Postmodernism in literature definition. Postmodernism in Russian literature

The trend, called postmodernism, arose at the end of the 20th century and combined the philosophical, ideological and cultural moods of its time. Occurred and art, religion, philosophy. Postmodernism, not striving to study the deep problems of being, gravitates toward simplicity, a superficial reflection of the world. Therefore, the literature of postmodernism is aimed not at understanding the world, but at accepting it as it is.

Postmodernism in Russia

The forerunners of postmodernism were modernism and avant-gardism, which sought to revive the traditions Silver Age. Russian postmodernism in literature has abandoned the mythologization of reality, to which previous literary trends gravitated. But at the same time, he creates his own mythology, resorting to it as the most understandable cultural language. Postmodernist writers conducted a dialogue with chaos in their works, presenting it as a real model of life, where the utopia is the harmony of the world. At the same time, there was a search for a compromise between space and chaos.

Russian postmodern writers

The ideas considered by various authors in their works are sometimes strange unstable hybrids, designed to always conflict, being absolutely incompatible concepts. So, in the books of V. Erofeev, A. Bitov and S. Sokolov, compromises, paradoxical in essence, between life and death are presented. T. Tolstoy and V. Pelevin - between fantasy and reality, and Pietsuha - between law and absurdity. From the fact that postmodernism in Russian literature is based on combinations of opposite concepts: the sublime and the base, pathos and mockery, fragmentation and integrity, the oxymoron becomes its main principle.

The postmodern writers, in addition to those already listed, include S. Dovlatov, L. Petrushevskaya, V. Aksyonova. In their works, the main character traits postmodernism, such as the understanding of art as a way of organizing text according to special rules; an attempt to convey a vision of the world through organized chaos on the pages of a literary work; attraction to parody and denial of authority; emphasizing the conventionality of the artistic and visual techniques used in the works; connection within the same text of different literary eras and genres. The ideas that postmodernism proclaimed in literature point to its continuity with modernism, which in turn called for a departure from civilization and a return to savagery, which leads to the highest point of involution - chaos. But in specific literary works one cannot see only the desire for destruction, there is always a creative tendency. They can manifest themselves in different ways, one prevail over the other. For example, Vladimir Sorokin's works are dominated by the desire for destruction.

Formed in Russia in the 80-90s, postmodernism in literature absorbed the collapse of ideals and the desire to get away from the orderliness of the world, so a mosaic and fragmentary consciousness arose. Each author has refracted this in his own way in his work. L. Petrushevskaya and her works combine a craving for naturalistic nudity in describing reality and the desire to get out of it into the realm of the mystical. The perception of the world in the post-Soviet era was characterized precisely as chaotic. Often in the center of the plot of postmodernists there is an act of creativity, and the main character is a writer. It is not so much the relationship of the character with real life that is explored, but with the text. This is observed in the works of A. Bitov, Yu. Buyda, S. Sokolov. The effect of literature being closed on itself comes out when the world is perceived as a text. Main character, often identified with the author, when faced with reality, pays a terrible price for its imperfection.

It can be predicted that, being focused on destruction and chaos, postmodernism in literature will one day leave the stage and give way to another trend aimed at a systemic worldview. Because sooner or later the state of chaos is replaced by order.

"Hidden Gold of the 20th Century" is a publishing project by Maxim Nemtsov and Shasha Martynova. During the year they are going to translate and publish six books by major English-speaking authors (including Brautigan, O'Brien and Bartelmy) - this will close the next gaps in the publication of modern foreign literature. Funds for the project are raised through crowdfunding. For "Gorky" Shashi Martynova prepared a short introduction to literary postmodernism based on the material of the authors under her charge.

The 20th century, the time of planetary delights and blackest disappointments, gave postmodernism to literature. From the very beginning, the reader treated postmodern “unbridledness” in different ways: this is not at all marshmallows in chocolate and not a Christmas tree to please everyone. The literature of postmodernism in general is the texts of freedom, the rejection of the norms, canons, attitudes and laws of the past, the goth child / punk / hippie (continue the list yourself) in a respectable - “square”, as beatniks said - family of classical literary texts. However, pretty soon the literary postmodern will be about a hundred years old, and during this time, in general, people have got used to it. He has grown a considerable audience of fans and followers, translators tirelessly hone on him professional excellence, and we have decided to summarize some of the key features of postmodern texts.
Naturally, this article does not pretend to exhaustive coverage of the topic - hundreds of dissertations have already been written on postmodernism in literature; however, an inventory of a postmodernist writer's toolbox is a useful thing in the household of any modern reader.

Postmodern literature is not a "movement", not a "school" and not " creative association". It is rather a group of texts, united by the rejection of the dogma of the Enlightenment and modernist approaches to literature. by the most early examples Postmodern literature in general can be considered "Don Quixote" (1605-1615) by Cervantes and "Tristram Shandy" (1759-1767) by Lawrence Sterne.
The first thing that comes to mind when we hear about postmodern literature is the pervasive irony, sometimes understood as "black humor." For postmodernists, there are few things in the world (if any) that cannot be denounced. That is why postmodernist texts are so generous with mockery, parodic antics, and similar amusements. Here is an example for you - a quote from the novel "Willard and his bowling prizes" (1975) by Richard Brautigan:

“Better,” said Bob. - That's all that's left of the poem.
“Escaped,” said Bob. - That's all that's left of the other one.
"He's cheating on you," Bob said. - "Breaking". "With you, I forgot all the hardships." Here are three more.
“These two are amazing,” said Bob. “My grief is immeasurable, for my friends are good for nothing.” "Bite off cucumbers."
- What do you say? Do you like it? Bob asked. He forgot that she couldn't answer him. She nodded, yes, she likes it.
- Do you still want to listen? Bob asked.
He forgot that she had a gag in her mouth. (Translated by A. Guzman)

Postmodern literature is not a "movement", not a "school" and not a "creative association"

The whole novel is declared as a parody of sadomasochistic literature (you will find nowhere more serious) and at the same time a detective story. As a result, both sadomasochism and Brautigan's detective turn into a piercing watercolor of loneliness and the inability of people to understand and be understood. Another great example is Miles' Gapalin (Flann O'Brien) cult novel The Lazarus Singers (1941, translated into Russian 2003), a vicious parody of turn-of-the-century Irish national-cultural renaissance by a man who spoke excellent Irish who knew and loved Irish culture, but had a deep disgust at the way the revival of culture was embodied by hysterics and mediocrity. Irreverence, as a natural consequence of irony, is a trademark of postmodernists.

