In creativity Griboyedov, and especially Pushkin, develops the method of critical realism. But it turned out to be stable only with Pushkin, who went forward and higher. Griboedov, on the other hand, did not hold on to the height achieved in Woe from Wit. In the history of Russian literature, he is an example of the author of one classical work. And the poets of the so-called "Pushkin galaxy" (Delvig, Yazykov, Boratynsky) were not able to pick up this discovery of his. Russian literature was still romantic.

Only ten years later, when "Masquerade", "Inspector", "Arabesques" and "Mirgorod" were created, and Pushkin was at the zenith of fame ("Queen of Spades", " Captain's daughter”), in this chordal coincidence of three different geniuses of realism, the principles of the realistic method were consolidated in its sharply individual forms revealing his inner potentialities. The main types and genres of creativity were covered, the emergence of realistic prose was especially significant, which he recorded as a sign of the times Belinsky in the article "On the Russian story and the stories of Gogol" (1835).

Realism looks different for its three founders.

AT artistic concept world, Pushkin the realist is dominated by the idea of ​​the Law, of the patterns that determine the state of civilization, social structures, the place and significance of a person, his self-reliance and connection with the whole, the possibility of authorial sentences. Pushkin is looking for laws in educational theories, in moral universal values, in historical role Russian nobility, in the Russian popular revolt. Finally, in Christianity and the Gospel. Hence - the universal acceptability, harmony of Pushkin with all the tragedy of personal fate.

At Lermontov- on the contrary: sharp enmity with the divine world order, with the laws of society, lies and hypocrisy, all kinds of upholding the rights of the individual.

At Gogol- a world far from any ideas about the law, vulgar everyday life, in which all concepts of honor and morality, conscience are mutilated, - in a word, Russian reality, worthy of grotesque ridicule: "to blame the mirror forever, if the face is crooked."

However, in this case, realism turned out to be the lot of geniuses, literature remained romantic ( Zagoskin, Lazhechnikov, Kozlov, Veltman, V. Odoevsky, Venediktov, Marlinsky, N. Polevoy, Zhadovskaya, Pavlova, Krasov, Kukolnik, I. Panaev, Pogorelsky, Podolinsky, Polezhaev and others.).

The theater was arguing about Mochalova in Karatygin, that is, between romantics and classicists.

And only ten years later, that is, around 1845, in the works of young writers " natural school» ( Nekrasov, Turgenev, Goncharov, Herzen, Dostoevsky and many others) realism finally wins, it becomes mass creativity. "Natural School" is the true reality of Russian literature. If one of the followers is now trying to renounce it, belittle the importance of organizational forms and its consolidation, the influence Belinsky, is profoundly mistaken. We are assured that there was no “school”, but there was a “band” through which various stylistic currents passed. But what is a "band"? We will again come to the concept of “school”, which was not at all distinguished by the uniformity of talents, it just had different stylistic currents (compare, for example, Turgenev and Dostoevsky), two powerful internal streams: realistic and properly naturalistic (V. Dahl, Bupsov , Grebenka, Grigorovich, I. Panaev, Kulchitsky and others).

With the death of Belinsky, the "school" did not die, although it lost its theorist and inspirer. It grew into a powerful literary trend, its main figures - realist writers - in the second half of the 19th century became the glory of Russian literature. Those who did not formally belong to the “school” and did not survive the preliminary stage of romantic development joined this powerful trend. Saltykov, Pisemsky, Ostrovsky, S. Aksakov, L. Tolstoy.

Throughout the second half of the 19th century, the realistic trend reigned supreme in Russian literature. His dominance partly captures the beginning of the 20th century, if we keep in mind Chekhov and L. Tolstoy. Realism as a whole can be qualified as critical, socially accusatory. Honest, truthful Russian literature is different and could not exist in a country of serfdom and autocracy.

Some theorists, disillusioned with socialist realism, consider it a sign of good taste to abandon the definition of "critical" in relation to the old classical realism XIX century. But the criticism of the realism of the last century is more evidence that it had nothing in common with the obsequious “what would you like?” on which the Bolshevik socialist realism who ruined Soviet literature.

It is another matter if we raise the question of the internal typological varieties of Russian critical realism. At his ancestors - Pushkin, Lermontov and Gogol- realism appeared in its various types, just as it was also diverse among the realist writers of the second half of the 19th century.

It lends itself most easily to thematic classification: works from the nobility, merchant, bureaucratic, peasant life- from Turgenev to Zlatovratsky. More or less clear genre classification: family-household, chronicle genre - from S.T. Aksakov to Garin-Mikhailovsky; estate romance with the same elements of family and domestic love relationship, only at a more mature age stage of the development of heroes, in a more generalized typification, with a weak ideological element. In Ordinary History, the clashes between the two Aduevs are age related, not ideological. There was also the genre of the socio-social novel, such as Oblomov and Fathers and Sons. But the angles of consideration of problems in them are different. In Oblomov, good inclinations in Ilyusha, when he was still a frisky child, and their burial as a result of nobility, doing nothing, are considered in stages. At Turgenev's famous novel- "ideological" clash of "fathers" and "children", "principles" and "nihilism", the superiority of commoners over the nobles, new trends of the times.

