumarokov comedy, who was largely under the influence of bourgeois ideology and focused not on the noble, but on the "philistine" audience. He himself notes that the first production of his play Mot, Corrected by Love (1765) caused displeasure of the noble parterre; in the prefaces to his plays, he speaks of a new audience - of servants who read more than their masters; creating comedies, he, in his own words, took into account the peculiarities of the stage talent of theater actors created by the Yaroslavl bourgeoisie, actors who "played more merchants." From comedy, Lukin demands a concrete depiction of Russian customs; the borrowed plot should "incline to Russian customs"; it is necessary to abandon the foreign-sounding names of the characters and force the heroes of the comedy to speak pure Russian, allowing "foreign sayings" only for example. for the speech characteristics of a dandy and a dandy. In theory, Lukin turned out to be stronger than in practice: his own comedies did not implement completely new principles, but in some cases (for example, in "Schepetilnik", 1765), he also succeeded in sharp criticism of noble morals (put into the mouth of a merchant); he noted with satirical features the feudal manner of the treatment of the nobles with the servants, touching lightly. arr. throughout the feudal system. The bourgeois slogan "to incline comedy to Russian customs" was adopted by other playwrights - Fonvizin, Knyaznin, Nikolev, Kapnist and others. This suggests that in the 60-70s. the nobles had not only to listen to the voice of the bourgeois groups, but in the fight against them, reorganize themselves accordingly. The evolution of the noble comedy of the middle of the century goes from the abstract comedy of characters to the concrete everyday comedy, from psychological schematism to experiments in the typification of noble reality. The flourishing of household noble comedy is characteristic of the last third of the 18th century. Its task is to maintain, strengthen the nobility, re-educate it so that, having overcome its weaknesses, it could resist the peasantry and partly the bourgeoisie. Criticism of the nobility in the comedy of this time is generally devoid of accusatory pathos, friendly: the accusations do not concern the essence of the feudal-serf system, on the contrary, they seek to divert this theme, opposing the low cultural level of Ch. arr. provincial petty nobility, against the cultural "perversions" of the nobility of the capital. Everyday comedy became a means of enlightening noble politics, ridiculing French mania as a phenomenon of false education of the nobility, idle talk and idle thought of dandies and dandies, rudeness of small estate morals, ignorance of the noble "undergrowth". She warned against all kinds of freethinking - Voltairianism, materialism, Freemasonry, perceiving them as phenomena hostile to the integrity of the feudal landowner ideology, she took up arms against representatives of other classes - merchants and especially clerks, believing that it was in them that the reason for the shortcomings of the noble system - bribery , chicanery, judicial troubles - not noticing and not wanting to notice that bribe-takers and bureaucrats are a product of the state system, and putting it that way. arr. consequence instead of cause (Kapnist's Yabeda). The negative images of the nobles were contrasted by the comedy with the images of the bearers of the noble "honor" - the Starodums, the Pravdins, the Milons. Fonvizin proclaimed the principles of the noble educational policy with particular zeal, exposing the morally decaying court nobility through the mouth of Starodum, preaching nobility, which consists in “good deeds, and not in nobility”, in good manners, in the development of feelings. The preaching of the education of feeling, which is more valuable than reason, was a transformed assimilation of one of the principles of the Western advanced bourgeoisie of the 18th century. (see below for a description of Russian sentimentalism). While retaining a formal resemblance to classical comedy (unity, love affair, division of persons into “virtuous” and “evil”, the names-stamps of the characters - Khanzhakhina, Skotinin, Krivosudov, etc.), everyday comedy nevertheless differs in its artistic method from the psychological schematism of the comedy of characters. This is a method of typical everyday characterization, especially pronounced in the depiction of negative faces. Everyday typification is also achieved by the introduction of everyday figures of episodic significance (in "The Undergrowth" - Mitrofan's teacher, his mother, tailor Trishka), a speech characteristic that emphasizes the linguistic features of this environment (Russian-French language of dandies and dandies, professional and estate features of the language of clerks, seminarians etc.). From this comedy, a direct path leads to the comedies of the early 19th century. - to Krylov, Shakhovsky, and then Griboyedov. Overcoming the classical "rules", developing in the direction of mastering the realistic method, comedy begins to absorb elements of the "third estate" literature. The same should be said about the genre of comic opera - "dramas with voices", that is, insert numbers for singing and musical accompaniment. Among the authors of comic operas we find e.g. "traveling in Italy serf Count Yaguzhinsky" Matinsky, a writer of noble ideology, whose play "Gostiny Dvor" was almost as successful as Ablesimov's famous comic opera "The Miller - a sorcerer, a deceiver and a matchmaker" (1779), which caused a number of imitations. “Sbitenshchik” by Knyazhnin, “Melnik and sbitenshchik - rivals” by Plavilshchikov, etc. Free from “rules” (unity of place and time), diverse in subject matter (plots from the life of the nobility, merchant, peasant, from Russian and Oriental fairy tales, history, mythology etc.), widely using folklore (songs, dramatizations of rituals, especially wedding ones), comic opera stopped halfway in its development and, approaching, for example, to the peasant theme, most often gave an idyllic image of serf life, in the cloudless sky of which clouds are possible, but not for long (“Misfortune from the carriage” by Knyazhnin with the characteristic final chorus of the peasants “trinket ruined us, but the trifle saved us”). Pursuing primarily the goals of entertainment, the genre of comic opera, curious as a movement forward along the path of "nationality", had no great social significance.