Descartes spent too much time in bed, subject to a haunting hallucination that he was thinking. You are unhealthy with a similar affliction. ("The Dolkey Archive", Flann O'Brien, trans. Sh. Martynova)

The second is intertextuality and the techniques of collage, pastiche, etc. associated with it. A postmodern text is a prefabricated constructor from what was in culture before, and new meanings are generated from what has already been mastered and appropriated. This technique is very common among postmodernists, whoever you take. Masters Joyce and Beckett, modernists, however, also used this toolkit. The texts of Flann O'Brien, the reluctant heir of Joyce (it's complicated, as they say), are a link between modernity and postmodernity: "A Hard Life" (1961) is a modernist novel, and "Two Birds Sailed" (1939, in a Russian-language edition - “About Waterfowl”) is still some kind of postmodern. Here is one of the thousands of possible examples - from "The Dead Father" by Donald Barthelme:

Children, he said. Without children, I would not have become a Father. Without childhood, no Fatherhood. I myself never wanted it, they forced it on me. A kind of tribute, which I could do without, the generation and then education of each of the thousands, thousands and tens of thousands, the inflation of a small package to a large package, over a period of years, and then a certificate that large packages, if the male sex, wear their hats with bells, and if not him, then they observe the principle of jus primae noctis, the shame of sending away those who are undesirable to me, the pain of sending those who are desired to the lifestream big city to never warm my cold ottoman, and leading the hussars, maintaining public order, observing postal codes, keeping rubbish out of the drain, would prefer not to leave my office comparing Klinger's editions, first print, second print, third print, and so on, didn't it fall apart at the fold? […] But no, I had to devour them, hundreds, thousands, fififofam, sometimes together with shoes, you bite a child’s leg well, and right there, between your teeth, you have a poisoned sports slipper. And hair, millions of pounds of hair scarred the intestines over the years, so why not just throw children into wells, leave them on mountain slopes, accidentally shock toy railways? And worst of all were their blue jeans, in my meals dish after dish of badly washed blue jeans, T-shirts, saris, “tom-macans”. Probably, it would be possible to hire someone to peel them for me first. (Translated by M. Nemtsov)

Another good example of “an old fairy tale in a new way” is Donald Bartelmy’s Russian-language novel The King (published posthumously, 1990), in which the legends of the Arthurian cycle are creatively rethought in the setting of World War II.

The mosaic nature of many postmodernist texts was bequeathed to us by William Burrows, and Kerouac, Bartelmy, Sorrentino, Dunleavy, Eggers and many others (we list only those who were translated into Russian in one way or another) used this technique vividly and in various ways - and use it.

Third: metafiction, in fact - writing about the very process of writing and the deconstruction of meanings associated with it. O'Brien's already mentioned novel Two Birds Sailed is a textbook example of this technique: in the novel we are told about the author who composes a novel based on Irish mythology (please: double postmodernism!), and the characters of this nested novel weave against the author intrigues and conspiracies. The novel “Irish Stew” by the postmodernist Gilbert Sorrentino (not published in Russian) is arranged according to the same principle, and in the novel by the English writer Christine Brooke-Rose “Textermination” (1992), only the characters of classical works of literature, gathered in San Francisco at the Annual Congress of Supplication for Genesis.

The fourth thing that comes to mind is a non-linear plot and other games with time. And baroque temporal architecture in general. V. (1963) by Thomas Pynchon is a perfect example. In general, Pynchon is a great lover and craftsman of turning pretzels out of time - remember the third chapter of the novel "V.", from reading which the brain of more than one generation of readers is twisted into a DNA helix.

Magic realism - the merging and mixing of life-like and non-lifelike literature - can be considered postmodern to one degree or another, and in this respect, Marquez and Borges (and even more so Cortazar) can also be considered postmodernists. Another excellent example of such interweaving is the novel by Gilbert Sorrentino with a rich title of translation options "Crystal Vision" (1981), where the whole work can be read as an interpreter for a deck of tarot cards and at the same time as everyday chronicles of one Brooklyn block. Numerous implicitly archetypal characters in this novel are characterized by Sorrentino only through direct speech, their own and addressed to them - this, by the way, is also a postmodernist device. Literature does not have to be authentic - this is what the postmodernists decided, and it is not very clear how and why to argue with them here.

The mosaic nature of many postmodern texts was bequeathed to us by William Burroughs

Separately (fifthly), it is necessary to say about the inclination towards technoculture and hyperreality as about the desire to go beyond the reality given to us in sensations. The Internet and virtual reality are, to a certain extent, products of postmodernity. In this sense, perhaps best example may be the recently published Russian novel by Thomas Pynchon, The Edge of the Blow (2013).
The result of all that has happened in the 20th century is paranoia as a desire to discover order behind chaos. Postmodern writers, following Kafka and Orwell, are attempting to re-systematize reality and the suffocating spaces of Magnus Mills (Cattle Drive, Full Employment Scheme and the forthcoming release in Russian All Quiet on the Orient Express), The Third Policeman (1939/1940) O'Brien and, of course, the whole Pynchon - about this, although we have just a couple of examples from many.

Postmodernism in literature in general is a territory of complete freedom. The toolkit of postmodernists, compared to what their predecessors managed, is much wider - everything is allowed: an unreliable narrator, and surreal metaphor, and abundant lists and catalogs, and word creation, word game and other lexical exhibitionism, and the emancipation of language in general, breaking or distorting syntax, and dialogue as a narrative engine.

