Much is debatable and I do not agree with much, but several theses are very strong and true.

Dmitry Bykov. Does not apply

Modern Russian literature is monstrously unprofessional, and this is the only thing that can be said about it. It lives in the same deep spiritual province as Russian education, cinema, fundamental science and all other areas of spiritual activity, and it is very boring to talk about it. Russian literature is not read in the West and not known in the East. She had not had success for a long time, which all of Russia would talk about. In a Russian bookstore, as a rule, there is nothing to buy.

From foreign literature in Russia, the most stupid texts are most often translated, because everyone eats out of the world cake the cake that is too tough for him. IN Soviet time in Russia, not only friends of the Soviet Union were published, but also, for example, John Gardner (not a detective, but the one who "October Light"), and Joseph Heller, and Truman Capote, and modern Russian prose works as if neither William Gaddis, nor Ralph Ellison, nor D.F. Wallace, or Don DeLillo, or T. Coragessan Boyle (the last two were translated, from afar - but they disappeared like that, few noticed and not mastered at all). I'm not a fan of Pynchon, at least not of Gravity's Rainbow, but it's a significant work, whatever one may say, that has given rise to a new literary wave; in Russia, it made absolutely no impression, and not because it came out 40 years after the American publication, but because reading it, after all, requires some effort. True, the translation by Nemtsov and Gryzunova turned out to be such that in English I still somehow understand this book, but in Russian, to tell the truth, with difficulty.

The narrative techniques of modern Russian prose are more old-fashioned than in the century before last, when Tolstoy experimented with the novel genre, and Dostoevsky was looking for a synthesis of fantasy and physiological essay ("Double", let's say). Russian prose has never really been able to build a fascinating plot with an unexpected ending, but now it has forgotten how to do what Soviet fiction writers have worked out. Living heroes, whose names would become common nouns, we have not had for twenty years. In ninety texts out of a hundred, the only hero of any note is the author himself, but more often than not he is so disgusting—both to himself and to the reader—that you want to quickly banish him from memory. The style of modern Russian prose is exhaustively described by the Soviet couplet "I have one string, Kazakhstan is my country." In addition, at the very time when all World culture is looking for compromises between mass character and seriousness - Russian prose has finally stratified into monstrous chewing gum a la Dontsov or Minaev and an arthouse that is not interesting to anyone, through which it is difficult to wade through even the most sophisticated reader. It is difficult for him to break through, however, not because it is so hot how difficult it is written, not because he has verbal lace in the spirit of Sasha Sokolov or his epigone Goldstein, but because everything written does not concern the reader at all. This is literature of pure self-service. If, however, modern Russian prose, with the courage of a neophyte, takes on the solution of world problems, like Maxim Kantor in the novel Red Light, it either endlessly repeats itself (and Kantor, by the way, diligently repeats The Drawing Manual), or slides into a completely indecent feuilletonity, or voices obvious things in such a cloth language that even the author's long-standing anger does not save: the engine does not start, the text stands still.

All this has been said many times, and one more repetition will not change anything - except for the on-duty and predictable cries that the author himself is a fool and has written himself long ago. It makes sense to talk about the reasons for this state of affairs, but I'm afraid that the reason is well known: lack of motivation. You usually take up prose, hoping either to solve world problem, or to cope with an interesting technical problem, or, at worst, to amuse the reader and earn money, but all this must be done seriously, and not carelessly. In contemporary Russia, even the oprichniks work in a slipshod manner, who have at least sadomasochistic or material incentives; all others are so unprofessional that it is humiliating to analyze their actions. Writing is not that very difficult, contrary to the old Serapion formula, but it requires some kind of erudition, perseverance, study of the material. Where the word weighs nothing, the author has no incentive for all these beautiful pursuits; in Soviet times, people could write on a table and believe that they had a bomb in their table. Today, the word is worth so little, and the violation of the simplest rules is so total and obvious that even the most stubborn idealist will not invest in such a dubious activity as the search for meaning or the fight against vices. Writing good literature is the pleasure of a very few, and today the number of writers almost equals the number of readers. Of course, writing remains one of the most powerful self-hypnosis, a unique way of dealing with the meaninglessness of existence, but writing itself, the process of stringing words on a thread of a plot, will not save anyone from anything. In the best case, you get a LiveJournal, a diary about nothing, at worst - the so-called automatic writing. The construction of a utopia, a fascinating story, the reprisal against vices - all this is possible where a person knows what he lives for. In modern Russia, the very posing of such a question is equated with extremism, because the creation of a high-quality text in itself violates homeostasis (we call it stability). Everything of any quality today is a political challenge, because the main sign of the times is the state's attitude towards mediocrity. The Nikolaev “dark seven years”, the analogue of which we are now apparently living, was marked by a complete lack of literature: Nekrasov, in order to fill Sovremennik with at least something, had to write, together with Panaev, the longest novel “Three Countries of the World”. Today's thick magazines are also filled with God knows what. The only novel, about which they spoke and wrote, - "Appeal to the ear" by Anton Ponizovsky, and the most interesting thing in it is documentary recordings of other people's monologues; everything else is so secondary and cardboard that you want to scroll through it. Pavel Sanaev's book "Chronicles of Gouging" aroused some interest, proving only that any sequel is worse than a prequel: "Bury me behind the plinth" - living book, generated by living longing and anger; "Chronicles" is a set of clichés, a book whose characters evoke neither pity, nor envy, nor anger. The author of "Plinth" wrote what he thought, not particularly hoping for reader recognition; the author-hero of "Gouging" tries to think and write what will resonate with the mass reader - and this is very felt.

