The artistic originality of romanticism. Romanticism: representatives, distinctive features, literary forms

Romanticism is a trend in art and literature that arose at the end of the 18th century in Germany and spread throughout Europe and America.

Signs of romanticism:

Emphasized attention to the human personality, individuality, inner peace person.

An image of an exceptional character in exceptional circumstances, a strong, rebellious personality, irreconcilable with the world. This person is not only free in spirit, but also special and unusual. More often than not, this is a loner that most other people do not understand.

The cult of feelings, nature and the natural state of man. Denial of rationalism, the cult of reason and order.

The existence of "two worlds": the world of the ideal, the dream and the world of reality. There is an irreparable inconsistency between them. This brings romantic artists into a mood of despair and hopelessness, "world sorrow".

Appeal to folk stories, folklore, interest in the historical past, the search for historical consciousness. An active interest in the national, folk. Raising national self-awareness, focusing on originality among the creative circles of European peoples.

In literature and painting, detailed descriptions of exotic nature, stormy elements, as well as images of "natural" people, "not spoiled" by civilization, are becoming popular.

Romanticism completely abandoned the use of plots about antiquity, which were popular in the era of classicism. It led to the emergence and establishment of new literary genres - song ballads based on folklore, lyric songs, romances, historical novels.

Outstanding representatives of romanticism in literature: George Gordon Byron, Victor Hugo, William Blake, Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, Walter Scott, Heinrich Heine, Friedrich Schiller, Georges Sand, Mikhail Lermontov, Alexander Pushkin, Adam Mitskevich.

Romanticism - (from French romantism) - ideological and aesthetic and the artistic direction that took shape in European art at the turn of the 18th - 19th centuries and dominated music and literature for seven to eight decades *. The interpretation of the word "romanticism" itself is ambiguous, and the very appearance of the term "romanticism" in different sources is interpreted in different ways.

So originally the word romance in Spain meant lyrical and heroic songs-romances. Subsequently, the word was transferred to epic poems about knights - novels. A little later, prose stories about the same knights began to be called novels *. In the 17th century, the epithet served to characterize adventurous and heroic plots and works written in Romance languages, as opposed to the languages ​​of classical antiquity.

For the first time, romanticism as a literary term appears in Novalis.

In the 18th century in England, the term "romanticism" came into widespread use after it was put forward by the Schlegel brothers and appeared in the journal Atoneum published by them. Romanticism began to denote the literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

In the second half of the 18th century, the writer Germaine de Stael transferred the term to France, and then it spread to other countries.

German philosopher Friedrich Schlegel derived the name of a new direction in literature from the term "novel", believing that it is this genre, in contrast to English and classicistic tragedy, that expresses the spirit modern era... And, indeed, the novel flourished in the 19th century, which gave the world many masterpieces of this genre.

Already at the end of the 18th century, it was customary to call everything fantastic or, in general, extraordinary (what happens "as in novels") romantic. Therefore, the new poetry, which rarely differs from the classicistic and educational poetry that preceded it, was also called romantic, and the novel was recognized as its main genre.

At the end of the 18th century, the word "romanticism" began to denote an artistic direction that opposed itself to classicism. Having inherited many of its progressive features from the Enlightenment era, romanticism, at the same time, was associated with deep disappointment both in the Enlightenment itself and in the successes of the entire new civilization as a whole *.

Romantics, in contrast to the classicists (who made their support the culture of antiquity), relied on the culture of the Middle Ages and modern times.

In search of spiritual renewal, romantics often came to the idealization of the past, viewed, as romantic, Christian literature and religious myths.

It is the focus on the inner world of the individual in Christian literature that became the prerequisite for romantic art.

The master of minds at that time was the English poet George Gordon Byron. He creates " hero XIX centuries ”, - the image of a lonely person, a brilliant thinker who has no place for himself in life.

Deep disappointment in life, in history, pessimism is felt in many sensations of that time. An agitated, excited tone, a gloomy, thickened atmosphere - these are the characteristic signs of romantic art.

Romanticism was born under the sign of the denial of the cult of the omnipotent reason. And therefore, the true knowledge of life, as the romantics believe, is not provided by science, not philosophy, but art. Only an artist with the help of his ingenious intuition can understand reality.

Romantics elevate the artist to a pedestal, almost deify him, for he is endowed with a special sensitivity, a special intuition that allows him to penetrate into the essence of things. Society cannot forgive the artist for his genius, it cannot understand his insights, and therefore he is in sharp contradiction with society, rebelling against it, hence one of the main themes of romanticism - the theme of the artist's deep misunderstanding, his rebellion and defeat, his loneliness and death.

Romantics dreamed not of a partial improvement in life, but of a complete solution of all its contradictions. Romantics were characterized by a thirst for perfection - one of important features romantic outlook.

In this regard, VG Belinsky's term "romanticism" extends to the entire historical and spiritual life: "Romanticism is not only one art, not just poetry: its sources, in which the sources of both art and poetry - in life. "*

Despite the penetration of romanticism into all aspects of life, in the hierarchy of the arts of romanticism, music was given the most honorable place, since feeling reigns in it and therefore creativity finds the highest goal in it a romantic artist... For music, from the point of view of romantics, does not comprehend the world in abstract terms, but reveals its emotional essence. Schlegel, Hoffmann - the largest representatives of romanticism - argued that thinking with sounds is higher than thinking in concepts. For music embodies feelings so deep and elemental that they cannot be expressed in words.

In an effort to assert their ideals, romantics turn not only to religion and the past, but also take an interest in various arts and the natural world, exotic countries and folklore. They oppose material values ​​to spiritual ones; it is in the life of the spirit of romance that they see the highest value.

The inner world of a person becomes the main thing - his microcosm, a craving for the unconscious, the cult of the individual generates a genius that does not obey generally accepted rules.

In addition to lyrics, in the world of musical romanticism, fantastic images were of great importance. Fantastic images gave a sharp contrast to reality, while simultaneously intertwining with it. Thanks to this, science fiction itself revealed different facets to the listener. Science fiction acted as freedom of imagination, a play of thoughts and feelings. The hero fell into a fairy tale, unreal world, in which good and evil, beauty and ugliness collided.

Romantic artists sought salvation in flight from the brutal reality.

Another sign of romanticism is an interest in nature. For romantics, nature is the island of salvation from the troubles of civilization. Nature consoles and heals the restless soul of the romantic hero.

In an effort to show the most diverse people, to reflect all the diversity of life, composers - romantics chose the art of musical portraiture, which often led to parody and grotesque.

In music, the direct outpouring of feeling becomes philosophical, and the landscape and portrait are imbued with lyricism and draw to generalizations.

The romantic interest in life in all its manifestations is inextricably linked with the desire to recreate the lost harmony and integrity. Hence - the interest in history, folklore, interpreted as the most integral, undistorted by civilization.

It is the interest in folklore in the era of romanticism that contributes to the emergence of several national schools of composition, reflecting local musical traditions. Under the conditions of national schools, romanticism retained much in common and at the same time showed a noticeable originality in stylistics, plots, ideas, and favorite genres.

Since romanticism saw in all arts a single meaning and a single main goal - merging with the mysterious essence of life, the idea of ​​a synthesis of arts acquired a new meaning.

This is how the idea arises of bringing all types of art closer together, so that music can draw and tell about the sounds of the content of the novel and tragedy, poetry in its musicality would approach the art of sound, and painting would convey the images of literature.

The combination of various types of art made it possible to increase the impact of the impression, strengthened the greater integrity of perception. In the fusion of music, theater, painting, poetry, color effects, new opportunities have opened up for all types of arts.

In literature, updates are made to the artistic handicap, new genres are created, such as historical novels, fantastic stories, lyric - epic poems. The main character of what is being created becomes the lyrics. Possibilities poetic word were expanded due to ambiguity, condensed metaphor and discoveries in the field of versification, rhythm.

It becomes possible not only the synthesis of arts, but also the penetration of one genre into another, there is a mixture of the tragic and the comic, high and low, a vivid demonstration of the conventions of forms begins.

Thus, the image of beauty becomes the main aesthetic principle in romantic literature. The criterion of the romantically beautiful is the new, the unknown. The mixture of the unknown and the unknown romance is considered a particularly valuable, especially expressive means.

In addition to new criteria for beauty, special theories of romantic humor or irony have appeared. They are often found in Byron, Hoffmann, they depict a limited outlook on life. It is from this irony that the sarcasm of the romantics will then grow. There will be a grotesque portrait of Hoffmann, the impetuous passion of Byron and the antithesis of passion in Hugo.

CHAPTER I. ROMANCE AND SELF-EXPERIENCE

A ROMANTIC HERO IN THE WORKS OF AS PUSHKIN.

Romanticism in Russia arose somewhat later than in the West. The soil for the emergence of Russian romanticism was not only the French bourgeois revolution, the war of 1812, but also the Russian reality of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

As noted, V.A. Zhukovsky was the founder of Russian romanticism. His poetry amazed with its novelty and uniqueness.

But, undoubtedly, the true origin of romanticism in Russia is associated with the work of A.S. Pushkin.

« Prisoner of the Caucasus"Pushkin is, perhaps, the first work of the romantic school, where a portrait of a romantic hero is given *. Despite the fact that the details of the portrait of the Prisoner are sparse, they are given very definitely in order to emphasize the special position of this character as best as possible: "high brow", "sarcastic grin", "burning gaze" and so on. The parallel between the emotional state of the Prisoner and the ensuing storm is also interesting:

And the captive, from the mountain height,

Alone, behind a thunder cloud,

I waited for the return of the sun,

Unattainable by a thunderstorm

And storms to the feeble howl,

I listened with some joy. *

At the same time, the Prisoner, like many other romantic heroes, is shown as a lonely person, not understood by those around him and standing above others. His inner strength, his genius and fearlessness are shown through the opinions of other people, in particular his enemies:

His careless boldness

The formidable Circassians marveled,

Spared his young age

And in a whisper among themselves

They were proud of their booty.

In addition, Pushkin does not stop there. The story of the life of a romantic hero is given as a hint. Through the lines we guess that the Prisoner was fond of literature, led a stormy social life, did not value it, constantly participating in duels.

