Who called the literature of the reduced universe thin. "Saltykov-Shchedrin called fiction a "reduced universe""
What is "Reduced Universe"?
M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin called fiction "A reduced universe".
Who is the founder of Russian romanticism?
The initiators of Russian romanticism were V. A. Zhukovsky and K. N. Batyushkov.
In the work of V. A. Zhukovsky, such genres as ballads and elegies were leading, and K. N. Batyushkov - messages and elegies.
Who called the fables of I. A. Krylov "the book of the wisdom of the people itself" and why?
The fables of I. A. Krylov were called "the book of the wisdom of the people themselves" by N. V. Gogol. We can agree with this judgment, because I. A. Krylov wrote in a rustic manner, the characters of his fables were animals, which brings them closer to folk tales, but most importantly, the simple and accurate truths for which his fables were composed were close simple, but deep folk wisdom and were, as it were, well-aimed Russian proverbs deployed in a short story. For example, the fable "Dragonfly and Ant" perfectly illustrates the proverb: "Prepare the sleigh in the summer, and the cart in the winter," and the fable "Convoy" - the proverb: "Do not climb across the father in hell" and "Eggs do not teach chicken."
Who was K. F. Ryleev?
Kondraty Fedorovich Ryleev was a Decembrist, the soul of Northern society. He was one of the five leaders of the uprising hanged in 1826.
Tell us briefly about the poems of E. A. Baratynsky
The poems of E. A. Baratynsky are elegies, messages, poems. They are devoted to the problem of the withering of creative abilities and the death of noble impulses in an environment that kills them with the endless reproduction of the same thing.
Tell us briefly about the poems of F. I. Tyutchev
The philosophical scale in the poems of F. I. Tyutchev is manifested by finding analogies and general patterns in the existence of nature and human life - external and internal, physiological and spiritual.
Sympathy for the suffering of the motherland can be found in such poems as "Over this dark crowd ...", "Cicero". Comprehension of native nature occurs in the poems "Summer Evening", "Autumn Evening", "There is in the original autumn ...". Reflections on love and compassion are the theme of the following poems: "She was sitting on the floor ...", "I am still languishing with longing for desires ...".
Tell us briefly about the poems of Ya. P. Polonsky
The poems of Yakov Petrovich Polonsky are dedicated to the spiritual life of a poor person, his memories and dreams of love and a better life. I know such poems of his that have become songs, such as "Song of a Gypsy" ("My fire in the fog shines ..."), "The Recluse" ("In a familiar street ..."). In the 6th grade, we read his poem "Two gloomy clouds over the mountains ...", "Look, what a haze ...".
Tell us briefly about the poems of A. N. Maikov
The description of events in the novels and other works of Apollon Nikolaevich Maikov is imbued with the idyllic beauty of nature. His language is plastic and saturated with color images. In the 5th grade, we read his poem "Swallows" ("My garden fades every day ..."), in the 6th grade - "Dawn" ("Here is a greenish stripe ..."), "Autumn" (“The golden leaf is already covering ...”) and “Landscape” (“I love the forest path ...”).
Tell us briefly about the poems of A. N. Pleshcheev
In the works of Alexei Nikolayevich Pleshcheev, the desire of the advanced nobles and raznochintsy to participate in the life of the common people, to protect them from cruel oppression by those in power, found its expression. In the 5th grade, we read his poem "Spring" ("The snow is already melting, streams are running ...").
Tell us briefly about the poems of N. A. Nekrasov
N. A. Nekrasov is certainly the brightest representative of civil poetry. He writes about the peasants, about their hard hopeless life, often from the inside of this life itself and in its own language. His simple laconic poems and poems were very popular among the people. In previous classes, excerpts from the poem "Frost - Red Nose", the poems "Railway", "Peasant Children" were studied, the poem "Who Lives Well in Russia" will be studied.
Remember the works of the 19th century that you have read and try to determine which literary movement (romanticism or realism) they belong to. Justify the answer.
