Interest in history at the beginning of the 19th century arose in Russia with extraordinary force after a powerful national upsurge caused by the Napoleonic wars and especially the Patriotic War of 1812. The awakened national consciousness determined the originality spiritual development Russian society. And the Decembrist movement, and the monumental work of Karamzin, and the fables of Krylov, and the works of Pushkin - all these are echoes of major historical events that have themselves become facts of our history. The first decades of the 19th century passed under the sign of history. Belinsky drew attention to this feature. “Our age is primarily a historical age. Historical contemplation, wrote the critic, powerfully and irresistibly penetrated all spheres of contemporary consciousness. History has now become common ground and the only condition for any living knowledge: without it, it became impossible to comprehend either art or philosophy.
Russian society felt an urgent need to be aware of what distinctive features national character, national spirit as they said then. Historicism became the banner of the new century. He was inseparable from the ideas of the people. But in order to understand the feat of the people in Patriotic War 1812, which surprised noble Russia, in order to comprehend the way of his life, thoughts and feelings, it was necessary to look into the past, into the "dark antiquity", turn to the origins of national life. Karamzin's "History of the Russian State" opened up to Russian society the pages of antiquity that had not yet been illuminated by anyone. Russian society saw in it a reliable picture of life, a struggle of opinions, a psychological intensity of passions and ready-made plots for philosophical, historical, moral and artistic reflections. A real ground was created for the flourishing of historical genres. But Karamzin's "History ..." played an equally important role in the formation of the method of historicism. From now on, historical thinking becomes not only a tool with which to open the door of knowledge into the depths of centuries, but also necessary quality philosophical or artistic thought, illuminating living modernity with its beam.
At the same time, Karamzin's "History ..." is a work in which the scientific presentation merged with artistry. The element of artistry, very strong in the "History ...", relied on genuine and reliable facts and evidence. This circumstance immediately posed a number of purely creative problems for the writers - how appropriate is fiction in a work of art, how to combine historical truth and an imaginary plot? Narrative forms have not yet been so perfected and refined that contradictory terms artwork on a historical theme could be reconciled in some kind of organic unity. Therefore, in a historical story, either an artistic task predominates, which for the most part ignores historical reality, or an essay in which the characters look pale, devoid of full-blooded life and persuasiveness.
life and credibility. Between them were intermediate forms of memories, "byly", "incidents". Often, historical material played an auxiliary, auxiliary role - writers were not interested in last century in its truth, and their own views on modernity, carried out with the help of historical information.
The fate of the historical story is also instructive in the sense that it clearly demonstrated how historical thinking was formed and the forms of historical narration took shape, how the features of realism were honed. If Karamzin awakened theoretical thought, forced him to pay close attention to historical reality, to the era, to the clash of interests, then Walter Scott - his historical novels were already widely known to Russian society - had a tremendous influence on the form of historical narrative. Walter Scott, like Karamzin, relied on documents, but from them he chose the most characteristic of a particular time. At the same time, he was attracted by some episode, scene, stroke, “joke”, in which the mores, customs, thinking, determined by the era or environment, vividly and clearly showed themselves. From this came the installation on the ordinaryness of the image. Particular cases, thanks to careful selection, carried both artistic appreciation, and the originality of characters, and the typicality of the era. The story was drawn in everyday simplicity, it was made by people, and not figures put on pedestals or sentimental heroes endowed with a sensitive author's heart.
Russian historical tale gradually assimilated both the historicism of Karamzin and narrative style Walter Scott. However, this assimilation was extremely difficult and was accompanied by disagreements, disputes, harsh judgments. The principles of historicism and their implementation in literature became the subject of open or hidden controversy.
With all their admiration for Karamzin, the Decembrists decisively disagreed with him in their view of Russian history. They did not and could not accept Karamzin's monarchism. They believed that the idea of a monarchy was alien to the Russian people, that autocracy was imposed on them. The people were forced by deceit and force into an autocratic order and their freedom was taken away, turning the peasants into forced serfs. From the point of view of the Decembrists, the whole people somehow ended up in slavery to the autocrats with varying degrees of freedom - greater (nobles) or less (peasants). Inspired by the national-patriotic idea, the Decembrists divided the entire nation into tyrants and republicans. Tyrants are those who defended autocracy and slavery with thoughts, feelings, actions; Republicans are freedom lovers, although they turned out to be "slaves", but with their thoughts, feelings and actions they did not reconcile themselves to a miserable fate. The overwhelming majority of the Russian nation, the Decembrists considered, was a nation of republicans. For them, Novgorod and Pskov served as historical evidence of this, where the free popular voice dominated the veche and where "the last outbreaks of Russian freedom" were strangled. From this point of view, the content of Russian history was the unrelenting struggle of the Republicans against tyranny and its champions.
The content of Russian history was the unrelenting struggle of the Republicans against tyranny and its champions.
Section XRK-612
RUSSIAN HISTORICAL STORY
FIRST HALF OF THE XIX CENTURY
For older children Compiled by Valentin Ivanovich Korovin
Artist Yu. K. Bazhenov
— M.: Sov. Russia, 1989.— 368 p.
The historical stories collected in this book belong mostly to Russian romantic writers. With their work, they stirred up interest in the dramatic events of Russian history, thanks to their activities, historical thinking began to take shape, which later manifested itself so powerfully in the work of Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, L. Tolstoy and our other classics.
Content:
V. Korovin. "Treasure Traditions".
Alexander Bestuzhev
An old story.
Orest Somov
Traveler's story.
Nikolai Polevoy
The Tale of Simeon, Prince of Suzdal.
Alexander Kryukov
.
Alexander Kornilovich
Andrey Bezymenny. An old story.
Konstantin Masalsky
Biron Regency.
Notes.
RUSSIAN HISTORICAL STORY
FIRST HALF OF THE XIX CENTURY
"TREASURED LEDITIONS"
AND At the beginning of the 19th century, interest in history arose in Russia with extraordinary force after a powerful national upsurge caused by the Napoleonic wars and especially the Patriotic War of 1812. The awakened national self-consciousness determined the originality of the spiritual development of Russian society. And the Decembrist movement, and the monumental work of Karamzin, and the fables of Krylov, and the works of Pushkin - all these are echoes of major historical events that themselves have become facts of our history. The first decades of the 19th century are marked by history. Belinsky drew attention to this feature. “Our age is primarily a historical age. Historical contemplation, wrote the critic, powerfully and irresistibly penetrated all spheres of contemporary consciousness. History has now become, as it were, the common basis and the only condition for all living knowledge: without it, it has become impossible to comprehend either art or philosophy.
