Romanticism: representatives, distinctive features, literary forms. What is romanticism: brief and clear
Exam essay
Topic: "Romanticism as a trend in art".
Performed student 11 "B" class school №3
Boyprav Anna
World Art Lecturer
culture Butsu T.N.
Brest 2002
1. Introduction
2. The reasons for the emergence of romanticism
3. The main features of romanticism
4. Romantic hero
5. Romanticism in Russia
a) Literature
b) Painting
c) Music
6. Western European romanticism
a) Painting
b) Music
7. Conclusion
8. References
1. INTRODUCTION
If you look into the explanatory dictionary of the Russian language, you can find several meanings of the word "romanticism": 1. The trend in literature and art of the first quarter of the 19th century, characterized by idealization of the past, isolation from reality, cult of personality and man. 2. A trend in literature and art, imbued with optimism and the desire to show in vivid images the high purpose of a person. 3. Mood, imbued with the idealization of reality, dreamy contemplation.
As can be seen from the definition, romanticism is a phenomenon that manifests itself not only in art, but also in behavior, clothing, lifestyle, psychology of people and arises at the turning points of life, therefore the theme of romanticism is relevant today. We live at the turn of the century, we are in a transitional stage. In this regard, in society there is a lack of faith in the future, disbelief in ideals, there is a desire to escape from the surrounding reality into the world of one's own experiences and at the same time to comprehend it. It is these features that are characteristic of romantic art. That is why I chose the topic “Romanticism as a direction in art” for research.
Romanticism is a very large layer different types art. The purpose of my work is to trace the conditions of origin and the reasons for the emergence of romanticism in different countries, to investigate the development of romanticism in such forms of art as literature, painting and music, and to compare them. The main task for me was to highlight the main features of romanticism, characteristic of all types of art, to determine what influence romanticism had on the development of other trends in art.
When developing the topic, I used textbooks on art by authors such as Filimonova, Vorotnikov, etc., encyclopedias, monographs dedicated to various authors of the era of romanticism, biographical materials such authors as Aminskaya, Atsarkina, Nekrasova, etc.
2. REASONS FOR ROMANCE
The closer we are to modernity, the shorter the time periods for the dominance of a particular style become. Time period of the end of the 18th-1st third of the 19th centuries. is considered to be the era of romanticism (from the French Romantique; something mysterious, strange, unreal)
What influenced the emergence of a new style?
These are three main events: the Great French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the rise of the national liberation movement in Europe.
The thunders of Paris echoed throughout Europe. The slogan "Freedom, equality, brotherhood!" European nations... With the formation of bourgeois societies, the working class began to act against the feudal order as an independent force. The opposing struggle of the three classes - the nobility, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat - formed the basis of the historical development of the 19th century.
The fate of Napoleon and his role in European history for 2 decades, 1796-1815, occupied the minds of his contemporaries. "The ruler of thoughts" - said A.S. Pushkin.
For France, these were years of greatness and glory, though at the cost of the lives of thousands of French people. Italy saw Napoleon as its liberator. The Poles pinned great hopes on him.
Napoleon acted as a conqueror acting in the interests of the French bourgeoisie. For European monarchs, he was not only a military enemy, but also a representative of the alien world of the bourgeoisie. They hated him. At the beginning of the Napoleonic wars in his "Great Army" there were many direct participants in the revolution.
The personality of Napoleon himself was phenomenal. The young man Lermontov responded to the 10th anniversary of Napoleon's death:
He is alien to the world. Everything about him was a secret
A day of rise - and an hour of fall!
This secret attracted the attention of romantics especially.
In connection with the Napoleonic wars and the ripening of national self-awareness, this period was characterized by the rise of the national liberation movement. Germany, Austria, Spain fought against the Napoleonic occupation, Italy - against the Austrian yoke, Greece - against Turkey, in Poland they fought against Russian tsarism, Ireland - against the British.
One generation witnessed a startling change.
France seethed most of all: the stormy five years of the French Revolution, the rise and fall of Robespierre, the Napoleonic campaigns, the first abdication of Napoleon, his return from the island of Elba ("one hundred days") and the final
the defeat at Waterloo, the bleak 15th anniversary of the restoration regime, the July Revolution of 1860, the February Revolution of 1848 in Paris, which triggered a revolutionary wave in other countries.
In England, as a result of an industrial revolution in the 2nd half of the 19th century. machine production and capitalist relations became firmly established. The parliamentary reform of 1832 cleared the path of the bourgeoisie to state power.