Of the romantic works of the 19th century, I would name the poems and ballads of V. A. Zhukovsky, the poems of A. S. Pushkin, created during the period of southern exile, "Mtsyri" by M. Yu. Lermontov and most of his poems, the stories of A. A. Bestuzhev- Marlinsky and V.F. Odoevsky. Although these are very different works - and romanticism is individually manifested in the work of each writer - nevertheless, their belonging to the romantic direction can be explained by a number of general principles for depicting reality. First of all, it is dissatisfaction with the surrounding world, the unspiritual beginning. Belief in the beautiful, pure, immaculate, eternal, but inaccessible unites the work of romantics. Zhukovsky's works belong to one of the brightest currents of romanticism - contemplative-psychological, which promotes the cult of high, spiritual love, sincere and faithful friendship. Nature for a romantic is eternally alive, embodying the divine principle. He is looking for inner harmony in it, the possibility of improving his emotional world. The novel (immortal work) tic hero is not afraid of death, but sees in it a sweet transition from the real, earthly world to the world of eternal ideas, unattainable dreams, truth and the absolute. Such romanticism is characterized by the pathos of light sadness. The followers of Byronic romanticism, whose influence Pushkin and Lermontov experienced in their time, showed deep pessimism in assessing the surrounding reality. They depicted a strong, disappointed personality, an embittered lone rebel who challenged God, morality, and power. As a rule, this is a voluntary exile, for whom love remains the only consolation, but it is also taken away from him by the injustice of life, which pushes the hero either to commit suicide, a duel, or to commit a crime. Civil romantics (K. F. Ryleev, Decembrist poets) were ready to transform the existing system through struggle. They turned to Russian history and Russian folklore, drawing plots and heroic characters from them. For them, the genre of thought has become close. D. V. Venevitinov, the poets of wisdom, F. I. Tyutchev belonged to philosophical romanticism. They deliberately moved away from depicting social conflicts to purely philosophical, moral problems, and through their comprehension they considered the themes of love, friendship, the poet and poetry.
Such works of the 19th century as A. S. Pushkin's novels "The Captain's Daughter" and "Dubrovsky", N. V. Gogol's comedy "The Inspector General", "Notes of a Hunter" and novels by I. S. Turgenev, stories by A. P. Chekhov, the works of L. N. Tolstoy belong to realism. They deeply explore life itself, reality. Heroes act in specific socio-historical conditions, their behavior, characters, views, lifestyle depend on these conditions. Sometimes these two directions are combined in the work of the same writer, for example, in the work of Pushkin or Lermontov.
Think about the difference between the realism of the first half of the 19th century, which in Europe and Russia is considered the period of the formation of realism, from the era of its maturity (the second half of the century).
Indeed, in the first half of the 19th century, the formation of realism takes place, even within the framework of the work of the same writer, romantic and realistic approaches to the development of reality coexist in many respects (Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol), heroes often combine realistic and romantic beginnings in their depiction (" Taman" in the novel "A Hero of Our Time"). We find the classic and realistic in the content and composition of "Woe from Wit" by A. S. Griboyedov. In the second half of the century, realism was already established as the predominant method in Russian and Western European literature. At this time, he receives a critical direction, rejecting negative phenomena in social life, asserting new norms for relations between people (Nekrasov, Chernyshevsky, Saltykov-Shchedrin) or returning to eternal moral values (Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov).
Follow how the hero changes in the works of classicism, sentimentalism, romanticism and realism. What character traits become leading?
In the works of classicism, such qualities of heroes as fidelity to duty, the ability to suppress their personal feelings and interests in the name of duty, patriotism, and service to the state were highly valued. The heroes of sentimental works (this is the controversy between classicism and other trends in literature) are characterized by a cult of feelings, love, passion. They are sensitive, highly emotional, prone to detailed love explanations. The novel (an immortal work) is an unusual character and acts in unusual, exceptional circumstances, prefers to go into an exotic environment, sometimes inclined to mysticism. His moods are characterized by melancholy, sadness, acute feelings of loss.
How can you, the lucky ones, understand what I understood with longing? (V. A. Zhukovsky)
Particularly acute feelings of guilt and remorse.
The realistic hero is versatile, closely connected with the socio-historical conditions in which he finds himself. It is typical and develops in typical circumstances. The hero in Russian realism directs his activity towards the transformation of life.
This subtle and precise definition is quite applicable to the heritage of the classics, in which the centuries-old spiritual experience of mankind is compressed. Classics has always been a powerful stimulus in the development of the culture of any nation. To isolate modern literature from the classical traditions would mean cutting it off from the national root - it will bleed and wither away.
