Historical novel in Russian and French literature of the XIX-XX centuries. Historical novel in Russia

Statistics show a paradox: in our virtual 21st century, historical novels are becoming more and more popular. The list of books of this genre read by a person testifies to the comprehensive education of the latter.

Interest in the past lives in everyone. Even the ancients noticed that people are conservative. They are not allowed to return to the past or get rid of it, but they are destined to feel a connection with it every day, to honor continuity and traditions.

The first author of historical novels is considered to be the Briton Walter Scott, who created the composition of the work, where against the backdrop of "cases of bygone days" fictional artistic characters acted.

Diverse historical romance

Thousands of books of this direction are available to the reader today on the Internet. If you search Wikipedia for "authors of historical novels", the answer will be a list containing about 600 names. Three lives are not enough for a lover of such literature to read their creations. It is important for a novice reader to help navigate the book sea, and, fortunately, experts in the “book trade” are able to recommend what they are interested in.

The reader may be disappointed by opportunistic, "one-day" historical novels. List of books recognized by connoisseurs artistic culture- that's what the adept needs. Otherwise, after reading a few untalented works of this genre, a person will put the books aside and take up another matter.

The reader can be sure that mankind has already read and systematized the books that he picks up. The path of spiritual growth of the adept does not seem like a labyrinth, at the end of which the exhausted traveler will be devoured by the Minotaur of disappointment.

Classifying Romance

Initially, we will focus on the selection of only famous, illustrious works, in order to then include them in the lists. We also take into account the availability of these books, that is, we are interested in publishing in large editions. Thus, the sample will include solid classic historical novels.

The list of books is compiled according to the specific interests of connoisseurs of literature. After all, the readership differs by gender, age, interests, and education. You can choose works for each of its categories of representatives. First, let's invite bookworms to decide which novels about the past will interest them:

• classic Russian;
• classic foreign;
• philosophical;
• love;
• documentaries;
• easy reading.

In the future, we will present novels in detail in each of these areas.

Classic Russian

An educated person is ashamed not to know history home country. Such a lively interest generates love for the Motherland. Therefore, the historiographer Karamzin Nikolai Mikhailovich unambiguously hinted to his descendants: "The history of the Russian state is no less interesting than the history of the rest of the world."

The reader is able to get acquainted with the past of the country of Lomonosov and Pushkin thanks to fiction. Russian and Soviet writers wrote cult historical novels for him. The list of books by these authors testifies to the richness of the country's culture:

• The White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov.
• "The Living and the Dead" by Konstantin Simonov.
• "Pit" by Andrey Platonov.
• "Moscow and Muscovites" by Vladimir Gilyarovsky.
• "Peter I" by A. Tolstoy.
• The Tragedy of Tsushima by Vladimir Semenov.
• "Quiet Don" by M. Sholokhov.
• "Gloomy River" by Vyacheslav Shishkov.
• "Favorite", "Bayazet", "Moozund" by Valentin Pikul.
• Genghis Khan by Vladimir Yan.

The mentioned Russian historical novels are also known abroad. The list of books includes various works composition and content. Among them - an inspiring work that tells about the first emperor and a dramatic one about the Cossack share; poignant revelation about lost generation and the story of a terrible war.

Classic foreign

Let's pay attention to the rating of books of the oldest British information company containing historical novels. The list of books (whether they are foreign or domestic works is not so important) will be correct if it is substantiated by the BBC. Compatriots of Walter Scott know a lot about literature.

The Russians are familiar with the titles of the works foreign classics by film performances. Classic literature is a universal value. This is the only monument socialite in the Vatican, dedicated to Heinrich Sienkiewicz, the author of the novel about the Apostle of Rome.

• "Ivanhoe", "Quentin Dorward" by Walter Scott.
• The Young Years of Henry IV by Heinrich Mann.
• "Kamo Gryadeshi" by Henryk Sienkiewicz.
• "Red and Black" by Stendhal.
• "Mary Stuart" by Stefan Zweig.
• "Les Misérables", "Notre Dame Cathedral" by Victor Hugo.
• Cursed Kings by Maurice Druon.
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Marquez.
• "Gone with the Wind" M. Mitchell.

Note that most of these books were written by Old World writers.

love

Works of this kind are more suitable for our lovely ladies.

After all, women are often interested in sensual historical novels. The list of books about love is based on the works of recognized world classics, which, in addition to knowledge, also educates a person aesthetically:

• The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje.
• The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Fitzgerald.
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.
• "Wuthering Heights" by Bronte Emily.
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.
• "Doctor Zhivago" B. Pasternak.
• "Consuelo" George Sand.
• "Lady Rose" by Sandra Worth.
• Lady Chatterley's Lover by David Lawrence.
• "Rebecca" by Daphne Du Maurier.
• Teresa Raken by Stefan Zweig.
• "Arc de Triomphe", "Life on loan" by E. M. Remarque.

For the reader, these historical romance novels have long become favorites. The list of books contains works that cannot be read indifferently. The authors managed to find the strings of the soul of the readers and touch them

philosophical

Novels about the past philosophical idea is a special topic. To paraphrase the phrase " godfather”, this dish is to the taste of readers-“gourmets”. We will mean by this epithet lovers of literature, capable of re-reading the plot several times in order to find each time hidden meaning, nuance.

"Gourmets" get satisfaction by comprehending the "second, third and even fourth bottom" of the work. Such intellectual things, in their opinion, are the best historical novels. The list of these books contains works respected by the reader community:

• 1984 by George Orwell.
• "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy.
• The Sovereign by Niccolo Machiaveli.
• "The Name of the Rose", "Baudolino" "Foucault Pendulum" Umberto Eco.
• "Kamo coming" Henryk Sienkiewicz.
• "Cancer Ward" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
• "Rehearsals" by Vladimir Sharov.
• "Schindler's List" by Thomas Kienilli.
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Fans of these works believe (and not without reason) that these are the best historical novels.