Despite the aggravation of class contradictions, the nobility was still so strong that it could put out from its midst the greatest poet, whose work to a certain extent synthesized different areas of landowner literature and which became an almost continuous hymn to the joy and fullness of noble life, and to a certain extent, life in general. . This poet - Derzhavin, overcoming the traditions of Lomonosov classicism in the very genre that Lomonosov glorified - in an ode. Just as Lomonosov is the "singer of Elisabeth", so Derzhavin is the "singer of Felitsa" (Catherine II): but Derzhavin's ode is full of deformations of the classical canon. And the interpretation of the theme is the praise of the monarch in a friendly, familiar, sometimes playful rut, and the introduction of realistic, sometimes rude scenes into the ode, and the lack of a strict plan, the logical construction, and the language, from the “high calm” sharply turning into vernacular, and the general, characteristic for all of Derzhavin's poetry, a mixture of styles and genres - all this runs counter to Lomonosov's poetics. In general, Derzhavin's poetry is a vivid expression of rapture with life, a panegyric of the pomp and luxury of the life of the capital's nobility and the abundant "simplicity" of the life of the estate nobility. Nature for Derzhavin is “a feast of colors, light”; figurative symbolism of his poetry is all based on the images of fire, sparkling precious stones, sunshine. Derzhavin's poetry is deeply material, objective. This “objectivity”, the materiality of language, is also incompatible with the magnificent abstractness of Lomonosov's speech, the traditions of which Derzhavin overcame. Only sometimes the poet seems to think for a moment about the future fate of his class, instinctively feeling that the system that feeds his being is already beginning to disintegrate. But the notes of doubt and thoughts of instability (“today God is dust tomorrow”) that sometimes break through Derzhavin are explained more by reflection on the fate of individual members of the class, on the vagaries of “chance”, than on the fate of the entire class as a whole. Destroying classical aesthetics, Derzhavin's poetry is gradually approaching (in recent years) sentimentalism, "neoclassicism" and Ossian romanticism, which dominated Russian lyrics in the early 19th century.

Under the conditions of the nobility's dictatorship, the literary development of other classes (the big and petty bourgeoisie, and even more so the peasantry) was stifled, but nevertheless, along with the formation of capitalist relations by the end of the 18th century. the energy of the developing bourgeois literature of the 18th century is also growing. This literature has not yet been studied enough. Bourgeois literary criticism only noted the process of "descent" of noble literature into the middle class environment - from stories and novels to songs and lyrics in general, without explaining the complex deformation of the work that took place. The consumption of the literature of the ruling class by the subordinate classes is a natural phenomenon, but by no means mechanical. But not only in these revisions was in the XVIII century. creativity of the subordinate classes. It is enough to recall Sumarokov's protest against the "nasty kind of tearful comedies" (concerning the translation and staging of Beaumarchais's "Eugenie") to understand how dangerous bourgeois literature seemed to the nobility. In the 60-70s. “Third-class literature” is already perceived by writers of the nobility as an unpleasant and hostile symptom. This is the time when Lukin put forward the slogan “inclining comedy to Russian customs”, when satirical journalism flourished, partially captured by bourgeois ideologists, when parodies of the noble classical epic appeared (such as Kheraskov’s “Rossiada”) - iroico-comic poems, when in the literary ranks raznochintsy writers - Chulkov, Popov, Komarov - entered, when the genres of the novel and "tearful comedy" unforeseen by classical theory took shape, the popularity of the comic opera genre free from "rules" - "drama with voices" increased, when finally the first revolutionary from the nobles, who reflected in In his literary activity, to a large extent, the aspirations of the revolutionary peasantry, Radishchev, threw down his first challenge to the feudal-serf society, in order to decisively oppose it a few years later. Among the satirical journalism that arose on the model of English satirical and moralizing magazines, several publications appeared that definitely promoted bourgeois ideology (Parnassian Scribbler, 1770, Chulkov and Novikov’s magazines - Drone, 1769, Painter, 1772, and Wallet) , 1774). Satire was the main literary genre for expressing anti-noble tendencies, which otherwise, under the conditions of the infringement of the Russian bourgeoisie, could not be introduced into literature. The difference between noble and bourgeois satire in magazines is immediately evident. The nobility (for example, “All sorts of things”) stands for satire in a “smiling kind”, for light and soft criticism of noble manners, manifestations of hypocrisy, helicopterism, a tendency to gossip, etc.