The indissoluble connection of times is especially clearly embodied in the top works of fiction, which we call classical: in their cognitive meaning, the unquenchable moral impact of their heroes on many generations of people, and also in the fact that these works continue to serve as an inexhaustible source of beauty. Great art does not know the past, it lives in the present and the future. One must not only read the classics, one must also learn to re-read them. Because every meeting with them is fraught with the joy of discovery. A person at each subsequent stage of his being is able to perceive spiritual values more and more deeply. An outstanding work, once read and re-perceived, introduces us into an atmosphere of inexplicable charm, caused, among other things, also by the opportunity to really feel our own, aesthetic, in the words of Herzen, “growth”. Perhaps it is appropriate to recall here the excellent entry of the young Herzen: “I have a passion to reread the poems of the great maestro: Goethe, Shakespeare, Pushkin, Walter Scott. It would seem, why read the same thing when at this time you can "decorate" your mind with the works of Messrs. A, B, C? Yes, the fact of the matter is that they are not the same thing; in the intervals, some spirit changes a lot in the eternally living works of the maestro. Just as Hamlet and Faust used to be wider than me, so now they are wider, despite the fact that I am convinced of my extension. No, I will not give up the habit of re-reading, for this I visually measure my growth, improvement, decline, direction ... Mankind in its own way re-reads entire millennia of Homer, and this is for him a touchstone on which he tries the power of age.
Every turn of history gives people the opportunity to take a fresh look at themselves and rediscover the immortal pages of works of art. Each epoch reads them in its own way. Goncharov noticed that Chatsky is inevitable when one century changes to another, that every business that needs updating gives birth to the shadow of Chatsky.
Great artists are responsive to the calls of all times, they are rightly called the eternal companions of mankind. The classical heritage is remarkable in that it expresses self-consciousness not only of its era. Time is moving, and along with it, the classics are moving along the same orbit, in which there is, as it were, a constant process of renewal. She has something to say to every generation, she is ambiguous. Of course, today we perceive the legacy of Gogol and Dostoevsky differently than their contemporaries, and we understand it more deeply. And this happens not because we are smarter, more insightful. The social experience of generations forms that historical tower from which the man of our apokha is aware of the spiritual culture of the past. From this donut, we see much further and clearer. The classic is inexhaustible. Its depth is infinite, as the cosmos is infinite. Shakespeare and Pushkin, Goethe and Tolstoy enrich the reader, but the reader, in turn, continuously enriches the works of great artists with his new historical experience. That is why our knowledge of the classics can never be considered final, absolute. Each subsequent generation discovers new facets in old works that have not been seen before. This means an increasingly capacious comprehension of the meaning and artistic nature of the immortal works of the past.
Mastering the classical heritage meets the modern needs of society, because it itself, this heritage, becomes an active participant in modern life. The social content of the works of Russian classics is extremely important. It has always been fertilized by the progressive ideas of the time and expressed the spirit of the liberation struggle of the people, their hatred of despotism and their indomitable desire for freedom. The German writer Heinrich Mann famously said that Russian classical literature was a revolution "even before the revolution happened."
Russian literature has always been distinguished by its unusual sensitivity to the solution of moral issues that are invariably intertwined with the most important social problems of our time. The great poet was proud that in his "cruel age" he "glorified ... freedom" and awakened "good feelings." Striking here is the unexpected neighborhood of words that seemed so different in historical meaning, like “freedom” and “good”. The first of them in romantic poetry was almost always associated with the boiling of passions, with a titanic and cruel struggle, with courage, prowess, a dagger, revenge. And here it stands next to the words "good feelings." Remarkable is Pushkin's conviction that sometime in the future the awakening of good feelings in people will be understood as something equivalent to the glorification of freedom. But after all, all Russian classics are a sermon of humanity, kindness and the search for ways leading to it!
Tolstoy called on people to improve their soul, their moral world. As a terrible tragedy, Lermontov imagined the extinction in Pechorin of the best qualities of his character - love for people, tenderness for the world, the desire to embrace humanity.
Hatred for various manifestations of injustice was for the great Russian writers the highest measure of a person's moral virtues. With its indomitable moral pathos, as well as artistic perfection, Russian literature has long won the recognition of the whole world. “Where for forty years,” recalled Romain Rolland, “we were looking for our spiritual food and our daily bread, when our black soil was no longer enough to satisfy our hunger? Who, if not Russian writers, were our leaders?
In today's struggle for a new man, the great artists of the past are with us. The struggle against injustice, various manifestations of evil is nothing but a struggle in the name of the victory of good, humanity. This is known by such an "evil" genre of literature as satire. Was not the most tender heart of Gogol, who dreamed of a different, more perfect reality! Didn't Shchedrin, who was so merciless for his time, want good for Russia? Good people in the name of good became irreconcilable to various manifestations of evil and to what gave rise to it. Beautiful ideals require beautiful feelings.