Feudal rulers retained power on the lands of Germany and Austria. After the fall of Napoleon, they dealt severely with the opposition. But even on German soil, a steam locomotive brought from England in 1831 became a factor in bourgeois progress.
Industrial revolutions, political revolutions changed the face of Europe. "The bourgeoisie, in less than a hundred years of its class rule, has created more numerous and grandiose productive forces than all previous generations combined," wrote the German scientists Marx and Engels in 1848.
So, the Great French Revolution (1789-1794) marked a special milestone separating the new era from the age of the Enlightenment. It was not only the forms of the state that changed, the social structure of society, the arrangement of classes. The whole system of representations, illuminated for centuries, was shaken. The educators ideologically prepared the revolution. But they could not foresee all its consequences. The "kingdom of reason" did not take place. The revolution, which proclaimed the freedom of the individual, gave birth to a bourgeois order, a spirit of acquisitiveness and selfishness. This was the historical basis for the development of artistic culture, which put forward a new direction - romanticism.
3. MAIN FEATURES OF ROMANCE
Romanticism as a method and direction in artistic culture was a complex and contradictory phenomenon. In every country, he had a vivid national expression. In literature, music, painting and theater, it is not easy to find features that unite Chateaubriand and Delacroix, Mickiewicz and Chopin, Lermontov and Kiprensky.
Romantics occupied different social and political positions in society. They all rebelled against the results of the bourgeois revolution, but they rebelled in different ways, since each had its own ideal. But for all the many-sidedness and diversity, romanticism has stable features.
Disappointment in modernity gave rise to a special interest in the past: to pre-bourgeois social formations, to patriarchal antiquity. Many romantics were characterized by the idea that the picturesque exoticism of the countries of the south and east - Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey - is a poetic contrast to the boring bourgeois everyday life. In these countries, then still little affected by civilization, romantics were looking for bright, strong characters, original, colorful way of life. Interest in the national past gave rise to a lot of historical works.
In an effort to rise, as it were, above the prose of life, to liberate the diverse abilities of the individual, to maximally self-actualize in creativity, the romantics opposed the formalization of art and the straightforwardly judicious approach to it inherent in classicism. They all came from denial of the Enlightenment and rationalistic canons of classicism, which fettered the artist's creative initiative. And if classicism divides everything in a straight line, into bad and good, into black and white, then romanticism divides nothing in a straight line. Classicism is a system, but romanticism is not. Romanticism propelled the advancement of modern times from classicism to sentimentalism, which shows the inner life of a person in harmony with the vast world. And romanticism opposes harmony to the inner world. It is with romanticism that real psychologism begins to appear.
The main task of romanticism was image of the inner world, spiritual life, and this could be done on the basis of stories, mysticism, etc. It was necessary to show the paradox of this inner life, its irrationality.
In their imaginations, the romantics transformed the unsightly reality or went into the world of their experiences. The gap between dream and reality, the opposition of the beautiful fiction to objective reality, lay at the heart of the entire romantic movement.
For the first time, romanticism poses the problem of the language of art. “Art is a language of a completely different kind than nature; but it also contains the same miraculous force that just as secretly and incomprehensibly affects the human soul ”(Wackenroder and Thicke). An artist is an interpreter of the language of nature, a mediator between the world of spirit and people. “Thanks to the artists, humanity emerges as an integral individuality. Through the present, artists unite the past world with the future world. They are the highest spiritual organ in which the vital forces of their outer humanity meet each other, and where the inner humanity manifests itself first of all ”(F. Schlegel).
However, romanticism was not a homogeneous trend: its ideological development went in different directions. Among the romantics were reactionary writers, adherents of the old regime, who glorified feudal monarchy and Christianity. On the other hand, romantics with a progressive outlook expressed a democratic protest against feudal and all kinds of oppression, embodied the people's revolutionary impulse for a better future.
Romanticism left a whole era in the world art culture, its representatives were: V. Scott, J. Byron, Shelley, V. Hugo, A. Mitskevich, and others; in the fine arts of E. Delacroix, T. Gericault, F. Runge, J. Constable, W. Turner, O. Kiprensky and others; in music F. Schubert, R. Wagner, G. Berlioz, N. Paganini, F. Liszt, F. Chopin and others. They discovered and developed new genres, paid close attention to the fate of the human person, revealed the dialectic of good and evil, masterfully revealed human passions, etc.
The forms of art in their importance more or less equalized and produced magnificent works of art, although the romantics in the ladder of arts gave priority to music.
4. ROMANTIC HERO
Who is a romantic hero and what is he like?