All this colorful life of the Prisoner led him not only to displeasure, but also resulted in a break with those around him, in flight to foreign lands. It was by being a wanderer:

Apostate of light, friend of nature,

He left his native limit

And flew to a distant land

With a cheerful ghost of freedom.

It was the thirst for freedom and the experience of love that made the Prisoner leave motherland, and he goes for the "ghost of freedom" in foreign lands.

Another important impetus for escape was the former love, which, like many other romantic heroes, was non-reciprocal:

No, I did not know mutual love,

Loved alone, suffered alone;

And I go out like a smoky flame,

Forgotten among empty valleys.

In many romantic works, a distant exotic land and the people inhabiting it were the target of the escape of the romantic hero. It was in foreign countries that the romantic hero wanted to find the long-awaited freedom, harmony between man and nature *. This new world, which attracted a romantic hero from afar, becomes alien to the Prisoner, in this world the Prisoner becomes a slave *

And again the romantic hero strives for freedom, now freedom for him is personified with the Cossacks, with whose help he wants to get it. He needs freedom from captivity in order to obtain the highest freedom, to which he strove both at home and in captivity.

The return of the Prisoner to his homeland is not shown in the poem. The author allows the readers to determine for themselves: whether the Prisoner will achieve freedom, or become a "traveler", "exile."

As in many romantic works, the poem depicts an alien people - the Circassians *. Pushkin introduces into the poem genuine information about the people, taken from the publication "Northern Bee".

This ambiguity of mountain freedom fully corresponded to the character of romantic thought. This development of the concept of freedom was associated not with morally low, but with cruel. Despite this, the Prisoner's curiosity, like any other romantic hero, makes him sympathize with one side of the Circassian life and be indifferent to others.

"The Fountain of Bakhchisarai" is one of the few works of Alexander Pushkin, which begins not with a descriptive headpiece, but with a portrait of a romantic hero. This portrait contains all the typical traits of a romantic hero: “Girey sat with downcast eyes,” “an old brow expresses the excitement of his heart,” “what moves a proud soul?” ".

As in the "Caucasian Prisoner", in the "Bakhchisarai Fountain" there is a force that pushed the Prisoner to embark on a long journey. What burdens Khan Giray? Only after three times asked questions, the author replies that the death of Mary took away the last hope from the khan.

The bitterness from the loss of his beloved woman is experienced by the khan with the super emotional tension of a romantic hero:

He is often fatal

Raise the saber, and with a swing

Suddenly remains motionless

Looks around with madness

Turns pale as if full of fear

And something whispers and sometimes

Burning tears pouring in a river.

The image of Giray is given against the background of two female images, which are no less interesting in terms of romantic ideas. Two women's destinies reveal two types of love: one sublime, "above the world and passions", and the other - earthly, passionate.

Maria is portrayed as a favorite image of romantics - an image of purity and spirituality. At the same time, love is not alien to Mary, she just has not yet woken up in her. Mary is distinguished by severity, harmony of the soul.

Maria, like many romantic heroines, faced with a choice between liberation and slavery. She finds a way out of this situation in humility, which only emphasizes her spiritual principle, faith in a higher power. Starting her confession, Zarema opens before Maria the world of passions inaccessible to her. Maria understands that all ties with life have been cut off, and like many romantic heroes, she is disappointed in life, not finding a way out of this situation.

The prehistory of Zarema takes place against the backdrop of an exotic country, which is her homeland. Description of distant countries, typical for romantics, merges in the "Bakhchisarai Fountain" with the fate of the heroine. Life in a harem for her is not a confinement, but a dream that has become a reality. The harem is the world into which Zarema runs to hide from everything that came before.

In addition to internal psychological states the romantic nature of Zarema is portrayed purely externally. For the first time in the poem, Zarema appears in the pose of Giray. She is portrayed as indifferent to everything. Both Zarema and Girey lost their love, which was the meaning of their lives. Like many romantic heroes, they received only disappointment from love.

Thus, all three main characters of the poem are depicted at critical moments in life. The current situation seems to be the worst that could only happen in the life of each of them. Death for them becomes inevitable or desirable. In all three cases, the main cause of suffering is a love feeling that has been rejected or non-reciprocal.

Despite the fact that all three main characters can be called romantics, only Khan Girey is shown in the most psychological way, it is with him that the conflict of the entire poem is associated. His character is shown in the development from a barbarian with passions to a medieval knight with delicate feelings. The feeling that flared up in Girey for Mary turned his soul and mind upside down. Without understanding why, he guards Mary and bows down to her.

In AS Pushkin's poem "The Gypsies", in comparison with the previous poems, the central character - the romantic hero Alekodan - is not only descriptive, but also effective. (Aleko thinks, he freely expresses his thoughts and feelings, he is against generally accepted rules, against the power of money, he is against cities with their civilization. Aleko stands for freedom, for a return to nature, its harmony.)

Aleko not only argues, but also confirms his theory in practice. The hero leaves to live with a free nomadic people - the gypsies. For Aleko, life with gypsies is as much a departure from civilization as the flight of other romantic heroes to distant countries or fabulous, mystical worlds.

The craving for the mystical (especially among Western romantics) finds a way out in Pushkin's dreams of Aleko. Dreams predict and prophesy future events in Aleko's life.

Aleko himself not only "takes" from the gypsies the freedom he desired, but also brings social harmony into their lives. For him, love is not only a strong feeling, but also that on which his whole spiritual world, his whole life stands. The loss of his beloved for him is the collapse of the entire surrounding world.

Aleko's conflict is built not only on disappointment in love, but goes deeper. On the one hand, the society in which he lived earlier cannot give him freedom and will, on the other hand, gypsy freedom cannot give harmony, constancy and happiness in love. Aleko does not need freedom in love, which does not impose any obligations on each other.

The conflict gives rise to the murder committed by Aleko. His act is not limited to jealousy, his act is a protest against life, which cannot give him the existence he wants.

Thus, Pushkin's romantic hero is disappointed in his dream, a free gypsy life, he rejects what he had been striving for until recently.

Aleko's fate looks tragic not only because of his disappointment in the love of freedom, but also because Pushkin provides a possible outlet for Aleko, which sounds in the story of an old gypsy.

In the life of the old man there was a similar case, but he did not become a "disappointed romantic hero", he was reconciled with fate. The old man, unlike Aleko, considers freedom to be a right for everyone, he does not forget his beloved, but resigns himself to her will, refraining from revenge and resentment.

CHAPTER II. THE PERSONALITY OF A ROMANTIC HERO IN POEM

M. Yu. LERMONTOVA “MTSYRI” AND “DEMON”.

The life and fate of M. Yu. Lermontov are like a bright comet that for a moment illuminated the sky of Russian spiritual life in the thirties. Wherever this amazing man appeared, exclamations of admiration and curse were heard. The jewelery perfection of his poems amazed with both the grandeur of the plan and the invincible skepticism, the power of denial.

One of the most romantic poems in all Russian literature is the poem "Mtsyri" (1839). This poem harmoniously combines the patriotic idea with the theme of freedom. Lermontov does not share these concepts: love for the motherland and thirst for will merge into one, but "fiery passion". The monastery becomes a prison for Mtsyri, he himself seems to be a slave and a prisoner. His desire "to find out - for the will or prison, we were born into this world" is due to a passionate impulse for freedom. The short days of escape become for him a temporarily acquired will: he lived only outside the monastery, and did not vegetate.

Already at the beginning of the poem "Mtsyri" we feel the romantic mood that the central character of the poem brings. Perhaps, appearance, the portrait of the hero does not betray a romantic hero in him, but his exclusivity, exclusivity, and mystery are emphasized by the dynamics of his actions.

As is usually the case in other romantic fiction, the decisive inflection point takes place against the backdrop of the elements. Mtsyri's departure from the monastery takes place in a storm: *

At the hour of the night, a terrible hour,

When the thunderstorm frightened you

When, bowing down at the altar,

You were lying on the ground,

I ran. Oh i'm like a brother

A hug with a storm would be glad. *

The romantic character of the hero is also emphasized by the parallelism between the storm and the feelings of the hero-romantic. Against the background of the elements, the loneliness of the protagonist will stand out even more sharply. The storm, as it were, protects Mtsyri from all other people, but he is not afraid and does not suffer from this. Nature and, as part of it, the storm penetrates into Mtsyri, they merge with him; the romantic hero is looking for will and freedom in the playing out of the elements, which was lacking in the monastery walls. And as Yu. V. Mann wrote: “In the illumination of lightning, the puny figure of the boy grows almost to the gigantic size of Galiath. "* Regarding this scene, VG Belinsky also writes:" You see what a fiery soul, what a mighty spirit, what a gigantic nature this Mtsyri has. "*

The very content, the actions of the hero - flight to a distant land, beckoning with happiness and freedom, can occur only in a romantic work with a romantic hero. But at the same time, the hero from "Mtsyri" is somewhat unusual, since the author does not give a clue, the impetus that served as a reason for the escape. The hero himself does not want to go into an unknown, mysterious, fairy-tale world, but only tries to return to the place from which he was recently pulled out. Rather, it can be regarded not as an escape to an exotic country, but as a return to nature, to its harmonious life. Therefore, in the poem there are frequent references to the birds, trees, clouds of his homeland.

The hero of "Mtsyri" is going to return to his native land, as he sees his homeland in an idealized form: "a wonderful land of worries and battles." The natural environment for the hero takes place in violence and cruelty: "the shine of the poisoned sheath of long daggers." This environment seems to him beautiful, free. Despite the friendly disposition of the monks who warmed the orphan, the image of evil is personified in the monastery, which will then affect the actions of Mtsyri. Will attracts Mtsyri more than a deed pleasing to God; instead of a vow, he flees the monastery. He does not condemn the monastic laws, does not put his order above the monastic ones. So Mtsyri, in spite of all this, is ready to exchange “paradise and eternity” for a moment of life at home.

Although the romantic hero of the poem did no harm to anyone, unlike other romantic heroes *, he still remains alone. Loneliness is further emphasized because of Mtsyri's desire to be with people, to share their joys and troubles with them.

The forest, as a part of nature, becomes for Mtsyri either a friend or an enemy. The forest simultaneously gives the hero strength, freedom and harmony, and also at the same time takes away his strength, tramples on his desire to find happiness in his homeland.