Bourgeois satire unfolds in social terms, it is enough to pay attention to its slogan - the epigraph of Novikov's "Trutny" - "they work, and you eat their bread", undoubtedly socially pointed, in the second edition it had to be replaced by another, more neutral one. Bourgeois satire declares war on the nobility, especially the noble aristocracy, opposing to it the image of "a perfect husband, virtuous, albeit vile, in the language of some stupid nobles." If we add to this such clearly anti-serf articles, as the story of a certain I. T. (apparently Radishchev) published in The Painter about a trip to the village of Ruined, it becomes clear why satirical journalism of this type turned out to be a short-lived phenomenon. The activation of the "third-class literature" in this period also affected the creation of the "heroic-comic poem" (Chulkov), which also had an impact on the literature of the nobility (V. Maikov). This genre arises as a parody of the heroic poem of the "high" style (Kantemir, Tredyakovsky, Lomonosov). The "high calm" was kept in academic circles until the second decade of the 19th century, but it did not enjoy popularity even among the noble tribal environment. The comic poem interprets the "low" plot in a "high calm", parodying like this. arr. and pathos, and mythological scenery, and plot situations of the classical poem: the “hero” is shown in fights, in a drunken brawl; the introduction of sketches of "mean" reality - the life of the lower strata - provides material for characterizing the position of the people in the noble state. In the poem by V. Maikov (“Elisha, or the irritated Bacchus”, 1771), scenes depicting prison life, peasant work, fights and disputes in neighboring villages due to demarcation, peasant land shortage, latrine crafts, a penitentiary house for “dissolute wives”, compared with the monastery, etc., are just as far from noble themes as the language of the poem with its focus on lively, "common" speech. Standing apart in the series of comic poems is Bogdanovich's Darling, a product of "light poetry", which came out of the "Sumarokov school", a product of "light poetry", opening the way for works whose peak in the 19th century. there will be "Ruslan and Lyudmila" by Pushkin. Chulkov's comic poems are distinguished by a different character, they are interesting by attracting folklore material that did not penetrate into the poetry of the nobility. Noble poets generally interpreted folklore from above: Derzhavin, for example. considered Russian fairy tales and epics “monochrome and monotonous”, in them he saw only “giant and heroic boasting of absurdity, barbarism and gross disrespect for the female sex expressed”. Chulkov was also the first collector and publisher of folklore material. The “heroic-comic poem” in its development breaks off after the 70s, only to be revived a little later in the form of a burlesque poem-parody of the converted “Aeneids” by Osipov, Kotelnitsky, Naumov and others. Even Boileau regarded burlesque as a folk genre. The interpretation of the heroic plot in a crudely vulgar tone was one of the means to push off from the ceremonial literature of the upper classes; this is what Russian travesty did, the creation of "petty-travesty" writers from a petty-bourgeois milieu. But the "third estate" literature in the field of the novel proved to be especially prolific. The classical theory did not say a word about the novel; from Sumarokov's point of view, novels are "a wasteland, invented by people who waste their time in vain, and serve only to corrupt human morals and to a greater stagnancy in luxury and carnal passions." Nevertheless, the novel filled the second half of the 18th century. According to the researcher's calculations, novels make up 13.12% of all printed matter of the 18th century, 32% of all "bells and whistles", especially increasing in number towards the end of the century, with the advent of "free printing houses". Along with this, they are also distributed by hand. Chulkov, in the journal Both That and Sio, describes a clerk who feeds on correspondence of popular stories sold on the market about Bova, about Peter the Golden Keys, about Yevdokha and Berf: he had to rewrite Bov alone forty times. The novel penetrates the most diverse social groups: it fills the libraries of the landowners, it is read with enthusiasm by the merchants, the petty bourgeoisie, and literate courtyards; his popularity is evidenced by memoirists (Bolotov, Dmitriev, and others) and, finally, by literature itself, which captures the image of the reader and especially the reader. A lover of novels, a noble girl who discovers her ideal in the hero of the novel, which is then embodied in the first acquaintance she meets, later became a classic image of noble literature (Griboyedov's Sophia, Pushkin's Tatyana). Genre diversity of the novel of the 18th century. very large. Among the nobility, on the one hand, translations - chivalric, shepherd, salon-heroic novels with a moralizing tendency, such as Fenelonov's Telemachus and Kheraskov's imitations of him ("Cadmus and Harmony"); on the other hand, a psychological novel depicting images of ideal nobles - like the translated Adventures of the Marquis G*. In the bourgeois environment, they are fond of the genre of the "picaresque" novel of the type "Gille Blas" by Le Sage or the genre of the novelized fairy tale (Chulkov, Komarov, Levshin, Popov). It is precisely the genre of the picaresque novel that receives particular distribution in the "third estate" literature. Telling about a dexterous hero who changes professions, by the force of circumstances either descending or ascending the social ladder, this novel made it possible to change the domestic environment, paying considerable attention to the life of the “social lower classes”. One of the most popular novels of the 18th century, which was preserved in the reader's everyday life and later - "The Story of Vanka Cain", - was based on a historical person, a certain Ivan Osipov, a peasant who from a courtyard becomes a thief, from a thief - a Volga robber, from a robber - a policeman spy and detective. His biography served as the outline of the "detective" novel, had several adaptations, the most popular of which belongs to the writer Matvey Komarov. Komarov also owns other popular novels - “About Milord George” (“About Milord Stupid”, mentioned in Nekrasov’s poem “Who Lives Well in Russia” among samples of popular literature read by peasants) and the novel “Unfortunate Nikanor, or the Adventures of a Russian Nobleman ”, where the hero of a picaresque novel is a nobleman, who, after a series of misadventures, ends his life as a jester-habiter. The novel of the picaresque genre made it possible to introduce, as in the “heroic-comic” poem, material from the life of merchants, artisans, and the peasantry, thus contributing. arr. self-affirmation in the literature of the "third estate". The fairy-adventurous novel, which arose from a mixture of elements of a chivalrous novel with Russian epic and fairy-tale folklore, served the same purpose in its well-known part. The introduction of folklore (albeit often falsified, especially when it came to Slavic mythology) was also a literary achievement of the third estate, in whose life, as well as in the life of the “social lower classes” in general, folklore was still an integral part of everyday life. This is how the bourgeoisie has said its word in the realm of the novel. The relative weakness of the class did not allow him to master other genres, for example. dramatic, to the extent that it happened in the West. Since the half of the 60s. famous examples of Western bourgeois drama appear in Russian translations - Lillo's The Merchant of London, plays by Diderot, Mercier, and Lessing; introducing "pathetic phenomena" into comedy, Lukin tries to approach the genre of drama; in some of their plays Kheraskov, Verevkin (“So It Should Be”), Melters (“Sidelets”, “Bobyl”) approach it quite closely, but the genre of drama - with significant differences from Western European bourgeois dramas - is already receiving full development. in the age of sentimentality.