Some of the novels mentioned in the article are being prepared for publication in Russian by Dodo Press, and you can personally participate in this: the Hidden Gold of the 20th Century project is a substantive continuation of the conversation about literary postmodernism of the 20th century (and not only).

Postmodernism

The end of World War II marked an important turn in the worldview Western civilization. The war was not only a clash of states, but also a clash of ideas, each of which promised to make the world perfect, and in return brought rivers of blood. Hence - the feeling of the crisis of the idea, that is, disbelief in the possibility of any idea to make the world a better place. There was also a crisis of the idea of ​​art. On the other hand, the number of literary works has reached such a quantity that it seems that everything has already been written, each text contains links to previous texts, that is, it is a metatext.

In the course of development literary process the gap between elite and pop culture has become too deep, the phenomenon of “works for philologists” has appeared, for reading and understanding which you need to have a very good philological education. Postmodernism has become a reaction to this split, connecting both areas of the multi-layered work. For example, Suskind's "Perfumer" can be read as a detective, or maybe as philosophical novel, revealing the questions of genius, artist and art.

Modernism, which explored the world as the realization of certain absolutes, eternal truths, gave way to postmodernism, for which the whole world is a game without a happy ending. As a philosophical category, the term "postmodernism" has spread thanks to the works of the philosophers Zhe. Derrida, J. Bataille, M. Foucault and especially the book French philosopher J.-F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (1979).

The principles of repetition and compatibility are transformed into a style of artistic thinking with its inherent features of eclecticism, a tendency to stylization, quoting, rewriting, reminiscences, and allusions. The artist does not deal with "pure" material, but with culturally assimilated, because the existence of art in previous classical forms impossible in a post-industrial society with its unlimited potential for serial reproduction and replication.

Encyclopedia literary trends and currents gives such a list of features of postmodernism:

1. The cult of an independent personality.

2. Craving for the archaic, for the myth of the collective unconscious.

3. The desire to combine, mutually supplement the truths (sometimes polar opposites) of many people, nations, cultures, religions, philosophies, the vision of everyday real life as a theater of the absurd, an apocalyptic carnival.

4. The use of an emphatically playful style to emphasize the abnormality, non-authenticity, anti-naturalness of the way of life prevailing in reality.

5. Deliberately whimsical weave different styles narration (high classic and sentimental or crudely naturalistic and fabulous, etc.; styles of science, journalistic, business, etc. are often woven into the artistic style).

6. A mixture of many traditional genre varieties.

7. Plots of works - these are easily disguised allusions (hints) to well-known plots of literature of previous eras.

8. Borrowings, echoes are observed not only at the plot-compositional, but also at the figurative, linguistic levels.

9. As a rule, in a postmodern work there is an image of a narrator.

10. Irony and parody.

The main features of the poetics of postmodernism are intertextuality (creating one's own text from others'); collage and montage (“gluing” of equal fragments); use of allusions; attraction to prose of a complicated form, in particular, with free composition; bricolage (indirect achievement of the author's intention); saturation of the text with irony.

Postmodernism develops in the genres of fantastic parables, confession novels, dystopias, short stories, mythological novels, socio-philosophical and socio-psychological novels, etc. Genre forms can be combined to reveal new artistic structures.

Günter Grass (The Tin Drum, 1959) is considered the first postmodernist. Outstanding representatives of postmodern literature: V. Eco, H.-L. Borges, M. Pavic, M. Kundera, P. Suskind, V. Pelevin, I. Brodsky, F. Begbeder.

In the second half of the XX century. the genre of science fiction is activated, which in its best examples is combined with prognostication (forecasts for the future) and dystopia.

In the pre-war period, existentialism arose, and after the Second World War, existentialism was actively developing. Existentialism (lat. existentiel - existence) is a direction in philosophy and a current of modernism, in which the source of a work of art is the artist himself, expressing the life of the individual, creating an artistic reality that reveals the secret of being in general. The sources of existentialism were contained in the writings of the German thinker of the 19th century. From Kierkegaard.

Existentialism in works of art reflects the mood of the intelligentsia, disappointed with social and ethical theories. Writers seek to understand the causes of the tragic disorder of human life. The categories of the absurdity of life, fear, despair, loneliness, suffering, death are put forward in the first place. Representatives of this philosophy argued that the only thing that a person possesses is his inner world, the right to choose, free will.

Existentialism is spreading in French (A. Camus, J.-P. Sartre and others), German (E. Nossak, A. Döblin), English (A. Murdoch, V. Golding), Spanish (M. de Unamuno), American (N. Mailer, J. Baldwin), Japanese (Kobo Abe) literature.

In the second half of the XX century. a “new novel” (“anti-novel”) is developing - a genre equivalent of French modern novel 1940-1970s, which arises as a denial of existentialism. Representatives of this genre are N. Sarrot, A. Robbe-Grillet, M. Butor, K. Simon and others.

A significant phenomenon of the theatrical avant-garde of the second half of the XX century. is the so-called theater of the absurd. The dramaturgy of this direction is characterized by the absence of a place and time of action, the destruction of the plot and composition, irrationalism, paradoxical collisions, an alloy of the tragic and the comic. The most talented representatives of the "theater of the absurd" are S. Beckett, E. Ionesco, E. Albee, G. Frisch and others.

A notable phenomenon in the world process of the second half of the XX century. became "magical realism" - a direction in which elements of the real and the imaginary, the real and the fantastic, the everyday and the mythological, the probable and the mysterious, everyday life and eternity are organically combined. greatest development he purchased in Latin American literature(A. Karpent "єp, J. Amado, G. Garcia Marquez, G. Vargas Llosa, M. Asturias and others). A special role in the work of these authors is played by the myth, which is the basis of the work. A classic example of magical realism is the novel G Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (1967), where the history of Colombia and all of Latin America is recreated in mythical-real images.