But not only the forest and wild animals become an obstacle on his path and goal achievement. His irritation and annoyance with people and nature grows onto himself. Mtsyri understands that not only external obstacles hinder him, but he cannot overcome the feeling of his own hunger, physical fatigue. Irritation and pain increase in his soul, not because there is no specific person to blame for his misfortune, but because he cannot find the harmony of life only because of some circumstances and the state of his soul.

B. Eheybaum concluded that last words young men - "And I will not curse anyone" - do not at all express the idea of ​​"reconciliation", but serve as an expression of a sublime, albeit tragic, state of consciousness. “He does not curse anyone, because no one is individually guilty of his tragic outcome of his struggle with fate. "*

Like many romantic heroes, Mtsyri's fate does not develop happily. Hero-romantic does not achieve his dream, he dies. Death comes as a deliverance from suffering and crosses out his dream. From the very first lines of the poem, the ending of the poem "Mtsyri" becomes clear. We perceive all subsequent confession as a description of Mtsyri's failures. And as Yu. V. Mann thinks: “Three days” Mtsyri is a dramatic analogue of his whole life, if it were free, sad and sad by its distance from it. and the inevitability of defeat. "*

In Lermontov's poem "The Demon" the romantic hero is none other than an evil spirit personifying evil. What could be in common between a demon and other romantic heroes?

The demon, like other romantic heroes, was expelled, he is a "exile of paradise", like other heroes are exiles or fugitives. The demon also brings new features to the portrait of the heroes of romanticism. So the Demon, unlike other romantic heroes, begins to take revenge, he is not free from evil feelings. Instead of seeking to expel, he cannot feel and see.

Like other romantic heroes, the Demon seeks to his native element ("I want to make peace with the sky"), from where he was expelled *. His moral revival is full of hope, but he wishes to return unrepentant. He does not admit his guilt before God. And he accuses people created by God of lies and betrayal.

And as Yu. V. Mann writes: “But it has never happened before that, making a“ vow ”of reconciliation, a hero in the same speech, at the same time, continued his rebellion and, returning to his god, at the same the very moment called for a new flight. "*

The Demon's originality as a romantic hero is associated with the Demon's ambiguous attitude towards good and evil. Because of this, in the fate of the Demon, these two opposite concepts are closely intertwined. So, the death of Tamara's fiancé stems from kindness - feelings love for Tamara. The very death of Tamara also grows from the Demon's love:

Alas! Evil spirit triumphed!

The deadly poison of his kiss

Instantly penetrated her chest.

An agonizing, terrible cry

The night was outraged by the silence.

The same kind feeling - love breaks the calm chill of the Demon's soul. The evil, of which he himself is personified, melts from the feeling of love. It is love that makes the Demon suffer and feel, like other romantic heroes.

All this gives the right to rank the Demon not among the creatures of hell, but to put him in an intermediate position between good and evil. The demon himself personifies the close connection between good and evil, their mutual transition from one state to another.

Perhaps this is where the poem's double-digit ending comes from. The Demon's defeat can be considered both conciliatory and irreconcilable, since the conflict of the poem itself remained unresolved.

CONCLUSION.

Romanticism is one of the most unexplored creative methods, they talked and argued a lot about romanticism. At the same time, many pointed to the lack of clarity of the very concept of "romanticism".

Romanticism was debated when it first appeared and even when the method reached its peak. Discussions about romanticism flared up even when the method tended to decline, and to this day they argue about its origin and development. this work set herself the goal of tracing the main features of the romantic style, characteristic of music and literature.

In this work, the most famous poets Russian era of romanticism.

Usually romantic we call a person who is unable or unwilling to obey the laws of everyday life. A dreamer and maximalist, he is gullible and naive, which is why he sometimes finds himself in funny situations. He thinks that the world is full of magical secrets, believes in eternal love and holy friendship, does not doubt his high destiny. Such is one of the most likable Pushkin heroes, Vladimir Lensky, who "... believed that his soul was dear // To connect with him, // That, melancholy, // She waits for him every day; // He believed that his friends were ready / / For his honor to take the shackles ... ".

More often than not, such a state of mind is a sign of youth, with the departure of which old ideals become illusions; we get used to really look at things, i.e. do not strive for the impossible. This, for example, occurs in the finale of IA Goncharov's novel "An Ordinary History", where a calculating pragmatist appears instead of an enthusiastic idealist. And yet, even after growing up, a person often feels the need for romance- in something bright, unusual, fabulous. And the ability to find romance in everyday life helps not only to come to terms with this life, but also to find a high spiritual meaning in it.

In literature, the word "romanticism" has several meanings.

If translated literally, then it will be the general name of works written in Romance languages. This language group (Romano-Germanic), originating from Latin, began to develop in the Middle Ages. It is the European Middle Ages, with its belief in the irrational essence of the universe, in the incomprehensible connection of man with higher powers, had a decisive impact on the topics and issues novels New time. Long time words romance and romantic were synonyms and meant something exceptional - "what they write about in books." Researchers associate the earliest found use of the word "romantic" with the 17th century, or rather, with 1650, when it was used in the meaning of "fantastic, imaginary".

At the end of XVIII - early XIX v. romanticism is understood in different ways: both as the movement of literature towards national identity, which presupposes the appeal of writers to folk-poetic traditions, and as the discovery of the aesthetic value of an ideal, imaginary world. Dahl's dictionary defines romanticism as "free, free, not constrained by the rules" art, opposing it to classicism as a normative art.

Such historical mobility and contradictory understanding of romanticism can explain terminological problems that are relevant to modern literary criticism. It seems quite topical assertion of Pushkin's contemporary poet and critic PA Vyazemsky: "Romanticism is like a brownie - many believe it, there is a conviction that it exists, but where are its signs, how to designate it, how to stumble a finger on it?"

In the modern science of literature, romanticism is viewed mainly from two points of view: as a certain artistic method based on the creative transformation of reality in art, and how literary direction, historically natural and limited in time. More general is the concept of the romantic method; we will dwell on it in more detail.

The artistic method presupposes a certain way comprehending the world in art, i.e. the basic principles of selection, depiction and evaluation of the phenomena of reality. The peculiarity of the romantic method in general can be defined as artistic maximalism, which, being the basis of the romantic understanding of the world, is found at all levels of the work - from the problematic and the system of images to the style.

Romantic picture of the world differs in hierarchy; the material in it is subordinated to the spiritual. The struggle (and the tragic unity) of these opposites can take on different denouncements: the divine - the devil, the sublime - the base, the heavenly - the earthly, the true - false, free - dependent, internal - external, eternal - transitory, natural - accidental, desired - real, exclusive - commonplace. Romantic ideal, unlike the ideal of the classicists, concrete and accessible for embodiment, it is absolute and therefore is already in eternal contradiction with a passing reality. The artistic worldview of the romantic, thus, is based on the contrast, collision and fusion of mutually exclusive concepts - it is, according to the researcher A.V. Mikhailov, "a carrier of crises, something transitional, internally, in many respects, terribly unstable, unbalanced." The world is perfect as a design - the world is imperfect as an embodiment. Can the irreconcilable be reconciled?

This is how double world, a conditional model of a romantic Universe, in which reality is far from ideal, and the dream seems unrealizable. Often, the connecting link between these worlds is the inner world of the romantic, in which the desire from the dull "HERE" to the beautiful "THERE" lives. When their conflict is insoluble, the motive sounds escape: the departure from imperfect reality to otherness is thought of as salvation. This is what happens, for example, in the finale of KS Aksakov's novel "Walter Eisenberg": the hero, by the miraculous power of his art, finds himself in the dream world created by his brush; thus, the death of the artist is perceived not as a departure, but as a transition to another reality. When it is possible to connect reality with the ideal, an idea appears transformations: spiritualization of the material world with the help of imagination, creativity or struggle. German writer XIX v. Novalis proposes to call it romanticization: "I give a high meaning to the ordinary, I clothe the everyday and prosaic in a mysterious shell, I give the known and understandable the tempting obscurity, the finite - the meaning of the infinite. This is romanticization." The belief in the possibility of a miracle lives on in the XX century: in the story of A. S. Green " Scarlet Sails", in the philosophical tale of A. de Saint-Exupery" The little Prince"and in many other works.

Characteristically, both of the most important romantic ideas are quite clearly correlated with a religious value system based on faith. Exactly faith(in its epistemological and aesthetic aspects) determines the originality of the romantic picture of the world - it is not surprising that romanticism often sought to violate the boundaries of the actual artistic phenomenon, becoming a certain form of worldview and worldview, and sometimes " new religion". According to the famous literary critic, specialist in German romanticism, V. M. Zhirmunsky, the ultimate goal of the romantic movement is" enlightenment in God all life, and every flesh, and every individual. "Confirmation of this can be found in the aesthetic treatises of the 19th century; in particular, F. Schlegel writes in" Critical Fragments ":" Eternal life and the invisible world must be sought only in God. All spirituality is embodied in Him ... Without religion, instead of full endless poetry, we will have only a novel or a game, which is now called beautiful art. "

Romantic duality as a principle operates not only at the level of the macrocosm, but also at the level of the microcosm - the human personality as an integral part of the Universe and as the intersection point of the ideal and everyday life. Motives of duality, tragic disruption of consciousness, images twins, objectifying various essences of the hero, are very common in romantic literature - from "The Amazing Story of Peter Schlemil" by A. Chamisso and "Elixirs of Satan" by E. T. A. Hoffmann to "William Wilson" by E. A. Poe and "Double" by F. M Dostoevsky.

In connection with the dual world, science fiction acquires a special status in works as an ideological and aesthetic category, and its understanding by the romantics themselves does not always correspond to modern meaning"incredible", "impossible". Actually romantic fantasy (miraculous) often means not violation laws of the universe, and their detection and ultimately - execution. It's just that these laws have a higher, spiritual nature, and reality in the romantic universe is not limited by materiality. It is fantasy in many works that becomes a universal way of comprehending reality in art by transforming its external forms with the help of images and situations that have no analogues in the material world and are endowed with symbolic meaning, which in reality reveals spiritual regularity and interconnection.