However, in the literature of the 70s. the sharpening of the class struggle was no longer going only along the line of the "third estate", but mainly and with the greatest force along the line of the peasantry. The Peasant War of 1773-1775, which resulted in the previous long peasant movements, revealed the sharpness of the contradictions of feudal society. The nobility realized the strength of the class hatred of the peasants, resolutely attacked the rebels and cracked down on them. In the literature of the nobility of this time, we have a number of speeches, where the political nature of the peasant movement causes a storm of indignation. Sumarokov speaks against "Pugachevshchina" in two poems, calling Pugachev "an infamous robber", the leader of a "robber crowd", a gang made up of "beasts", "fiends of nature"; he is fully aware of the goals of the movement, seeking to "exterminate the nobles" and "throw down the support of this throne." There is no execution that would be sufficient for Pugachev, from the point of view of Sumarokov. The anonymous author of the recently published "Poems on the Villain Pugachev" also demands the most cruel execution and eternal damnation for the "villain". An attempt to portray the era, of course, from a noble point of view, was made in Verevkin's comedy Just the Same (published in 1785, written in 1779). The author is a member of one of the punitive expeditions against the peasantry. The time of the action of the comedy is the final moment of the movement, when Pugachev has already been caught. In the comedy, there is a governor who left the city when the rebels approached him (a fact that has repeatedly taken place in reality); the stereotyped intrigue (obstacles met by lovers) is colored with the color of a historical moment: the hero goes to the army, because "it is shameful to think about marriages and love games when the blood of noble compatriots is shed." Meanwhile, the heroine falls into the hands of enemies and liked one of them; after the elimination of the uprising, she wants to go to the monastery, but the hero restores her "honor", considering her innocent. The play is full of glorification of the noble repulse to the insurgent peasantry: the leader of the rebuff, Panin, is likened to an “archangel from heaven”, with a “small” army he “smashed, dispersed, caught and pacified all this damned bastard”, etc .; another suppressor, Milizon (Mikhelson), also causes no less delight.