This is an individualist. A superman who has lived through two stages: before colliding with reality, he lives in a ‘pink’ state, he is possessed by the desire for achievement, for changing the world; after facing reality, he continues to consider this world both vulgar and boring, but he does not become a skeptic, a pessimist. With a clear understanding that nothing can be changed, the desire for heroic deeds is reborn into the desire for dangers.
Romantics could give an eternal lasting value to every little thing, to every concrete fact, to every single thing. Joseph de Maistre calls it "the ways of Providence", Germain de Stael - "the fruitful womb of the immortal universe." Chateaubriand in The Genius of Christianity, in a book devoted to history, directly points to God as the beginning of historical time. Society appears as an unshakable bond, "a thread of life that connects us with our ancestors and which we must extend to our descendants." Only a person's heart, and not his mind, can understand and hear the voice of the Creator, through the beauty of nature, through deep feelings. Nature is divine, it is the source of harmony and creative power, its metaphors are often transferred by romantics into the political lexicon. For romantics, the tree becomes a symbol of the family, spontaneous development, the perception of the juices of the native land, a symbol of national unity. The more innocent and sensitive a person's nature is, the easier he hears the voice of God. A child, a woman, a noble youth more often than others perceive the immortality of the soul and the value of eternal life. Romantics' thirst for bliss is not limited to the idealistic pursuit of the Kingdom of God after death.
In addition to mystical love for God, a person needs real, earthly love. Unable to possess the object of his passion, the romantic hero became an eternal martyr, doomed to wait for a meeting with his beloved in the afterlife, "for great love is worthy of immortality when it cost a man his life."
A special place in the work of romantics is occupied by the problem of the development and education of the individual. Childhood is devoid of laws, its instant impulses violate public morality, obeying its own rules of child's play. In an adult person, similar reactions lead to death, to the condemnation of the soul. In search of the heavenly kingdom, a person must comprehend the laws of duty and morality, only then can he hope for eternal life... Since duty is dictated to romantics by their desire to gain eternal life, fulfilling duty gives personal happiness in its deepest and strongest manifestation. To the moral duty is added the duty of deep feelings and lofty interests. Without mixing the merits of different sexes, romantics advocate the equality of the spiritual development of men and women. In the same way, love for God and his institutions is dictated by civic duty... Personal striving finds its completion in a common cause, in the striving of the entire nation, of all mankind, of the whole world.
Every culture has its own romantic hero, but Byron's Charles Harold gave a typical representation of the romantic hero. He put on the mask of his hero (says that there is no distance between the hero and the author) and managed to comply with the romantic canon.
All romantic works are distinguished by characteristic features:
First, in every romantic work there is no distance between the hero and the author.
Secondly, the author of the hero does not judge, but even if something bad is said about him, the plot is so built that the hero is not guilty as it were. The plot in a romantic work is usually romantic. Romantics also build a special relationship with nature, they like storms, thunderstorms, cataclysms.
5. ROMANCE IN RUSSIA.
Romanticism in Russia differed from Western European for the sake of a different historical setting and a different cultural tradition. The French Revolution cannot be counted among the reasons for its occurrence, as a very narrow circle of people pinned any hopes on transformations in its course. And the results of the revolution completely disappointed in it. The question of capitalism in Russia early XIX in. did not stand. Therefore, there was no such reason either. The real reason was the Patriotic War of 1812, in which all the power of the people's initiative was manifested. But after the war the people did not receive the will. The best of the nobility, dissatisfied with the reality, came to Senate Square in December 1825. This act also did not pass without leaving a trace for the creative intelligentsia. The turbulent post-war years became the setting in which Russian romanticism was formed.
Romanticism, and, moreover, ours, Russian, developed and molded into our original forms, romanticism was not a simple literary, but a life phenomenon, a whole era of moral development, an era that had its own special color, carried out a special view in life ... Let the romantic trend come from the outside, from Western life and Western literatures, it found in Russian nature the soil ready for its perception, and therefore was reflected in completely original phenomena, as the poet and critic Apollo Grigoriev assessed - this is a unique cultural phenomenon, and its characteristics show the essential complexity of romanticism , from the depths of which the young Gogol emerged and with whom he was associated not only at the beginning of his career as a writer, but throughout his entire life.
