Literary genera

When we talk about literary gender and genre, we are talking about the type of literary work. Literary genre and genre - a certain type of literary work. The fact is that a literary work does not exist by itself. It exists only as a representative of a certain genus and genre. It is impossible to create a literary work that would be absolutely unlike any other literary work. The historical life of works also live only as representatives of a certain kind and genre.

A literary work is a combination of unique properties that determine its individuality. On the other hand, in any literary work there are some typical properties that, on the contrary, bring this work closer to some other works, i.e. have typical properties. We distinguish types of literary works. The degree of correlation between individual and typical depends on the stage of development of literature, literary direction.

Definition of literary gender according to Tamarchenko:

A literary gender is a concept that is introduced on the one hand to designate a group of genres that have similar structural features. On the other hand, to differentiate (distinguish) the basic possibilities of verbal creativity.

Ode, elegy, sonnet, message - lyrics. On the basis of common (structural) features, the lyrics will differ from other genres. Lyrics, epic and drama have the main possibilities of verbal and artistic creativity.

The generic properties of a literary work are the most general, universal, supra-historical properties. Genres are, on the contrary, a historically developed variety of a literary work.

Criteria for delimiting literary genres

Aristotle sees art as an imitation of beautiful nature. From the point of view of Aristotle, there are three ways of imitation: telling about an event as something separate from itself (for example, Homer's epic); remaining himself without changing his face (lyrics); you can imitate, showing all the depicting persons as actors and figures (drama).

Aristotle puts the type of relationship between the subject of the utterance and the subject of speech at the basis of the distinction between literary genders.

In the 19th century, literary genres began to be thought of as types of artistic content. According to Hegel, everything objective in drama is the manifestation of the subjective will of the individual.

Hegel considered drama as the highest kind of literature. At the beginning of the 20th century, linguistic and psychological interpretations of literary genres appeared.

The linguistic interpretation correlates literary genres with the phenomena of language, with the categories of person and time. Lyric is first person, drama is second person, epic is third person. Lyric is the present tense, epic is the past tense, drama is the future tense.

Psychological interpretation correlates literary genres with the category of the psyche. The epic is a memory, the lyric is a performance, the drama is a will.

Vadim Valeryanovich Kozhinov in the article "Problems of literary types and genres" (collection "Theory of Literature. Main Issues in Historical Coverage. Volume 3") says that, on the one hand, all of the above concepts have given a lot of productive in the study of literary types, on the other hand , they cannot be considered fully productive, because in these concepts, when describing the genres of literature, the features associated with the structure of the literary work itself are not taken into account.

Without taking into account aspects of the literary work itself, Kozhinov lists the features associated with the structure of the literary work itself: a different amount of verbal text (conciseness in lyrics, limited size in drama, spaciousness, length in epic), the nature of time and the pace of development (instantaneity, accuracy in lyrics). , perfection, slowness in the epic, striving for the future in the drama), the method of joining (free joining in the epic, a rigid causal relationship between episodes - drama, the unity of the lyrical plot - lyrics), the specificity of compositional speech forms (lyrics - monologue, drama - dialogue, epic - mixing). Kozhinov writes that the generic properties of a literary work are the most general, universal, which exist both on the surface of the text and in its depth.

In modern literary criticism, all previous criteria (conditions) are taken into account

The modern approach is usually described according to three criteria:

1) Compositional-speech organization

Each literary genre has its own subject matter. One subject of speech is lyrics, the primary and secondary subject of speech is epic, the alternation of replicas plus author's remarks is drama. This is the most superficial criterion

2) The nature of the development of action in a literary work. Type, situation, events, composition that underlie the development of actions. P.S. may be decisive.

3) Subject-semantic sphere. The literary genre has its own subject matter. Modern literary criticism considers literary genres as architectonic forms, i.e. as a form of organization of life values.

According to the traditional point of view, we have three literary genres: lyric, epic and drama. However, there were other points of view regarding the number of literary genera. In the 20th century there was an attempt to justify the novel as a fourth literary genre. V. Dneprov published an article "The novel as a new kind of poetry." There were attempts by other literary scholars to substantiate satire as the fourth literary kind, but these points of view were not entrenched in literary criticism. In addition to works that clearly belong to one or another literary genre, there are works that combine the features of different literary genres. These are intergeneric forms. The ballad is just an intergeneric form (lyroepic).

In addition to intergeneric forms, there are also non-generic forms (works that only slightly possess generic features, or even lack them altogether) (epigram, essay).

Lyrics as a kind of literature

1. The subject of lyrics as a literary genre

2. The specifics of the lyrical event and the lyrical plot.

3. Semantic structure of a lyrical work

Hegel, in his lectures on aesthetics, defines the subject of lyricism as follows: the subject of lyricism is the expression of the content and activity of the innermost life. All words in this formulation are significant for Hegel. Moreover, the word “expression” is especially significant. Gennady Nikolaevich Pospelov in the textbook "Introduction to Literary Studies" says that the subject of lyrics is the inner life itself. Despite the fact that Pospelov refers to Hegel, the word "expression" is omitted in Pospelov's formulation, and Pospelov's approach cannot be considered adequately productive, because Pospelov's approach does not allow drawing boundaries between lyrics and other literary genres. To prove this is very simple: if we consider such a genre as a psychological novel. The subject of the psychological novel is the inner life. But this will not mean at all that we will classify the psychological novel as a lyric. And therefore, Pospelov's approach does not always work.

In order for the expression of the inner life (according to Hegel) not to be accidental, the inner life of the subject itself must be poetic. This means that the feelings and experiences of the subject, in addition to their uniqueness (singularity), must have some kind of universal, universal significance. In lyrics, the universality of the subject's experiences is achieved not by the subject of the image (according to Hegel, the content and the subject can be random), but is born by the form of a poetic work, the form of a lyrical statement. In the lyrics, the question "HOW?" is important. Lyrics presupposes a special status of the poetic word in a lyrical work. From the point of view of Tamarchenko, a lyrical event is always an event of utterance or an event of the birth of a poetic word. The search for a word, a name to express one's own inner life is an integral part of a lyrical event, and sometimes all of its content. It is no coincidence that one of Mandelstam's poems begins with the line "I forgot the word that I wanted to say."

"This morning, this joy..." The last line "It's all spring" sums it up. Fet's example proves that a lyrical event is an utterance event or an event of the birth of a poetic word. The subject of lyrical experience absorbs the external world, experiences it in his inner element (within himself) and, after the external world has become something internal for him, expresses it, finding the appropriate word for this.

Lyrics assumes a minimum distance between the author and the hero, the author and the reader, the hero and the reader. “These are my words, I feel the same” - this is a typical reader's reaction to a lyrical work. Such a reader's reaction is explained by the special status of the lyrical character. The lyrical character is characterized by extreme validity (the subject of appearance, social status, age characteristics. One of the properties of the lyrical character is his anonymity (anonymity). Just because of the generalization of the lyrical character, it is easy for the reader to identify himself with him. At the same time, the logical connections between the words in the lyrics can However, despite the absence of logical connections, the lyrics still have a great inspiring force that infects the reader.The ability of lyrics to have a great inspiring force that infects the reader is called suggestiveness.

3. Semantic structure of a lyrical work. (according to the concept of Tamara Isaakovna Silman). This concept is outlined in the book On Lyrics. It proceeds from the fact that artistic time is organized in a special way in the lyrics. In lyrics, a moment can be experienced as eternity, and eternity as an instant. Based on this, Silman distinguishes two parts in a lyrical work: empirical and generalizing. How to differentiate them? In the empirical part, a variety of the objective world appears, time plans clearly separated from each other, specific facts of the biography of the subject of experience appear. In the generalizing part, universal time appears (when the past, present and future are drawn together into one point). It is both moment and eternity at the same time. The generalizing part captures the moment when the subject of experience comprehends the timeless essence of what is happening, the timeless meaning of what is happening.

Nr. Monastic Giuseppe Ungaretti

“And I love you, love you; and it is endless suffering.” Here there is a concrete fact of the biography of the lyrical hero. And this fact is assigned to the present.

"When the yellowing field is agitated ...". The first stanza is about autumn, the second about spring, and the third about winter. And the fourth is a generalizing part, because there is universal time. Universal tense is usually grammatically expressed using the present tense, but not always. Universal tense does not depend on the verb form.

Tarkovsky's poem "Ballet" consists of 6 stanzas. In the first five there is a description of the ballet performance (empirical part). The fifth stanza ends with the question "So what is art?". The sixth stanza is a kind of answer to the question. The verbs in it are in the future tense, but the time there is universal, because this is the answer to the question of what art is considered in GENERAL. The generalizing part very often stands at the end of the lyrical work, but not always (it can stand at the beginning, in the middle, it can be broken by the empirical part). The empirical part in a lyrical work may be absent altogether, the generalizing part is present in any lyrical work, because universal time is one of the main properties of lyrics.

Pasternak has a poem "Definition of Poetry".

In the same spirit - as the types of relation of the speaker ("speech carrier") to the artistic whole - the types of literature were repeatedly considered later, up to our time. However, in the 19th century (originally - in the aesthetics of romanticism), a different understanding of the epic, lyrics and drama was strengthened: not as verbal and artistic forms, but as some intelligible entities fixed by philosophical categories: literary genera began to be thought of as types of artistic content. Thus, their consideration turned out to be torn away from poetics (the teachings specifically about verbal art). So, Schelling correlated the lyrics with infinity and the spirit of freedom, the epic with pure necessity, but in the drama he saw a kind of synthesis of both: the struggle of freedom and necessity. And Hegel (following Jean-Paul) characterized the epic, lyrics and drama with the help of the categories "object" and "subject": epic poetry is objective, lyrical poetry is subjective, while dramatic poetry combines these two principles. Thanks to V.G. Belinsky as the author of the article "The division of poetry into genera and types" (1841), the Hegelian concept (and the terminology corresponding to it) took root in Russian literary criticism.

In the XX century. the types of literature were repeatedly correlated with various phenomena of psychology (recollection, representation, tension), linguistics (first, second, third grammatical person), as well as with the category of time (past, present, future).

However, the tradition dating back to Plato and Aristotle has not exhausted itself, it continues to live. The types of literature as types of speech organization of literary works are an undeniable supra-epochal reality worthy of close attention.

The theory of speech developed in the 1930s by the German psychologist and linguist K. Buhler, who argued that statements (speech acts) have three aspects, sheds light on the nature of the epic, lyrics and drama. They include, firstly, message about the subject of speech (representation); Secondly, expression(expression of the speaker's emotions); Thirdly, appeal(appeal of the speaker to someone, which makes the statement actually an action). These three aspects of speech activity are interconnected and manifest themselves in different types of statements (including artistic ones) in different ways. In a lyrical work, speech expression becomes the organizing principle and dominant. Drama emphasizes the appellative, actually effective side of speech, and the word appears as a kind of act performed at a certain moment in the unfolding of events. The epic also widely relies on the appellative beginnings of speech (since the composition of the works includes the statements of the characters that signify their actions). But messages about something external to the speaker dominate in this literary genre.

With these properties of the speech fabric of lyrics, drama and epic, other properties of the genres of literature are organically connected (and precisely by them are predetermined): ways of spatio-temporal organization of works; the originality of the manifestation of a person in them; forms of presence of the author; the nature of the appeal of the text to the reader. Each of the genres of literature, in other words, has a special complex of properties inherent only to it.

The division of literature into genera does not coincide with its division into poetry and prose (see pp. 236-240). In everyday speech, lyrical works are often identified with poetry, and epic works with prose. This usage is inaccurate. Each of the literary genera includes both poetic (poetic) and prose (non-poetic) works. The epic in the early stages of art was most often poetic (epics of antiquity, French songs about exploits, Russian epics and historical songs, etc.). Epic works written in verse are not uncommon in the literature of the New Age (“Don Juan” by J. N. G. Byron, “Eugene Onegin” by A. S. Pushkin, “Who Lives Well in Rus'” by N.A. Nekrasov). In the dramatic kind of literature, both poetry and prose are also used, sometimes combined in the same work (many plays by W. Shakespeare). Yes, and lyrics, mostly poetic, sometimes prose (recall Turgenev's "Poems in Prose").

There are also more serious terminological problems in the theory of literary genders. The words “epic” (“epic”), “dramatic” (“dramaticism”), “lyrical” (“lyricism”) denote not only the generic features of the works in question, but also their other properties. Epic is called majestically calm, unhurried contemplation of life in its complexity and diversity, the breadth of the view of the world and its acceptance as a kind of integrity. In this regard, they often talk about the "epic worldview", artistically embodied in Homer's poems and a number of later works ("War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy). Epicness as an ideological and emotional mood can take place in all literary genres - not only in epic (narrative) works, but also in drama (“Boris Godunov” by A.S. Pushkin) and lyrics (“On the Kulikov Field” by A.A. . Block). It is customary to call dramatism a state of mind associated with a tense experience of some contradictions, with excitement and anxiety. And finally, lyricism is a sublime emotionality expressed in the speech of the author, narrator, characters. Drama and lyricism can also be present in all literary genres. So, the novel by L.N. Tolstoy "Anna Karenina", a poem by M.I. Tsvetaeva "Longing for the Motherland" Lyricism is imbued with the novel by I.S. Turgenev "The Nest of Nobles", plays by A.P. Chekhov "Three Sisters" and "The Cherry Orchard", stories and novels by I. A. Bunin. Epos, lyrics and drama, thus, are free from unambiguously rigid attachment to epic, lyricism and drama as types of emotional and semantic "sound" of works.

The original experience of distinguishing between these two series of concepts (epos - epic, etc.) was undertaken in the middle of our century by the German scientist E. Steiger. In his work "Basic Concepts of Poetics", he characterized the epic, lyrical, dramatic as phenomena of style (tonality types - Tonart), linking them (respectively) with such concepts as representation, memory, tension. And he argued that every literary work (regardless of whether it has the external form of an epic, lyric or drama) combines these three principles: "I will not understand the lyrical and dramatic if I associate them with lyrics and drama."

Epos, lyrics and drama were formed at the earliest stages of the existence of society, in primitive syncretic creativity. The first of the three chapters of his "Historical Poetics" A.N. Veselovsky, one of the greatest Russian historians and literary theorists of the 19th century. The scientist argued that literary genera arose from the ritual choir of primitive peoples, whose actions were ritual dance games, where imitative body movements were accompanied by singing - exclamations of joy or sadness. Epos, lyrics and drama were interpreted by Veselovsky as having developed from the “protoplasm” of ritual “choir actions”.