In the second half of the XX century. traditional realism is also developing, which is acquiring new features. The image of individual being is combined with historical analysis, which is due to the desire of artists to understand the logic of social laws (G. Belle, E.-M. Remarque, V. Bykov, N. Dumbadze and others).

Literary process of the second half of the XX century. is determined primarily by the transition from modernism to postmodernism, as well as the powerful development of the intellectual trend, science fiction, "magic realism", avant-garde phenomena, etc.

Postmodernism was widely discussed in the West in the early 1980s. Some researchers consider Joyce's novel "Finnegans Wake" (1939) to be the beginning of postmodernism, others - Joyce's preliminary novel "Ulysses", still others - American "new poetry" of the 1940s and 1950s, others think that postmodernism is not a fixed chronological phenomenon, and the spiritual state and “every epoch has its own postmodernism” (Eko), the fifth generally speak of postmodernism as “one of the intellectual fictions of our time” (Yu. Andrukhovych). However, most scholars believe that the transition from modernism to postmodernism took place in the mid-1950s. In the 60s and 70s, postmodernism covered various national literatures, and in the 80s it became the dominant trend. modern literature and culture.

The first manifestations of postmodernism can be considered such trends as the American school of "black humor" (W. Burroughs, D. Wart, D. Barthelm, D. Donlivy, K. Kesey, K. Vonnegut, D. Heller, etc.), the French "new novel" (A. Robbe-Grillet, N. Sarrot, M. Butor, K. Simon, etc.), "theater of the absurd" (E. Ionesco, S. Beckett, J. Gonit, F. Arrabal, etc.) .

The most prominent postmodern writers include the English John Fowles ("The Collector", "The French Lieutenant's Woman"), Julian Barnes ("A History of the World in Nine and a Half Chapters") and Peter Ackroyd ("Milton in America"), the German Patrick Suskind (" Perfumer"), Austrian Carl Ransmayr (" last world”), Italians Italo Calvino (“Slowness”) and Umberto Eco (“The Name of the Rose”, “Foucault’s Pendulum”), Americans Thomas Pinchon (“Entropy”, “For Sale No. 49”) and Vladimir Nabokov (English-language novels “Pale Fire” and others), Argentines Jorge Luis Borges (short stories and essays) and Julio Cortazar (The Hopscotch Game).

An outstanding place in the history of modern postmodern novel its Slavic representatives are also occupied, in particular the Czech Milan Kundera and the Serb Milorad Pavic.

A specific phenomenon is Russian postmodernism, represented both by the authors of the metropolis (A. Bitov, V. Erofeev, Ven. Erofeev, L. Petrushevskaya, D. Prigov, T. Tolstaya, V. Sorokin, V. Pelevin), and representatives of the literary emigration ( V. Aksenov, I. Brodsky, Sasha Sokolov).

Postmodernism claims to express a general theoretical "superstructure" of contemporary art, philosophy, science, politics, economics, and fashion. Today they talk not only about “postmodern creativity”, but also about “postmodern consciousness”, “postmodern mentality”, “postmodern mentality”, etc.

Postmodern creativity involves aesthetic pluralism at all levels (plot, composition, figurative, characterological, chronotopic, etc.), completeness of presentation without evaluation, reading the text in a cultural context, co-creation of the reader and writer, mythological thinking, a combination of historical and timeless categories, dialogue , irony.

The leading features of postmodern literature are irony, “quoting thinking”, intertextuality, pastiche, collage, and the principle of the game.

Total irony reigns in postmodernism, general ridicule and ridicule from all over. Numerous postmodern works of art are characterized by a conscious attitude towards the ironic juxtaposition of various genres, styles, artistic movements. A work of postmodernism is always a mockery of previous and unacceptable forms of aesthetic experience: realism, modernism, mass culture. Thus, irony defeats the serious modernist tragedy inherent, for example, in the works of F. Kafka.

One of the main principles of postmodernism is quotation, and representatives of this trend are characterized by quotation thinking. The American researcher B. Morrissett called postmodern prose "citation literature". The total postmodern quotation comes to replace the elegant modernist reminiscence. Quite postmodern is the American student anecdote about how a philology student read Hamlet for the first time and was disappointed: nothing special, a collection of common winged words and expressions. Some works of postmodernism turn into quotation books. So, the novel by the French writer Jacques Rivet "The Young Ladies from A." is a collection of 750 quotations from 408 authors.

Such a concept as intertextuality is also associated with postmodern quotation thinking. The French researcher Julia Kristeva, who introduces this term into literary criticism, noted: “Any text is built as a mosaic of citations, any text is a product of the absorption and transformation of some other text.” The French semiotician Roland Karaulov wrote: “Each text is an intertext; other texts are present in it at various levels in more or less recognizable forms: texts of the previous culture and texts surrounding culture. Each text is a new fabric woven from old quotations.” Intertext in the art of postmodernism is the main way of constructing a text and consists in the fact that the text is built from quotations from other texts.

If numerous modernist novels were also intertextual (Ulysses by J. Joyce, Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, T. Mann's Doctor Faustus, H. Hesse's The Glass Bead Game), and even realistic works(as Y. Tynyanov proved, Dostoevsky's novel "The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants" is a parody of Gogol and his works), it is the achievement of postmodernism with hypertext. This is a text constructed in such a way that it turns into a system, a hierarchy of texts, at the same time constituting a unity and a multitude of texts. Its example is any dictionary or encyclopedia, where each entry refers to other entries in the same edition. You can read such text in an equal way: from one article to another, ignoring hypertext links; read all the articles in a row or moving from one link to another, carrying out "hypertext navigation". Therefore, such a flexible device as hypertext can be manipulated at one's own discretion. in 1976 American writer Raymond Federman published a novel, which is called - "At your discretion." It can be read at the request of the reader, from any place, shuffling unnumbered and bound pages. The concept of hypertext is also associated with computer virtual realities. Today's hypertexts are computer literature, which can only be read on the monitor: by pressing one key, you are transferred to the backstory of the hero, by pressing another - you change the bad ending to a good one, etc.