"Childhood" by Maxim Gorky is an autobiographical story. It describes the life and cruel customs of the bourgeois environment in which a half-orphan boy is forced to grow up. In his childhood, Alyosha encounters many people, both good and bad. But there is a person among them who has a special role. This is grandmother Akulina Ivanovna. Grandmother always remains in the center of his attention, being an intermediary between the boy and the big world, Alyosha receives the most valuable life lessons from her. Grandmother - "round, big-headed, with huge eyes and a funny loose nose ...". In her guise, Alyosha is especially attracted to Mr.
One of the main issues of A.S. Pushkin was the question of the relationship between the individual and the state, as well as the resulting problem of the "little man". It is known that it was Pushkin who seriously developed this problem, which N.V. Gogol, and F.M. Dostoevsky. Pushkin's poem "The Bronze Horseman" reveals an eternal conflict - a contradiction between the interests of the individual and the state. Pushkin believed that this conflict was inevitable, at least in Russia. It is impossible to govern the state and take into account the interests of every "little man". Moreover, Russia is a semi-Asian country,
Based on the results of 2002-2003, I and ten other students of our school were awarded on a trip to the capital of Ukraine - Kiev. During the whole hour we saw the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, the museum of Taras Shevchenko, walked along Khreschatyk and Andriivsky uzvoz. Dehto from us was more merciful to the Dniprom-Slavuta. Kiev has grafted us with the smiling appearances of the bagmen, grandiose wakes and quiet green streets. For two days of excursions and walks, we have come to love our capital. Let's hope that there is only the beginning of acquaintance with Kiev. For the sake of our mischief for a wonderful gift! (loadpositiontextmod
It's subtle and precise the definition is quite applicable to the heritage of the classics, in which the centuries-old spiritual experience of mankind is compressed. Classics has always been a powerful stimulus in the development of the culture of any nation. To isolate modern literature from the classical traditions would mean cutting it off from the national root - it will bleed and wither away.
Indissoluble bond time is especially clearly embodied in the top works of fiction, which we call classical: in their cognitive significance, the unquenchable moral impact of their heroes on many generations of people, and also in the fact that these works continue to serve as an inexhaustible source of beauty. Great art does not know the past, it lives in the present and the future. One must not only read the classics, one must also learn to re-read them. Because every meeting with them is fraught with the joy of discovery. A person at each subsequent stage of his being is able to perceive spiritual values more and more deeply. An outstanding work, once read and re-perceived, introduces us into an atmosphere of inexplicable charm, caused, by the way, also by the opportunity to really feel our own, aesthetic, in the word, “growth”. Perhaps it is appropriate to recall here the excellent entry of the young Herzen: “I have a passion to reread the poems of the great maestro: Goethe, Shakespeare, Pushkin, Walter Scott. It would seem, why read the same thing when at this time you can "decorate" your mind with the works of Messrs. A, B, C? Yes, the fact of the matter is that they are not the same thing; in the intervals, some spirit changes a lot in the eternally living works of the maestro. Just as , before they were wider than me, so now they are wider, despite the fact that I am convinced of my expansion. No, I will not give up the habit of re-reading, for this I visually measure my growth, improvement, decline, direction ... Mankind in its own way re-reads entire millennia of Homer, and this is for him a touchstone on which he tries the power of age.
Every turn history gives people the opportunity to take a fresh look at themselves and rediscover the immortal pages of works of art. Each epoch reads them in its own way. Goncharov noticed that it is inevitable when one century changes to another, that every business that needs updating gives birth to the shadow of Chatsky.
Great artists are responsive to the calls of all times, they are rightly called the eternal companions of mankind. The classical heritage is remarkable in that it expresses self-consciousness not only of its era. Time is moving, and along with it, the classics are moving along the same orbit, in which there is, as it were, a constant process of renewal. She has something to say to every generation, she is ambiguous. Of course, today we perceive the heritage differently than their contemporaries, and understand it more deeply. And this happens not because we are smarter, more insightful. The social experience of generations forms that historical tower from which the man of our apokha is aware of the spiritual culture of the past. From this donut, we see much further and clearer. The classic is inexhaustible. Its depth is infinite, as the cosmos is infinite. Shakespeare and Goethe and Tolstoy enrich the reader, but the reader, in turn, continuously enriches the works of great artists with his new historical experience. That is why our knowledge of the classics can never be considered final, absolute. Each subsequent generation discovers new facets in old works that have not been seen before. This means an increasingly capacious comprehension of the meaning and artistic nature of the immortal works of the past.