No less harshness - in relation to the nobility - we will find in the peasant creativity of this era (see the section "Oral poetry"). Starting from the “lament of serfs” (“Lament of the serfs of the last century”, “Complaint of the Saratov peasants against the Zemstvo court”) through songs about serf captivity, we come to the rich folklore about Pugachev. In everyday life of the peasantry of the XVIII century. the previously composed songs about Stepan Razin also live. Both songs about Razin and songs about Pugachev are saturated with a sense of acute class hatred. We have, of course, only fragments of the probably extensive "Pugachev cycle"; but they also constitute quite eloquent and historically valuable material that changes the face of Russian literature of the 18th century, created once by bourgeois researchers.

The revolutionary ferment among the peasantry, which did not directly find its reflection in written literature, nevertheless had a peculiar effect in it. As early as the beginning of the century, the protest of the peasantry against the exploitation of the landlords found expression in a certain part of splitting. Later, a number of bourgeois writers reflected in their work - inconsistently and contradictoryly - the seething stream of peasant consciousness hostile to the existing order. In terms of such criticism, Novikov, in the main a typical representative of liberalism of the 18th century, was already acting in part, later turning to the reactionary path of Freemasonry and mysticism. In 1790, Radishchev acted as a spokesman for revolutionary sentiments. The influence of the Enlightenment and the French bourgeois revolution played a decisive role in the creation of Radishchev's ideology. There can be no talk of Radishchev's "ideological loneliness", allegedly falling out of the literature of the 18th century, as bourgeois literary criticism claimed. In the conditions of the aggravated (especially after the French Revolution) government supervision of literature, it was difficult for works that criticized the feudal system to penetrate the press; this does not mean that there were few of them, and still less does it mean that the corresponding ideological currents were represented by individuals. Radishchev sets literature not only educational tasks, but also demands that the writer be a political and social fighter, striving for the social re-education of his readers. This was hindered by censorship - the demand for freedom of the press is put forward. "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" (1790) Radishchev directed against the two foundations of the feudal landlord state - the autocracy and serfdom. The theme of "autocracy", developed in the "Journey" in journalistic discourses and in the ode "Liberty", is interpreted quite differently from the interpretation of the noble and bourgeois writers close to them: in tragedies imbued with the spirit of intra-noble opposition, the monarch was a "tyrant" only when he did not share his power with the nobles, he strove for unlimited domination; Radishchev has an unlimited monarch - "the first killer in society, the first robber, the first violator of general silence, the most fierce enemy, directing his anger at the inside of the weak." Autocracy is a violator of the “agreement”, which determines the relationship between power and the people: the people conclude a “silent” agreement with the sovereign - the “first citizen”, trusting him with power, but reserving the right to control, judge and remove the monarch in case of abuse of power by him. Therefore, the English revolution is worthy of praise, punishing with death the king who abused the trust of the people. The main thing in the state is the “law”, before which all citizens must be equal: from the point of view of this democratic principle, Radishchev approaches his second topic. Serfdom is the worst evil for him, "a monster oblo, mischievous, huge, stozevno and barking" (a verse from Tredyakovsky's Telemachis, taken as an epigraph to Journey). From Radishchev's point of view, serfdom is not only incompatible with the humane principles of equality and freedom: it also undermines the economic power of the state and leads to the extinction of the population. Having based his views on the theories of the ideologists of Western European bourgeois democracy (Mably, Reynal, and others), Radishchev was able to apply them to Russian reality, outlining even the specific conditions for the abolition of serfdom with the allotment of land to the peasants and their transformation into small landowners. The theme of serfdom is developed by Radishchev both in pathetic journalism and in the fiction form of short stories that describe peasant life and poverty, revealing the horrors of lordly arbitrariness. Setting himself the educational tasks of social reorganization based on the principles of bourgeois democracy, Radishchev used a special method in his main work, which made it possible to combine elements of journalism with a display of living reality. In Journey, reasoning, lyrical outpourings, novellas and stories, descriptions (perhaps partly on the model of Stern) are combined into a whole. A form of "travel" from the end of the 18th century. becomes popular in the literature of the nobility (in 1794-1798 they published a separate edition of Karamzin's Letters of a Russian Traveler). But there are a number of sharp differences between Radishchev's book and the noble "journeys". The Radishevsky "traveler" is first of all the bearer of a certain class ideology and then a "sensitive" person in general: his sensitivity is a manifestation of social humanity; reality for him is not a reason for an outpouring of personal feelings or an expression of curiosity, but material for reflection and generalizations of a sociological nature. Radishchev's style is the result of a complex interaction between the rationalistic tendencies of classicism, a realistic striving for living reality, and some elements of sentimentalism. In 18th century literature the literary and public environment of Radishchev could not express itself widely, went into the "underground", but during the years of temporary weakening of censorship oppression, at the beginning of the 19th century. , Radishchev found followers - poets and publicists who united in the "Free Society of Lovers of Literature, Sciences and Arts" (Pnin, Born, Popugaev, Nik. Radishchev and others).

