Representatives of realism in literature and their works. 19th century realist writers and their critical realism

spiritual climate Western Europe after 1830, it changed significantly compared to the romantic era. The subjective idealism of the Romantics was replaced by a belief in the omnipotence of reason and science, a belief in progress. Two ideas determine the thinking of Europeans during this period - this is positivism (a direction in philosophy based on the collection of objective facts with the aim of scientific analysis) and organicism (Darwin's evolutionary theory extended to other areas of life). The 19th century is the century of the rapid growth of science and technology, the rise of the social sciences, and this striving for scientificity also penetrates into literature. Realist artists saw their task in describing in literature all the richness of the phenomena of the surrounding world, all the diversity of human types, that is, the science of the 19th century and realistic literature are imbued with the same spirit of collecting facts, systematizing and developing a consistent concept of reality. And the explanation of reality was given on the basis of the principles of evolution: in the life of society and the individual, the action of the same forces as in nature, similar mechanisms of natural selection, was seen.

By the thirties of the 19th century, a new system had finally taken shape. public relations. It was a bourgeois system, in which each person was quite rigidly assigned to a certain social class environment, that is, the time of romantic "freedom", "restlessness" of a person has passed. In a classical bourgeois society, the belonging of a person to a certain class appeared as an immutable law of being, and, accordingly, became the principle of the artistic development of life. Therefore, realists use the discoveries of the romantics in the field of psychology, but inscribe a newly understood person in a historically reliable, contemporary life. For realists, a person is primarily conditioned by the socio-historical environment, and realism is based on the principle of social class determinism.

Realists have also changed their perception of human character. Among the Romantics, an exceptional character was the subjective property of an individual; the hero of a realistic work is always a unique product of interaction historical process and specific (biological, individual, random) circumstances, therefore realists understand the life experience of each person as unique and valuable by this very uniqueness, and, on the other hand, the life experience of each person is of general, universal interest, because it contains repeatable, general features. Here lies the basis of the realistic doctrine of type, the basis of realistic typification.

The realists directly inherited from the romantics the inherent value they discovered human personality, but fixed this personality for a certain place, time, environment. Realist art is democratic - for the first time the realists brought the "little man" to the stage, who had not previously been considered an interesting object for literature, restored his rights. Realist literature is imbued with an overall optimistic spirit: criticizing their contemporary society, realist writers were confident in the effectiveness of their criticism, that this society could be improved, reformed, they believed in the inevitability of progress.

The realism of the 19th century sought to cover life as widely as possible, to show all the details of the social structure, all types of human relations, which, of course, required works of large volumes. This is partly why the leading genre in the literature of realism is the novel - the genre of a major epic narrative, in which there is a place for all this gigantic material of life. Especially at the early stage of realism, novels were distinguished by their greater volume than is customary today. In addition, the novel was in the 19th century the newest of the available genres, that is, a genre without the burden of canonical tradition.

The novel is a genre open to everything new; the novelist explores life freely and without prejudice, not knowing in advance where his artistic quest will lead him. In this way, the novel is akin to the spirit of scientific research, this side of the novel was emphasized by the realists of the 19th century, and under their pen the genre turned into a tool for research and knowledge of reality, external and internal conflicts of human life. A realistic novel reflects reality in the forms of life itself, and from the era of realism, the concept of "fiction" begins to be associated not with poetry and dramaturgy, but primarily with prose. The novel becomes the dominant genre of world literature.

G.K. Kosikov writes: "The main feature of the romantic situation is the change in the internal and external position of the hero in the course of various collisions with the world around him." In a realistic novel, as a rule, the “positive” hero opposes the existing forms of social coexistence as the bearer of the ideal, but, unlike romantic literature, in a realistic novel, the discord between the hero and the world does not turn into a complete break. The hero may reject his immediate environment, but he never rejects the world as a whole, he always retains the hope of realizing his subjective world in some other spheres of being. Therefore, the realistic novel is based both on the contradiction between the hero and the world and on the deep inner commonality between them. The search for the hero of a realistic novel in the early stages of its existence was limited by the scope of social circumstances offered by history. In the 19th century, the social mobility of the individual increased sharply; the example of Napoleon's fantastic career has become a model of changing social status for new generations. This new phenomenon of reality was reflected in the creation of such genre variety realistic novel as a "career novel". Consider it on the example of the works of the creators of the realistic novel Stendhal and Balzac.

Realism (from late Latin reālis - material) is an artistic method in art and literature. The history of realism in world literature is extraordinarily rich. The very concept of it has changed at different stages. artistic development, reflecting the persistent desire of artists for a truthful depiction of reality.

Illustration by V. Milashevsky for the novel by Charles Dickens "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club".



Illustration by O. Vereisky for Leo Tolstoy's novel "Anna Karenina".



Illustration by D. Shmarinov for F. M. Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment.



Illustration by V. Serov for M. Gorky's story "Foma Gordeev".



B. Zaborov's illustration for M. Andersen-Neksø's novel Ditte is a Human Child.

However, the concept of truth, truth - one of the most difficult in aesthetics. So, for example, the theoretician of French classicism N. Boileau called for being guided by the truth, "imitating nature." But the ardent opponent of classicism, the romantic V. Hugo, urged "to consult only with nature, truth and your inspiration, which is also truth and nature." Thus, both defended "truth" and "nature".

The selection of life phenomena, their assessment, the ability to present them as important, characteristic, typical - all this is connected with the artist's point of view on life, and this, in turn, depends on his worldview, on the ability to catch the advanced movements of the era. The desire for objectivity often forces the artist to depict the real balance of power in society, even contrary to his own political convictions.

The specific features of realism depend on the historical conditions in which art develops. National-historical circumstances also determine the uneven development of realism in different countries.

Realism is not something once and for all given and unchanging. In the history of world literature, several main types of its development can be outlined.

There is no consensus in science about the initial period of realism. Many art historians attribute it to very distant eras: they talk about realism rock paintings primitive people, about the realism of ancient sculpture. In the history of world literature, many features of realism are found in the works of ancient world and the early Middle Ages (in the folk epic, for example, in Russian epics, in chronicles). However, the formation of realism as art system in European literatures it is customary to associate with the Renaissance (Renaissance), the greatest progressive upheaval. A new understanding of life by a person who rejects the church preaching of slavish obedience was reflected in the lyrics of F. Petrarch, the novels of F. Rabelais and M. Cervantes, in the tragedies and comedies of W. Shakespeare. After medieval churchmen preached for centuries that man is a “vessel of sin” and called for humility, the literature and art of the Renaissance glorified man as the highest creation of nature, seeking to reveal the beauty of his physical appearance and the wealth of soul and mind. The realism of the Renaissance is characterized by the scale of the images (Don Quixote, Hamlet, King Lear), the poeticization of the human personality, its ability to have a great feeling (as in Romeo and Juliet) and at the same time the high intensity of the tragic conflict, when the clash of the personality with the inert forces opposing it is depicted. .

The next stage in the development of realism is the Enlightenment (see Enlightenment), when literature becomes (in the West) an instrument for the direct preparation of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. Among the enlighteners were supporters of classicism, their work was influenced by other methods and styles. But in the XVIII century. So-called Enlightenment realism is taking shape (in Europe), the theorists of which were D. Diderot in France and G. Lessing in Germany. The English realistic novel, the founder of which was D. Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe (1719), acquired world significance. A democratic hero appeared in the literature of the Enlightenment (Figaro in the trilogy by P. Beaumarchais, Louise Miller in the tragedy "Treachery and Love" by J. F. Schiller, and the images of peasants by A. N. Radishchev). Enlighteners assessed all the phenomena of public life and the actions of people as reasonable or unreasonable (and they saw the unreasonable, first of all, in all the old feudal orders and customs). From this they proceeded in the depiction of the human character; their positive heroes are, first of all, the embodiment of reason, the negative ones are a deviation from the norm, the product of unreason, barbarism of former times.

Enlightenment realism often allowed for convention. Thus, the circumstances in the novel and drama were not necessarily typical. They could be conditional, as in the experiment: "Let's say that a person ended up on a desert island ...". At the same time, Defoe depicts Robinson's behavior not as it could be in reality (the prototype of his hero became wild, even lost articulate speech), but as he wants to present a person, fully armed with his physical and mental forces, as a hero, a conqueror of forces. nature. Just as conventional is Goethe's Faust, shown in the struggle for the affirmation of lofty ideals. The features of a well-known convention also distinguish D. I. Fonvizin’s comedy “Undergrowth”.

A new type of realism takes shape in the 19th century. This is critical realism. It differs significantly from both the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Its heyday in the West is associated with the names of Stendhal and O. Balzac in France, C. Dickens, W. Thackeray in England, in Russia - A. S. Pushkin, N. V. Gogol, I. S. Turgenev, F. M. Dostoevsky, L. N. Tolstoy, A. P. Chekhov.

Critical realism portrays the relationship between man and the environment in a new way. Human character is revealed in organic connection with social circumstances. The inner world of a person has become the subject of deep social analysis; therefore, critical realism simultaneously becomes psychological. In preparing this quality of realism, romanticism played a large role, striving to penetrate the secrets of the human "I".

Deepening the knowledge of life and complicating the picture of the world in the critical realism of the 19th century. do not mean, however, some absolute superiority over the previous stages, for the development of art is marked not only by gains, but also by losses.

The scale of the images of the Renaissance was lost. The pathos of affirmation, characteristic of the enlighteners, their optimistic faith in the victory of good over evil, remained unique.

The rise of the labor movement in Western countries, the formation in the 40s. 19th century Marxism not only influenced the literature of critical realism, but also brought to life the first artistic experiments in depicting reality from the standpoint of the revolutionary proletariat. In the realism of such writers as G. Weert, W. Morris, the author of the "Internationale" E. Pottier, new features are outlined, anticipating the artistic discoveries of socialist realism.

AT Russia XIX century is a period of exceptional strength and scope of the development of realism. In the second half of the century, the artistic achievements of realism, bringing Russian literature to the international arena, win it world recognition.

The richness and diversity of Russian realism of the XIX century. allow us to talk about its different forms.

Its formation is associated with the name of A. S. Pushkin, who led Russian literature to a wide path of depicting "the fate of the people, the fate of man." In the conditions of the accelerated development of Russian culture, Pushkin, as it were, makes up for its former lag, blazing new trails in almost all genres and, with its universality and optimism, turns out to be akin to the titans of the Renaissance. The foundations of critical realism, developed in the work of N. V. Gogol and after him in the so-called natural school, are laid in Pushkin's work.

Performance in the 60s. revolutionary democrats, led by N. G. Chernyshevsky, gives new features to Russian critical realism (the revolutionary nature of criticism, images of new people).