The most reliable way to evaluate a book - at least when choosing it in a store - is to read its first and last phrase; we used to do just that in What to Read magazine, putting these same phrases instead of reviews. If you look at most of today's novelties from this point of view, the reader will find with longing the first phrase that does not catch, and the last one that does not leave behind anything like an "extended ghost of being." The distance between these phrases is not interesting to pass - just as uninteresting as to go from Samogonsk to Kislosvishchevo. I will not deprive the reader of one of the few pleasures available to him - to do this experiment on his own. If he is too lazy to go to the bookstore, let him take a walk through the prose " magazine hall". I recommend that the most meticulous ones read the first and last paragraphs - okay, you can’t judge anything from one phrase. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the first paragraph will describe the scenery verbosely and tritely - the weather, the interior - or it will contain a squeamish monologue of the hero, doomed to drag himself into such an interior in such weather; in the finale there will almost certainly be a rhetorical question or a painfully dull maxim in which there is neither novelty nor even false significance.

Are there any talented writers in today's Russia? Eat. There are far fewer talented publishers - the publisher is focused not on finding new names, but on milking out old ones that guarantee at least sluggish reader interest. Putting your texts on the Internet is no more fruitful than throwing them in the trash: of course, some publicity is provided, but the context is able to kill any new book. Tons of graphomania, among which something suddenly flashes, will not so much shade this novelty as stifle it. In addition, for literature, a successful debut is not enough - growth is needed. And remember, which of the modern Russian writers, whose discovery was joyfully welcomed, is at least growing somewhere or at least not bringing down the bar. Aleksei Ivanov, in my opinion, evolved interestingly, but he also grew downwards, based on the criteria of literary quality. One can hope for Prilepin, Buksha, Yevdokimov - but it is enough to look at how every developing phenomenon is poisoned in Russia and how they begin to love anyone who has finally surrendered to circumstances: “Another one who has fallen down!” So I don't know how long they will last.

The way out of this situation is obvious: life will begin and literature will appear. You can’t endlessly chew on Russian questions - they have not changed in the last five centuries; you can not repeat the same circle - it bothers the reader, and the writer, and the outside observer. All words have been said, but the situation is unchanged; no iPad, iPhone, Internet can update the Russian situation, in which there have been no “new people” since Chto Delat. All the curses of Herzen and Pecherin, all the invectives of Shchedrin and Pisarev, all the conjectures of Levin and Nekhlyudov are one-on-one applicable to today's situation, and this is unbearable. Russian prose has nothing to talk about - everything is said; and in order to move into the depths of a hero, this hero is needed. A production novel cannot be written without production. It is impossible to write a family saga in conditions of complete disintegration of the family - and the climate in society, primarily moral, is such that it is difficult for people to simply tolerate each other. Everything is useless. Any movement, as in zugzwang, worsens the situation: we seem to be comfortable in this dirt and stink, and if we move, then, God forbid, a revolution will happen. In the same way, it is almost impossible to write good children's literature where there is no image of the future: whether we like it or not, children are still the future, and we know nothing about it and do not want to know.

It remains to be hoped that not far off is your Oblomov, your Fathers and Sons, and there, what the hell is not joking, and War and Peace. But for this it is necessary that the seven-year period should last exactly seven years. Otherwise, Goncharov would die of laziness and “fatness of the heart”, Turgenev would finally break ties with his homeland, and Tolstoy would shoot himself, disguising this case as a hunting accident.

Not so long ago we talked with Dr. philological sciences Maria Chernyak about what is actually hidden under the phrase "modern literature". The video interview can be seen on our YouTube channel, and for those who prefer the text format, we suggest that you familiarize yourself with the transcript:

M. A. Chernyak

Doctor of Philology, Professor

The time of postmodernism, in my opinion, is over: there are heirs of this trend, but it is obvious that it is already becoming obsolete. But the time of postmodernity, probably not: it comes from the constant feeling of the end of an era, the end of style, death - the author, the hero, the reader. We are still in search of new coordinates of the literary and cultural field.

There is, of course, such a contradictory phenomenon as, but after all, it also comes from constant walking in a circle, repetitions and self-repetitions, the limit of new ideas, which leads to endless quoting and the fact that the writer - and sometimes literary text- he himself becomes the hero of the work. This is now very much in literature and cinema. However, in any case, this is only one of the directions, and it does not exhaust the entire modern literary process.

All the charm and at the same time the risks in the study of modern literature lie in the fact that it is still difficult for it to make point estimates and diagnoses - we can only talk about trends. Already now we can note several important signs:

Apparently, due to fatigue from postmodernism, constructions in literature, the so-called metamodern, many writers consciously come to realism. Someone calls it "new realism", such as Zakhar Prilepin, Roman Senchin, Irina Bogatyreva and others. Why is this direction relevant again? The fact is that for many authors today it is important to analyze the history and the fate of a person in it, but oddly enough, this analysis often occurs with the help of various phantasmagoric techniques.

On the other hand, today there is a clear interest in non-fiction, when writers base their artistic worlds on documentary history. This trend, for example, reflects a huge, heavy romance "In Memory of Memory" by Maria Stepanova.

Another of the trends that is being written about a lot today is the merging of the novel and the series. It is no coincidence that nowadays bookshelves a large number of multi-page works appeared - 700-800 pages each.

In addition, there is a clear polarization: there are intellectual, so-called elite novels for a very narrow circle of readers, and at the same time, there is a desire for fiction, to some extent, a simplification of the writing code.

When I look at textbooks, I often see that in the section on modern literature there are works by Shukshin or, say, Solzhenitsyn. But what is modern literature? Yes, Solzhenitsyn is our contemporary, but after all, his works of the 60s are offered for reading at school.

Some researchers believe that modern literature was born in 1991. In general, the event that marked the break with the past culture, of course, was perestroika, when works of the underground and “returned” literature (Bunin, Bulgakov, Platonov, etc.) poured into thick magazines.

