The play is built in the form of a chain of paintings that depict individual episodes from the life of a canteen girl of the second Finnish regiment. Marketers were called merchants who accompanied troops on campaigns. Mother Courage has no illusions about the ideological background of the war and treats it extremely pragmatically - as a way of enrichment. It is completely indifferent to her under which flag to trade in her road shop, the main thing is that the trade is successful. Courage also teaches commerce to his children, who grew up in an endless war. Like any caring mother, she makes sure that the war does not hook them. However, against her will, the war inexorably takes away her two sons and daughter. But, even having lost all the children, the candienne does not change anything in her life. As in the beginning of the drama, in the finale she stubbornly drags her shop.
The eldest son - Eilif, embodies courage, the youngest son Schweitzerkas - honesty, the mute daughter Katrin - kindness. And each of them is ruined by their best features. Thus, Brecht leads the viewer to the conclusion that in conditions of war, human virtues lead to the death of their bearers. The picture of Catherine's execution is one of the most powerful in the play.
On the example of the fate of Courage's children, the playwright shows the "wrong side" of human virtues, which opens up in the conditions of war. When Eilif takes the cattle from people, it becomes clear that courage has turned into cruelty. When Schweitzerkas hides money behind his own life, it is impossible not to be surprised at his stupidity. Katherine's dumbness is perceived as an allegory of helpless kindness. The playwright encourages you to think about the fact that in the modern world, virtues must change.
The idea of the tragic doom of children Courage in the play is summarized by an ironic "zong" about the legendary figures of human history, who, allegedly, also became victims of their own virtues.
Most of the blame for the broken fates of Eilif, Schweitzerkas and Katrin, the author places on their mother. It is no coincidence that in the drama their death is mounted with the commercial affairs of Courage. Trying, as a "business person" to win money, she loses children every time. However, it would be a mistake to think that Courage is only greedy for profit. She is a very colorful personality, even attractive in some ways. Cynicism, characteristic of Brecht's early works, combined in it with the spirit of defiance, pragmatism - with ingenuity and "courage", trading passion - with the power of motherly love.
Its main mistake lies in the "commercial" approach to war freed from moral feelings. The canteen hopes to feed herself on the war, but it turns out that, according to the sergeant major, she herself feeds the war with her "offspring." The divination scene (the first picture) contains a deep symbolic meaning, when the heroine draws black crosses on scraps of parchment for her own children with her own hands, and then mixes these scraps in a helmet (another “alienation” effect), jokingly comparing it with a mother’s womb.
The play "Mother Courage and Her Children" is one of the most important achievements of Brecht's "epic theater". Mother Courage acts as a symbol of crippled Germany. However, the content of the play goes far beyond the German history of the 20th century: the fate of Mother Courage and the stern warning embodied in her image concerns not only the Germans of the late 30s. - the beginning of the 40s, but also all those who look at the war as commerce.
Anti-war pathos and allegorical meaning of the drama By. Brecht "Mother Courage and Her Children"
I. The plot of the action - an opinion about the war. (Even before the action begins, we hear the dialogue of the recruiter with the sergeant major. And the latter says that the world is a mess, the basis of the immorality of society, "only wars create harmony." War for him is an exciting fa in which players begin to fear the world, because then you have to calculate how much they lost.)
II. There is no war without soldiers. (Mother Courage eats from the war, because she is a squire and trades in the army. And when they want to take her son Eilif into the army, she says: "let other people's sons go to the soldiers, not mine." But the cunning recruiter still persuades the guy to sign up to the troops while Mother Courage was bargaining.)
III. Who wants to live in war, Must pay something for her.
Mother Courage meets her son Eilif only two years before, but he is brave and respected by the commander. He brutally cracks down on the peasants, and the war writes everything off. For now. And the second son of Courage Schweitzerkas is taken into the army as a treasurer, because he is honest and decent. He suffered for this, because, trying to save the cashier of the regiment, he was shot. The mother was not allowed to mourn and bury Schweitzerkas. Eilif also dies, for he kills a peasant family precisely during a short peace. And mother Courage at this time is trying to establish material affairs. Finally, Katrin's daughter also dies when her mother went to the city to buy goods. And again she goes the roads of war, not even having time to bury her daughter.
IV. Allegorical meaning of the images of the children of Mother Courage. (Each of the children of Mother Courage is the personification of what kind of virtue. Eilif is brave, courageous. Schweitzerkas is honest, decent. Katrin is not a fool and kind. But they all die in the war. Such is the fate of human virtues that die amidst moral decay. It is no coincidence the priest says that war turns everything inside out and demonstrates the most terrible human vices, which may not have appeared in peacetime: "Those who unleashed the war are to blame, who turn out the best that is in people.")
V. What is the meaning of hidden irony. (Already in the very title, Courage is called not a mother, but a mother. Why? Because there is a hidden irony here. Can a real mother want war? Of course not, even if this does not concern her children. And she does not treat her own too carefully. Every time when the fate of her children is decided, where is she bargaining. She is bargaining even when it comes to the life of her son - honest Schweitzerkas. The author's irony extends to other images - a priest, a cook, a sergeant major, a soldier, etc. This because they live behind moral rules turned inside out. Irony helps to understand the allegorical meaning of Brecht's drama.)
VI. The meaning of the end of drama. (When Brechtov was reproached for the fact that his heroine did not curse the war, he said that he had a different goal: let the viewer himself come to a conclusion. faith, because she continues to profit from the war. Her last words: "I must continue to trade.")