The most difficult task is to establish the typology and specific modifications of realism on a methodological basis. All writers of the second half of the 19th century are realists. But into what kinds is realism itself differentiated?

One can distinguish writers whose realism accurately reflects the forms of life itself. Such are Turgenev and Goncharov and all those who came out of the "natural school". Nekrasov also has many of these life forms. But in his best poems - "Frost - Red Nose", "Who Lives Well in Rus'" - he is very inventive, resorting to folklore, fantasy, parables, parabolas and allegory. The plot motivations that connect the episodes in the last poem are purely fabulous, the characteristics of the heroes - seven men-truth-seekers - are built on stable folklore repetitions. In the poem "Contemporaries" Nekrasov has a torn composition, the modeling of images is purely grotesque.

Herzen's critical realism is completely unique: there are no forms of life here, but "a heartfelt humanistic thought." Belinsky noted the Voltaire warehouse of his talent: "the talent has gone into the mind." This mind turns out to be a generator of images, a biography of personalities, the combination of which, according to the principle of contrast and fusion, reveals the “beauty of the universe”. These properties appeared already in "Who is to blame?". But in full power Herzen's pictorial humanistic thought was expressed in "The Past and Thoughts". Herzen clothed the most abstract concepts in living images: for example, idealism forever, but unsuccessfully, trampled materialism "with its disembodied feet." Tyufyaev and Nicholas I, Granovsky and Belinsky, Dubelt and Benckendorff appear as human types and types of thought, state and creative. These qualities of talent make Herzen related to Dostoevsky, the author of "ideological" novels. But Herzen's portraits are strictly painted according to social characteristics, go back to "forms of life", while Dostoevsky's ideology is more abstract, more infernal and hidden in the depths of the personality.

Another variety of realism appears extremely brightly in Russian literature - satirical, grotesque, such as we find in Gogol and Shchedrin. But not only them. Satire and grotesque exist in individual images of Ostrovsky (Murzavetsky, Gradoboev, Khlynov), Sukhovo-Kobylin (Varravin, Tarelkin), Leskov (Levsha, Onopry Peregud) and others. Grotesque is not simple hyperbole or fantasy. This is a combination in images, types, plots into a single whole of what is in natural life does not happen, but what is possible in the artistic imagination as a technique in order to identify a certain social and social pattern. In Gogol, most often - the quirks of an inert mind, the folly of the prevailing situation, the inertia of habit, the routine of generally accepted opinion, the illogical, taking the form of a logical one: Khlestakov’s lies about his life in St. Petersburg, his characteristics of the mayor and officials of the county outback in a letter to Tryapichkin. The very possibility of Chichikov's commercial tricks with dead souls is based on the fact that in feudal reality it was easy to buy and sell living souls. Shchedrin draws his grotesque devices from the world of the bureaucratic apparatus, whose quirks he has thoroughly studied. At ordinary people it is impossible that instead of brains, either minced meat or an automatic organ would end up in their heads. But in the minds of Foolov's pompadours, everything is possible. In Swift's way, he "delimits" the phenomenon, he draws the impossible as possible (the debate between the Pig and the Truth, the boy "in pants" and the boy "without pants"). Shchedrin skillfully reproduces the casuistry of bureaucratic chicanery, the absurd logic of the reasoning of self-confident despots, all those governors, heads of departments, head clerks, quarters. Their empty philosophy is firmly established: “Let the law stand in the closet”, “The layman is always to blame for something”, “The bribe finally died and the kush was born in its place”, “Enlightenment is useful only when it has an unenlightened character”, “ Raz-d-dawn, I won’t stand it!”, “Slap him.” Psychologically, the verbiage of bureaucrats-planners, the mellifluous idle talk of Yudushka Golovlev are reproduced in a penetrating way.

Approximately in the 60-70s, another variety of critical realism was formed, which can be conditionally called philosophical-religious, ethical-psychological. We are talking primarily about Dostoevsky and L. Tolstoy. Of course, both of them have many amazingeveryday paintings, thoroughly developed in the forms of life. In "The Brothers Karamazov" and "Anna Karenina" we will find a "family thought". And yet, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy have a certain “teaching” in the foreground, whether it will be “soiling” or “simplification”. From this prism, realism is enhanced in its piercing power.

But one should not think that philosophical, psychological realism is found only in these two giants of Russian literature. On another artistic level, without the development of philosophical and ethical doctrines to the scale of a holistic religious teaching, in specific forms it is also found in the work of Garshin, in his works such as “Four Days”, “Red Flower”, clearly written for a specific thesis. The properties of this type of realism also appear among populist writers: in the “Power of the Earth” G.I. Uspensky, in Zlatovratsky's Foundations. Leskov’s “difficult” talent is the same in nature, of course, with a certain preconceived idea of ​​portraying his “righteous”, “enchanted wanderers”, who loved to choose talented natures from the people, endowed by the grace of God, tragically doomed to death in their spontaneous existence.