Boundaryness is the main feature of this literature: it is a transition from century to century, and from millennium to millennium, and from monocentric Soviet literature to polyphonic literature. But today we live in the second decade of the 21st century. The boundary line should already be exhausted!

I think we are now entering a new literary era, but when exactly this period began, it is still difficult to say - as well as how to call it. Writers, philologists, literary critics cannot yet agree on one name and offer various epithets: bronze, digital, cranberry literature - a reference to the replacement of blood with cranberry juice. As Pavel Krusanov said, apparently, being in the center of the flower bed, we cannot look at this flower bed from a height - only the Gardener can, meaning that the name will definitely be found, but later, after a while, and hardly by us, contemporaries.

I'm a pain in the ass about age markings: I think librarians and vendors suffer the most from it. As well as school teachers, because today they are afraid to offer some works to their students - what if it turns out to be illegal?

But then the question arises: why is Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" not marked? In all respects, it should have the category "18+", while today it is included in the mandatory program for tenth graders. In my opinion, while this law is absurd.

Last year or the year before last, a survey was conducted among schoolchildren who passed the exam. They were asked: what will you read now, when the school curriculum finally does not dominate you? Basically, they answered: “Never and nothing!”. It is clear that this was a psychological reaction to fatigue and stress, but many people will indeed forget about books for many years.

I am sure that, despite the lack of time for a proper study of the same 20th century literature, modern works should still be present at school. We keep saying that the language develops, changes, lives - why do we show this life only on the example of the classics of past centuries?

The place for contemporary authors can always be found. For example, you can conduct final lessons on any work school curriculum, be it Gogol or Chekhov, if you choose a remake, a sequel, a novel for them, entering into a dialogue with the classics. Or modern literature can come to Russian language textbooks - at least at the level of examples to the rules or texts for exercises.

The school curriculum in literature is very conservative, it has not changed for decades: I studied according to it, you studied, our parents studied. But today other children: they own gadgets literally from birth. And at the same time, they often do not perceive the same classics, because these texts seem too alien to them, they are not about them and are not written in their language.

There is a point of view that in the current situation, with the incredible pace in which we are forced to live, it is worth switching to short stories. Why are Gogol's compact "Overcoat" or "Nose" removed from the program, which are actually well read - and at the same time there are "Dead Souls", which, as a rule, are not read?

Speaking of school, we must consider a high degree infantility modern society, which Umberto Eco wrote about in the famous article “Tell me“ you ”, I’m only fifty!” . Today's high school students enjoy reading dystopias and Harry Potter, write fanfiction in wild quantities, and "War and Peace", let's be frank, is a work "for growth" for them.

The events that took place in recent decades of the last century, were reflected in all spheres of life, including culture. IN fiction significant changes were also observed. With the adoption of the new Constitution, a turning point occurred in the country, which could not but affect the way of thinking, the worldview of citizens. New values ​​have emerged. Writers, in turn, reflected this in their work.

The theme of today's story is modern Russian literature. What trends are observed in prose recent years? What are the characteristics of 21st century literature?

Russian language and modern literature

The literary language is processed and enriched by the great masters of the word. It should be attributed to the highest achievements of the national speech culture. Wherein literary language cannot be separated from the people. Pushkin was the first to understand this. The great Russian writer and poet showed how to use speech material created by the people. Today, in prose, authors often reflect the folk language, which, however, cannot be called literary.

Time frame

When using such a term as "modern Russian literature", we mean prose and poetry created in the early nineties of the last century and in the 21st century. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, cardinal changes took place in the country, as a result of which literature, the role of the writer, and the type of reader became different. In the 1990s, the works of such authors as Pilnyak, Pasternak, Zamyatin finally became available to ordinary readers. The novels and stories of these writers were read, of course, before, but only by advanced book lovers.

Exemption from prohibitions

In the 1970s, a Soviet person could not calmly go into a bookstore and purchase the novel Doctor Zhivago. This book, like many others, was banned. for a long time. In those distant years, it was fashionable for representatives of the intelligentsia, if not aloud, but to scold the authorities, criticize the “correct” writers approved by it and quote the “forbidden” ones. The prose of disgraced authors was secretly reprinted and distributed. Those who were engaged in this difficult business could lose their freedom at any moment. But forbidden literature continued to be reprinted, distributed and read.

Years have passed. Power has changed. Such a thing as censorship simply ceased to exist for some time. But, oddly enough, people did not line up in long lines for Pasternak and Zamyatin. Why did it happen? In the early 1990s, people lined up at grocery stores. Culture and art were in decline. Over time, the situation improved somewhat, but the reader was no longer the same.

Many of today's critics of the prose of the XXI century respond very unflatteringly. What the problem of modern Russian literature is, will be discussed below. First, it is worth talking about the main trends in the development of prose in recent years.

The Other Side of Fear

In times of stagnation, people were afraid to say an extra word. This phobia in the early nineties of the last century turned into permissiveness. Modern Russian literature initial period completely devoid of instructive function. If, according to a survey conducted in 1985, the most widely read authors were George Orwell and Nina Berberova, 10 years later the books "Crappy Cop", "Profession - Killer" became popular.

In modern Russian literature on initial stage its development was dominated by such phenomena as total violence, sexual pathologies. Fortunately, during this period, as already mentioned, the authors of the 1960s and 1970s became available. Readers had the opportunity to get acquainted with the literature of foreign countries: from Vladimir Nabokov to Joseph Brodsky. The work of previously banned authors positive influence on Russian contemporary fiction.