At the end of the XVIII century. the rise of capitalism. Under these conditions, a certain part of the nobility, who felt the instability of feudal relations and at the same time did not accept new social trends, put forward a different sphere of life, previously ignored. It was an area of ​​intimate, personal life, the defining motives of which were love and friendship. This is how sentimentalism arose as a literary trend, the last stage in the development of R. l. XVIII century, covering the original decade and thrown into the XIX century. In contrast to the literature of classicism, sentimentalism put the middle man from the nobility, his everyday way of life, in the center of attention. In its class nature, Russian sentimentalism is profoundly different from Western European sentimentalism, which arose among the progressive and revolutionary bourgeoisie, which was an expression of its class self-determination. Russian sentimentalism is basically a product of noble ideology: bourgeois sentimentalism could not take root on Russian soil, because the Russian bourgeoisie was just beginning - and extremely uncertainly - its self-determination; the sentimental sensibility of Russian writers, which affirmed new spheres of ideological life, previously, at the time of the heyday of feudalism, of little importance and even forbidden, is a longing for the outgoing freedom of feudal life. But at the same time, Russian sentimentalism reflected some of the features of the new relationship. These are, first of all, certain individualistic tendencies, and then that - abstract, however, - attention to the non-noble elements of society, which was reflected in the assertion of the all-estate feeling (“And peasant women know how to feel”). There are no anti-noble tendencies left in this slogan, just as there is no criticism of the nobility in Karamzin's sentimentalism. Using eg. the common plot scheme of a Western sentimental novel - an aristocrat seduces a bourgeois girl ("Clarissa Harlow" by Richardson), - the same Karamzin in his "Poor Liza" (1792) emasculated the class meaning from it. In Richardson, the aristocratic seducer is opposed to the virtue of the heroine, steadfast in all temptations and morally triumphant over vice. The heroine of Karamzin, the peasant woman Liza, does not oppose Erast, and the author himself does not condemn him, but only mourns over the unfortunate, but from his point of view, inevitable denouement. Sentimentalism in Russian literature was not, of course, the result of the creative initiative of Karamzin alone, as the bourgeois school textbooks once claimed: its elements, long before Karamzin, broke into the classical idyll, found a place for themselves in the comic opera, in the experiments of the Russian “tearful comedy”, in the psychological novel, in love lyrics. Karamzin is rather the result than the beginning of development. He himself, as often happens, was not aware of his connection with previous literature, pointing to foreign models (Shakespeare, Milton, Thompson, Jung, Gessner, Rousseau, etc.: the poem "Poetry"). In the field of prose, sentimentalism especially put forward two genres: the genre of sentimental travel and the genre of sensitive story. Karamzin’s “Letters from a Russian Traveler” caused a whole series of imitations (“Journey to Midday Russia” by Izmailov, 1800-1802; “Journey to Little Russia” by Shalikov, 1803; “Another Journey to Little Russia” by him, travels of Nevzorov, Gledkov, etc.). Karamzin's genre of travel is a relaxed combination of lyrical outpourings, portraits, landscapes, descriptions of urban life, social life, short stories and short stories. In the center, the traveler himself is a sensitive hero, an enthusiast of nature and humanity, pure and meek in heart, establishing friendly ties everywhere. It goes without saying that his attitude towards the French Revolution (he witnessed its initial stage) is completely negative. His “love for humanity” boils down to the desire to see around him contented and happy, so that scenes of misfortune do not disturb his peace; in the desire to be “touched”, to be touched by manifestations of human gratitude, paternal or filial love, friendship. Such an abstract "love" could be a convenient veil to cover up the reality of serfdom. The peasant, imbued with sensitivity, should love his masters and bless his yoke. Most of all, however, the sensitive hero is occupied with the analysis of his heart. A scrupulous analysis of feelings and experiences is combined in Journey with a careful drawing of the details of the background, with loving attention to the little things of everyday life. Another favorite genre of sentimentalism is the sensitive story. Its features stand out especially clearly when compared with the adventurous (picaresque) novel of third-class literature, from which Karamzin's story is clearly repelled. The novel is built on the complexity and rapid change of adventures: the story avoids complex plots, simplifying and curtailing the action, transferring it to the psychological plane. Here, too, the focus is on the analysis of feelings revealed in characterizations, monologues, and author's comments. The latter create a tense atmosphere of emotionality around the hero, further enhanced by lyrical descriptions of nature. The literary activity of Karamzin and his school was perceived as reformist, not only because they "discovered" a new world of human emotions, but also because, in connection with this, the system of artistic speech was reorganized. The main principle of the language reform was the desire for "pleasantness", as opposed to the "incoherence" of the prose of the 17th century, with its syntactic disorder. Karamzin reformed the vocabulary, banishing Slavicisms and “common people” from it, symmetrical periods with uniform rises and falls are introduced in place of confused periods; neologisms are created. This is how the principle of syntactic and lexical ease and pleasantness is realized. A long struggle flared up around Karamzin’s language reform, which occupied the first decades of the 19th century, the struggle between the “Shishkovists” and the “Karamzinists”, a conservative feudal noble group and a group that moved away from perceived new, social phenomena (capitalism) into the sphere of private life, attractive for its sophistication. and closure. But at the same time, there is no doubt the progressive significance of Karamzin's linguistic "reform", which contributed to the expansion of the reading environment at the expense of the most extensive groups of the nobility ... With Karamzin and the "Karamzinists" we are already moving into the 19th century, the beginning of which is the era of sentimentism, and along the way, the development of a bourgeois offensive against noble literature, the growth of those bourgeois-realist tendencies that are rooted precisely in the 18th century.