As you already know, at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, the aesthetic system of Russian realism was significantly updated. Traditional realism, in the form in which it had developed in the previous century, was engulfed by crisis phenomena. But the crisis was fruitful in this case, and realistic aesthetics came out of it renewed. The realism of the 20th century changed the traditional system of character motivation. The understanding of the environment that forms the personality has expanded to the utmost: history, global historical processes now acted as typical circumstances. The man (and the literary hero) was now face to face with history itself. This affected the confidence of realist artists in the individual. At the same time, in the process of artistic assimilation of the changing world, the dangers that confronted the personality were revealed. The most important thing for a person turned out to be under threat: his private being.

In the 20th century, the right to private life was questioned. The man was drawn into the cycle of reality historical events- often against own will. History itself, as it were, formed typical circumstances, the aggressive influence of which the literary hero was subjected to.

In the literature of the 19th century, the right of private existence was declared as natural and inalienable: after all, it was the “extra person” like Onegin or Pechorin who asserted it with his fate and social behavior; Ilya Ilyich Oblomov claimed it, preferring a sofa in a house on Gorokhovaya Street to the prospect of public service; it was claimed by Fyodor Ivanovich Lavretsky, who retired to a noble nest from the hardships that befell him.

M. Gorky played an important role in the development of realism at the beginning of the 20th century. Perhaps for the first time in Russian literary history this writer has lost his literary hero the right to be Robinson - to be in society and at the same time outside of society. historical time became in the Gorky epic the most important factor affecting character. Interaction with him - sometimes positive, sometimes destructive - none of his heroes could avoid. Tolstoy also had characters who, as it were, did not notice the surroundings, stepping up the career ladder: Bergi, Drubetsky, Helen. But if the Bergis and Kuragins could close themselves within the limits of their social clan, then Gorky no longer left such a right to his heroes. His characters cannot escape reality, even if they really want to.

Klim Samghin, the hero of the four-volume epic "The Life of Klim Samghin", experiences the oppressive force of social circumstances, real violence historical process, wars, revolutions. However, this historical "violence", studied by the writer, just became a factor that modified realism, giving it new and very powerful impulses of self-renewal. Having survived the painful crisis of the turn of the century, realism did not at all give up its positions in literature; on the contrary, it led to amazing artistic discoveries, without which not only Russian, but also European culture new century. Ho realism has become completely different than in the last century. The renewal of realism manifested itself primarily in the interpretation of the primordial for this literary direction the question of the interaction of characters and circumstances.

This interaction becomes truly bidirectional. Now not only the character experiences the influence of the environment: the possibility and even the necessity of a “reverse” influence - the hero on the environment - are affirmed. A new concept of personality is being formed: a person who is not reflective, but creative, who realizes himself not in the sphere of private intrigue, but in the public arena.

The prospects for a good re-creation of the world opened up before the hero and before the artist. But these hopes were not always destined to be realized. Perhaps future historians of Russian literature will call the period of the 1920s and 1930s a period of unfulfilled hopes, which were bitterly disappointed in the second half of the century. Asserting the rights of the individual to transform the world, new literature It also asserted the rights of the individual to violence in relation to this world - even if it was carried out for good purposes.

The bottom line is that revolution was conceived as the most accessible and natural form of this transformation. The next logical step was to justify revolutionary violence, not only in relation to another person, but also in relation to common ground being. Violence was justified by a high goal: on the ruins of the old unjust world, it was supposed to create a new, ideal world, a world based on goodness and justice.

Such a change in realistic aesthetics was associated with an attempt by realism to adapt to the worldview of a person of the 20th century, to new philosophical, aesthetic, and simply everyday realities. And renewed realism, as we will conditionally call it, coped with this task, became adequate to the thinking of a man of the 20th century. In the 1930s, he reached his artistic peak: the epics of M. Gorky “The Life of Klim Samgin”, M. Sholokhov “The Quiet Don”, A. Tolstoy “Walking Through the Pains”, novels by L. Leonov, K. Fedin and other realists appeared .

But next to renewed realism in the 1920s, an aesthetic different from it arises, genetically, however, also ascending to realism. In the 1920s, it did not yet dominate, but actively developed, as it were, in the shadow of a renewed realism, the formation of which gives undoubted artistic results. But it was the new direction that brought to literature, first of all, the anti-humanistic pathos of violence against the individual, society, the desire to destroy the whole world around him in the name of the revolutionary ideal.

Research functions, traditional for realism, give way to purely illustrative functions, when the mission of literature is seen in the creation of a certain ideal model social and natural world. Belief in tomorrow's ideal is so strong that a person amazed utopian idea, is ready to sacrifice the past and the present only because they do not correspond to the ideal of the future. Principles are changing artistic typification: this is no longer a study of typical characters in their interaction with a realistic environment, but the approval of normative ones (should be from the standpoint of a certain social ideal) characters in normative circumstances. This aesthetic system, fundamentally different from the new realism, we will call normativism.