The classic typology of fiction is represented by the work of the German writer Jean Paul "The Preparatory School of Aesthetics" (1804), which distinguishes three types of use of the fantastic in literature: "heap of miracles" ("night fiction"); "exposure of imaginary miracles" ("daytime fantasy"); equality of the real and the miraculous ("twilight fantasy").

However, regardless of whether a miracle is "exposed" in a work or not, it is never accidental, performing a variety of functions. In addition to knowing the spiritual foundations of being (the so-called philosophical fiction), it can be the disclosure of the inner world of the hero (psychological fiction), and the recreation of the people's perception of the world (folk fiction), and forecasting the future (utopia and dystopia), and playing with the reader (entertaining fiction ). Separately, it should be said about the satirical exposure of the vicious sides of reality - exposure, in which fantasy also often plays an important role, presenting in an allegorical form real social and human shortcomings. This happens, for example, in many of VF Odoevsky's works: "The Ball", "The Mock of a Dead Man", "The Tale of How Dangerous It is for Girls to Walk in a Crowd on Nevsky Prospect".

Romantic satire is born from the rejection of spirituality and pragmatism. Reality is assessed by a romantic person from the standpoint of an ideal, and the stronger the contrast between what is and what is due, the more active is the opposition between man and the world, which has lost its connection with the higher principle. The objects of romantic satire are varied: from social injustice and the bourgeois value system to specific human vices. The man of the "Iron Age" profanes his high destiny; love and friendship turn out to be corrupt, faith - lost, compassion - superfluous.

In particular, secular society is a parody of normal human relations; hypocrisy, envy, anger reign in him. In the romantic consciousness, the concept of "light" (aristocratic society) often turns into its opposite (darkness, rabble), and the literal meaning returns to the church antonymic pair "secular - spiritual": secular means non-spiritual. It is generally uncharacteristic for a romantic to use Aesop's language; he does not seek to hide or muffle his caustic laugh. This intransigence in likes and dislikes leads to the fact that satire in romantic works is often presented as angry invective, directly expressing the author's position: "This is a nest of depravity of the heart, ignorance, dementia, baseness! Arrogance kneels down there before an impudent occasion, kissing the dusty floor of his clothes, and crushes the fifth of his modest dignity ... Petty ambition is the subject of morning care and night vigil, shameless flattery rules over words, vile self-interest in deeds, and the tradition of virtue is preserved only by pretense. Not a single lofty thought will sparkle in this suffocating darkness, not a single warm feeling will warm this icy mountain "(Μ. N. Pogodin." Adele ").

Romantic irony, as well as satire, it is directly related to the dual world. Romantic consciousness strives to the heavenly world, and being is determined by the laws of the sub-world. Thus, the romantic finds himself, as it were, at the crossroads of mutually exclusive spaces. Life without belief in a dream is meaningless, but a dream is unrealizable in the conditions of earthly reality, and therefore belief in a dream is also meaningless. Necessity and impossibility turn out to be one. Awareness of this tragic contradiction turns into a bitter smile of the romantic not only over the imperfection of the world, but also over himself. This grin is heard in many works of the German romantic E. T. A. Hoffmann, where the sublime hero often finds himself in comic situations, and the happy ending - the victory over evil and the acquisition of the ideal - can turn into quite earthly philistine prosperity. For example, in the fairy tale "Little Tsakhes nicknamed Zinnober" romantic lovers after a happy reunion receive a wonderful estate as a gift, where "excellent cabbage" grows, where food in pots never burns and porcelain dishes do not break. And another Hoffmann's fairy tale "The Golden Pot", by its name, ironically "lands" the famous romantic symbol of an unattainable dream - the "blue flower" from Novalis's novel "Heinrich von Ofterdingen".

The events that make up romantic plot usually bright and unusual; they are a kind of "peaks" on which the narrative is built (amusement in the era of romanticism becomes one of the important artistic criteria). At the event level of the work, the desire of romantics to "throw off the chains" of classicistic plausibility is clearly traced, opposing it with the author's absolute freedom, including in plotting, and this construction can leave the reader with a feeling of incompleteness, fragmentation, as if calling for independent replenishment of "white spots ". An external motivation for the extraordinary nature of what is happening in romantic works can be a special place and time of action (for example, exotic countries, distant past or future), as well as popular superstitions and legends. The portrayal of "exceptional circumstances" is aimed primarily at revealing the "exceptional personality" acting in these circumstances. The character as the engine of the plot and the plot as a way of "realizing" the character are closely related, therefore, each eventful moment is a kind of external expression of the struggle between good and evil taking place in the soul romantic hero.

One of the artistic achievements of romanticism is the discovery of the value and inexhaustible complexity of the human person. Romantics perceive man in a tragic contradiction - as the crown of creation, "the proud lord of fate" and as a weak-willed toy in the hands of forces unknown to him, and sometimes his own passions. freedom personality assumes its responsibility: having made the wrong choice, you need to be prepared for the inevitable consequences. Thus, the ideal of liberty (both politically and philosophically), which is an important component in the romantic hierarchy of values, should not be understood as preaching and poeticizing self-will, the danger of which has been repeatedly revealed in romantic works.

The image of the hero is often inseparable from the lyric element of the author's "I", turning out to be either in tune with him, or alien. Anyway author-narrator takes an active position in a romantic work; the narrative tends to be subjective, which can also be manifested at the compositional level - in the use of the "story within a story" technique. However, subjectivity as a general quality of romantic storytelling does not imply author's arbitrariness and does not abolish the "system of moral coordinates." According to the researcher N. A. Gulyaev, "in ... romanticism, the subjective is essentially a synonym for the human, it is humanistically meaningful." It is from the moral standpoint that the exclusiveness of the romantic hero is assessed, which can be both evidence of his greatness and a signal of his inferiority.

The "strangeness" (mysteriousness, dissimilarity to others) of the character is emphasized by the author, first of all, with the help of portrait: spiritualized beauty, morbid pallor, expressive gaze - these signs have long become stable, almost cliches, that is why comparisons and reminiscences are so frequent in descriptions, as if "citing" previous samples. Here is a typical example of such an associative portrait (N.A. thoughtfully charming, resembled the face of the Madonnas of Albrecht Durer ... Adelheide seemed to be the spirit of the poetry that inspired Schiller when he described his Tekla, and Goethe when he portrayed his Minion. "

The behavior of a romantic hero is also evidence of his exclusivity (and sometimes - "exclusion" from society); often it “does not fit” into generally accepted norms and violates the conventional “rules of the game” by which all other characters live.

Society in romantic works it represents a kind of stereotype of collective existence, a set of rituals that does not depend on the personal will of everyone, therefore the hero here is "like a lawless comet in a circle of calculated stars." He is formed as if "in spite of the environment," although his protest, sarcasm or skepticism was born precisely by the conflict with others, i.e. to some extent due to society. The hypocrisy and death of the "secular rabble" in the romantic image are often correlated with the devilish, base beginning, trying to gain power over the soul of the hero. The human in the crowd becomes indistinguishable: instead of faces - masks (masquerade motive- E. A. Po. "The Mask of the Red Death", V. N. Olin. "Strange Ball", M. Yu. Lermontov. "Masquerade", A. K. Tolstoy. "Meeting in three hundred years"); instead of people - dolls-automata or the dead (E. T. A. Hoffman. "Sand Man", "Automata"; V. F. Odoevsky. "Mock of a Dead Man", "Ball"). This is how writers sharpen the problem of personality and impersonality as much as possible: becoming one of many, you cease to be a human being.

Antithesis as a favorite structural device of romanticism is especially evident in the confrontation between the hero and the crowd (and more broadly, the hero and the world). This external conflict can take many forms, depending on the type of romantic personality created by the author. Let's turn to the most typical of these types.

The hero is a naive eccentric, who believes in the possibility of the realization of ideals, is often comical and absurd in the eyes of "sane". However, he favorably differs from them in his moral integrity, childish striving for truth, ability to love and inability to adapt, i.e. lie. Such, for example, is the student Anselm from E. TA Hoffmann's fairy tale "The Golden Pot" - it is he, childishly funny and awkward, given not only to discover the existence of an ideal world, but also to live in it and be happy. The heroine of A. Green's story "Scarlet Sails" Assol, who knew how to believe in a miracle and wait for its appearance, in spite of the mockery and ridicule of "adults", was also awarded with the happiness of a dream come true.

Baby for romantics, in general, a synonym for the genuine - not burdened by conventions and not killed by hypocrisy. The discovery of this topic is recognized by many scientists as one of the main merits of romanticism. “The 18th century saw in a child only a small adult. Children’s children begin with romantics, they are appreciated by themselves, and not as candidates for future adults,” wrote N. Ya. Berkovsky. Romantics were inclined to interpret the concept of childhood broadly: for them it is not only a time in the life of every person, but also of humanity as a whole ... to open in it, as Dostoevsky put it, "the image of Christ." Spiritual vision and moral purity inherent in a child make him, perhaps, the brightest of the romantic heroes; perhaps that is why so often the nostalgic motive of the inevitable loss of childhood sounds in the works. This happens, for example, in A. Pogorelsky's tale "The Black Chicken, or Underground inhabitants", in the stories of K. S. Aksakov (" Cloud ") and V. F. Odoevsky (" Igosha "),

Hero – tragic loner and dreamer rejected by society and realizing his alienation to the world, is capable of open conflict with others. They seem to him limited and vulgar, living exclusively by material interests and therefore personifying some kind of world evil, powerful and destructive for the spiritual aspirations of the romantic. Often this type of hero is combined with the theme of "high insanity" - a kind of seal of the chosen one (or rejection). Such are Antiochus from "The Bliss of Madness" by N. A. Polevoy, Rybarenko from "Ghoul" by A. K. Tolstoy, Dreamer from "White Nights" by F. M. Dostoevsky.

The opposition "personality - society" acquires the most acute character in the "marginal" version of the hero - a romantic vagabond or a robber who takes revenge on the world for his desecrated ideals. As examples, we can name the characters of the following works: "Les Miserables" by V. Hugo, "Jean Sbogard" by C. Nodier, "Le Corsaire" by D. Byron.