A special place in the history of Russian realism belongs to L. N. Tolstoy and F. M. Dostoevsky. It is thanks to them that the Russian realistic novel acquired world significance. Their psychological skill, penetration into the "dialectics of the soul" opened the way for the artistic searches of writers of the 20th century. Realism in the 20th century all over the world bears the imprint of the aesthetic discoveries of L. N. Tolstoy and F. M. Dostoevsky.

Rise of Russian freedom movement, which by the end of the century transfers the center of the world revolutionary struggle from the West to Russia, leads to the fact that the work of the great Russian realists becomes, as V. I. Lenin said about L. N. Tolstoy, “the mirror of the Russian revolution” in its objective historical content , with all the differences in their ideological positions.

The creative scope of Russian social realism is reflected in the wealth of genres, especially in the field of the novel: philosophical and historical (L. N. Tolstoy), revolutionary publicistic (N. G. Chernyshevsky), everyday (I. A. Goncharov), satirical (M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin), psychological (F. M. Dostoevsky, L. N. Tolstoy). By the end of the century, A.P. Chekhov became an innovator in the genre of realistic storytelling and a kind of “lyrical drama”.

It is important to emphasize that Russian realism of the XIX century. did not develop in isolation from the world historical and literary process. This was the beginning of an era when, according to K. Marx and F. Engels, "the fruits of the spiritual activity of individual nations become common property."

F. M. Dostoevsky noted as one of the features of Russian literature its “ability for universality, all-humanity, all-response”. Here we are talking not so much about Western influences, but about the organic development in line with the European culture of its centuries-old traditions.

At the beginning of the XX century. the appearance of M. Gorky's plays "The Philistines", "At the Bottom" and in particular the novel "Mother" (and in the West - the novel "Pelle the Conqueror" by M. Andersen-Neksö) testifies to the formation of socialist realism. In the 20s. Soviet literature declares itself with major successes, and in the early 1930s. in many capitalist countries there is a literature of the revolutionary proletariat. The literature of socialist realism is becoming an important factor in world literary development. At the same time, it should be noted that Soviet literature as a whole retains more links with the artistic experience of the 19th century than literature in the West (including socialist literature).

The beginning of the general crisis of capitalism, two world wars, the acceleration of the revolutionary process throughout the world under the influence of the October Revolution and the existence of the Soviet Union, and after 1945 the formation of the world socialist system - all this affected the fate of realism.

Critical realism, which continued to develop in Russian literature until October (I. A. Bunin, A. I. Kuprin) and in the West, in the 20th century. was further developed, while undergoing significant changes. In the critical realism of the XX century. in the West, a wide variety of influences are more freely assimilated and crossed, including some features of the unrealistic trends of the 20th century. (symbolism, impressionism, expressionism), which, of course, does not exclude the struggle of realists against non-realistic aesthetics.

From about the 20s. in the literatures of the West, there is a tendency towards in-depth psychologism, the transmission of a “stream of consciousness”. There is a so-called intellectual novel by T. Mann; subtext acquires special significance, for example, in E. Hemingway. This focus on the individual and spiritual world in the critical realism of the West significantly weakens its epic breadth. Epic scale in the 20th century. is the merit of the writers of socialist realism (“The Life of Klim Samgin” by M. Gorky, “ Quiet Don" M. A. Sholokhov, "Walking through the agony" by A. N. Tolstoy, "The dead remain young" by A. Zegers).

Unlike the realists of the XIX century. writers of the 20th century more often they resort to fantasy (A. France, K. Capek), to conventionality (for example, B. Brecht), creating parable novels and parable dramas (see Parable). At the same time, in the realism of the XX century. triumphant document, fact. Documentary works appear in different countries within the framework of both critical realism and socialist realism.

So, while remaining documentary, they are works of great generalizing meaning. autobiographical books E. Hemingway, S. O "Casey, I. Becher, such classic books of socialist realism as "Reporting with a noose around the neck" by Y. Fuchik and "Young Guard" by A. A. Fadeev.

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Introduction

Critical realism (Greek kritike - judgment; sentencing, and Latin realis - material, real) is an artistic movement based on the principle of historicism, a truthful depiction of reality. In the works of critical realism, the writers tried not only to faithfully reproduce life in all its manifestations, but also to focus their attention on its social aspects, showing the injustice and immorality that reigns in society, thereby trying to actively influence it. Realism creates typical characters in typical circumstances. Literature is enriched in terms of genre: many varieties of the novel, the enrichment of the themes and structure of the short story, the rise of dramaturgy. One of the leading motives is the exposure of bourgeois society. Fight for freedom creative personality artist. Historical and revolutionary theme. The attention that realists pay to the individual helps them achieve success in portraying characters, and leads to a deepening of psychologism.

The desire to historically and scientifically substantiate their conclusions when depicting the phenomena of social life, the desire to always be at the level of the latest achievements of science, “to feel the pulse of their era,” according to Balzac, this is what helped the realists to organize their artistic method.

1. How critical realism developed in the 19th century

The history of the development of critical realism in the literature of foreign countries:

The origin of critical realism dates back to the end of the 20s of the 19th century, its heyday - to the 30s-40s. Critical realism was born primarily in England and France, where in France such famous authors as Balzac, Stendhal, Beranger, and in England - Dickens, Gaskell and Bronte acted in this direction.

Historical prerequisites for the development of critical realism. In the 30s of the 19th century, a contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the working class emerged. In Germany, France and England there is a wave of labor movement. In the enslaved countries - Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic - the national liberation struggle is intensifying.

During these years, the rise different areas culture of bourgeois society. A powerful dawn of philosophy, natural, technical and historical sciences began. Already in the second half of the 19th century, natural science and biology were making great strides. It is no coincidence that Balzac, justifying his realistic method, sought support in natural science, recognized Cuvier and Saint-Hilaire as his teachers.

Historicism of Balzac, who conceived truthfulness to himself first of all, as fidelity to history, its logic, also feature realism, the development of which coincides with the period when the historical sciences made great strides.

It must be noted, however, that after the final strengthening of bourgeois society—after 1830—the same historians pass over to reactionary defensive positions, striving to strengthen the rule of the bourgeoisie, its undivided power over the exploited classes.

Hegel's dialectical method, which had already taken shape in the first quarter of the 19th century, acquires tremendous significance.

Finally, in the 1940s, in the pre-revolutionary situation that had developed in a number of countries (France, Germany, Hungary), the scientific socialism of Marx and Engels arose, which was the greatest revolution in the history of human thought.

These are, in general terms, the historical and cultural-philosophical prerequisites for the development of critical realism in foreign literature of the 19th century.

Critical Realism in Russian Literature:

Critical realism in Russia arose during a period of severe crisis in the autocratic-serf system, when the advanced circles of Russian society fought for the abolition of serfdom and democratic reforms. A feature of the historical aspect of the development of Russia in the middle of the 19th century is the situation after the Decembrist uprising, as well as the emergence of secret societies and circles, the appearance of the works of A.I. Herzen, a circle of Petrashevites. This time is characterized by the beginning of the raznochin movement in Russia, as well as the acceleration of the process of formation of the world artistic culture, including the Russian one.

2. Creativity of realist writers

Typical features of critical realism:

The object of the image of critical realists is human life in all its manifestations. Depicted not only the spiritual and ideal human activity, but also everyday life, public affairs. In this regard, the boundaries of literature have greatly expanded - the prose of life has wedged into it. Everyday, everyday motives have become an indispensable companion of realistic works. The main characters have also changed. Romantic characters living in a world of high spiritual values ​​and ideals have been replaced by the image of an ordinary historical man in the present and natural world. The critical realist shows man not only in his ideal, but also in his concrete historical essence.

The characters behave in a completely ordinary way, doing ordinary everyday things: they go to work, lie on the couch, think about the eternal and about where bread is cheaper. Through the interweaving of concrete human destinies a realist writer reveals certain patterns of society. And the wider his view, the deeper his generalization. And, conversely, the narrower his ideological outlook, the more he dwells on the external, empirical side of reality, unable to penetrate to its foundations.

And so, a typical feature of this style is the image of a “living” person. The real, in all its fullness and vital manifestations. They did not avoid real images of time, places: urban slums, crises, revolutions. Realist writers, revealing the contrasts of society, raised the self-consciousness of the people, sought to point out the main problems of social life of that time. Arguing with aestheticians who called for the display of only beauty, Belinsky wrote back in 1835: “We demand not the ideal of life, but life itself as it is. Is it bad or good, but we don’t want to decorate it, because in a poetic representation it is equally beautiful in both cases, and precisely because it is true, and because where there is truth, there is poetry.

It was necessary to prove that even negative characters can become artistically beautiful if they truly capture the objective content of reality, if the writer expressed his critical attitude towards them. Similar thoughts were expressed by Diderot and Lessing, but they received a particularly deep justification in the aesthetics of Belinsky and other Russian revolutionary democrats.

The principle of depicting a person and society:

Not wanting to be limited only by the external actions of a person, realist writers also revealed the psychological side, social conditioning. The principle was to describe the individual in unity with the environment. It `s naturally.

The character himself is a very specific person representing certain social circles with socio-historical concreteness. His thoughts, feelings, actions are typical because they are socially motivated.

Picture of a man in social connections was not the discovery of Gogol or Balzac. In the work of Fielding, Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, the characters were also portrayed socially specifically. But there is still a difference. In the 19th century changed understanding of the social environment. It began to include not only the ideological superstructure, but also the economic relations of the era. Enlighteners of the 18th century focused on the manifestations of serfdom in the ideological sphere. Critical realists go further. They direct the fire of criticism at property inequality, at class contradictions, at the economic foundations of society. Artistic research penetrates here into the economic, class structure of life.

Writers of critical realism understand the objective laws of life, the real prospects for development. Society for them is an objective process that is being studied in search of the germs of the future. It is worth judging realists by the veracity of the image, the image of history and its understanding.

In the work of many writers of the realistic trend (Turgenev, Dostoevsky, etc.), the real processes of life are captured not in their economic, but in their ideological, spiritual refraction, as a clash in the spiritual sphere of fathers and children, representatives of various ideological currents, etc., but The dialectic of living social development is reflected here as well. What makes Turgenev and Dostoevsky realists is not the truthfully outlined scenes of the private life of the Kirsanovs or Marmeladov, but the ability to show the dialectic of history, its objective movement from lower to higher forms.

When depicting a person, the critical realist takes reality as the starting point, he carefully studies it in order to find the motives that determine the actions of his characters. The focus of his attention is the complex social relations of the individual. He is alien to the desire to endow the characters of works with their own subjective thoughts and experiences.

3. Realist writers of the 19th century and their critical realism

critical realism artistic herzen

Guy de Maupassant (1850-1993): he passionately, painfully hated the bourgeois world and everything connected with it. He painfully searched for antitheses to this world - and found it in the democratic strata of society, in the French people.

Works: short stories - "Dumbnut", "Old Sauvage", "Crazy", "Prisoners", "Chair Weaver", "Papa Simone".