Mastering the classical heritage meets the modern needs of society, because it itself, this heritage, becomes an active participant in modern life. The social content of the works of Russian classics is extremely important. It has always been fertilized by the progressive ideas of the time and expressed the spirit of the liberation struggle of the people, their hatred of despotism and their indomitable desire for freedom. The German writer Heinrich Mann famously said that Russian classical literature was a revolution "even before the revolution happened."
Russian literature always distinguished by extraordinary sensitivity to the solution of moral issues, invariably intertwined with the most important social problems of our time. The great poet was proud that in his "cruel age" he "glorified ... freedom" and awakened "good feelings." Striking here is the unexpected neighborhood of words that seemed so different in historical meaning, like “freedom” and “good”. The first of them in romantic poetry was almost always associated with the boiling of passions, with a titanic and cruel struggle, with courage, prowess, a dagger, revenge. And here it stands next to the words "good feelings." Remarkable is Pushkin's conviction that sometime in the future the awakening of good feelings in people will be understood as something equivalent to the glorification of freedom. But after all, all Russian classics are a sermon of humanity, kindness and the search for ways leading to it!
Improve his soul, his moral world called people Tolstoy. As a terrible tragedy, he imagined the extinction in Pechorin of the best qualities of his character - love for people, tenderness for the world, the desire to embrace humanity.
Hatred for various manifestations of injustice was for the great Russian writers the highest measure of a person's moral virtues. With its indomitable moral pathos, as well as artistic perfection, Russian literature has long won the recognition of the whole world. “Where for forty years,” recalled Romain Rolland, “we were looking for our spiritual food and our daily bread, when our black soil was no longer enough to satisfy our hunger? Who, if not Russian writers, were our leaders?
In today's in our struggle for the new man, the great artists of the past are with us. The struggle against injustice, various manifestations of evil is nothing but a struggle in the name of the victory of good, humanity. This is known by such an "evil" genre of literature as satire. Was not the most tender heart of Gogol, who dreamed of a different, more perfect reality! Didn't Shchedrin, who was so merciless for his time, want good for Russia? Good people in the name of good became irreconcilable to various manifestations of evil and to what gave rise to it. Beautiful ideals require beautiful feelings.
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Homework on the topic: Saltykov-Shchedrin called fiction "a reduced universe".
Artistic world of Gogol
Introduction
Every great artist is a whole world. To enter this world, to feel its versatility and unique beauty means to bring oneself closer to the knowledge of the infinite diversity of life, to put oneself on some higher level of spiritual, aesthetic development. The work of every major writer is a precious storehouse of artistic and spiritual, one might say, "humanistic" experience, which is of great importance for the progressive development of society. Shchedrin called fiction a "reduced universe". Studying it, a person acquires wings, turns out to be able to understand history more broadly, deeper and that always restless modern world in which he lives. The great past is connected with the present by invisible threads. The history and soul of the people are captured in the artistic heritage. That is why it is an inexhaustible source of his spiritual and emotional enrichment.
This is also the real value of the Russian classics. With her civic temperament, her romantic impulse, her deep and fearless analysis of the real contradictions of reality, she had an enormous influence on the development of the liberation movement in Russia. Heinrich Mann rightly said that Russian literature was a revolution "even before the revolution happened."
Gogol played a special role in this respect. "... We don't know," wrote Chernyshevsky, "how Russia could do without Gogol." In these words, perhaps, the attitude of revolutionary democracy and all progressive Russian social thought of the 19th century towards the author of The Inspector General and Dead Souls was most clearly reflected.
Herzen spoke about Russian literature: “... composing songs, she destroyed; laughing, she burrowed. Gogol's laughter also had tremendous destructive power. He undermined faith in the imaginary inviolability of the police-bureaucratic regime, to which Nicholas I tried to give an aura of invincible power; he exposed to "the eyes of the whole people" the rottenness of this regime, everything that Herzen called "the insolent frankness of autocracy."
The appearance of Gogol's work was historically natural. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Russian literature faced new, major tasks. The rapidly developing process of the disintegration of serfdom and absolutism evoked in the advanced strata of Russian society an ever more persistent, passionate search for a way out of the crisis, awakened the idea of further ways of Russia's historical development. Gogol's work reflected the growing dissatisfaction of the people with the feudal system, their awakening revolutionary energy, their desire for a different, more perfect reality. Belinsky called Gogol "one of the great leaders" of his country "on the path of consciousness, development, progress."