From the exclamations of the most active members of the choir (singers, luminaries), lyric-epic songs (cantilenas) grew up, which eventually separated from the rite: “Songs of a lyrical-epic nature seem to be the first natural separation from the connection between the choir and the rite.” the original form of poetry proper was, therefore, the lyric-epic song. On the basis of such songs, epic narratives subsequently formed. And from the exclamations of the choir as such, lyricism grew (initially group, collective), which, over time, also separated from the rite. The epic and lyrics are thus interpreted by Veselovsky as "a consequence of the decay of the ancient ritual choir." The drama, the scientist claims, arose from the exchange of remarks of the choir and the singers. And she (unlike the epic and lyrics), having gained independence, at the same time "preserved the entire<…>syncretism" of the ritual choir and was a kind of its likeness.

The theory of the origin of literary genera, put forward by Veselovsky, is confirmed by many facts about the life of primitive peoples known to modern science. Thus, the origin of the drama from ritual performances is undoubted: dance and pantomime were gradually more and more actively accompanied by the words of the participants in the ritual action. At the same time, Veselovsky's theory does not take into account that epic and lyric poetry could be formed independently of ritual actions. Thus, mythological tales, on the basis of which prose legends (sagas) and fairy tales subsequently became firmly established, arose outside the choir. They were not sung by the participants in the mass ritual, but were told by one of the representatives of the tribe (and, probably, such a story was far from being addressed to a large number of people in all cases). Lyrics could also be formed outside the rite. Lyrical self-expression arose in the production (labor) and domestic relations of primitive peoples. Thus, there were different ways of forming literary genera. And the ritual choir was one of them.

In the epic kind of literature (other - gr. epos - word, speech) the organizing beginning of the work is story about characters (characters), their destinies, actions, mindsets, about the events in their lives that make up the plot. This is a chain of verbal messages, or, more simply, a story about what happened earlier. Narrative is characterized by a temporal distance between the conduct of speech and the subject of verbal designations. It (remember Aristotle: the poet tells “about an event as something separate from himself”) is conducted from the outside and, as a rule, has a grammatical form past tense. The narrator (telling) is characterized by the position of a person who recalls what happened earlier. The distance between the time of the depicted action and the time of the narration about it is perhaps the most essential feature of the epic form.

The word "narrative" is used in a variety of ways when applied to literature. In a narrow sense, this is a detailed designation in words of what happened once and had a temporal duration. In a broader sense, the narrative also includes descriptions, i.e., the re-creation through words of something stable, stable or completely motionless (such are most of the landscapes, the characteristics of the everyday environment, the features of the appearance of the characters, their states of mind). Descriptions are also verbal images of the periodically repeating. “He used to be still in bed: / They carry notes to him,” says, for example, about Onegin in the first chapter of Pushkin's novel. In a similar way, the narrative fabric includes author's reasoning, playing a significant role in L. N. Tolstoy, A. France, T. Mann.

In epic works, the narrative connects to itself and, as it were, envelops the statements of the characters - their dialogues and monologues, including internal ones, actively interacting with them, explaining, supplementing and correcting them. And the literary text turns out to be an alloy of narrative speech and statements of characters.

Works of the epic kind make full use of the arsenal of artistic means available to literature, easily and freely master reality in time and space. However, they do not know the limitations in the amount of text. Epos as a kind of literature includes both short stories (medieval and renaissance short stories; O'Henry's and early A.P. Chekhov's humor) and works designed for prolonged listening or reading: epics and novels that cover life with extraordinary breadth. Such are the Indian "Mahabharata", the ancient Greek "Iliad" and "Odyssey" by Homer, "War and Peace" by L. N. Tolstoy, "The Forsyte Saga" by J. Galsworthy, "Gone with the Wind" by M. Mitchell.

An epic work can “absorb” such a number of characters, circumstances, events, destinies, details that are inaccessible to either other types of literature or any other kind of art. At the same time, the narrative form contributes to the deepest penetration into the inner world of a person. Complex characters, possessing many features and properties, incomplete and contradictory, in motion, formation, development are quite accessible to her.

These possibilities of the epic kind of literature are not used in all works. But the idea of ​​the artistic reproduction of life in its entirety, the disclosure of the essence of the era, the scale and monumentality of the creative act is firmly connected with the word "epos". There is no (neither in the sphere of verbal art, nor beyond) groups of works of art that would so freely penetrate both into the depths of human consciousness and into the breadth of people's being, as stories, novels, epics do.

In epic works, the presence of narrator. This is a very specific form of human artistic reproduction. The narrator is an intermediary between the depicted and the reader, often acting as a witness and interpreter of the persons and events shown.

The text of an epic work usually does not contain information about the fate of the narrator, about his relationship with the characters, about when, where and under what circumstances he tells his story, about his thoughts and feelings. The spirit of the story, according to T. Mann, is often "weightless, incorporeal and omnipresent"; and "for him there is no separation between 'here' and 'there'. And at the same time, the narrator's speech has not only figurativeness, but also expressive significance; it characterizes not only the object of the utterance, but also the speaker himself. In any epic work, the manner of perceiving reality is imprinted, inherent in the one who narrates, his vision of the world and his way of thinking. In this sense, it is legitimate to speak of character of a narrator. This concept has become firmly established in literary criticism thanks to B. M. Eikhenbaum, V.V. Vinogradov, M.M. Bakhtin (works of the 1920s). Summing up the judgments of these scientists, G.A. Gukovsky wrote in the 1940s: “Every image in art forms an idea not only about the depicted, but also about the depicting, the carrier of the presentation.<…>The narrator is not only a more or less concrete image<„.>but also a certain figurative idea, principle and appearance of the speaker, or otherwise - certainly a certain point of view on what is being stated, a psychological, ideological and simply geographical point of view, since it is impossible to describe from anywhere and there can be no description without a descriptor.

The epic form, in other words, reproduces not only the narrated, but also the narrator; it artistically captures the manner of speaking and perceiving the world, and, ultimately, the mindset and feelings of the narrator. The image of the narrator is found not in actions and not in direct outpourings of the soul, but in a kind of narrative monologue. The expressive beginnings of such a monologue, being its secondary function, are at the same time very important.

There can be no full-fledged perception of folk tales without close attention to their narrative manner, in which behind the naivety and ingenuity of the one who tells the story, gaiety and cunning, life experience and wisdom are guessed. It is impossible to feel the charm of the heroic epics of antiquity without catching the sublime structure of thoughts and feelings of the rhapsodist and storyteller. And even more unthinkable is the understanding of the works of A. S. Pushkin and N. V. Gogol, L. N. Tolstoy and F. M. Dostoevsky, N. S. Leskov and I. S. Turgenev, A. P. Chekhov and I. A. Bunin, M. A. Bulgakov and A. P. Platonov outside the comprehension of the “voice” of the narrator. A lively perception of an epic work is always associated with close attention to the manner in which the story is told. A reader sensitive to verbal art sees in a story, story or novel not only a message about the life of the characters with its details, but also an expressively significant monologue of the narrator.

Literature has different modes of storytelling. The most deeply rooted and presented is the type of narration in which there is, so to speak, an absolute distance between the characters and the one who reports on them. The narrator recounts events with unruffled calmness. Everything is clear to him, the gift of "omniscience" is inherent. And his image, the image of a creature that has ascended above the world, gives the work a flavor of maximum objectivity. Significantly, Homer was often likened to the celestial Olympians and called "divine".

The artistic possibilities of such a narrative are considered in the German classical aesthetics of the era of romanticism. In the epic, “a narrator is needed,” we read in Schelling, “who, by the equanimity of his story, would constantly distract us from too much participation in the characters and direct the attention of listeners to net result. And further: “The narrator is alien to the actors<…>he not only surpasses the listeners with his balanced contemplation and sets his story in this way, but, as it were, takes the place of "necessity" .

Based on such forms of storytelling, dating back to Homer, the classical aesthetics of the 19th century. argued that the epic kind of literature is the artistic embodiment of a special, "epic" worldview, which is marked by the maximum breadth of the outlook on life and its calm, joyful acceptance.

Similar thoughts about the nature of narration were expressed by T. Mann in the article “The Art of the Novel”: “Perhaps the element of narration is the eternal Homeric beginning, this prophetic spirit of the past, which is infinite like the world, and to which the whole world is known, most fully and worthy embodies the element of poetry." The writer sees in the narrative form the embodiment of the spirit of irony, which is not a coldly indifferent mockery, but full of cordiality and love: “... this is greatness, nourishing tenderness for the small”, “a view from the height of freedom, peace and objectivity, not overshadowed by any moralizing”.

Such ideas about the substantive foundations of the epic form (despite the fact that they are based on centuries of artistic experience) are incomplete and largely one-sided. The distance between the narrator and the characters is not always updated. Antique prose already testifies to this: in the novels "Metamorphoses" ("The Golden Ass") by Apuleius and "Satyricon" by Petronius, the characters themselves talk about what they saw and experienced. Such works express a view of the world that has nothing to do with the so-called "epic worldview".

The literature of the last two or three centuries has almost been dominated by subjective narration. The narrator began to look at the world through the eyes of one of the characters, imbued with his thoughts and impressions. A vivid example of this is the detailed picture of the Battle of Waterloo in Stendhal's Parma Monastery. This battle is by no means reproduced in a Homeric way: the narrator, as it were, reincarnates as a hero, young Fabrizio, and looks at what is happening through his eyes. The distance between him and the character practically disappears, the points of view of both are combined. Tolstoy sometimes paid tribute to this way of depicting. The Battle of Borodino in one of the chapters of "War and Peace" is shown in the perception of Pierre Bezukhov, who was not experienced in military affairs; the military council in Fili is presented in the form of impressions of the girl Malasha. In Anna Karenina, the races in which Vronsky takes part are reproduced twice: once experienced by himself, the other - seen through Anna's eyes. Something similar is characteristic of the works of F.M. Dostoevsky and A.P. Chekhov, G. Flaubert and T. Mann. The hero approached by the narrator is depicted as if from within. “You need to transfer yourself to the character,” Flaubert remarked. When the narrator approaches one of the characters, indirect speech is widely used, so that the voices of the narrator and the character merge into one. Combining the points of view of the narrator and characters in the literature of the 19th–20th centuries. caused by the increased artistic interest in the originality of the inner world of people, and most importantly - the understanding of life as a set of dissimilar attitudes to reality, qualitatively different horizons and value orientations.

The most common form of epic storytelling is third person story. But the narrator may well appear in the work as a kind of “I”. It is natural to call such personified narrators speaking from their own, "first" person storytellers. The narrator is often at the same time a character in the work (Maxim Maksimych in the story "Bela" from "A Hero of Our Time" by M.Yu. Lermontov, Grinev in "The Captain's Daughter" by A. S. Pushkin, Ivan Vasilyevich in L. N. Tolstoy's story "After ball”, Arkady Dolgoruky in “The Teenager” by F. M. Dostoevsky).

By the facts of their lives and mindsets, many of the narrators-characters are close (although not identical) to the writers. This takes place in autobiographical works (the early trilogy of L.N. Tolstoy, "The Summer of the Lord" and "Praying Man" by I.S. Shmelev). But more often, the fate, life positions, experiences of the hero who has become a narrator differ markedly from what is inherent in the author (“Robinson Crusoe” by D. Defoe, “My Life” by A.P. Chekhov). At the same time, in a number of works (epistolary, memoir, skaz forms), the narrators express themselves in a manner that is not identical to the author's and sometimes differs quite sharply from it (on someone else's word, see pp. 248–249). The modes of narration used in epic works seem to be very diverse.

Dramatic works (other - gr. drama - action), like epic ones, recreate the series of events, the actions of people and their relationships. Like the author of an epic work, the playwright is subject to the "law of developing action." But there is no detailed narrative-descriptive image in the drama. Actually, the author's speech here is auxiliary and episodic. Such are the lists of actors, sometimes accompanied by brief characteristics, designation of time and place of action; descriptions of the stage situation at the beginning of acts and episodes, as well as comments on individual replicas of the characters and indications of their movements, gestures, facial expressions, intonations (remarks). All this constitutes side dramatic text. Basic its text is a chain of statements of characters, their replicas and monologues.

Hence some limited artistic possibilities of the drama. The writer-playwright uses only a part of the visual means that are available to the creator of a novel or epic, short story or short story. And the characters of the characters are revealed in the drama with less freedom and fullness than in the epic. "Drama I<…>I perceive, - noted T. Mann, - as the art of the silhouette and I feel only the told person as a voluminous, integral, real and plastic image. At the same time, playwrights, unlike the authors of epic works, are forced to limit themselves to the amount of verbal text that meets the requirements of theatrical art. The time of the action depicted in the drama must fit into the strict framework of the stage time. And the performance in the forms familiar to the new European theater lasts, as you know, no more than three or four hours. And this requires an appropriate size of the dramatic text.

At the same time, the author of a play has significant advantages over the creators of short stories and novels. One moment depicted in the drama closely adjoins another, neighboring one. The time of the events reproduced by the playwright during the “stage episode is not compressed or stretched; the characters of the drama exchange remarks without any noticeable time intervals, and their statements, as K.S. Stanislavsky noted, form a continuous, continuous line. is captured as something past, then the chain of dialogues and monologues in the drama creates the illusion of the present time. Life here speaks as if from its own perspective: there is no intermediary narrator between what is depicted and the reader. The action is recreated in the drama with maximum immediacy. It flows as if before the eyes of the reader. "All narrative forms," ​​wrote F. Schiller, "carry the present into the past; all dramatic forms make the past present."

Drama is stage oriented. Theater is a public, mass art. The performance directly affects many people, as if merging into one in response to what is happening before them. The purpose of the drama, according to Pushkin, is to act on the multitude, to occupy its curiosity "and for this to capture the" truth of passions ":" The drama was born on the square and constituted the amusement of the people. The people, like children, require entertainment, action. The drama presents him with extraordinary, strange incidents. The people demand strong sensations<..>Laughter, pity and horror are the three strings of our imagination, shaken by dramatic art. The dramatic genre of literature is especially closely connected with the sphere of laughter, for the theater was consolidated and developed in close connection with mass festivities, in an atmosphere of play and fun. “The comic genre is universal for antiquity,” remarked O. M. Freidenberg. The same is true to say about the theater and drama of other countries and eras. T. Mann was right when he called the "comedian instinct" "the fundamental principle of any dramatic skill."