In exile, in the struggle against fascism, Brecht's dramatic work blossomed. It was exceptionally rich in content and varied in form. Among the most famous plays of emigration - "Mother Courage and her children" (1939). The sharper and more tragic the conflict, the more critical, according to Brecht, a person's thought should be. Under the conditions of the 1930s, "Mother Courage" sounded, of course, as a protest against the demagogic propaganda of the war by the Nazis and was addressed to that part of the German population that succumbed to this demagogy. War is depicted in the play as an element that is organically hostile to human existence.
The essence of the "epic theater" becomes especially clear in connection with "Mother Courage". Theoretical commentary is combined in the play with a realistic manner, merciless in its consistency. Brecht believes that it is realism that is the most reliable way of influence. Therefore, in "Mother Courage" the "genuine" face of life is so consistent and sustained even in small details. But one should keep in mind the duality of this play - the aesthetic content of the characters, i.e. a reproduction of life, where good and evil are mixed regardless of our desires, and the voice of Brecht himself, not satisfied with such a picture, trying to affirm good. Brecht's position is directly evident in the Zongs. In addition, as follows from Brecht's directorial instructions to the play, the playwright provides theaters with ample opportunities to demonstrate the author's thought with the help of various "alienations" (photographs, film projections, direct appeal of actors to the audience).
The characters of the characters in "Mother Courage" are depicted in all their complex inconsistency. The most interesting is the image of Anna Firling, nicknamed Mother Courage. The versatility of this character causes a variety of feelings of the audience. The heroine attracts with a sober understanding of life. But she is a product of the mercantile, cruel and cynical spirit of the Thirty Years' War. Courage is indifferent to the causes of this war. Depending on the vicissitudes of fate, she hoists either a Lutheran or a Catholic banner over her van. Courage goes to war in the hope of big profits.
The conflict between practical wisdom and ethical impulses that excites Brecht infects the whole play with the passion of the dispute and the energy of the sermon. In the image of Catherine, the playwright drew the antipode of Mother Courage. Neither threats, nor promises, nor death forced Katrin to abandon the decision dictated by her desire to at least somehow help people. The talkative Courage is opposed by the mute Katrin, the girl's silent feat, as it were, crosses out all the lengthy arguments of her mother. Brecht's realism is manifested in the play not only in the depiction of the main characters and in the historicism of the conflict, but also in the life authenticity of episodic persons, in Shakespeare's multicolor, reminiscent of the "Falstaff background". Each character, drawn into the dramatic conflict of the play, lives his own life, we guess about his fate, past and future life, and as if we hear every voice in the discordant choir of war.
In addition to revealing the conflict through a clash of characters, Brecht complements the picture of life in the play with zongs, which give a direct understanding of the conflict. The most significant zong is the "Song of Great Humility". This is a complex kind of "alienation", when the author acts as if on behalf of his heroine, sharpens her erroneous positions and thereby argues with her, inspiring the reader to doubt the wisdom of "great humility". To the cynical irony of Mother Courage, Brecht responds with his own irony. And Brecht's irony leads the viewer, who has already succumbed to the philosophy of accepting life as it is, to a completely different view of the world, to an understanding of the vulnerability and fatality of compromises. The song about humility is a kind of foreign counteragent that allows us to understand the true wisdom of Brecht, which is opposite to it. The entire play, critical of the heroine's practical, compromising "wisdom," is an ongoing argument with the "Song of Great Humility." Mother Courage does not see clearly in the play, having survived the shock, she learns "about its nature no more than an experimental rabbit about the law of biology." The tragic (personal and historical) experience, while enriching the viewer, taught Mother Courage nothing and did not enrich her in the least. The catharsis she experienced turned out to be completely fruitless. So Brecht argues that the perception of the tragedy of reality only at the level of emotional reactions is not in itself knowledge of the world, it is not much different from complete ignorance.
“Mother Courage and Her Children” is a play by B. Brecht. The play was written in 1939 on the eve of World War II. The premiere took place in Zurich in 1941, on January 11, 1949 the play was staged at the Berliner Ensemble Theatre. In "Mother Courage" Brecht almost completely embodied the theoretical principles of the "epic theater", which he created as an alternative to the dramatic theater ("Aristotelian"). The new artistic ideas of the writer were born from his passionate desire to transform the old theater and turn it from a “hotbed of illusion” and a “factory of dreams” into a theater that educates the viewer in class consciousness, causing him to strive for a revolutionary change in the world.
According to Brecht's theory, epic theater should tell about the event, and not embody it, appeal not to feelings, but to reason. To do this, it is necessary to create a distance between the viewer and the stage so that he understands further and more than the stage character. At the heart of this relationship lies a technique created by Brecht, called the “alienation effect”. Its essence is to show life phenomena and human types from some unexpected side for a deeper understanding of the phenomenon, to awaken a critical and analytical position in the viewer, as opposed to the compassion of traditional dramatic theater.
In Mother Courage, Brecht refers to the events of the Thirty Years' War in the 17th century. The reproduction of the past was supposed to warn against the terrible consequences of the coming future. Brecht appeals to a man from the "crowd" who does not object to war, since he believes that the indifference and position of non-interference of the "little" man in the political games of the powerful is the main cause of social disasters at all times.
The protagonist of the play is Anna Fierling, nicknamed "Mother Courage", a candienne. She and her children - the sons Eilif and the Swiss and the mute daughter Katrin - with a van loaded with salable goods, roam the roads of war, "thinking to live through the war." The very image of a woman is written out by Brecht in a completely unexpected perspective. The drama of the mother, who said “yes” to the war, for whom human slaughter is a boon, money, gain, enhances the destructive and destroying all human impact of war. Twelve years pass between the beginning of the play and its end, they changed the appearance and well-being of Mother Courage (she grew old, lost all her children, almost went bankrupt), but her essence and her attitude to the war did not change. She continues to pull her wagon in the hope of better days, so that the war does not end, her nurse.