Apollon Grigoriev accurately determined the nature of the influence of the romantic school on literature and life, including the prose of that time: not a simple influence or borrowing, but a characteristic and powerful life and literary trend, which gave completely original phenomena in young Russian literature.
a) Literature
It is customary to divide Russian romanticism into several periods: initial (1801-1815), mature (1815-1825) and the period of post-Kabrist development. However, in relation to the initial period, the conventionality of this scheme is striking. For the dawn of Russian romanticism is associated with the names of Zhukovsky and Batyushkov, poets whose creativity and attitude are difficult to put side by side and compare within the same period, their goals, aspirations, temperaments are so different. In the poems of both poets, one can still feel the imperious influence of the past - the era of sentimentalism, but if Zhukovsky is still deeply rooted in it, then Batyushkov is much closer to new trends.
Belinsky rightly noted that Zhukovsky's work is characterized by "complaints about imperfect hopes that did not have a name, sadness for the lost happiness, which God knows what it was." Indeed, in the person of Zhukovsky, romanticism was still making its first timid steps, paying tribute to sentimental and melancholic melancholy, vague, barely perceptible hearty yearning, in a word, to that complex complex of feelings, which in Russian criticism was called "romanticism of the Middle Ages."
A completely different atmosphere reigns in Batyushkov's poetry: the joy of being, frank sensuality, a hymn to pleasure.
Zhukovsky is rightfully considered a prominent representative of Russian aesthetic humanism. Alien to strong passions, complacent and meek Zhukovsky was under the noticeable influence of the ideas of Rousseau and German romantics... Following them, he attached great importance to the aesthetic side in religion, morality, and social relations. Art acquired a religious meaning from Zhukovsky, he strove to see in art a "revelation" of higher truths, it was "sacred" for him. The German romantics are characterized by the identification of poetry and religion. We find the same thing in Zhukovsky, who wrote: "Poetry is God in the holy dreams of the earth." In German romanticism, he was especially close to gravitation towards everything beyond, towards the "night side of the soul", towards the "inexpressible" in nature and man. Nature in Zhukovsky's poetry is surrounded by mystery, his landscapes are ghostly and almost unreal, like reflections in water:
How incense is merged with the coolness of the plants!
How sweet is the splashing in the silence by the shore of the jets!
How quietly the marshmallow blows through the waters
And the flexible willow flutter!
The sensitive, gentle and dreamy soul of Zhukovsky seems to freeze sweetly on the threshold of "this mysterious light." The poet, according to Belinsky's apt expression, “loves and doves his suffering,” but this suffering does not bite his heart with cruel wounds, for even in melancholy and sadness his inner life is quiet and serene. Therefore, when, in his letter to Batyushkov, “the son of bliss and joy,” he calls the Epicurean poet “relatives of the Muse”, it is difficult to believe in this relationship. Rather, we will believe the virtuous Zhukovsky, who amicably advises the singer earthly pleasures: "Reject voluptuousness, dreams are fatal!"
Batyushkov is the opposite of Zhukovsky in everything. He was a man of strong passions, and his creative life was cut short 35 years before his physical existence: as a very young man, he plunged into the abyss of madness. He gave himself up to both joys and sorrows with equal strength and passion: in life, as well as in its poetic interpretation, he - unlike Zhukovsky - was alien to the "golden mean". Although his poetry is also characterized by the praise of pure friendship, the joy of a "humble corner", his idyll is by no means modest and quiet, for Batiushkov cannot imagine it without the languid bliss of passionate pleasures and intoxication with life. At times, the poet is so carried away by sensual joys that he is ready to recklessly reject the oppressive wisdom of science:
Can it be true in sad truths
Gloomy stoics and boring sages
Sitting in funeral dresses,
Between the rubble and the coffins
Will we find the sweetness of our life?
From them, I see, joy
Flies like a butterfly from thorn bushes.
For them there is no charm in the charms of nature,
Virgins do not sing to them, intertwining in round dances;
For them, as for the blind,
Spring without joy and summer without flowers.
True tragedy is rarely heard in his poems. Only at the end of his creative life, when he began to show signs of mental illness, one of his last poems, in which the motives of the vanity of earthly existence are clearly expressed:
Do you remember what you said
Saying goodbye to life, gray-haired Melchizedek?
A man was born a slave
A slave will lie in the grave,
And death will hardly tell him
Why did he walk along a valley of wonderful tears,
I suffered, cried, endured,
In Russia, romanticism as a literary trend took shape by the twenties of the nineteenth century. At its origins were poets, prose writers, writers, and they created Russian romanticism, which differed from the "Western European" by its national, original character... Russian romanticism was developed by the poets of the first half of the nineteenth century, and each poet introduced something new. Russian romanticism was widely developed, acquired characteristic features, and became an independent trend in literature. In "Ruslan and Lyudmila" A.S. Pushkin has lines: "There is a Russian spirit, there is a smell of Russia." The same can be said about Russian romanticism. The heroes of romantic works are poetic souls striving for the "high" and the beautiful. But there is a hostile world that does not allow one to feel freedom, which leaves these souls incomprehensible. This world is rough, therefore the poetic soul runs to another, where there is an ideal, it strives for the "eternal". Romanticism is based on this conflict. But the poets treated this situation differently. Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Lermontov, proceeding from one thing, build relationships between their heroes and the world around them in different ways, therefore their heroes had different paths to the ideal.