Romain Rolland (1866-1944): the meaning of being and creativity initially consisted in faith in the beautiful, kind, bright, which never left the world - it is simply necessary to be able to see, feel and convey to people.

Works: the novel "Jean Christoff", the story "Pierre and Luce".

Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880): His work indirectly reflected the contradictions of the French Revolution of the mid-nineteenth century. The desire for truth and hatred for the bourgeoisie were combined in him with social pessimism and distrust in the people.

Works: novels - "Madam Bovary", "Salambo", "Education of the Senses", "Bouvard and Pécuchet" (not finished), novels - "The Legend of Julian the Hospitable", "A Simple Soul", "Herodias", also created several plays and extravaganza.

Stendhal (1783-1842): The work of this writer opens the period of classical realism. It was Stendhal who took the lead in substantiating the main principles and program for the formation of realism, theoretically stated in the first half of the 19th century, when romanticism still dominated, and soon brilliantly embodied in the artistic masterpieces of the outstanding novelist of that time.

Works: novels - "Parma Convent", "Armans", "Lucien Leven", stories - "Vittoria Accoramboni", "Duchess di Palliano", "Cenci", "Abbess of Castro".

Charles Dickens (1812-1870): Dickens's works are full of deep drama, social contradictions are sometimes tragic character, which they did not have in the interpretation of the writers of the XVIII century. Dickens also deals with the life and struggle of the working class in his work.

Works: "Nicholas Nickleby", "The Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewitt", " Hard times”, “Christmas stories”, “Dombey and son”, “Antiquities shop”.

William Thackeray (1811-1863): Arguing with the Romantics, he demands strict truthfulness from the artist. "Let the truth not always be pleasant, but there is nothing better than the truth." The author is not inclined to depict a person as either a notorious scoundrel or an ideal being. unlike Dickens, he avoided happy endings. Thackeray's satire is riddled with skepticism: the writer does not believe in the possibility of changing life. He enriched the English realistic novel by introducing the author's commentary.

Works: The Book of Snobs, Vanity Fair, Pendennis, The Career of Barry Lyndon, The Ring and the Rose.

Pushkin A.S. (1799-1837): founder of Russian realism. Pushkin is dominated by the idea of ​​the Law, the patterns that determine the state of civilization, social structures, the place and importance of a person, his independence and connection with the whole, the possibility of authorial sentences.

Works: "Boris Godunov", " Captain's daughter”, “Dubrovsky”, “Eugene Onegin”, “Tales of Belkin”.

Gogol N.V. (1809-1852): a world far from any ideas about the law, vulgar everyday life, in which all concepts of honor and morality, conscience are mutilated - in a word, Russian reality, worthy of grotesque ridicule: "to blame everything on the mirror, if the face is crooked" .

Works: "Dead Souls", "Notes of a Madman", "Overcoat".

Lermontov M.Yu. (1814-1841): sharp enmity with the divine world order, with the laws of society, lies and hypocrisy, all kinds of upholding the rights of the individual. The poet strives for a concrete image of the social environment, the life of an individual person: the combination of the features of early realism and mature romanticism into an organic unity.

Works: "Hero of Our Time", "Demon", "Fatalist".

Turgenev I.S. (1818-1883): Turgenev is interested in the moral world of people from the people. The main feature of the cycle of stories was truthfulness, which contained the idea of ​​the liberation of the peasantry, presented the peasants as spiritually active people capable of independent activity. Despite his reverent attitude towards the Russian people, Turgenev the realist did not idealize the peasantry, seeing, like Leskov and Gogol, their shortcomings.

Works: “Fathers and Sons”, “Rudin”, “Noble Nest”, “On the Eve”.

Dostoevsky F.M. (1821-1881): Regarding Dostoevsky's realism, it was said that he had a "fantastic realism." D. believes that in exceptional, unusual situations, the most typical appears. The writer noticed that all his stories were not invented, but taken from somewhere. Main feature: creating a philosophical basis with the detective - there is a murder everywhere.

Works: "Crime and Punishment", "Idiot", "Demons", "Teenager", "The Brothers Karamazov".

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is worth saying that the development of realism in the 19th century was a revolution in the field of art. This direction opened the eyes of society, the era of revolutions and drastic changes began. Artworks writers of the 19th centuries, which absorbed the trends of that era, are relevant to this day. By bringing their characters as close as possible to real images, the writers revealed a person from all sides, helping readers to find themselves, to solve the pressing problems that a person faces in life. Everyday life, and about which no romantic writer or classicist will write.

Why did I choose this particular style? Because I believe that of all literary movements, it is critical realism that has the power to turn society around and bring changes both in the spiritual and political life of people. This is the kind of literature that is really worth reading.

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Critical realism in English literature of the 19th century. and characteristics of the work of Charles Dickens. Biography of Dickens as a source of images of goodies in his work. Display of positive characters in the novels "Oliver Twist" and "Dombey and Son".

term paper, added 08/21/2011


Variety of artistic genres, styles and methods in Russian literature of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. The emergence, development, main features and the most prominent representatives of the areas of realism, modernism, decadence, symbolism, acmeism, futurism.

Realism (lat. realis- material, real) - a direction in art, whose figures strive to understand and depict the interaction of a person with his environment, and the concept of the latter includes both spiritual and material components.

The art of realism is based on the creation of characters, understood as the result of the influence of socio-historical events, individually comprehended by the artist, resulting in a living, unique and at the same time carrying generic features. artistic image. "The cardinal problem of realism is the ratio credibility and artistic truth. The outward resemblance of an image to its prototypes is not, in fact, the only form of expression of truth for realism. More importantly, such similarity is not enough for true realism. Although plausibility is an important and most characteristic form of realism for the realization of artistic truth, the latter is ultimately determined not by plausibility, but by fidelity in comprehension and transmission. entities life, the significance of ideas, expressed by the artist". From what has been said, it does not follow that realist writers do not use fiction at all - without fiction, artistic creativity is generally impossible. Fiction is necessary already when selecting facts, grouping them, highlighting some heroes and briefly characterizing others, etc.

The chronological boundaries of the realistic trend in the works of various researchers are defined differently.

Some see the beginnings of realism as early as antiquity, others attribute its emergence to the Renaissance, others date back to the 18th century, and others believe that realism as a trend in art arose no earlier than the first third of the 19th century.

For the first time in domestic criticism, the term "realism" was used by P. Annenkov in 1849, however, without a detailed theoretical substantiation and came into general use in the 1860s. The French writers L. Duranty and Chanfleury were the first to make an attempt to comprehend the experience of Balzac and (in the field of painting) G. Courbet, giving their art a "realistic" definition. "Realism" is the title of a magazine published by Duranty in 1856-1857 and a collection of articles by Chanfleury (1857). However, their theory was largely contradictory and did not exhaust the complexity of the new artistic direction. What are the basic principles of the realistic trend in art?

Until the first third of the 19th century, literature created artistically one-sided images. In antiquity it is perfect world gods and heroes and the limitations of earthly existence opposed to it, the division of characters into "positive" and "negative" (echoes of such a gradation still make themselves felt in primitive aesthetic thinking). With some changes, this principle continues to exist in the Middle Ages, and in the period of classicism and romanticism. Only Shakespeare was far ahead of his time, creating "diverse and multifaceted characters" (A. Pushkin). It was precisely in overcoming the one-sidedness of the image of a person and his social relations that the most important shift in the aesthetics of European art consisted. Writers are beginning to realize that the thoughts and actions of characters often cannot be dictated by the author's will alone, since they depend on specific historical circumstances.

The organic religiosity of society under the influence of the ideas of the Enlightenment, which proclaimed the human mind to be the supreme judge of all things, was supplanted during the 19th century by such a social model in which the place of God was gradually occupied by supposedly omnipotent productive forces and class struggle. The process of forming such a worldview was long and complex, and its supporters, declaratively rejecting the aesthetic achievements of previous generations, relied heavily on them in their artistic practice.

The share of England and France at the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries had especially many social upheavals, and the rapid change of political systems and psychological states allowed the artists of these countries to realize more clearly than others that each era leaves its own unique imprint on the feelings, thoughts and actions of people.

For writers and artists of the Renaissance and classicism, biblical or ancient characters were only mouthpieces for the ideas of modernity. No one was surprised that the apostles and prophets in painting XVII century were dressed in the fashion of the century. Only at the beginning of the 19th century did painters and writers begin to follow the correspondence of all everyday details of the depicted time, coming to the understanding that both the psychology of the heroes of ancient times and their actions cannot be fully adequate in the present. It was precisely in capturing the "spirit of the times" that the first achievement of art at the beginning of the 19th century consisted.

The ancestor of literature, in which the course of the historical development of society was comprehended, was the English writer W. Scott. His merit is not so much in the accurate depiction of the details of the life of past times, but in the fact that, according to V. Belinsky, he gave "the historical direction to the art of the 19th century" and portrayed as an indivisible common individual and universal. The heroes of W. Scott, involved in the epicenter of turbulent historical events, are endowed with memorable characters and at the same time are representatives of their class, with its social and national characteristics, although in general he perceives the world from a romantic position. The outstanding English novelist also managed to find in his work that edge that reproduces the linguistic flavor of the past years, but does not literally copy archaic speech.

Another discovery of the realists was the discovery of social contradictions caused not only by the passions or ideas of the "heroes", but also by the antagonistic aspirations of estates and classes. The Christian ideal dictated sympathy for the downtrodden and destitute. Realistic art is also based on this principle, but the main thing in realism is the study and analysis of social relations and the very structure of society. In other words, the main conflict in a realistic work lies in the struggle between "humanity" and "inhumanity", which is due to a number of social patterns.

The psychological content of human characters is also explained by social causes. When depicting a plebeian who does not want to accept the fate destined for him from birth ("Red and Black", 1831), Stendhal renounces romantic subjectivism and analyzes the psychology of the hero who seeks a place in the sun, mainly in social aspect. Balzac in the cycle of novels and short stories "The Human Comedy" (1829-1848) set a grandiose goal to recreate the multi-figured panorama of modern society in its various modifications. Approaching his task as a scientist describing a complex and dynamic phenomenon, the writer traces the fate of individuals over a number of years, discovering significant adjustments that the "zeitgeist" makes to the original qualities of the characters. At the same time, Balzac focuses on those socio-psychological problems that remain almost unchanged, despite the change in political and economic formations (the power of money, the moral decline of an outstanding personality who pursued success at any cost, the disintegration of family ties that were not sealed by love and mutual respect, and etc.). At the same time, Stendhal and Balzac reveal truly high feelings only among inconspicuous honest workers.

