The literature of the stream of consciousness is the artistic transmission of the spiritual world of the individual, which is not directly connected with reality.
Predecessors. Realistic tradition
In the 19th century made (Stendhal, L. Tolstoy, F. Dostoevsky) a fundamental artistic discovery: psychological analysis. Prior to this discovery, the phenomenon of thinking was understood by literature as a simple response of consciousness to the fact of reality. Thought fully corresponded to the fact and was equal to it. Tolstoy showed that people are like rivers. Spiritual world fluid, thought only starts from the fact, all previous human experience participates in the act of thinking, thought conjugates the present, past and future; thought is the processing of a fact in the light of a person's entire life experience; in the act of thinking, not only the analytical and synthetic abilities of the brain take part, but also memory, and imagination, and fantasy. Analytical awareness, a description of a fact that goes back to the past, turns out to be "symmetrical" in relation to the future, to divination and anticipation. He took an active part in the preparation of the artistic discovery of psychological analysis in his time (XVIII century). English writer Lawrence Stern.
Inner Monologue Literature Tradition
In the XX century. the artistic conquests of realism (psychological analysis) were picked up, continued and deepened by the literature of the "inner monologue". The term itself "mindflow" (English stream of consciousness) was introduced by the philosopher and psychologist William James (1842-1910) in the book "Fundamentals of Psychology" (Principles of Psychology, 1890). This term combines different types internal monologue ( literary description internal processes of thinking, literary technique of depicting thoughts and feelings passing through consciousness, depicting spiritual processes). Three types of verbal penetration have emerged in the literature. inner world of a person: (1) the realists Stendhal, L. Tolstoy, F. Dostoevsky, and later W. Faulkner created and developed methods for conducting psychoanalysis (a verbal description of the process of processing a life fact in the light of all human experience; analytic skills personality and its memory, imagination, fantasy); (2) J. Joyce, M. Proust created the literature of the internal monologue (the reflection in the work of the flow of consciousness, which is not yet completely detached from reality - thinking dives into reality and emerges from it); (3) N. Sarrot, A. Robbe-Grillet, M. Butor created the literature of the stream of consciousness (the river of thinking is already flowing without touching the shores of reality, thought moves only by self-movement, not receiving impulses from reality, except for the first push).
It is generally accepted that for the first time in literature, the internal monologue was creatively embodied in 1922 by Irish writer J. Joyce (1882-1941) in the novel "Ulysses". However, Joyce himself believed that for the first time the stream of consciousness in literary work created a little-known French prose writer Edgard Dujardin in the novel "Down Laurels" ("Les Lauriers sont coupes", 1888), which was soon translated into English and influenced him.
Ulysses describes the twenty-four hours of the life of two men, Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus. The action of the novel (if the description of the actions and mainly the thoughts and feelings of the characters can be called action) takes place on June 16, 1904 in Dublin. Interest in the stream of consciousness Joyce showed in "Portrait of the Artist as a Youth" (1916). After the 1920s, stream-of-consciousness techniques were developed by Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, and many other authors.
The literature of the interior monologue began with James Joyce and Marcel Proust (1870-1922). In their work, for the first time, with great attention, as if under a magnifying glass, the memory of a person was considered as a grandiose receptacle of life experience, and this experience was affirmed in its own self-sufficient meaning. A long previous life was interpreted as something more essential for the spiritual situation of the individual than the facts of reality, which simultaneously enter into his consciousness. Consciousness began to break away from its vital impulses and more and more to be treated as a spontaneous, self-developing flow.
Proust takes the fact of reality in its multiple manifestation in the mind of a person, in its change, determined by changes in experience, memory and age-related changes (the same phenomenon is interpreted differently by the mind of the same person in childhood, adolescence, adulthood). André Maurois wrote of Proust:
He feels that he has only one duty left, namely ... to give himself up to the search for lost time ... To recreate with the help of memory lost impressions, to develop those huge deposits, which is the memory of a person who has reached maturity, and from his memories to make a work of art - this is the task he sets himself. (Morua A. Marcel Proust. M., 1970. S. 219).