The books "Schindler's List", "The Name of the Rose" became the basis for the creation of famous films. The novel "War and Peace" is recognized as the standard of historical classics. The work "1984" served as a kind of insight for humanity, an impetus to understanding the hidden essence of dictatorship. A universally recognized simulator for the intellect is the difficult plots of Professor Umberto Eco for book lovers.

Easy reading

Let's make a reservation: we are not going to belittle by calling the books presented in this list "easy".

The list received such a name from subjective considerations, since his works are pleasant and easy to perceive, like Mozart's music is for hearing. The plot in them is exciting, there is a struggle between good and evil. For many people, these compositions have become favorites:

• "Agnia daughter of Agnia" Vasily Livanov.
• "Azazel", "State Counselor" by Boris Akunin.
• The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas.
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.
• The Odyssey of Captain Blood by Raffaello Sabatini.
• The Last of the Mohicans, Pathfinder by Fenimore Cooper.
• The Adventures of Schweik by Yaroslav Hasek.
• "Spartacus" Raffaello Giovagnoli.
• Thais of Athens by Ivan Efremov.
• "Black Arrow" by Robert Stevenson.
• “I have the honor”, ​​“Pen and sword” by Valentin Savvich Pikul.

The action of these novels can captivate any category of readers. This is evidenced by the all-Union success of the film "The Three Musketeers", where d'Artagnan was played by the young and charismatic Mikhail Boyarsky.

Documentaries

Documentary novels about the past are preferred by serious ones, harsh men. Works of this kind claim to be a thorough disclosure of the topic, often impartial and not advertised.

Their heroes are people who have passed terrible trials, heroically preserving "in the first circle of hell" (earthly) human dignity. This literature found a reader relatively recently, in the era of glasnost:

• "The Gulag Archipelago", "In the First Circle" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
• "Aquarium", "Icebreaker", "The Last Republic" by Viktor Suvorov.
• "White Clothes" by Vladimir Dudintsev.
• Vishera by Varlam Shalamov.
• "Memories of the War" by Nikolai Nikulin.
• "Children of the Arbat" by Anatoly Rybakov.
• "Men and Women", "Outcast" by Boris Mozhaev.
• "Deadly fire awaits us!" Vladimir Pershanin.
• Cursed and Killed by Victor Astafiev.
• "Faculty of unnecessary things" Yuri Dombrovsky.

It is not easy psychologically to read these works that tell about flagrant injustice. However, these novels also carry a positive charge, because they instill in people a sense of humanity, justice, immunity to violence, intolerance to tyranny.

Conclusion

Fascinating and exciting historical novels. The list of books of this genre is selected by each reader according to their interests. The variants of such lists presented in the article are not a dogma.

The reader can, guided by taste, add or remove works from it. The list of such novels is a compass in the sea of ​​books, the route in which the book lover makes his own.

Historical theme in Russian literature

1. The influence of the Patriotic War of 1812 on the development of the historical theme in Russian literature

The Patriotic War of 1812 caused a national upsurge in 1812 among the masses of the people and in the circles of the progressive noble intelligentsia. The war left a deep and vivid mark on the development of Russian literature. Patriotic moods and themes of the war of 1812 were directly reflected in a number of Krylov's fables, which ridicule Napoleon, who found himself in a hopeless situation ("The Wolf in the Kennel"), and the fate of the French who were starving in Moscow ("The Crow and the Hen"). The fable "Oboz" approves of Kutuzov's clever slowness in the fight against Napoleon. The mediocrity of Admiral Chichagov, who failed to cut off Napoleon's retreat across the Berezina River, is ridiculed in the fable "The Pike and the Cat".

Impressed by the Battle of Borodino, Zhukovsky creates the famous ode "A Singer in the Camp of Russian Warriors", in which he glorifies the remarkable Russian commanders of 1812. A participant in the war with Napoleon, Batyushkov, in a poetic message to "Dashkov" (1813), declares that he does not want to sing "love and joy ... carelessness, happiness and peace" until victory over the enemy. folk character the war of 1812 is depicted in the prose works of participants in the war, in Denis Davydov's Diary of Partisan Actions of 1812, and Fyodor Glinka's Letters of a Russian Officer. At the same time, reactionary journalism and poetry responded to the war in the spirit of leavened ultra-patriotism and pseudo-nationality. Such were the manifestos written by Shishkov, the solemn odes “to overcome the enemy” by Golenishchev-Kutuzov, etc.

Valor of the Russian people Patriotic war Griboyedov inspires the idea of ​​the folk tragedy "1812". The Patriotic War of 1812 left a deep mark on the work of Pushkin, who considered it "the greatest event in recent history", and saw the "high lot" of the Russian people in the victory over Napoleon and in the liberation of Western Europe from the Napoleonic yoke by the Russian troops. Later, Herzen, the successor of the Decembrists, said: "The stories about the fire of Moscow, about the Battle of Borodino, about the capture of Paris were my lullaby, children's tales, my Iliad and Odyssey."

The significance of the Patriotic War of 1812 for the development of literature is not limited, however, to the appearance of a number of works on the themes of the war.

“The twelfth year, which shook all of Russia, from end to end, awakened its dormant forces and discovered in it new, hitherto unknown sources of strength ... aroused the people's consciousness and people's pride, and all this contributed to the emergence of publicity as the beginning of public opinion,” Belinsky pointed out. After the Patriotic War of 1812, “the whole of Russia entered a new phase,” Herzen notes. Russian literature is also entering a new phase.

2. The historical theme in Pushkin's work

Pushkin reflects on the "eternal contradictions of essentiality" that characterize the development of life, on the complex and contradictory inner world of a person in its conditionality of the social environment. Having mastered the idea of ​​regularity, Pushkin does not become a fatalist in understanding historical process. Both the recent Russian past (Peter 1) and the contemporary life of the poet in Europe, in the fate of which Napoleon played such a big role, convinced Pushkin of the importance of outstanding personalities in the course of history. At the same time, in understanding the very content of the historical process, its driving forces, Pushkin remains on the positions of historical idealism, characteristic of enlightenment. main role in the development of society, the poet assigns enlightenment, political ideas, legislation, social mores, education.