It is not surprising that drama gravitates towards an outwardly spectacular presentation of what is depicted. Her imagery turns out to be hyperbolic, catchy, theatrical and bright. "The theater requires<…>exaggerated broad lines both in voice, recitation, and in gestures, ”wrote N. Boileau. And this property of stage art invariably leaves its mark on the behavior of the heroes of dramatic works. “How he acted out in the theater,” Bubnov (At the Bottom by Gorky) comments on the frenzied tirade of the desperate Klesch, who, by an unexpected intrusion into the general conversation, gave it theatrical effect. Significant (as a characteristic of the dramatic kind of literature) are Tolstoy's reproaches against W. Shakespeare for the abundance of hyperbole, because of which the possibility of an artistic impression is allegedly violated. “From the very first words,” he wrote about the tragedy “King Lear,” one can see an exaggeration: an exaggeration of events, an exaggeration of feelings and an exaggeration of expressions. L. Tolstoy was wrong in assessing Shakespeare's work, but the idea of ​​the great English playwright's commitment to theatrical hyperbole is completely justified. What has been said about "King Lear" with no less reason can be attributed to ancient comedies and tragedies, dramatic works of classicism, to the plays of F. Schiller and V. Hugo, etc.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, when the desire for worldly authenticity prevailed in literature, the conventions inherent in the drama became less obvious, often they were reduced to a minimum. At the origins of this phenomenon is the so-called "petty-bourgeois drama" of the 18th century, the creators and theorists of which were D. Diderot and G.E. Lessing. Works of the largest Russian playwrights of the XIX century. and the beginning of the 20th century - A.N. Ostrovsky, A.P. Chekhov and M. Gorky - are distinguished by the reliability of the recreated life forms. But even when the playwrights set their sights on plausibility, plot, psychological, and actually verbal hyperbole persisted. Theatrical conventions made themselves felt even in Chekhov's dramaturgy, which was the maximum limit of "life-likeness". Let's take a look at the final scene of The Three Sisters. One young woman broke up with a loved one ten or fifteen minutes ago, probably forever. Another five minutes ago found out about the death of her fiancé. And now they, together with the eldest, third sister, sum up the moral and philosophical results of the past, thinking to the sounds of a military march about the fate of their generation, about the future of mankind. It is hardly possible to imagine this happening in reality. But we do not notice the implausibility of the ending of The Three Sisters, because we are used to the fact that the drama significantly changes the forms of people's life.

The foregoing convinces of the justice of A. S. Pushkin’s judgment (from his already cited article) that “the very essence of dramatic art excludes plausibility”; “Reading a poem, a novel, we can often forget ourselves and believe that the incident described is not fiction, but the truth. In an ode, in an elegy, we can think that the poet portrayed his real feelings, in real circumstances. But where is the credibility in a building divided into two parts, of which one is filled with spectators who have agreed etc.

The most important role in dramatic works belongs to the conventions of speech self-disclosure of the characters, whose dialogues and monologues, often saturated with aphorisms and maxims, turn out to be much more extensive and effective than those remarks that could be uttered in a similar life situation. Replicas “aside” are conventional, which, as it were, do not exist for other characters on the stage, but are clearly audible to the audience, as well as monologues uttered by the characters alone, alone with themselves, which are a purely stage technique for bringing out inner speech (there are many such monologues as in ancient tragedies, and in the dramaturgy of modern times). The playwright, setting up a kind of experiment, shows how a person would express himself if he expressed his moods with maximum fullness and brightness in the spoken words. And speech in a dramatic work often takes on a resemblance to artistic lyrical or oratorical speech: the characters here tend to express themselves as improvisers-poets or masters of public speaking. Therefore, Hegel was partly right, considering the drama as a synthesis of the epic beginning (eventfulness) and the lyrical (speech expression).

Drama has, as it were, two lives in art: theatrical and literary. Constituting the dramatic basis of the performances, existing in their composition, the dramatic work is also perceived by the reading public.

But this was not always the case. The emancipation of the drama from the stage was carried out gradually - over a number of centuries and ended relatively recently: in the 18th-19th centuries. The world-famous examples of drama (from antiquity to the 17th century) at the time of their creation were practically not recognized as literary works: they existed only as part of the performing arts. Neither W. Shakespeare nor J. B. Molière were perceived by their contemporaries as writers. A decisive role in strengthening the idea of ​​drama as a work intended not only for stage production, but also for reading, was played by the “discovery” in the second half of the 18th century of Shakespeare as a great dramatic poet. From now on, dramas began to be read intensively. Thanks to numerous printed publications in the XIX-XX centuries. dramatic works proved to be an important variety of fiction.

In the 19th century (especially in its first half) the literary merits of the drama were often placed above the scenic ones. So, Goethe believed that "Shakespeare's works are not for bodily eyes", and Griboedov called his desire to hear the verses of "Woe from Wit" from the stage "childish". The so-called Lesedrama (drama for reading), created with the installation primarily on perception in reading. Such are Goethe's Faust, Byron's dramatic works, Pushkin's little tragedies, Turgenev's dramas, about which the author remarked: "My plays, unsatisfactory on stage, may be of some interest in reading."

There are no fundamental differences between the Lesedrama and the play, which the author is oriented towards stage production. Dramas created for reading are often potentially stage dramas. And the theater (including the modern one) stubbornly seeks and sometimes finds the keys to them, evidence of which is the successful productions of Turgenev's "A Month in the Country" (first of all, this is the famous pre-revolutionary performance of the Art Theater) and numerous (though far from always successful) stage readings Pushkin's little tragedies in the 20th century.

The old truth remains in force: the most important, the main purpose of the drama is the stage. “Only when performed on stage,” A. N. Ostrovsky noted, “does the author’s dramatic fiction take on a completely finished form and produce exactly the moral action that the author set himself as a goal to achieve.”

The creation of a performance based on a dramatic work is associated with its creative completion: the actors create intonation-plastic drawings of the roles they play, the artist designs the stage space, the director develops the mise-en-scenes. In this regard, the concept of the play changes somewhat (more attention is paid to some of its sides, less attention to others), it is often concretized and enriched: the stage production introduces new elements into the drama. semantic shades. At the same time, the principle of paramount importance for the theater is reading fidelity literature. The director and actors are called upon to convey the staged work to the audience with the maximum possible completeness. Fidelity in stage reading takes place where the director and actors deeply comprehend the dramatic work in its major content, genre, style features. Stage productions (as well as film adaptations) are legitimate only in those cases where there is agreement (even if relative) between the director and actors and the circle of ideas of the playwright writer, when the stage figures are carefully attentive to the meaning of the staged work, to the features of its genre, the features of its style and to the text itself.

In the classical aesthetics of the 18th–19th centuries, in particular by Hegel and Belinsky, drama (primarily the genre of tragedy) was considered as the highest form of literary creativity: as the “crown of poetry”. A whole series of artistic epochs has, in fact, manifested itself predominantly in the dramatic art. Aeschylus and Sophocles in the heyday of ancient culture, Moliere, Racine and Corneille in the time of classicism had no equal among the authors of epic works. Significant in this respect is the work of Goethe. All literary genres were available to the great German writer, but he crowned his life in art with the creation of a dramatic work - the immortal Faust.

In past centuries (up to the 18th century), drama not only successfully competed with the epic, but often became the leading form of artistic reproduction of life in space and time. This is due to a number of reasons. First, the theatrical art played a huge role, accessible (unlike handwritten and printed books) to the widest strata of society. Secondly, the properties of dramatic works (the depiction of characters with pronounced features, the reproduction of human passions, the attraction to pathos and the grotesque) in the "pre-realist" era fully corresponded to general literary and general artistic trends.

And although in the XIX-XX centuries. the socio-psychological novel, a genre of epic literature, moved to the forefront of literature; dramatic works still have a place of honor.

The lyrical experience appears as belonging to the speaker (the speaker). It is not so much indicated by words (this is a special case), but with maximum energy is expressed. in lyrics (and only in it) the system of artistic means is entirely subordinated to the disclosure of the integral movement of the human soul.

A lyrically imprinted experience differs significantly from directly life emotions, where amorphousness, indistinctness, and randomness take place, and often prevail. Lyrical emotion is a kind of clot, the quintessence of a person's spiritual experience. “The most subjective kind of literature,” L. Ya. Ginzburg wrote about the lyrics, “it, like no other, strives for the general, for the depiction of mental life as universal.” The experience underlying the lyrical work is a kind of spiritual insight. It is the result of creative completion and artistic transformation of what is experienced (or can be experienced) by a person in real life. “Even in those days,” N.V. Gogol wrote about Pushkin, “when he himself rushed into the passions, poetry was sacred to him, like some kind of temple. He did not enter there untidy and untidy; he brought in nothing thoughtless, reckless from his own life; disheveled reality did not enter there naked<…>The reader heard only one fragrance, but what substances burned out in the poet's chest in order to emit this fragrance, no one can hear.

Lyricism is by no means confined to the sphere of the inner life of people, their psychology as such. She is invariably attracted to mental states that signify a person's focus on external reality. Therefore, lyric poetry turns out to be an artistic mastery of states not only of consciousness (which, as G. N. Pospelov insistently says, is primary, main, dominant in it), but also of being. Such are philosophical, landscape and civil poems. Lyrical poetry is capable of capturing spatio-temporal ideas easily and widely, connecting expressed feelings with the facts of everyday life and nature, history and modernity, with planetary life, the universe, the universe. At the same time, lyrical creativity, one of the forerunners of which in European literature is the biblical Psalms, can acquire a religious character in its most striking examples. It turns out (remember M.Yu. Lermontov's poem "Prayer") "congenial to prayer" captures the thoughts of poets about the higher power of being (ode of G.R. Derzhavin "God") and his communication with God ("Prophet" by A.S. Pushkin ). Religious motifs are very persistent in the lyrics of our century: V.F. Khodasevich, N.S. Gumilyov, A.A. Akhmatova, B. L. Pasternak, among modern poets - O. A. Sedakova.

The range of lyrically embodied concepts, ideas, emotions is unusually wide. At the same time, lyrics, to a greater extent than other types of literature, tend to capture everything that is positively significant and of value. It is not capable of fruitfulness, locking itself in the realm of total skepticism and world-rejection. Let us turn once again to the book by L.Ya. Ginzburg: “At its very essence, lyricism is a conversation about significant, high, beautiful (sometimes in a contradictory, ironic refraction); a kind of exposition of the ideals and life values ​​of a person. But also anti-values ​​- in the grotesque, in denunciation and satire; but it is not here that the high road of lyric poetry passes.

Lyric finds itself mainly in a small form. Although there is a genre lyric poem recreating experiences in their symphonic diversity (“About this” by V.V. Mayakovsky, “Poem of the mountain” and “Poem of the end” by M.I. Tsvetaeva, “Poem without a hero” by A.A. Akhmatova), the scope of the poem. The principle of the lyrical kind of literature is “as short as possible and as full as possible”. Aspiring to the utmost compactness, the most "compressed" lyrical texts are sometimes similar to proverbial formulas, aphorisms, maxims, with which they often come into contact and compete.

The states of human consciousness are embodied in the lyrics in different ways: either directly and openly, in sincere confessions, confessional monologues filled with reflection (recall S.A. Yesenin’s masterpiece “I don’t regret, I don’t call, I don’t cry ...”), or mostly indirectly, indirectly) in the form of an image of external reality ( descriptive lyrics, primarily landscape) or a compact story about some event (narrative lyrics). But almost in any lyrical work there is a meditative beginning. Meditation (lat. meditatio - thinking, reflection) is called an excited and psychologically intense meditation on something: “Even when lyrical works seem to be devoid of meditativeness and outwardly mostly descriptive, they only turn out to be fully artistic if their descriptiveness has a meditative "subtext". Lyrics, to put it another way, are incompatible with the neutrality and impartiality of tone widely used in epic narratives. The speech of the lyrical work is full of expression, which here becomes the organizing and dominant principle. Lyrical expression makes itself felt in the choice of words, and in syntactic constructions, and in allegory, and, most importantly, in the phonetic-rhythmic construction of the text. "Semantic-phonetic effects" come to the fore in the lyrics in their inextricable connection with the rhythm, as a rule, tense and dynamic. At the same time, the lyrical work in the vast majority of cases has a poetic form, while the epic and drama (especially in eras close to us) turn mainly to prose.

Speech expression in the lyrical kind of poetry is often brought, as it were, to the maximum limit. Such a number of bold and unexpected allegories, such a flexible and rich combination of intonations and rhythms, such heartfelt and impressive sound repetitions and similarities that lyric poets willingly resort to (especially in our century), neither "ordinary" speech, nor the statements of heroes know. in epic and drama, neither in narrative prose, nor even in verse epic.

In the full expression of lyrical speech, the usual logical ordering of statements is often pushed to the periphery, or even completely eliminated, which is especially characteristic of the poetry of the 20th century, which was largely preceded by the work of the French symbolists of the second half of the 19th century (P. Verlaine, St. Mallarmé). Here are the lines of L.N. Martynov devoted to the art of this kind:

And the speech is self-willed,
The order in the scale breaks,
And the notes go upside down
To wake up the voice.

The “lyrical disorder”, familiar to verbal art before, but prevailing only in the poetry of our century, is an expression of artistic interest in the hidden depths of human consciousness, in the origins of experiences, in complex, logically indefinable movements of the soul. Turning to speech, which allows itself to “be free-willed”, poets get the opportunity to talk about everything at the same time, swiftly, at once, “excitedly”: “The world here appears as if taken by surprise by a sudden feeling.” Let us recall the beginning of B.L. Pasternak "Waves", opening the book "Rebirth":

Everything will be here: experienced
And what I still live
My aspirations and principles
And seen in reality.

The expressiveness of speech makes lyrical creativity related to music. P. Verlaine's poem "The Art of Poetry" is about this, containing an appeal addressed to the poet to be imbued with the spirit of music:

It's just a matter of music.
So, don't measure the way.
Prefer almost incorporeality
Everything that is too flesh and body<…>
So music again and again!
Let in your verse with overclocking
Shine in the distance transformed
Another sky and love.

((Translated by B.L. Pasternak))

At the early stages of the development of art, lyrical works were sung, the verbal text was accompanied by a melody, enriched with it and interacted with it. Numerous songs and romances still testify that lyrics are close to music in their essence. According to M.S. Kagan, lyricism is "music in literature", "literature that has assumed the laws of music".

There is, however, a fundamental difference between lyrics and music. The latter (like dance), while comprehending the spheres of human consciousness that are inaccessible to other types of art, at the same time is limited to what conveys general character experiences. Human consciousness is revealed here outside of its direct connection with some specific phenomena of being. Listening, for example, to Chopin's famous Etude in C minor (op. 10 No. 12), we perceive all the impetuous activity and loftiness of feeling, reaching the intensity of passion, but we do not associate this with any particular life situation or any particular picture. The listener is free to imagine a sea storm, or a revolution, or the rebelliousness of a love feeling, or simply surrender to the elements of sounds and perceive the emotions embodied in them without any subject associations. Music is able to immerse us in such depths of the spirit that are no longer associated with the idea of ​​some single phenomena.