School of the "new novel"
The artistic principles of J. Joyce and M. Proust were absolutized by the "new novel" school that developed in the literature of the 1950s in France (N. Sarrot, A. Robbe-Grillet, M. Butor). Proceeding from the existentialist idea of the absurdity of life, the absence of a purpose in the life process, and the "scattered" (chaotic) world, the school of the "new novel" elevated the non-plot narrative to a principle, destroying all the traditional organizing compositional elements of the work. From the story of life facts and events, the novel turned into a refined essayistic, impressionistic retelling of the nuances of the hero's spiritual life. Psychologism was taken to the extreme. The stream of consciousness has severed its connection with the real world. In realism, the consciousness of the hero, making jumps through the "gap in information" (from fact to fact, to hypothesis, to previous experience, to the future), kept in touch with life process, in the literature of the stream of consciousness, this stream turned out to be flying over reality. The stream of consciousness became the stream of self-consciousness, thought flowing beyond the shores of life. Thinking itself was understood as a mental process of the hero's egocentric personality. The narrative began to break off in mid-sentence, unexpectedly and unmotivated. The works became amorphous, amoeba-like, they lost their outlines: the plot weakened, the denouement ceased to be the artistic result of the work, which turned into a naturalistic picture of flashing psychological states character. This direction is also called "anti-novel" for its rejection of the usual methods.
Mindflow
"Stream of consciousness - the image of the thoughts and feelings of characters, expressed in a free manner and not constrained by logic" (Karl Beckson, Arthur Gahz. LTD).
In the novel "Portrait of an Unknown Man" (1948) Nathalie Sarrot (1900-1999) reveals the subtlest nuances and semitones of human relationships. An unknown and not presented to the reader in any way man, passing through the city garden, looks at unknown girl. The birth of unaccountable tenderness in the soul of a man and the responses that occur in the soul of a girl to his persistent views become the content of the novel. The writer also introduces another motif that determines the girl's experiences: the old father, either out of jealousy or despotism, tyrannizes her. There is no disconnect storylines are interrupted, as if emphasizing that it is not life events, but inner experiences, shades of feelings that are an intrinsically valuable subject of artistic depiction.
Memory and its meaning
In "Last Summer in Marienbad" Alain Robbe-Grillet (b. 1922) reveals the importance of memory in the spiritual life of the individual. Memory is always present, it is the past that exists in the present: as long as I remember, the phenomenon exists in me and with me. Therefore, Robbe-Grillet mixes the past and the present, they are superimposed on each other and turn out to be coexisting and equivalent. The personality is interpreted as an amphibian, living simultaneously in two environments - the past and the present.
Stream of consciousness literature captures the inner world of the individual and reveals the values of the spiritual life in their spontaneous movement.
Modernism is famous for its achievements in the field of new literary techniques: here is the rejection of linear narrative, and the principles of montage, and the absence of the author as the ultimate truth ... The text begins to speak in a different language, concentrating all attention on the internal mental organization of a person, inexpressible direct and habitual "realistic" statements. It turns out a stream of consciousness - a set of thoughts and impressions that arise in an associative way in the head of the hero and are transferred to paper.
We selected 5 major novels in which the authors used the stream of consciousness method.
Petersburg. Andrey Bely
Russian modernism is a really bright and strong phenomenon. Then it is all the more remarkable that "Petersburg" by Andrei Bely is considered one of the main modernist texts. domestic literature, in which there is both work with a new form, and a display of the "dark" history of Russia during the Revolution of 1905-1907.
Academician Dmitry Likhachev wrote about this novel in the following way: “I think the main thing in this form is constant searching, dissatisfaction with the “smooth writing”, which was so much in Russian literature XIX V. Hence his constant striving to emphasize the "texture" of form, the "texture" of language.
Ulysses. James Joyce
This novel is called the most complex work throughout the world literature of the last century, which few people can decipher. However, this is not a reason to postpone reading, because James Joyce clearly did not mind that everyone interpreted his creation in their own way.
It is difficult to say what exactly happens in Ulysses - we see how Leopold Bloom spends his day in Dublin, how he meets Stephen Daedalus and learns about his wife's betrayal. By the way, a special place is given to the stream of consciousness in the final monologue of Molly Bloom, and not every reader is ready to endure this test!
In search of lost time. Marcel Proust
This epochal cycle of Marcel Proust consists of seven novels, each of which appeared as a result of the struggle of the writer with a serious illness. The author wrote a work like no other, full of subjective manifestations of consciousness, a stream of fleeting impressions and reactions that cannot be explained rationally.