Brecht's philosophical idea of the incompatibility of motherhood (and more broadly: life, joy, happiness) with military commerce is expressed in the form of a parabola (the narrative moves away from the modern world, and then, as if moving along a curve, returns again to the abandoned subject and gives its philosophical and ethical understanding and evaluation). The plot is parabolic, separate situations, episodes connected with the successive loss of mother Courage of her children: each of them embodies the collision of a tradeswoman and mother, human and war.
Brecht in "Mother Courage", as in other plays, uses a number of techniques necessary to create an "alienation effect". This is editing, connecting parts, episodes without merging them. These are zongs (songs) performed by the characters, in a generalized form representing their worldview, life positions, and also designed to reveal the attitude of the author and actors to these characters. Brecht warned the actors about the distant, "alienated" performance of these songs, as they should feel the accusation and criticism of the characters by the author and performers.
The image of mother Courage caused a heated discussion in German literary criticism. The main reproach to Brecht is that a mother who has not learned anything and has not changed can cause a pessimistic mood. Brecht answered very briefly: whether mother Courage will see or not is not so important, the author must achieve insight into the viewer. According to Brecht, a negative example is more convincing for a person who is able to see his double in Mother Courage and draw the appropriate conclusions.
The famous performer of the role of Courage was the actress Elena Weigel, the wife of B. Brecht. On the Soviet stage, the play was staged by directors M.M. Strauch, M.A. Zakharov, television film adaptation was carried out by S.N. Kolosov.
The epic theater theory of Bertolt Brecht, which had a huge impact on the dramaturgy and theater of the 20th century, is a very difficult material for students. Conducting a practical lesson on the play "Mother Courage and Her Children" (1939) will help make this material accessible for assimilation.
The theory of epic theater began to take shape in Brecht's aesthetics as early as the 1920s, at a time when the writer was close to left-wing expressionism. The first, still naive, idea was Brecht's proposal to bring theater closer to sports. “A theater without an audience is nonsense,” he wrote in the article “More Good Sports!”.
In 1926, Brecht finished work on the play "What is that soldier, what is that", which he later considered the first example of epic theater. Elisabeth Hauptmann recalls: “After staging the play “What is that soldier, what is that,” Brecht acquires books on socialism and Marxism ... Somewhat later, while on vacation, he writes: “I am up to my ears in Capital. I now need to know all this for sure ... ".
Brecht's theatrical system takes shape simultaneously and in close connection with the formation of the method of socialist realism in his work. The basis of the system - the "alienation effect" - is the aesthetic form of the famous position of K. Marx from the "Theses on Feuerbach": "Philosophers have only explained the world in various ways, but the point is to change it."
The first work that deeply embodied such an understanding of alienation was the play "Mother" (1931) based on the novel by A. M. Gorky.
Describing his system, Brecht sometimes used the term "non-Aristotelian theater" and sometimes "epic theater". There is some difference between these terms. The term "non-Aristotelian theater" is associated primarily with the denial of old systems, "epic theater" - with the approval of a new one.
The "non-Aristotelian" theater is based on the criticism of the central concept, which, according to Aristotle, is the essence of tragedy - catharsis. The social meaning of this protest was explained by Brecht in the article “On the theatricality of fascism” (1939): “The most remarkable property of a person is his ability to criticize ... The one who gets used to the image of another person, and moreover without a trace, thereby refuses critical attitude towards him and himself.<...>Therefore, the method of theatrical acting, adopted by fascism, cannot be regarded as a positive model for the theatre, if we expect from it pictures that will give the audience the key to solving the problems of social life ”(Book 2, p. 337).
And Brecht connects his epic theater with an appeal to reason, without denying feelings. Back in 1927, in the article “Reflections on the Difficulties of the Epic Theater,” he explained: “The essential ... in the epic theater is probably that it appeals not so much to the feeling as to the mind of the viewer. The viewer should not empathize, but argue. At the same time, it would be completely wrong to reject feeling from this theater” (Book 2, p. 41).
Brecht's epic theater is the embodiment of the method of socialist realism, the desire to tear away the mystical veils from reality, to reveal the true laws of social life in the name of its revolutionary change (see B. Brecht's articles "On Socialist Realism", "Socialist Realism in the Theater").
Among the ideas of the epic theater, we recommend focusing on four main provisions: “the theater must be philosophical”, “the theater must be epic”, “the theater must be phenomenal”, “the theater must give an alienated picture of reality” - and analyze their implementation in the play “Mother Courage and her children.
The philosophical side of the play is revealed in the peculiarities of its ideological content. Brecht uses the principle of parabola (“the narrative moves away from the world contemporary to the author, sometimes even from a specific time, a specific situation, and then, as if moving along a curve, again returns to the abandoned subject and gives its philosophical and ethical comprehension and evaluation ...”.
Thus, the play-parabola has two planes. The first is B. Brecht's reflections on contemporary reality, on the blazing flames of the Second World War. The playwright formulated the idea of the play expressing this plan in the following way: “What should the production of “Mother Courage” show first of all? That big things in wars are not done by small people. That war, which is a continuation of business life by other means, makes the best human qualities disastrous for their possessors. That the struggle against war is worth any sacrifice” (Book 1, p. 386). Thus, "Mother Courage" is not a historical chronicle, but a warning play, it is turned not into the distant past, but into the near future.