Not so in lyric poetry. Feelings and volitional impulses are given here in their conditionality by something and in a direct direction to specific phenomena. Recall, for example, Pushkin's poem "The daylight went out ...". The poet's rebellious, romantic and at the same time sorrowful feeling is revealed through his impression of the environment (the "gloomy ocean" waving under him, "the distant shore, the lands of midday magic lands") and through memories of what happened (about the deep wounds of love and youth faded in storms ). The poet conveys the connections of consciousness with being, otherwise it cannot be in verbal art. This or that feeling always appears as a reaction of consciousness to some phenomena of reality. No matter how vague and elusive the emotional movements captured by the artistic word are (recall the poems of V.A. Zhukovsky, A.A. Fet or the early A.A. Blok), the reader will find out what caused them, or, at least, with what connected with impressions.

The bearer of the experience expressed in the lyrics is usually called lyrical hero. This term, introduced by Yu.N. Tynyanov in the 1921 article Blok, is rooted in literary criticism and criticism (along with the synonymous phrases “lyrical self”, “lyrical subject”). They talk about the lyrical hero as “I-created” (M.M. Prishvin), meaning not only individual poems, but also their cycles, as well as the work of the poet as a whole. This is a very specific image of a person, fundamentally different from the images of narrators-storytellers, about whose inner world we, as a rule, know nothing, and the characters of epic and dramatic works, which are invariably distanced from the writer.

The lyrical hero is not only bound by close ties with the author, with his worldview, spiritual and biographical experience, mental attitude, manner of speech behavior, but turns out (almost in most cases) to be indistinguishable from him. The lyrics in its main "array" are autopsychological.

At the same time, the lyrical experience is not identical to what the poet experienced as a biographical personality. The lyrics do not just reproduce the author's feelings, they transform, enrich, recreate, elevate and ennoble them. This is exactly what A. S. Pushkin’s poem “The Poet” is about (“.. only a divine verb / Touches the sensitive ear, / The poet’s soul will start up, / Like an awakened eagle”).

At the same time, the author in the process of creativity often creates those psychological situations with the power of imagination that did not exist at all in reality. Literary critics have repeatedly been convinced that the motives and themes of A. S. Pushkin's lyrical poems do not always agree with the facts of his personal fate. The inscription made by A.A. Block on the margins of the manuscript of one of his poems: "There was nothing like that." In his poems, the poet captured his personality either in the image of a young monk, an admirer of the mystically mysterious Beautiful Lady, or in the “mask” of Shakespeare's Hamlet, or as a frequenter of St. Petersburg restaurants.

Lyrically expressed experiences can belong both to the poet himself and to other persons who are not like him. The ability to “feel someone else’s instantly as your own” is, according to A.A. Feta, one of the facets of poetic talent. Lyrics that express the experiences of a person who is noticeably different from the author are called role-playing(as opposed to autopsychological). These are the poems “There is no name for you, my distant ...” A.A. Blok - a spiritual outpouring of a girl living in a vague expectation of love, or "I was killed near Rzhev" by A.T. Tvardovsky, or "Odyssey to Telemaku" by I.A. Brodsky. It even happens (although this rarely happens) that the subject of a lyrical utterance is exposed by the author. Such is the “moral man” in the poem by N.A. Nekrasov of the same name, who caused many sorrows and troubles to those around him, but stubbornly repeated the phrase: "Living in accordance with strict morality, I did no harm to anyone in my life." Aristotle's earlier definition of lyric (the poet "remains himself without changing his face") is thus inaccurate: the lyric poet may well change his face and reproduce an experience that belongs to someone else.

But the mainstay of lyrical creativity is not role-playing poetry, but autopsychological: poems that are an act of direct self-expression of the poet. The human authenticity of the lyrical experience, the direct presence in the poem, according to V.F. Khodasevich, "the living soul of the poet": "The personality of the author, not hidden by stylization, becomes closer to us"; the dignity of the poet lies "in the fact that he writes in obedience to the real need to express his feelings."

Lyricism in its dominant branch is characterized by the charming immediacy of the author's self-disclosure, the "openness" of his inner world. So, delving into the poems of A.S. Pushkin and M.Yu. Lermontova, S.A. Yesenin and B.L. Pasternak, A.A. Akhmatova and M.I. Tsvetaeva, we get a very vivid and multifaceted idea of ​​their spiritual and biographical experience, range of mindset, personal fate.

The relationship between the lyrical hero and the author (poet) is perceived by literary critics in different ways. The opinions of a number of scientists of the 20th century, in particular M.M. Bakhtin, who saw in the lyrics a complex system of relations between the author and the hero, “I” and “the other”, and also spoke about the invariable presence of the choral principle in it. This idea was developed by S.N. Broitman. He argues that lyric poetry (especially the eras close to us) is characterized not by "mono-subjectivity", but by "inter-subjectivity", that is, the imprinting of interacting consciousnesses.

These scientific innovations, however, do not shake the usual idea of ​​the openness of the author's presence in a lyrical work as its most important property, which is traditionally denoted by the term "subjectivity". “He (lyric poet. - W.H.), - Hegel wrote, - maybe inside himself look for motivation for creativity and content, dwelling on internal situations, states, experiences and passions of one's heart and spirit. Here the man himself in his subjective inner life becomes a work of art, while the epic poet is served by a hero different from himself, his exploits and incidents that happen to him.

It is the completeness of the expression of the author's subjectivity that determines the originality of the perception of the lyrics by the reader, who is actively involved in the emotional atmosphere of the work. Lyrical creativity (and this again makes it related to music, as well as to choreography) has the maximum inspiring, contagious power ( suggestiveness). Getting acquainted with a short story, novel or drama, we perceive what is depicted from a certain psychological distance, to a certain extent detached. By the will of the authors (and sometimes of our own) we accept or, on the contrary, do not share their mindset, approve or disapprove of their actions, mock them or sympathize with them. The lyric is another matter. To fully perceive a lyrical work means to be imbued with the mindset of the poet, to feel and once again experience them as something of one's own, personal, sincere. With the help of condensed poetic formulas of a lyrical work between the author and the reader, according to the exact words of L.Ya. Ginzburg, "lightning-fast and unmistakable contact is established" . The poet's feelings become at the same time our feelings. The author and his reader form a single, inseparable "we". And this is the special charm of the lyrics.

The genres of literature are not separated from each other by an impenetrable wall. Along with works that unconditionally and wholly belong to alone from literary genera, there are also those that combine the properties of any two generic forms - “ two-kind formations "(B.O. Korman's expression). On works and their groups belonging to two types of literature during the 19th–20th centuries. has been said repeatedly. Thus, Schelling characterized the novel as "a combination of the epic with the drama." The presence of the epic beginning in the dramaturgy of A. N. Ostrovsky was noted. B. Brecht characterized his plays as epic. The works of M. Maeterlinck and A. Blok were given the term "lyrical dramas". Deeply rooted in verbal art lyro-epic, which includes lyric-epic poems (established in literature since the era of romanticism), ballads (having folklore roots), the so-called lyrical prose (usually autobiographical), works where lyrical digressions are “connected” to the narrative of events, as, for example, in Byron's Don Juan and Pushkin's Eugene Onegin.

In literary criticism of the XX century. Repeated attempts have been made to supplement the traditional "triad" (epos, lyrics, drama) and to substantiate the concept of a fourth (or even fifth, etc.) kind of literature. Next to the three "former" ones, the novel (V.D. Dneprov), and satire (Y.E. Elsberg, Yu.B. Borev), and the script (a number of film theorists) were put. There is a lot of controversy in such judgments, but literature really knows groups of works that do not fully possess the properties of an epic, lyric or drama, or even lack them altogether. It is right to call them non-generic forms.

First, this essays. Here the attention of the authors is focused on external reality, which gives literary critics some reason to put them in a number of epic genres. However, in the essays, the series of events and the narrative itself do not play an organizing role: descriptions dominate, often accompanied by reasoning. These are “Khor and Kalinich” from Turgenev’s “Notes of a Hunter”, some works by G.I. Uspensky and M.M. Prishvin.

Secondly, this is the so-called literature "stream of consciousness", where not the narrative presentation of events prevails, but the endless chains of impressions, memories, mental movements of the speaker. Here, consciousness, which most often appears disordered, chaotic, seems to appropriate and absorb the world: reality turns out to be “veiled” with the chaos of its contemplations, the world is placed in consciousness. The works of M. Proust, J. Joyce, Andrei Bely have similar properties. Later, representatives of the "new novel" in France (M. Butor, N. Sarrot) turned to this form.

And finally, it definitely does not fit into the traditional triad essay, which has now become a very influential area of ​​​​literary creativity. At the origins of essays are the world-famous "Experiments" ("Essays") by M. Montaigne. The essay form is a casually free combination of summarizing reports about single facts, descriptions of reality and (which is especially important) reflections on it. Thoughts expressed in essay form, as a rule, do not claim to be an exhaustive interpretation of the subject, they allow the possibility of completely different judgments. Essayistics gravitates towards syncretism: the beginnings of art proper here are easily combined with journalistic and philosophical ones.

Essayistics almost dominates in the work of V.V. Rozanova ("Solitary", "Fallen Leaves"). She made herself felt in the prose of A.M. Remizov ("Salting"), in a number of works by M.M. Prishvin (first of all, "Eyes of the Earth" are remembered). The essayistic principle is present in the prose of G. Fielding and L. Stern, in Byron's poems, in Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin" (free conversations with the reader, thoughts about a secular person, about friendship and relatives, etc.), "Nevsky Prospekt" N .IN. Gogol (the beginning and the end of the story), in the prose of T. Mann, G. Hesse, R. Musil, where the narration is abundantly accompanied by the thoughts of the writers.

According to M.N. Epstein, the basis of essayism is a special concept of a person - as a carrier not of knowledge, but of opinions. Its vocation is not to proclaim ready-made truths, but to split the inveterate, false integrity, to defend free thought, moving away from the centralization of meaning: here there is a "coexistence of the personality with the emerging word." The author attaches a very high status to the relativistically understood essayism: it is “the internal engine of the culture of the new time”, the focus of the possibilities of “super-artistic generalization”. Note, however, that essayism has by no means eliminated traditional generic forms and, moreover, it is able to embody a world attitude that opposes relativism. A vivid example of this is the work of M.M. Prishvin.

So, there are distinguishable generic forms proper, traditional and undividedly dominating in literary creativity for many centuries, and forms "extra-generic", non-traditional, rooted in "post-romantic" art. The first interact with the second very actively, complementing each other. Today, the Platonic-Aristotelian-Hegelian triad (epos, lyrics, drama), apparently, is largely shaken and needs to be corrected. At the same time, there is no reason to declare the three types of literature habitually distinguished as obsolete, as is sometimes done with the light hand of the Italian philosopher and art theorist B. Croce. Among Russian literary critics, A. I. Beletsky spoke in a similar spirit: “For ancient literatures, the terms epic, lyric, drama were not yet abstract. They denoted special, external ways of transmitting a work to a listening audience. Going into the book, poetry abandoned these modes of transmission, and gradually<…>types (meaning the genres of literature. - V.Kh.) became more and more of a fiction. Is it necessary to continue the scientific existence of these fictions? Disagreeing with this, we note: literary works all epochs (including modern ones) have a certain generic specificity (the form is epic, dramatic, lyrical, or forms of an essay, “stream of consciousness”, essay, which are not uncommon in the 20th century). Generic affiliation (or, on the contrary, the involvement of one of the "non-generic" forms) largely determines the organization of the work, its formal, structural features. Therefore, the concept of "kind of literature" in the composition of theoretical poetics is inalienable and essential.

Existing genre designations fix various aspects of works. Thus, the word "tragedy" states the involvement of this group of dramatic works in a certain emotional and semantic mood (pathos); the word “tale” speaks of the belonging of works to the epic kind of literature and of the “average” volume of the text (smaller than that of novels, and greater than that of short stories and short stories); the sonnet is a lyrical genre, which is characterized primarily by a strictly defined volume (14 verses) and a specific system of rhymes; the word "fairy tale" indicates, firstly, the narrative and, secondly, the activity of fiction and the presence of fantasy. And so on. B.V. Tomashevsky reasonably noted that, being "many different", genre features "do not provide the possibility of a logical classification of genres on some one basis." It is impossible not to heed such warnings. However, the literary criticism of our century has repeatedly outlined, and to some extent carried out the development of the concept of "literary genre" not only in the specific, historical and literary aspect (studies of individual genre formations), but also in its own theoretical aspect. Experiences in the systematization of genres in the perspective of supra-epochal and worldwide have been undertaken both in domestic and foreign literary criticism.

Consideration of genres is unimaginable without referring to the organization, structure, form of literary works. The theorists of the formal school insistently talked about this. So, B.V. Tomashevsky called genres specific "groupings of techniques" that are compatible with each other, have stability and depend "on the environment for the emergence, purpose and conditions for the perception of works, on imitation of old works and the resulting literary tradition." The scientist characterizes the features of the genre as dominant in the work and determining its organization.

Inheriting the traditions of the formal school, and at the same time revising some of its provisions, scientists have paid close attention to the semantic aspect of genres, using the terms "genre essence" and "genre content". The palm here belongs to M.M. Bakhtin, who said that the genre form is inextricably linked with the themes of the works and the features of the worldview of their authors: “In the genres<…>over the centuries of their lives, forms of vision and understanding of certain aspects of the world are accumulated. Genre is significant construction: "The artist of the word must learn to see reality through the eyes of the genre." And again: "Each genre<…>is a complex system of means and methods of understanding mastery of reality. Emphasizing that the genre properties of works constitute an indissoluble unity, Bakhtin at the same time distinguished between the formal (structural) and content aspects of the genre proper. He noted that such genre names rooted in antiquity as epic, tragedy, idyll, which characterized the structure of works, later, as applied to the literature of the New Age, “are used as a designation genre essence .

Bakhtin’s works do not directly mention what constitutes a genre essence, but from the totality of his judgments about the novel (which will be discussed below), it becomes clear that these are the artistic principles of mastering a person and his connections with the environment. This deep aspect of genres in the XIX century. considered by Hegel, who characterized the epic, satire and comedy, as well as the novel, involving the concepts of "substantial" and "subjective" (individual, ghostly). At the same time, genres were associated with a certain kind of understanding of the “general state of the world” and conflicts (“collisions”). In a similar way, A.N. Veselovsky.