Time is an extremely important substance for modernism, and Proust managed to embody ideas about it in this monumental work. It is important that in the issue of time, he relied on the philosophical concept of Anri Bergson and wove into the fabric of the text the contradictory modernist relations of the momentary moment of being and life.
Mrs Dalloway. Virginia Woolf
This novel, like Joyce's Ulysses, is also about a heroine's one day, and is written almost entirely in the stream-of-consciousness technique. As in her other works, in "Mrs. Dalloway" Virginia Woolf shows deep, subtle and paradoxical connections between people that cannot be told linearly and in order. At the same time, the story of privacy happening in the background big story- World War I...
William Faulkner
The novel "The Sound and the Fury" (formerly translated as "The Sound and the Fury") is dedicated to the story of the destruction of the Compson family living in the South of the United States. Four parts of this outstanding work are devoted to different heroes: first, the narration comes from the perspective of the idiot Benji, then from his brothers, and, finally, from the author himself, who talks about the black maid Dilsey. Thanks to this change of perspective, we get to know the characters so closely that we begin to feel inside the events and empathize with the characters as members of our own family.
German Literature of the 20th Century. Germany, Austria: textbook Eva Alexandrovna Leonova
Stream of Consciousness School
Stream of Consciousness School
The concept of "stream of consciousness" (eng. "Stream of consciousness") was put into circulation by the famous American philosopher and psychologist William James. In the 11th section of his book "Fundamentals of Psychology" (1874-1890), the scientist stated: "Consciousness is never shown to itself fragmented into pieces. Expressions like "chain" or "row" do not depict consciousness as it appears to itself. There is nothing in it that could bind - it flows ... The metaphor "river" or "stream" always draws consciousness more naturally. Therefore, let us in the future, speaking of it, call it "the stream of thought", "the stream of consciousness", "the stream of subjective life".
The judgments of W. James were perceived by writers different countries Story by: James Joyce Virginia Woolf(England), Marcel Proust (France), William Faulkner, Gertrude Stein (USA), Alfred Döblin (Germany) and others. Especially noticeable development of the “stream of consciousness” school falls on the 20-30s of the XX century.
In literary criticism, the “stream of consciousness” is distinguished as a separate artistic technique in a number of other devices and as a literary genre form (in such cases they say: a “stream of consciousness” novel).
As an artistic device, the “stream of consciousness” is quite often identified with the internal monologue, which was used in the literature of the 19th century; for the first time it is mentioned, according to American researchers, in the novel by A. Dumas "Twenty years later", and in Russian literature - in the review of N.G. Chernyshevsky on the works of L. Tolstoy "Childhood and adolescence" and "Military stories" ("Contemporary", 1856, No. 12). The internal monologue is used by Stendhal, L. Tolstoy, F.M. Dostoevsky, E. Hemingway, T. Dreiser, O. Huxley, G. Grass and many other authors of the 19th–20th centuries.
The "stream of consciousness" - in contrast to the internal monologue with its logic, consistency, cause-and-effect relationships - is characterized by such features as abrupt thought, temporary layers and shifts, a tendency to illogicality, subjectivity, lack of predeterminedness, conscious non-direction. Thoughts, associations, impressions, memories seem to interrupt each other, connect according to the principle of chance and inadvertently, as it happens with the conscious and subconscious in natural life person. Close to the “stream of consciousness” are the methods of “internal analysis” (similar to an internal monologue, but marked by illogicality), “sensory impression” (provides for the abruptness of not only thoughts, phrases, but also individual words), dissonance, etc. Under the technique of “flow consciousness" usually understand the totality of all these techniques.
Let us recall an episode from Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin, Alexanderplatz (1929), when the police, together with a character involved in the murder of Mizzi, are looking for the corpse of the unfortunate woman; in the stream of consciousness of this hero, tinsmith Karl, everything is intertwined and confused: “They are going along a familiar road. Good to go. Better yet, jump out of the car. Yes, where is it! Bastards, hands tied, nothing can be done. And they have tapestries with them. So there's nothing you can do, no matter what. They go, the highway flies towards. Mizzi, you are dear to me, I give you a hundred and twenty days ... Sit on my knees. What a nice girl she was, and this scoundrel, this Reinhold, is walking over corpses. Well wait! Remember Mizzi... I'll bite off your tongue... How she knew how to kiss! The driver then still asked where to go: right or left? I say - no matter where! My dear, my dear girl ... "
Or another of the many episodes, this time with the participation of the protagonist Franz Bieberkopf: “Looks - two pictures side by side. What is this? Franz went cold. It is me. But why am I here, because of the business at Stralauerstrasse? What a horror, it's me, and next to it is Reinhold, and on top is the headline: "Murder in Freyenwal de ..." Mizzi! And who is this? Me?.. Hush, mice, the cat is on the roof... But what is it? (the novel is cited in G. Zukkau's translation).