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The same, vol. 19-21, M., 1935 (articles by V. Desnitsky, D. Mirsky and from the editor - Results of the discussion)

"XVIII century", Sat., Articles and materials, ed. ak. A. S. Orlova, ed. Academy of Sciences, M. - L., 1935 (among others - L. Pumpyansky, Essays on Literature of the First Half of the 18th Century)

Gukovsky G., Essays on the history of Russian literature of the XVIII century, ed. Academy of Sciences, M. - L., 1936

Berkov P., Lomonosov and the literary controversy of his time, ed. Academy of Sciences, M. - L., 1936

General courses: Porfiryeva, Galakhova, Pypin, Loboda, etc. On the history of individual genres: A. Afanasiev, Russian satirical magazines of 1769-1774, M., 1859 (reprinted in Kazan in 1919), Krugly A., On theory poetry in Russian literature of the 18th century, St. Petersburg, 1893

Sipovsky V.V., Essays from the histories of the Russian novel, vol. I, no. 1-2 (XVIII century), St. Petersburg, 1909-1910

Veselovskaya A., Collection of love lyrics of the 18th century, St. Petersburg, 1910

Rozanov I. N., Russian lyrics. From impersonal poetry to "confession of the heart", M., 1914

His own, Songs about the living son, Sat. "XVIII century", see above

His own, Russian book poetry from the beginning of writing to Lomonosov, Sat. "Verses. Syllabic poetry of the 17th-18th centuries”, M. - L., 1935 (“Poet’s Bib”)

Varneke V., History of the Russian Theatre, ed. 2

Kallash V. V. and Efros N. E. (eds.), History of the Russian theater. vol. I, M., 1914

Bagriy A., On the issue of Russian lyrics of the 18th century, "Russian Philological Bulletin", (M.), 1915, No. 3. See also the bibliography under the articles characterizing the genres.

For the preparation of this work, materials from the site http://feb-web.ru were used.

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The proposed textbook on the history of Russian literature of the XVIII century. is focused on the program of higher education in the humanities, adopted and used in the practice of teaching the history of Russian literature in higher educational institutions of the Russian Federation. It differs from existing textbooks currently used in the pedagogical process in that the history of Russian literature of the 18th century. the author tried to consistently interpret in the aspect of historical poetics, paying primary attention to the originality of genre models and the genre system.

A similar approach to the study and teaching of the history of Russian literature of the XVIII century. was outlined in the scientific works of Russian philologists back in the 1920s-1930s.

Suffice it to mention at least the classic work of Yu. N. Tynyanov "Ode as an oratorical genre", articles by L. V. Pumpyansky and a number of studies by G. A. Gukovsky, ranging from the article "On the Sumarokov tragedy" (1926) to the monograph "Russian poetry 18th century (L., 1927), the problems of which were partly reflected in his textbook on the history of Russian literature of the 18th century.

In modern literary criticism, this trend has found its continuation in the works of Yu. M. Lotman, B. A. Uspensky, V. N. Toporov, N. D. Kochetkova and others. least of all is reflected in the existing textbooks on the history of Russian literature of the XVIII century.

The desire to bring the content of the textbook, addressed to teachers and students of higher education, closer to the main trend of modern philological science, obviously gravitating in its development towards cultural knowledge and the methodology of historical poetics, dictated the main aspect of the presentation of historical and literary facts, which the author of the proposed textbook tried to adhere to in all cases. .

Without departing from the traditionally established ideas about the historical and literary paradigm of the 18th century. and the generally accepted chronological principle of its deployment, the author tried to consistently interpret the history of Russian literature of the 18th century. in the aspect of historical poetics, that is, to present the literary process of the era under study as the history of the emergence, development, interaction and change of productive genre models of Russian literature, believing that this aspect in the existing educational literature has been given incomparably less attention than the ideological-ideological, problematic and sociological ones.