Russian society felt an urgent need to be aware of what are the distinctive features of the national character, the national spirit, as they said then. Historicism became the banner of the new century. He was inseparable from the ideas of the people. But in order to understand the feat of the people in the Patriotic War of 1812, which surprised noble Russia, in order to comprehend the way of their life, thoughts and feelings, it was necessary to look into the past, into the "dark antiquity", turn to the origins of national life. Karamzin's "History of the Russian State" opened up to Russian society the pages of antiquity, almost uncovered until then. Russian society saw in it a reliable picture of life, a struggle of opinions, a psychological intensity of passions and ready-made plots for philosophical, historical, moral and artistic reflections. A real ground was created for the flourishing of historical genres. But, perhaps, Karamzin's "History" played an equally important role in the formation of the method of historicism. From now on, historical thinking becomes not only a tool with which to plow open
1 Belinsky V. G. Full. coll. cit. - M., 1955. - T. VI. - S. 90.
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the door of knowledge to the depths of centuries, but the necessary quality of philosophical or artistic thought, illuminating the living modernity with its beam.
At the same time, Karamzin's "History" is a work in which scientific presentation merged with artistry. The element of artistry, very strong in the "History", relied on genuine and reliable facts and evidence. This circumstance immediately posed a number of purely creative problems for writers - how appropriate is fiction in a work of art, how to combine historical truth and an imaginary plot? Narrative forms have not yet been so perfected and refined that the contradictory components of a work of art on a historical theme could be reconciled in some kind of organic unity. Therefore, the historical story is either dominated by an artistic task, which for the most part ignores historical reality, or an essay in which the characters look pale, devoid of a full-blooded life and persuasiveness. Between them were intermediate forms of memories, "byly", "incidents". Often, historical material played a secondary, auxiliary role - writers were not interested in the past century in its truth, but in their own views on the present, carried out with the help of historical information.
The fate of the historical story is also instructive in the sense that it clearly demonstrated how historical thinking was formed and the forms of historical narration took shape, how the features of realism were honed.
If Karamzin awakened theoretical thought, forced him to pay close attention to historical reality, to the era, to the clash of interests, then Walter Scott - his historical novels were already widely known to Russian society - had an enormous influence on the form of historical narrative.
Walter Scott, like Karamzin, relied on the document, but from the documents he chose the most characteristic for a particular time. At the same time, he was attracted by some episode, scene, stroke, “joke”, in which the mores, customs, thinking, conditioned by the era or environment, vividly and vividly showed themselves. From this came the installation on the ordinaryness of the image. “The main charm of rum.<анов>W. Sc. , - wrote Pushkin, - consists<в том>that we get acquainted with the past tense not with enflure (puffiness. - Ed.) fr.<анцузских>tragedies - not with the stiffness of sensitive novels - not with the dignite (high tone. - Ed.) of history, but in a modern, but domestic way "Thus, the" anecdote "became one of the important
1 Pushkin A. S. Full. coll. op.-M.; JI., 1949.—T. XII.—S. 195.
6
of artistic historical description. Particular cases, thanks to careful selection, carried both artistic appreciation, the originality of characters, and the typicality of the era. The story was drawn in everyday simplicity, it was made by people, and not figures put on pedestals or sentimental heroes endowed with a sensitive author's heart. Walter Scott managed to seamlessly merge artistic intuition and scientific documentation. In his novels, historical events and historical time naturally revealed themselves in the actions, thoughts, feelings of ordinary people. At the forefront was the task of conveying the typical in the special, and, in comparison with modernity, even unusual and strange, and through it to understand the rights of the people and each person participating in history.
The Russian historical story gradually assimilated both the historicism of Karamzin and the narrative style of Walter Scott. However, this assimilation was extremely difficult and was accompanied by disagreements, disputes, harsh judgments.
The principles of historicism and their implementation in literature became the subject of open or hidden controversy.
With all their admiration for Karamzin, the Decembrists decisively disagreed with him in their view of Russian history. They did not and could not accept Karamzin's monarchism. They believed that the idea of a monarchy was alien to the Russian people, that autocracy was imposed on them. The people were forced by deceit and force into an autocratic order and their freedom was taken away, turning the peasants into forced serfs. From the point of view of the Decembrists, the whole people somehow ended up in slavery to the autocrats with varying degrees of freedom - more (nobles) or less (peasants). Inspired by the national-patriotic idea, the Decembrists divided the entire nation into tyrants and republicans. Tyrants are those who defended autocracy and slavery with thoughts, feelings, actions; Republicans are freedom lovers, although they turned out to be "slaves", but with their thoughts, feelings and actions they did not reconcile themselves to a miserable fate. The overwhelming majority of the Russian nation, the Decembrists considered, was a nation of republicans. For them, Novgorod and Pskov served as historical evidence of this, where the free popular voice dominated the veche and where "the last outbreaks of Russian freedom" were strangled. From this point of view, the content of Russian history was the unrelenting struggle of the Republicans against tyranny and its champions.
In the views of the Decembrists on history strengths combined with the weak. The Decembrists were convinced that monarchism was a despotic form of government, that it held back the mighty forces of the nation and hindered the progress of the country. In a word, autocracy is a strangler of the free initiative of the nation and of each individual.
At the same time, the ideas of modernity, noble revolutionaries
7
extended to the entire historical Russian experience, not seeing the qualitative originality of this or that era, but noting that at a certain stage in history, the autocracy played a positive unifying role. Since, the Decembrists believed, there are no fundamental differences between the historical past and the present, the struggle between tyrants and tyrants is equally characteristic of all periods of Russian history. Consequently, the freedom-loving ideas of antiquity are identical to the freedom-loving ideas of modern times. Therefore, all ancient and new freedom-loving heroes think the same way with each other and with the author. And this meant that these self-sacrificing people were not at all born of this or that era, its social conditions. If heroism historical figures, derived by the Decembrists, was dependent on the circumstances of historical life, then the guarantees of the appearance of valor in the modern era would disappear. Thus, the character of the freedom lover was explained by the Decembrists not by the time that created him, but by the commonality of the patriotic and civic ideas of the past with the patriotic and civic ideas of the present. The Decembrists strove to reveal the unity of the national character at all times, leaving the historical development of the Russian people outside the brackets of their reflections. This, in essence, consisted of that anti-historicism and that rationalistic approach to history, which manifested themselves with particular force in many works of the Decembrists, including the historical story.