The artistic reflection of the national past of the people in its concrete historical development is recognized by Pushkin as an important task of Russian literature. “The history of the people belongs to the poet,” he wrote in February 1825 to N. I. Gnedich. In the winter of 1824/25, Pushkin's intensive work on the Russian historical theme was going on. He studies Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State”, Russian chronicles, asks his brother to send him materials about the life of Pugachev, is interested in the personality of another leader of peasant uprisings in Russia, Stepan Razin, about whom in 1826 he writes several songs in the spirit of folk poetry. With a great creative upsurge, the tragedy "Boris Godunov" is being created.

In the tragedy "Boris Godunov" the poet set himself the task of showing "the fate of the people, the fate of man." "Boris Godunov" is remarkable for its deep realism, poetic penetration into the nature of Russian history, historical fidelity and the wide scope of the pictures of Russian life drawn in it at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries. The depiction in the tragedy of this era, Belinsky points out, "is so deeply imbued with the Russian spirit, so deeply true to historical truth, as only the genius of Pushkin, a truly national Russian poet, could do."

In Boris Godunov, Pushkin, in his words, sought to "resurrect the past century in all its truth." The tragedy shows all segments of the population: the people, the boyars, the clergy, revealed political struggle within the boyars. The poet managed to recreate the features of the Russian culture of pre-Petrine Russia, as well as in a number of scenes the culture of feudal gentry Poland.

The problem of the relationship between the people and the royal power is posed with great acuteness in the tragedy. Pushkin showed the hostility of the people to the boyars, his antipathy to the king, who came to power as a result of a crime and was rejected by the people for this. The tragedy is permeated with the denial of the despotism of the autocracy. No wonder Pushkin himself wrote about the political nature of his tragedy to Vyazemsky: “I couldn’t hide all my ears under the cap of the holy fool - they stick out!”, And it is the holy fool who exposes Tsar Boris in the tragedy.

The scene of the election of the king is full of irony. One Moscow resident advises another to rub onions on his eyes to make it look like weeping. With this comic advice, Pushkin emphasized the indifference of the broad masses of the people to the election of Boris as tsar. The poet shows the people as "the element of rebellion." one of the heroes of the tragedy. Another speaks of "the opinion of the people" as a decisive political force.

Pushkin shows great importance in the major historical events of popular opinion, the role of the masses. He embodies in tragedy the idea of ​​the continuity and infinity of the historical life of the people, despite all the storms and ups and downs of the political struggle, in which the people themselves may not take a direct part. There, in the "top", there is a struggle and a change of earthly rulers, boyar groups, etc., "below" the life of the people flows as before, but it is this that forms the basis of the life and development of the nation, the state; the people have the last word.

Enlighteners of the 18th century believed that it was enough for the monarch to adjust his policy to the requirements of an enlightened mind and humanity, as happiness and contentment would reign in the life of the people. Pushkin shows the failure of educational subjectivism in understanding history.

In "Boris Godunov" the people win, but they again find themselves defeated: a new tyrant and usurper appears. It is impossible not to see in such an interpretation of major historical events a reflection of the course of history in the era of Pushkin himself. The people overthrew the old order in France and won freedom, but a new usurper, a new despot, appeared, and "the newborn freedom, suddenly numb, lost its strength." Pushkin resolves this conflict between freedom and necessity, "the secret will of Providence" in the poem "Andrey Chenier" written after Boris Godunov. Boris Godunov reflected a new, immeasurably higher historical thinking than that which was the basis of the historical genre in the works of Karamzin and the Decembrists.

The deepest interest of Pushkin was caused by the image of the ancient Russian chronicler, bred in tragedy. “The character of Pimen is not my invention,” the poet wrote. “I collected in him the features that captivated me in our old chronicles: touching meekness, innocence, something infantile and at the same time wise ... It seemed to me that this character was all together new and sign for the Russian heart. Belinsky admired the image of Pimen. “Here is the Russian spirit, here it smells of Russia,” wrote the great critic. In his tragedy, Pushkin, as Zhukovsky rightly remarked, showed "a lot of depth and knowledge of the human heart." Contrary to the classical tradition, Boris Godunov mixes the tragic with the comic.

In The Captain's Daughter, Pushkin deepens realistic method artistic depiction of the historical past of the people. The life of the people is shown by Pushkin in its national-historical originality, in its social class contradictions. Drawing the activities of prominent historical figures, Pushkin shows in this activity a reflection of the “spirit of the times”. It is remarkable that in the last years of Pushkin's work, his realism acquires a sociological sharpness. In "Dubrovsky", "The Captain's Daughter", in "Scenes from Knightly Times" the poet begins to depict the class struggle, the contradictions and clashes between the peasantry and the nobility. " Captain's daughter”after the “Arap of Peter the Great” marked the beginning of the Russian historical novel.

It is undeniable that experience historical novel Walter Scott made it easier for Pushkin to create a realistic historical novel on a Russian theme. However, Pushkin went far ahead of the Scottish novelist in the depth of his realism. In The Captain's Daughter, Pushkin reveals social contradictions more deeply than Walter Scott does in his novels. The peculiarity of Russian history, the breadth and greatness of the national life of the Russian people, so clearly expressed, for example, in the era of Peter 1, the scope and tragic nature of spontaneous peasant movements in Russia, such heroic events in Russian history as the struggle of our people with almost all of armed Europe, led by Napoleon, in 1812, finally, the sharpness of class contradictions in the feudal Russia of Pushkin's time - all this was a source that nourished more high level Pushkin's historical novel compared to the Walter Scott novel, although some important artistic principles of Walter Scott were adopted by Pushkin as preeminent in the development of realism in the realm of the historical genre.