The paradox of the situation was that neither public consciousness, nor in the literary-critical everyday life, these two tendencies did not differ. On the contrary, both renewed realism and normativism were comprehended in an indivisible way - as a single Soviet literature. In 1934, this indistinguishability was consolidated by the general term - socialist realism. Since then, two different aesthetic systems, normative and realistic, in many respects opposed to each other, were conceived as an ideological and aesthetic unity.

Moreover, sometimes they coexisted in the work of the same author or even in the same work. An example of the latter is A. Fadeev's novel "The Rout" (1927).

Like Gorky's Pavel Vlasov, Fadeev's favorite characters are on the way to a moral rebirth. Having seen only bad and dirty things in life, Morozka joined the partisan detachment, as he himself says, not for the sake of the commander's beautiful eyes, but in order to build a better, righteous life. By the end of the novel, he gets rid of his inherent anarchism, for the first time he experiences an unexpected feeling of love for Vara. The team has become dear to him, and Frost, without hesitation, gives his life for his comrades, warning the detachment of the danger. The scout Metelitsa, who believed that people were deeply indifferent to him, stands up for the shepherd boy and, before his death, discovers for himself that he loves the people around him.

A. Fadeev trusts the role of an active educator of the masses to the detachment commander Levinson, behind whose frail appearance he sees spiritual strength, conviction in the need to transform the world in a revolutionary way.

It is quite traditional for Russian realistic literature that A. Fadeev debunks the individualist Mechi-ka. Mechik's romantic maximalism, his soaring above reality, his constant search for the exceptional - whether in private or social life - lead him to deny real life, show inattention to the essential, inability to appreciate it and see beauty. So he rejects Varya's love in the name of a beautiful stranger in the photograph, rejects the friendship of ordinary partisans and, as a result, remains a romantic in splendid isolation. In essence, the author punishes him with betrayal precisely for this (as well as, however, for his social alienation from ordinary partisans).

It is characteristic that the strongest passages of the novel contain a psychological analysis of the behavior of the characters. He accidentally criticized unanimously noted the influence on the young Soviet writer traditions of L. Tolstoy.

At the same time, the idea of ​​"social humanism", when in the name of highest goal it is possible to sacrifice a person, a personality, brings A. Fadeev's novel closer to normativism.

If the revolution is being made in the name and for the working people, then why does the arrival of Levinson's detachment promise starvation to the Korean peasant and his entire family? Because the highest social necessity (to feed the detachment and continue the journey to their own) is more important than "abstract humanism": the life of the members of the detachment means more than the life of one Korean (or even his entire family). Yes, there is arithmetic! - I want to exclaim after Raskolnikov.

Dr. Stashinsky and Levinson come to the idea of ​​the need to finish off the wounded partisan Frolov. His death is inevitable: the wound is fatal, and it is impossible to carry him with you - this will slow down the movement of the detachment and can kill everyone. Leave - get to the Japanese and take even more terrible death. Facilitating his hero's decision, Fadeev forces Frolov himself to take poison, which looks almost like suicide.

In this part of the novel, Fadeev broke with humanistic tradition Russian realism, declaring a fundamentally new ethical system based on a rigidly rational attitude towards both man and the world as a whole.

The ending of the novel also sounds less ambiguous. Levinson will live "and fulfill his duties." In order to gather another detachment from the distant people whom he sees after the death of the detachment, people working on the ground, threshing bread. It seems to Fadeev that Levinson’s idea is indisputable “to make [these peasants] their own, close people, like those eighteen who silently followed” and lead them along the roads civil war- to a new defeat, because in such a war there are no winners and the final general defeat is inevitable.

However, it is possible that the artist triumphed in Fadeev-politics. After all, the novel is called "Defeat", not "Victory".

If A. Fadeev's book bears both the features of genuine realism and normativism, then Y. Libedinsky's story "The Week" (1922) was written exclusively in the traditions of normativism and utopianism. One of its heroes, the Bolshevik Stelmakhov, utters the following monologue-confession: “I hated the revolution before I fell in love ... And only then, after I was beaten for Bolshevik agitation, after I was in Moscow, in October , stormed the Kremlin and shot the cadets, when I was not yet in the party and did not understand anything politically, then in moments of fatigue I began to imagine a distant rest ahead, that's how the kingdom of heaven for a Christian, distant, but certainly promised, if not to me, then to the future people, my sons or grandchildren... This is what communism will be... I don’t know what it will be like...”

The heroes of the story give all their strength to the service of a beautiful, but completely obscure mythical future. This idea gives them the strength to step over natural human feelings such as pity for defeated enemy, disgust at cruelty, fear of murder: “But when my head is sick from fatigue or work is going badly, or someone needs to be shot, then I will think in my mind my warm word - communism, and exactly who will wave a red handkerchief to me.”