The historical chronicle constitutes the second (parabolic) plan of the play. Brecht turned to the novel by the 17th-century writer X. Grimmelshausen "In defiance of a simpleton, that is, an outlandish description of a hardened liar and a vagabond Courage" (1670). In the novel, against the backdrop of the events of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), the adventures of the cannery Courage (that is, brave, brave), the girlfriend of Simplicius Simplicissimus (the famous hero from Grimmelshausen's novel Simplicissimus) were depicted. Brecht's chronicle presents 12 years of life (1624-1636) of Anna Fierling, nicknamed Mother Courage, her travels in Poland, Moravia, Bavaria, Italy, Saxony. “Comparison of the initial episode, in which Courage with three children goes to war, not expecting the worst, with faith in profit and good luck, with the final episode in which the candidate who has lost her children in the war, in essence, has already lost everything in life, with stupid persistence pulls his van along the beaten path into darkness and emptiness - this comparison contains the parabolically expressed general idea of the play about the incompatibility of motherhood (and more broadly: life, joy, happiness) with military commerce. At the same time, it should be noted that the period depicted is only a fragment in the Thirty Years' War, the beginning and end of which are lost in the flow of years.
The image of war is one of the central philosophically rich images of the play.
Analyzing the text, students must reveal the causes of the war, the need for war for businessmen, the understanding of war as "order", using the text of the play. The whole life of mother Courage is connected with the war, she gave her this name, children, prosperity (see picture 1). Courage chose the "great compromise" as a way of existence in the war. But a compromise cannot hide the internal conflict between the mother and the canteen (mother - Courage).
The other side of the war is revealed in the images of the Courage children. All three die: the Swiss because of his honesty (picture 3), Eilif - "because he accomplished one more feat than required" (picture 8), Catherine - warning the city of Halle about the attack of enemies (picture 11). Human virtues are either perverted in the course of war, or lead the good and honest to death. This is how the grandiose tragic image of the war as “the world in reverse” arises.
Revealing the epic features of the play, it is necessary to refer to the structure of the work. Students should study not only the text, but also the principles of the Brechtian setting. To do this, they must become familiar with Brecht's Courage Model. Notes for the 1949 production" (Book 1. S. 382-443). “As for the epic beginning in the production of the German Theater, it was reflected in the mise-en-scenes, and in the drawing of images, and in the careful finishing of details, and in the continuity of the action,” wrote Brecht (Book 1, p. 439). Epic elements are also: the presentation of the content at the beginning of each picture, the introduction of zongs commenting on the action, the widespread use of the story (one of the most dynamic pictures can be analyzed from this point of view - the third, in which there is a bargain for the life of the Swiss). The means of epic theater also include montage, that is, the connection of parts, episodes without their merging, without the desire to hide the junction, but on the contrary, with a tendency to highlight it, thereby causing a stream of associations in the viewer. Brecht in the article "Theater of Pleasure or Theater of Instruction?" (1936) writes: “The epic author Deblin gave an excellent definition of the epic, saying that, unlike a dramatic work, an epic work can, relatively speaking, be cut into pieces, and each piece will retain its viability” (Book 2, p. 66 ).
If students learn the principle of epization, they will be able to give a number of specific examples from Brecht's play.
The principle of "phenomenal theater" can only be analyzed using Brecht's "Courage Model". What is the essence of phenomenality, the meaning of which the writer revealed in the work "Purchase of copper"? In the old, "Aristotelian" theater, only the performance of the actor was truly artistic. The rest of the components, as it were, played along with him, duplicated his work. In the epic theater, each component of the performance (not only the work of the actor and director, but also light, music, design) should be an artistic phenomenon (phenomenon), each should have an independent role in revealing the philosophical content of the work, and not duplicate other components.
In the Courage Model, Brecht reveals the use of music based on the principle of phenomenality (see: Book 1, pp. 383-384), the same applies to scenery. Everything superfluous is removed from the stage, not a copy of the world is reproduced, but its image. For this, few, but reliable details are used. “If a certain approximation is allowed in the big, then in the small it is unacceptable. For a realistic image, it is important to carefully develop the details of costumes and props, because here the viewer’s imagination cannot add anything, ”wrote Brecht (Book 1, p. 386).
The effect of alienation, as it were, unites all the main features of the epic theater, gives them purposefulness. The figurative basis of alienation is a metaphor. Alienation is one of the forms of theatrical convention, the acceptance of the conditions of the game without the illusion of plausibility. The effect of alienation is designed to highlight the image, to show it from an unusual side. At the same time, the actor should not merge with his hero. Thus, Brecht warns that in scene 4 (in which Mother Courage sings “The Song of Great Humility”) acting without alienation “conceals a social danger if the performer of the role of Courage, hypnotizing the viewer with her acting, calls him to get used to this heroine.<...>He will not be able to feel the beauty and attractive force of the social problem” (Book 1, p. 411).
Using the effect of alienation with a goal different from that of B. Brecht, the modernists depicted on the stage an absurd world in which death reigns. Brecht, with the help of alienation, sought to show the world in such a way that the viewer would have a desire to change it.
There were great disputes around the finale of the play (see Brecht's dialogue with F. Wolf. - Book 1, pp. 443-447). Brecht answered Wolf: “In this play, as you rightly noted, it is shown that Courage has learned nothing from the catastrophes that befell it.<...>Dear Friedrich Wolf, it is you who confirm that the author was a realist. Even if Courage has not learned anything, the public, in my opinion, can still learn something by looking at it” (Book 1, p. 447).
24. G. Böll's creative path (analysis of one of the novels of his choice)
Heinrich Böll was born in 1917 in Cologne and was the eighth child in the family. His father, Victor Böll, is a hereditary cabinetmaker, and his mother's ancestors are Rhenish peasants and brewers.
The beginning of his life path is similar to the fate of many Germans, whose youth fell on a period of political adversity and the Second World War. After graduating from the public school, Heinrich was assigned to a humanitarian Greco-Roman gymnasium. He was among those few high school students who refused to join the Hitler Youth, and was forced to endure the humiliation and ridicule of those around him.