In the same vein (and, in our opinion, closer to Veselovsky than to Hegel) is the concept of literary genres by G.N. Pospelov, who in the 1940s undertook an original attempt to systematize genre phenomena. He distinguished between genre forms "external" ("a closed compositional-stylistic whole") and "internal" ("genre-specific content" as the principle of "figurative thinking" and "cognitive interpretation of characters"). Having regarded the external (compositional-stylistic) genre forms as content-neutral (in this, Pospel's concept of genres, which has been repeatedly noted, is one-sided and vulnerable), the scientist focused on the inner side of genres. He singled out and characterized three supra-epochal genre groups, using the sociological principle as the basis for their differentiation: the type of relationship between an artistically comprehended person and society, the social environment in a broad sense. “If works of national historical genre content (meaning epics, epics, odes. - V.Kh.),- wrote G.N. Pospelov, - they know life in the aspect formation of national societies if the works of romance comprehend the formation of individual characters in private relations, then works of "ethological" genre content reveal state national society or some part of it. (Ethological, or moralistic, genres are works such as A.N. Radishchev’s “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”, N.A. Nekrasov’s “Who Lives Well in Rus'”, as well as satires, idylls, utopias and dystopias). Along with the three named genre groups, the scientist singled out another one: mythological containing "folk figurative and fantastic explanations origin of certain phenomena of nature and culture. He attributed these genres only to the “pre-art” of historically early, “pagan” societies, believing that “the mythological group of genres, during the transition of peoples to higher levels of social life, did not receive its further development” .

Characteristics of genre groups, which is given by G.N. Pospelov, has the advantage of a clear system. However, it is incomplete. Now, when the ban on the discussion of the religious and philosophical problems of art has been lifted from domestic literary criticism, it is not difficult for scientists to add to what has been said that there is and is a deeply significant group of literary and artistic (and not just archaic and mythological) genres, where a person is correlated not so much with the life of society , how much with the cosmic principles, the universal laws of the world order and the higher forces of being.

Takova parable, which dates back to the eras of the Old and New Testaments and "from the content side is distinguished by its attraction to the deep" wisdom "of a religious or moralistic order" . Takovo life, which became almost the leading genre in the Christian Middle Ages; here the hero is attached to the ideal of righteousness and holiness, or at least aspires to it. Let's call and mystery, also formed in the Middle Ages, as well as religious and philosophical lyrics, at the origins of which are the biblical "Psalms". According to Vyach. Ivanov about the poetry of F.I. Tyutcheva, A.A. Feta, Vl. S. Solovyov (“The Roman Diary of 1944”, October), “... there are three of them, / In the earthly sight of the unearthly / And foretelling us the way.” The named genres, which do not fit into any sociological constructions, can be legitimately defined as ontological(using the term of philosophy: ontology - the doctrine of being). This group of genres also includes works of a carnival-comic nature, in particular comedies: in them, as shown by M.M. Bakhtin, the hero and the reality surrounding him are correlated with existential universals. The origins of the genres that we have called ontological are mythological archaic, and above all, myths about the creation of the world, called etiological (or cosmological).

The ontological aspect of genres comes to the fore in a number of foreign theories of the 20th century. Genres are considered, first of all, as describing being as a whole in a certain way. In the words of the American scientist C. Burke, these are systems of acceptance or rejection of the world. In this series of theories, the concept of N.G. Fry, stated in his book Anatomy of Criticism (1957). The genre form, it says, is generated by myths about the seasons and their corresponding rituals: “Spring represents the dawn and birth, giving rise to myths<..->about awakening and resurrection, - sets out I.P. Ilyin the thoughts of a Canadian scientist - about the creation of light and the death of darkness, as well as the archetypes of dithyrambic and rhapsodic poetry. Summer symbolizes the zenith, marriage, triumph, giving rise to myths about apotheosis, a sacred wedding, a visit to paradise and the archetypes of comedy, idyll, chivalric romance. Autumn, as a symbol of sunset and death, gives rise to the myths of the withering of vital energy, the dying god, violent death and sacrifice, and the archetypes of tragedy and elegy. Winter, personifying darkness and hopelessness, gives rise to the myth of the victory of dark forces and the flood, the return of chaos, the death of the hero and gods, as well as the archetypes of satire.

The novel, recognized as the leading genre of literature of the last two or three centuries, attracts close attention of literary scholars and critics. It also becomes the subject of reflection of the writers themselves. However, this genre still remains a mystery. A variety of, sometimes opposing opinions are expressed about the historical fate of the novel and its future. “His,” T. Mann wrote in 1936, “prose qualities, consciousness and criticism, as well as the wealth of his means, his ability to freely and quickly dispose of display and research, music and knowledge, myth and science, his human breadth, his objectivity and irony make the novel what it is today: a monumental and dominant form of fiction. O.E. Mandelstam, on the other hand, spoke of the decline of the novel and its exhaustion (article "The End of the Novel", 1922). In the psychologization of the novel and the weakening of the external-event principle in it (which took place already in the 19th century), the poet saw a symptom of the decline and the threshold of the death of the genre, which has now become, in his words, "old-fashioned".

In modern concepts of the novel, one way or another, statements about it made in the last century are taken into account. If in the aesthetics of classicism the novel was treated as a low genre (“A hero, in whom everything is small, is only suitable for a novel”; “Inconsistencies with the novel are inseparable”), then in the era of romanticism he rose to the shield as a reproduction of “ ordinary reality" and at the same time - "mirror of the world and<…>of his age”, the fruit of “a fully mature spirit”; as a "romantic book", where, unlike the traditional epic, there is a place for a laid-back expression of the mood of the author and heroes, and humor and playful lightness. "Every novel must shelter within itself the spirit of the universal," wrote Jean-Paul. Thinkers of the turn of the 18th–19th centuries developed their theories of the novel. substantiated by the experience of modern writers, first of all, I.V. Goethe as the author of books about Wilhelm Meister.

The comparison of the novel with the traditional epic, outlined by the aesthetics and criticism of romanticism, was deployed by Hegel: “Here<…>again (as in the epic. - W.H.) appears in its entirety the richness and versatility of interests, states, characters, living conditions, a wide background of a holistic world, as well as an epic depiction of events. On the other hand, the novel lacks the inherent epic " originally poetic state of the world”, there are “ prosaically orderly reality" and "the conflict between the poetry of the heart and the prose of everyday life that opposes it." This conflict, Hegel notes, "is resolved tragically or comically" and often ends with the fact that the heroes come to terms with the "ordinary order of the world", recognizing in it "a true and substantial beginning." Similar thoughts were expressed by V. G. Belinsky, who called the novel an epic of private life: the subject of this genre is “the fate of a private person”, ordinary, “everyday life”. In the second half of the 1840s, the critic argued that the novel and the story related to it "have now become at the head of all other genres of poetry."

Much in common with Hegel and Belinsky (at the same time supplementing them), M.M. Bakhtin in works on the novel, written mainly in the 1930s and awaiting publication in the 1970s. Based on the judgments of the writers of the XVIII century. G. Fielding and K.M. Wieland, a scientist in the article "Epos and the Novel (On the Methodology of the Study of the Novel)" (1941) argued that the hero of the novel is shown "not as ready-made and unchanging, but as becoming, changing, brought up by life"; this person "should not be" heroic "neither in the epic nor in the tragic sense of the word, the romantic hero combines both positive and negative traits, both low and high, both funny and serious" . At the same time, the novel captures the “living contact” of a person “with the unfinished, becoming modernity (the unfinished present)”. And it "more deeply, essentially, sensitively and quickly" than any other genre, "reflects the formation of reality itself" (451). Most importantly, the novel (according to Bakhtin) is capable of discovering in a person not only properties determined in behavior, but also unrealized opportunities, a certain personal potential: “One of the main internal themes of the novel is precisely the theme of the inadequacy of the hero of his fate and to be "either greater than one's destiny, or less than one's humanity" (479).

The above judgments of Hegel, Belinsky and Bakhtin can rightly be considered as axioms of the theory of the novel, which explores the life of a person (primarily private, individually biographical) in dynamics, formation, evolution and in situations of complex, as a rule, conflict relations between the hero and others. The novel is invariably present and almost dominates - as a kind of "super-theme" - artistic comprehension (to use the well-known words of A.S. Pushkin) "man's independence", which constitutes (let us add the poet) and "the guarantee of his greatness", and the source of woeful falls, life's dead ends and catastrophes. The ground for the formation and strengthening of the novel, in other words, arises where there is interest in a person who has at least relative independence from the establishment of the social environment with its imperatives, rites, rituals, which is not characterized by "herd" inclusion in society.

In the novels, situations of the hero's alienation from the environment are widely depicted, his lack of roots in reality, homelessness, worldly wandering and spiritual wandering are emphasized. Such are Apuleius' Golden Ass, chivalric novels of the Middle Ages, A.R. Lesage. Let us also recall Julien Sorel (“Red and Black” by Stendhal), Eugene Onegin (“Alien to everything, not bound by anything,” the Pushkin hero complains about his fate in a letter to Tatyana), Herzen Beltov, Raskolnikov and Ivan Karamazov in F.M. Dostoevsky. This kind of novel characters (and they are innumerable) "rely only on themselves."

The alienation of a person from society and the world order was interpreted by M.M. Bakhtin as necessary dominant in the novel. The scientist argued that here not only the hero, but also the author himself appear unrooted in the world, remote from the principles of stability and stability, alien to legend. The novel, in his opinion, captures "the disintegration of the epic (and tragic) integrity of man" and carries out "a ludicrous familiarization of the world and man" (481). “The novel,” Bakhtin wrote, “has a new, specific problematic; it is characterized by eternal rethinking - reappraisal" (473). In this genre, reality "becomes a world where the first word (the ideal beginning) is not there, and the last has not yet been said" (472-473). Thus, the novel is seen as an expression of a skeptical and relativistic worldview, which is conceived as a crisis and at the same time having a perspective. The novel, Bakhtin argues, prepares a new, more complex integrity of man "on a higher level<…>development” (480).

There are many similarities with the Bakhtinian theory of the novel in the judgments of the famous Hungarian Marxist philosopher and literary critic D. Lukacs, who called this genre the epic of the godless world, and the psychology of the novel hero - demonic. He considered the subject of the novel to be the history of the human soul, manifesting itself and knowing itself in all sorts of adventures (adventures), and its predominant tone was irony, which he defined as the negative mysticism of eras that broke with God. Considering the novel as a mirror of growing up, the maturity of society and the antithesis of the epic that captured the "normal childhood" of mankind, D. Lukacs spoke about the re-creation of the human soul by this genre, lost in an empty and imaginary reality.

However, the novel does not completely plunge into the atmosphere of demonism and irony, the disintegration of human integrity, the alienation of people from the world, but it is opposed to it. The hero's reliance on himself in the classical novels of the 19th century. (both Western European and domestic) appeared most often in a dual coverage: on the one hand, as a worthy human "independence", sublime, attractive, bewitching, on the other - as a source of delusions and defeats in life. “How wrong I was, how punished!” - Onegin exclaims woefully, summing up his solitary free path. Pechorin complains that he did not guess his own “high purpose” and did not find a worthy application for the “immense forces” of his soul. Ivan Karamazov at the end of the novel, tormented by his conscience, falls ill with delirium tremens. “And God help the homeless wanderers,” Rudin’s fate is said at the end of Turgenev’s novel.

At the same time, many novel characters strive to overcome their solitude and alienation, they yearn for “a connection with the world to be established in their destinies” (A. Blok). Let us recall once again the eighth chapter of "Eugene Onegin", where the hero imagines Tatiana sitting at the window of a rural house; as well as Turgenev's Lavretsky, Goncharov's Raisky, Tolstoy's Andrey Volkonsky, or even Ivan Karamazov, who in his best moments aspires to Alyosha. This kind of novel situations was characterized by G.K. Kosikov: “The “heart” of the hero and the “heart” of the world are drawn to each other, and the problem of the novel is<…>in the fact that they are never allowed to unite, and the guilt of the hero for this sometimes turns out to be no less than the guilt of the world.

Something else is also important: in novels, heroes play a significant role, whose self-reliance has nothing to do with the solitude of consciousness, alienation from the environment, relying only on themselves. Among the novel characters, we find those who, using the words of M.M. Prishvin about himself, it is legitimate to call "figures of communication and communication." Such is the “overflowing with life” Natasha Rostova, who, in the words of S.G. Bocharova, invariably "renews, liberates" people, "defines them<…>behavior". This heroine L.N. Tolstoy naively and at the same time convincingly demands "immediately, now open, direct, humanly simple relations between people." Such are Prince Myshkin and Alyosha Karamazov in Dostoevsky. In a number of novels (especially persistently - in the works of Charles Dickens and Russian literature of the 19th century), spiritual contacts of a person with a reality close to him, and, in particular, family ties ("The Captain's Daughter" by A.S. Pushkin); "Cathedrals" and "The Seedy Family" by N. S. Leskov; "Nest of Nobles" by I. S. Turgenev; "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" by L. N. Tolstoy). The heroes of such works (remember the Rostovs or Konstantin Levin) perceive and think of the surrounding reality not so much as alien and hostile to themselves, but as friendly and akin. They are characterized by the fact that M.M. Prishvin called "kind attention to the world."

The theme of the House (in the high sense of the word - as an irremovable existential principle and indisputable value) persistently (most often in intensely dramatic tones) sounds in the novels of our century: in J. Galsworthy ("The Forsyte Saga" and subsequent works), R. Marten du Gard ("The Thibault Family"), W. Faulkner ("The Sound and the Fury"), M.A. Bulgakov ("The White Guard"), M.A. Sholokhov ("Quiet Flows the Don"), B.L. Pasternak ("Doctor Zhivago"), V, G. Rasputin ("Live and Remember", "Deadline").

The novels of the eras close to us, apparently, are to a large extent focused on idyllic values ​​(although they are not inclined to bring situations of harmony between a person and a reality close to him to the forefront). Even Jean-Paul (probably referring to such works as "Julia, or New Eloise" by J.J. Rousseau and "The Weckfield Priest" by O. Goldsmith) noted that the idyll is "a genre related to the novel". And according to M.M. Bakhtin, "the significance of the idyll for the development of the novel<…>was huge."

The novel absorbs the experience not only of the idyll, but also of a number of other genres; in this sense it is like a sponge. This genre is able to include epic features in its sphere, capturing not only the private life of people, but also events of a national historical scale (Stendhal's Parma Monastery, Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, M. Mitchell's Gone with the Wind) . Novels are able to embody the meanings characteristic of the parable. According to O.A. Sedakova, "in the depths of the" Russian novel "usually lies something like a parable" .