Hero – disappointed, "superfluous" human, who did not have the opportunity and no longer wants to realize his talents for the good of society, has lost his former dreams and faith in people. He turned into an observer and analyst, passing judgment on imperfect reality, but not trying to change it or change himself (for example, Octave in "Confessions of the Son of the Century" by A. Musset, Lermontovsky Pechorin). The fine line between pride and egoism, the consciousness of one's own exclusiveness and disdain for people can explain why so often in romanticism the cult of a lonely hero merges with his debunking: Aleko in A. Pushkin's poem "Gypsies" and Larra in M. Gorky's story "The Old Woman Izergil "were punished by loneliness precisely for their inhuman pride.

The hero is a demonic personality, which challenges not only society, but also the Creator, is doomed to a tragic discord with reality and with oneself. His protest and despair are organically linked, since the Truth, Goodness, and Beauty that he rejects have power over his soul. According to the researcher of Lermontov's creativity V. I. Korovin, "... a hero who is inclined to choose demonism as a moral position, thereby rejects the idea of ​​good, since evil does not give rise to good, but only evil. But this is a" high evil " as it is dictated by the desire for good. " The rebellion and cruelty of such a hero often becomes a source of suffering for those around him and does not bring joy to him. Acting as the "deputy" of the devil, tempter and punisher, he himself is sometimes humanly vulnerable, for he is passionate. It is no coincidence that the motive of the "devil in love", named after the story of the same name by J. Casot, has become widespread in romantic literature. "Echoes" of this motif are heard in Lermontov's "The Demon", and in the "Secluded House on Vasilievsky" by VP Titov, and in the story "Who is he?" By NA Meliunov.

The hero is a patriot and a citizen ready to give his life for the good of the Fatherland, most often does not meet with the understanding and approval of his contemporaries. In this image, pride, traditional for romanticism, is paradoxically combined with the ideal of selflessness - the voluntary atonement of collective sin by a lonely hero (in the literal, not literary sense of the word). The theme of sacrifice as a heroic deed is especially characteristic of the "civil romanticism" of the Decembrists; for example, the character of K. F. Ryleev's poem "Nalivaiko" consciously chooses his own suffering path:

I know - death awaits

The one who rises first

On the oppressors of the people.

Fate has already doomed me

But where, tell me, when was

Is freedom redeemed without sacrifices?

Ivan Susanin from the thought of the same name of Ryleev and Gorky's Danko from the story "The Old Woman Izergil" can say the same about himself. In the work of Μ. Y. Lermontov, this type is also widespread, which, according to V. I. Korovin, "... became for Lermontov the starting point in his dispute with the century. feelings inspire a person to heroic behavior, and his whole inner world. "

Another common type of hero can be called autobiographical as it represents the comprehension of the tragic fate man of art, who is forced to live, as it were, on the border of two worlds: the sublime world of creativity and the everyday world of creation. Interestingly, this sense of self was expressed by the writer and journalist N.A. The German romanticist Hoffmann built his most famous novel just according to the principle of combining opposites, the full title of which is "The Worldly Views of Murr the Cat, coupled with fragments of the biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler, which accidentally survived in the scrapbooks" (1822). The depiction of the philistine, philistine consciousness in this novel is intended to highlight the greatness of the inner world of the romantic artist-composer Johann Kreisler. In E. Poe's short story "The Oval Portrait", the painter, by the miraculous power of his art, takes away the life of the woman whose portrait he is painting — takes away in order to give eternal life in return (another name for the short story "Life is in Death"). "Artist" in a broad romantic context can mean both a "professional" who has mastered the language of art, and in general an exalted person who subtly feels the beauty, but sometimes does not have the ability (or gift) to express this feeling. According to the literary critic Yu. V. Mann, "... any romantic character - a scientist, architect, poet, secular person, official, etc. - is always an" artist "by his involvement in the high poetic element, even if the latter poured into various creative deeds or remained confined within the human soul. " Related to this is the theme loved by romantics. inexpressible: the possibilities of language are too limited to contain, capture, name the Absolute - one can only hint at it: "Everything immense is crowded into a single sigh, // And only silence speaks clearly" (V. A. Zhukovsky).

Romantic art cult based on the understanding of inspiration as Revelation, and creativity as the fulfillment of Divine destiny (and sometimes a daring attempt to equalize with the Creator). In other words, art for romantics is not imitation or reflection, but approximation to the true reality that lies beyond the visible. In this sense, it opposes the rational way of knowing the world: according to Novalis, "... a poet comprehends nature better than the mind of a scientist." The unearthly nature of art determines the artist's alienation from those around him: he hears "the judgment of a fool and the laughter of a cold crowd," he is alone and free. However, this freedom is incomplete, because he is an earthly person and cannot live in the world of fiction, and outside this world life is meaningless. The artist (both the hero and the romantic author) understands the doom of his striving for a dream, but he does not abandon the "exalting deception" for the sake of "the darkness of low truths." This thought ends the story of I. V. Kireevsky "Opal": "Deception is all beautiful, and the more beautiful, the more deceptive, for the best thing in the world is a dream."

In the romantic frame of reference, a life devoid of craving for the impossible becomes an animal existence. It is this kind of existence aimed at achieving the attainable that is the basis of a pragmatic bourgeois civilization, which romantics actively reject.

Only the naturalness of nature can save from the artificiality of civilization - and in this, romanticism is consonant with sentimentalism, which discovered its ethical and aesthetic significance ("mood landscape"). For a romantic, inanimate nature does not exist - it is all spiritualized, sometimes even humanized:

She has a soul, she has freedom,

It has love, it has language.

(F.I. Tyutchev)

On the other hand, the closeness of man to nature means his "self-identity", i.e. reunification with his own "nature", which is the guarantee of his moral purity (here the influence of the concept of "natural man" belonging to J. Zh. Rousseau is felt).

However, the traditional romantic landscape strongly differs from the sentimental: instead of idyllic rural spaces - groves, oak groves, fields (horizontal) - there are mountains and the sea - height and depth, always at war "wave and stone". According to the literary critic, "... nature is recreated in romantic art as a free element, a free and beautiful world, not subject to human arbitrariness" (Η. P. Kubareva). A storm and a thunderstorm set in motion a romantic landscape, emphasizing the inner conflict of the universe. This fits with the passionate nature of the romantic hero:

Oh i'm like a brother

Would be glad to hug with the storm!

With the eyes of the clouds I followed

I caught lightning with my hand ...

(Μ. Yu. Lermontov)

Romanticism, like sentimentalism, opposes the classicistic cult of reason, believing that "there is much in the world, friend of Horatio, that our sages never dreamed of." But if the sentimentalist considers feeling to be the main antidote to rational narrow-mindedness, then the romantic maximalist goes further. Feeling is replaced by passion - not so much human as superhuman, uncontrollable and spontaneous. It raises the hero above the ordinary and connects him with the universe; it reveals to the reader the motives of his actions, and often becomes an excuse for his crimes:

No one is made entirely of evil

And in Konrad, a good passion lived ...

However, if Byron's Corsair is capable of a deep feeling in spite of the criminality of his nature, then Claude Frollo from "Cathedral Notre dame de paris"V. Hugo becomes a criminal because of the insane passion that destroys the hero. Such an" ambivalent "understanding of passion - in a secular (strong feeling) and spiritual (suffering, torment) context is characteristic of romanticism, and if the first meaning presupposes the cult of love as a discovery of the Divine in a person, then the second is directly related to the devil's temptation and spiritual fall. For example, the main character of A. A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's story "Terrible fortune-telling" with the help of a wonderful dream-warning is given the opportunity to realize the criminality and fatality of his passion for a married woman: " This fortune-telling opened my eyes, blinded by passion; a deceived husband, a deceived spouse, a torn apart, disgraced marriage and why to know, maybe bloody revenge on me or from me - these are the consequences of my insane love! "

Romantic psychologism is based on the desire to show the inner regularity of the words and deeds of the hero, at first glance inexplicable and strange. Their conditioning is revealed not so much through the social conditions of character formation (as it will be in realism), but through the clash of the transcendental forces of good and evil, the battlefield of which is the human heart (this idea sounds in the novel by E. TA Hoffman "Elixirs of Satan" ). According to the researcher V. A. Lukov, “the typification characteristic of the romantic artistic method through the exclusive and absolute reflected the new understanding of man as a small Universe ... the principle of romantic psychologism. ”Romantics see in the human soul a combination of two poles -“ angel ”and“ beast ”(V. Hugo), rejecting the unambiguousness of classicistic typification through“ characters ”."

Thus, in the romantic concept of the world, a person is included in the "vertical context" of being as its most important and integral part. The universe depends on personal choice status quo. Hence - the greatest responsibility of the individual not only for actions, but also for words, and even for thoughts. The theme of crime and punishment in the romantic version has acquired a special acuteness: "Nothing in the world ... nothing is forgotten and does not disappear" (V. F. Odoevsky. "The Improviser"), Descendants will pay for the sins of their ancestors, and unredeemed guilt will a patrimonial curse that determines the tragic fate of the heroes of "Castle Otranto" by G. Walpole, "Terrible Vengeance" by N. V. Gogol, "Ghoul" by A. K. Tolstoy ...

Romantic historicism is based on understanding the history of the Fatherland as the history of the clan; the genetic memory of the nation lives in each of its representatives and explains a lot in his character. Thus, history and modernity are closely related - an appeal to the past for most romantics becomes one of the ways of national self-determination and self-knowledge. But unlike the classicists, for whom time is nothing more than a convention, the romantics try to correlate the psychology of historical characters with the customs of the past, to recreate the "local flavor" and "spirit of the times" not as a masquerade, but as a motivation for events and people's actions. In other words, a "immersion in the era" must take place, which is impossible without a thorough study of documents and sources. "Facts colored by the imagination" is the basic tenet of romantic historicism.

Time moves, making adjustments to the nature of the eternal struggle between good and evil in human souls. What drives the story? Romanticism does not offer an unambiguous answer to this question - maybe the will of a strong personality, or maybe Divine Providence, which manifests itself either in the cohesion of "accidents" or in the spontaneous activity of the masses. For example, FR Chateaubriand argued: "History is a novel by the people."

As for historical figures, in romantic works they rarely correspond to their real (documentary) appearance, being idealized depending on the author's position and their artistic function - to set an example or to warn. It is characteristic that in his warning novel "Prince of Silver" A. K. Tolstoy shows Ivan the Terrible only as a tyrant, without taking into account the inconsistency and complexity of the tsar's personality, and Richard the Lionheart in reality did not at all look like the exalted image of the knight king , as shown by W. Scott in the novel "Ivanhoe".