“The reception and technique of the stream of consciousness had different content and meaning for different writers…,” writes N.S. Pavlova (who rightly noted that the existing translation does not give a complete picture of narrative technique Döblin, including his stream of consciousness). – For Döblin, the stream of consciousness has its own relevance. The specifically Döblinian meaning of this technique is reduced to the possibility of showing the friction of the inner and outer layers of reality, i.e., the same penetration (bohren) of life into human consciousness” (1, 123). It is no coincidence that Döblin, in relation to his own creative method, was decidedly not satisfied with the word "describe". “In a novel one should layer, accumulate, roll, push” (schichten, h?ufen, w?lzen, schieben) (2, 447).
Sometimes the "stream of consciousness" technique is used as universal remedy images of reality, the only possible way to convey the mental and psychological life of the character. In this case, one speaks of genre form- about the novel "stream of consciousness". Unlike the traditional novel, according to the American literary critic M. Friedman, it "flows non-stop, easily, working spontaneously, with reminiscences and forebodings", being attentive to the consciousness and subconsciousness of the character.
The classic examples of the “stream of consciousness” novel are the novels of J. Joyce “Ulysses” (1922) and “Finnegans Wake” (1939), W. Faulkner “The Sound and the Fury” (1929). great place occupies the "stream of consciousness" in M. Proust's multi-volume novel "In Search of Lost Time", on which the writer worked from 1905 to 1922; however, here the associative narration is closer to an internal monologue, to a greater extent (with some exceptions) it is logical, moreover, like in A. Döblin, in the novel by M. Proust, others also make themselves felt artistic directions, first of all, impressionism and realism (in Döblin - naturalism, realism, symbolism, expressionism, futurism, as well as " epic theater» B. Brecht and others).
How the “stream of consciousness” technique is used in the actual realistic literature, and in the avant-garde, for example, in the "psychological" offshoot of such a direction as the "new novel".
Sources
1. Pavlova N.S. Typology of the German Novel: 1900–1945. M., 1982.
2. D?blin A. Die Vertreibung der Gespenster. Berlin, 1968.
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Very often there is a kind of “shot through” version of the transformation of consciousness, in which the entity masters a certain minimum of knowledge at each turn of the ascent, without comprehending the laws of its functioning to the end and striving ever higher. This minimum, as a rule, is not enough for stable progress.
To hold on and, all the more, to function fully for more high level we are not allowed by the lack of knowledge, due to the fact that we did not get something at the previous levels. At the same time, there will inexorably be a shuttle return to the spaces and aspects of life in which they are embodied, insufficiently known by us. Such a return will be carried out until we “choose” for ourselves the entire limit of knowledge embedded in them. The same detrimental situation for us, to which we are trying to close our eyes, will be repeated with us in various ways until we understand what kind of experience it brings to us.
The life of each of us is replete with learning situations., but we do not always take the chance to gain new experience embedded in them. Even if we have a wonderful Teacher, the main factor in the success of spiritual advancement will not be his ability to teach, but our ability and desire to learn.
Sometimes there is a conscious refusal to master some forms of experience that seem unnecessary to us. For each person in certain phases of life they are different. On present stage for many people, this often manifests itself in the idea that spirituality does not correlate with professional fulfillment, with the ability to earn money. The postulate that spiritual man there should be no material needs, formed in the conditions of spaces of completely different historical eras. Each evolutionary epoch presupposes the development by mankind of some new type of experience. In addition to individual programs for the development of one or another aspect of perception, a common social task for all is included in the sphere of human learning. The epoch in which we are now embodied dictates the need for humanity to develop the experience of social orientation and acquire the ability of abstract thinking, which implies the ability to see the general and integral behind any particular and fragmentary.
Modern conditions require that a person has reached the level of professionalism in his field and, due to this, is able to earn money, the presence of which is a measure of the manifestation of many types of social freedom. This includes freedom of movement (few people today are not embarrassed by the prices of, say, air transport), and freedom to purchase quality food, and freedom to access information (in order to buy a new book or attend a seminar on any type of practice, again, you need money).