Postmodernism

This trend in literature can be characterized as a peculiar combination of worldview attitudes and unexpected aesthetic principles. Postmodernism was developed in Europe in the 1960s. In our country, it took shape in a separate literary movement much later. There is no single picture of the world in the works of postmodernists, but there is a variety of versions of reality. The list of modern Russian literature in this direction includes, first of all, the works of Viktor Pelevin. In the books of this writer, there are several versions of reality, and they are by no means mutually exclusive.

Realism

Realist writers, unlike modernists, believe that there is a meaning in the world, however, it should be found. V. Astafiev, A. Kim, F. Iskander are representatives of this literary movement. It can be said that in recent years the so-called village prose. So, often there is an image of provincial life in the books of Alexei Varlamov. Orthodox faith is, perhaps, the main one in the prose of this writer.

A prose writer can have two tasks: moralizing and entertaining. There is an opinion that third-class literature entertains, distracts from everyday life. Real literature makes the reader think. Nevertheless, among the themes of modern Russian literature, the crime occupies not the last place. The works of Marinina, Neznansky, Abdullaev, perhaps, do not lead to deep reflections, but they gravitate towards a realistic tradition. The books of these authors are often called "pulp fiction". But it is difficult to deny the fact that both Marinina and Neznansky managed to occupy their niche in modern prose.

In the spirit of realism, the books of Zakhar Prilepin, a writer known public figure. Its heroes mainly live in the nineties of the last century. Prilepin's work causes a mixed reaction among critics. Some consider one of his most famous works - "Sankya" - a kind of manifesto for younger generation. And the story of Prilepin "Vein" Nobel laureate Günther Grass called it very poetic. Opponents of the Russian writer's work accuse him of neo-Stalinism, anti-Semitism and other sins.

Women's prose

Does this term have a right to exist? It is not found in the works of Soviet literary critics, yet not many people deny the role of this phenomenon in the history of literature. contemporary critics. Women's prose is not just literature created by women. It appeared in the era of the birth of emancipation. Such prose reflects the world through the eyes of a woman. The books of M. Vishnevetskaya, G. Shcherbakova, M. Paley belong to this direction.

Are the works of the Booker Prize winner Lyudmila Ulitskaya women's prose? Maybe only individual works. For example, stories from the collection "Girls". The heroes of Ulitskaya are equally men and women. In the novel "Kukotsky's Case", for which the writer was awarded a prestigious literary award, the world is shown through the eyes of a man, a professor of medicine.

Not many modern Russian works of literature are actively translated into foreign languages ​​today. Such books include novels and stories by Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Viktor Pelevin. Why are there so few Russian-speaking writers of interest in the West today?

Lack of interesting characters

According to the publicist and literary critic Dmitry Bykov, modern Russian prose uses the outdated narrative technique. In the past 20 years, not a single living thing has appeared, interesting character, whose name would become a household name.

Moreover, unlike foreign authors trying to find a compromise between seriousness and mass character, Russian writers as if divided into two camps. The creators of the above-mentioned "pulp fiction" belong to the first. To the second - representatives of intellectual prose. A lot of art-house literature is being created that even the most sophisticated reader cannot understand, and not because it is extremely complex, but because it has no connection with modern reality.

publishing business

Today in Russia, according to many critics, there are talented writers. But good publishers are not enough. On the shelves of bookstores regularly appear books "promoted" authors. Out of a thousand works of low-quality literature, look for one, but noteworthy, not every publisher is ready.

Most of the books of the writers mentioned above reflect the events not of the beginning of the 21st century, but of the Soviet era. In Russian prose, according to one of the famous literary critics, nothing new has appeared in the last twenty years, since writers have nothing to talk about. Under the conditions of the disintegration of the family, it is impossible to create a family saga. In a society that prioritizes material matters, an instructive novel will not arouse interest.

One may not agree with such statements, but in modern literature there really are no modern heroes. Writers tend to look to the past. Perhaps soon the situation in literary world will change, there will be authors who can create books that will not lose popularity in a hundred or two hundred years.

Modern Russian literature (literature of the late 20th century - early 21st century)

Direction,

its time frame

Content

(definition, its "identification marks")

Representatives

1.Postmodernism

(early 1970s - early 21st century)

1. This is a philosophical and cultural trend, a special frame of mind. It originated in France in the 1960s in the atmosphere of resistance of intellectuals to the total attack of mass culture on human consciousness. In Russia, when Marxism collapsed as an ideology that provided a reasonable approach to life, rational explanation left and an awareness of irrationality came. Postmodernism has focused on the phenomenon of fragmentation, the splitting of the consciousness of the individual. Postmodernism does not give advice, but describes the state of consciousness. The art of postmodernism is ironic, sarcastic, grotesque (according to I.P. Ilyin)

2. According to the critic Paramonov B.M., “postmodernism is the irony of a sophisticated person who does not deny the high, but understands the need for the low”

His "identification marks": 1. Rejection of any hierarchy. The boundaries between the high and the low, the important and the secondary, the real and the fictional, the author's and the non-author's have been erased. Removed all style and genre differences, all taboos, including profanity. There is no reverence for any authorities, shrines. There is no desire for any positive ideal. The most important tricks: grotesque; irony, reaching cynicism; oxymoron.

2.Intertextuality (citation). Since the boundaries between reality and literature are abolished, the whole world is perceived as a text. The postmodernist is sure that one of his tasks is to interpret the legacy of the classics. At the same time, the plot of the work most often does not have independent meaning, and the main thing for the author is the game with the reader, who is supposed to identify plot moves, motifs, images, hidden and explicit reminiscences (borrowings from classical works calculated on the reader's memory) in the text.

3.Expansion of the readership by attracting mass genres: detective stories, melodramas, science fiction.