The originality of Russian historical reality found a special reflection in the composition of Pushkin's historical novel, in the nature of his use of historical material. The fiction of The Captain's Daughter is especially realistic. The whole story of Grinev's adventure is strictly and truthfully motivated by the circumstances of Grinev's first meeting with Pugachev during a storm. Romance history without violence was included in the frame of the most extensive historical events.

The poetic synthesis of history and fiction in the novel is reflected in its very plot about the fate of a noble family in a setting peasant uprising. Pushkin followed here not the plots of Walter Scott's novels, as some researchers claimed, but was based on Russian reality itself. The dramatic fate of many noble families is very typical in the period of the anti-feudal, peasant movement. The plot of the story itself reflected the essential side of this movement.

The content of Pushkin's historical novel is always based on a truly historical conflict, such contradictions and clashes that are really significant and historically defining for a given era. And in Peter the Great's Moor, and in Roslavlev, and in The Captain's Daughter, Pushkin illuminates the essential aspects of the historical life of the nation, depicting such moments of it that brought great political, cultural and psychological changes to the life of the masses. This primarily determines the epic character, clarity and depth of the content of Pushkin's historical novel, and at the same time its enormous cognitive value. The nationality of Pushkin's historical novel lies not only in the fact that Pushkin makes the masses of the people the hero of his novel. Only in The Captain's Daughter does the people act directly as an active participant in the events depicted. However, in both "Peter the Great's Moor" and "Roslavlev" behind the events and fate of the characters of the novels, one feels the life of the people, the historical fate of the nation, the image of Russia arises: under Peter 1 - "a huge artisan", a powerful patriotic force - in "Roslavlev". How authentic folk writer, Pushkin depicts the life of not one social group, but the life of the entire nation, the contradictions and struggle of its top and bottom. Moreover, Pushkin sees the end result of the historical process in the changes in the destinies of the people.

The depiction of a historical figure as a representative of certain social circles is Pushkin's mighty strength as a realist artist. In Pushkin's historical novel, we always see the conditions that prepared the appearance and activity of an outstanding historical figure, and the social crisis that this person expresses. In The Captain's Daughter, Pushkin first reveals the causes and circumstances that gave rise to Pugachev's movement, and only then does Pugachev himself appear in the novel as historical hero. Pushkin traces the genesis of the historical hero, shows how the contradictions of the era give rise to great people, and never deduces, as the romantics did, the character of the era from the character of its hero, an outstanding personality.

3. Historical novel in Russian literature

The emergence of the historical novel dates back to the 1930s, the successes of which reflected the development of the national-historical self-awareness of Russian society, the rise of its interest in the domestic past.

The first such novel about “one’s own” was Yuri Miloslavsky, or the Russians in 1612 by Zagoskin, which appeared in 1829. His success was unheard of in the annals of Russian literature. In the next few years, many historical novels appeared, of which Roslavlev, or the Russians in 1812 (1830) by Zagoskin, Dimitry the Pretender (1829) Bulgarin, and The Oath at the Holy Sepulcher (1832) played a certain role in the development of the genre. Field, "The Last Novik, or the conquest of Livonia under Peter 1", published in parts in 1831-1833, "Ice House" (1835) and "Basurman" (1838) I. I. Lazhechnikova. In 1835, Gogol's story "Taras Bulba" was published. In 1836, Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter appeared. Russian historical novel was created.

The success and rapid development of the historical novel caused a lively controversy around its problems in magazines and literary circles in the first half of the 1930s. “At that time, they talked a lot about local color, about historicity, about the need to recreate history in poetry, in the novel,” testifies Adam Mickiewicz, an attentive observer of the development of Russian literature of that time. The controversy surrounding the problems of the historical novel was important point in that struggle for realism in Russian literature, which Pushkin began in the mid-1920s and then continued by Belinsky.

For Belinsky, the development of the historical novel in Russian literature was not the result of the influence of Walter Scott, as Shevyrev and Senkovsky claimed, but a manifestation of the "spirit of the times", "a universal and, one might say, worldwide trend." Attention to the historical past, reflecting the growth of the national self-consciousness of peoples, at the same time testified to the ever deeper penetration of reality and its interests into art and social thought. Belinsky points out that all further activity of advanced thought will and must be based on history, grow out of historical soil. According to Belinsky, the significance of Walter Scott was that he "finished the union of art with life, taking history as an intermediary." “Art itself has now become predominantly historical, the historical novel and historical drama are of interest to everyone and everyone more than works of the same kind, belonging to the sphere of pure fiction, ”the critic noted. With regard to history, reality he saw the movement of Russian literature towards realism.

Among the authors of historical novels of the 1930s, prominent and. and. Lazhechnikov is replaced by Ivan Ivanovich Lazhechnikov, who, according to Belinsky, gained wide popularity and "loud authority" among his contemporaries. The son of a rich, enlightened merchant who had been in contact with N. I. Novikov, he received a good education at home. Captured by a broad upsurge of patriotism in 1812, he ran away from home, participated in the Patriotic War, and visited Paris. Subsequently, in his Travel Notes of a Russian Officer, published in 1820, Lazhechnikov sympathetically noted the progressive phenomena of European culture and protested, although restrainedly, against serfdom. In the future, he served for a number of years as director of schools; by the 60s, his moderate liberalism had dried up, his talent as a novelist had also weakened, only his published memoirs of life meetings (with Belinsky and others) are of undoubted interest.

Each of Lazhechnikov's novels was the result of the author's careful work on the sources known to him, a careful study of documents, memoirs and the area where the events described took place. These features are already distinguished by Lazhechnikov's first novel, The Last Novik. Lazhechnikov chose Livonia as the main place of action, which he knew well and, perhaps, attracted his imagination with the ruins of ancient castles.