The moral superiority of the poor over the "high society" is also proved in the novels of C. Dickens. The writer was not at all inclined to portray the "high society" as a bunch of scoundrels and moral freaks. “But all the evil is,” Dickens wrote, “that this pampered world lives as if in a jewel case ... and therefore does not hear the noise of larger worlds, does not see how they revolve around the sun. This is a dying world, and the creation it is painful, because there is nothing to breathe in it. In the work of the English novelist, psychological authenticity, along with somewhat sentimental conflict resolution, is combined with gentle humor, sometimes developing into sharp social satire. Dickens outlined the main pain points of contemporary capitalism (the impoverishment of the working people, their ignorance, lawlessness and the spiritual crisis of the upper classes). No wonder L. Tolstoy was sure: "Sift the world's prose, Dickens will remain."

The main spiritualizing force of realism are the ideas of individual freedom and universal social equality. Everything that hinders the free development of the individual, the realist writers denounced, seeing the root of evil in the unfair arrangement of social and economic institutions.

At the same time, most writers believed in the inevitability of scientific and social progress, which would gradually destroy the oppression of man by man and reveal its initially positive inclinations. This mood is typical for European and Russian literature, especially for the latter. So, Belinsky sincerely envied the "grandchildren and great-grandchildren" who would live in 1940. Dickens wrote in 1850: “We strive to bring out of the seething world around us under the roofs of countless houses the announcement of a multitude of social miracles - both beneficial and harmful, but those that do not detract from our conviction and perseverance, indulgence towards each other, loyalty to the progress of mankind. and gratitude for the honor that has fallen to us to live in the summer dawn of time. N. Chernyshevsky in "What is to be done?" (1863) painted pictures of a wonderful future, when everyone will have the opportunity to become a harmonious personality. Even Chekhov's heroes, who belong to an era in which social optimism has already noticeably diminished, believe that they will see "the sky in diamonds."

And yet, first of all, a new direction in art focuses on criticizing the existing order. The realism of the 19th century in Russian literary criticism of the 1930s - early 1980s was commonly called critical realism(definition proposed M. Gorky). However, this term does not cover all aspects of the phenomenon being defined, since, as already noted, the realism of the 19th century was by no means devoid of affirmative pathos. In addition, the definition of realism as predominantly critical "is not entirely accurate in the sense that, emphasizing the concrete historical significance of the work, its connection with the social tasks of the moment, it leaves in the shadow the philosophical content and universal significance of the masterpieces of realistic art" .

A person in realistic art, in contrast to romantic art, is not seen as an autonomously existing individuality, interesting precisely because of its originality. In realism, especially at the first stage of its development, it is important to demonstrate the influence of the social environment on the personality; at the same time, realist writers strive to depict the way of thinking and feelings of characters that change over time (Oblomov and Ordinary History by I. Goncharov). Thus, along with historicism, at the origins of which was W. Scott (transferring the color of place and time and the realization of the fact that the ancestors saw the world differently than the author himself), the rejection of static, the image of the inner world of the characters depending on the conditions of their life and made the most important discoveries of realistic art.

No less significant for its time was general movement to the people of art. For the first time, the problem of nationality was touched upon by the Romantics, who understood national identity as national identity, which was expressed in the transfer of customs, features of life and habits of the people. But Gogol already noticed that a truly folk poet remains so even when he looks at a "completely different world" through the eyes of his people (for example, England is depicted from the position of a Russian artisan from the provinces - "Lefty" N. Leskov, 1883).

In Russian literature, the problem of nationality has played a particularly important role. This problem was substantiated in most detail in the works of Belinsky. The sample is authentic folk art the critic saw in Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin" where "folk" paintings as such take up little space, but the moral atmosphere in the society of the first third of the 19th century is recreated.

By the middle of this century, nationality in the aesthetic program of most Russian writers becomes the central point in determining the social and artistic value works. I. Turgenev, D. Grigorovich, A. Potekhin strive not only to reproduce and study various aspects of folk (i.e., peasant) life, but also directly address the people themselves. In the 60s, the same D. Grigorovich, V. Dal, V. Odoevsky, N. Shcherbina and many others published books for popular reading, publish magazines and brochures designed for a person just joining reading. As a rule, these attempts were not very successful, because cultural level the lower strata of society and its educated minority was too different, which is why the writers looked at the peasant as " little brother", which should be taught to the mind. Only A. Pisemsky ("The Carpenter's Artel", "Pitershchik", "Leshy" 1852-1855) and N. Uspensky (novels and stories 1858-1860) managed to show the true peasant life in its primordial simplicity and rudeness, but most writers preferred to sing of the people's "living soul".

In the post-reform era, the people and "nationality" in Russian literature turn into a kind of fetish. L. Tolstoy sees in Platon Karataev the center of all the best human qualities. Dostoevsky calls to learn worldly wisdom and spiritual sensitivity from the "kufelny peasant". Folk life is idealized in the works of N. Zlatovratsky and other writers of the 1870s–1880s.

Gradually, nationality, understood as an appeal to the problems of people's life from the point of view of the people themselves, becomes a dead canon, which nevertheless remained unshakable for many decades. Only I. Bunin and A. Chekhov allowed themselves to doubt the object of worship of more than one generation of Russian writers.

By the middle of the 19th century, another feature of realistic literature was also determined - tendentiousness, that is, the expression of the moral and ideological position of the author. Previously, artists in one way or another revealed their attitude towards their heroes, but basically they didactically preached the harmfulness of universal human vices, independent of the place and time of their manifestation. Realist writers make their social and moral-ideological predilections an integral part of the artistic idea, gradually leading the reader to an understanding of their position.

Tendentiousness gives rise in Russian literature to a delimitation into two antagonistic camps: for the first, the so-called revolutionary-democratic, criticism was most important state system, the second defiantly declared political indifference, proved the primacy of "artistic" over the "topics of the day" ("pure art"). The prevailing public mood - the decay of the feudal system and its morality was obvious - and the active offensive actions of the revolutionary democrats formed in the public the idea of ​​​​those writers who did not agree with the need for an immediate breakdown of all "foundations", as anti-patriots and obscurants. In the 1860s and 1870s, the "civic position" of a writer was valued more than his talent: this can be seen in the example of A. Pisemsky, P. Melnikov-Pechersky, N. Leskov, whose work was negatively regarded or hushed up by revolutionary democratic criticism.

This approach to art was formulated by Belinsky. “And I need poetry and artistry no more than enough for the story to be true ... - he said in a letter to V. Botkin in 1847. - The main thing is that it raises questions, makes a moral impression on society. If it reaches this goal and without poetry and creativity at all - it is for me Nonetheless interesting..." Two decades later, this criterion became fundamental in revolutionary democratic criticism (N. Chernyshevsky, N. Dobrolyubov, M. Antonovich, D. Pisarev). a fierce uncompromising attitude, a desire to "destroy" dissenters.6-7 more decades will pass, and in the era of the dominance of socialist realism, this trend is realized in the literal sense.

However, all this is still far ahead. In the meantime, new thinking is being developed in realism, a search is underway for new themes, images and style. The focus of realistic literature alternately "little man", "superfluous" and "new" people, folk types. "Little Man" with his sorrows and joys, first appearing in the work of A. Pushkin (" Stationmaster") and N. Gogol ("The Overcoat"), for a long time became an object of sympathy in Russian literature. The social humiliation of the "little man" atoned for all the narrowness of his interests. at the end of the story, a ghost appears, robbing any passer-by without regard to rank and condition) was noted only by F. Dostoevsky ("The Double") and A. Chekhov ("The Triumph of the Winner", "Two in One"), but in general it remained uncovered in the literature Only in the 20th century will M. Bulgakov devote a whole story to this problem ("Heart of a Dog").

Following the "small" in Russian literature came the "extra person", the "smart uselessness" of Russian life, not yet ready to accept new social and philosophical ideas ("Rudin" by I. Turgenev, "Who is to blame?" A. Herzen, "Hero of our time" M. Lermontov and others). "Superfluous people" have mentally outgrown their environment and time, but due to their upbringing and property status, they are not capable of everyday work and can only denounce self-satisfied vulgarity.

As a result of reflections on the possibilities of the nation, a gallery of images of "new people" appears, most vividly presented in "Fathers and Sons" by I. Turgenev and "What is to be done?" N. Chernyshevsky. Characters of this type are presented as resolute subverters of obsolete morality and state structure and are an example of honest work and devotion to the "common cause". These are, as their contemporaries called them, "nihilists", whose authority among the younger generation was very high.

In contrast to the works about "nihilists" there is also an "anti-nihilist" literature. In works of both types, standard characters and situations are easily found. In the first category, the hero thinks independently and provides himself with intellectual work, his bold speeches and deeds make young people want to imitate authority, he is close to the masses and knows how to change their lives for the better, etc. In anti-nihilistic literature, "nihilists "usually depicted as depraved and unscrupulous phrase-mongers who pursue their narrowly selfish goals and crave power and worship; Traditionally, the connection between "nihilists" and "Polish rebels" was noted, etc.

There were not so many works about the "new people", while among their opponents were such writers as F. Dostoevsky, L. Tolstoy, N. Leskov, A. Pisemsky, I. Goncharov, although it should be recognized that, for with the exception of "Demons" and "Cliff", their books are not among the best creations of these artists - and the reason for this is their pointed tendentiousness.

Deprived of the opportunity to openly discuss the pressing problems of our time in representative state institutions Russian society concentrates his mental life in literature and journalism. The writer's word becomes very weighty and often serves as an impetus for the adoption of vital important decisions. The hero of Dostoevsky's novel "The Teenager" admits that he went to the village in order to make life easier for the peasants under the influence of D. Grigorovich's "Anton Goremyka". The sewing workshops described in What Is to Be Done? have spawned many similar establishments in real life.

At the same time, it is noteworthy that Russian literature practically did not create the image of an active and energetic person, engaged in a specific business, but not thinking about a radical reorganization. political system. Attempts in this direction (Kostanjoglo and Murazov in " dead souls ah", Stolz in "Oblomov") were regarded by modern critics as groundless. And if the "dark kingdom" of A. Ostrovsky aroused keen interest among the public and critics, then subsequently the playwright's desire to draw portraits of entrepreneurs of a new formation did not find such a response in society.

The solution in literature and art of the "damned questions" of its time required a detailed justification of a whole range of tasks that could only be solved in prose (due to its ability to touch on political, philosophical, moral and aesthetic problems at the same time). In prose, priority is given to the novel, this "epic of modern times" (V. Belinsky), a genre that made it possible to create broad and multifaceted pictures of the life of various social strata. The realistic novel turned out to be incompatible with the plot situations that had already turned into clichés, which were so readily exploited by the romantics - the secret of the hero's birth, fatal passions, extraordinary situations and exotic scenes in which the will and courage of the hero are tested, etc.

Now writers are looking for plots in the everyday existence of ordinary people, which becomes the object of close study in all details (interior, clothing, professional activities, etc.). Since the authors strive to give the most objective picture of reality, the emotional narrator either goes into the shadows or uses the mask of one of the characters.

Poetry, which has receded into the background, is largely oriented towards prose: poets master some features of prose narration (citizenship, plot, description of everyday details), as was the case, for example, in the poetry of I. Turgenev, N. Nekrasov, N. Ogarev.