In this sense, the past is more convenient than the present for creating an ideal (and at the same time, real in the past) model of national existence, opposing the wingless modernity and degraded compatriots. The emotion expressed by Lermontov in the poem "Borodino":

Yes, there were people in our time.

Mighty, dashing tribe:

Bogatyrs are not you, -

is very typical for many romantic works. Belinsky, speaking about Lermontov's "Song about ... the merchant Kalashnikov," emphasized that it "... testifies to the state of mind of the poet, dissatisfied with modern reality and transported from it to the distant past, in order to look for life there, which he does not see in the present ".

It was in the era of romanticism that the historical novel firmly entered the number of popular genres thanks to W. Scott, W. Hugo, Μ. N. Zagoskin, I. I. Lazhechnikov and many other writers who turned to historical topics. Generally the concept genre in its classicist (normative) interpretation, romanticism underwent a significant rethinking, which followed the path of blurring the strict genre hierarchy and generic boundaries. This is quite understandable if we recall the romantic cult of free, independent creativity, which should not be constrained by any conventions. The ideal of romantic aesthetics was a kind of poetic universe that contained not only features of different genres, but features of different arts, among which a special place was given to music as the most "subtle", intangible way of penetrating the spiritual essence of the universe. For example, the German writer W. G. Wackenroder considers music "... the most wonderful of all ... inventions, because it describes human feelings in a superhuman language ... because it speaks a language that we do not know in our everyday life, which they learned where and how, and which seems to be the language of only angels. " Nevertheless, in reality, of course, romanticism did not abolish the system of literary genres, making adjustments to it (especially for lyric genres) and revealing the new potential of traditional forms. Let's turn to the most typical ones.

First of all, it is ballad , which in the era of romanticism acquired new features associated with the development of the action: the tension and dynamism of the narrative, mysterious, sometimes inexplicable events, the fatal predetermination of the fate of the protagonist ... Classic examples This genre in Russian romanticism is represented by the works of V. A. Zhukovsky - the experience of deeply national understanding of the European tradition (R. Southey, S. Coleridge, W. Scott).

Romantic poem characterized by the so-called summit composition, when the action is built around one event, in which the character of the protagonist is most clearly manifested and his further - most often tragic - fate is determined. This is the case in some of the "eastern" poems of the English romantic D.G. Byron ("Gyaur", "Corsair"), and in the "southern" poems of A.S. Lermontov's "Mtsyri", "Song about ... the merchant Kalashnikov", "Demon".

Romantic drama seeks to overcome classic conventions (in particular, the unity of place and time); she does not know the speech individualization of the characters: her characters speak "the same language." It is extremely conflictual, and most often this conflict is associated with the irreconcilable confrontation between the hero (internally close to the author) and society. Due to the inequality of forces, the collision rarely ends with a happy ending; the tragic ending can also be associated with contradictions in the soul of the protagonist, his internal struggle... Typical examples of romantic drama are Lermontov's Masquerade, Byron's Sardanapalus, Hugo's Cromwell.

One of the most popular genres in the era of romanticism was story(most often this word the romantics themselves called a story or novella), which existed in several thematic varieties. Plot secular the story is based on the discrepancy between sincerity and hypocrisy, deep feelings and social conventions (EP Rostopchina. "The Duel"). Household the story is subordinated to moral-descriptive tasks, depicting the life of people who are in some way unlike the others (A. II. Pogodin. "Black sickness"). V philosophical The story is based on the "damned questions of life", the answers to which are offered by the heroes and the author (M. Yu. Lermontov. "Fatalist"). Satirical the story is aimed at debunking the triumphant vulgarity, in different guises representing the main threat to the spiritual essence of man (V. F. Odoevsky. "The Tale of a Dead Body Who Does Not Know Who Belongs to"). Finally, fantastic the story is built on the penetration into the plot of supernatural characters and events, inexplicable from the point of view of everyday logic, but natural from the point of view of the higher laws of being, which have a moral nature. Most often, quite real actions of the character: careless words, sinful actions become the cause of miraculous retribution, reminiscent of a person's responsibility for everything he does (A. Pushkin. "The Queen of Spades", N. V. Gogol. "Portrait"),

Romantics breathed new life into folklore genre fairy tales, not only promoting the publication and study of monuments of oral folk art, but also creating their own original works; one can recall the brothers Grimm, V. Hauf, A. S. Pushkin, Π. P. Ershova and others. Moreover, the fairy tale was understood and used quite widely - from the way of recreating the folk (children's) view of the world in stories with the so-called folk fiction (for example, O. M. Somov's "Kikimora") or in works addressed to children (for example, "Town in a Snuffbox" by V. F. Odoevsky), to the general quality of truly romantic creativity, the universal "canon of poetry": "Everything poetic must be fabulous," Novalis argued.

The originality of the romantic art world is also manifested at the linguistic level. Romantic style , of course, heterogeneous, appearing in many individual varieties, has some common features. It is rhetorical and monologic: the heroes of the works are the "linguistic counterparts" of the author. The word is valuable to him for its emotionally expressive potential - in romantic art it always means immeasurably more than in everyday communication. Associativity, saturation with epithets, comparisons and metaphors becomes especially evident in portrait and landscape descriptions, where the main role assimilations play, as it were, replacing (obscuring) a specific image of a person or a picture of nature. Here is a typical example of the romantic style of A. A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky: “The heaps of firs stood gloomily around, like the dead, wrapped in snow shrouds, as if stretching out their icy hands to us; burnt stumps, blowing gray hair, took on dreamy images, but all this did not bear the trace of a foot or a human hand ... Peace and desert around! ".

According to the scientist L. I. Timofeev, "... the expression of the romantic kind of subjugates the image. This affects the especially sharp emotionality of the poetic language, the attraction of the romantic to paths and figures, to everything that accepts his subjective principle in the language." ... The author often refers to the reader not just as a friend-interlocutor, but as a person of "cultural blood", an initiate who is able to understand the unsaid, that is, inexpressible.

Romantic symbolism based on the endless "expansion" of the literal meaning of some words: the sea and the wind become symbols of freedom; morning dawn - hopes and aspirations; blue flower (Novalis) - an unattainable ideal; night - the mysterious essence of the universe and the human soul, etc.

We have identified some essential typological features romanticism as an artistic method; however, until now, the term itself, like many others, is still not precision instrument knowledge, but the fruit of a "social contract" necessary for the study of literary life, but powerless to reflect its inexhaustible diversity.

The concrete historical being of the artistic method in time and space is literary direction.

Prerequisites the emergence of romanticism can be attributed to the second half of the 18th century, when in many European literatures Even within the framework of classicism, a turn is made from "imitating strangers" to "imitating one's own": writers find models among their compatriot predecessors, turn to national folklore not only for ethnographic, but also for artistic purposes. Thus, new tasks are gradually formed in art; after "studying" and reaching the world level of artistry, it becomes an urgent need to create an original national literature (see the works of A. S. Kurilov). In aesthetics, an idea of ​​\ u200b \ u200bforming nationalities as the author's ability to recreate the appearance and express the spirit of the nation. At the same time, the dignity of the work becomes its connection with space and time, which denies the very basis of the classicist cult of the absolute sample: according to the statement Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, "... all exemplary talents bear the imprint of not only the people, but also the centuries, the places where they lived, therefore, it is impossible and inappropriate to imitate them slavishly in other circumstances."

Of course, the emergence and formation of romanticism was also influenced by many "extraneous" factors, in particular, socio-political and philosophical. The political system of many European countries fluctuates; the French bourgeois revolution says that the time of absolute monarchy is over. The world is not ruled by a dynasty, but strong personality- such as Napoleon. The political crisis entails changes in public consciousness; the kingdom of reason ended, chaos burst into the world and destroyed what seemed simple and understandable - ideas about civic duty, about an ideal sovereign, about a beautiful and ugly ... hopes - from these moments a special mentality of the era of catastrophes is formed and develops. Philosophy again turns to faith and recognizes that the world is rationally unknowable, that matter is secondary to spiritual reality, that human consciousness is an infinite universe. Great philosophers-idealists - I. Kant, F. Schelling, G. Fichte, F. Hegel - are vitally connected with romanticism.

It is hardly possible to determine with certainty in which of the European countries romanticism appeared earlier, and this is hardly important, since the literary trend has no homeland, arising where there was a need for it, and when it appeared: "... there was and could not be secondary romanticisms - borrowed ... national literature discovered romanticism for herself when the socio-historical development of peoples led them to this ... "(S. Ye. Shatalov.)

Originality English romanticism identified the colossal personality of D.G. Byron, who, according to Pushkin,

Clothed in dull romanticism

And hopeless selfishness ...

The English poet's own "I" became the protagonist of all his works: irreconcilable conflict with others, disappointment and skepticism, God-seeking and fighting against God, the wealth of inclinations and the insignificance of their embodiment - these are just some of the features of the famous "Byronic" type, which has found doubles and followers in many literatures. In addition to Byron, English romantic poetry is represented by the "lake school" (W. Wordsworth, S. Coleridge, R. Southey, P. Shelley, T. Moore and D. Keats). The Scottish writer W. Scott is rightfully considered the "father" of popular historical novelism, who revived the past in his numerous novels, where, along with historical figures fictional characters are acting.

German romanticism characterized by philosophical depth and close attention to the supernatural. The most prominent representative of this trend in Germany was E. TA Hoffman, who surprisingly combined faith and irony in his work; in his fantastic novellas, the real turns out to be inseparable from the miraculous, and completely earthly heroes are able to transform into their otherworldly counterparts. In poetry

H. Heine, the tragic discord between the ideal and reality becomes the cause of the poet's bitter, caustic laugh at the world, at himself and at romanticism. Reflection, including aesthetic, is generally characteristic of German writers: the theoretical treatises of the Schlegel brothers, Novalis, L. Tieck, the Grimm brothers, along with their works, had a significant impact on the development and "self-consciousness" of the entire European romantic movement. In particular, thanks to the book by J. de Stael "On Germany" (1810), French and later Russian writers got the opportunity to join the "gloomy German genius".