If Karamzin wrote that “we will not find any repetitions in history”, then the Decembrists insisted on the self-evidence of repetitions, for patriotism and love of freedom are repeated throughout all epochs. “Every century,” Karamzin argued, “has its own special moral character, plunges into the depths of eternity and never appears on earth another time.” For Karamzin, each century has a relatively independent character. Historical development is accomplished by changing such epochs, which are no longer resurrected in the future. According to the Decembrists, the content and distinctive features of the moral life of people do not disappear anywhere and, of course, do not disappear without a trace. History, by its examples, convinces of the vitality of patriotic and civic virtues. From this comes the allusion characteristic of the Decembrist historical literature, which consists in the fact that in history examples of civic virtues are found that are directly imposed on modernity and overturned into it. Historical figures or events illustrate the Decembrist understanding of the underlying conflict. The method of allusions and "applications" was intended to justify the Decembrist ideas historically, to give them a national meaning.
1 Karamzin N. M. Selected. op.-M.; JI., 1904.—T. 2.—S. 258.
8
Because the historical heroes were like-minded of each other and the author-Decembrist, they thought, felt, spoke the same way. In addition, the Decembrists glorified such historical figures who, for one reason or another, found themselves in conflict with tyrants, but at the same time the real causes of the clashes were not taken into account and therefore were distorted. So, for example, for Ryleev it is enough that Artemy Volynsky was Biron's opponent. This prompted the poet to draw the image of a passionate and adamant freedom lover, dying for his convictions, but not betraying them. Meanwhile, Volynsky, of course, was neither a revolutionary nor a freedom lover. He belonged to that noble oligarchy that wanted to overthrow Biron, assert its influence over Anna Ioannovna and seize power. In other words, his actions were not driven by revolutionary and democratic considerations. With Ryleev, Volynsky turned into a fiery freethinker, a Decembrist in thoughts and feelings. The poet Katenin was surprised at the coverage of Mazepa in the poem "Voinarovsky", who appeared in Ryleev's work as "some kind of Cato", that is, instead of a traitor and enemy of Russia - a hater of tyranny and a republican.
Decembrists in their historical consciousness on initial stage were far from recognizing the indisputable fact that autocracy is a form of government that naturally arose in the course of history, that monarchism is an objective result of historical process independent of our subjective desires and tastes. The Decembrists approached history romantically and therefore excluded the idea of development and had not yet risen to the point of understanding historical period essential link in the fate of the people.
At the same time, the Decembrists did not want to deliberately distort history. On the contrary, they sought to rely on documents, borrowing them from various sources, mostly from Karamzin's History. Thus, they showed an interest in historical truth and historical documentation. For example, each thought of Ryleev was preceded by historical reference, which tells about the event depicted in the poem. Ryleev, therefore, convinced readers of the accuracy of the historical picture he had drawn. Over time, the Decembrists were more and more attentive to the historically reliable transmission of events, linking the concept of historicism with the concept of nationality. Attempts to capture the originality of the era, to penetrate the "soul" of the people led the Decembrists to reproduce the mores of the people in a particular historical era.
The Decembrists felt that each nation lives its own historical life that the life and customs of the Russian people cannot be confused with the life and customs of the Germans, French, British or Arabs. In those first decades of the 19th century, opposite types of culture were distinguished.
9
the tour, which is still very generalized, is the northern, "Ossnanian", and the southern, "ancient" In the Byronic poem, the contrast "East" - "West" dominated. Byron's "oriental" poems are permeated with the color of the East. Next to the Arab, Muslim Mediterranean lives another - Western, European - type of culture, originating in antiquity. Consequently, the historical fate of the Eastern and Western peoples is thought to be different. Contemporaries of Byron and Walter Scott, the Decembrists, are close to the idea that the life of the people depends on the conditions of their life, occupations, climate, customs, traditions, beliefs, language, on what is called "local color". The moral character of a people is inseparable from the totality of its surrounding circumstances. The Decembrists went even further. They understood that the Russian man of the 12th century differed from Russian XIX centuries. However, this difference does not refer to the content of national heroism, but only to the external forms of its expression.
The historical story reflected that stage in the creation of the historical style, when, on the one hand, the writers already felt the difference between the speech of the narrator and the speech of the characters, and on the other hand, they could not yet give the characters' speeches a historical flavor. Not in last turn this happened because the early historical story could not rely on a deep narrative tradition and at first depended on lyric-narrative forms. Such dependence concerned the organization of the plot (breaks in the narrative, the absence of gradual transitions), the "top" and episodic composition, which was built from one tense dramatic moment to another, leaving the intermediate course of events unsaid; attention to exceptional, unusual characters, "to forced emotional experiences; the introduction of spectacular scenes, gestures, poses. From romantic poem the situations connected with horrors, mysteries and moral perversions passed into the historical story. Heightened exaltation, lofty language of passions, along with ancient sayings, everyday realities and moral and religious concepts and attitudes, made up the linguistic background of the historical story, in which the stylistic principles of the "Eastern" or historical poem. Reproducing traditional motifs and relying on existing structural elements, the Decembrists introduced an original ideological content and expressed history through the prism of modernity. Thanks to the new content, the early historical story of the Decembrists, which included the ideas of romantic historicism, replaced sentimental story on a historical plot and anticipated the further deepening of the genre.
The first romantic historical stories are associated with the names of Alexander Bestuzhev, V. Kuchelbeker, N. Bestuzhev and other Decembrists. IN early prose A. Bestuzhev has a steady interest in the Russian medium
10
ageless. Two themes stand out here - Livonian and purely Russian. The second of them is devoted to events reflecting the struggle between Novgorod and Moscow. A vivid example of it was the story "Roman and Olga", which had a strong influence on romantic writers who turned to the same or similar historical era.
For historical narration, A. Bestuzhev chooses the plot summarized in Karamzin's "History". This choice is dictated by the desire to follow the truth of history. The writer intentionally took a specific historical event, trying to be documentary accurate. This allowed Bestuzhev, as he thought, to historically correctly recreate the historical flavor: the customs of the people, thoughts, feelings, desires of the characters, the peculiarities of their behavior and language. In the afterword to the story, the writer referred to the documentary nature of his narrative: “The course of my story lies between the halves of 1396 and 1398 (counting the year from March 1, according to the then style). All historical incidents and persons mentioned in it are presented with relentless accuracy, and I depicted customs, prejudices and customs, according to consideration, from legends and the remaining monuments. As proof of "relentless accuracy" Bestuzhev referred to the works of N. Karamzin, E. Bolkhovitinov and G. Uspensky. The reader had to believe that the author was relying on authentic documents and evidence. He was convinced that the action of the story is strictly confined to a certain time, and "mores, prejudices and customs" are extracted "from legends and the remaining monuments." However, Bestuzhev “depicted them ... by reason”, that is, following fiction, fantasy, his artistic intuition, but verifying it with the same historical facts. Thus, he tried to connect two principles - the testimony of history and fiction, ascending again to the original documents. All this, according to the writer, provided the narrative with historical authenticity.