After graduating from high school, Heinrich Böll abandoned the idea of volunteering for military service and enrolled as an apprentice in one of the Bonn second-hand bookshops.
The first attempts at writing also belong to this time. However, his attempt to escape from reality and immerse himself in the world of literature was unsuccessful. In 1938, a young man was mobilized to serve his labor service in draining swamps and logging.
In the spring of 1939, Heinrich Böll entered the University of Cologne. However, he failed to learn. In July 1939, he was called up for military training of the Wehrmacht, and in the autumn of 1939 the war began.
Böll ended up in Poland, then in France, and in 1943 part of it was sent to Russia. This was followed by four serious injuries in a row. The front moved west, and Heinrich Böll roamed the hospitals, full of disgust for war and fascism. In 1945 he surrendered to the Americans.
After captivity, Böll returned to the devastated Cologne. He again entered the university to study German and philology. At the same time he worked as an auxiliary worker in his brother's carpentry workshop. Bell returned to his writing experiences. In the August issue of the magazine "Karusel" for 1947, his first story "Message" ("News") was published. This was followed by the story "The train comes on time" (1949), a collection of short stories "Wanderer, when you come to Spa ..." (1950); novels "Where have you been, Adam?" (1951), "And I didn't say a single word" (1953), "A house without a master" (1954), "Billiards at half past ten" (1959), "Through the eyes of a clown" (1963); the novels Bread of the Early Years (1955), Unauthorized Absence (1964), End of a Business Trip (1966) and others. In 1978, Bell's collected works in 10 volumes were published in Germany. The writer's works have been translated into 48 languages of the world.
In Russian, Böll's story first appeared in the magazine In Defense of the World in 1952.
Böll is an outstanding realist painter. The war in the image of the writer is a world catastrophe, a disease of humanity that humiliates and destroys the individual. For a small ordinary person, war means injustice, fear, torment, want and death. Fascism, according to the writer, is an inhuman and vile ideology, it provoked the tragedy of the world as a whole and the tragedy of an individual.
Böll's works are characterized by subtle psychologism, revealing the contradictory inner world of his characters. He follows the traditions of the classics of realistic literature, especially F. M. Dostoevsky, to whom Böll dedicated the script for the TV movie Dostoevsky and Petersburg.
In his later works, Böll increasingly raises acute moral problems that grow out of a critical understanding of his contemporary society.
The pinnacle of international recognition was his election in 1971 as president of the International PEN Club and the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1972. However, these events testified not only to the recognition of Bell's artistic talent. The outstanding writer was perceived both in Germany and in the world as the conscience of the German people, as a person who acutely felt "his involvement with time and his contemporaries", deeply perceived other people's pain, injustice, everything that humiliates and destroys the human person. Conquering humanism permeated every page of Bell's literary work and every step of his social activity.
Heinrich Böll organically does not accept any violence from the authorities, believing that this leads to the destruction and deformation of society. Numerous publications, critical articles and speeches by Böll in the late 70s and early 80s are devoted to this problem, as well as his two last major novels, The Caring Siege (1985) and Women Against the Background of a River Landscape (published posthumously in 1986) .
This position of Böll, his creative manner and commitment to realism has always aroused interest in the Soviet Union. He repeatedly visited the USSR, in no other country in the world did Heinrich Belle enjoy such love as in Russia. "Valley of thundering hooves", "Billiards at half past nine", "Bread of early years", "Through the eyes of a clown" - all this was translated into Russian until 1974. In June 1973 Novy Mir completed the publication of a Group Portrait with a Lady. And on February 13, 1974, Bell met the exiled A. Solzhenitsyn at the airport and invited him home. This was the last straw, although Bell had been involved in human rights activities before. In particular, he stood up for I. Brodsky, V. Sinyavsky, Yu. Daniel, was indignant at Russian tanks on the streets of Prague. For the first time after a long break, Heinrich Böll was printed in the USSR on July 3, 1985. And on July 16, he died.
In the biography of Böll as a writer, there are relatively few external events, it consists of literary work, trips, books and speeches. He belongs to those writers who write one book all their lives - a chronicle of their time. He was called "the chronicler of the era", "Balzac of the second German republic", "the conscience of the German people".
The novel "Billiards at half past ten" can be called the central novel of Bell's work, it formulated many of the most important leitmotifs of Bell's poetics. When analyzing the poetics of the title of the novel, it was noted that in this novel a special type of textual fabric is most clearly manifested, it can be called "billiard". As B.A. Larin noted, “The author’s style is manifested not only in the choice of words, the order and composition of verbal chains, in the effects of semantic duality and diversity, in leitmotifs, enriched repetitions, refrains, parallelisms, a large context ...” [Larin 1974; 220]. It is “a special composition of verbal chains”, when various text fragments, repeating many times (in the form of several invariants) and colliding in various combinations, pass through the entire text. For example, a colored description of billiards, each reference to which (as well as to each enclosing phrase) gives a new billiard figure - a new composition of text fragments, new meanings.
Moreover, the question of the choice of the sacrament, and, consequently, the rules of the game, the playing space, posed in "Billiards ...", is the most important for all Bell's heroes. The relation of the characters to this or that space, which remains unchanged, is associated with a very important opposition for Bell's poetics, realized through the motive of movement (dynamics/statics). By belonging to space, Bell's heroes are static (similar to billiard balls which, according to the rules of the game, also cannot go beyond the playing field, nor end up on any other field; after all, they will no longer be participants in the game there) and therefore are always easily recognizable by players another space. The story of Hugo (hotel fight) is very typical: “You know, they shouted, beating me: “Lamb of God.” This is the nickname I was given. … In the end, I was sent to an orphanage. Nobody knew me there - neither children nor adults, but two days had not passed before they called me “the lamb of God”, and I again became scared.” Each playing space has its own heroes, they are characterized by static in relation to the chosen space (participle).