Realistic portraiture also gravitates toward detailed description, as was also the case with the Romantics, but now it carries a different psychological burden. “By examining facial features, the writer seeks out the “main idea” of the physiognomy and conveys it in all its fullness and universality of the inner life of a person. A realistic portrait, as a rule, is analytical, there is no artificiality in it; everything in it is natural and conditioned by character.” At the same time, the so-called "material characteristic" of the character (costume, home decoration) plays an important role, which also contributes to an in-depth disclosure of the psychology of the characters. Such are the portraits of Sobakevich, Manilov, Plyushkin in Dead Souls. In the future, the enumeration of details is replaced by some detail that gives scope to the reader's imagination, calling him to "co-authorship" when familiarizing himself with the work.

The depiction of everyday life leads to the rejection of complex metaphorical constructions and refined style. More and more rights in literary speech are won by vernacular, dialectal and professional speeches, which, as a rule, were used by classicists and romantics only to create a comic effect. In this regard, "Dead Souls", "Notes of a Hunter" and a number of other works by Russian writers of the 1840s-1850s are indicative.

The development of realism in Russia proceeded at a very rapid pace. In just less than two decades, Russian realism, starting with the "physiological essays" of the 1840s, gave the world such writers as Gogol, Turgenev, Pisemsky, L. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky ... Already in the middle of the 19th century, Russian literature became the focus of domestic social thoughts, going beyond the art of the word in a number of other arts. Literature "is imbued with moral and religious pathos, publicism and philosophy, complicated by meaningful subtext; masters the "Aesopian language", the spirit of opposition, protest; the burden of literature's responsibility to society, and its liberating, analytical, generalizing mission in the context of all culture, become fundamentally different. Literature becomes self-forming factor of culture, and above all, this circumstance (that is, cultural synthesis, functional universality, etc.) ultimately determined the universal significance of Russian classics (and not its direct relation to the revolutionary liberation movement, as Herzen tried to show, and after Lenin - almost all Soviet criticism and the science of literature).

Closely following the development of Russian literature, P. Merimee once said to Turgenev: "Your poetry seeks, first of all, truth, and then beauty appears by itself." Indeed, the mainstream of Russian classics is represented by characters who follow the path of moral quest, tormented by the consciousness that they did not fully use the opportunities provided by nature. Such are Pushkin's Onegin, Lermontov's Pechorin, Pierre Bezukhov and L. Tolstoy's Levin, Turgenev's Rudin, Dostoevsky's heroes. "The hero, who acquires moral self-determination on the paths given to man "from the ages", and thereby enriches his empirical nature, was exalted by Russian classic writers to the ideal of a person involved in Christian ontologism" . Is it not because the idea of ​​a social utopia at the beginning of the 20th century found such an effective response in Russian society that the Christian (specifically Russian) search for the “promised city”, transformed in the popular consciousness into a communist “bright future”, which is already visible beyond the horizon, had in Russia has such long and deep roots?

Abroad, the inclination towards the ideal was expressed much weaker, despite the fact that the critical element in literature sounded no less weighty. Here the general trend of Protestantism, which considers prosperity in the business sphere as the fulfillment of the will of God, has affected. The heroes of European writers suffer from injustice and vulgarity, but first of all they think about own happiness, while Turgenev's Rudin, Nekrasov's Grisha Dobrosklonov, Chernyshevsky's Rakhmetov are concerned not with personal success, but with general prosperity.

Moral problems in Russian literature are inseparable from political problems and, directly or indirectly, are associated with Christian dogmas. Russian writers often take on a role similar to the role of the Old Testament prophets - teachers of life (Gogol, Chernyshevsky, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy). “Russian artists,” wrote N. Berdyaev, “will have a thirst to move from the creation of works of art to the creation of a perfect life. The theme of religious-metaphysical and religious-social torments all significant Russian writers.”

The strengthening of the role of fiction in public life entails the development of criticism. And here the palm also belongs to Pushkin, who moved from taste and normative assessments to the discovery general patterns contemporary literary process. Pushkin was the first to realize the need for a new way of depicting reality, "true romanticism", as he defined it. Belinsky was the first Russian critic who tried to create an integral historical and theoretical concept and periodization of Russian literature.

During the second half of the 19th century, it was the activities of critics (N. Chernyshevsky, N. Dobrolyubov, D. Pisarev, K. Aksakov, A. Druzhinin, A. Grigoriev and others) that contributed to the development of the theory of realism and the formation of Russian literary criticism (P. Annenkov, A. Pypin, A. Veselovsky, A. Potebnya, D. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky and others).

As you know, in art its main direction is laid by the achievements outstanding artists whose discoveries are used by "ordinary talents" (V. Belinsky). Let us characterize the main milestones in the formation and development of Russian realistic art, the conquests of which made it possible to call the second half of the century "the century of Russian literature."

At the origins of Russian realism are I. Krylov and A. Griboyedov. The great fabulist was the first in Russian literature to recreate the "Russian spirit" in his works. The lively colloquial speech of Krylov's fable characters, his thorough knowledge of folk life, the use of folk common sense as a moral standard made Krylov the first truly "folk" writer. Griboyedov expanded the scope of Krylov's interests, focusing on the "drama of ideas" by which educated society lived in the first quarter of the century. His Chatsky in the fight against the "Old Believers" defends national interests from the same positions of "common sense" and popular morality. Krylov and Griboyedov still use the dilapidated principles of classicism (Krylov's didactic fable genre, the "three unities" in Woe from Wit), but their creative power even within these outdated frameworks declares itself in full voice.

In the work of Pushkin, the main problems, the pathos, and the methodology of realism have already been outlined. Pushkin was the first to give the image of the "superfluous person" in "Eugene Onegin", he also outlined the character of the "little man" ("The Stationmaster"), he saw in the people that moral potential that determines the national character ("The Captain's Daughter", "Dubrovsky" ). Under the poet's pen, for the first time, such a hero as Hermann ("Queen of Spades"), a fanatic, obsessed with one idea and not stopping for its implementation in front of any obstacles, arose for the first time; Pushkin also touched upon the theme of emptiness and insignificance of the upper strata of society.

All these problems and images were picked up and developed by Pushkin's contemporaries and subsequent generations of writers. "Superfluous people" and their possibilities are analyzed both in "A Hero of Our Time", and in "Dead Souls", and in "Who is to Blame?" Herzen, and in "Rudin" by Turgenev, and in "Oblomov" by Goncharov, depending on time and circumstances, acquiring new features and colors. The "Little Man" is described by Gogol ("The Overcoat"), Dostoevsky (Poor People"). Landowners-tyrants and "non-smokers" were portrayed by Gogol ("Dead Souls"), Turgenev ("Notes of a Hunter"), Saltykov-Shchedrin("Lord Golovlevs"), Melnikov-Pechersky ("Old Years"), Leskov ("Dumb Artist") and many others. Of course, such types were supplied by Russian reality itself, but it was Pushkin who identified them and developed the basic methods for their depiction. And folk types in their relationship between themselves and the masters arose in objective coverage precisely in the work of Pushkin, subsequently becoming the object of close study by Turgenev, Nekrasov, Pisemsky, L. Tolstoy, and populist writers.

Having passed the period of romantic depiction of unusual characters in exceptional circumstances, Pushkin opened up for the reader the poetry of everyday life, in which the place of the hero was taken by an "ordinary", "small" person.

Pushkin rarely describes the inner world of characters, their psychology is more often revealed through actions or commented on by the author. The depicted characters are perceived as the result of environmental influences, but most often they are given not in development, but as some kind of already formed reality. The process of formation and transformation of the psychology of characters will be mastered in literature in the second half of the century.

Pushkin's role is also great in the development of norms and the expansion of the boundaries of literary speech. The colloquial element of the language, which clearly manifested itself in the work of Krylov and Griboyedov, still has not yet fully established its rights, it was not for nothing that Pushkin called for learning the language from Moscow prosvirens.

Simplicity and precision, "transparency" of Pushkin's style at first seemed to be a loss of the high aesthetic criteria of previous times. But later "the structure of Pushkin's prose, its style-forming principles were adopted by the writers who followed him - with all the individual originality of each of them" .

It is necessary to note one more feature of Pushkin's genius - his universalism. Poetry and prose, dramaturgy, journalism and historical studies - there was no genre in which he would not say a weighty word. The subsequent generations of artists, no matter how great their talent, still basically gravitate towards any one kind.

The development of Russian realism was, of course, not a straightforward and unambiguous process, in the course of which romanticism was consistently and inevitably supplanted by realistic art. On the example of the work of M. Lermontov, this can be seen especially clearly.

In his early works, Lermontov creates romantic images, coming to the conclusion in "A Hero of Our Time" that "the history of the human soul, at least the smallest soul almost more curious and more useful than the history of a whole people ... ". The object of close attention in the novel is not only the hero - Pechorin. With no less care, the author peers into the experiences of "ordinary" people (Maxim Maksimych, Grushnitsky). The method of studying the psychology of Pechorin - confession - is associated with a romantic worldview, however, the general author's attitude towards an objective portrayal of characters determines the constant comparison of Pechorin with other characters, which makes it possible to convincingly motivate those actions of the hero that the romantic would have remained only declared.In different situations and in collisions with different people Pechorin opens up from new sides every time, revealing strength and effeminacy, determination and apathy, disinterestedness and selfishness ... Pechorin, like a romantic hero, experienced everything, lost faith in everything, but the author is not inclined to either blame or justify his hero - a position for romantic artist is unacceptable.

In "A Hero of Our Time" the dynamism of the plot, which would be quite appropriate in the adventure genre, is combined with a deep psychological analysis. This is how the romantic attitude of Lermontov, who embarked on the path of realism, manifested itself here. And having created "The Hero of Our Time", the poet did not completely part with the poetics of romanticism. The heroes of "Mtsyri" and "Demon", in essence, solve the same problems as Pechorin (achieving independence, freedom), only in the poems the experiment is set up, as they say, in its purest form. Almost everything is available to the demon, Mtsyri sacrifices everything for the sake of freedom, but the realist artist sums up the sad result of the desire for an absolute ideal in these works.

Lermontov completed "... begun by G. R. Derzhavin and continued by Pushkin, the process of eliminating genre boundaries in poetry. Most of his poetic texts are "poems" in general, often synthesizing features of different genres."

And Gogol began as a romantic ("Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka"), however, even after "Dead Souls", his most mature realistic creation, romantic situations and characters do not cease to attract the writer ("Rome", the second edition of "Portrait").

At the same time, Gogol refuses the romantic style. Like Pushkin, he prefers to convey the inner world of the characters not through their monologues or "confessions". Gogol's characters certify themselves through deeds or by means of "proper" characteristics. Gogol's narrator plays the role of a commentator, which makes it possible to reveal shades of feelings or details of events. But the writer is not limited to visible side what is happening. For him, what is hidden behind the outer shell is much more important - the "soul". True, Gogol, like Pushkin, basically portrays already established characters.