However, the coverage of the historical past is strongly romanticized. The intention to reproduce the era "relentlessly accurate" came into conflict with the Decembrist understanding of history. In the conflict between Novgorod and Moscow, all the sympathies of the Decembrist were given in advance to Novgorod and its love of freedom. Moscow was portrayed as an oppressive and unrighteous side. She encroached on the freedoms of Novgorod. For the sake of glorifying the freemen of Novgorod, Bestuzhev misinterpreted historical facts. Karamzin, for example, wrote about the "mercenary Novgorod government", that certain parts of Novgorod "willingly" and "friendly" meet the Moscow army. Bestuzhev, on the contrary, idealizes the veche, emphasizes the unity of Novgorodians who do not want to recognize the power of Moscow. Although Novgorodians argue about whether to fight with Vasily Dmitrievich or surrender to the mercy of a strong enemy, Moscow remains an enemy for both, and its claims are a rude attack on independence and ancient customs. Tem
11
most historical accuracy is sacrificed to the Decembrist worldview.
The hero of the story Roman acts as a conductor of the author's idea of the Novgorod freemen. This is a romantic Decembrist, dressed in the costume of a Novgorod boyar. Above all for him is the freedom of Novgorod, which he is ready to defend and uphold at the cost of own life. The writer, creating the image of an ardent champion of liberty, capable of sacrificing himself, of course, turned to his contemporaries, drawing them to the struggle and awakening in them a sense of honor and duty. At the same time, the novel speaks and thinks as a contemporary of the author and those young nobles to whom the writer is addressing. The hero's speech combines two stylistic streams - lyrically agitated and pathetically passionate, full of exclamations, questions, and "overturned" into the past, replete with old turns, expressions, proverbs and sayings. Inclusions Old Russian words, concepts, everyday realities, descriptions of clothing, utensils, fabrics give a historical flavor to the narrative, but it turns out not to be a reproduction of the authenticity of a bygone era, but just a spectacular ornament that sets off quite modern ones. characters and actions of heroes.
Bestuzhev's attempts to convey the moral image of the era "by consideration" based on authentic documents are unsuccessful, because the author's narrative is based on the speech of the Decembrist writer, slightly embellished and covered with old words. So, talking about the behavior of Olga, Roman's lover, Bestuzhev reports that the heroine recalls "that unforgettable semik, when for the first time her hand trembled in Roman's hand." Not to mention Olga’s behavior, which was impossible for the mores of antiquity (she could not see Roman before the matchmaking and wedding, because “our ancestors” did not show their daughters not only to outsiders, but even to their brothers), stylistic accents in the reflections of the heroine, transmitted by Bestuzhev , are placed incorrectly. The word "semik", which is deliberately used here for supposedly historical fidelity, looks like an alien oddity, while the word "unforgettable" carries a strong emotional load, explaining state of mind Olga. But the epithet "unforgettable" was taken by Bestuzhev from the modern romantic language, while the word "semik" belongs to the religious and everyday vocabulary. In the second part of the phrase ("when her hand trembled in the hand of Roman"), the style of romanticism dominates. This turnover is firmly linked with the word "unforgettable". They are selected according to stylistic similarity and form a single stylistic layer, from which the word "semik" falls out. At the same time, it loses its historical flavor and means the word “day”, which was common for that time. All this proves that Olga thinks about her sweetheart as a typical romantic heroine, and not as a sedate beauty of our folklore or ancient monuments.
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The description of morals “by consideration” does not stand the test of historical accuracy, excluding the organic unity of style and allowing the conflict of words that carry historical coloring with words and expressions used in romantic prose. In accordance with the general artistic task, Bestuzhev focuses on the inner world of the characters, on the motives of their behavior and experiences, and external images become signs of deep passions. All narrative material was subject to the expression of the patriotic idea. In the struggle of Novgorod for its freedom, both the civil and personal fate of Roman was decided. Beli with the image of Olga, the Decembrist writer correlated the idea of personal and, moreover, female independence, protesting against the shy foundations of the medieval way of life and standing up for the dignity of the girl, for her right to love, for which the heroine is ready to sacrifice herself, then Bestuzhev associated the idea of public freedom with the image of Roman, in which the highest personal feelings gave way to civic virtues. Roman does not doubt for a moment that he can bring love for Olga to the altar of fidelity to Novgorod liberty. At the same time, the spirit of freedom in the Novgorodians is so strong that it does not fade away even in the robbers who first captured Roman and then rescued him from trouble.
plot-compositional and stylistic features historical story of the Decembrists, where the patriotic spirit of the hero is revealed in his “transformations” (the hero, as it were, changes different masks; remaining selfless and faithful to his public duty, he appears either as a sorrowful lover, separated from his girlfriend, or as a mysterious wanderer, or as a prisoner imprisoned in prison, then an accidental savior of his offender, and finally, a happy winner who receives a bride as a reward), are easily distinguishable in subsequent historical stories of romantics.
The Decembrist historical story, in which two principles are combined - documentary and fictional (“by consideration”), became the progenitor of two types of historical narrative, conventionally designated as “poetic”, gravitating towards the romantic, and “prosaic”, with the features of realism ripening in it. . At the same time, both beginnings were certainly present, but the emphasis shifted either to “fiction” or to “document”.
The "poetic" type of historical narrative was then embodied in N. Polevoy's story about Simeon, the Prince of Suzdal, and in other stories of this "tireless and gifted fighter" for romanticism, according to Belinsky. N. Polevoy sought to reproduce the national spirit on the basis of poetic intuition. He brought to the fore the principle of philosophical and poetic penetration into the historical era. From this point of view, N. Polevoy opposed Walter Scott, in whom he found only a decoration of morals, a true image of the people and customs,
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but he did not see either philosophy or poetry, the school of French historical novelists (V. Hugo, A. de Vigny).