The division into buffaloes and lambs, or rather, the choice of one or another communion, is purely voluntary and occurs at some specific time. Those roles that the heroes of the novel have chosen for themselves are also chosen voluntarily; they can be abandoned (a role, not a space, which is very important for a writer). But, having once chosen the path, that is, the space of life (buffaloes or lambs), a person in the novel strictly follows the laws of this space. Thus, in Bell's poetics, these play spaces have one very important quality: immutability. In this they are similar to the Catholic rite of communion. Having taken this or that communion, a person, the hero of the novel, once and for all chooses a god and laws for himself. Some become servants of the devil (everything that he personifies - meanness, baseness, evil); and others are God. Johanna, Heinrich, and Robert Femeli, Alfred Shrella repeatedly address the problem of the immutability of the choice of the sacrament: “... woe to people who have not taken the communion of the buffalo, you know that the sacraments have a terrible property, their effect is endless; people suffered from hunger, but the miracle did not happen - bread and fish did not multiply, the communion of the lamb could not satisfy hunger, but the communion of the buffalo gave people abundant food, they never learned to count: they paid a trillion for a candy ... and then they did not there were three pfennigs to buy themselves a bun, but they still believed that decorum and decency, honor and loyalty are above all, when people are stuffed with buffalo communion, they imagine themselves immortal. (141) Elisabeth Blaukremer says the same thing: “And after that I don't dare to cry out when I see this Bloodsucker sitting comfortably next to Kundt, Blaukremer and Halberkamm! I never screamed before, I endured everything, I drank a little, I read Stevenson, I went for walks, I helped cheer up voters to get more votes. But Plich is already too much. No! No!". (111) After the death of Dmitry, Elizabeth voluntarily takes the communion of the buffalo, for some time the role that she plays among the buffalo seems to her bearable, then the appearance of the Bloodsucker - Plicha forces her to change the role, but she does not manage to get out of the buffalo space (after all, it is closed ) and eventually dies.
The first and very important characteristic of game spaces is immutability, the second, associated with it, is isolation. It is impossible to pass from space to space, taking into account the first characteristic. This isolation is reminiscent of the properties of the field for playing billiards, according to the rules of the game, the balls should not cross the boundaries of the field, and the player can only direct them with a cue from the outside, also without crossing the field boundary.
Analyzing the space of pastors, you pay attention to the fact that their spatial and temporal characteristics are inseparable from each other. Thus, there are some space-time nodes or chronotopes, outside of which the poetics of the text is not revealed.
One of these knots is a special pastoral chronotope. The space of shepherds gets its name from the dialogue between Robert and Shrella; belonging to it is more difficult to determine, and in terms of its characteristics it really is between buffaloes and lambs. The actors of this space are quite closed, interact little with each other; their way of uniting into one space is akin to uniting the members of the English club: each on their own and, at the same time, they are members of the same club. The characteristics of the space of shepherds are as follows:
According to their inner essence, they unconditionally profess the laws of the space of the lambs; - due to the specifics of their existence (“feed my sheep”), they are forced outwardly to conform to the rules of the game of the buffalo space.
The specificity of this connection is manifested in the fact that some of the ideas professed by the lambs are not carried out so directly by the shepherds. In saving the "sheep" they herd from becoming buffaloes (or "rams" that will go anywhere for the buffalo that calls them, promises them something pleasant), they are far from meekness; in a world “where one movement of the hand can cost a man life” (138) there is no place for meekness and non-resistance to evil by violence, they protest against this evil, but this is not a sacrifice of the lambs, but a warning to the “sheep” and a well-calculated revenge on the buffaloes for the already dead lambs and "lost sheep".
The shepherds in both novels have a very special relationship with time and space. When studying the poetics of the title of the novel "Billiards ...", it became clear that through the game of billiards, the relationship to time and space of the players of all three game spaces in the novel is revealed.
The main shepherd of the novel, Robert Femel, has a special feeling of billiards. He is the only one who does not see something behind the color and lines of the billiards, but it is in them that he opens the world. He feels calm and open right here, in the billiard room, the main concepts that reveal the image of Robert in the novel are connected with this time and space: on green ... "(270). For Robert, the color and lines created by the red and white balls on the green cloth of the billiard table are the language he speaks to those he is open to: Hugo and Alfred. Interestingly, this is a language that can only be spoken one on one, and this language only refers to the past.
This ability to organize the surrounding world in their own way is typical for shepherds: “Feed my sheep!..” - in order to pasture sheep, you must be able to organize them. In the same way, he organizes a special, different time around him. The time layer of the novel is divided into two: eternity and momentary. The indication of the time of the game contained in the title: “at half past nine” seems to combine both parts of the opposition. On the one hand, this is the ultimate specificity (hours and minutes are indicated), on the other hand, absolute infinity, since it is always “at half past nine”.
The connection between the second part of the title of the novel - "at half past nine" - with the first is very important. All structure-forming motifs associated with billiards can exist only in one part of the temporal opposition (either in the eternal or in the momentary). None of the leitmotifs that create the structure of the novel will take place without reference to this or that time. In itself, the opposition lambs/shepherds-buffaloes is also present in two time layers: on the one hand, the confrontation between the heroes of the novel is defined by specific time frames, for each of the events mentioned by the heroes, you can choose a specific date (which is often already chosen by the author); on the other hand, the opposition of good and evil is eternal, it comes from the creation of the world.