Reality is terrible, rude, impudent and selfish, there is no place in it for the feelings, dreams and desires of the poet and his heroes. "True" and eternal - in the other world. Hence the concept of a double world, the poet aspires to one of these worlds in search of an ideal.
Zhukovsky's position was not the position of a person who entered into a struggle with the outside world, challenged him. It was a path through unity with nature, a path of harmony with nature, in an eternal and beautiful world. According to many researchers (including Yu.V. Mann), Zhukovsky expresses his understanding of this process of unification in The Inexpressible. Unity is the flight of the soul. The beauty that surrounds you fills your soul, it is in you, and you are in it, the soul flies, neither time nor space exists, but you exist in nature, and at this moment you live, you want to sing about this beauty, but there are no words to express your state, there is only a sense of harmony. You are not disturbed by the people around you, prosaic souls, more is open to you, you are free.
Pushkin and Lermontov approached this problem of romanticism differently. Undoubtedly, the influence exerted by Zhukovsky on Pushkin could not but be reflected in the work of the latter. The early works of Pushkin were characterized by "civic" romanticism. Under the influence of Zhukovsky's "A Singer in the Camp of Russian Soldiers" and the works of Griboyedov, Pushkin wrote the ode "Liberty", "To Chaadaev." In the latter, he urges:
"My friend! We will devote our souls to our homeland with wonderful impulses ...". This is the same striving for the ideal that Zhukovsky had, only Pushkin understands the ideal in his own way, therefore the poet's path to the ideal is different. He does not want and cannot strive for the ideal alone, the poet calls for him. Pushkin looked at reality and the ideal differently. This cannot be called a riot, this is a reflection on the rebellious elements. This is reflected in the ode "The Sea". This is the strength and power of the sea, the sea is free, it has reached its ideal. A person must also become free, his spirit must be free.
The search for the ideal is the main characteristic of romanticism. It manifested itself in the works of Zhukovsky, and in Pushkin, and in Lermontov. All three poets were looking for freedom, but they were looking for it in different ways, they understood it differently. Zhukovsky was looking for freedom sent by the "creator". Having found harmony, a person becomes free. For Pushkin, freedom of spirit was important, which should manifest itself in a person. For Lermontov, only the rebellious hero is free. Rebellion for freedom, what could be more beautiful? This attitude towards the ideal was preserved in love lyrics poets. In my opinion, this attitude is due to time. Although they all worked in almost the same period, the time of their creation was different, events developed with extraordinary rapidity. The characters of the poets also greatly influenced their relationship. Calm Zhukovsky and rebellious Lermontov are completely opposite. But Russian romanticism developed precisely because the natures of these poets were different. They introduced new concepts, new characters, new ideals, gave a complete idea of what freedom is, what real life is. Each of them represents his own path to the ideal, this is the right of choice for each person.
The very emergence of romanticism was very unsettling. The human individuality now stood at the center of the whole world. The human "I" began to be interpreted as the basis and meaning of all being. Human life began to be viewed as a work of art, art. In the 19th century, romanticism was very common. But not all poets who called themselves romantics conveyed the essence of this movement.
Now, at the end of the 20th century, we can already classify the romantics of the last century on this basis into two groups. One and probably the most extensive group is the one that united the "formal" romantics. It is difficult to suspect them of insincerity, on the contrary, they very accurately convey their feelings. Among them are Dmitry Venevitinov (1805-1827) and Alexander Polezhaev (1804-1838). These poets used the romantic form, considering it the most suitable for achieving their artistic goal. So, D. Venevitinov writes:
I feel it burns in me
Holy flame of inspiration
But the spirit soars towards the dark goal ...
Will I find a reliable cliff
Where will I rest my foot firmly?
This is a typical romantic poem. It uses traditional romantic vocabulary - both “flame of inspiration” and “soaring spirit”. Thus, the poet describes his feelings. But nothing more. The poet is bound by the framework of romanticism, by its “verbal image”. Everything has been simplified to some kind of stamps.