Behind this monstrous confession, which the hero and the author perceive as sublimely romantic, stands a utopian worldview in its most terrible and cruel form. It was it that became the ideological justification for socialist realism.

Reality in the new aesthetics was perceived as a hostile, inert, conservative beginning, in need of a radical alteration. The highest value for the writer of the new direction was the future, ideal and devoid of contradictions, existing, of course, only in the project. This project was also poorly detailed, but justified any violence against the present.

How was the formation of a new view of the world in socialist realism? First of all, it should be noted that in the literature of the 1920s a new concept of personality emerged. The inclusion of a person in the historical process, the assertion of his direct contacts with the "macro environment" paradoxically devalues ​​the hero, he, as it were, loses self-worth and turns out to be significant only insofar as it contributes to historical movement forward. Such a devaluation is possible because of the finalist concept of history, which is more and more spreading in society. History in this interpretation acquires meaning and significance only insofar as it moves towards a "golden age", localized somewhere far ahead.

Moreover, the hero himself is aware of the absolute value of the future and the very relative value of his own personality, he is ready to consciously and completely calmly sacrifice himself. extreme form such an anti-humanist position was embodied (quite sympathetically in relation to the ideas of the hero) by the writer A. Tarasov-Rodionov in the story “Chocolate”, which tells how the Chekist Zudin decides to sacrifice his life, but not to cast even a small shadow on the uniform of the Cheka. Accused of bribery, Zudin was sentenced to death. And for his comrades, confident in his innocence, but nevertheless sentenced to death, and for himself, this decision seems to be the only true one: it is better to sacrifice life than to give even the slightest reason for philistine rumors.

The romanticization of the future, its sharp opposition to the present, and ultimately the creation of the myth of the "golden age" are the most important features of the aesthetics of socialist realism. In the most naked form, this idea was stated by A. V. Lunacharsky in the article “Socialist Realism”.

Only the future, from the point of view of the Marxist theoretician, is the only worthy subject of depiction. “Imagine,” says A. V. Lunacharsky, as if substantiating the aesthetic principles of the “golden age,” that a house is being built, and when it is built, it will be a magnificent palace. But it is still unfinished, and you will draw it in this form and say: “Here is your socialism”, but there is no roof. You will, of course, be a realist, you will tell the truth: but it is immediately evident that this truth is in fact not true. The socialist truth can only be told by those who understand what kind of house is being built, how it is being built, who understands that it will have a roof. A person who does not understand development will never see the truth, because the truth is not like itself, it does not sit still, the truth flies, the truth is development, the truth is a conflict, the truth is a struggle, the truth is tomorrow, and it is necessary to see it in this way, and whoever does not see it in this way is a bourgeois realist, and therefore a pessimist, a whiner and often a swindler and a falsifier, and in any case a voluntary or involuntary counter-revolutionary and a pest.

This quote is very important for understanding the basic idea of ​​socialist realism. First of all, new functions of art compared to traditional realism are affirmed: not the study of real conflicts and contradictions of the time, but the creation of a model of an ideal future, a model of a “magnificent palace”. The research, cognitive function of literature goes to the background or even to the third plan; the main function is to promote what kind of great house will someday be built on the site of real, now existing dwellings.

These ideas, immediately embedded in the program of the new direction, awakening and developing more and more actively, turned out to be a kind of “cancer cells” of the new art. It was they who led to the rebirth of new realism into a normative non-realistic aesthetics during the 1920s and 1950s. It is the order to see not reality, but a project, not what is, but what should be, that leads to the loss realistic principles typification: the artist no longer studies characters, but creates them in accordance with the prescribed norm and thereby turns them into primitive social masks (enemy, friend, communist, layman, middle peasant, kulak, specialist, pest, etc.).

Normativity transforms the very concept of artistic truth. The monopoly on the truth now belongs to those who can see the "truth tomorrow". And the one who cannot do this depicts reality as it is - "often a swindler and a falsifier, and in any case a voluntary or involuntary counter-revolutionary and saboteur." Normativity is interpreted not only as an aesthetic, but also as a political requirement.

Thus, art turns out to be a tool for creating an artistic myth capable of organizing society and distracting it from the real problems of life. Its goal is precisely defined: it is violence against reality with the aim of its reorganization, "education of a new person", because "art has not only the ability to orient, but also to form." Later, in 1934, this provision would be included in an amended form in the Charter of the Writers' Union of the USSR: "the task of ideologically reshaping and educating working people in the spirit of socialism" will be declared as the most important for socialist realism.

A special place in normative aesthetics was occupied by the question of the creative freedom of the artist. "Socialist realism provides artistic creativity an exceptional opportunity to display creative initiative, to choose diverse forms, styles, genres,” the Charter of the Writers' Union said. Characteristically, the artist's freedom is localized only in the sphere of form, but not in content. The content sphere is strictly regulated by ideas about the functions of art, which are seen in the creation of an idealized image of the future. Such a super-task determines the style specific work, all his poetry. The conflict is predetermined, the ways of its resolution. pre-scheduled social roles heroes: a leader, a specialist, a communist, a sneaking enemy, a woman gaining her human dignity...