In contrast to Pushkin, N. Polevoy thus decisively preferred the French romantics to the realist V. Scott. To the romantic imagination of H. Polevoy, history seemed exceptionally sublime. The writer believed that the characters in ancient Rus' were much stronger than his contemporary and, therefore, neither his consciousness nor the consciousness people XIX centuries are inaccessible and beyond their reach. Therefore, in his story, all the main characters are extraordinary, exceptional, truly romantic characters. Simeon, for example, is depicted as bold and noble. He has a special fate marked by fate. However, he acts contrary to the fate prepared for him. To match him and the merchant Zamyatia, freeing Simeon from prison, and the boyar Dimitri. The struggle that Simeon leads with his uncle is caused by a sense of justice and love of freedom. The support given to him by part of the inhabitants of Nizhny Novgorod is also explained by their desire for independence. Thus, moral reasons are put at the basis of the conflict: a conspiracy arises where the primordial property of a Russian person is infringed - indestructible love of freedom. Such an interpretation of history brought H. Polevoy closer to the Romantic Decembrists and moved him away from the realists, primarily from Pushkin. However, H. Polevoy, although he saw the historical past in a romantically sublime light, believed that a true reproduction of the era is impossible without preserving historical accuracy, which is primarily attributable to historical facts. Therefore, unlike A. Bestuzhev, H. Polevoy connects the romantic idea of personal liberty with the historically important task of the Russian principalities to overthrow Tatar yoke. He understands that Simeon is pursuing personal goals, which, if successfully implemented, will not yet bring freedom to the Russian people. Moscow, having intervened in the feud between Boris Konstantinovich and Simeon Kirdyak and depriving both of them of power over Nizhny Novgorod, joined forces for the final liberation of the Russian lands.
Gradually, the fate of Rus' becomes main theme works, and last pages In the story, the author places a lyrical-pathetic "prophecy" from "The Tale of Igor's Campaign", directly referring to national patriotic motives.
Comprehending the philosophical and poetic meaning of history, N. Polevoy, of course, weakened the romance, love, in comparison with A. Bestuzhev. a line that has only been outlined, but has not unfolded into an intrigue that is somehow significant for the fate of the country or the heroes.
Next to the "poetic" historical narrative, fanned with romance, another, "prosaic" type of depiction of antiquity arose. It also began with Decembrist prose, in particular, the stories of A. O. Korpilovich. Decembrist A. Kornilovich, in addition to stories,
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essays, paintings and sketches of morals were also due. Contemporaries (P. Vyazemsky, V. Belinsky) believed that in Russian documentary sources, unlike, for example, Scottish or English, “there are no morals, dormitory, citizenship and domestic life”, which made it extremely difficult, in their opinion, to reproduce correctly stories in the spirit of W. Scott. A. Kornnlovich concentrated his efforts on this. He turned to the era of Peter I and placed essays on amusements, on assemblies, on the first balls, on privacy emperor and Russians during the time of Peter the Great. Much of his information, told in essays, was then used by Pushkin in the unfinished novel Peter the Great's Moor. A. Nornilovich did not shy away oral stories, anecdotes that reached contemporaries from a relatively recent era. For the first time, he widely used written and oral materials of an everyday nature, thanks to which the course of historical life was illuminated.
The story of A. Kornilovich "Andrei Bezymyanny" is dedicated to the events of the Petrine era. Its plot basis is documentary: the writer borrowed the plot from the works of I. Golikov (an episode about a private and wrongful trial). Two principles are clearly distinguished in the story: historical material and romantic intrigue. However, the historian and novelist conflict in the work. As a historian, A. Kornilovich carefully selects the facts, creating a historical background. Documents are almost not processed and become, as it were, self-sufficient. Detailed descriptions Petersburg, in which excursions into the past are combined with comments, appeals to the present (“In a long row of buildings, the former palace of Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich (now the Hof Quartermaster's Office), the Foundry Yard, which did not change its then appearance, the Summer Palace, the wooden Winter Palace (where Now Imperial Hermitage), huge house Admiral Apraksin (broken down under the current Winter Palace), Naval Academy. Admiralty..."), mechanically connected with the romantic "history" and written in a different - dryish and precise - stylistic manner. It is most important for A. Kornilovich to express his attitude to the era of Peter the Great, to talk about the benevolence of the tsar's undertakings and transformations in all areas - from state institutions to small signs of private life. The documentary material is thus separated from the plot and turns into essays of a larger or smaller volume. A. Kornilovich talks about St. Petersburg, about occupations and hobbies, about the private life of the tsar and his entourage. Peter's transformations and the very spirit of the era captivate the writer, and he conveys them in detail, with many characteristic features, lovingly naming the king's associates and sympathetically drawing pictures of customs and life.
Against this historical background, the fate of the nobleman Andrei Gorbunov unfolds, from whom the powerful and greedy Menshikov takes
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estate, and together with the estate honor, dignity and the bride, because Gorbunov, deprived of his noble title, can no longer claim the hand of Varvara. The hero is saved by chance: having entered the Preobrazhensky Regiment, he once found himself alone with Peter I and told him about his sad story. The tsar, who knew the habits of his favorite, checked Gorbunov's story and returned his hereditary title, the estate. In a word, he restored the justice trampled by Menshikov. This story is sustained by Kornilovich in conditional and rather worn out romantic colors. She confirms, according to common plan writer, the greatness of Peter as a statesman and as a person. However, A. Kornilovich did not achieve an organic fusion of the historical background and the romantic plot, heroes and environment. Historical documentary material entered the story unprocessed, although with the help of it the story was portrayed in the manner of W. Scott "at home". The private story of the hero both in content and style, as it were, “knocked out” of the essay narrative: in its transmission, the romantic style sculpted the top, which affected both the unnaturalness of experiences, and the speeches, and the behavior of the characters. The characters, as the writer himself admitted, turned out to be undeveloped.
A. Kryukov also experienced the difficulties of translating documentary material into a fictional narrative in "My Grandmother's Tale". On the one hand, the story from the time of the Pugachev uprising was filled with expressively truthful details of everyday life (unsightly houses woven from twigs and smeared with clay, uncleaned and hardly suitable for firing cannons, “in which sparrows built their nests”, wretched clothes, mended and rearranged , barely standing on their feet from decrepitude, disabled soldiers), and on the other hand, a romantic story that happened to an orphan girl. The Pugachevites appear in the story as romantic villains, fiends, and the author does not spare black colors to paint their faces, clothes, to tell about their terrible intentions and low feelings. A. Kryukov wanted to contrast an episode from a real story with “the fictitious disasters of romantic heroes”, but the life of his heroine Nastenka proceeds according to a long-known romantic pattern: here there is a rumor about the secret relations of the old woman who sheltered Nastenka with otherworldly creatures, and a servant who plays the role of the devil and climbed into an oven, and a secluded corner from where you can eavesdrop on the speeches of the robbers, and then thwart their collusion, and a happy ending.