Gogol laid the foundation for the revival of the religious and instructive trend in Russian literature. Already in the romantic "Evenings" dark forces, devilry, retreat before kindness and religious firmness of spirit. Taras Bulba is animated by the idea of ​​a direct defense of Orthodoxy. And "Dead Souls", inhabited by characters who neglected their spiritual development, were supposed to show the way to the revival of fallen man, according to the author's intention. The appointment of a writer in Russia for Gogol at the end of his career becomes inseparable from the spiritual service to God and people who cannot be limited only by material interests. Gogol's "Reflections on the Divine Liturgy" and "Selected passages from correspondence with friends" are dictated by a sincere desire to educate oneself in the spirit of highly moral Christianity. However, it latest book even by Gogol's admirers was perceived as a creative failure, since social progress, as it seemed to many then, was incompatible with religious "prejudices".

The writers of the "natural school" also did not accept this side of Gogol's creativity, having assimilated only its critical pathos, which in Gogol serves to affirm the spiritual ideal. The "natural school" limited itself, so to speak, to the "material sphere" of the writer's interests.

And subsequently, the realistic trend in literature makes the fidelity of the depiction of reality reproduced "in the forms of life itself" the main criterion of artistry. For its time, this was a huge achievement, since it made it possible to achieve in the art of the word such a degree of lifelikeness that literary characters begin to be perceived as real people and become an integral part of national and even world culture (Onegin, Pechorin, Khlestakov, Manilov, Oblomov, Tartarin, Madame Bovary, Mr. Dombey, Raskolnikov, etc.).

As already noted, a high degree of lifelikeness in literature by no means excludes fiction and fantasy. For example, in Gogol's famous story "The Overcoat", from which, according to Dostoevsky, all Russian literature of the 19th century came out, there is a fantastic story of a ghost that terrifies passers-by. Realism does not renounce the grotesque, symbol, allegory, etc., although all these pictorial means do not determine the main tone of the work. In those cases where the work is based on fantastic assumptions ("History of a City" by M. Saltykov-Shchedrin), they have no place for the irrational principle, without which romanticism cannot do.

Orientation to the facts was the strength of realism, but, as you know, "our shortcomings are a continuation of our virtues." In the 1870s and 1890s, a trend emerged within European realism called "naturalism". Influenced by the success of the natural sciences and positivism ( philosophy O. Konta), writers want to achieve complete objectivity of the reproduced reality. “I don’t want, like Balzac, to decide what the structure of human life should be, to be a politician, philosopher, moralist ... The picture I draw is a simple analysis of a piece of reality, such as it is,” said one of the ideologists of “naturalism” E. Zola.

Despite internal contradictions, the group of French naturalist writers that had developed around Zola (br. E. and J. Goncourt, Ch. Huysmans and others) professed a common view on the task of art: the image of the inevitability and invincibility of rough social reality and cruel human instincts that everyone is drawn in a stormy and chaotic "stream of life" into the abyss of passions and actions that are unpredictable in their consequences.

The human psychology of "naturalists" is rigidly determined by the environment. Hence the attention to the smallest details of life, fixed with the dispassionateness of the camera, and at the same time, the biological predestination of the fate of the characters is emphasized. In an effort to write "according to the dictation of life", naturalists tried to erase any manifestation of the subjective vision of the problems and objects of the image. At the same time, pictures of the most unattractive aspects of reality appear in their works. The writer, naturalists argued, like the doctor, has no right to ignore any phenomenon, no matter how disgusting it may be. With such an attitude, the biological principle involuntarily began to look more important than the social. The books of naturalists shocked adherents of traditional aesthetics, but nevertheless, later writers (S. Crane, F. Norris, G. Hauptman and others) used individual discoveries of naturalism - primarily the expansion of the field of view of art.

In Russia, naturalism did not receive special development. We can only talk about some naturalistic tendencies in the work of A. Pisemsky and D. Mamin-Sibiryak. The only Russian writer who declaratively professed the principles of French naturalism was P. Boborykin.

The literature and journalism of the post-reform era gave rise in the thinking part of Russian society to the conviction that the revolutionary reorganization of society would immediately lead to the flowering of all the best aspects of the individual, since there would be no oppression and lies. Very few people did not share this confidence, and first of all F. Dostoevsky.

The author of "Poor People" was aware that the rejection of the norms of traditional morality and the precepts of Christianity would lead to anarchy and a bloody war of all against all. As a Christian, Dostoevsky knew that in every human soul can prevail

God or the devil, and that it depends on each one to whom he will give preference. But the path to God is not easy. To get closer to him, you need to be imbued with the suffering of others. Without understanding and empathy for others, no one will be able to become a full-fledged person. With all his work, Dostoevsky proved: “A person on the surface of the earth has no right to turn away and ignore what is happening on earth, and there are higher moral reasons for it."

Unlike his predecessors, Dostoevsky strove not to capture the established, typical forms of life and psychology, but to capture and designate the emerging social conflicts and types. His works are always dominated by crisis situations and characters outlined in large, sharp strokes. The "dramas of ideas", the intellectual and psychological fights of the characters, are brought to the fore in his novels, and the individual is inseparable from the universal, for single fact are "world issues".

Finding the loss of moral guidelines in modern society, the impotence and fear of the individual in the grip of an unspiritual reality, Dostoevsky did not believe that a person should capitulate to "external circumstances". He, according to Dostoevsky, can and must overcome "chaos" - and then, as a result of the common efforts of everyone, "world harmony" will reign, based on overcoming unbelief, selfishness and anarchic self-will. A person who has embarked on the thorny path of self-improvement will face material deprivation, moral suffering, and misunderstanding of others ("Idiot"). The most difficult thing is not to become a "superman", like Raskolnikov, and, seeing others only as "rags", to indulge any desire, but to learn to forgive and love without demanding a reward, like Prince Myshkin or Alyosha Karamazov.

Like no other leading artist of his time, Dostoevsky is close to the spirit of Christianity. In his work, the problem of the original sinfulness of man is analyzed in various aspects ("Demons", "Teenager", "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man", "The Brothers Karamazov"). According to the writer, the result of the original fall is world evil, which gives rise to one of the most acute social problems - the problem of theomachism. "Atheistic expressions of unprecedented power" are contained in the images of Stavrogin, Versilov, Ivan Karamazov, but their throwing does not prove the victory of evil and pride. This is the way to God through His initial denial, the proof of God's existence by way of contradiction. The ideal hero in Dostoevsky must inevitably take as a model the life and teachings of the One who for the writer is the only moral guide in the world of doubt and hesitation (Prince Myshkin, Alyosha Karamazov).

With the ingenious instinct of the artist, Dostoevsky felt that socialism, under the banner of which many honest and intelligent people rush, is the result of the decline of religion ("Demons"). The writer predicted that on the path of social progress humanity would face severe upheavals, and directly connected them with the loss of faith and its replacement by socialist doctrine. The depth of Dostoevsky's insight was confirmed in the 20th century by S. Bulgakov, who already had reason to assert: "... Socialism today acts not only as a neutral area social policy, but, usually, and as a religion based on atheism and man-godism, on the self-deification of man and human labor and on the recognition of the elemental forces of nature and social life as the only building principle of history ". In the USSR, all this was realized in practice. All means of propaganda and agitation, among which literature played one of the leading roles, they introduced into the consciousness of the masses that the proletariat, always led by the leader and the party, always right in any undertakings, and creative labor are forces designed to transform the world and create a society of universal happiness (a kind of Kingdom of God on earth). The only thing Dostoevsky was mistaken about was his assumption that the moral crisis and the subsequent spiritual and social cataclysms would erupt primarily in Europe.

Along with "eternal questions", Dostoevsky the realist is also characterized by attention to the most ordinary and at the same time hidden from the mass consciousness facts of modernity. Together with the author, these problems are given to the heroes of the writer's works, and comprehension of the truth is very difficult for them. The struggle of the individual with the social environment and with himself determines the special polyphonic form of Dostoevsky's novels.

The author-narrator takes part in the action as an equal, and even a minor character ("chronicler" in "Demons"). The hero of Dostoevsky not only has an inner secret world that the reader will have to know; he, according to M. Bakhtin’s definition, “most of all thinks about what others think and can think about him, he strives to get ahead of someone else’s consciousness, every other thought about him, every point of view on him. With all his own moments of his confessions, he tries to anticipate the possible definition and evaluation of him by others, to guess these possible other people's words about him, interrupting his speech with imaginary other people's remarks. In an effort to guess other people's opinions and arguing with them in advance, Dostoevsky's heroes, as it were, call to life their doubles, in whose speeches and actions the reader receives a justification or denial of the position of the characters (Raskolnikov - Luzhin and Svidrigailov in "Crime and Punishment", Stavrogin - Shatov and Kirillov in "Demons").

The dramatic intensity of the action in Dostoevsky's novels is also due to the fact that he brings events as close as possible to the "topics of the day", sometimes drawing plots from newspaper notes. Almost always in the center of Dostoevsky's work is a crime. However, behind the sharp, almost detective plot, there is not a desire to solve an ingenious logical problem. Criminal events and motives are elevated by the writer to the level of capacious philosophical symbols ("Crime and Punishment", "Demons", "The Brothers Karamazov").

The scene of action of Dostoevsky's novels is Russia, and often only its capital, and at the same time the writer received worldwide recognition, because for many decades ahead he anticipated the general interest in global problems for the 20th century ("superman" and the rest of the masses, "man of the crowd" and state machine, faith and spiritual anarchy, etc.). The writer created a world inhabited by complex, contradictory characters, saturated dramatic conflicts, for the solution of which there are no and cannot be simple recipes - one of the reasons why in Soviet times Dostoevsky's work was either declared reactionary or hushed up.

Dostoevsky's work outlined the main direction of literature and culture of the 20th century. Dostoevsky inspired Z. Freud in many ways, A. Einstein, T. Mann, W. Faulkner, F. Fellini, A. Camus, Akutagawa and other outstanding thinkers and artists spoke about the enormous influence on them of the works of the Russian writer.

L. Tolstoy also made a huge contribution to the development of Russian literature. Already in his first published story "Childhood" (1852), Tolstoy acted as an innovative artist.

The detail and clarity of his description of everyday life are combined with a microanalysis of the complex and mobile psychology of the child.

Tolstoy uses his own method of depicting the human psyche, observing the "dialectics of the soul." The writer seeks to trace the formation of character and does not emphasize its "positive" and "negative" sides. He argued that it makes no sense to talk about some "defining trait" of the character. "... In my life I have never met an evil, proud, kind, or intelligent person. In humility I always find a suppressed desire for pride, in the smartest book I find stupidity, in the conversation of the stupidest person I find smart things, etc. etc., etc.".