The players of each of the spaces have access to one of these layers (sheep - eternity; buffaloes - momentary), only shepherds are able to cross the boundaries of the game spaces, replace one temporary layer around them with another. “Hugo loved Femel; every morning he came at half past nine and released him until eleven; thanks to Femel, he already knew the feeling of eternity; wasn’t it always like this, wasn’t it already a hundred years ago that he stood at the white shiny door, with his hands behind his back, watching a quiet game of billiards, listening to the words that either threw him back sixty years ago, then threw him twenty years ahead , then again thrown back ten years, and then suddenly thrown to the present day, indicated on the big calendar.
However, let's start our analysis with Billiards at half past ten. The Rhine is explicitly named only once, in the title of the song "Watch on the Rhine," but the river as such appears repeatedly in important scenes.
Johanna and Heinrich go to the river on their wedding night (87); a young man wants his beloved not to experience pain and fear. Indeed, the shore turns out to be the most natural, organic place for Johanna: the green river (187) - in the symbolism of the novel, this color is the sign of the indicated heroine. Repeatedly (59, 131) we are talking about a silvery crown, similar to the skeleton of a marine animal - an attribute of a folklore sea or river princess, a co-natural being. Silver/grey is Johanna's other color. In the novel, he is associated with the river distance, the horizon that beckons; Johanna feels the river as her native element, the distance does not frighten her: “Flood, flood, I was always drawn to throw myself into a flooded river and let myself be carried to the horizon.” Beyond the horizon - infinity, eternity.
The silver-green leaves above Johanna's head that very night are a sign of eternal youth. Many years later, Johanna asks Heinrich: "Take me back to the river bank" (151). The disenchanted princess wants to return to her kingdom; there is, however, another subtext - the desire to die in the homeland. Here, this extremely common motif is naturally translated into a metaphorical plan - we are talking about the spiritual homeland. There is also a special time dimension. Johanna does not want to see her grandchildren as adults, does not want to “swallow the years” (149), says to Heinrich: “My boat is sailing, don’t sink it” (151). The boats are made from calendar sheets; launching them is a way to get rid of time and at the same time to last, to stay clean. In this sense, Bell's Rhine approaches Lethe, with the only difference being that complete oblivion is undesirable and even impossible for the characters of the novel: it is rather a transition to a new dimension, to eternity.
Another motif resurrects similar layers of symbolism, although in a slightly different way (not without resemblance to "Women on the Rhine"). The ominous "Why why why" sounds in Johanna's ears "like the call of a river raging in the flood" (147 - 148). Here the river is a threatening element, it brings death with it - this is the despair that the ancestor did not want to penetrate, longing for the communion of the lamb. The Johanna River is calm, majestic and pure, it flows into eternity, and therefore cannot rage.
So far we have been talking about "the river in general"; The Rhine, let us recall, appears only once, in the title of the song “Guards on the Rhine”, which was once patriotic, but acquired a chauvinistic sound after the First World War [Belle 1996; 699 (commentary by G. Shevchenko)]. Generalization, the mythologeme is replaced by a specific reality, the usual symbol of the nation - and this side of the "river theme" will be explored a little lower.
So, the study showed that an essential feature of the two selected novels by Bell is the presence of a system of chronotopes: shepherds, a river, a national past. It is interesting, however, that, according to preliminary data, these chronotopes are included in the structure of a number of other novels by the writer. If further work confirms this hypothesis, then it will be possible to argue that a stable set of chronotopes is a genetic feature of Bell's poetics.
Literature and the "consumer society" (general characteristics, coverage of the creative path of J.D. Salinger / E. Burgess / D. Copeland - at the choice of the student).
AMERICAN LITERATURE AFTER THE WAR
In no way inferior to the pre-war. The war became a test of values. Our literature on war is tragic, positive, not meaningless, the death of a hero is not absurd. Americans portray the war as absurd, shifting the focus to senseless discipline and confusion.
A person who is at war with meaning is either a fognatist or a madman. The aims of war have nothing to do with human life. This literature is more individualistic.
The first years after the war are the darkest time for intellectuals: the Cold War, the Caribbean crisis, the Vietnam War. Commission (1953) to investigate un-American activities, many figures of cinema and literature were involved in a security check.
The country's economy grew, the country became vulgar and cynical. Intellectuals rebelled against pragmatism (D. Steinbeck, A. Miller, D. Gardner, N. Miller), against lack of spirituality and totalitarianism. They tried to play the role of spiritual leaders, non-conformists (Buddhism, new Christianity).
Jerome David Salinger was born on January 1, 1919 in New York City to a family of smoked meat merchants. Went to three colleges but didn't graduate from any. He completed a course of study at the Pennsylvania Military School. Jerome began to write already in military school, but decided to seriously engage in literature a little later. In 1940, his short story, Young Folks, was published in Story magazine.
In 1942, Salinger was drafted into the army. As part of the 12th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Division, he participated in World War II. It was not easy at the front, and in 1945 the future classic of American literature was hospitalized with a nervous breakdown. The bitter and tragic experience of the war years played a big role in shaping him as a writer.
In 1943, the Saturday Evening Post published his short story "The Varioni Brothers", for which he donated a fee to the fund of annual prizes for emerging writers.