Descriptions of everyday life, containing realistic elements, were the strong side of historical stories. It is known that Pushkin used many everyday realities from A. Kryukov's story in The Captain's Daughter, depicting life in Belogorsk fortress. However, the document historical prose Pushkin ceases to fulfill the role of illustration and loses its decorative effect. He is subjected to such creative
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logical processing, as a result of which the image and the environment merge into a single whole. Historical conditions become necessary for understanding the characters, and the characters naturally act in circumstances, "because such circumstances are familiar to them," as Pushkin himself put it about the characters in W. Scott's novels.
The historical story of the Romantics aroused interest in the originality of the national character and its reliable reproduction, stirred up a sense of patriotism and made us think again about the historicism and folk character of literature. Comprehending them, the historical story has advanced quite far. So, for example, in the story "Sign" O. Somov, a writer and critic close to the Decembrists, and then to the Pushkin circle of writers, depicted two ways of life - French and Russian, two types of behavior of simple, ordinary people of different nations. The ideological core of the story is the idea of the unity of the Russian people during the Napoleonic invasion. The peasants and the landlord commanding them act in concert and deftly, capturing the French. In this sense, the glorious past is more exalted than the present, in which people are divided and interests are different. In part, the events of the past were portrayed as a reproach to modernity and as an unattainable ideal of better, more perfect social relations. The historical story of the romantics here directly invaded life, and its problems to some extent anticipated the ideas of a realistic story or merged with them.
From the second half of the 1830s, the genre of the historical story was dying out. It becomes the property of writers, although knowledgeable in Russian history, such as K. Masalsky, but too preoccupied with an entertaining, action-packed narrative to the detriment of true historical depth. The patriotic content of K. Masalsky's story "The Regency of Biron" is narrowed down to a denial of German influence and deviations from Orthodoxy. Nevertheless, K. Masalsky fairly accurately described the gloomy era of "Bironism" with its general suspicion, court intrigues, squabbles for power and complete defenselessness. ordinary people in the realm of investigation and torture. A romantic story on a historical theme retained its dual character: documentary and fiction, historical background and images, everyday realities and entertainment did not become a convincing artistic fusion. Not least of all, this was due to a superficial assimilation of the principles of historicism. Man has not yet been explained by history, but has been planted on sometimes even detailed historical soil. His behavior and experiences were not organically connected with her. Therefore, against the background of the past, either modern character, or conditional, bookish, created according to well-known literary samples. Only Pushkin, and then Gogol (Taras Bulba) and Lermontov (Borodino, Song about the Merchant Kalashnikov) managed to say a new word in the historical narrative and apply the principles of historicism to the works.
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deniyam on modern theme("Eugene Onegin", "A Hero of Our Time"). In asserting this, one should not, of course, belittle the romantic historical story, which has become an important stage on the path to realistic narration. The desire to capture and understand the spirit of the era, attention to historical documents, to language, to life, mores, customs, costumes - all this, of course, had a fruitful significance for the fate of Russian literature. The Romantics were the first not only to declare the demands of historicism and nationality, but to offer in historical stories bold artistic solutions that did not disappear without a trace, which have preserved both cognitive and aesthetic interest to this day.
V. Korovin
The century before last became interesting stage development of human history. The emergence of new technologies, faith in progress, the spread of enlightenment ideas, the development of new public relations, the emergence of a new class of the bourgeoisie, which became dominant in many European countries - all this was reflected in art. The literature of the 19th century reflected everything turning points development of society. All shocks and discoveries are reflected in the pages of novels by eminent writers. 19th century literature– multifaceted, diverse and very interesting.
Literature of the 19th century as an indicator of public consciousness
The century began in the atmosphere of the Great french revolution, whose ideas captured the whole of Europe, America and Russia. As a result of these events, greatest books 19th century, a list of which you can find in this section. In Great Britain, with the coming to power of Queen Victoria, new era stability, which was accompanied by a national upsurge, the development of industry and art. Public tranquility produced the best books of the 19th century, written in all sorts of genres. In France, on the contrary, there was a lot of revolutionary unrest, accompanied by a change in the political system and the development of social thought. Of course, this also influenced the books of the 19th century. The literary age ended with an era of decadence, which is characterized by gloomy and mystical moods and a bohemian lifestyle of representatives of art. Thus, the literature of the 19th century gave works that everyone needs to read.
Books of the 19th century on the site "KnigoPoisk"
If you are interested in 19th century literature, the list of the KnigoPoisk site will help you find interesting novels. The rating is based on the feedback from visitors to our resource. "Books of the 19th century" - a list that will not leave anyone indifferent.
Interest in history at the beginning of the 19th century arose in Russia with extraordinary force after a powerful national upsurge caused by the Napoleonic wars and especially the Patriotic War of 1812. The awakened national self-consciousness determined the originality of the spiritual development of Russian society. And the Decembrist movement, and the monumental work of Karamzin, and the fables of Krylov, and the works of Pushkin - all these are echoes of major historical events that themselves have become facts of our history. The first decades of the 19th century passed under the sign of history. Belinsky drew attention to this feature. “Our age is primarily a historical age. Historical contemplation, wrote the critic, powerfully and irresistibly penetrated all spheres of contemporary consciousness. History has now become, as it were, the common basis and the only condition for all living knowledge: without it, it has become impossible to comprehend either art or philosophy.
Russian society felt an urgent need to be aware of what are the distinctive features of the national character, the national spirit, as they said then. Historicism became the banner of the new century. He was inseparable from the ideas of the people. But in order to understand the feat of the people in the Patriotic War of 1812, which surprised noble Russia, in order to comprehend the way of their life, thoughts and feelings, it was necessary to look into the past, into the “dark antiquity”, turn to the origins of national life. Karamzin's “History of the Russian State” opened to Russian society the pages of antiquity that had not yet been illuminated by almost anyone. Russian society saw in it a reliable picture of life, a struggle of opinions, a psychological intensity of passions and ready-made plots for philosophical, historical, moral and artistic reflections. A real ground was created for the flourishing of historical genres. But Karamzin's "History ..." played no less a role for the formation of the method of historicism. From now on, historical thinking becomes not only a tool with which to open the door of knowledge into the depths of centuries, but also a necessary quality of philosophical or artistic thought, illuminating living modernity with its beam.