A sign of postmodern literature is the so-called pastish (from Italian pasbiccio - an opera composed of excerpts from other operas, a mixture, potpourri, stylization). It is a specific variant of parody, which changes its functions in postmodernism. Pastish differs from parody in that now there is nothing to parody, there is no serious object that can be ridiculed. O. M. Freudenberg wrote that only that which is “living and holy” can be parodied. For a day of non-postmodernism, nothing "lives", and even more so nothing is "holy". Pastish is also understood as parody.

Postmodern art is by its nature fragmentary, discrete, eclectic. Hence such a feature of it as a collage. Postmodern collage may seem new form modernist montage, but it differs significantly from it. In modernism, montage, although it was composed of incomparable images, was nevertheless united into a whole by the unity of style and technique. In the postmodern collage, on the contrary, various fragments of the collected objects remain unchanged, not transformed into a single whole, each of them retains its isolation.

Important for postmodernism with the principle of the game. Classical moral and ethical values ​​are translated into a playful plane, as M. Ignatenko notes, “yesterday’s classical culture and spiritual values ​​live dead in postmodernity - its era does not live with them, it plays with them, it plays with them, it plays with them.”

Other characteristics of postmodernism include uncertainty, decanonization, carialization, theatricality, hybridization of genres, co-creation of the reader, saturation with cultural realities, “dissolution of character” (complete destruction of the character as a psychologically and socially determined character), attitude to literature as to the “first reality” (text does not reflect reality, but creates new reality, even many realities, often independent of each other). And the most common images-metaphors of postmodernism are centaur, carnival, labyrinth, library, madness.

A phenomenon of modern literature and culture is also multiculturalism, through which the multi-component American nation has naturally realized the unsteady uncertainty of postmodernism. A more "grounded" multi-cult) previously "voiced" thousands of uniform unique living American voices representatives of various racial, ethnic, gender, local and other specific streams. The literature of multiculturalism includes African-American, Indian, Chicano (Mexicans and other Latin Americans, a significant number of whom live in the United States), literature of various ethnic groups inhabiting America (including Ukrainians), American descendants of Asians, Europeans, literature of minorities of all stripes .

Abstract on the topic:

"Postmodern Literature of the End of the 20th Century"

Recently, it has become popular to announce that at the beginning of the new century, postmodernism finally passed all possible stages of its self-determination, having exhausted the possibilities of existence as a phenomenon of modern culture that has signs of universality. Along with this, the manifestations of postmodernism in the last third of the twentieth century. often regarded as intellectual games, beloved by the elite part of the creative intelligentsia both in the West and in Russia.

Meanwhile, researchers who turned to the issue of postmodernism in a situation of apparent dominance of the postmodern worldview and the emergence of a huge number of works devoted to postmodernism come to the conclusion that “numerous publications turned out to be inconsistent and contradictory: the new aesthetic phenomenon was fluid, vague and defying definition.” D. V. Zatonsky, referring to theoretical and literary texts in order to identify and formulate general conclusions about postmodernism, called the term itself an “unintelligible word”, the use of which does little to streamline the picture of the world in in the usual sense words. One way or another, we have to admit, following the scientist, that the most significant reason for the spread of postmodernism was the state of general crisis, and its significance lies in the fact that it called into question the traditional "system of the existence of spirit and culture."

Indeed, the formation of postmodernism is primarily associated with those profound changes in the picture of the world that accompany the post-industrial, information and computer stage of the development of modern civilization. In practice, this turned into a deep and often irrevocable disbelief in the universal significance of both the objective and subjective principle of knowledge. real world. For many, events and phenomena perceived by consciousness modern world have ceased to have the character of images, signs, concepts that contain any objective significant meaning or spiritual and moral meaning, correlated with the idea of ​​a real progressive historical development or free spiritual activity. According to J.-F. Lyotard, now the so-called "zeitgeist" "can express itself in all sorts of reactive or even reactionary attitudes or utopias, but there is no positive orientation that could open before us any new perspective". In general, postmodernism was "a symptom of the collapse of the previous world and, at the same time, the lowest mark on the scale of ideological storms" with which the twenty-first century is fraught. This characterization of postmodernism can find many confirmations in theoretical works and artistic texts.

At the same time, the definition of postmodernism as a phenomenon stating a general crisis and chaos that opened after the collapse of the traditional system of understanding and cognition of the world sometimes does not allow us to see some significant aspects of the postmodern period of the state of mind. It's about about the intellectual and aesthetic efforts undertaken in line with postmodernism to develop new coordinates and define the outlines of that new type of society, culture and worldview that have emerged at the present post-industrial stage in the development of Western civilization. The case was not limited to the general denial or parody of cultural heritage. For some writers, called postmodernists, it has become more important to determine those new relationships between culture and man that develop when the principle of progressive, progressive development of society and culture in a society that exists in the era of information and computer civilization loses its dominant value.

As a result, in works of literature, a coherent picture of life based on the plot as the unfolding of events has often been replaced not so much by the traditional genre plot principle of selecting and arranging material in the spatio-temporal dimension and linear sequence, but by creating a certain integrity built on a combination of different layers of material. , united by characters or the figure of the author-narrator. In fact, the specifics of such a text can be defined by using the term "discourse". Among the numerous concepts that reveal the concept of "discourse", one should single out its understanding, which allows one to go beyond linguistics. After all, discourse can be interpreted as a "supra-phrasal unity of words", as well as "any meaningful unity, regardless of whether it is verbal or visual." In this case, the discourse is a system of socio-cultural and spiritual phenomena fixed in one form or another, external to the individual and offered to him, for example, as a cultural heritage consecrated by tradition. From this point of view, the writers of postmodernism conveyed a rather acute feeling that for a modern person living in a world of formed, “ready-to-use” diverse social and cultural material, there are two ways left: conformist acceptance of all this or awareness of one’s state of alienation and lack of freedom. Thus, postmodernism in creativity begins with the fact that the writer comes to understand that any creation of works of the traditional form degenerates into the reproduction of one discourse or another. Therefore, in some works modern prose the main thing is the description of a person's stay in the world of various types of discourses.