The works that laid the foundation for the modern Russian postmodern

prose, are traditionally considered "Pushkin House" by Andrey Bitov and "Moscow-Petushki" by Venedikt Erofeev. (although the novel and story were written in the late 1960s, the facts literary life they became only in the late 1980s, after publication.

2.neorealism

(new realism, new realism)

(1980s-1990s)

Borders are very flexible

It is a creative method that draws on tradition and at the same time can use the achievements of others. creative methods, combining reality and phantasmagoria.

"Life-likeness" ceases to be the main characteristic of realistic writing; legends, myth, revelation, utopia are organically combined with the principles of realistic knowledge of reality.

The documentary “truth of life” is forced out into thematically limited spheres of literature, recreating the life of one or another “local society”, whether it be the “army chronicles” of O. Ermakov, O. Khandus, A. Terekhov or the new “village” stories of A. Varlamov (“ House in the village"). However, the attraction to the literally understood realistic tradition is most clearly manifested in mass pulp fiction - in detective stories and "police" novels by A. Marinina, F. Neznansky, Ch. Abdullaev and others.

Vladimir Makanin "Underground, or a Hero of Our Time";

Ludmila Ulitskaya "Medea and her children";

Alexey Slapovsky "I am not me"

(the first steps were taken in the late 1970s in the “prose of the forties”, which includes the work of V. Makanin, A. Kim, R. Kireev, A. Kurchatkin and some other writers.

3Neonaturalism

Its origins are in natural school» Russian realism of the 19th century, with its focus on recreating any aspect of life and the absence of thematic restrictions.

The main objects of the image: a) marginal spheres of reality (prison life, night life streets, “weekdays” of a garbage dump); b) marginal heroes who “dropped out” of the usual social hierarchy (homeless people, thieves, prostitutes, murderers). There is a “physiological” spectrum of literary themes: alcoholism, sexual desire, violence, illness and death). It is significant that the life of the "bottom" is interpreted not as a "different" life, but as everyday life naked in its absurdity and cruelty: a zone, an army or a city garbage dump is a society in a "miniature", the same laws apply in it as in " normal" world. However, the boundary between the worlds is conditional and permeable, and “normal” everyday life often looks like an outwardly “ennobled” version of the “landfill”

Sergei Kaledin "Humble Cemetery" (1987), "Stroybat" (1989);

Oleg Pavlov "A State Fairy Tale" (1994) and "Karaganda Deviatiny, or The Tale of the Last Days" (2001);

Roman Senchin "Minus" (2001) and "Athenian Nights"

4.Neo-sentimentalism

(new sentimentalism)

This is a literary trend that brings back, actualizes the memory of cultural archetypes.

The main subject of the image is private life (and often intimate life), realized as the main value. The “sensitivity” of modern times is opposed to the apathy and skepticism of postmodernism; it has bypassed the phase of irony and doubt. In a completely fictitious world, only feelings and bodily sensations can claim authenticity.

So-called women's prose: M. Paley "Cabiria from the bypass channel",

M. Vishnevetskaya "The month came out of the fog", L. Ulitskaya "Kukotsky's case", works by Galina Shcherbakova

5.Postrealism

(or metarealism)

Since the early 1990s.

This literary direction, an attempt to restore integrity, attach a thing to meaning, an idea to reality; search for truth, true values, appeal to eternal themes or eternal prototypes of modern themes, saturation with archetypes: love, death, word, light, earth, wind, night. The material is history, nature, high culture. (according to M. Epstein)

“A new ‘artistic paradigm’ is being born. It is based on the universally understood principle of relativity, dialogic comprehension of a continuously changing world and the openness of the author's position in relation to it,” M. Lipovetsky and N. Leiderman write about post-realism.

The prose of post-realism carefully examines "the complex philosophical conflicts that unfold in the daily struggle" little man with impersonal, alienated worldly chaos.

Private life conceived as a unique "cell" world history, created by the individual efforts of a person, imbued with personal meanings, “stitched” with the threads of a wide variety of connections with the biographies and destinies of other people.

Post-Realist Writers:

L. Petrushevskaya

V. Makanin

S.Dovlatov

A. Ivanchenko

F. Gorenstein

N. Kononov

O. Slavnikova

Y. Buyda

A.Dmitriev

M. Kharitonov

V. Sharov

6.post-postmodernism

(at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries)

His aesthetic specificity is determined primarily by the formation of a new artistic environment - the environment of "technoimages". Unlike traditional "text images", they require an interactive perception of cultural objects: contemplation / analysis / interpretation are replaced by project activities reader or viewer.

The artistic object "dissolves" in the activities of the addressee, continuously transforming in cyberspace and becoming directly dependent on the design skills of the reader.

Characteristic features Russian version of post-postmodernism are new sincerity, new humanism, new utopianism, a combination of interest in the past with openness to the future, subjunctiveness.

Boris Akunin

Leading themes in contemporary literature:

Autobiography in modern literature

A.P. Chudakov. "Darkness falls on the cold steps"

A. Nyman "Stories about Anna Akhmatova", "The Glorious End of Infamous Generations", "Sir"

L. Zorin "Proscenium"

N. Korzhavin "In the temptations of the bloody era"

A. Terekhov "Babaev"

E. Popov " True story"Green Musicians"

New realistic prose

V. Makanin "Underground, or a Hero of Our Time"

L. Ulitskaya "Medea and her children", "The Case of Kukotsky"

A. Volos "Khurramabad", "Real Estate"

A. Slapovsky "I am not me"

M. Vishnevetskaya "A month came out of the fog"

N.Gorlanova, V.Bukur "The Novel of Education"