At the same time, Karamzin's "History ..." is a work in which the scientific presentation merged with artistry. The element of artistry, very strong in the "History ...", relied on genuine and reliable facts and evidence. This circumstance immediately posed a number of purely creative problems for the writers - how appropriate is fiction in a literary work, how to combine historical truth and an imaginary plot? Narrative forms have not yet been so perfected and refined that the contradictory components of a work of art on a historical theme could be reconciled in some kind of organic unity. Therefore, the historical story is either dominated by an artistic task, which for the most part ignores historical reality, or an essay in which the characters look pale, devoid of a full-blooded life and persuasiveness. Between them there were intermediate forms of memories, "byly", "incidents". Often, historical material played an auxiliary, auxiliary role - writers were not interested in the past century in its truth, but in their own views on the present, carried out with the help of historical information.
The fate of the historical story is also instructive in the sense that it clearly demonstrated how historical thinking was formed and the forms of historical narration took shape, how the features of realism were honed. If Karamzin awakened theoretical thought, forced him to pay close attention to historical reality, to the era, to the clash of interests, then Walter Scott - his historical novels were already widely known to Russian society - had a tremendous impact on the form of historical narrative. Walter Scott, like Karamzin, relied on documents, but from them he chose the most characteristic of a particular time. At the same time, he was attracted by some episode, scene, stroke, “joke”, in which the mores, customs, thinking, conditioned by the era or environment, vividly and vividly showed themselves. From this came the installation on the ordinaryness of the image. Particular cases, thanks to careful selection, carried both artistic appreciation, and the originality of characters, and the typicality of the era. The story was drawn in everyday simplicity, it was made by people, and not figures put on pedestals or sentimental heroes endowed with a sensitive author's heart.
The Russian historical story gradually assimilated both the historicism of Karamzin and the narrative style of Walter Scott. However, this assimilation was extremely difficult and was accompanied by disagreements, disputes, harsh judgments. The principles of historicism and their implementation in literature became the subject of open or hidden controversy.
With all their admiration for Karamzin, the Decembrists decisively disagreed with him in their view of Russian history. They did not and could not accept Karamzin's monarchism. They believed that the idea of a monarchy was alien to the Russian people, that autocracy was imposed on them. The people were forced by deceit and force into an autocratic order and their freedom was taken away, turning the peasants into forced serfs. From the point of view of the Decembrists, the whole people somehow ended up in slavery to the autocrats with varying degrees of freedom - more (nobles) or less (peasants). Inspired by the national-patriotic idea, the Decembrists divided the entire nation into tyrants and republicans. Tyrants are those who defended autocracy and slavery with thoughts, feelings, actions; Republicans are freedom lovers, although they turned out to be “slaves”, but with their thoughts, feelings and actions they did not reconcile themselves to a miserable fate. The overwhelming majority of the Russian nation, the Decembrists considered, was a nation of republicans. Novgorod and Pskov served as historical evidence of this, where the free voice of the people dominated the veche and where "the last outbreaks of Russian freedom" were strangled. From this point of view, the content of Russian history was the unrelenting struggle of the Republicans against tyranny and its champions.
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Other writings:
- In the views of the Decembrists on history, strengths were combined with weaknesses. The Decembrists were convinced that monarchism was a despotic form of government, that it held back the mighty forces of the nation and hindered the progress of the country. In a word, autocracy is a strangler of the free initiative of the nation and of each individual. Read More ......
- In Russian painting of the Petrine era, the portrait played the most significant role. The influences of the old Parsuna were still strong in him. The static posture of the model being portrayed, the planar interpretation of the form, the interest in the ornament made themselves felt in such works. Gradually, the portrait began to convey deeper Read More ......
- The original and translated children's literature of the first half of the 19th century is distinguished by a great diversity of ideological and artistic directions. continue to appear in in large numbers various children's encyclopedias and educational books, in which enlightening tendencies are noticeable, as well as moralizing sentimental stories of French and German Read More ......
- “Dead Souls”remind me of a museum of life, where you can travel for a long time, each time getting into a new world. There are only three rooms in it, distributed according to the principle of nesting dolls: the first - the largest - belongs to the landowners, the second - to the peasants and the third - to the officials. Read More ......
- Many great writers gave a broad image of the nobility in their works: these are A. S. Griboedov and A. S. Pushkin. In their works, the authors opposed the oppression of the common Russian people by nobles and landowners, as well as against serfdom. In his Read More ......
- Early XIX century in the life of Russia was marked by events that were of paramount importance for the further history of our country. In 1812, the Patriotic War began. Napoleon entered Russia as a conqueror, as an invader The war against him was for Russia in the full sense of the struggle Read More ......
- Russian defeat in Crimean War exacerbated the social and social contradictions that had developed in Russian life by the mid-1950s. The turning point in the history of Russian society and Russian literature was also reflected in Tolstoy's work. From military theme the writer addresses the issue most Read More ......
- As a definition modern stage in the development of philosophy, art and science, the term “postmodernism” is used, uniting all the variety of manifestations cultural activities a person living in the second half of the twentieth century. There have been heated discussions about this phenomenon for several decades. And although some scientists Read More ......
1. First third of XIX century - the era of the Russian romantic story. Romanticism, as you know, is first mastered by our poets and only then spreads to prose and drama. It is important to remember that since the 10s. our general public gets acquainted with the novels of Walter Scott, which inevitably affects the development of prose genres (if you want, you can connect this with the growth national identity etc.): in the early 20s. superficial borrowing of elements of historicism (the desire to draw attention to the color of the place and time, to compare the political events of the past with the present, but the conflict and the plot are not yet determined by the historical situation), in the second half of the 20s-30s the events of the distant past cease to be a reason for depicting instructive pictures, the historical past becomes not only the subject of narration, but also the object of study - the aesthetic existence of historical material, and not the historical background, as it was before (which, apparently, inherited the romantic story from the sentimental one). An important place is occupied by any mystery, fairy tales, legends. Also among characteristic features one can note the parallelism of the author and the hero, the confession of the protagonist, etc. However, in each case, in essence, different elements of romantic poetics are actualized, so let's turn to concrete examples. It is also important to note that especially at an early stage, but also further, the influence of Karamzin's sentimentalism remains important. And finally: there is a tradition of distinguishing several subspecies within the framework of the Russian romantic story: historical, fantastic, secular and moral stories (however, there are probably more).