In this regard, the work of J. Barnes is characteristic, who in the novel "England, England" (1998) suggested reflecting on the question "What is real England?" for a person of the post-industrial era living in a "consumer society". The novel is divided into two parts: one is called "England", and in it we get acquainted with main character Martha, who grew up in a simple family. When she meets her father, who once left the family, she reminds him that as a child she used to put together the Counties of England puzzle, and she was always missing one piece, because. his father hid him. In other words, she represented the geography of the country as a set of external outlines of individual territories, and this puzzle can be considered a postmodern concept that reveals the level of knowledge of an ordinary person about their country.

This is how the fundamental question “What is reality” is defined in the novel, and the second part of the novel is devoted to a certain project to create the territory of “Good Old England” next to modern England. Barnes proposes to present the entire culture of England in the form of a socio-cultural discourse consisting of 50 concepts of "Englishness". These included the royal family and Queen Victoria, Big Ben, Parliament, Shakespeare, snobbery, The Times, homosexuality, Manchester United football club, beer, pudding, Oxford, imperialism, cricket, etc. Additionally, the text gives an extensive menu of real "English" dishes and drinks. All this is placed in a specially designed and specially created socio-cultural spatial analogue, which is a kind of grandiose reconstruction or reproduction of "old England" on a certain island territory chosen for this purpose. The organizers of this project proceed from the fact that historical knowledge is not like an accurate video recording. real events past, and modern man lives in a world of copies, myths, signs and archetypes. In other words, if we want to reproduce the life of English society and cultural heritage, it will not be a presentation, but a representation of this world, in other words, “its improved and enriched, ironized and summarized version”, when “the reality of the copy will become the reality that we will meet on our way." Barnes draws attention to the fact that the postmodern state of modern society is manifested, among other things, in the fact that in the sphere of culture, i.e. spiritual life of a person, certain technologies are now also being used, the world of culture is being designed and systematically created in the same way as it is done, for example, in the field of industrial production.

"England, England" is a space where the archetypes and myths about this country are presented as a spectacle and where only clouds, photographers and tourists are authentic, and everything else is the creation of the best restorers, actors, costume designers and designers using the most modern technology to create the effect of antiquity and historicity. This product of the modern show business of the era of the "consumer society" is a "repositioning" of the myths about England: an England was created that foreign tourists want to see for their money, without experiencing some of the inconvenience that accompanies guests when traveling through real country- Great Britain.

In this case, the literature of postmodernism highlighted one of the phenomena of the postindustrial world as a world of realized utopia of universal consumption. Modern man found himself in a situation where, placed in the sphere of mass culture, he acts as a consumer, whose "I" is perceived as a "system of desires and their satisfaction" (E. Fromm), and the principle of unhindered consumption now extends to the sphere of classical culture and all cultural heritage. Thus, the concept of discourse as sociocultural phenomenon gives Barnes the opportunity to show that the picture of the world within which modern man exists is essentially not the fruit of his own life experience, but is imposed on him from the outside by some technologists, "Concept Developers" as they are called in the novel.

At the same time, it is very characteristic that, while recreating some of the essential aspects of the postmodern state of the modern world and man, the writers themselves perceive their work as a series of procedures for creating texts outside the classical tradition of prose. We are talking about understanding creativity as a process of individual processing, combination and combination of individual already formed layers of material, parts of cultural texts, individual images and archetypes. In the second half of the twentieth century. It is this postmodern type of activity that temporarily becomes dominant in protecting, preserving and realizing the primordial human need and ability for cognition and creativity.

In this case, the internal interconnections of text fragments, images and motifs in the postmodern text are reproduced as a discourse, which is generally characterized as one of the evidence of the so-called “post-historical state” of artistic consciousness in the last third of the 20th century. In postmodernism, there is a consistent replacement of the real historical perspective of the transition from the past to the future by the process of deconstruction. individual painting world, whose integrity is entirely based on discourse, in the process of recreating which this picture of the world acquires a certain connection for the reader, sometimes opening the way for him to a new understanding of this world and his position in it. In other words, postmodernism draws new sources of artistry in recreating a picture of the world from various historical, socio-cultural and informational fragments. Thus, it is proposed to evaluate the existence and spiritual life of the individual not so much in social circumstances, but in the modern historical and cultural context.

At the same time, it is the informational and cultural aspect of the selection and organization of material that makes up the specifics of postmodernist texts, which look like layered system. Most often, three levels can be distinguished: artistic (figurative), informational and cultural. At the informational level, the use of extra-artistic text fragments, which are commonly called documents, is extremely characteristic of postmodernism. Narratives about the heroes and their lives are supplemented by heterogeneous material already processed and ordered for understanding. In some cases, parts of the texts may be some genuine formalized samples or their imitations: for example, diaries and diary entries, letters, files, protocols of trials, data from the field of sociology or psychology, excerpts from newspapers, quotations from books, including literary works of poetry and prose, written in various eras. All this is assembled into a literary text, contributes to the creation of the culturological context of the narrative and becomes part of the discourse that accompanies the description, which has the genre features of a novel at the plot-plot level and reveals the problems of the hero's individual fate.