The plot of "Last Novik" is romantic. The author resorted to an unsuccessful fiction, making the hero of the novel the son of Princess Sophia and Prince Vasily Golitsyn. AT early years he almost became the murderer of Tsarevich Peter. After the overthrow of Sophia and the removal of Golitsyn from power, he had to flee abroad to escape execution. There he matured and took a fresh look at the situation in Russia. He sympathetically followed the activities of Peter, but considered it impossible to return to his homeland. When a war arose between Russia and Sweden, Novik secretly began to help the Russian army, which invaded Livonia. Having entered into the confidence of the head of the Swedish troops Schlippenbach, he reported on his forces and plans to the commander of the Russian army in Livonia Sheremetyev, contributing to the victory of the Russian troops over the Swedes. Thus a dramatic situation arose in a romantic spirit. The last Novik is both a hero and a criminal: he is Peter's secret friend and knows that Peter is hostile towards him. The conflict is resolved by the fact that the last Novik returns to his homeland secretly, receives forgiveness, but no longer feeling the strength in himself to participate in Peter's transformations, he goes to the monastery, where he dies.

The novel exposes the hypocritical, disguised as patriarchalism, soulless feudal attitude of the Livonian barons towards the peasants and their needs. At the same time, the author could well expect that the reader would be able to apply the images of the Livland landlords-serfs to Russian reality. Their black world is opposed in the novel by noble people: zealots of education and true patriots I. R. Patkul, doctor Blumen-trost, pastor Gluck and his pupil - the future Catherine 1, noblemen - officers, the Traufert brothers, scientific librarian, lover of natural science Big and others. Most of them are historical figures. These characters are the bearers of historical progress in the novel. All of them admire the personality of Peter 1, sympathize with his activities, wish Livonia to come closer to Russia.

In light colors, Lazhechnikov draws the image of Peter himself, combining the simplicity and grandeur that are given in two scenes of Pushkin's "Arap Peter the Great". But if Pushkin clearly imagined controversial character activity of Peter, then in Lazhechnikov's novel the Petrine era, Peter himself and his associates are extremely idealized. Lazhechnikov does not show any social contradictions and political struggle, passes by the barbaric methods of government used by Peter. The appearance of Peter is given in the spirit of the romantic theory of genius.

Lazhechnikov's most significant novel is The Ice House (1835). Creating it, the novelist read into the memoirs of the figures of the time of Anna Ioannovna - Manstein, Munnich and others, published in early XIX century. This allowed him to recreate with sufficient accuracy the atmosphere of court life during the time of Anna Ioannovna and the images of some historical figures, although in sketching them he considered it possible, according to his views, to change something compared to reality. This applies primarily to the hero of the novel Cabinet Minister Art. Volynsky, slandered by the favorite of the Empress, the German Biron, and betrayed by a terrible execution. The writer largely subjected his image to idealization. Historical role Volynsky, who fought against the temporary foreigner, was undoubtedly progressive. But in the historical Volyn positive features combined with negative ones. Peter I beat him more than once for covetousness. Like other nobles of his time, Volynsky was not alien to servility, vanity, and careerism. All these features of his personality are eliminated by the writer. Volynsky in the novel is full of concern for the welfare of the state and the people, exhausted by heavy requisitions; in the fight with Biron, he enters only in the name of the good of the fatherland.

Volynsky's rival, the impudent temporary worker and oppressor of the people Biron, is sketched by the writer much closer to historical appearance favorite of the empress. With all the caution of Lazhechnikov, the painted image of Anna Ioannovna herself testified to her narrow-mindedness, lack of will, and her lack of any spiritual interests. The construction of an ice house, in which the wedding of a jester couple was celebrated, is shown by the writer as an expensive and cruel entertainment.

The plot presented Lazhechnikov with the opportunity to deeply reveal the plight of the people. For the holiday, conceived by Volynsky for the amusement of the empress, young couples were brought from all over the country, creating an image multinational Russia. In the fear and humiliation experienced by the participants in the performance in the ice house, in the fate of the Ukrainian tortured by Biron's slander, the theme of the suffering of the Russian people under the yoke of Biron's revolt sounds. Conveying the dreams of the joker Mrs. Kulkovskaya about how she, “the future pillar noblewoman”, will “buy peasants in her name and beat them out of her own hands”, and, if necessary, resort to the help of an executioner, Lazhechnikov slightly opens the veil over serf morals, expressing his indignant attitude towards serfdom, his position as a humanist writer.

The image of Trediakovsky turned out to be historically incorrect, which was noted by Pushkin in a letter to Lazhechnikov. Trediakovsky Lazhechnikova is more like his caricature in Sumarokov's comedy Tressotinius, caused by fierce literary disputes in the middle of the 18th century, than like a historical reformer of Russian verse and a man of tragic life, who was mocked by nobles.

In the plot of the novel, political and love intrigues are intertwined all the time, Volynsky's romantic love for the beautiful Moldavian Marioritsa. This line of plot development sometimes interferes with the first, weakening the historicism of the Ice House. But it does not go beyond the life and customs of the capital noble society that time. Not always skillfully intertwining two main motives plot development novel, Lazhechnikov, unlike most historical writers of his time, does not subordinate history to fiction: the main situations and the ending of the novel are determined by the political struggle between Volynsky and Biron.

Reproducing in the novel "local color", some curious features of the customs and life of that time, the writer truthfully showed how state affairs were intertwined during the time of Anna Ioannovna with the palace and household life of the queen and her entourage. The scene of fear of the people at the appearance of the “language”, when pronouncing the terrible “word and deed”, which entailed torture in the Secret Chancellery, is historically accurate. Christmas fun of girls, faith in sorcerers and fortune-tellers, images of a gypsy, palace jesters and crackers, an idea with an ice house and court entertainments of a bored Anna, which the Cabinet Minister himself had to deal with - all these are picturesque and true features of the mores of that time. In historical and everyday paintings and episodes, in the depiction of the horrors of Bironovism, the realistic stream continues its course in the writer's work.