The writer was sure that if people learn to understand the multi-layered thoughts and feelings of others, then most psychological and social conflicts will lose their sharpness. The task of the writer, according to Tolstoy, is to teach others to understand. And for this it is necessary that truth in all its manifestations become the hero of literature. This goal is already declared in the "Sevastopol Tales" (1855-1856), which combines the documentary accuracy of what is depicted and the depth of psychological analysis.

The tendentiousness of art promoted by Chernyshevsky and his supporters turned out to be unacceptable for Tolstoy, if only because the a priori idea that determines the selection of facts and the angle of view was put at the forefront in the work. The writer almost demonstratively adjoins the camp of "pure art", which rejects all "didactics". But the position "above the fight" turned out to be unacceptable for him. In 1864, he wrote the play "Infected Family" (it was not printed and staged in the theater), in which he expressed his sharp rejection of "nihilism". In the future, all of Tolstoy's work is devoted to the overthrow of hypocritical bourgeois morality and social inequality, although he did not adhere to any particular political doctrine.

Already at the beginning of his creative path, having lost faith in the possibility of changing social orders, especially by violent means, the writer is looking for at least personal happiness in the family circle ("Roman of the Russian Landowner", 1859), however, having constructed his ideal of a woman capable of selflessness in the name of her husband and children, comes to the conclusion that this ideal is also unrealizable.

Tolstoy longed to find a model of life in which there would be no place at all for any artificiality, any falsehood. For a while, he believed that one could be happy among simple, undemanding people close to nature. It is only necessary to completely share their way of life and be content with the few that form the basis of the "correct" being (free labor, love, duty, family ties - "Cossacks", 1863). And Tolstoy also strives in real life to be imbued with the interests of the people, but his direct contacts with the peasants and the work of the 1860s and 1870s reveal an ever-deepening gulf between the peasant and the master.

Tolstoy also tries to discover the meaning of modernity, which eludes him, by delving into the historical past, by returning to the origins of the national worldview. He came up with the idea of ​​a huge epic canvas, in which the most significant moments of the life of Russia would be reflected and comprehended. In War and Peace (1863-1869), Tolstoy's heroes painfully strive to comprehend the meaning of life and, together with the author, are imbued with the conviction that it is possible to comprehend the thoughts and feelings of people only at the cost of renouncing one's own egoistic desires and gaining the experience of suffering. Some, like Andrei Bolkonsky, learn this truth before they die; others - Pierre Bezukhov - find it, rejecting skepticism and defeating the power of the flesh with the power of reason, find themselves in high love; the third - Platon Karataev - this truth is given from birth, because they embody "simplicity" and "truth". According to the author, Karataev's life "as he himself looked at it, did not make sense as a separate life. It made sense only as a particle of the whole, which he constantly felt." This moral position is also illustrated by the example of Napoleon and Kutuzov. The gigantic will and passions of the French emperor succumb to the actions of the Russian commander, devoid of external effect, for the latter expresses the will of the entire nation, united in the face of formidable danger.

In creativity and in life, Tolstoy strove for the harmony of thought and feeling, which could be achieved with a general understanding of individual particulars and overall picture universe. The path to such harmony is long and thorny, but it is impossible to shorten it. Tolstoy, like Dostoevsky, did not accept the revolutionary doctrine. Paying tribute to the disinterested faith of the "socialists", the writer nevertheless saw salvation not in the revolutionary demolition of the state system, but in the unswerving adherence to the gospel commandments, both simple and just as difficult to fulfill. He was sure that one should not "invent life and demand its implementation."

But the restless soul and mind of Tolstoy could not fully accept the Christian doctrine either. At the end of the 19th century, the writer opposes the official church, which is largely related to the state bureaucracy, and tries to correct Christianity, create his own doctrine, which, despite numerous followers ("Tolstoyism"), had no future prospects.

In his declining years, having become a "teacher of life" for millions in his homeland and far beyond its borders, Tolstoy still constantly had doubts about his own rightness. Only in one thing he was unshakable: the custodian of the highest truth is the people, with its simplicity and naturalness. The interest of the decadents in the gloomy and hidden twists of the human psyche for the writer meant a departure from art, which actively serves humanistic ideals. True, in the last years of his life, Tolstoy was inclined to think that art is a luxury that not everyone needs: first of all, society needs to comprehend the simplest moral truths, strict observance of which would eliminate many "damned questions".

And one more name cannot be dispensed with when speaking about the evolution of Russian realism. This is A. Chekhov. He refuses to recognize the complete dependence of the individual on the environment. "Dramatically conflicting positions in Chekhov do not consist in opposing the volitional orientation of different sides, but in objectively caused contradictions, before which the individual will is powerless" . In other words, the writer gropes for those painful points of human nature that will later be explained by congenital complexes, genetic programming, etc. Chekhov also refuses to study the possibilities and desires of the "little man", the object of his study is an "average" person in all respects. Like the characters of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Chekhov's heroes are also woven from contradictions; their thought also aspires to the knowledge of the Truth, but they do not succeed well, and almost none of them thinks about God.

Chekhov discovers a new type of personality born of Russian reality - the type of an honest but limited doctrinaire who firmly believes in the power of social "progress" and judges living life using socio-literary templates (Dr. Lvov in Ivanov, Lida in Dom with a mezzanine, etc.). Such people talk a lot and willingly about duty and the need for honest work, about virtue, although it is clear that behind all their tirades there is a lack of genuine feeling - their tireless activity is akin to mechanical.

Those actors with whom Chekhov sympathizes do not like big words and meaningful gestures, even if they are experiencing a real drama. Tragic in the understanding of the writer is not something exceptional. In modern times, it is everyday and ordinary. A person gets used to the fact that there is no other life and cannot be, and this, according to Chekhov, is the most terrible social ailment. At the same time, the tragic in Chekhov is inseparable from the funny, satire is merged with lyrics, vulgarity coexists with the sublime, as a result of which an "undercurrent" appears in Chekhov's works, the subtext becomes no less significant than the text.

Dealing with the "little things" of life, Chekhov gravitates towards an almost plotless narrative ("Ionych", "Steppe", " The Cherry Orchard"), to the imaginary incompleteness of the action. The center of gravity in his works is transferred to the story of the spiritual hardening of the character ("Gooseberry", "The Man in the Case") or, on the contrary, his awakening ("The Bride", "Duel").

Chekhov invites the reader to empathy, not saying everything that is known to the author, but pointing to the direction of the "search" only in separate details, which he often grows into symbols (a dead bird in "The Seagull", a berry in "Gooseberry"). "Both symbols and subtext, combining opposite aesthetic properties (of a concrete image and an abstract generalization, a real text and an "inner" thought in the subtext), reflect the general trend of realism, which has intensified in Chekhov's work, towards the interpenetration of heterogeneous artistic elements."

By the end of the 19th century, Russian literature had accumulated a huge aesthetic and ethical experience, which won world recognition. And yet, for many writers, this experience already seemed dead. Some (V. Korolenko, M. Gorky) tend to merge realism with romance, others (K. Balmont, F. Sologub, V. Bryusov and others) believe that "copying" reality has become obsolete.

The loss of clear criteria in aesthetics is accompanied by a "crisis of consciousness" in the philosophical and social spheres. D. Merezhkovsky in the pamphlet "On the Causes of the Decline and New Trends in Modern Russian Literature" (1893) concludes that the crisis in Russian literature is due to an excessive enthusiasm for the ideals of revolutionary democracy, which requires art, above all, civic sharpness. The obvious failure of the precepts of the sixties gave rise to public pessimism and a tendency towards individualism. Merezhkovsky wrote: “The latest theory of knowledge has erected an indestructible dam that forever separated the solid earth accessible to people from the boundless and dark ocean that lies beyond the limits of our knowledge. And the waves of this ocean can no longer invade the inhabited earth, the realm of exact knowledge. .. Never before has the boundary line of science and faith been so sharp and inexorable... Wherever we go, no matter how we hide behind the dam of scientific criticism, with our whole being we feel the proximity of mystery, the proximity of the ocean. alone! No enslaved mysticism of the past ages can compare with this horror. Never before have people felt the need to believe so much and so understood the impossibility of believing with reason. L. Tolstoy also spoke about the crisis of art in a somewhat different way: "Literature was a blank sheet, and now it is all written over. We must turn it over or get another one."

Reached highest point the heyday of realism seemed to many to have finally exhausted its possibilities. Symbolism, which originated in France, claimed a new word in art.

Russian symbolism, like all previous trends in art, dissociated itself from old tradition. Yet the Russian Symbolists grew up on the ground prepared by such giants as Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov, and could not ignore their experience and artistic discoveries. "... Symbolic prose actively involved the ideas, themes, images, techniques of the great Russian realists in its own artistic world, forming by this constant comparison one of the defining properties of symbolic art and thus giving many themes of realistic literature of the 19th century a second reflected life in the art of the 20th century ". And later "critical" realism, which was declared abolished in Soviet times, continued to nourish the aesthetics of L. Leonov, M. Sholokhov, V. Grossman, V. Belov, V. Rasputin, F. Abramov and many other writers.

Realism

Realism (- material, real) is an artistic direction in art and literature, which is established in the first third of the 19th century. I. A. Krylov, A. S. Griboyedov, A. S. Pushkin stood at the origins of realism in Russia (realism appeared somewhat later in Western literature, its first representatives were Stendhal and O. de Balzac).

features of realism. The principle of life's truth, which is guided by the realist artist in his work, trying to give the most complete reflection of life in its typical properties. The fidelity of the image of reality, reproduced in the forms of life itself, is the main criterion of artistry.

Social analysis, historicism of thinking. It is realism that explains the phenomena of life, establishes their causes and consequences on a socio-historical basis. In other words, realism is unthinkable without historicism, which involves the understanding of a given phenomenon in its conditionality, in its development and connection with other phenomena. Historicism is the basis of the worldview and artistic method of the realist writer, a kind of key to the knowledge of reality, allowing you to connect the past, present and future. In the past, the artist is looking for answers to topical issues of the present, and modernity comprehends as a result of previous historical development.

Critical portrayal of life. Writers deeply and truthfully show the negative phenomena of reality, focus on exposing the existing order. But at the same time, realism is not without life-affirming pathos, because it is based on positive ideals - patriotism, sympathy for the masses, the search for a positive hero in life, faith in the inexhaustible possibilities of man, the dream of a bright future for Russia (for example, "Dead Souls"). That is why in modern literary criticism, instead of the concept of "critical realism", which was first introduced by N. G. Chernyshevsky, they most often talk about "classical realism". Typical characters in typical circumstances, that is, the characters were portrayed in close connection with the social environment that brought them up, formed them in certain socio-historical conditions.

The relationship between the individual and society is the leading problem posed by realistic literature. For realism, the drama of these relationships is important. As a rule, realistic works focus on outstanding personalities, dissatisfied with life, “breaking out” of their environment, people who are able to rise above society and challenge it. Their behavior and actions become the subject of close attention and research for realist writers.