M. Butov "Freedom"

D. Bykov "Spelling"

A. Dmitriev "The Tale of the Lost"

M. Paley "Cabiria from the bypass channel"

military theme in modern literature

V. Astafiev "Merry Soldier", "Cursed and Killed"

O. Blotsky "Dragonfly"

S. Dyshev "See you in paradise"

G. Vladimov "The General and his army"

O. Ermakov "Baptism"

A. Babchenko "Alkhan-Yurt"

A. Azalsky "Saboteur"

The fate of the literature of the Russian emigration: "the third wave"

V. Voinovich "Moscow 2042", "Monumental Propaganda"

V. Aksenov "Crimea Island", "Moscow Saga"

A. Gladilin "Big Running Day", "Shadow of the Rider"

A. Zinoviev “Russian fate. Confessions of a Renegade"

S. Dovlatov "Reserve", "Foreigner. Branch"

Y. Mamleev " eternal home»

A. Solzhenitsyn “A calf butted with an oak”, “A grain fell between two millstones”, “Open your eyes”

S. Bolmat "Themselves"

Y. Druzhnikov "Angels on the tip of a needle"

Russian postmodernism

A.Bitov Pushkin House”, V. Erofeev “Moscow-Petushki”

V. Sorokin "Queue", V. Pelevin "Life of insects"

D. Galkovsky "Endless dead end"

Y. Buyda "Prussian Bride"

E. Ger "Gift of the word"

P. Krusanov "Bite of an angel"

Transformation of History in Modern Literature

S. Abramov "A quiet angel flew by"

V. Zalotukha "The Great Campaign for the Liberation of India (Revolutionary Chronicle)"

E. Popov "The Soul of a Patriot, or Various Messages to Ferfichkin"

V. Pietsukh "The Enchanted Country"

V. Schepetnev "The sixth part of darkness"

Science fiction, utopias and dystopias in modern literature

A. Gladilin "French Soviet Socialist Republic»

V. Makanin "Laz"

V. Rybakov "Gravilet" Tsesarevich "

O. Divov "Culling"

D. Bykov "Justification"

Y. Latynina "Draw"

Modern essay writing

I. Brodsky "Less than one", "One and a half rooms"

S. Lurie "Interpretation of fate", "Conversation in favor of the dead", "Successes of clairvoyance"

V. Erofeev "Commemoration of Soviet literature", "Russian flowers of evil", "In the labyrinth of cursed questions"

B. Paramonov "The End of Style: Postmodernism", "Next"

A. Genis "One: Culturology", "Two: Investigations", "Three: Personal"

Modern poetry.

Poetry at the turn of the 20th and early 21st centuries was influenced by postmodernism. IN modern poetry There are two main poetic directions:

c o n c e p tualizm

m e t a r e a l i z m

Appears in 1970. The definition is based on the idea of ​​a concept (concept - from the Latin "concept") - a concept, an idea that arises in a person when perceiving the meaning of a word. The concept in art is not just lexical meaning words, but also those complex associations that arise in every person in connection with the word, the concept translates the lexical meaning into the sphere of concepts and images, giving rich opportunities for its free interpretation, conjecture and imagination. The same concept can be understood different people in different ways, depending on the personal perception of each, education, cultural level and specific context.

Therefore Sun. Nekrasov, standing at the origin of conceptualism, proposed the term "contextualism".

Representatives of the direction: Timur Kibirov, Dmitry Prigov, Lev Rubinshtein and others.

This is a literary movement that depicts a deliberately complicated picture of the surrounding world with the help of expanded, interpenetrating metaphors. Metarealism is not a denial of traditional, habitual realism, but an extension of it, a complication of the very concept of reality. Poets see not only the concrete, visible world, but also many secret things that are not visible to the naked eye, they receive the gift of seeing through their very essence. After all, the reality that surrounds us is not the only one, according to metarealist poets.

Representatives of the direction: Ivan Zhdanov, Alexander Eremenko, Olga Sedakova and others.

Modern dramaturgy

L. Petrushevskaya “What to do?”, “Men's zone. Cabaret", "Twenty-Five Again", "Date"

A. Galin "Czech photo"

N. Sadur "Wonderful Woman", "Pannochka"

N. Kolyada "Boater"

K. Dragunskaya "Red Play"

Revival of the detective

D. Dontsova "Ghost in sneakers", "Viper in syrup"

B. Akunin "Pelageya and the white bulldog"

V. Lavrov "City of Sokolov - the genius of the detective"

N.Leonov "Protection of Gurov"

A.Marinina "The Stolen Dream", "Death for the sake of death"

T. Polyakova "My favorite killer"

References:

T.G. Kuchina. Modern domestic literary process. Grade 11. Tutorial. elective courses. M. Bustard, 2006.

B.A. Lanina. Modern Russian Literature. 10-11 class. M., "Ventana-Count", 2005.

Modern literary process

Literature is an integral part of a person's life, his kind of photograph, which describes everything in the best possible way. internal states as well as social laws. Like history, literature develops, changes, becomes qualitatively new. Of course, one cannot say that modern literature is better or worse than that that was before. She's just different. Now others literary genres, other problems that the author covers, other authors, after all. But whatever one may say, the “Pushkins” and “Turgenevs” are not the same now, the time is not right now. Sensitive, always quiveringly responding to the mood of the time, Russian literature today shows, as it were, a panorama of a divided soul, in which the past and the present are intertwined in a bizarre way. Literary process since the 80s. of the twentieth century, indicated its unconventionality, dissimilarity to the previous stages of development artistic word. There's been a change artistic epochs, the evolution of the creative consciousness of the artist. In the center modern books there are moral and philosophical problems. The writers themselves, participating in disputes about modern literary process They seem to agree on one thing: latest literature interesting because it aesthetically reflects our time. So, A. Varlamov writes: " Today's literature, whatever crisis it may be in, saves time. This is its purpose, the future - this is its addressee, for the sake of which one can endure the indifference of both the reader and the ruler".P. Aleshkovsky continues the thought of his colleague:" One way or another, literature constructs life. Builds a model, tries to hook, highlight certain types. The plot, as you know, has not changed since antiquity. Overtones are important ... There is a writer - and there is Time - something non-existent, elusive, but alive and pulsating - something with which the writer always plays cat and mouse".