Today, for many entities who in other rebirths have shown superpowers that fit the category of “miraculous”, a real and sometimes unbearable miracle is the acquisition of the ability to earn money for successful social functioning. Due to the fact that we can move objects with an effort of will, we will not have a separate apartment or the opportunity to go to study abroad. We can apply all the skills and abilities we already have to work on new ones only if we comprehend the foundations of the laws that make them up.
All our successes in spiritual advancement, achieved in a regime of strict isolation from the world, will be of a rather illusory nature until we master the experience of social manifestation. In order to comprehend the degrees of spiritual freedom, it is first necessary to learn to be consciously socially conditioned.
Proust's main work was the novel "In Search of Lost Time"(1913-1927 - already terminally ill), cat. comprises 7 books, united by the image of the narrator Marseille reminiscing. However, the novel is neither a memoir nor an autobiography. Proust saw it as his task not to sum up what had been lived. It was important for the author to convey to the reader a certain emotion. mood, to inspire a spiritual attitude, to discover the truth, acquired by him and realized, formulated in the process of writing a novel. The novel can be seen as a kind lyrical novel. Proustian lyricism stems from the desire to break through to the authenticity of our "I". The author wants to inspire the reader with faith in inexhaustible wealth inner reality which must be freed from the all-destroying action of habit and mental laziness. The creative effort of consciousness is rewarded with insight, the acquisition by the personality of its authenticity.
The writer should not invent anything, invent. His work is akin to translation: he must translate the book of his soul into a common language.
"In search of ut.vr." Proust creates a peculiar novel-flow, in which Stendhal's psychologism is transformed into a special technique ("mindflow"), and the internal monologue absorbs the entire structure of the novel. Proust knows and recognizes as true only what he remembers, what has entered the sphere of his complex consciousness and even subconsciousness. True being is within consciousness. Man is first and foremost "man of remembrance" The main plot of the book is the story of a complex, author's "I". For Proust, "everything is in the mind, not in the object."
For Proust art- the highest form of life, the only true way of human existence, allowing him to find "lost time", and with it his real "I" and the meaning of life.
It happens in the novel destruction of character: the image of the character is deprived of integrity, the semantic core. Proust questioned the identity of the individual. Personality is estimated by him as a chain of successive representations of various "I". Therefore, the image of a character is often built as a set of static sketches, layered on top of each other. The image of the character, as it were, is divided into many incompatible components. Such a construction of the image illustrated Proust's idea about the subjectivity of our ideas about the personality of another, about the fundamental incomprehensibility of his essence. Man comprehends not the objective world, but only his own image of the world.
13. The main themes and motives of the novel by M. Proust "Towards Swann"
The novel cycle In Search of Lost Time (1905-1922) consists of seven books. The first novel included is Towards Swann (finished in 1911). The novel put Proust among the "fathers" of European modernism. The modernism of the novel is evidenced by the displacement of the real world by subjective impressions, the mixing of temporal layers, the rejection of the traditional plot, the destruction of character, the “stream of consciousness” as a splitting of feelings, the predominance of trifles and details associated with the fact that Proust moves away from the image of the typical towards the singular.
Summary, for those who haven't read: In the first part, “Towards Swann, the hero Marcel, on behalf of whom the story is being told, recalls his childhood in the town of Combray, most of all about his mother, tenderness for which overwhelms him, and about the son of his grandfather's friend Charles Swann, a stockbroker, secretly from neighbors leading a high-society life. Marcel speaks of two favorite routes of his walks around Combray: towards the estate of the bourgeois Swann and towards the aristocrats of Guermantes. In Combray, the first knowledge of life comes to Marseille. a significant role this is played by the music teacher Vinteuil, the writer Bergot. He is fascinated by the Duchess of Guermantes, who does not stand out in any way, but is surrounded by a mythical halo of her high and ancient origin. It was then that Marcel's dream of becoming a writer was born. The boy also admires Svan's daughter Gilbert, primarily because she communicates with the writer Bergog. Much later, he learns of Swann's passionate love for Odette de Crecy. The story of Swann’s acquaintance in the salon of the Verdurins with the rather vulgar Odette, who reminds him of one of the images of Botticelli, of Swann’s insane jealousy, of his sudden cooling towards Odette, in whom he suddenly saw a very ordinary person who was completely different from the Botticelli painting, is, as it were, "a novel in a novel", judging by some of the accents placed in the text, written by the Proustian hero Marcel. From the subsequent narrative, it turns out that Odette, whom Swann fell out of love with, nevertheless became his wife, and young Marcel fell in love with their daughter Gilberte.