...for me, imagination has always beenhigher than existence, and the strongest loveI experienced in a dream.
L.N. Andreev

Realism, as is known, appeared in Russian literature in the first half of the 19th century and throughout the century existed within the framework of its critical current. However, symbolism, which declared itself in the 1890s, is the first modernist direction in Russian literature - sharply opposed himself to realism. Following symbolism, other non-realist movements arose. This inevitably led to qualitative transformation of realism as a method of depicting reality.

The symbolists expressed the opinion that realism only glides over the surface of life and is not able to penetrate the essence of things. Their position was not infallible, but since then began in Russian art confrontation and mutual influence of modernism and realism.

It is noteworthy that modernists and realists, outwardly striving for delimitation, internally had a common aspiration for a deep, essential knowledge of the world. It is not surprising, therefore, that the writers of the turn of the century, who considered themselves realists, understood how narrow the framework of consistent realism was, and began to master syncretic forms of narration that made it possible to combine realistic objectivity with romantic, impressionistic and symbolist principles.

If the realists of the nineteenth century close attention paid social human nature, then the realists of the twentieth century correlated this social nature with psychological, subconscious processes expressed in the clash of reason and instinct, intellect and feelings. Simply put, the realism of the early twentieth century pointed to the complexity of human nature, which is by no means reducible only to his social being. It is no coincidence that Kuprin, and Bunin, and Gorky have a plan of events, environment barely marked, but a refined analysis of the character's mental life is given. The author's gaze is always directed beyond the limits of the characters' spatial and temporal existence. Hence - the appearance of folklore, biblical, cultural motifs and images, which made it possible to expand the boundaries of the narrative, to attract the reader to co-creation.

At the beginning of the 20th century, within the framework of realism, four currents:

1) critical realism continues the traditions of the 19th century and involves an emphasis on the social nature of phenomena (at the beginning of the 20th century, these were the works of A.P. Chekhov and L.N. Tolstoy),

2) socialist realism - the term of Ivan Gronsky, denoting the image of reality in its historical and revolutionary development, the analysis of conflicts in the context of the class struggle, and the actions of heroes - in the context of benefit for humanity ("Mother" by M. Gorky, and later - most of the works of Soviet writers),

3) mythological realism formed in ancient literature, however, in the 20th century under M.R. began to understand the image and understanding of reality through the prism of well-known mythological plots (in foreign literature a prime example serves as the novel by J. Joyce "Ulysses", and in Russian literature of the early 20th century - the story "Judas Iscariot" by L.N. Andreeva)

4) naturalism involves depicting reality with the utmost plausibility and detail, often unsightly ("Pit" by A.I. Kuprin, "Sanin" by M.P. Artsybashev, "Notes of a Doctor" by V.V. Veresaev)

The listed features of Russian realism caused numerous disputes about creative method writers who remained faithful to realistic traditions.

Bitter starts with neo-romantic prose and goes on to create social plays and novels, becomes the ancestor of socialist realism.

Creation Andreeva was always in a borderline state: the modernists considered him a "contemptible realist", and for the realists, in turn, he was a "suspicious symbolist". At the same time, it is generally accepted that his prose is realistic, and his dramaturgy gravitates towards modernism.

Zaitsev, showing interest in the microstates of the soul, created impressionistic prose.

Attempts by critics to define the artistic method Bunin led to the fact that the writer himself compared himself to a suitcase pasted over with a huge number of labels.

The complex worldview of realist writers, the multidirectional poetics of their works testified to the qualitative transformation of realism as artistic method. Thanks to a common goal - the search for the highest truth - at the beginning of the 20th century there was a convergence of literature and philosophy, which was outlined even in the work of Dostoevsky and L. Tolstoy.

Introduction

A new type of realism takes shape in the 19th century. This is critical realism. It differs significantly from the Renaissance and from the Enlightenment. Its heyday in the West is associated with the names of Stendhal and Balzac in France, Dickens, Thackeray in England, in Russia - A. Pushkin, N. Gogol, I. Turgenev, F. Dostoevsky, L. Tolstoy, A. Chekhov.

critical realism redefine the relationship between man and environment. Human character is revealed in organic connection with social circumstances. The subject of deep social analysis was inner world of man, critical realism simultaneously becomes psychological.

Development of Russian realism

A feature of the historical aspect of the development of Russia mid-nineteenth century is the situation after the Decembrist uprising, as well as the emergence secret societies and circles, the appearance of works by A.I. Herzen, a circle of Petrashevites. This time is characterized by the beginning of the raznochin movement in Russia, as well as the acceleration of the process of formation of world artistic culture, including Russian. realism Russian creativity social

Creativity of writers - realists

AT Russia XIX century is a period of exceptional strength and scope of the development of realism. In the second half of the century, the artistic conquests of realism brought Russian literature to international arena, conquer her world recognition. The richness and diversity of Russian realism allow us to speak of its various forms.