Bibliography

1. A. I. Herzen, On the Development of Revolutionary Ideas in Russia.

2. A. I. Herzen, The Past and Thoughts, Part 1.

3. V. G. Belinsky, On the Russian story and the stories of Gogol. N.

4. N.G. Chernyshevsky, Essays on the Gogol period of Russian literature.

5. A.I. Polezhaev, complete collection poems. Introductory article

6. N. F. Belchikova, ed. " Soviet writer”, 1934 (“Poet's Library”. Large series).

7. V. G. Belinsky, Polezhaev's Poems. N “A. Dobrolyubov, Poems by A. Polezhaev.

8. I. Voronin, A. I. Polezhaev. Life and creativity, Goslitizdat, M., 1954.

9. V. G. Benediktov, Poems. Introductory article by L. Ya. Ginzburg, ed.

10. "Soviet writer", L., 1939 ("Library of the poet". Large series).

11. V. G. Belinsky, Works of V. F. Odoevsky.

12. M. N. Zagoskin, Yuri Miloslavsky, or Russians in 1612. Introductory article by B. Neumann, Goslitizdat, Moscow, 1986.

13. M. N. Zagoskin, Roslavlev, or Russians in 1812. Introductory article

14. I.I. Lazhechnikov, Complete Works in 12 volumes, ed. "Wolf", St. Petersburg, 1899-1900.

15. I. I. Lazhechnikov, Ice House. Introductory article by M. V. Nechkina, Goslitizdat, M., 1988.

16. V. G. Belinsky, Two novels by Lazhechnikov. M. 1995.

17. Tavrina Ksenia Vladimirovna. historical theme in Russian literature.

Historical novel as a genre

HISTORICAL NOVEL- a novel, the action of which takes place against the backdrop of historical events. The beginnings of a historical novel can be seen already in the Alexandrian era, not only in the historical names that he endows his heroes, in the style of his novel Hairei and Collyroy imitating Thucydides, Chariton of Aphrodisias, but, in particular, in the novels about Alexander the Great and the Trojan campaign, written in the first centuries of our era and received in the Middle Ages in numerous versions and alterations, huge distribution throughout Europe. However, the touch of alleged historicism that meets us here is almost only a convenient device for making readers treat with the greatest confidence that irresistible fantasy that overwhelmed all these works.

Historical novel- a symbol for novels that are heterogeneous in structure and composition, in which historical events of a more or less distant time are narrated, and historical figures can act as actors (main or secondary).

In European culture, the generally accepted founder and first classic of the genre was Walter Scott, although he had predecessors (for example, Maria Edgeworth). The genre flourished in the era of romanticism and remained popular in subsequent periods. The most famous writers of this genre also include Victor Hugo, Fenimore Cooper, Alessandro Manzoni, Heinrich Kleist, Alexander Dumas père, in Russian literature - Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Zagoskin, Ivan Lazhechnikov, in Soviet literature - Yuri Tynyanov, Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy, Sergei Sergeev -Tsensky, Vasily Yan, Valentin Pikul, Dmitry Balashov, Bulat Okudzhava, Yuri Davydov and others.

What is a historical novel The historical novel sets itself the task of depicting people in the conditions of a specific historical time. The task of a historical novel is not to retell major historical events, but to recreate by artistic means the image of those people who participated in these events. The classic historical novel arose at the beginning of the 19th century, almost simultaneously with the overthrow of Napoleon. And until the XIX century. there have been attempts to turn to the past, but only with the advent of Walter Scott in literature is a truly historical novel created. The historical novel before Walter Scott lacks historical thinking, that is, the fact that the features of the character of people stem from the historical uniqueness of their time. Great historical art consists in the revival of the past as a prehistory of the present, in the artistic revival of those social and human forces that, during a long development, have shaped our life as it is. A real artist makes this whole process so tangible, so clearly visible, that we, as it were, participate in it and experience it ourselves. Why did the historical novel appear at the beginning of the 19th century? As a result of the French Revolution of 1789, the revolutionary wars, the rise and fall of Napoleon, interest in history awakened among the masses. At this time, the masses received an unprecedented historical experience. During two or three decades (1789-1814), each of the peoples of Europe experienced more upheavals and upheavals than in previous centuries. There is a growing conviction that history really exists, that it is a process of continuous change, and, finally, that history intrudes directly into the personal life of each person, determines this life. What had previously been experienced only by a few people, mostly people with adventurous inclinations - to travel around and get to know the whole of Europe, or at least a significant part of it - has now, during the years of the Napoleonic wars, become accessible and even necessary for hundreds of thousands and millions. people from various segments of the population of almost all European countries. Thus, a concrete opportunity arises for the masses to understand that their entire existence is historically conditioned, to see in history something that invades everyday life - and, therefore, something that every person cares about. On such a social basis, the historical novel created by Walter Scott arose.

Typology of the historical novel

The Soviet writer V. S. Pikul, for example, created novels-historical chronicles: "Word and Deed" (1974), "Battle of the Iron Chancellors" (1977), "Favorite" (1982) and many others. He collected a huge amount of documents, memoirs, statements of historical figures or simple contemporaries of events and arranged all the information in the order that he considered best for expressing his ideas.

In this type of novel, everything is historical truth and there is practically no author's fiction, but there is not enough psychological depth and artistic persuasiveness. Once Yu. N. Tynyanov, the author of the remarkable historical novels "Kukhlya" (1925), "The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar" (1928), said: "Where the document ends, I begin." To paraphrase Tynyanov, Pikul could say about himself: "I finish writing where the document ends." The second type of historical novel is a work where the characters are dressed up in costumes of a certain era, where next to fictional characters historical figures coexist, and the main characters are fictional, and real characters belong to the event background.

A striking example of this type of novel is the "Three Musketeers" by Alexandre Dumas - a work with an exciting, masterfully "twisted" intrigue. Its alignment is the main objective the author, and the desire to understand and convey the content of the depicted era becomes a secondary task. In fairness, it should be noted that French literary scholars found the real prototype of d'Artagnan, but this man remained in the history of France only thanks to his modest memoirs. the historical truth of Alexandre Dumas and The Three Musketeers! And he did the right thing, that he did not observe. "The works of M.N.