The main themes "Towards Svan".
An important feature of the psychologism of the work is precisely the fact that it laid the foundation for a new type of novel - the "stream of consciousness" novel. The architectonics of the 1st "flow novel", which recreates the memories of the protagonist Marcel about his childhood in Combray, about his parents, about acquaintances and social friends, indicates that Proust captures the fluidity of life and thought. For the author, the "duration" of a person's mental activity is a way of resurrecting the past, when past events reconstructed by consciousness often acquire greater significance than the present every minute, undoubtedly affecting it. Proust discovers that the combination of sensation (gustatory, tactile, sensory), which stores the subconscious on a sensory level, and memories, give the volume of time.
Proust saw it as his task not to sum up what had been lived. It was important for the author to convey to the reader a certain emotional mood, to inspire a certain spiritual attitude, to discover the truth, acquired by him and realized, formulated in the process of writing a novel. The author wants to inspire the reader with faith in the inexhaustible richness of the inner reality, which must be freed from the all-destroying action of habit and mental laziness. The creative effort of consciousness is rewarded with insight, the acquisition by the personality of its authenticity. So, in the book “Toward Swann”, little Marcel approaches the comprehension of the essence of his deep “I”, describing the pleasure that he received while contemplating the Martinville bell towers.
The theme of the novel is the ratio of a person and an artist in the structure of a creative personality. It simply denies the direct dependence of talent on personal qualities artist. Genuine artists are not brilliant, educated and sophisticated aristocrats, like Baron de Charlus or Saint-Loup, but the seemingly unremarkable Vinteuil, the author of a brilliant musical phrase, or the talented writer Bergotte, who seems vulgar to secular society. According to Proust, "genius lies in the ability to reflect, and not in the properties of the reflected spectacle."
Art- the highest form of life, the only true way of human existence, allowing him to find "lost time", and with it his real "I" and the meaning of being. “In Search of Lost Time” is a novel about a novel, or rather about why a novel has not been written for so long, this is the story of Marcel finding his writing vocation.
L love theme- love becomes a purely subjective experience, in no way correlated with its object; love is wholly contained in the lover, the object of love is accidental and indifferent. Clever, subtle and educated, Swann falls in love with the very limited and vulgar Odette de Crecy when he discovers in her appearance resemblance to Botticella Sepphora.
Chamfort's aphorism is quite applicable to the Proustian concept of love: “We must choose: either to love women or to know them; there can be no middle ground. Model love relationship in Proust's novel is built on the movement from love to knowledge. As soon as Swann and Marcel come closer to knowing their loved ones, they experience deep disappointment, and love dies. Such an interpretation of love is connected with the general epistemological attitude of Proust, for whom to love and to know are opposite states of the soul. You can only love what you do not know, what is absent in the present, thus being present in the past or in the future, in the memory or in the imagination of the lover. For Proust, love is something like a disease of consciousness: it is inseparable from jealousy and suffering. Love can only live in fear of losing the beloved. Having become Swann's wife, Odette loses her former attractiveness in his eyes.
In Proust's novel, destruction of character: the image of the character is deprived of integrity, the semantic core. Proust questioned the identity of the individual. Personality is perceived by him as a chain of successive representations of various "I". Therefore, the image of this or that character is often built as a set of static, side by side sketches, layered on top of each other, complementing each other, correcting, but not forming a wholeness based on the constancy of stable psychological properties of the individual. The image of the character, as it were, is divided into many incompatible components. So, for example, Swann is a visitor to aristocratic salons, as he appears in the children's perception of Marseille, and Swann is Odette's jealous lover, and then a prosperous family man seen through the eyes of an adult Marcel, currying favor with his wife's insignificant guests. Such a construction of the image illustrated Proust's idea about the subjectivity of our ideas about the personality of another, about the fundamental incomprehensibility of his essence. Man comprehends not the objective world, but only his own image of the world.