Its formation is associated with the name of Pushkin, who brought Russian literature to a wide path of depicting "the fate of the people, the fate of man." In the conditions of the accelerated development of Russian literature, Pushkin, as it were, makes up for its former lag, paves new paths in almost all genres and, with its universality and optimism, turns out to be akin to the talents of the Renaissance.

Griboedov and Pushkin, and after them Lermontov and Gogol, comprehensively reflected the life of the Russian people in their work.

Writers of the new direction have in common that for them there are no high and low objects for life. Everything that occurs in reality becomes the subject of their image. Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol populated their works with heroes "of the lower, and middle, and upper classes." They truly revealed their inner world.

Writers realistic direction they saw in life and showed in their works that "a person living in society depends on it both in the way of thinking and in the way of his action."

Unlike the romantics, writers of the realistic trend show the character of a literary hero not only as an individual phenomenon, but also as a result of certain, historically established social relations. Therefore, the character of the hero realistic work always historical.

A special place in the history of Russian realism belongs to L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. It was thanks to them that the Russian realistic novel acquired world significance. Them psychological skill, penetration into the "dialectics" of the soul opened the way for the artistic searches of writers of the 20th century. Realism in the 20th century throughout the world bears the imprint of the aesthetic discoveries of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. It is important to emphasize that Russian realism of the 19th century did not develop in isolation from the world historical and literary process.

The revolutionary liberation movement played an important role in the realistic cognition of social reality. Until the first powerful uprisings of the working class, the essence of bourgeois society, its class structure, remained largely a mystery. The revolutionary struggle of the proletariat made it possible to remove the seal of mystery from the capitalist system, to expose its contradictions. Therefore, it is quite natural that it was in the 30s and 40s XIX years century in Western Europe is the establishment of realism in literature and art. Exposing the vices of feudal and bourgeois society, the realist writer finds beauty in objective reality itself. Him positive hero not exalted above life (Bazarov in Turgenev, Kirsanov, Lopukhov in Chernyshevsky, etc.). As a rule, it reflects the aspirations and interests of the people, the views of the advanced circles of the bourgeois and noble intelligentsia. Realistic art bridges the gap between ideal and reality, which is characteristic of romanticism. Of course, in the works of some realists there are indefinite romantic illusions where we are talking about the embodiment of the future (“The dream of a funny man” by Dostoevsky, “What to do?” Chernyshevsky ...), and in this case we can rightfully speak of the presence in their work of romantic tendencies. Critical realism in Russia was the result of the convergence of literature and art with life.

Critical realism took a step forward along the path of democratization of literature also in comparison with the work of the 18th century enlighteners. He captured the contemporary reality much wider. Serf-owning modernity entered the works of critical realists not only as the arbitrariness of the feudal lords, but also as the tragic state of the masses - the serfs, the destitute urban people.

Russian realists of the middle of the 19th century portrayed society in contradictions and conflicts, in which, reflecting the real movement of history, they revealed the struggle of ideas. As a result, reality appeared in their work as an "ordinary stream", as a self-moving reality. Realism reveals its true essence only on the condition that art is considered by writers as a reflection of reality. In this case, the natural criteria for realism are the depth, truth, objectivity in the disclosure internal communications life, typical characters acting in typical circumstances, and the necessary determinants of realistic creativity are historicism, the artist's folk thinking. Realism is characterized by the image of a person in unity with his environment, the social and historical concreteness of the image, conflict, plot, the widespread use of such genre structures like a novel, drama, novella, short story.

Critical realism was marked by an unprecedented spread of epic and dramaturgy, which in a noticeable way pressed poetry. Among the epic genres, the novel gained the greatest popularity. The reason for its success is mainly that it allows the realist writer to fulfill the analytical function of art to the fullest extent, to expose the causes of the emergence of social evil.

At the origins of Russian realism of the 19th century is Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. In his lyrics is visible modern to him public life with its social contrasts, ideological quests, the struggle of advanced people against political and feudal arbitrariness. The poet's humanism and nationality, along with his historicism, are the most important determinants of his realistic thinking.

Pushkin's transition from romanticism to realism manifested itself in Boris Godunov mainly in a concrete interpretation of the conflict, in recognition of the decisive role of the people in history. The tragedy is imbued with deep historicism.

The further development of realism in Russian literature is associated primarily with the name of N.V. Gogol. The pinnacle of his realistic work is Dead Souls. Gogol watched anxiously as he disappeared into modern society everything that is truly human, as a person becomes shallow, vulgarized. Seeing in art an active force of social development, Gogol does not imagine creativity that is not illuminated by the light of a lofty aesthetic ideal.

The continuation of the Pushkin and Gogol traditions was the work of I.S. Turgenev. Turgenev gained popularity after the release of the Hunter's Notes. Huge achievements of Turgenev in the genre of the novel ("Rudin", " Noble Nest”, “On the Eve”, “Fathers and Sons”). In this area, his realism acquired new features.