2. M. Pogodin "Black sickness" (1829): this is one of good examples Russian historical romantic story, where not a single component is sustained in the required volume. Regarding this story, there are two opposite points of view: 1) the main subject of the description is merchant life (then it everyday story); 2) life is opposed to the main character, who is the center of the story - a romantic story. The second point of view finds quite a lot of evidence: 1) romantic conflict - the hero's rejection of the world around him (merchant life); 2) the hero’s romantic idea of love (absolutely not corresponding to his surroundings - the fat terrible Agasha, actually “sold” by her parents in marriage, of course, not “two souls united”); 3) the protagonist's confession is also present - it is she who plays the main role in revealing the hero's spiritual world, into which the narrator's third-party word is not able to penetrate (confession as a device is typical for romantic prose); 4) availability poetic quotes- Also important feature Russian Romantic Prose: The authors, in search of their own possibilities of prose and drama, resort to the help of already established romantic genres. Fragments of other people's texts, most often very well-known, at the hearing of readers, serve as impulses of romantic energy. In this case, Zhukovsky’s poem is quoted: “I found everything familiar in them, but it was so sweet, so pleasant to read them that I inconspicuously learned them by heart ...” (we are talking about the elegy “On the death of Her Majesty Queen of Wirtemberg”). On the other hand, the concept of a romantic hero is not sustained to the end: having learned that he is not the only one in the world, Ganya rejoices, while romantic hero unique, Gavrila wants to find an interlocutor so that together with him to express to each other everything spiritual and inexpressible. On the third hand, for a historical story, this is a rather weakly motivated conflict that does not receive historical and social understanding: the conflict is built on the individual (hell knows where it came from) property of Gavrila. Thus, we have a very original story, which, on the one hand, uses romantic devices and is based on romantic poetics, on the other hand, gravitates towards everydayism, and on the third, it combines everything (you can even tell about it in the question about ambivalence: )).
3. Pushkin (1830): Belkin's Tales: The Young Lady-Peasant Woman and Sentimentalism
The characters in Pushkin's little tragedies and "Belkin's Tales" act out of not romantic secret motives (even if their actions look very romantic) or sentimental best/worst motives, but motives that are most natural to them as representatives of their world. Most of the plots of the "Tales" do not have direct references to specific predecessor texts; these are restored only as a result of analytical work and only hypothetically. The exception is the story that completes the cycle - "The Young Lady-Peasant Woman". The main pretext of the story is obvious: this is Karamzin's " Poor Lisa". The connection between the texts is established not only at the level of the names of the main characters, but also at the level of plots that are in relation to partial parallelism: in "Poor Lisa" it is told about a peasant girl who fell in love with a nobleman and committed suicide after his betrayal, and in "The Young Lady -peasant" - about a noble girl who partially imitated Karamzin's conflict and, as a result, married a nobleman.
However, in itself "Poor Lisa" was hardly so interesting to Pushkin as an object of parody. Much more important is the fact that this story has become a kind of precedent text, a paradigm of Russian sentimentalism, one of its peaks, representing in the minds of the literary community (meaning both writers and readers) sentimentalism in general. Despite the fact that by this time sentimentalism was already a thing for a long time past days, the authority of Karamzin's prose remained quite high, although the main positions were still given to romantic strife. To some extent, Pushkin was indeed more strongly repulsed by romanticism: in Belkin's Tales themselves, three of the five stories correspond more with romantic than with sentimentalist plots. Pushkin needed a sentimentalist plot in order to assign a new hero to his poetics (precisely as a hero, and not a minor character) - a simple man.
Sentimentalism (Lessing, Karamzin, partly Rousseau) created a certain canon of the love story. According to this canon, into the idyllic life of "common people" existing in accordance with natural law human existence, the figure of a lover (s) - a nobleman (s) invades, who destroys this life, because his (her) nature is distorted by an unnatural upbringing and way of life.
Pushkin completes his cycle (it ends not chronologically, but compositionally, which is much more important for understanding the author's position) with "The Young Lady-Peasant Woman", in which he consistently demythologizes the figure of "a peasant woman who also knows how to love."
First of all, the main character of the story, like other county ladies dear to the author’s heart, was brought up on novels: “Brought up on clean air, in the shade of their gardens, they will draw knowledge of light and life from books "(As you can see, Karamzin's propaganda work was a success). At the same time, Pushkin, as befits an "episentimentalist", does not forget to oppose them to more educated city dwellers: "In the capitals, women receive , May be, better education; but the skill of light soon smoothes the character and makes souls as monotonous as headdresses."
Main character, on the contrary, has a university education, which, however, does not prevent him from intending to enter military service. He behaves like a real romantic, while parodying the sentimental standard of the infernal seducer ("The young ladies went crazy over him"). The story uses such canonical techniques as correspondence, Alexei, as befits a sentimentalist hero, is struck by the thoughts and feelings of a “simple girl”, etc.
Let us note that the heroes of the story are constantly oscillating between the socio-cultural stereotypes inspired by literature and genuine feelings; moreover, sometimes the very adherence to the automatism of the stereotype whips up the feeling (a collision, unthinkable for sentimentalism): "He spoke the language of true passion and at that moment was definitely in love." However, the orientation of the heroes to book samples is not a reason for censure: "romantic" thoughts are just their natural habitat. At the same time, the happy ending comes not because the characters follow "the dictates of the heart" or "do what they should", but because the story could hardly have turned out differently: "the time has come - they got married."
So Pushkin says goodbye to Russian sentimentalism of the Karamzinist persuasion, erecting a kind of monument to it, in which familiar features are combined into a rather unexpected construction.
4. Gogol: Gogol in his stories also builds on romanticism, especially on its fantastical side. However, if in "Evenings ..." there is only a complication of the romantic conflict, then already in "The Nose" it is completely turned over. The subtlest irony of Gogol is manifested in the fact that he constantly plays on the expectation of unraveling a romantic mystery, parodying its poetics and further and further luring the reader into a trap. Mann: “The plot planes of The Nose are also mysteriously incompatible. In one plane, the nose exists in its “natural” form, and if not guilty, then at least Ivan Yakovlevich seems to be involved in its “separation”. On the other plane is the nose “by itself” with the signs of “state councilor”, and Ivan Yakovlevich’s fault is resolutely averted by the fact that the nose disappeared two days after shaving. Instead of somehow combining both planes, the narrator again steps aside, breaking off the event line twice: “But here the incident is completely covered by fog, and absolutely nothing is known what happened next.” At the same time, Gogol skillfully prevents the possibility of interpreting "history" as a misunderstanding or deception of the character's feelings, prevents by introducing a similar perception of the fact by other characters. The essence of the technique is that Gogol completely removes the carrier of fantasy - the personified embodiment of unreal power. But the fantasy itself remains. The achievements of romantic fiction were transformed by Gogol, but not abolished. By removing the bearer of fantasy, he left the fantastic; parodying the romantic mystery, he kept the mystery; making the “form of rumors” the subject of an ironic game, he strengthened the authenticity of “the incident itself”.