Back in the early 1980s, two camps of writers took shape in Russian literature: representatives of Soviet literature and representatives of the literature of the Russian emigration. Interestingly, with the death of prominent Soviet writers Trifonov, Kataev, Abramov, the camp of Soviet literature has become significantly impoverished. There were no new writers in the Soviet Union. The concentration of a significant part creative intelligentsia abroad led to the fact that hundreds of poets, writers, figures of various fields of culture and art continued to work outside their homeland. And only since 1985, for the first time after a 70-year break, Russian literature got the opportunity to be a single whole: the literature of the Russian abroad of all three waves of Russian emigration merged with it - after the civil war of 1918-1920, after World War II and the Brezhnev era. Returning back, the works of emigration quickly joined the flow of Russian literature and culture. The participants in the literary process were literary texts which were banned at the time they were written (the so-called "returned literature"). Domestic literature significantly enriched due to previously banned works, such as A. Platonov's novels "The Pit" and "Chevengur", E. Zamyatin's dystopia "We", B. Pilnyak's story "Red Tree", "Doctor Zhivago" by B. Pasternak, "Requiem" and "Poem without a Hero" by A. Akhmatova and many others. "All these authors are united by the pathos of studying the causes and consequences of deep social deformations" (N. Ivanova "Questions of Literature").

There are three main components of the modern literary process: the literature of the Russian diaspora; "returned" literature; actual modern literature. To give a clear and concise definition of the last of them is still not an easy task. In modern literature, such trends as avant-garde and post-avant-garde, modern and postmodern, surrealism, impressionism, neo-sentimentalism, metarealism, sotsart, conceptualism, etc. have appeared or revived.

But against the backdrop of postmodern tendencies, "classical, traditional" literature also continues to exist: neorealists, post-realists, and traditionalists not only continue to write, but also actively fight against the "pseudo-literature" of postmodernity. We can say that the entire literary community was divided into those who are "for" and those who are "against" new trends, and literature itself has become an arena for the struggle of two large blocs - traditionalist writers oriented towards the classical understanding artistic creativity, and postmodernists, who hold radically opposite views. This struggle influences both the ideological content and the formal levels of the emerging works.

The complex picture of aesthetic dispersion is complemented by the situation in the field of Russian poetry at the end of the century. It is generally accepted that prose dominates the modern literary process. Poetry bears the same burden of time, the same features of a confused and scattered era, the same aspirations to enter new specific zones of creativity. Poetry, more painfully than prose, feels the loss of the reader's attention, of its own role as an emotional exciter of society.

In the 1960s and 1980s, poets entered Soviet literature, bringing with them a lot of new things and developing old traditions. The themes of their work are diverse, and poetry is deeply lyrical and intimate. But the theme of the Motherland has never left the pages of our literature. Her images, connected either with the nature of her native village, or with the places where a person fought, can be found in almost every work. And each author has his own perception and feeling of the Motherland. We find penetrating lines about Russia in Nikolai Rubtsov (1936-1971), who feels himself to be the heir to centuries of Russian history. Critics believe that the work of this poet combined the traditions of Russian poetry of the 19th-20th centuries - Tyutchev, Fet, Blok, Yesenin.

WITH eternal themes our contemporaries invariably associate the name of Rasul Gamzatov (1923). Sometimes they say about him that his future path is difficult to predict. He is so unexpected in his work: from winged jokes to the tragic "Cranes", from the prose "encyclopedia" "My Dagestan" to the aphorisms "Inscriptions on daggers". But still it is not difficult to isolate the topics on which his poetry rests. This is devotion to the Motherland , respect for elders, admiration for a woman, a mother, a worthy continuation of the father's work... Reading the poems of Rubtsov, Gamzatov, and other remarkable poets of our time, you see the vast life experience of a person who in his poems expresses what is difficult for us to express.

One of the main ideas of modern poetry is citizenship, the main thoughts are conscience and duty. Yevgeny Yevtushenko belongs to public poets, patriots, citizens. His work is a reflection on his generation, on kindness and malice, on opportunism, cowardice and careerism.

The role of dystopia

Genre diversity and blurring of boundaries for a long time did not allow to detect typological patterns in the evolution of literature genres at the end of the century. However, the second half of the 1990s already made it possible to observe a certain commonality in the picture of the diffusion of the genres of prose and poetry, in the emergence of innovations in the field of the so-called " new drama". Obviously, large prose forms left the stage of artistic prose, the "credit of trust" to authoritarian narration turned out to be lost. First of all, it experienced the genre of the novel. Modifications of his genre changes demonstrated the process of "coagulation", giving way to small genres with their openness to various types of form creation.