Look French romanticism in general, it is indicated by the work of V. Hugo, in whose novels the heme of "outcast" is combined with moral issues: public morality and love for a person, external beauty and internal beauty, crime and punishment, etc. The "marginal" hero of French romanticism is not always a vagabond or a robber, he may just be a person who for some reason finds himself outside of society and therefore is able to give him an objective (ie negative) assessment. It is characteristic that the hero himself often receives the same assessment from the author for the "illness of the century" - wingless skepticism and overwhelming doubt. It is about the characters of B. Constant, F. R. Chateaubriand and A. de Vigny that Pushkin speaks in Chapter VII of "Eugene Onegin", giving a generalized portrait of "modern man":

With his wicked soul

Self-loving and dry

A betrayed dream immeasurably

With his embittered mind

Boiling in action empty ...

American romanticism more heterogeneous: it combines the Gothic poetics of horror and the gloomy psychologism of E.A. Poe, the simple-minded fantasy and humor of V. Irving, Indian exoticism and the poetry of D.F. Cooper's adventures. Perhaps it was from the era of romanticism American literature is included in the global context and becomes a distinctive phenomenon, not reducible only to European "roots".

History Russian romanticism began in the second half of the 18th century. Classicism, excluding the national as a source of inspiration and the subject of depiction, contrasted high examples of artistry with the "rough" common people, which could not but lead to the "monotony, limitation, convention" (A. Pushkin) of literature. Therefore, gradually imitation of ancient and European writers gave way to the desire to focus on the best examples. national creativity, including folk.

The formation and formation of Russian romanticism is closely connected with the most important historical event XIX century. - victory in the Patriotic War of 1812. The rise of national consciousness, belief in the great purpose of Russia and its people stimulate interest in what previously remained outside the boundaries of fine literature. Folklore, domestic legends are beginning to be perceived as a source of originality, independence of literature, which has not yet completely freed itself from the student's imitation of classicism, but has already taken the first step in this direction: if you learn, then from your ancestors. This is how O. M. Somov formulates this task: "... The Russian people, glorious in military and civil virtues, formidable in strength and magnanimous in victories, inhabiting a kingdom, the largest in the world, rich in nature and memories, must have their folk poetry, inimitable and independent of the traditions of alien".

From this point of view, the main merit V. A. Zhukovsky consists not in the "discovery of America of romanticism" and not in the acquaintance of Russian readers with the best Western European examples, but in a deeply national understanding of world experience, in combining it with the Orthodox world outlook, which asserts:

Our best friend in this life is

Faith in Providence, Blessed

The law of the creator ...

("Svetlana")

Romanticism of the Decembrists K. F. Ryleeva, A. A. Bestuzhev, V. K. Küchelbecker in the science of literature, they are often called "civil", since in their aesthetics and creativity the pathos of serving the Fatherland is fundamental. References to the historical past are called upon, according to the authors, "to excite the valor of fellow citizens by the exploits of their ancestors" (A. Bestuzhev's words about K. Ryleev), i.e. contribute to a real change in reality, far from ideal. It was in the poetics of the Decembrists that such general features of Russian romanticism as anti-individualism, rationalism and civicism were clearly manifested - features that indicate that in Russia romanticism is more likely the heir of the ideas of the Enlightenment than their destroyer.

After the tragedy of December 14, 1825, the romantic movement enters a new era - the civic optimistic pathos is replaced by a philosophical orientation, self-deepening, attempts to learn the general laws governing the world and man. Russians romantics-wise(D. V. Venevitinov, I. V. Kireevsky, A. S. Khomyakov, S. V. Shevyrev, V. F. Odoevsky) turn to German idealistic philosophy and seek to "graft" it into their native soil. Second half of the 20s - 30s - a time of fascination with the miraculous and supernatural. They turned to the genre of a fantastic story A. A. Pogorelsky, O. M. Somov, V. F. Odoevsky, O. I. Senkovsky, A. F. Veltman.

V general direction from romanticism to realism the creativity of the great classics of the 19th century is developing. - A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov, N. V. Gogol, moreover, we should not talk about overcoming the romantic principle in their works, but about transforming and enriching it with a realistic method of comprehending life in art. It is on the example of Pushkin, Lermontov and Gogol that one can see that romanticism and realism as the most important and deeply national phenomena in Russian culture of the 19th century. do not oppose each other, they are not mutually exclusive, but complementary, and only in their combination is the unique appearance of our classical literature... Soulful romantic look on the world, the correlation of reality with the highest ideal, the cult of love as an element and the cult of poetry as insight, we can find in the work of wonderful Russian poets F. I. Tyutchev, A. A. Fet, A. K. Tolstoy. Intense attention to the mysterious sphere of being, the irrational and the fantastic is characteristic of the late Turgenev's work, which develops the traditions of romanticism.

In Russian literature at the turn of the century and at the beginning of the XX century. romantic tendencies are associated with the tragic outlook of a person of the "transitional era" and with his dream of transforming the world. The concept of the symbol, developed by the romantics, was developed and embodied in the art of Russian Symbolists (D. Merezhkovsky, A. Blok, A. Bely); love for the exoticism of distant wanderings was reflected in the so-called neo-romanticism (N. Gumilev); the maximalism of artistic aspirations, the contrasting perception of the world, the desire to overcome the imperfection of the world and man - integral components of the early romantic creativity of M. Gorky.

In science, the question of chronological boundaries, who put an end to the existence of romanticism as artistic direction... Traditionally called the 40s. XIX century. However, more and more often in modern studies, these boundaries are proposed to be pushed back - sometimes significantly, to late XIX or even before the beginning of the XX century. One thing is indisputable: if romanticism as a direction and left the stage, yielding to its realism, then romanticism as an artistic method, i.e. as a way of knowing the world in art, it retains its vitality to this day.

Thus, romanticism in the broadest sense of the word is not a historically limited phenomenon left in the past: it is eternal and still represents something more than a phenomenon of literature. "Where there is a person, there is romanticism ... His sphere ... is the entire inner, soulful life of a person, that mysterious soil of the soul and heart, from which all indefinite aspirations for the best and the sublime rise, striving to find satisfaction in the ideals created by fantasy" ... "Genuine romanticism is not at all only literary movement... He aspired to become and became a new form of feeling a new way of experiencing life ... Romanticism is nothing more than a way to arrange, organize a person, a bearer of culture, for a new connection with the elements ... Romanticism is a spirit that strives under any solidifying form and , in the end, blows it up ... "These statements by V.G.Belinsky and A.A. Blok, pushing the boundaries of the usual concept, show its inexhaustibility and explain its immortality: as long as a person remains a person, romanticism will exist as in art and in everyday life.

Representatives of romanticism

Germany. Novalis (lyric cycle "Hymns to the Night", "Spiritual Songs", the novel "Heinrich von Ofterdingen"),

Chamisso (lyric cycle "The Love and Life of a Woman", tale-tale "The Amazing Story of Peter Schlemil"),

E. T. A. Hoffman (novels "Elixirs of Satan", "Worldly Views of Murr the Cat ..." mouse king", short story" Don Juan "),

I. F. Schiller (tragedies "Don Carlos", "Mary Stuart", "The Maid of Orleans", the drama "Wilhelm Tell", the ballads "Ivikovy Cranes", "Diver" (in Zhukovsky's lane "Cup"), "Knight of Togenburg "," Glove "," Polycratic Ring ";" Song of the Bell ", dramatic trilogy" Wallenstein "),

G. von Kleist (the story "Mihazl-Kolhaas", the comedy "The Broken Jug", the drama "Prince Friedrich of Hamburg", the tragedies "The Schroffenstein Family", "Pentesileia"),

brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm ("Children's and Family Tales", "German Legends"),

L. Arnim (Sat. folk songs"Boy's Magic Horn"),

L. Tick (fabulous comedy "Puss in Boots", "Bluebeard", collection " Folk tales", short stories" Elves "," Life is pouring over the edge "),

G. Heine ("The Book of Songs", a collection of poems "Romancero", the poems "Atta Troll", "Germany. A Winter's Tale", the poem "Silesian Weavers"),

C. A. Vulpius (novel "Rinaldo Rinaldini").

England. D. G. Byron (poems "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage", "Gyaur", "Lara", "Corsair", "Manfred", "Cain", " Bronze Age"," The Prisoner of Chillon ", a cycle of poems" Jewish Melodies ", a novel in verse" Don Juan "),

P. B. Shelley (poems "Queen Mab", "Rebellion of Islam", "Liberated Prometheus", historical tragedy "Cenchi", poems),

W. Scott (poems "Song of the Last Minstrel", "The Lady of the Lake", "Marmion", "Rockby", historical novels "Waverly", "Puritans", "Rob Roy", "Ivanhoe", "Quentin Dorward", ballad " Ivanov's evening "(in the lane. Zhukovsky

"Smalholm Castle")), C. Metyorin (novel "The Melmotskitalian"),

W. Wordsworth ("Lyric Ballads" - with Coleridge, the poem "Prelude"),

S. Coleridge ("Lyric Ballads" - with Wordsworth, poems "The Tale of the Old Navigator", "Christabel"),

France. F. R. Chateaubriand (stories "Atala", "Rene"),

A. Lamartine (collections of lyric poems "Poetic Reflections", "New Poetic Reflections", the poem "Josselin"),

Georges Sand (novels "Indiana", "Horace", "Consuelo", etc.),

B. Hugo (dramas "Cromwell", "Hernani", "Marion Delorme", "Ruy Blaz"; novels "Notre Dame Cathedral", "Les Miserables", "Toilers of the Sea", "93rd year", "The Man Who laughs "; collections of poems" Oriental motives "," Legend of the Ages "),

J. de Stael (novels "Dolphin", "Corinne, or Italy"), B. Constant (novel "Adolphe"),

A. de Musset (cycle of poems "Nights", novel "Confessions of the Son of the Century"), A. de Vigny (poems "Eloa", "Moses", "Flood", "Death of the Wolf", drama "Chatterton"),

C. Nodier (novel "Jean Sbogard", short stories).

Italy. D. Leopardi (collection "Songs", the poem "Paralypomenes of the Wars of Mice and Frogs"),

Poland. A. Mitskevich (poems "Grazhina", "Dzyady" ("Wake"), "Konrad Valleprod", "Pai Tadeusz"),

Y. Slovatsky (drama "Cordian", poems "Angelli", "Benevsky"),

Russian romanticism. In Russia, the heyday of romanticism falls on the first third of the 19th century, which is characterized by an increase in the intensity of life, stormy events, above all Patriotic War 1812 and the revolutionary movement of the Decembrists, which awakened Russian national consciousness, patriotic enthusiasm.