Zagoskin "Yuri Miloslavsky, or Russians in 1612" (1829), "Roslavlev, or Russians in 1812" (1830). Historical novels of the two named types become interesting for readers if they are written by talented authors, such as Pikul or Dumas. However, there is a third type of historical novel - not a historical chronicle, not a "costume" adventure, but a work that has a real historical background, an entertaining plot and a serious, one might say philosophical, understanding of the depicted era. The authors of novels of the third type are interested not only in conformity with the documentary source (as in novels of the first type), not only in historical exoticism, in the outward coloring of place and time (as in novels of the second type); they are attracted by the connection of the past and the present, the knowledge of modern public and private life through the comprehension of the past. Such historical works include the novel by A.

S. Pushkin "The Captain's Daughter", the epic novel by L. N. Tolstoy "War and Peace", the novel by A. N. Tolstoy "Peter the Great". The novels of the third type are characterized by the desire to show history through artistic images, and not through historical facts and costumes, which are easy to find in historical documents and ancient portraits, respectively.

Historical novel- a relatively young genre that arose in literature due to the establishment of the principles of historicism in it. The reason for this was the socio-political cataclysms at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries - the Great French revolution 1789-1794, national liberation wars of this period. Historicism in art artistically masters the concrete historical content era, its unique appearance and color, describes the trends of social development, revealed in the events of a nationwide scale and personal destinies of the characters. English writer Walter Scott is the founder of the European historical novel.

For the first time, he turned to a historical document for the artistic recreation of a bygone era. The writer managed to convey the specifics of social relations, ideology, psychology and everyday life of the heroes of the past.

"The main charm of the novels of Walter Scott is that we get acquainted with the past tense ... in a modern, domestic way," wrote A.S.

Pushkin in the note "On the novels of Walter Scott". "Walter Scott, one might say, created a historical novel that did not exist before him," - this is how V. G. Belinsky defined the meaning of the new genre of the historical novel in the article "Division of poetry into genera and types" (1841). Russian historical romance begins with the novels of M.

Zagoskin ("Yuri Miloslavsky, or Russians in 1612", 1829) and I. Lazhechnikov ("Last Novik", 1833, "Ice House", 1835). shiny Pushkin's works- "Arap of Peter the Great" (1828) and "The Captain's Daughter" (1836) - are also at its origins. The epic novel by L.N.

Tolstoy "War and Peace". In the 1920s and 30s, a noticeable genre restructuring took place in Russian literature. At a new stage literary development epic comes to the fore. Historical novel became one of the forms of its embodiment. However, Soviet writers do not seem to notice the achievements of the past. Yes, M.

Gorky, giving an enthusiastic assessment of the first Soviet historical novels ("Dressed with Stone" by O. Forsh, "Kyukhlya" and "The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar" by Yu.

Tynyanov, "Razin Stepan" by A. Chapygin and "Peter the Great" by A.

Tolstoy), emphasized the novelty of these works: "A historical novel has been created, which was not in pre-revolutionary literature." According to M. Gorky, the works of Soviet historical novelists were strikingly different from their predecessors, primarily in the concept of the historical process.

The development of the plot of the novel should be determined by the views and ideological position of the writer - his understanding of the historical process, the relationship between the individual and the era, the state and the individual, society and the individual. The writer either puts them into the mouth and actions of the hero-protagonist, or does it in the author's publicistic digression. The desire to display artistic means these problems led to the rapid development of the historical novel in the first half of the 20th century, both in Soviet literature, and in the literature of the Russian abroad (in particular, in the work of M. A. Aldanov). The first Soviet historical novels told about the revolutionary past of Russia.

The novelists saw in the liberation struggle of the people driving force history, the logical conclusion of which was the October Revolution and the education Soviet state. From this point of view, not only the uprising of Stepan Razin (A. Chapygin "Razin Stepan"), the peasant war of Emelyan Pugachev (V.

Shishkov "Emelyan Pugachev"), as well as the conquest of Siberia by Ermak (Artem Vesely "Walk, Volga"), and the tragic fate of the first Russian revolutionary (O. Forsh "Radishchev"), the emergence of Russian industry in the Urals (E. Fedorov "Stone Belt" ). The individual reaction of writers to the ideological dictate, heterogeneous historical material and various means of its artistic embodiment (biographical novel by O.

Forsh, the novel-tale by A. Chapygin, the novel by V. Shishkov, which gravitates towards inclusiveness, the historical chronicle by E. Fedorov), determine the generality of the approach: main topic all these novels - a large-scale popular protest and intensification of the liberation struggle of the masses. Completely different events and heroes were of interest to novelists-historians of the Russian diaspora.

The genre of the novel-biography was very popular here. famous figures culture. So, Nina Berberova (1901-1993) created novels about the least politicized Russian composers: "Tchaikovsky, the story of a lonely life" (1936) and "Borodin" (1938). Mikhail Tsetlin (1882-1945) wrote the book Five and Others (1944). Five are V. Stasov, M. Glinka, M. Balakirev, A.

Borodin and M. Mussorgsky.

Among others, N. Rimsky-Korsakov, A. Dargomyzhsky, V. A. Serov, C. Cui.

Another topic addressed by émigré writers was Russia's revolutionary past. For example, M. Tsetlin created a voluminous novel-study "The Decembrists: The Fate of One Generation" (1933). However, unlike Soviet idealism, the novelists of the Russian diaspora had a completely different understanding of the philosophy of history, which, in their opinion, is by no means the path of mankind to progress.

They were not interested in the class struggle and the bipolarity of social contrasts, but in the morality of the individual involved in the orbit of historical events.