Gogol's art arose on the foundation that was erected before him by Pushkin. In "Boris Godunov" and "Eugene Onegin", "The Bronze Horseman" and "The Captain's Daughter" the writer made the greatest discoveries. The amazing skill with which Pushkin reflected the fullness of contemporary reality and penetrated into the secrets of the spiritual world of his heroes, the insight with which he saw in each of them a reflection of the real processes of social life, the depth of his historical thinking and the greatness of his humanistic ideals - all these facets of his personality and his work, Pushkin opened a new era in the development of Russian literature, realistic art.
Gogol followed the trail laid by Pushkin, but he went his own way. Pushkin revealed the deep contradictions of modern society. But for all that, the world, artistically realized by the poet, is full of beauty and harmony, the element of negation is balanced by the element of affirmation. The denunciation of social vices is combined with the glorification of the power and nobility of the human mind. Pushkin, according to the true word of Apollon Grigoriev, "was a pure, sublime and harmonious echo of everything, transforming everything into beauty and harmony." The artistic world of Gogol is not so universal and comprehensive. His perception of modern life was also different. There is a lot of light, sun, joy in Pushkin's work. All his poetry is imbued with the indestructible strength of the human spirit, it was the apotheosis of youth, bright hopes and faith, it reflected the seething passions and that "revelry at the feast of life" about which Belinsky enthusiastically wrote.
Pushkin covered all aspects of Russian life, but already in his time there was a need for a more detailed study of its individual areas. The realism of Gogol, like that of Pushkin, was imbued with the spirit of a fearless analysis of the essence of the social phenomena of our time. But the originality of Gogol's realism consisted in the fact that he combined the breadth of understanding of reality as a whole with a microscopically detailed study of its most hidden nooks and crannies. Gogol depicts his heroes in all the concreteness of their social existence, in all the smallest details of their everyday way of life, their daily existence.
“Why, then, portray poverty, yes poverty, and the imperfection of our life, digging people out of the wilderness, from the remote nooks and crannies of the state?” These opening lines from the second volume of Dead Souls perhaps best reveal the pathos of Gogol's creativity. A significant part of it was focused on depicting poverty and the imperfection of life.
Never before have the contradictions of Russian reality been so exposed as in the 1930s and 1940s. Critical depiction of its deformities and ugliness became the main task of literature. And Gogol sensed this brilliantly. Explaining in the fourth letter, "Regarding Dead Souls, the reasons for the burning in 1845 of the second volume of the poem, he remarked that it was pointless now" to bring out a few beautiful characters that reveal the high nobility of our breed. And then he writes: “No, there is a time when it is impossible to direct society, or even the whole generation, towards the beautiful, until you show the full depth of its real abomination.”
Gogol was convinced that in the conditions of contemporary Russia, the ideal and beauty of life can be expressed primarily through the denial of ugly reality. This was his work, this was the originality of his realism.
In his famous discussion of two types of artists, to whom the seventh chapter of Dead Souls opens, Gogol contrasts the romantic inspiration soaring in the sky with the hard but noble work of a realist writer who dares to expose to the eyes of the people "all the terrible, amazing mire of trifles that have entangled our life, the whole depth of the cold, fragmented, everyday characters that our earthly, sometimes bitter and boring road is teeming with.” Most of all, Gogol was hostile to the false idealization of life, which always seemed to him offensive to the artist. Only truth, no matter how expensive it may be, is worthy of art.
Gogol was well aware of the tragic nature of contemporary social life. His satire did not just deny and denounce. For the first time, it acquired an analytical, research character. In his works, Gogol not only showed certain aspects of Russian "everyday reality", but also revealed its inner mechanism, not only depicted evil, but also tried to find out where it comes from, what gives rise to it. The study of the material, material and everyday basis of life, its invisible features and the impoverished characters arising from it, who arrogantly believed in their dignity and right, was Gogol's discovery in the history of Russian literature.
The critic saw the national significance of Gogol in the fact that with the appearance of this artist, our literature turned exclusively to Russian reality. “Perhaps,” he wrote, “through this it became more one-sided and even monotonous, but also more original, original, and therefore true.” A comprehensive depiction of the real processes of life, the study of its "roaring contradictions" - along this path will go all the great Russian literature of the post-Gogol era.
The artistic world of Gogol is unusually original and complex.