Representatives of romanticism in Russia. Currents:

• 1. Subjective lyrical romanticism, or ethical and psychological (includes the problems of good and evil, crime and punishment, the meaning of life, friendship and love, moral duty, conscience, retribution, happiness): V. A. Zhukovsky (ballads "Lyudmila", "Svetlana", " Twelve sleeping virgins "," Forest king "," Aeolian harp "; elegies, songs, romances, messages; poems" Abbadon "," Undine "," Pal and Damayanti "); K. II. Batyushkov (messages, elegies, poems).
• 2. Social and civic romanticism:

KF Ryleev (lyric poems, "Dumas": "Dmitry Donskoy", "Bogdan Khmelnitsky", "Death of Ermak", "Ivan Susanin"; poems "Voinarovsky", "Nalivaiko"); A. A. Bestuzhev (pseudonym - Marlinsky) (poems, stories "Frigate" Nadezhda "", "Sailor Nikitin", "Ammalat-Bek", " Terrible fortune-telling"," Andrey Pereyaslavsky ").

V.F. Raevsky (civic lyrics).

A. I. Odoevsky (elegies, historical poem"Vasilko", response to Pushkin's "Message to Siberia").

D. V. Davydov (civil lyrics).

B. K. Küchelbecker (civil lyrics, drama "Izhora"),

3. "Byronic" romanticism:

A. S. Pushkin (poem "Ruslan and Lyudmila", civil lyrics, a cycle of southern poems: "Prisoner of the Caucasus", "Brothers-robbers", "Bakhchisarai fountain", "Gypsies").

M. Yu. Lermontov (civil lyrics, poems "Ismail-Bey", "Hadji Abrek", "Fugitive", "Demon", "Mtsyri", drama "Spaniards", historical novel "Vadim"),

I. I. Kozlov (poem "Chernets").

4. Philosophical Romanticism:

DV Venevitinov (civil and philosophical lyrics).

B. F. Odoevsky (collection of short stories and philosophical conversations "Russian Nights", romantic stories "The Last Quartet of Beethoven", "Sebastian Bach"; fantastic stories "Igosha", "Sylphide", "Salamander").

F.N. Glinka (songs, poems).

V.G. Benediktov (philosophical lyrics).

F. I. Tyutchev (philosophical lyrics).

E. A. Baratynsky (civil and philosophical lyrics).

5. Folk-historical romanticism:

Μ. N. Zagoskin (historical novels "Yuri Miloslavsky, or Russians in 1612", "Roslavlev, or Russians in 1812", "Askold's Grave").

I. I. Lazhechnikov (historical novels "Ice House", "Last Novik", "Basurman").

Features of Russian romanticism. The subjective romantic image contained the objective content, which was expressed in the reflection of the social moods of the Russian people of the first third of XIX v. - disappointment, anticipation of changes, rejection of both the Western European bourgeoisie and the Russian despotically autocratic, feudal foundations.

Striving for nationality. It seemed to Russian romantics that, comprehending the spirit of the people, they were familiar with the ideal beginnings of life. At the same time, the understanding of the "people's soul" and the content of the very principle of nationality among representatives of various trends in Russian romanticism were different. So, among Zhukovsky, nationality meant a humane attitude towards the peasantry and, in general, towards poor people; he found it in the poetry of folk rituals, lyric songs, folk signs, superstitions, legends. In the works of the romantic Decembrists folk character not just positive, but heroic, nationally distinctive, which is rooted in the historical traditions of the people. They found such a character in historical, predatory songs, epics, heroic tales.

1. Romantics rejected the most important artistic principle of realism - believability. They did not reflect life as it is, but, as it were, re-created it in their own way, transformed it. Romantics believed that believability was boring, uninteresting.

Therefore, romantics are very willing to use a variety of forms. conventions, improbabilities images: a) straight fiction, fabulousness, b) grotesque- bringing to the point of absurdity any real features or connection of the incompatible; v) hyperbola- various types of exaggeration, exaggeration of the qualities of the characters; G) plot improbability- an unprecedented abundance in the plot of all kinds of coincidences, happy or unfortunate accidents.

2. Romanticism is characterized by a special romantic style... Its features: 1) emotionality(many words expressing emotions and emotionally colored); 2) stylistic adornment- many stylistic decorations, pictorial and expressive means, many epithets, metaphors, comparisons, etc. 3) verbosity, imprecision, vagueness.

Chronological framework development of romanticism and realism.

Romanticism arose in the 90s of the 18th century, after the Great French Revolution of 1789, but not in France, but in Germany and England, and a little later arose in all other European countries, including Russia. Romanticism became the main dominant literary trend since 1812, when the first songs of Byron's poem "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" were published and remained so until about the second half of the 1830s, when it lost ground to realism. But it must be borne in mind that realism began to take shape already in the 1820s - by the way, the first works with a predominance of realism began to appear in Russia: the comedy of A.S. Griboyedov "Woe from Wit" (1824), the tragedy "Boris Godunov" (1825) and the novel "Eugene Onegin" (1823 - 1831) by A.S. Pushkin. But since Russian literature did not have any general European influence at that time, French literature was of much greater importance in this sense - Stendhal's novel Red and Black (1830). Since the second half of the 1830s, the works of Balzac, Gogol and Dickens have marked the victory of realism. Romanticism fades into the background, but does not disappear - especially in France, it existed for almost the entire 19th century, for example, three novels by Victor Hugo, the best novelist among romantics, were written in the 1860s, and his last novel was published in 1874 ... And in poetry, romanticism prevailed throughout the nineteenth century, in all countries. For example, in Russia the best poets second half of the XIX century - Tyutchev and Fet - pure romance.

_ _ _ _ _ _ realism __________

_ _ _ _ _ romanticism _______ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

1789______1812____1824_____1836____________1874

Literature

1. History of foreign literature of the nineteenth century / Ed. Ya.N. Zasursky, S.V. Turaeva. - M., 1982 .-- 320 p.

2. Khrapovitskaya G.N., Korovin A.V. History of Foreign Literature: Western European and American Romanticism. - M., 2007 .-- 432 p.

3. History of foreign literature of the nineteenth century: textbook. for universities / Ed. ON. Solovieva. - M .: Higher school, 2007.- 656 p. Publication on the Internet: http://www.ae-lib.org.ua/texts/_history_of_literature_XIX__ru.htm.

4. History of foreign literature of the nineteenth century: in 2 hours, Part 1 / Ed. A.S. Dmitrieva - M., 1979 .-- 572 p.

5. History of foreign literature of the nineteenth century: in 2 hours, Part 1 / Ed. N.P. Mikhalskaya. - M., 1991 .-- 254 p.

6. History of world literature in 9 volumes. Vol. 6 (first half of the nineteenth century) / Otv. ed. I.A. Terteryan. - M .: Nauka, 1989 .-- 880 p.

7. Lukov V.A. Literary history. Foreign literature from the beginnings to the present day. - M., 2008 .-- 512 p.

8. Foreign literature of the XIX century. Romanticism. Reader / Ed. Ya.N. Zasursky. - M., 1976 .-- 512 p.

9. Bykov A.V. Foreign literature of the nineteenth century. Romanticism. Reader [electronic resource]. - Access mode: http://kpfu.ru/main_page?p_sub=14281.

Romanticism as a literary movement emerged in Europe at the end of the 18th century. One of the main reasons for this was the fact that this era was a time of strong shocks both in Russia and throughout Europe. In 1789, the Great French revolution, completely finished only by 1814. It consisted of a number of significant events, which ultimately led to a whole literary upheaval, as a person's mentality changed.

Prerequisites for the emergence of romanticism

First, the ideas of the Enlightenment lay at the heart of the French coup, the slogan Freedom, equality and brotherhood was put forward. A person began to be appreciated as a person, and not only as a member of society and a servant of the state, people believed that they themselves could control their own destiny. Secondly, many people who were apologists of classicism realized that the real course of history is sometimes beyond the control of reason - the main value of classicism, there were too many unforeseen turns. Also, in accordance with the new slogan, people began to understand that their usual structure of the world can actually be hostile to a particular person, can interfere with his personal freedom.

Features and traits of romanticism

Thus, in literature there is a need for a new, relevant direction. It was romanticism, the main conflict of which is the conflict between the individual and society. The romantic hero is strong, bright, independent and rebellious, usually lonely, because the surrounding society is not able to understand and accept him. He is one against all, he is always in a state of struggle. But this hero, despite his inconsistency with the world around him, is not negative.

Romantic writers do not set as their task to deduce some kind of morality in a work, to determine where it is good and where it is bad. They describe reality very subjectively, in the center of their attention is the rich inner world of the hero, which explains his actions.

The features of romanticism are the following:

• 1) The autobiography of the writer in the main character,
• 2) Attention to the inner world of the hero,
• 3) The personality of the protagonist contains many mysteries and secrets,
• 4) The hero is very bright, but at the same time, no one manages to understand him completely

Manifestations of romanticism in literature

The most striking manifestations of romanticism in literature were in two European countries, in England and Germany. German romanticism is usually called mystical, it describes the behavior of a hero defeated by society, the main writer here was Schiller. English romanticism was most actively used by Byron; it is a freedom-loving romanticism that preaches the idea of ​​the struggle of an incomprehensible hero.

For Russia, such an impetus to the emergence of romanticism was the Patriotic War of 1812, when Russian soldiers went to Europe and saw with their own eyes the life of foreigners (for many it was a shock), as well as the Decembrist uprising in 1825, which excited all Russian minds. However, this factor was rather final, since until 1825, many writers followed the traditions of romanticism - for example, Pushkin in his Southern poems (these are the years of 1820-24).

V. Zhukovsky and K. Batyushkov became apologists for romanticism in Russia, back in 1801-1815. This is the time of the dawn of romanticism in Russia and in the world. You may also be interested in getting to know the topics and