Anti-utopia occupies a special place in genre creation. Losing formal rigid features, it is enriched by new qualities, the main of which is a kind of worldview. Anti-utopia has had and continues to have an impact on the formation of a special type of artistic thinking, such as statements on the principle of "photo negative". A feature of anti-utopian thought lies in the destructive ability to break the habitual patterns of perception of the surrounding life. Aphorisms from the book Vic. Erofeev's "Encyclopedia of the Russian Soul" ironically, "from the opposite" formulate this type of relationship between literature and reality: "A Russian has an apocalypse every day", "Our people will live badly, but not for long." Classic examples of anti-utopia such as the novel "We" by E. Zamyatin, "Invitation to the Execution" by V. Nabokov, "Castle" by F. Kafka, "Animal Farm" and "1984" by J. Orwell, at one time played the role of prophecies. Then these books stood on a par with others, and most importantly, with another reality that opened its abysses. "Utopias are terrible because they come true," N. Berdyaev once wrote. A classic example is A. Tarkovsky's "Stalker" and the subsequent Chernobyl disaster with the Death Zone deployed around these places. The "inner ear" of Makanin's gift led the writer to the phenomenon of a dystopian text: Issue of the magazine " New world"With V. Makanin's dystopian story "The One-Day War" was signed for publication exactly two weeks before September 11, 2001, when the terrorist strike that hit America was the beginning of an "uninvited war." The plot of the story, for all its fantasticness, seems written off from real events. The text looks like a chronicle of the events that followed in New York on September 11, 2001. Thus, a writer writing a dystopia is moving along the path of gradually drawing the real outlines of the very abyss into which humanity, man, is striving. Among such writers, the figures of V. Pietsukh, A. Kabakov, L. Petrushevskaya, V. Makanin, V. Rybakov, T. Tolstoy and others stand out.

In the 1920s, E. Zamyatin, one of the founders of Russian dystopia, promised that literature in the 20th century would come to combine the fantastic with everyday life and become that diabolical mixture, the secret of which he knew so well Hieronymus Bosch. The literature of the end of the century exceeded all expectations of the Master.

Classification of modern Russian literature.

Modern Russian literature is classified into:

neoclassical prose

Conditionally metaphorical prose

"Other prose"

Postmodernism

Neoclassical prose addresses the social and ethical problems of life, proceeding from the realistic tradition, inherits the "teacher's" and "preacher" orientation of the Russian classical literature. The life of society in neoclassical prose is the main theme, and the meaning of life is the main problem. The author's worldview is expressed through the hero, the hero himself inherits an active life position, he takes on the role of a judge. The peculiarity of neoclassical prose is that the author and the hero are in a state of dialogue. It is characterized by a naked look at the terrible, monstrous in its cruelty and immorality phenomena of our life, but the principles of love, kindness, brotherhood - and, most importantly, catholicity - determine the existence of a Russian person in it. Representatives of neoclassical prose include: V. Astafiev " Sad detective"," Damned and killed "," Merry soldier ", V. Rasputin "In the same land", "Fire", B. Vasilyev "Assuage my sorrows", A. Pristavkin "A golden cloud spent the night", D. Bykov "Spelling ", M. Vishnevetskaya "The month came out of the fog", L. Ulitskaya "The Case of Kukotsky", "Medea and her children", A. Volos "Real Estate", M. Paley "Cabiria from the Bypass Canal".

In conditionally metaphorical prose, myth, fairy tale, scientific concept form a bizarre, but recognizable modern world. Spiritual inferiority, dehumanization acquire material embodiment in a metaphor, people turn into different animals, predators, werewolves. Conditional-metaphorical prose sees absurdity in real life, guesses catastrophic paradoxes in everyday life, uses fantastic assumptions, tests the hero with extraordinary possibilities. She is not characterized by the psychological volume of character. A characteristic genre of conventionally metaphorical prose is dystopia. Conditionally metaphorical prose includes the following authors and their works: F. Iskander "Rabbits and Boas", V. Pelevin "The Life of Insects", "Omon Ra", D. Bykov "Justification", T. Tolstaya "Kys", V. Makanin "Laz", V. Rybakov "Gravilet", "Tsesarevich", L. Petrushevskaya "New Robinsons", A. Kabakov "Defector", S. Lukyanenko "Spectrum".

"Other prose", in contrast to conditionally metaphorical, does not create fantasy world, but reveals the fantastic in the surrounding, real. It usually depicts a destroyed world, life, a broken history, a torn culture, a world of socially "shifted" characters and circumstances. It is characterized by the features of opposition to officialdom, the rejection of established stereotypes, of moralizing. The ideal in it is either implied or looms, and the author's position is disguised. Plots are random. The "other prose" is not characterized by the traditional dialogue between the author and the reader. Representatives of this prose are: V. Erofeev, V. Pietsukh, T. Tolstaya, L. Petrushevskaya, L. Gabyshev.

Postmodernism is one of the most influential cultural phenomena of the second half of the 20th century. In postmodernism, the image of the world is built on the basis of intracultural ties. The will and laws of culture are higher than the will and laws of "reality". In the late 1980s, it became possible to talk about postmodernism as an integral part of literature, but by beginning of XXI century, we have to state the end of the "postmodern era". The most characteristic definitions that accompany the concept of "reality" in the aesthetics of postmodernism are chaotic, changeable, fluid, incomplete, fragmentary; the world is the "scattered links" of being, folding into bizarre and sometimes absurd patterns human lives or into a temporarily frozen picture in the kaleidoscope of universal history. Unshakable universal values ​​lose their status as an axiom in the postmodern worldview. Everything is relative. N. Leiderman and M. Lipovetsky write about this very accurately in their article "Life after Death, or New Information about Realism": " Unbearable lightness being", the weightlessness of all hitherto unshakable absolutes (not only universal, but also personal) - this is the tragic state of mind that postmodernism expressed."

Russian postmodernism had a number of features. First of all, this is a game, demonstrativeness, outrageousness, playing with quotes from classical and socialist realist literature. Russian postmodern creativity is non-judgmental creativity, containing categoricalness in the subconscious, outside the text. Russian postmodern writers include: V. Kuritsyn "Dry Thunderstorms: Flicker Zone", V. Sorokin " Blue fat", V. Pelevin "Chapaev and Emptiness", V. Makanin "Underground, or a Hero of Our Time", M. Butov "Freedom", A. Bitov "Pushkin House", V. Erofeev "Moscow - Petushki", Yu. Buyda "Prussian Bride"