This information and cultural layer most often represents the postmodern component of the artistic narrative. It is at this level that the combination of material from different eras occurs, when images, plots, symbols from the history of culture and art are correlated with a system of norms, values ​​and concepts at the level of modern theoretical knowledge and humanitarian issues. For example, in W. Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum" excerpts from scientific, philosophical, theological literature of different eras are given as epigraphs to individual chapters. Other examples of the intellectual saturation of postmodern prose with informational, cultural and theoretical material are various types of prefaces of the authors, having the character of independent essays. Such, for example, are “Notes on the margins of the Name of the Rose” by W. Eco or “Prologue” and “Conclusion” to the novel by J. Fowles “The Worm”, “Intermedia” between two chapters in the “History of the World in 10 ½ chapters” by J. Barnes. Following the model of a scientific treatise, J. Barnes ends his "History of the World" with a list of books that he used to describe the Middle Ages and the history of the creation of the canvas french artist Gericault "The Raft of the Medusa", and his novel "Flaubert's Parrot" is provided with a rather detailed chronology of the life of the French writer.

In these cases, it is important for the authors to prove the possibility of fruitful spiritual activity and intellectual freedom based on literary work. For example, A. Robbe-Grillet believes that contemporary writer cannot, as before, turn outwardly solid and real everyday life into a source of creativity and give its works the character of a totalitarian truth about the norms and laws of virtue and complete knowledge about the world. Now the author "does not oppose individual provisions of this or that system, no, he denies any system." Only in his inner world can he find a source of free inspiration and a basis for creating an individual picture of the world as a text without the all-encompassing pressure of the principle of pseudo-plausibility of form and content. Living in the hope of an intellectual and aesthetic liberation from the world, the modern writer pays the price by "feeling himself as a kind of shift, a crack in the usual orderly course of things and events ...".

Not without reason, in W. Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum" for the narrator, the computer becomes a symbol of unprecedented freedom in handling the material of creativity and, thereby, the intellectual liberation of the individual. “Oh happiness, oh dizziness of dissimilarity, oh, my ideal reader, overwhelmed by the ideal “insomnia” ... “The mechanism of one hundred percent spirituality. If you write with a quill pen, squeaking on greasy paper and dipping it into the inkwell every minute, thoughts run ahead of each other and the hand does not keep up with the thought; if you type on a typewriter, the letters get mixed up, it is impossible to keep up with the speed of your own synapses, a dull mechanical rhythm wins. But with him (perhaps with her?), the fingers dance as they please, the brain is combined with the keyboard, and you flutter in the middle of the sky, you have wings like a bird, you compose a psychological critical analysis of the sensations of the wedding night ... ". "Proust is like a child's spill compared to such a thing." Access to an unprecedented variety of knowledge and information from the most diverse areas of the socio-cultural past and present, the possibility of their simultaneous perception, free combination and comparison, the combination of pluralism of values ​​and norms with their conflict and totalitarian pressure on human consciousness - all determine the contradictory foundations of the postmodern method of creating artistic picture life. In practice, postmodern manifestations of the methodology of the creative process look like a clearly defined repertoire of various ways, techniques and "technologies" of processing the source material to create a multi-level text.

However, the appearance in the 1980s of a number of works of prose allows us to see that such features as citation, fragmentation, eclecticism and playfulness, far from exhaust the possibilities literary postmodernism. Such features of postmodern prose as the creation of a cultural, philosophical and artistic narrative (for example, a historical novel or a detective story) that do not correspond to rooted traditional ideas about prose genres have found their dominant significance. For example, “The Name of the Rose” (1980) and “Foucault’s Pendulum” (1989), “illustrated novel” “The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana” (2004) by U. Eco, historical novel- "Fantasy" by J. Fowles "Worm" (1985), "History of the World at 10 ½ chapters "(1989) J. Barnes, autobiographical trilogy A. Robbe-Grillet "Romanesque" (1985-1994). These works show that the choice of the postmodernist methodology of creativity is largely due to the desire to get away from the image of the virtual picture of the world imposed on a person from the outside in line with the rooted genre discourse, when the content and plot are determined by the generally accepted aesthetic, ideological and moral canons of modern society and mass culture. Therefore, Robbe-Grillet refused to mislead readers simply by extracting from the material of reality a form of "innocent and honest story." The writer, for example, sees untapped opportunities for creativity in the fact that in the imagination of an author writing about the war of 1914, historically accurate military episodes may well be combined with images of heroes from medieval epic tales and chivalric novels. According to J. Barnes, the artistic deconstruction of the world is necessary because, as a rule, “we invent our own story in order to bypass the facts that we do not want to accept” and, as a result, “we live in an atmosphere of universal triumph of untruth.” Only art as a result free from outside pressure creative activity a person can overcome the rigid plot of an ideologized picture of the world, reviving old themes, images and concepts through their individual rethinking, combination and interpretation. In The History of the World, the author set the task of overcoming the superficial plot and approximateness of the generally accepted panorama of the historical past and present. The transition from one “elegant plot” to another over a complex stream of events can only be justified by the fact that by limiting his knowledge of life to selective fragments connected into a certain plot, modern man moderates his panic and pain from the perception of chaos and cruelty of the real world.

On the other hand, it is precisely the transformation of actual historical or contemporary events and facts into piece of art remains the most important asset of a creative person. Barnes sees a significant difference in the understanding of fidelity to the "truth of life" in classical art and now, when the practice of imposing a wrong view of the world on people has taken root in modern mass culture through literature, newspapers and television. He draws attention to the obvious differences between the picturesque scene depicted on the painting by Géricault "The Raft of the Medusa" and the real ones. scary facts maritime disaster of this ship. Freeing his viewers from the contemplation of wounds, abrasions and scenes of cannibalism, Gericault created an outstanding work of art that carries a charge of energy that liberates the inner world of the audience through the contemplation of the powerful figures of suffering and hopeful characters. In the modern post-industrial era, in the state of postmodernity, literature is put essentially eternal question: Will art be able to preserve and increase its intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic potential for comprehending and depicting the world and man.