Turgenev's realism expressed itself most clearly in the novel Fathers and Sons. His realism is complex. It shows the historical concreteness of the conflict, the reflection of the real movement of life, the veracity of the details, " eternal questions"the existence of love, old age, death, - the objectivity of the image and tendentiousness, lyricism penetrating the soul.

Many new things were introduced into realistic art by writers - democrats (I.A. Nekrasov, N.G. Chernyshevsky, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, etc.). Their realism was called sociological. What it has in common is the denial of the existing feudal system, showing its historical doom. Hence the sharpness social criticism, the depth of artistic research of reality.

The spiritual climate of Western Europe after 1830 changed significantly compared to the romantic era. The subjective idealism of the Romantics was replaced by a belief in the omnipotence of reason and science, a belief in progress. Two ideas determine the thinking of Europeans during this period - this is positivism (a direction in philosophy based on the collection of objective facts for the purpose of their scientific analysis) and organicism (Darwin's evolutionary theory, extended to other areas of life). The 19th century is the century of the rapid growth of science and technology, the rise of the social sciences, and this striving for scientificity also penetrates into literature. Realist artists saw their task in describing in literature all the richness of the phenomena of the surrounding world, all the diversity human types, that is, the science of the 19th century and realistic literature are imbued with the same spirit of collecting facts, systematizing and developing a consistent concept of reality. And the explanation of reality was given on the basis of the principles of evolution: in the life of society and the individual, the action of the same forces as in nature, similar mechanisms of natural selection, was seen.

By the thirties of the 19th century, the new system public relations. It was a bourgeois system, in which each person was quite rigidly assigned to a certain social class environment, that is, the time of romantic "freedom", "restlessness" of a person has passed. In a classical bourgeois society, the belonging of a person to a certain class appeared as an immutable law of being, and, accordingly, became the principle of the artistic development of life. Therefore, realists use the discoveries of the romantics in the field of psychology, but inscribe a newly understood person in a historically reliable, contemporary life. For realists, a person is primarily conditioned by the socio-historical environment, and realism is based on the principle of social class determinism.

Realists have also changed their perception of human character. Among the Romantics, an exceptional character was the subjective property of an individual; the hero of a realistic work is always a unique product of the interaction of the historical process and specific (biological, individual, random) circumstances, therefore realists understand the life experience of each person as unique and valuable already by this uniqueness, and, on the other hand, the life experience of each person is universal, universal interest, because it contains repeatable, universal features. Here lies the basis of the realistic doctrine of type, the basis of realistic typification.

The realists directly inherited from the romantics the inherent value of the human personality that they discovered, but fixed this personality in a certain place, time, environment. Realist art is democratic - realists first brought to the stage " little man", which was not previously considered an interesting object for literature, restored it to its rights. Realistic literature is imbued with a generally optimistic spirit: criticizing contemporary society, realist writers were confident in the effectiveness of their criticism, that this society is amenable to improvement, reform, believed in the inevitability of progress.

The realism of the 19th century sought to cover life as widely as possible, to show all the details of the social structure, all types of human relations, which, of course, required works of large volumes. This is partly why the leading genre in the literature of realism is the novel - the genre of a major epic narrative, in which there is a place for all this gigantic material of life. Especially on early stage realism novels were distinguished by a larger volume than is customary today. In addition, the novel was in the 19th century the newest of the available genres, that is, a genre without the burden of canonical tradition.

The novel is a genre open to everything new; the novelist explores life freely and without prejudice, not knowing in advance where his artistic quest will lead him. This novel is akin to the spirit of scientific research, this side of the novel was emphasized realists XIX centuries, and under their pen the genre has become a tool for research and cognition of reality, external and internal conflicts human life. The realistic novel reflects reality in the forms of life itself, and since the era of realism the concept of " fiction"begins to be associated not with poetry and drama, but primarily with prose. The novel becomes the dominant genre of world literature.

G.K. Kosikov writes: "The main feature of the novelistic situation is the change in the internal and external position of the hero in the course of various collisions with the world around him." In a realistic novel, as a rule, the "positive" hero is opposed as the bearer of the ideal. existing forms social hostel, but, unlike romantic literature, in a realistic novel, the discord between the hero and the world does not turn into a complete break. The hero may reject his immediate environment, but he never rejects the world as a whole, he always retains the hope of realizing his subjective world in some other spheres of being. Therefore, the realistic novel is based both on the contradiction between the hero and the world and on the deep inner commonality between them. Hero search realistic novel in the early stages of its existence was limited to the sphere of social circumstances offered by history. In the 19th century, the social mobility of the individual increased sharply; example of Napoleon's fantastic career became a model of change social status for new generations. This new phenomenon of reality was reflected in the creation of such a genre variety of a realistic novel as a "career novel". Consider it on the example of the works of the creators of the realistic novel Stendhal and Balzac.