The involvement of the novel and the traditions of hagiography is undoubted. The principle of life is very clearly expressed in the work of Dostoevsky. Leskovsky's "Cathedrals" can rightly be described as a novel-life. Novels often acquire the features of a satirical moral description, such as, for example, the works of O. de Balzac, W.M. Thackeray, "Resurrection" L.N. Tolstoy. As shown by M.M. Bakhtin, is far from being alien to the novel (especially the adventurous and picaresque) and the familiar-laughing, carnival element, which was originally rooted in comedy-farcical genres. Vyach. Ivanov, not without reason, characterized the works of F.M. Dostoevsky as "tragedy novels". "Master and Margarita" M.A. Bulgakov is a kind of novel-myth, and R. Musil's "A Man without Qualities" is a novel-essay. T. Mann, in his report on it, called his tetralogy "Joseph and his brothers" a "mythological novel", and its first part ("The Past of Jacob") - "a fantastic essay". The work of T. Mann, according to the German scientist, marks the most serious transformation of the novel: its immersion in the depths of mythological.

The novel, as can be seen, has a dual content: firstly, it is specific for him (the “independence” and evolution of the hero, revealed in his private life), and secondly, which came to him from other genres. Legal conclusion; genre essence of the novel synthetic. This genre is able, with unconstrained freedom and unprecedented breadth, to combine the content principles of many genres, both comic and serious. Apparently, there is no genre principle from which the novel would remain fatally alienated.

The novel, as a genre prone to synthesizing, is sharply different from others that preceded it, which were “specialized” and acted on certain local “areas” of artistic comprehension of the world. He (like no other) was able to bring literature closer to life in its diversity and complexity, inconsistency and richness. Romanesque freedom to explore the world has no boundaries. And writers from different countries and eras use this freedom in a variety of ways.

The diversity of the novel creates serious difficulties for literary theorists. Almost everyone who tries to characterize the novel as such, in its general and necessary properties, is tempted to a kind of synecdoche: the replacement of the whole by its part. So, O.E. Mandelstam judged the nature of this genre from the "career novels" of the 19th century, whose heroes were carried away by the unprecedented success of Napoleon. In the novels, which emphasized not the strong-willed aspiration of a self-affirming person, but the complexity of his psychology and internal action, the poet saw a symptom of the decline of the genre and even its end. T. Mann, in his judgments about the novel as filled with mild and benevolent irony, relied on his own artistic experience and, to a large extent, on the novels of I. W. Goethe's upbringing.

Bakhtin's theory has a different orientation, but also a local one (first of all, towards the experience of Dostoevsky). At the same time, the writer's novels are interpreted by scientists in a very peculiar way. The heroes of Dostoevsky, according to Bakhtin, are primarily the bearers of ideas (ideologies); their voices are equal, as is the voice of the author in relation to each of them. This is seen polyphony, which is the highest point of novelistic creativity and an expression of the writer's non-dogmatic thinking, his understanding that a single and complete truth "is fundamentally incompatible within the limits of one consciousness." Dostoevsky's novelism is considered by Bakhtin as an inheritance of the ancient "menippean satire". menippea is a genre "free of legend", committed to "unbridled fantasy", recreating the "adventure ideas or truth in the world: both on earth, and in the underworld, and on Olympus. She, Bakhtin argues, is a genre of "last questions", carrying out "moral and psychological experimentation", and recreates "a split personality", "unusual dreams, passions bordering on insanity.

Other varieties of the novel, not involved in polyphony, where the interest of writers in people rooted in a reality close to them prevails, and the author's "voice" dominates the voices of the characters, Bakhtin assessed them less highly and even spoke of them ironically: he wrote about "monologic" one-sidedness and the narrowness of “manor-home-room-apartment-family novels”, as if they had forgotten about the person’s being “on the threshold” of eternal and insoluble questions. At the same time, they were called L.N. Tolstoy, I.S. Turgenev, I.A. Goncharov.

In the centuries-old history of the novel, two types of it are clearly visible, more or less corresponding to two stages of literary development. These are, firstly, acutely eventful works based on external action, the characters of which strive to achieve some local goals. Such are adventurous novels, in particular picaresque, chivalric, "career novels", as well as adventure and detective novels. Their plots are numerous chains of event knots (intrigues, adventures, etc.), as is the case, for example, in Byron's Don Juan or A. Dumas.

Secondly, these are novels that have prevailed in the literature of the last two or three centuries, when one of the central problems of social thought, artistic creativity and culture as a whole has become spiritual human self-sufficiency. Here, the internal action successfully competes with the external action: the eventfulness is noticeably weakened, and the hero’s consciousness in its diversity and complexity, with its endless dynamics and psychological nuances, comes to the fore (on psychologism in the literature, see pp. 173–180). The characters of such novels are depicted not only striving for some particular goals, but also comprehending their place in the world, clarifying and realizing their value orientation. It was in this type of novels that the specificity of the genre, which was discussed, affected with maximum completeness. Reality close to man (“everyday life”) is mastered here not as a deliberately “low prose”, but as part of true humanity, the trends of this time, universal principles of being, and most importantly, as an arena of the most serious conflicts. Russian novelists of the 19th century. they knew well and persistently showed that "amazing events are a lesser test for human relations) than everyday life with petty displeasures."

One of the most important features of the novel and its sister story (especially in the 19th–20th centuries) is the authors' close attention to the characters' environment. microenvironment, the influence of which they experience and which they influence in one way or another. Outside of recreating the microenvironment, it is very difficult for a novelist to show the inner world of a person. At the origins of the now established novel form is the dilogy of I.V. Goethe about Wilhelm Meister (T. Mann called these works “in-depth into the inner life, sublimated adventure novels”), as well as “Confession” by J.J. Rousseau, "Adolf" B. Constant, "Eugene Onegin", which conveys the "poetry of reality" inherent in the works of A. S. Pushkin. Since that time, novels, focused on the connections of a person with a reality close to him and, as a rule, giving preference to internal action, have become a kind of center of literature. They most seriously influenced all other genres, even transformed them. According to M.M. Bakhtin, happened Romanization verbal art: when the novel comes to "great literature", other genres change dramatically, "to a greater or lesser extent" romanized "". At the same time, the structural properties of genres are also transformed: their formal organization becomes less strict, more relaxed and free. It is to this (formal-structural) side of genres that we turn.

Literary genres (in addition to content, essential qualities) have structural, formal properties that have a different measure of certainty. At earlier stages (up to and including the era of classicism), it was the formal aspects of genres that came to the fore and were recognized as dominant. The genre-forming beginnings were both meter and strophic organization (“solid forms”, as they are often called), and orientation to certain speech constructions, and principles of construction. Complexes of artistic means were strictly assigned to each genre. Strict regulations regarding the subject of the image, the construction of the work and its speech tissue were pushed to the periphery and even leveled the individual author's initiative. The laws of the genre dominated the creative will of the writers. “Old Russian genres,” writes D.S. Likhachev - are much more associated with certain types of style than the genres of modern times.<…>Therefore, the expressions “hagiographic style”, “chronographic style”, “chronographic style” will not surprise us, although, of course, individual deviations can be noted within each genre. Medieval art, according to the scientist, “strives to express a collective attitude towards the depicted. Hence, much in it depends not on the creator of the work, but on the genre to which this work belongs.<…>Each genre has its own strictly developed traditional image of the author, writer, "performer".

Traditional genres, being strictly formalized, exist separately from each other, separately. The boundaries between them are clear and distinct, each "works" on its own "bridgehead". Genre formations of this kind are. They follow certain norms and rules that are developed by tradition and are obligatory for authors. The genre canon is "a certain system sustainable And solid(emphasis mine. - W.H.) genre features".

The word "canon" other - gr. kanon - rule, prescription) was the name of the treatise of the ancient Greek sculptor Polykleitos (5th century BC). Here the canon was perceived as a perfect model, fully realizing a certain norm. The canonicity of art (including verbal) is conceived in this terminological tradition as the strict adherence of artists to the rules, allowing them to approach perfect models.

Genre norms and rules (canons) were originally formed spontaneously, on the basis of rituals with their rituals and traditions of folk culture. "Both in traditional folklore and in archaic literature, genre structures are inseparable from non-literary situations, genre laws merge directly with the rules of ritual and everyday decency."

Later, as reflection became stronger in artistic activity, some genre canons took on the appearance of clearly formulated provisions (postulates). Regulatory instructions to poets, imperative attitudes almost dominated the teachings on poetry by Aristotle and Horace, Yu.Ts. Scaliger and N. Boileau. In normative theories of this kind, genres, already possessing certainty, acquired the maximum orderliness. The regulation of genres, carried out by aesthetic thought, reached its highest point in the era of classicism. So, N. Boileau, in the third chapter of his poetic treatise "Poetic Art", formulated very strict rules for the main groups of literary works. He, in particular, proclaimed the principle of three unities (place, time, action) as necessary in dramatic works. Sharply distinguishing between tragedy and comedy, Boileau wrote:

Despondency and tears funny eternal enemy.
The tragic tone is incompatible with him,
But humiliating comedy is serious
To amuse the crowd with the sharpness of the obscene.
You can't joke around in comedy
You can not confuse the thread of living intrigue,
It is impossible to be embarrassingly distracted from the idea
And the thought in the void all the time to spread.

Most importantly, normative aesthetics (from Aristotle to Boileau and Sumarokov) insisted that poets follow indisputable genre patterns, which are, first of all, the epics of Homer, the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles.

In the era of normative poetics (from antiquity to the 17th–18th centuries), along with the genres that were recommended and regulated by theorists (“de jure genres”, in the words of S.S. Averintsev), there were also “de facto genres”, for a number of centuries, which did not receive theoretical justification, but also possessed stable structural properties and had certain substantive “predilections”. Such are fairy tales, fables, short stories and similar comic stage works, as well as many traditional lyrical genres (including folklore).

Genre structures have changed (and quite dramatically) in the literature of the last two or three centuries, especially in the post-romantic era. They have become malleable and flexible, have lost their canonical rigor, and therefore have opened up wide open spaces for the manifestation of individual authorial initiative. The rigidity of the distinction between genres has exhausted itself and, one might say, has sunk into oblivion along with the classic aesthetics, which was resolutely rejected in the era of romanticism. “We see,” V. Hugo wrote in his programmatic preface to the drama “Cromwell,” “how quickly the arbitrary division of genres collapses before the arguments of reason and taste.”

The “decanonization” of genre structures made itself felt already in the 18th century. Evidence of this is the works of Zh.Zh. Russo and L. Stern. The romanization of literature of the last two centuries marked its "exit" beyond the genre canons and, at the same time, the erasure of former boundaries between genres. In the XIX-XX centuries. "genre categories lose their clear outlines, genre models for the most part fall apart" . As a rule, these are no longer phenomena isolated from each other with a pronounced set of properties, but groups of works in which one or another formal and substantive preferences and accents are seen with greater or lesser clarity.

The literature of the last two centuries (especially of the 20th century) encourages us to speak about the presence in its composition of works devoid of genre definition, such as many dramatic works with a neutral subtitle "play", artistic prose of an essayistic nature, as well as numerous lyric poems that do not fit into the scope of any genre classifications. V.D. Skvoznikov noted) that in the lyric poetry of the 19th century, starting with V. Hugo, G. Heine, M.Yu. Lermontov, "the former genre definition disappears": "... lyrical thought<…>reveals a tendency towards more and more synthetic expression", there is a "atrophy of the genre in the lyrics". “No matter how you expand the concept of elegiacity,” M.Yu. Lermontov's "January 1st" - all the same, one cannot get away from the obvious circumstance that the lyrical masterpiece is in front of us, and its genre nature is completely indefinite. Or rather, it does not exist at all, because it is not limited by anything.

At the same time, genre structures that have stability have not lost their significance either at the time of romanticism or in subsequent eras. Traditional, centuries-old genres with their formal (compositional and speech) features (ode, fable, fairy tale) continued and continue to exist. The “voices” of long-existing genres and the voice of the writer as a creative individual each time somehow merge together in a new way in the works of A.S. Pushkin. In epicurean-sounding poems (Anacreontic poetry), the author is like Anacreon, Guys, early K.N. Batyushkov, and at the same time very clearly manifests itself (remember “Play, Adele, do not know sadness ...” or “Leila’s evening from me ...”). As the creator of the solemn ode “I erected a monument to myself not made by hands ...”, the poet, likening himself to Horace and G.R. Derzhavin, paying tribute to their artistic style, at the same time expresses his own credo, completely unique. Pushkin's fairy tales, original and inimitable, are at the same time organically involved in the traditions of this genre, both folklore and literary. It is unlikely that a person who first gets acquainted with these creations will be able to feel that they belong to one author: in each of the poetic genres, the great poet manifests himself in a completely new way, turning out to be not like himself. This is not only Pushkin. The lyrical epic poems of M.Yu. Lermontov in the tradition of romanticism ("Mtsyri", "Demon") with his folk - poetic "Song about<…>merchant Kalashnikov. This kind of “proteic” self-disclosure of authors in various genres is also seen by modern scholars in the Western European literatures of the New Age: “Aretino, Boccaccio, Margarita of Navarre, Erasmus of Rotterdam, even Cervantes and Shakespeare in different genres appear as if they are different individuals” .

Structural stability is also possessed by the newly emerged in the 19th–20th centuries. genre education. Thus, there is no doubt the presence of a certain formal-content complex in the lyrical poetry of the Symbolists (the attraction to universals and a special kind of vocabulary, the semantic complexity of speech, the apotheosis of mystery, etc.). The presence of a structural and conceptual commonality in the novels of French writers of the 1960s–1970s (M. Bugor, A. Robbe-Grillet, N. Sarrot, and others) is indisputable.

Summarizing what has been said, we note that literature knows two kinds of genre structures. These are, firstly, ready-made, complete, solid forms (canonical genres), invariably equal to themselves (a vivid example of such a genre formation is the sonnet, which is still alive today), and, secondly, non-canonical genre forms: flexible, open to all kinds of transformations. , perestroika, updates, what, for example, are elegies or short stories in the literature of the New Age. These free genre forms in the epochs close to us come into contact and coexist with non-genre formations, but genres cannot exist without some minimum of stable structural properties.

In each historical period, genres correlate with each other in different ways. They, according to D.S. Likhachev, "interact, support each other's existence and at the same time compete with each other"; therefore, it is necessary to study not only individual genres and their history, but also " system genres of each given epoch.