The versatility of the characters' characters: their actions, deeds, speech, lifestyle and inner world, the "dialectic of the soul", which is revealed in the psychological details of her emotional experiences. Thus, realism expands the possibilities of writers in the creative development of the world, in the creation of a contradictory and complex personality structure as a result of the subtlest penetration into the depths of the human psyche.

Expressiveness, brightness, figurativeness, accuracy of the Russian literary language, enriched with elements of lively, colloquial speech, which realist writers draw from the national Russian language.

A variety of genres (epic, lyrical, dramatic, lyrical epic, satirical) in which all the richness of the content of realistic literature finds expression.

The reflection of reality does not exclude fiction and fantasy (Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Sukhovo-Kobylin), although these artistic means do not determine the main tone of the work.

Typology of Russian realism. The question of the typology of realism is connected with the disclosure of well-known patterns that determine the dominant of certain types of realism and their change.

In many literary studies there are attempts to establish typical varieties (trends) of realism: Renaissance, enlightenment (or didactic), romantic, sociological, critical, naturalistic, revolutionary-democratic, socialist, typical, empirical, syncretic, philosophical and psychological, intellectual, spiral, universal, monumental... Since all these terms are rather conditional (terminological confusion) and there are no clear boundaries between them, we suggest using the concept of “stages of development of realism”. Let us trace these stages, each of which takes shape in the conditions of its time and is artistically justified in its uniqueness. The complexity of the problem of the typology of realism lies in the fact that typologically unique varieties of realism not only replace each other, but also coexist and develop simultaneously. Consequently, the concept of "stage" does not mean at all that within the same chronological framework there cannot be another kind of flow, earlier or later. That is why it is necessary to correlate the work of this or that realist writer with the work of other realist artists, while revealing the individual originality of each of them, revealing the closeness between groups of writers.

First third of the 19th century. Krylov's realistic fables reflect the real relations of people in society, live scenes are drawn, the content of which is diverse - they could be everyday, social, philosophical and historical.

Griboyedov created "high comedy" ("Woe from Wit"), that is, a comedy close to drama, reflecting in it the ideas that educated society lived in the first quarter of a century. Chatsky, in the fight against the serf-owners and conservatives, defends national interests from the standpoint of common sense and popular morality. The play presents typical characters and circumstances.

In Pushkin's work, problems and the methodology of realism have already been outlined. In the novel “Eugene Onegin”, the poet recreated the “Russian spirit”, gave a new, objective principle for depicting the hero, was the first to show the “extra person”, and in the story “The Stationmaster” - the “little person”. In the people, Pushkin saw the moral potential that determines the national character. In the novel "The Captain's Daughter" the historicism of the writer's thinking was manifested - both in the correct reflection of reality, and in the accuracy of social analysis, and in understanding historical pattern phenomena, and in the ability to convey the typical features of a person’s character, to show him as a product of a certain social environment.

30s of the XIX century. In this era of "timelessness", public inaction, only the bold voices of A. S. Pushkin, V. G. Belinsky and M. Yu. Lermontov were heard. The critic saw in Lermontov a worthy successor to Pushkin. Man in his work bears the dramatic features of the time. in destiny

Pechorin, the writer reflected the fate of his generation, his "age" ("A Hero of Our Time"). But if Pushkin devotes the main attention to the description of the actions, actions of the character, gives "outlines of character", then Lermontov focuses on the inner world of the hero, on an in-depth psychological analysis of his actions and experiences, on the "history of the human soul".

40s of the XIX century. During this period, the realists received the name " natural school» (N. V. Gogol, A. I. Herzen, D. V. Grigorovich, N. A. Nekrasov). The works of these writers are characterized by accusatory pathos, rejection of social reality, increased attention to everyday life, everyday life. Gogol did not find the embodiment of his lofty ideals in the world around him, and therefore he was convinced that in the conditions of contemporary Russia, the ideal and beauty of life can be expressed only through the denial of ugly reality. The satirist explores the material, material and everyday basis of life, its "invisible" features and the spiritually poor characters that arise from it, firmly confident in their dignity and right.

Second half of the 19th century. Creativity of writers of this time (I. A. Goncharov, A. N. Ostrovsky, I. S. Turgenev, N. S. Leskov, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, L. N. Tolstoy, F. M. Dostoevsky, V G. Korolenko, A.P. Chekhov) distinguishes a qualitatively new stage in the development of realism: they not only critically comprehend reality, but also actively look for ways to transform it, reveal close attention to the spiritual life of a person, penetrate into the “dialectics of the soul”, create a world populated by complex, contradictory characters, full of dramatic conflicts. The works of writers are characterized by subtle psychologism and great philosophical generalizations.

The turn of the XIX-XX centuries. The features of the era were most clearly expressed in the works of A. I. Kuprin, I. A. Bunin. They sensitively captured the general spiritual and social atmosphere in the country, deeply and faithfully reflected the unique pictures of the life of the most diverse segments of the population, created an integral and truthful picture of Russia. They are characterized by such themes and problems as the continuity of generations, the legacy of centuries, the root ties of man with the past, the Russian character and features of national history, the harmonious world of nature and the world of social relations (devoid of poetry and harmony, personifying cruelty and violence), love and death , the fragility and fragility of human happiness, the mysteries of the Russian soul, loneliness and the tragic predestination of human existence, the path of liberation from spiritual oppression. The original and original creativity of writers organically continues best traditions Russian realistic literature, and above all a deep insight into the essence of the depicted life, the disclosure of the relationship between the environment and the individual, attention to the social background, the expression of the ideas of humanism.

pre-October decade. A new vision of the world in connection with the processes taking place in Russia in all areas of life determined the new face of realism, which differed significantly from classical realism in its "modernity". New figures came to the fore - representatives of a special trend within the realist trend - neorealism ("renewed" realism): I. S. Shmelev, L. N. Andreev, M. M. Prishvin, E. I. Zamyatin, S. N. Sergeev-Tsensky , A. N. Tolstoy, A. M. Remizov, B. K. Zaitsev and others. They are characterized by a departure from the sociological understanding of reality; mastering the sphere of the “earthly”, deepening the concrete sensory perception of the world, artistic study of the subtle movements of the soul, nature and man coming into contact, which eliminates alienation and brings closer to the original, unchanging nature of being; a return to the hidden values ​​of the folk-village element, capable of renewing life in the spirit of "eternal" ideals (pagan, mystical coloring of the depicted); comparison of the bourgeois urban and rural way of life; the idea of ​​the incompatibility of the natural force of life, existential good with social evil; connection of the historical and metaphysical (next to the features of everyday or concrete historical reality, there is a “superreal” background, mythological overtones); the motif of cleansing love as a kind of symbolic sign of the all-human natural unconscious principle, bringing enlightened peace.

Soviet period. The distinctive features of socialist realism that arose at that time were party spirit, nationality, the depiction of reality in its "revolutionary development", propaganda of the heroism and romance of socialist construction. In the works of M. Gorky, M. A. Sholokhov, A. A. Fadeev, L. M. Leonov, V. V. Mayakovsky, K. A. Fedin, N. A. Ostrovsky, A. N. Tolstoy, A. T. Tvardovsky and others affirmed a different reality, a different person, different ideals, a different aesthetics, principles underlying the moral code of a fighter for communism. A new method was promoted in art, which was politicized: it had a pronounced social orientation, expressed the state ideology. In the center of the works was usually a positive hero, inextricably linked with the team, which constantly had a beneficial effect on the individual. The main sphere of application of the forces of such a hero is creative work. It is no coincidence that the production novel has become one of the most common genres.

20-30s of the XX century. Many writers, forced to live under a dictatorial regime, under severe censorship, managed to preserve their inner freedom, showed the ability to remain silent, be careful in their assessments, switch to allegorical language - they were devoted to the truth, the true art of realism. The genre of dystopia was born, in which severe criticism of a totalitarian society based on the suppression of the individual and individual freedom was given. The fates of A. P. Platonov, M. A. Bulgakov, E. I. Zamyatin, A. A. Akhmatova, M. M. Zoshchenko, O. E. Mandelstam were tragically destined for a long time to be deprived of the opportunity to publish in the Soviet Union.

The period of the "thaw" (mid-50s - first half of the 60s). In it historical time loudly and confidently declared themselves young poets of the sixties (E. A. Yevtushenko, A. A. Voznesensky, B. A. Akhmadulina, R. I. Rozhdestvensky, B. Sh. Okudzhava, etc.), who became the “rulers of thoughts” of his generation, together with representatives of the "third wave" of emigration (V. P. Aksenov, A. V. Kuznetsov, A. T. Gladilin, G. N. Vladimov,

A.I. Solzhenitsyn, N.M. Korzhavin, S.D. Dovlatov, V.E. Maksimov, V.N. Voinovich, V.P. of the human soul in the conditions of the command-administrative system and internal opposition to it, confession, moral quest of heroes, their release, emancipation, romanticism and self-irony, innovation in the field artistic language and style, genre diversity.

Last decades of the XX century. The new generation of writers, who already lived in somewhat relaxed political conditions within the country, came up with lyrical, urban and rural poetry and prose that did not fit into the rigid framework of socialist realism (N. M. Rubtsov, A. V. Zhigulin,

V. N. Sokolov, Yu. V. Trifonov, Ch. T. Aitmatov, V. I. Belov, F. A. Abramov, V. G. Rasputin, V. P. Astafiev, S. P. Zalygin, V. M. Shukshin, F. A. Iskander). The leading themes of their work are the revival of traditional morality and the relationship between man and nature, which manifested the closeness of the writers to the traditions of Russian classical realism. The works of this time are imbued with a sense of attachment to the native land, and hence responsibility for what is happening on it, a sense of the irreparable spiritual losses due to the rupture of age-old ties between nature and man. Artists reflect on the turning point in the sphere of moral values, the shifts in society in which the human soul is forced to survive, reflect on the catastrophic consequences for those who lose historical memory, the experience of generations.

The latest Russian literature. In the literary process of recent years, literary critics fix two trends: postmodernism (blurring of the boundaries of realism, consciousness of the illusory nature of what is happening, a mixture of different artistic methods, stylistic diversity, increased influence of avant-garde - A. G. Bitov, Sasha Sokolov, V. O. Pelevin, T. N Tolstaya, T. Yu. Kibirov, D. A. Prigov) and post-realism (traditional for realism attention to the fate of a private person, tragically lonely, in vain of everyday life that humiliates him, losing moral guidelines, trying to self-determine - V. S. Ma- Kanin, L. S. Petrushevskaya).

So, realism as a literary and artistic system has a powerful potential for continuous renewal, which manifests itself in one or another transitional era for Russian literature. In the work of writers who continue the traditions of realism, there is a search for new themes, heroes, plots, genres, poetic means, a new way of talking with the reader.