In the late 40s and early 50s, Salinger creates his best stories, and in the summer of 1951 his only novel, The Catcher in the Rye, is published, which a few months later took first place in the list of American bestsellers. . In 1951, the collection Nine Stories was published. In the late 1950s, Salinger published four more novels, all in The New Yorker magazine - Franny (Franny, 1955), Raise High the Roof Beam (Carpenters, 1955), " Zooey (Zooey, 1957). In 1961, two stories appeared as a separate book called "Franny and Zooey" (Franny and Zooey), the other two came out together in 1963. The resounding success of the stories and the novel did not satisfy the author, who always shunned publicity. The writer leaves New York, settles in the provinces and becomes inaccessible to phone calls and ubiquitous journalists. Here he is working on the completion of a cycle of stories about the Glass family, the last of which, "Hapworth, 16. 1924" was published in 1965. Since then, readers know almost nothing about Salinger's work.
Jerome David Salinger is now 83 years old and lives in Cornish, New Hampshire. And still remains an author who enjoys gigantic popularity, and not only in the United States.
Jerome David Salinger. In 1951 he wrote "The Catcher in the Rye". Reflected the spirit of the time and the whole generation. Holden Caulfield is at the same time much more, he has become a symbolic, mythological figure. But this is also a concrete image: out of many specific details, his speech bears the imprint of the time, it gives the main charm to the book. The speech consists of the slang of American high school students. Genre -0 novel-education, but occupies a special position. Holden rejects adulthood (the abyss) without hesitation. In Holden's neurosis, his way of escaping reality, he is obsessed with the idea of \u200b\u200bclean life, he is visited by the thought of death.
The author is hidden in the book. The hero lives in a spiritual vacuum, there is not a single adult nearby who can be trusted. It seems that Selinger agrees with him. But in the story itself, his rightness and wrongness are affirmed at the same time; Holden should not be taken for granted. The book suggests a combination of condescension and humor.
Literally, it's a compromise.
The beat movement and American literature
Beatnik literature is one of the central events. On the one hand, the beats are associated with the protest movement, on the other hand, with the avant-garde. The literary program goes back to Rimbaud, the Surrealists, was the last serious attempt to realize the avant-garde.
This is Kerouac, Rinsberg and Burroughs talking about the beat generation (non-conformist youth of the 50s and 60s). Socially conditioned by hip culture (hipsters). Hipsters are not just social marginals, although they were lumpen, but they were voluntarily. Hipsters are white blacks (drunkards, drug addicts, prostitutes), they consciously oppose themselves to culture. This is a socio-cultural emigration to the bottom, a lumpen-intelligent bohemia. An act of negativism, a denial of society's values, wanted to feel enlightened.
The semantic center is Negro music, alcohol, drugs, homosexuality. The range of values includes Sartre's freedom, strength and intensity of emotional experiences, readiness for pleasure. Bright manifestation, counterculture. Security for them is a bore, and therefore a disease: to live fast and die young. But in reality, everything was vulgar and rude. The beatniks glorified hipsters, gave them social significance. The writers lived this life, but they were not outcasts. The beatniks were not literary exponents, they only created a cultural myth, an image of a romantic rebel, a holy madman, a new sign system. They managed to instill in society the style and tastes of the marginalized.
Initially, the Binics were hostile towards society. In this they are similar to Rimbaud and Whitman, surrealists, expressionists (Miller, G. Stein, etc.). All authors who created spontaneously can be called the forerunners of the beatniks. In music, there were jazz improvisations in parallel.
The beatniks counted. That in literature life should be depicted in a stream without plot and composition, the stream of words should flow freely, but in practice they were not so radical. On a quarter he flunked five. The situation is complicated by the fact that Pansy is not the first school that the young hero leaves. Before that, he had already abandoned Elkton Hill, because, in his opinion, "there was one continuous linden." However, the feeling that there is a "linden" around him - falsehood, pretense and window dressing - does not let Caulfield go throughout the whole novel. Both the adults and the peers with whom he meets irritate him, but he is also unbearable to remain alone.
The last day of school is rife with conflict. He returns to Pansy from New York, where he traveled as captain of the fencing team to a match that was not held due to his fault - he left his sports equipment in the subway car. Stradlater's roommate asks him to write an essay for him - to describe a house or a room, but Caulfield, who likes to do things his own way, tells the story of his late brother Allie's baseball glove, who wrote poetry on it and recited it during matches. Stradlater, after reading the text, is offended by the author who deviated from the topic, stating that he planted a pig on him, but Caulfield, upset that Stradlater went on a date with a girl that he himself liked, does not remain in debt. The case ends in a brawl and Caulfield's broken nose.
Once in New York, he realizes that he cannot come home and inform his parents that he has been expelled. He gets into a taxi and goes to the hotel. On the way, he asks his favorite question that haunts him: “Where do the ducks go in Central Park when the pond freezes over?” The taxi driver, of course, is surprised by the question and wonders if the passenger is laughing at him. But he does not think to mock, however, the question about ducks is rather a manifestation of Holden Caulfield's confusion in front of the complexity of the world around him, rather than an interest in zoology.
This world both oppresses him and attracts him. It is hard for him with people, without them it is unbearable. He tries to have fun in a nightclub at the hotel, but nothing good comes of it, and the waiter refuses to serve him alcohol as a minor. He goes to a nightclub in Greenwich Village, where his older brother D.B., a talented writer who was tempted by the big fees of a screenwriter in Hollywood, liked to visit. On the way, he asks another taxi driver a question about ducks, again without getting an intelligible answer. In a bar, he meets an acquaintance D. B. with some sailor. This girl arouses such dislike in him that he quickly leaves the bar and goes on foot to the hotel.
The hotel lifter asks if he wants a girl - five dollars for the time, fifteen for the night. Holden agrees "for a while", but when the girl appears in his room, he does not find the strength to part with his innocence. He wants to chat with her, but she came to work, and since the client is not ready to comply, she demands ten dollars from him. He recalls that the contract was about the five. She leaves and soon returns with an elevator operator. Another skirmish ends with another defeat of the hero.