At the same time, genres are evaluated in a certain way by the reading public, critics, creators of "poetics" and manifestos, writers and scientists. They are interpreted as worthy or, on the contrary, not worthy of the attention of artistically enlightened people; both high and low; as truly modern or outdated, exhausted; as backbone or marginal (peripheral). These assessments and interpretations create genre hierarchies which change over time. Some of the genres, some kind of favorites, happy chosen ones, receive the highest possible assessment from any authoritative instances - an assessment that becomes generally recognized or at least acquires literary and social weight. Genres of this kind, based on the terminology of the formal school, are called canonized.(Note that this word has a different meaning than the term “canonical”, which characterizes the genre structure.) According to V. B. Shklovsky, a certain part of the literary era “represents its canonized crest”, while its other links exist “deafly”, on periphery, without becoming authoritative and without drawing attention to itself. Canonized (again after Shklovsky) is also called (see pp. 125-126, 135) that part of the literature of the past, which is recognized as the best, top, exemplary, that is, classics. At the origins of this terminological tradition is the idea of ​​sacred texts that have received official church sanction (canonized) as indisputably true.

The canonization of literary genres was carried out by normative poetics from Aristotle and Horace to Boileau, Lomonosov and Sumarokov. The Aristotelian treatise gave the highest status to tragedy and epic (epopee). The aesthetics of classicism also canonized "high comedy", sharply separating it from folk-farcical comedy as a low and inferior genre.

The hierarchy of genres also took place in the minds of the so-called mass reader (see pp. 120–123). So, Russian peasants at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. gave unconditional preference to "divine books" and those works of secular literature that echoed with them. The lives of the saints (most often reaching the people in the form of books written illiterately, in “barbaric language”) were listened to and read “with reverence, with rapturous love, with wide-open eyes and with the same wide-open soul.” Works of an entertaining nature, called "fairy tales", were regarded as a low genre. They were very widely used, but they aroused a dismissive attitude towards themselves and were awarded unflattering epithets (“fables”, “fables”, “nonsense”, etc.).

The canonization of genres also takes place in the "upper" layer of literature. Thus, at the time of romanticism, which was marked by a radical restructuring of genres, a fragment, a fairy tale, and also a novel (in the spirit and manner of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister) were elevated to the top of literature. Literary life of the XIX century. (especially in Russia) is marked by the canonization of socio-psychological novels and short stories, prone to lifelikeness, psychologism, and everyday authenticity. In the XX century. attempts were made (successful to varying degrees) to canonize mystery dramaturgy (the concept of symbolism), parody (formal school), epic novel (aesthetics of socialist realism of the 1930s–1940s), as well as novels by F.M. Dostoevsky as polyphonic (1960-1970s); in Western European literary life - the novel of the "stream of consciousness" and absurd dramaturgy of tragicomic sound. The authority of the mythological principle in the composition of novel prose is now very high.

If in the era of normative aesthetics canonized high genres, then in times close to us, those genre principles that were previously outside the framework of “strict” literature rise hierarchically. As noted by V.B. Shklovsky, there is a canonization of new themes and genres that were hitherto secondary, marginal, low: “Blok canonizes the themes and tempos of the “gypsy romance”, and Chekhov introduces the “Alarm Clock” into Russian literature. Dostoevsky elevates the methods of the boulevard novel into a literary norm. At the same time, traditional high genres evoke an alienated critical attitude towards themselves, they are thought of as exhausted. “In the change of genres, the constant displacement of high genres by low ones is curious,” noted B.V. Tomashevsky, stating the process of "canonization of low genres" in literary modernity. According to the scientist, followers of high genres usually become epigones. In the same vein, M.M. Bakhtin. Traditional high genres, according to him, are prone to "stilted glorification", they are characterized by conventionality, "unchanging poetry", "monotonity and abstractness".

In the 20th century, as can be seen, genres rise hierarchically. new(or fundamentally updated) as opposed to those that were authoritative in the previous era. At the same time, the places of leaders are occupied by genre formations with free, open structures: paradoxically, non-canonical genres turn out to be the subject of canonization, preference is given to everything in literature that is not involved in ready-made, established, stable forms.

In the epochs close to us, marked by the increased dynamism and diversity of artistic life, genres are inevitably involved in the struggle of literary groups, schools, and trends. At the same time, genre systems are undergoing more intense and rapid changes than in past centuries. Yu.N. Tynyanov, who argued that “there are no ready-made genres” and that each of them, changing from epoch to epoch, acquires either greater significance, moving to the center, or, on the contrary, relegating to the background or even ceasing to exist: “In the era of decomposition of what of any genre, it moves from the center to the periphery, and in its place from the trifles of literature, from its backyards and lowlands, a new phenomenon emerges into the center. So, in the 1920s, the focus of attention of the literary and near-literary environment shifted from the socio-psychological novel and traditionally high lyrics to parodic and satirical genres, as well as adventurous prose, as Tynyanov spoke about in the article “The Interval”.

Emphasizing and, in our opinion, absolutizing the rapid dynamics of the existence of genres, Yu.N. Tynyanov made a very sharp conclusion, rejecting the significance of inter-epochal genre phenomena and connections: “The study of isolated genres outside the signs of the genre system with which they correlate is impossible. Tolstoy's historical novel is not correlated with Zagoskin's historical novel, but is correlated with contemporary prose. This kind of emphasis on intraepochal genre confrontations needs some adjustment. So, “War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy (we note, supplementing Tynyanov) it is legitimate to correlate not only with the literary situation of the 1860s, but also - as links in one chain - with the novel by M.N. Zagoskin "Roslavlev, or Russians in 1812" (there are many roll calls, far from accidental), and with a poem by M.Yu. Lermontov "Borodino" (Tolstoy himself spoke about the influence of this poem on him), and with a number of stories of ancient Russian literature full of national heroism.

The relationship between dynamism and stability in the existence of genres from generation to generation, from epoch to epoch needs an unbiased and cautious discussion, free from "directive" extremes. Along with genre confrontations, genre traditions are fundamentally significant in literary life: continuity in this area (for continuity and tradition, see pp. 352–356)

Genres constitute the most important link between writers of different eras, without which the development of literature is unimaginable. According to S.S. Averintsev, "the background against which the silhouette of a writer can be seen is always two-part: any writer is a contemporary of his contemporaries, comrades in the era, but also a successor to his predecessors, comrades in the genre." Literary critics have repeatedly spoken about the “memory of the genre” (M.M. Bakhtin), about the “burden of conservatism” weighing on the concept of the genre (Yu.V. Stennik), about “genre inertia” (S.S. Averintsev).

Arguing with literary critics, who associated the existence of genres primarily with intra-epochal confrontations, the struggle of trends and schools, with "the superficial variegation and hype of the literary process", M.M. Bakhtin wrote: “The literary genre, by its very nature, reflects the most stable, “eternal” tendencies in the development of literature. Genre always retains undying elements archaic. True, this one. the archaic is preserved in it only thanks to its constant update, so to speak, modernizing<…>The genre is revived and updated at each new stage in the development of literature and in each individual work of this genre.<…>Therefore, the archaic, preserved in the genre, is not dead, but eternally alive, that is, capable of being updated.<…>Genre is a representative of creative memory in the process of literary development. That is why the genre is able to provide unity And continuity this development." And further: "The higher and more complex the genre has developed, the better and more fully it remembers its past."

These judgments (basic in Bakhtin's conception of the genre) need to be critically corrected. Not all genres date back to the archaic. Many of them are of later origin, such as, for example, lives or novels. But in the main, Bakhtin is right: genres exist in big historical time, they are destined to live a long life. These are epic phenomena.

Genres thus carry out the beginning of continuity and stability in literary development. At the same time, in the process of the evolution of literature, already existing genre formations are inevitably updated, as well as new ones arise and become stronger; relationships between genres and the nature of interaction between them change.

The genres of literature are connected with non-artistic reality by very close and diverse ties. The genre essence of works is generated by world-wide significant phenomena of cultural and historical life. Thus, the main features of the long-standing heroic epic were predetermined by the peculiarities of the era of the formation of ethnic groups and states (for the origins of heroism, see p. 70). And the activation of the novel element in the literatures of the New Age is due to the fact that it was at this time that the spiritual self-sufficiency of a person became one of the most important phenomena of primary reality.

The evolution of genre forms (we recall: always meaningful in content) also largely depends on shifts in the social sphere itself, which is shown by G. V. Plekhanov on the material of French dramaturgy of the 17th–18th centuries, which made its way from the tragedies of classicism to the “petty-bourgeois drama” of the Enlightenment .

Genre structures as such (like generic ones) are the refraction of forms of non-artistic being, both socio-cultural and natural. The principles of the composition of works, fixed by the genre tradition, reflect the structure of life phenomena. I will refer to the judgment of the graphic artist: “Sometimes you can hear an argument<…>Is there composition in nature? Eat!<…>Since this composition was found by the artist and exalted by the artist. The organization of artistic speech in a particular genre also invariably depends on the forms of non-artistic statements (oratory and colloquial, familiar-public and intimate, etc.). The German philosopher of the first half of the 19th century spoke about this. F. Schleiermacher. He noted that the drama, at its inception, took from life the conversations that are everywhere, that the chorus of tragedies and comedies of the ancient Greeks has its primary source in the meeting of an individual with the people, and the vital prototype of the artistic form of the epic is a story.

Forms of speech that affect literary genres, as shown by M.M. Bakhtin are very diverse: “All our statements have certain and relatively stable typical forms of building a whole. We have a rich repertoire of oral (and written) speech genres.” The scientist distinguished between primary speech genres, formed "under the conditions of direct speech communication" (oral conversation, dialogue), and secondary, ideological ones (oratory, journalism, scientific and philosophical texts). Artistic and speech genres, according to the scientist, are among the secondary; for the most part, they consist "of various transformed primary genres (replicas of dialogue, everyday stories, letters, protocols, etc.)" .

Genre structures in literature (both those with canonical rigor and those free from it) seem to have life analogues, which determine their appearance and strengthening. This is a sphere genesis(origin) of literary genres.

Another significant receptive(see p. 115) the side of the connections of verbal and artistic genres with the primary reality. The fact is that a work of one genre or another (let us turn again to M.M. Bakhtin) is oriented towards certain conditions of perception: “... for each literary genre<…>are characterized by their own special concepts of the addressee of a literary work, a special feeling and understanding of their reader, listener, public, people.

The specificity of the functioning of genres is most evident in the early stages of the existence of verbal art. Here's what D.S. says Likhachev about Old Russian literature: “Genres are determined by their use: in worship (in its various parts), in legal and diplomatic practice (lists of articles, annals, stories about princely crimes), in the atmosphere of princely life (solemn words, glory, etc. .)" . Similarly, the classic ode of the XVII-XVIII centuries. was part of the solemn palace ritual.

Inevitably associated with a certain environment of perception and folklore genres. Comedies of a farcical nature originally formed part of the mass festival and were part of it. The tale was performed during leisure hours and addressed to a small number of people. A relatively recent ditty appeared - the genre of a city or village street.

Having gone into the book, verbal art has weakened the ties with the life forms of its development: reading fiction is successfully carried out in any environment. But here, too, the perception of a work depends on its genre-generic properties. Drama in reading evokes associations with a stage performance, narration in a fairy tale form awakens in the reader's imagination a situation of lively and relaxed conversation. Family and everyday novels and short stories, landscape essays, friendly and love lyrics with a sincere tone inherent in these genres can evoke in the reader the feeling that the author is addressing him as an individual: an atmosphere of trusting, intimate contact arises. Reading traditionally epic, heroic works gives the reader a feeling of spiritual fusion with a certain very broad and capacious “we”. Genre, as you can see, is one of the bridges connecting the writer and the reader, an intermediary between them.

The concept of "literary genre" in the XX century. repeatedly rejected. “It is useless to be interested in literary genres,” argued the French literary critic P. van Tiegem, following the Italian philosopher B. Croce, “which were followed by the great writers of the past; they took the most ancient forms - the epic, the tragedy, the sonnet, the novel - is it all the same? The main thing is that they succeeded. Is it worth it to study the boots in which Napoleon was shod on the morning of Austerlitz? .

At the other extreme of understanding genres is M.M. Bakhtin as about the "leading heroes" of the literary process. The foregoing encourages us to join the second view, however, making a corrective clarification: if in the "pre-romantic" era the face of literature was really determined primarily by the laws of the genre, its norms, rules, canons, then in the 19th-20th centuries. truly the central figure of the literary process was the author with his widely and freely carried out creative initiative. From now on, the genre turned out to be “the second person”, but by no means lost its significance.

Notes:

An unpublished chapter from A.N. Veselovsky // Russian literature. 1959. No. 3. S. 118.

The history of literary criticism as such is not considered in any detail by us. Special works are dedicated to her. Cm.: Nikolaev P.A., Kurilov A.S., Grishunin A.L. History of Russian literary criticism. M., 1980; Kosikov G.K. Foreign literary criticism and theoretical problems of the science of literature // Foreign aesthetics and theory of literature of the 19th–20th centuries: Treatises, articles, essays. M., 1987. A summary coverage of the fate of Russian theoretical literary criticism of the 20th century, one hopes, will be undertaken in the coming years.

Pospelov G.N. Aesthetic and artistic. M., 1965. S. 154–159.

Mukarzhovsky Ya. Studies in aesthetics and art theory. S. 131.

Pospelov G.N.. To the question of poetic genres // Reports and messages of the philological faculty of Moscow State University. Vyl, 5. 1948, pp. 59–60.

Pospelov G.N.. Problems of historical development of literature. M., 1972. S. 207.

Averintsev S.S. Parable//Literary Encyclopedic Dictionary. M., 1987. See also: Tyupa V.I. The art of Chekhov's story. M., 1989. pp. 13–32.

Cm.: Burke K. Attitudes Toward History, Los Altos, 1959; Chernets L.V.. literary genres. pp. 59–61.

Ilyin I.P. N.G. Fry //Modern Foreign Literary Critics: A Handbook. countries of capitalism. Part III. M., 1987.S. 87–88.

Over the past two or three decades, monographs by V.D. Dneprov, D.V. Zatonsky, V.V., Kozhinov, N.S. Leites, N.T. Rymarya, N.D., Tamarchenko, A.Ya. Esalnek devoted to the history and theory of the novel. Let's also call it: Zur Poetik des Romans. Hisg. von V. Klotz. Darmstadt, 1965; Deutsche Roman theorien. Hrsg. von R. Grimm. fr. a M., 1968.