Representatives of another group of romantics of the 19th century, of course, were A.S. Pushkin and M.Lermontov. These poets, on the contrary, filled the romantic form with their own content. The romantic period in the life of A. Pushkin was short, therefore he has few romantic works. The Prisoner of the Caucasus (1820-1821) is one of the earliest romantic poems by A.S. Pushkin. Before us is a classic version of a romantic work. The author does not give us a portrait of his hero, we do not even know his name. And this is not surprising - all romantic heroes are similar to each other. They are young, beautiful ... and unhappy. The plot of the work is also classically romantic. A Russian prisoner of the Circassians, a young Circassian woman falls in love with him and helps him escape. But he hopelessly loves another ... The poem ends tragically - the Circassian woman throws herself into the water and dies, and the Russian, freed from "physical" captivity, falls into another, more painful captivity - the captivity of the soul. What do we know about the hero's past?
A long journey leads to Russia ...
.....................................
Where he embraced terrible suffering,
Where stormy life ruined
Hope, joy and desire.
He came to the steppe in search of freedom, tried to escape from his past life. And now, when happiness seemed so close, he has to run again. But where? Back to the world where he “embraced terrible suffering”.
Apostate of light, friend of nature,
He left his native limit
And flew to a distant land
With a cheerful ghost of freedom.
But the "ghost of freedom" remained a ghost. He will forever haunt the romantic hero. Another one romantic poem- "Gypsies". In it, the author again does not give the reader a portrait of the hero, we only know his name - Aleko. He came to the camp to experience true pleasure, true freedom. For her sake, he abandoned everything that previously surrounded him. Has he become free and happy? It would seem that Aleko loves, but with this feeling only misfortune and contempt come to him. Aleko, who so longed for freedom, could not recognize the will in another person. In this poem, another of the extremely characteristic features of the worldview of the romantic hero was manifested - selfishness and the most complete incompatibility with the world around him. Aleko is punished not by death, but worse - by loneliness and debate. He was alone in the world from which he fled, but in another, so desired, he was left alone again.
Before writing The Prisoner of the Caucasus, Pushkin once said: “I am not fit to be a hero of a romantic poem”; however, at the same time, in 1820, Pushkin wrote his poem "The daylight went out ...". In it you can find all the vocabulary inherent in romanticism. This is the “distant coast”, and the “gloomy ocean”, and “excitement and longing” that torment the author. A refrain runs through the entire poem:
Worry beneath me, gloomy ocean.
It is present not only in the description of nature, but also in the description of the hero's feelings.
...But old hearts wounds,
Deep wounds of love, nothing healed ...
Noise, noise, obedient sail,
Excite beneath me, gloomy ocean ...
That is, nature becomes another character, another lyrical hero of the poem. Later, in 1824, Pushkin wrote the poem "To the Sea". The author himself again became the romantic hero in it, as in “The daylight went out ...”. Here Pushkin refers to the sea as a traditional symbol of freedom. The sea is an element, which means freedom and happiness. However, Pushkin builds this poem unexpectedly:
You waited, you called ... I was bound;
My soul was torn in vain:
Fascinated by a mighty passion,
I stayed on the coast ...
We can say that this poem completes the romantic period of Pushkin's life. It is written by a man who knows that after achieving so-called “physical” freedom, the romantic hero does not become happy.
In the woods, in the deserts are silent
I will transfer, I am full of you,
Your rocks, your bays ...
At this time, Pushkin comes to the conclusion that true freedom can exist only within a person and only she can make him truly happy.
A variant of Byron's romanticism lived and felt in his work first in Russian culture Pushkin, then Lermontov. Pushkin had the gift of attention to people, and yet the most romantic of the romantic poems in the work of the great poet and prose writer, undoubtedly, is the Fountain of Bakhchisarai.
The poem "The Fountain of Bakhchisarai" still only continues Pushkin's search in the genre of a romantic poem. And there is no doubt that this was prevented by the death of the great Russian writer.
The romantic theme in Pushkin's work received two different versions: there is a heroic romantic hero ("prisoner", "robber", "fugitive"), distinguished by a strong will, passed through a cruel test of violent passions, and there is a suffering hero in whom subtle emotional experiences are incompatible with the cruelty of the outside world ("exile", "prisoner"). The passive beginning in the romantic character has now taken on a female guise from Pushkin. The Fountain of Bakhchisarai develops precisely this aspect of the romantic hero.