15. Poetry by P. Verlaine Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) - French poet, one of the largest French symbolists. Being a recognized master of symbolism, Verlaine was still not its head and theoretician, like S. Mallarme. More strongly than any of the Symbolists, Verlaine is associated with Impressionism. He strove not so much to create symbols as to convey impressions. Verlaine's poetic image is most often built from the most ordinary details, from fragments of what the poet has seen and perceived by the poet's subtle impressionability. The image-symbol of Verlaine is devoid of Baudelaire's "Satanism" and drama, as well as the grotesque sharpness, associativity, deformity of the image in A. Rimbaud.
In Verlaine's first poetry collection "Saturn Poems" (1866) the influence of Parnassian aesthetics and C. Baudelaire is noticeable. Parnassian influence is reflected in the plastic expressiveness of the image, in the careful finishing of the verse, in the material density, visibility and tangibility of the world. The collection still retains the Parnassian balance of objective and subjective principles in the structure of the poetic image. The Baudelaire tradition is felt in the general minor key poems, in the subtlety of sensations and heightened susceptibility, as well as in the development of an urban theme (“Remembering the secret of twilight”, “Sentimental walk”, “Autumn song”). However, already in this collection, features of the original Verlaine style are revealed: melancholic intonation, nuanced image, musicality, manifested not only as a virtuoso orchestration of verse, but above all as the ability to convey the subtlest movements, the “music” of the soul. Verlaine's innovation is in giving poetic word hitherto unprecedented musicality and suggestiveness (hint, suggestion, suggestion), in enriching the rhythm of the verse. Verlaine was one of the first to turn to "free verse". Never before in French poetry inner life was not conveyed with such fullness, with such a variety of shades, in its continuous dynamics, fluidity.
Long penalties
Autumn violins
The call is unrelenting,
My heart is hurt
Thoughts are foggy
Monotonously.
I sleep, I'm cold
Startled, I turn pale
With the fight of midnight.
Something will be remembered.
All without a report
The eyes will pay off.
I will go out into the field.
Wind at will
Rushing, brave.
He grabs, he throws
Like it takes away
The leaf is yellowed.
Translation by Valery Bryusov
"Autumn Song"- one of the masterpieces of Verlaine, in which already on early stage creativity of the French poet showed the originality of his talent. How many times before him did the French romantics. Verlaine in "Autumn Song" creates a landscape colored by feelings lyrical hero. The mood of melancholy, loneliness, mental fatigue - these are the main motives of Verlaine's poem.
In the collection "Gallant festivities" (1869) often saw the works of an amateur and decadent, an adherent of the theory of "art for art's sake". The collection is a series of elegant landscapes, pictures, sketches, depicting the exquisite entertainment of ladies and gentlemen of the 18th century. The poet uses the Parnassian method of referring not to living nature, but to its refraction in the prism of art. He is inspired by the paintings of Watteau, Fragonard, Greuze. "Gallant festivities"? a peculiar attempt of the poet to find refuge in a distant era, with the help of imagination to dissolve in its fabulous, theatrical world. Sketches of nature acquire the character of "landscapes of the soul", in which observations of reality are absorbed by the subjective impressions of the poet, dissolved in his perception and subordinated to the task? express the shades of the state of mind of the lyrical hero (poems " Moonlight"," On a walk", "Secretly"). Such a poetic attitude led to an increase in the melancholic tonality of the collection, to a further disintegration material world and to the strengthening of the subjective principle in the structure of the poetic image. However The general trend to subjectivization artistic world does not yet lead to the blurring of the line between the real and the imaginary, to the weakening of the contours of the object.
Collection "Good Song" (1870) includes poems dedicated to Verlaine's beloved, his fiancee Mathilde Mote, whom he met in 1869 when Mathilde was sixteen years old. Verlaine loved this collection of his more than any other book, for "The Good Song", in his words, was "first of all sincere and conceived so sweetly, tenderly and cleanly ... written so simply." Is it really a good song? the most cheerful of the poet's collections of poetry, telling the story of the revival of a lyrical hero under the influence of love. Verlaine's love is not so much a passionate and painful feeling as a tender longing. Verlaine prefers restraint and chastity to Baudelaire's ardent sensuality. In the poem “The sun has just risen over the wet fields…” the poet, creating a picture of sunrise, early morning, turns his thought to his beloved: “But what a pleasure / Gives this view to someone who is obsessed / With a single dream and one image / Maiden, - in everything its charm / Of the melodious whiteness of the soul and clothes, / So similar to the day, which has barely begun ... ".