Thus, in the proposed textbook, Russian literature of the 18th century. presented not as a set of exhaustive descriptions of the creative heritage of individual writers, but as a dynamic genre system. It was this starting position that determined the basic principles for the selection of literary material and its composition.

First of all, the proposed angle of view forced the author to abandon the generally accepted principle of factual encyclopedism, as determining the thematic composition of the textbook, in particular, to omit biographical information about the writers, to introduce historical commentary only in certain cases necessary from the point of view of aesthetic factors in the interpretation of this text, and also to produce purposeful selection of texts from the totality of the creative heritage of Russian writers of the 18th century.

As a rule, the biographical empiricism of the life of the writer of the XVIII century. little connected with his literary personality, represented by the leading genres of his work and the scale of the functioning of his author's genre models in the literary consciousness of the era. On the contrary, it was the literary personality that was the fundamental aesthetic innovation that distinguished authorial Russian literature of the 18th century. from the anonymous bookishness of the Russian Middle Ages. Exceptions to the general regularity of the gap between the biographical and literary personality of the writer are very rare.

So, for talking about the literary position of Lomonosov, for example, information about his scientific activities is important, but for the analysis of the genre model of the solemn ode, they are in principle inapplicable, since the personality of the author of the ode appears in it in an underlined generalized human context. To characterize the satire of Cantemir, it is completely unimportant that he was a diplomat; the stylistic originality of Trediakovsky's lyrics and epic is in no way correlated with his academic activities. On the other hand, Emin's extraordinary biography directly determined the aesthetics and poetics of his novels, the autobiographical nature of Derzhavin's lyrics is an aesthetically determining factor in its originality, and Karamzin's life-building requires correlation of his texts with the facts of his biography. In these and all similar, aesthetically motivated, cases, the author tried to give the necessary biographical information, omitting them in other cases, not so important.

The same can be said about the motivations for the introduction of historical essays of the era. Despite the fact that Russian history of the XVIII century. was very stormy throughout the century, only two of its periods have aesthetic richness, both are transitional eras in the development of Russian mentality, Russian statehood and Russian literature. This is the era of state reforms at the beginning of the century, associated with the name of Peter I, and the first decades of the reign of Catherine II. The first gave rise to a new type of personality and mass aesthetic consciousness, which determined the general direction of the literary process, the second - a new type of correlation between ideology and aesthetics. Therefore, an outline of the socio-political and spiritual atmosphere is given only for these two cultural and historical periods. The new quality of Russian literature at the origins of the new time of Russian culture and at the moment of the first deep crisis of the enlightenment worldview in these cases is deeply motivated by non-literary reality, which comes into direct contact with aesthetic activity. Of course, the historical facts, the realities of Russian and European life, necessary for understanding this or that artistic text, are constantly present on the pages of the textbook, but the nature of their aesthetic refraction is emphasized.

Finally, the criteria for selecting literary material are due to the obvious inequality of genre models within the totality of literary texts of one writer: with the general diversity of these models for each creative individuality, the literary personality of the writer is determined only by individual genre structures - namely, those that have the prospect of further existence not only in literature of the 18th century, but also beyond its chronological limits. In the case of Kantemir, whose name has become synonymous with the genre of satire, with Lomonosov, whose literary personality is isomorphic to the genre of solemn ode, with Bogdanovich - "the singer of Dushenka", with Chulkov - the author of the first original Russian novel, Fonvizin - "the writer of the Undergrowth", etc. . , such an approach probably does not need special motivation.

The author was guided by the same criteria when presenting the work of F. Prokopovich as a genre of sermon-word, limiting the conversation about the work of Sumarokov (who was a fundamental genre universalist) to his dramaturgy and lyrics, choosing from the totality of Fonvizin's texts his comedies, in which the most productive genre model of "high comedy" is formed. ”, presenting Kapnist as the author of the comedy “Yabeda”, focusing on the formation of the genre system of Russian sentimentalist prose in the work of Radishchev and Karamzin, etc.

It seems that the cross-cutting idea of ​​the proposed textbook also requires special motivation - namely, the emphasis on the existence of the tradition of older genres of satire and solemn ode and the study of their functions in the Russian literary process of the 18th century. Even Yu. N. Tynyanov showed the exceptional role of the oratorical solemn ode, which exhausted its genre existence in the work of the creator of this model, M. V. Lomonosov, but became an underlying trend in the Russian literary process not only in the 18th, but also in the first third of the 19th century. The same can be said about the laws of existence of the genre of satire, which has grown into a trend in the development of Russian literature already outside the work of Cantemir, where satire exists exclusively in its genre quality.