In "Prisoner of the Caucasus" all attention was paid to the "prisoner" and very little to the "Circassian woman", now on the contrary - Khan Girey is no more than a little dramatic figure, but the main character is really a woman, even two - Zarema and Maria. The solution to the duality of the hero found in previous poems (through the image of the shackled brothers) Pushkin uses here as well: the passive principle is depicted in the person of two characters - the jealous, passionately in love Zarema and the sad, who has lost hope and love Mary. Both of them are two conflicting passions of a romantic nature: disappointment, despondency, hopelessness and, at the same time, spiritual ardor, intensity of feelings; the contradiction is resolved tragically in the poem - the death of Mary did not bring happiness to Zarema either, since they are connected by mysterious ties. Likewise, in Brothers-Robbers, the death of one of the brothers forever darkened the life of the other.
However, BV Tomashevsky justly noted, “the lyrical isolation of the poem also determined a certain paucity of content ... The moral victory over Zarema does not lead to further conclusions and reflections ... The Prisoner of the Caucasus has a clear continuation in Pushkin's work: both Aleko and Eugene Onegin allow ... the questions posed in the first southern poem. The "Bakhchisarai Fountain" does not have such a continuation ... "
Pushkin groped and outlined the most vulnerable point of a person's romantic position: he wants everything only for himself.
Lermontov's poem "Mtsyri" also does not fully reflect the characteristic features of romanticism.
There are two romantic heroes in this poem, therefore, if it is also a romantic poem, then it is very peculiar: first, the second hero is conveyed by the author through the epigraph; secondly, the author does not connect with Mtsyri, the hero solves the problem of willfulness in his own way, and Lermontov, throughout the entire poem, only thinks about solving this problem. He does not judge his hero, but he does not justify either, but he stands in a certain position - understanding. It turns out that romanticism in Russian culture is being transformed into thinking. It turns out romanticism from the point of view of realism.
We can say that Pushkin and Lermontov did not succeed in becoming romantics (however, Lermontov once managed to comply with romantic laws - in the drama Masquerade). By their experiments, the poets showed that in England the position of an individualist could be fruitful, but in Russia it could not. Although Pushkin and Lermontov did not succeed in becoming romantics, they opened the way for the development of realism. In 1825, the first realistic work: "Boris Godunov", then "The Captain's Daughter", "Eugene Onegin", "A Hero of Our Time" and many others.
b) Painting
In the visual arts, romanticism manifested itself most clearly in painting and graphics, less expressively in sculpture and architecture. Outstanding representatives romanticism in the visual arts were Russian romantic painters. In their canvases, they expressed the spirit of love of freedom, active action, passionately and passionately appealed to the manifestation of humanism. The everyday canvases of Russian painters are distinguished by their relevance and psychologism, an unprecedented expression. Spiritual, melancholic landscapes are again the same attempt by romantics to penetrate the human world, to show how a person lives and dreams in the sublunary world. Russian romantic painting was different from foreign painting. This was determined by both the historical setting and tradition.
Features of Russian romantic painting:
Educational ideology weakened but did not fail, as in Europe. Therefore, romanticism was not pronounced.
Romanticism developed in parallel with classicism, often intertwining with it.
Academic painting in Russia has not yet exhausted itself.
Romanticism in Russia was not a stable phenomenon; romantics were drawn to academism. TO mid XIX in. the romantic tradition has almost died out.
Works related to romanticism began to appear in Russia already in the 1790s (works by Feodosiy Yanenko "Travelers Caught by the Storm" (1796), "Self-Portrait in a Helmet" (1792). At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Later, the influence of this pro-romantic artist will be noticeable in the work of Alexander Orlovsky. Robbers, scenes by the fire, battles accompanied his entire career. As in other countries, artists belonging to Russian Romanticism introduced portraiture into the classical genres, landscape and genre scenes have a completely new emotional mood.
In Russia, romanticism began to manifest itself first in portrait painting... In the first third of the 19th century, she for the most part lost contact with the noble aristocracy. Portraits of poets, artists, art patrons, depictions of ordinary peasants began to occupy a significant place. This tendency was especially clearly manifested in the work of O.A. Kiprensky (1782 - 1836) and V.A. Tropinin (1776 - 1857).
Vasily Andreevich Tropinin strove for a lively, unconstrained characterization of a person, expressed through his portrait. The portrait of a son (1818), “Portrait of A.S. Pushkin” (1827), “Self-portrait” (1846) are striking not by their portrait resemblance to the originals, but by their unusually subtle penetration into the inner world of a person.