The poem "Poetic Art" (written in 1874, published in 1882) became the poetic manifesto of impressionistic and symbolist lyrics. The poet calls for musicality as the most important principle of the new poetry ("De la musique avant toute chose"). Moreover, musicality is understood broadly, as the overcoming in poetry of everything that interferes with the looseness of lyrical self-expression: the laws of logic and common sense, established norms of versification, installation on virtuosity and certainty of meaning, accuracy of contour. The poet is a medium driven by intuition, not logic. Genuine poetry is the expression of the inexpressible. Verlaine concludes his poem with the following admonition addressed to the poet: “Let him blurt out foolishly / All that is in the dark, wonderworking, / The dawn will bewitch him ... / Everything else is literature.”
The collection Wisdom (1881) includes poems written by Verlaine in prison and shortly after his release. In prison, Verlaine's conversion to the Catholic faith takes place. In Wisdom, the poet turns to God, often the second deep plan of the image-symbol is occupied not by the human soul, but by God, the poet moves from “humanistic symbolism” to “religious” (D. D. Oblomievsky). the collection "Wisdom" marked the maturity of Verlaine's symbolism.
16. Creativity A. Rimbaud. Symbolist poet, considered in France to be the founder of French poetry of the 20th century. Born in the family of an infantry captain. The first works were written by Rimbaud at the Lyceum, in 1862-1863. In 1869 he manages to publish three poems on Latin. During these years, Rimbaud read a lot (Rabelais, Hugo, etc.). The first period of his work begins (1870-May 1871, poems "Ophelia", "The Hanged Ball", "Evil", "Sleeping in a Hollow", etc.) . Already in these works, the poet acts as a symbolist, in which the central image, as it were, shines through all other images, giving the work an artistic unity. So, in the poem “Sleeping in a hollow”, death, leaving the cruel world, where some people kill others, turns out to be true life, merging with nature In 1870, the 16-year-old Rimbaud made his first "escape" to Paris, where he became a witness to the Paris Commune, which was in agony. The heroism of the revolutionary struggle did not leave indifferent the romantically minded young man (“The War Hymn of Paris”, “The Hands of Jeanne-Marie”, etc.). Rimbaud was never a politically engaged poet, but the spectacle of the bourgeoisie, the philistines recovering from the shock that he hated so much, disgusted him (“A Parisian orgy, or Paris is repopulated”), as well as the bigotry of a “respectable” society (“The poor in the temple”) .
The theory of clairvoyance. Upon learning of the proclamation of the Commune, Rimbaud leaves the lyceum in Charleville and, having reached Paris, participates in revolutionary events. The feeling of the collapse of the Commune leads him to search for poetry, ahead of inert life. By May 1871, Rimbaud had the concept of a "clairvoyant poet." - All forms of love, suffering, madness; he seeks himself, he tries all the poisons on himself in order to save only the quintessence. Unspeakable torture, in which he needs all faith, all superhuman strength, in which he becomes among all the great sick, the great criminal, the great accursed - and the supreme Scientist! - for he strives for the unknown.
The theory of "clairvoyance" further development in the book of essays and reflections by Rimbaud "Illumination" (1872-1873). This is one of the most important documents of French symbolism.
Rimbaud believed that the poet achieves clairvoyance through insomnia, resorting, if necessary, to alcohol and drugs. He sought to express the inexpressible, to penetrate what he called "the alchemy of the word."
The implementation of the theory of "clairvoyance" became two famous works Rimbaud: "The Drunken Ship" and "The Vowels".
"Drunken Ship"
This great poem is built like an extended meta
handicap of the poet-ship, left without a team and carried away by a storm and ocean waves to unknown lands. The finale of the poem is full of deep disappointment: the ship is tired of freedom and the expanse of the ocean, disfigured by pontoons with convicts (members of the Paris Commune were exiled to hard labor in New Caledonia):
I've been crying too long! How bitter is youth to me,
How merciless the moon, how black the sun!
Let my keel break on the pitfalls,
Would choke, lie down on the sandy bottom.
Well, if Europe, then let it be,
Like a frozen puddle, dirty and shallow,
Let the sad boy spin on his haunches
Your own paper boat with a moth wing.
I'm tired of the swell of this slow moisture,
Caravan sails, homeless days
Tired of trade swagger flags
And there are lights on the hard labor pontoons!