Therefore, it is no coincidence that in postmodernism of the 80s. attempts to create literary texts containing a modern concept of life turn out to be associated with the development of humanistic problems, which was one of the main assets of classical literature. Therefore, in the novel by J. Fowles "The Worm", the episodes of the emergence in England of the 18th century. one of the unorthodox religious movements is interpreted as a story about how "how the sprout of personality painfully breaks through the hard stone soil of an irrational society bound by traditions." Thus, in recent decades 20th century postmodernism reveals a clear tendency to return to the field of art and creativity of a person as an intrinsically valuable person, freed from the pressure of society and generally accepted ideological and worldview canons and principles. postmodernism creativity cultural text

Used Books

1. Kuzmichev I. K. Literary criticism of the twentieth century. Crisis of methodology. Nizhny Novgorod: 1999.

Zatonsky DV Modernism and postmodernism. Kharkov: 2000.

Foreign literature. 1994. No. 1.

Vladimirova T. E. Called into communication: Russian discourse in intercultural communication. M.: 2010.

Bart R. Selected works: Semiotics: Poetics. M., 1989.

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Term "postmodernism" still causes controversy here and in the West. Introduced into circulation in the sixties, in a purely historical significance it refers to the culture of the West after the Second World War, to post-industrial society, to the era of consumer capitalism, new technologies, electronic communications. All this destabilizes and modifies traditional cultural mechanisms and, which is especially important for literature, leads to the loss of the privileged position of the book, text, work. The processes taking place in the culture of the postmodern era are described by scientists in different ways. Some consider postmodernism a continuation and development of modernism, and postmodern literature turns out to be simply a continuation of the trends of modernist literature on a new historical stage, then postmodernism is simply what follows after modernism. Others see in the culture of postmodernism a break with the classical modernism of the first half of the century, others are busy looking for writers in the past whose work already carries the ideas and principles of modernism (with this approach, the postmodernists turn out to be a French writer late XVIII century, the Marquis de Sade, the American poet Ezra Pound, who is usually ranked among the classics of modernism, and many others).

One way or another, the term "postmodernism" itself indicates the connection of this phenomenon with the culture of the previous era, and postmodernism is aware of itself in relation to modernism. At the same time, modernism itself is subject to constant revision, and postmodernist theorists propose next system oppositions that describe the difference between modernism of the first half of the twentieth century and postmodernism. The following table is taken from the work of the American theorist I. Hassan "The Culture of Postmodernism" (1985).

Postmodernist theorists argue that postmodernism rejects the elitism and formal experimentation inherent in modernism, the tragedy in experiencing alienation. If modernism was the dehumanization of art, postmodernism is experiencing the dehumanization of the planet, the end of history, the end of man. If Joyce, Kafka, and Proust are all-powerful masters of the artistic worlds, they still believe in the ability of the word to express the essential truth about the human condition, in the eternal existence of a perfect work of art, then the postmodern artist knows that the word and language are subjective and, at best, can reflect some moments of an individual point of view, and a book bought in an airport kiosk, will be read during the flight, left at the exit of the plane, and it is unlikely that the reader will ever remember about it. Modernist literature still depicted the tragedy of the earthly existence of the individual, that is, it retained the heroic principle; the postmodernist writer expresses the weariness of a person from life's struggle, the emptiness of existence. In short, in the era of modernism, the art of the word still retained a high value status in society, the artist could still feel like a creator and a prophet, and in postmodernism, art becomes optional, anarchic, ironic through and through.

At the heart of the literature of postmodernism is the concept of the game, far removed from romantic irony. The game in postmodernism fills everything and absorbs itself, leading to the loss of the purpose and meaning of the game. Postmodernists say that the time has come to abandon the traditional categories of the beautiful and the authentic, because we live in a world of one-day fakes, fake data, in a world of imitations. The shock of mankind from new historical circumstances that cannot be comprehended by consciousness alone (the Holocaust - the extermination of Jews during the Second World War; application nuclear weapons; environmental pollution; the ultimate leveling of the individual in modern Western democracies), leads to the loss of initial guidelines and a total revision of the value system, the very ways of thinking. The idea of ​​a single world order is being lost, and, consequently, of a single center of any system, any concept. It becomes impossible to distinguish the important from the unimportant, to highlight the main meaning of any concept.

The idea of ​​the absence of absolutes, finite truths, the idea that reality is given to us only in the differences between its phenomena, was most consistently developed by the French post-structuralists Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Francois Lyotard. These philosophers preached the rejection of all tradition classical philosophy, revision of the whole system scientific knowledge, and their unusually complex, "breakthrough" work, the final assessment will still give time.

The same exhaustion of rebellion, fatigue characterizes the attitude of postmodernists towards tradition. They do not reject it outright, as their predecessors did: the postmodernist writer can be compared to a shopper in a supermarket of world history and world literature, who rolls his cart down the aisles, looking around and dumping in it whatever catches his attention or curiosity. Postmodernism is a product of such a late stage in the development of Western civilization, when "everything has been said" and new ideas in literature are impossible; moreover, postmodern writers themselves very often teach literature at universities or are critics, literary theorists, so they easily introduce all these latest literary theories directly into their works, immediately parody and beat them.

In postmodern works, the degree of self-awareness, self-criticism within the text rises sharply; the writer does not hide from the reader how he achieves this or that effect, offers the reader for discussion the choices that the author of the text faces, and this discussion with the reader also takes on the character of a sophisticated game.

All the major writers of the late 20th century were, to one degree or another, affected by postmodernism, which is equally evident in the old national literatures West (French "new novelists" - Nathalie Sarrot, Henri Robbe-Grillet, Claude Simon; Germans - Günther Grass and Patrick Suskind; Americans - John Bart and Thomas Pynchon; British - Julian Barnes and Graham Swift, Salman Rushdie; Italians Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco), and in the heyday of the Latin American novel (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Julio Cortazar), and in the work of Eastern European writers (Milan Kundera, Agota Christophe, Victor Pelevin).

Let us turn to two examples of postmodern literature, which were chosen for purely pragmatic reasons: both belong to the greatest masters of postmodernism, are small in size and are available in Russian translation.