Bakhtin M.M.. Aesthetics of verbal creativity. P. 279. See also: Medvedev P.N.. Formal method in literary criticism. (Bakhtin under the mask. The second mask.) S. 145–146.

Likhachev D.S. Poetics of ancient Russian literature. S. 55.

Chernets L.V.. literary genres. S. 77.

Cit. by: Chernets L.V. literary genres. S. 51.

Cm.: Bakhtin M.M.. Questions of literature and aesthetics. S. 451.

It is customary to unite works of artistic literature into three large groups, called literary genera - epic, drama and lyrics.

Epos and drama have a number of common properties that distinguish them from lyrics. Epic and dramatic works recreate events taking place in space and time! It depicts individuals (characters), and? with relationships, intentions and actions, experiences and statements. And although the reproduction of life in epic and drama invariably expresses the author's understanding and assessment of the characters' characters, it often seems to readers that the events depicted occurred independently of the author's will. In other words, epic works, and especially dramatic ones, can create the illusion of their complete objectivity.

Drama, and especially epic, have unlimited ideological and cognitive possibilities. Freely mastering life in its spatial and temporal extent, the authors of epic and dramatic works can draw vivid, detailed, diverse pictures of life "in its variability, conflict, diversity" and at the same time penetrate into the depths of people's consciousness, recreate their inner life. At the same time, both literary types capable of capturing a variety of characters and their relationship with life circumstances.Drama and epic, in other words, "operate" in an infinitely wide content sphere: any topics, problems and types of pathos are accessible to them.

Epic and dramatic works, however, differ sharply from each other. The organizing formal beginning of the epic is a narrative about the events in the life of the characters and their actions. Hence the name of this kind of literature (gr. epos - word, speech). Means of subject representation here are used most freely and widely.

In the drama (gr. drao - I act), the narration in any developed form is absent. The text of the work consists primarily of the statements of the characters themselves, through which they act in the depicted situation. The author's explanations to the words of the heroes are reduced to the so-called remarks (fr. remarquer - to notice), which have only an auxiliary meaning. The specificity of drama as a literary genre is determined by its purpose for stage production.

The word "lyric" is derived from the ancient Greek name of the musical instrument lyre, to the accompaniment of which verbal works were performed (sung). Lyric differs from epic and drama primarily by the subject of the image. There is no detailed and detailed reproduction of events, actions, relationships between people in it. Lyrics artistically masters mainly the inner world of a person as such: his thoughts, feelings, impressions. It maximally embodies the subjective beginning of human life. However, the feeling of complete, "absolute" subjectivity of the lyrics, which sometimes arises when reading it, is illusory: lyrical creativity contains deep cognitive generalizations.

Speech in lyrics appears primarily in its expressive (expressive) function, it directly and actively embodies the emotional attitude to the life of the speaker (speech speaker) - the so-called lyrical hero. Therefore, the speech structure of a lyrical work is its most important formal beginning: the nuances of word usage and construction of phrases, as well as the rhythmic ordering of the text, are especially significant here.

The concept of literary gender arose in ancient aesthetics, in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. The third chapter of the Aristotelian “Poetics” speaks of the existence in poetry (i.e., the art of the word) of three “modes of imitation”: from himself, as Homer does, or in such a way that the imitator remains himself, without changing his face, or representing all the depicted persons as active and active " (20, 45). The “methods of imitation” designated by Aristotle subsequently began to be called literary genera. This concept characterizes

Epos, lyrics and drama were formed at the earliest stages of the existence of society, in primitive syncretic creativity. Al-r N. Veselovsky devoted the first of three chapters of his "Historical Poetics" to the origin of literary genera (36, 200-313); in it, he argued that literary genera arose from the ritual choir of primitive peoples.

The ritual choir that accompanied the dance and mimic actions included, according to Veselovsky, exclamations of joy and sadness, which expressed collective emotionality. Lyricism arose from such exclamations, which subsequently separated from the rite and acquired artistic independence. Lyric-epic songs (cantilenas) were formed from the performances of the singers (luminaries) of the ritual choir. From these songs, which later also separated from the rite, heroic poems (epics) arose. And, finally, a drama arose from the exchange of remarks of the participants in the ritual choir.

The theory of the origin of literary genera, put forward by Veselovsky, is confirmed by many facts known to modern science from the life of primitive peoples. Thus, the emergence of theatrical performances (and, on their basis, drama) from ritual games is undoubted.

At the same time, Veselovsky's theory does not take into account that epic and lyric poetry could be formed independently of ritual actions. Mythological tales, which subsequently formed prose legends (sagas) and fairy tales, appeared outside the ritual choir. They were not sung, but representatives of the tribe told each other. Lyricism could also arise outside the rite. Lyrical self-expression took place in the production (labor) and domestic relations of primitive peoples. Thus, there were different ways of forming literary families, and the ritual choir was one of them.

Under the influence of the literary process, ideas about childbirth changed in one way or another. They were brought into the system by representatives of German aesthetics of the late 18th - early 19th centuries: in the works of Schiller and Goethe, later - Schelling and Hegel. In line with the ideas of these authors (primarily Hegel), Belinsky developed his theory of literary genera in the article "The Division of Poetry into Genus and Types" (1841). He saw in epic, drama, lyrics

certain types of content and delimited the genera using the categories of "object" and "subject" of artistic knowledge. Epic works were associated with the idea of ​​the object. “Epic poetry,” wrote Belinsky, “is primarily objective, external poetry, both in relation to itself and to the poet and his reader” (25, 9). And further: “The poet is not visible here; the world, plastically determined, develops by itself, and the poet is only, as it were, a simple narrator of what happened by itself” (25 10). Lyricism, on the contrary, was understood as the sphere of the subjectivity of the poet. “Lyric poetry,” we read in Belinsky, “is predominantly poetry subjective internal, the expression of the poet himself" (25, 10). And, finally, the drama was seen as a "synthesis" of objectivity and subjectivity. A work of this literary kind, according to Belinsky, "is a reconciliation of opposite elements - epic objectivity and lyrical subjectivity" (25, 16).

This concept of literary genera summarizes centuries of artistic experience. Many of the thoughts expressed by Belinsky were inherited by Soviet literary criticism, for which the emphasis on the meaningful functions of generic forms is especially important.

At the same time, there is a certain one-sidedness in the mentioned article: not only drama, but also any work of art combines objectivity (that is, reflects reality) and subjectivity (since it expresses the writer's understanding of life). Belinsky himself repeatedly spoke about this in later works. In particular, he emphasized the importance of the subjective principle in epic works, primarily in novels and short stories.

Along with the division of literature into genera (epos, lyrics, drama), there is a division into poetry and prose. In everyday speech, lyrical works are often identified with poetry, and epic works with prose. This usage is inaccurate. Each of the literary genera includes both poetic (poetic) and prose (non-poetic) works. The epic in the early stages of art was most often poetic (epics of antiquity, French songs about exploits, Russian epics and historical songs, etc.). Epic works written in verse are not uncommon in modern literature (“Don Juan” by Byron, “Eugene Onegin” by Pushkin, “Who Lives in Russia

good" Nekrasov). In the dramatic kind of literature, both poetry and prose are also used, sometimes combined in the same work (many of Shakespeare's plays, Pushkin's Boris Godunov). Yes, and the lyrics, mostly poetic, sometimes prose.

Other, more serious terminological problems also arise in the theory of literary genders. The words “epic” (“epic”), “dramatic” (“dramaticism”), “lyrical” (“lyricism”) denote not only the generic features of the work in question, but also their other properties.

Epic is called majestically calm, unhurried contemplation of life in its complexity and diversity, the breadth of the view of the world and its acceptance as a kind of integrity. In this regard, they often talk about the "epic worldview", artistically embodied in Homer's poems and a number of later works ("War and Peace" by L. Tolstoy). Epicness as an ideological and emotional mood can take place in all literary genres - not only in epic (narrative) works, but also in drama (“Boris Godunov” by Pushkin) and lyrics (“On the Kulikovo Field” by Blok). It is customary to call dramatism a state of mind associated with a tense experience of some contradictions, with excitement and anxiety. And, finally, lyricism is a sublime emotionality expressed in the speech of the author, narrator, characters. Drama and lyricism can also be characteristic of all literary genres. Thus, L. Tolstoy's novel "Anna Karenina" and Tsvetaeva's poem "Longing for the Motherland" are full of drama. Turgenev's novel "The Nest of Nobles", Chekhov's plays "Three Sisters" and "The Cherry Orchard", stories and novels by Paustovsky are imbued with lyricism.

Therefore, it is important to distinguish, on the one hand, epic, drama, lyricism as literary genres, and on the other hand, epic, dramatic, lyricism as the emotional mood of works.

Section two

A LITERARY WORK AS A ARTISTIC WHOLE

that is called an idea. But this term will be explained
later, but for now we note that the content of the artistic
works contains different sides, for defining
divisions of which there are three terms - subject matter,
problematic, ideological o-e emotional

grade. Naturally, it is necessary to begin the analysis with what characteristic phenomena of reality are reflected in this work. This is a subject specific question.

Generic and genre forms of literature violate the principle of the historical development of literature. Generic and genre forms are meaningful. The role of abstract content is important, it makes it difficult to understand literary genres.

Epos, lyrics, drama are the main division into genera.

Dichotomous division: into a monological gender (epos, lyrics) and a dialogic gender (drama). In the 20th century, the 4th kind of literature was also singled out - the novel or satire. But the main one is the division into 3 kinds.

Classification of literary genera.

1 Even Plato singled out generic forms according to formal features. The story on behalf of the poet himself is the lyrics. A story based on imitation is a drama. A story built on a mixed method is an epic. The lyric is opposed to the drama, and the epic is a mixed gender according to Plato.

2 Aristotle also defined childbirth according to formal characteristics, according to the way of reflection, imitation.

The epic is opposed to the lyrics. This is an objective species. Lyrics are something subjective. Drama - imitates action. Aristotle outlines a classification according to the subject of the image.

The revolutionary democrats classified literary genres according to Plato and Aristotle. This classification is inaccurate.

The principle of differentiation of literary genres was used by Veselovsky, Dneprov, Chernyshevsky and others.

The principle on the basis of meaningful differences was determined in German aesthetics: Schiller, Goethe, and others. Hegel distinguished literary genera according to the method of cognition: the epic is an object; lyrics-subject; drama is a synthetic, objective-subjective kind.

All these traditions of characterization of childbirth have become widespread. Hegel's classification was considered generally accepted, it was supported by Belinsky.

In the literature, pure generic forms are practically not found, according to Belinsky.

1) which is determined by formal features (the tradition of Plato and Aristotle);

2) which is determined by meaningful features (Hegel, Belinsky).

The psychological and linguistic interpretation of literary genres is given.

Psychological: literary genre - artistic transformation of the human psyche.

feeling - lyrics

will - drama

epic thought

memory-lyric

epic performance

effort-drama

Linguistic interpretation: generic affiliation is determined by language categories. 1st person is poetry, 2nd person is drama, 3rd person is epic. Linguistic and psychological teachings were intertwined. E. Steiger "Basic Concepts of Poetics". The author begins to deny generic categories, since there are no pure generic forms in the literature. He proposes to go from the generic division of literature.

Generic forms are associated with the psyche and language, but do not replace them.

Many scientists proposed to abandon the literary genre (Anechkov, Potebnya, etc.)

The dichotomous division into genera was supported by L.I. Timofeev. He proposed to call the genus a genre. It characterizes the lyrics and the epic, but also highlights the 3rd genus-drama.

Epic: A person's character is portrayed through an event.

Lyrics: character is created through experience.

Gulyaev clarified the Hegelian triad in relation to the surrounding reality to man. He distinguishes 3 types of connection: a person and society-epos, a conflict between characters-drama, experience-lyrics.

Gulyaev distinguishes generic forms according to the content of the conflict.

V. Kozhinov establishes that in each classification there is a certain failure. He proceeded from the Hegelian classification; the categories of event and action underlie the distinction between epic and drama. The drama turns out to be wider and deeper than other generic forms, but the event is wider than the action, which means that the epic is a synthetic genus, and not a drama. Kozhinov saw this contradiction. The epic is the most complex and capacious literary form.

3 generic forms correlate with each other in different ways. Lyric is fundamentally different from epic and drama, there are fewer differences between epic and drama.

Lyrics cannot be turned into epic and drama, but the transformation of epic into drama is possible. The lyrics are devoid of pictorial elements, which are obligatory in drama and epic.

The differences between epic and drama do not mean that there are 2 kinds: lyrics and epic + drama. Epos and drama never appear together in the same period (according to Kozhinov).

Veselovsky adhered to the traditions of Plato and Aristotle "Historical Poetics". The starting point for the development of lit. Veselovsky considered the syncretism of primitive art, in which he singled out ritual chorea (ritual, choral song with dances; the art of the word merges with music, dance and pantomime). Veselovsky singled out all the main genera and some genres from ritual chorea. Epic forms stand out primarily from the ritual chorea, in which there is a certain rhythm. Oral folk epics appear ("Iliad" and "Odyssey" by Homer). This is how the epic appears.

Lyrics stand out from the ritual chorea. Rhythm subjugated the verbal text, choruses (rhythmized emotional responses). Rhythmic form appears to embody the rhythmic content. At first, these refrains were two-line, they could be performed separately from the ritual chorea. This is how the lyric came about.

Drama also stands out from the ritual chorea. A dialogue begins between the luminary and the choir, then the actors appear, the choir disappears. This is how the dramatic form emerges.

M. Kogan "Morphology of Art". The formation of childbirth went under the influence of other types of art. Initially, art was syncretic. Rhythm played an organizing role.

The emergence of the poetic form was influenced by music, because it is rhythmic. Lyricism in the art of the word remains music in literature. The lyrics, both in content and in form, appear under the influence of music.

Drama is a more complex form, it masters actions, it also has a subjective beginning. The development of the drama was influenced by the pantomime of the syncretic (musical) complex. The main form of drama is dialogue. Drama is genetically and structurally related to acting.

Epic creativity is the most difficult form. The word must gain complete freedom from other arts. The epic is initially distinguished by its content.

The concept of genus includes the composition and connection of elements. The genus characterizes the volume of the work: epic - spaciousness, drama - limited size, lyrics - conciseness.

Compositional and stylistic forms are also peculiar: lyric- monologue, drama-dialogic, epic-mixture.

Each genus characterizes the way the parts of the work are connected. The epic is the addition of independent episodes, the drama is the close connection of the scenes, the lyrics are the unity of the plot, the epic is slowness and perfection (past tense), the drama is the aspiration to the future, speed, the lyrics are instantaneous, accurate, modern.