The seeming simplicity and clarity of his works should not deceive. They bear the imprint of the original, one might say, amazing personality of the great master, his very deep outlook on life. Both are directly related to his artistic world.
None of the Russian writers who preceded the author of Dead Souls showed the obsolete forms of feudal reality in Russia with such persuasive artistic power and realistic authenticity. Griboyedov, Pushkin, Lermontov, from the standpoint of revolutionary nobles, denounced the vices of the landlord system. In their works, the ideological conflict between the advanced noble intelligentsia and the prevailing reactionary foundations of life was deeply revealed. Chatsky, Onegin and Pechorin - each of them in his own way reflected the various sides of this conflict.
Gogol did not call for overthrowing the tyrant tsar and hoisting the banner of liberty on the "ruins of autocracy". The rebellious mind of Chatsky, who with his passionate word anathematized the world of the Famusovs and Skalozubs, was not peculiar to him either. Gogol also hated this world, but executed it by other means - laughter, which Herzen considered "one of the most powerful weapons of destruction." In The Inspector General and Dead Souls, the life of old Russia is shown from such an angle and with such accusatory power that no one has portrayed it before.
But did this image express the conscious tendency of the writer himself?
At one time, in Soviet literary criticism, there was a rather widespread legend about the absence of a consciously critical attitude towards reality by the author of The Inspector General and Dead Souls. It was argued that the writer subjectively did not share the accusatory pathos of his own works, that he created them allegedly contrary to his convictions. According to this theory, Gogol, even in the 1930s and early 1940s, that is, at the time of his creative flowering, stood on invariably conservative positions. The accusatory pathos of Gogol's satire, thus, was directly opposed to the worldview of the writer.
His talent allegedly created independently and contrary to worldview. Such a point of view is erroneous and completely distorts the nature of Gogol's work, gives an incorrect idea of his worldview.
Gogol is one of the most complex writers in the world. His fate - literary and worldly - shocks us with its drama. Contradictions tore apart his consciousness and creativity. In his works, of course, he deliberately exposed the rules that the unjust social system in Russia was imposing. But this "consciousness" had certain limits. Gogol was far from thinking about the need for a radical, revolutionary transformation of this system. Sincerely and with conviction he hated the ugly world of feudal lords and tsarist officials. At the same time, he was often afraid of the conclusions that naturally and naturally flowed from his works. The gift of a brilliant realist artist was combined in the writer with the narrowness of his political outlook. In this sense, Belinsky noted the limitations of "intellectual development" inherent in Gogol, and Chernyshevsky noted the "crampedness of the horizon." Here are the origins of the spiritual drama that Gogol experienced in the last years of his life.
In his work, the writer experienced a certain influence of Belinsky's ideas. And although with his theoretical thought he did not rise to the revolutionary positions of a great critic, his works fought the same political enemy that Belinsky opposed. In his famous article "A look at Russian literature since the death of Pushkin" Ap. Grigoriev wrote that "Gogol became the literary belief of Belinsky and of the entire era." The author of "Dead Souls" impressed Belinsky and the entire "young Russia" not only with the striking originality and artistic perfection of his work, but also direction this creativity. The ideological orientation of Gogol's work was close to Belinsky; in addition, in the very worldview of the writer there were such elements that helped him create works of colossal accusatory power. There were many backward, patriarchal aspects in Gogol's worldview. He believed in the reason of the government and the supreme justice of the power of the king. He believed that it was possible to effectively improve the life of the people only by eliminating officials of all ranks who were dishonest in their duties. But in the spiritual image of Gogol there were also quite a few features that were truly progressive. For all the inconsistency of Gogol's worldview, his realism possessed such a power of artistic generalization, led readers to such conclusions that, objectively, Gogol became an ally of Belinsky and all revolutionary democracy. This is what Lenin had in mind when putting forward his well-known position about the ideas of Belinsky and Gogol, "which made these writers dear to Nekrasov - like to any decent person in Russia ...".
In the moral character of Gogol the artist, one remarkable feature has always stood out - the consciousness of the greatest responsibility for one's word. No force could force Gogol to publish a work if he believed that he had not yet exhausted all the possibilities to make it more perfect. He had a high moral right to declare: “I can say that I have never sacrificed my talent to the world. No entertainment, no passion was able to take possession of my soul for a moment and distract me from my duty. There is no life for me outside of my life." The confessional tone of this confession fully corresponded to the preaching nature of all his work.