In Russia, the first acquaintance with prose works Scottish writer takes place in the same 1810s, but the peak of fame falls on the 1820-30s. The success and rapid development of the historical novel caused a lively controversy around its problems in magazines and literary circles in the first half of the 1930s. “At that time, they talked a lot about local color, about historicity, about the need to recreate history in poetry, in the novel,” testifies Adam Mickiewicz, an attentive observer of the development of Russian literature of that time. The controversy around the problems of the historical novel was an important moment in the struggle for realism in Russian literature, which was started by Pushkin in the mid-1920s and then continued by V.G. Belinsky.

For Belinsky, the development of the historical novel in Russian literature was not the result of the influence of Walter Scott, as famous authors claimed. literary critics first thirds of XIX century S.P. Shevyrev and O.I. Senkovsky, but a manifestation of the "spirit of the times", "a universal and, one might say, a worldwide trend." Attention to the historical past, reflecting the growth of the national self-consciousness of peoples, at the same time testified to the ever deeper penetration of reality and its interests into art and social thought. Belinsky points out that all further activity of advanced thought will and must be based on history, grow out of historical soil. According to Belinsky, the significance of Walter Scott was that he "finished the union of art with life, taking history as an intermediary." “Art itself has now become predominantly historical, the historical novel and historical drama are of interest to everyone and everyone more than works of the same kind, belonging to the realm of pure fiction,” the critic noted. In attention to history, to reality, he saw the movement of Russian literature towards realism.

V. Scott at that time was read almost everywhere, although opinions were different (for example, O.I. Senkovskiy strongly condemned the historical novel). But the majority still assessed his work positively, even enthusiastically (N.A. and K.A. Polevye, P.A. Vyazemsky, V.K. Kuchelbeker, etc.).

The main merit of W. Scott was considered the creation of a new genre - the historical novel, which, according to critics, absorbed the main aesthetic aspirations of that era. “Walter Scott created, invented, discovered, or, rather, guessed the epic of our time - a historical novel,” wrote V.G. Belinsky. And in another article: “Walter Scott was the creator of a new kind of poetry that could only arise in the 19th century, the historical novel. In Walter Scott's novel, history and poetry first met as kindred rather than hostile principles.<...>And this is why, when reading the novels of Walter Scott, in which one historical event is mixed with many fictitious ones, you think that you are reading history: everything is so natural, alive and true in the novel. What was new was the angle of view from which he saw Walter Scott " privacy with her worries and troubles "(V. G. Belinsky) and love -" the supreme queen of feelings "(N. I. Nadezhdin). Everything “private” is given by W. Scott in a historical perspective: fictional characters- people of past centuries - act among historical figures, participate in events that took place in reality. Special meaning in the novels of W. Scott, they acquired "archaeological" and "ethnographic" details: the area with all its features, the color of the era, the costumes, and the poses of the characters - everything had to correspond to its time. The novelist strove for the same correspondence when depicting "old customs": habits, customs, concepts, prejudices of people of the past. With special care, the everyday and historical background of the era was recreated in the historical novel. This does not mean that W. Scott historical events, faces, objects were reproduced with scrupulous accuracy, based only on documentary facts. The writer, resurrecting the story in the novel with the help of artistic conjecture, was free to allow conscious anachronisms, rearrange the dates to enhance the drama of the narrative, and invent the nature of the historical person.

In Russia, the first attempt at a historical "narration" based on historical reality is N. Karamzin's story "Natalya, boyar daughter» (1792). However, the difficulty of mastering historical era in it is not only unresolved, but is also recognized by the author as unresolvable. “The reader will guess,” he writes in a short preface to the story, “that the old lovers did not speak quite the way they speak here, but we could not now understand the language of that time.” As a result of this realization characters stories and they say and feel in modern N. Karamzin literary language sentimentalism. The influence of Walter Scott, who showed how you can make your heroes speak the language of their era, so that it is understandable and modern readers, affected, first of all, in the "Moor of Peter the Great" A.S. Pushkin (1827), about which V.G. Belinsky wrote: “These seven chapters of the unfinished novel, of which one preempted all the historical novels of Mr. Zagoskin and Lazhechnikov, are immeasurably higher and better than any historical Russian novel taken separately and all of them taken together.”

However, the consciousness of contemporaries is much greater than the "Arap of Peter the Great" and even

The Captain's Daughter (1836) touched upon the historical novels of M.N. Zagoskin ("Yuri Miloslavsky" 1829, "Askold's Grave" 1833, "Bryn Forest" 1845 and many others) and I.I. Lazhechnikov (“The Last Novik” 1831-1833, “Ice House” 1835, “Basurman” 1838, etc.). A. S. Pushkin, in his review of Yuri Miloslavsky, wrote: “Mr. Zagoskin definitely takes us to 1612. Our good people, boyars, Cossacks, monks, violent shisha - all this is guessed, all this acts, feels how it should have acted, felt in the troubled times of Minin and Avraamy Palitsyn. How alive, how entertaining are the scenes of ancient Russian life! .

“War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy (1860), according to D. Blagoy, “this “Russian Iliad”, where all the struggles and passions of the human heart, all searches and sorrows are woven into a “giant web of history” human spirit, where, next to the exceptionally accurate portraits of the great participants in the events of the 12th year, a broad picture of life is given - and all this airy construction is carried along the dark waves of the author's original philosophical and historical worldview - gives a unique example of a world historical novel, while at the same time, not fitting entirely within the framework of this genre alone.

Among the famous classical Russian historical novels are “Taras Bulba” by N.V. Gogol, "Masons" by A.F. Pisemsky (1880), "Pugachevtsy" (1874) E.A. Salias de Turnemire, novels by G.P. Danilevsky ("Mirovich" and others), Vs. Solovyov ("Magi" 1889, "The Great Rosicrucian" 1890, etc.), D.L. Mordovtsev (“The Great Schism”, “The Twelfth Year” and many others), “ Fire Angel» V.Ya. Bryusov, historical trilogy"Christ and the Antichrist", the novel "Alexander I" by D.S. Merezhkovsky and many others.