Gogol was one of the most amazing and original masters of the artistic word. Among the great Russian writers, he possessed, perhaps, perhaps the most expressive signs of style. Gogol's language, Gogol's landscape, Gogol's humor, Gogol's manner in depicting a portrait - these expressions have long become commonplace. Nevertheless, the study of Gogol's style and artistic skill is still far from being a fully solved task.
Soviet literary criticism has done a lot to study the legacy of Gogol - perhaps even more than in relation to some other classics. But can we say that it has already been fully explored? Hardly even sometime in the historically foreseeable future we will have grounds for an affirmative answer to this question. At each new round of history, there is a need to re-read and rethink the work of the great writers of the past in a new way.
The classic is inexhaustible. Each epoch opens previously unnoticed facets in the great heritage and finds in it something important for thinking about their own, modern affairs. Much of Gogol's artistic experience today is unusually interesting and instructive.
In this book, the main milestones of Gogol's creative path are traced and an attempt is made to comprehend his artistic heritage in close connection with the general direction of his spiritual development and, in particular, his views on art - in many respects wise and insightful. I had neither the intention nor the opportunity to speak with equal thoroughness of all his works. Some are discussed in more detail, others less. First of all, I wanted to give a sense of the immense depth of Gogol, to show the artistic originality of his work, as well as the significance of his feat for advanced Russian social thought, for our domestic literature as a whole.
Notes
(1) Lenin V. I. Poln. coll. cit., vol. 22, p. 83.
This subtle and precise definition is quite applicable to the heritage of the classics, in which the centuries-old spiritual experience of mankind is compressed. Classics has always been a powerful stimulus in the development of the culture of any nation. To isolate modern literature from the classical traditions would mean cutting it off from the national root - it will bleed and wither away.
The indissoluble connection of times is especially clearly embodied in the top works of fiction, which we call classical: in their cognitive meaning, the unquenchable moral impact of their heroes on many generations of people, and also in the fact that these works continue to serve as an inexhaustible source of beauty. Great art does not know the past, it lives in the present and the future. One must not only read the classics, one must also learn to re-read them. Because every meeting with them is fraught with the joy of discovery. A person at each subsequent stage of his being is able to perceive spiritual values more and more deeply. An outstanding work, once read and re-perceived, introduces us into an atmosphere of inexplicable charm, caused, among other things, also by the opportunity to really feel our own, aesthetic, in the words of Herzen, “growth”. Perhaps it is appropriate to recall here the excellent entry of the young Herzen: “I have a passion to reread the poems of the great maestro: Goethe, Shakespeare, Pushkin, Walter Scott. It would seem, why read the same thing when at this time you can "decorate" your mind with the works of Messrs. A, B, C? Yes, the fact of the matter is that they are not the same thing; in the intervals, some spirit changes a lot in the eternally living works of the maestro. Just as Hamlet and Faust used to be wider than me, so now they are wider, despite the fact that I am convinced of my extension. No, I will not give up the habit of re-reading, for this I visually measure my growth, improvement, decline, direction ... Mankind in its own way re-reads entire millennia of Homer, and this is for him a touchstone on which he tries the power of age.
Every turn of history gives people the opportunity to take a fresh look at themselves and rediscover the immortal pages of works of art. Each epoch reads them in its own way. Goncharov noticed that Chatsky is inevitable when one century changes to another, that every business that needs updating gives birth to the shadow of Chatsky.
Great artists are responsive to the calls of all times, they are rightly called the eternal companions of mankind. The classical heritage is remarkable in that it expresses self-consciousness not only of its era. Time is moving, and along with it, the classics are moving along the same orbit, in which there is, as it were, a constant process of renewal. She has something to say to every generation, she is ambiguous. Of course, today we perceive the legacy of Gogol and Dostoevsky differently than their contemporaries, and we understand it more deeply. And this happens not because we are smarter, more insightful. The social experience of generations forms that historical tower from which the man of our apokha is aware of the spiritual culture of the past. From this donut, we see much further and clearer. The classic is inexhaustible. Its depth is infinite, as the cosmos is infinite. Shakespeare and Pushkin, Goethe and Tolstoy enrich the reader, but the reader, in turn, continuously enriches the works of great artists with his new historical experience. That is why our knowledge of the classics can never be considered final, absolute. Each subsequent generation discovers new facets in old works that have not been seen before. This means an increasingly capacious comprehension of the meaning and artistic nature of the immortal works of the past.
Mastering the classical heritage meets the modern needs of society, because it itself, this heritage, becomes an active participant in modern life. The social content of the works of Russian classics is extremely important.