Portrait of a son- Arseny Tropinina is one of the best in the work of the master. The refined, dull golden color scheme resembles the valera painting of the 18th century. However, compared with a typical childhood portrait in 18th century romanticism. here the impartiality of the plan is striking - this child poses in very small measure. Arseny's gaze slides past the viewer, he is dressed casually, the collar is as if accidentally thrown open. The lack of representativeness lies in the extraordinary fragmentation of the composition: the head fills almost the entire surface of the canvas, the image is cut to the very collarbones, and thus the boy's face is automatically moved to the viewer.
The history of creation is unusually interesting "Portrait of Pushkin". As usual, for the first acquaintance with Pushkin, Tropinin came to Sobolevsky's house on the dog's playground, where the poet lived at that time. The artist found him in the office fiddling with puppies. At the same time, apparently, was written according to the first impression, which Tropinin so appreciated, a small sketch. For a long time he remained out of sight of the pursuers. Only almost a hundred years later, by 1914, was it published by P.M. Schekotov, who wrote that of all the portraits of Alexander Sergeevich, he “most conveys his features ... the poet's blue eyes are filled with a special brilliance here, the turn of the head is quick, and the facial features are expressive and mobile. Undoubtedly, here are captured the genuine features of Pushkin's face, which we individually meet in one or another of the portraits that have come down to us. It remains to be puzzled, - adds Schekotov, - why this adorable sketch did not receive due attention from the publishers and connoisseurs of the poet. " This is explained by the very qualities of the small etude: there was neither the brilliance of colors, nor the beauty of the brushstroke, nor masterfully written "roundabouts". And Pushkin here is not a folk "whit" not a "genius", but above all a man. And it is hardly amenable to analysis why such a great human content is contained in the monochromatic grayish-green, olive scale, in the hasty, as if accidental strokes of the brush of an almost nondescript-looking sketch. Going over in memory all the lifetime and subsequent portraits of Pushkin, this study by the power of humanity can only be placed next to the figure of Pushkin, sculpted by the Soviet sculptor A. Matveev. But this was not the task that Tropinin set himself, not the kind of Pushkin his friend wanted to see, although he ordered to portray the poet in a simple, homely form.
In the artist's assessment, Pushkin was a “tsar-poet”. But he was also a folk poet, he was his own and dear to everyone. “The similarity of the portrait with the original is striking,” Polevoy wrote after finishing it, although he noted the insufficient “quickness of the gaze” and “liveliness of the expression on the face,” which changes and revives in Pushkin with each new impression.
In the portrait, everything is thought out and verified to the smallest detail, and at the same time there is nothing deliberate, nothing introduced by the artist. Even the rings adorning the poet's fingers are highlighted as much as Pushkin himself attached importance to them in life. Among the picturesque revelations of Tropinin, the portrait of Pushkin amazes with the sonority of its scale.
Tropinin's romanticism has distinct sentimental origins. It was Tropinin who was the founder of the genre, somewhat idealized portrait of a man of the people (The Lacemaker (1823)). “Both connoisseurs and not connoisseurs, - writes Svinin about "Lace", - come in admiration when looking at this picture, which truly combines all the beauties of pictorial art: the pleasantness of the brush, correct, happy lighting, clear, natural color, moreover, in this portrait the soul of a beauty is revealed and that sly glance of curiosity that she throws at someone the one who entered that minute. Her hands, bare by the elbow, stopped with her gaze, the work stopped, a sigh escaped from a virgin breast, covered with a muslin handkerchief - and all this is depicted with such truth and simplicity that this picture can very easily be taken for the most successful work of the glorious Dream. Ancillary items, such as a lace pillow and a towel, are arranged with great art and finished with finality ... "
At the beginning of the 19th century, Tver was a significant cultural center of Russia. All outstanding people of Moscow have been here for literary evenings. Here the young Orest Kiprensky met A.S. Pushkin, whose portrait, painted later, became the pearl of the world portrait art, and A.S. Pushkin will devote poetry to him, where he will call him "the darling of light-winged fashion." Portrait of Pushkin O. Kiprensky's brush is a living personification of the poetic genius. In the decisive turn of the head, in the arms crossed vigorously on the chest, a feeling of independence and freedom is reflected in the poet's entire appearance. It was about him that Pushkin said: "I see myself as in a mirror, but this mirror flatters me." In the work on the portrait of Pushkin, Tropinin and Kiprensky meet for the last time, although this meeting does not take place with their own eyes, but many years later in the history of art, where, as a rule, two portraits of the greatest Russian poet are compared, created simultaneously, but in different places - one in Moscow. Another in St. Petersburg. Now this is a meeting of masters equally great in their importance for Russian art. Although Kiprensky's admirers argue that the artistic advantages are on the side of his romantic portrait, where the poet is depicted immersed in his own thoughts, alone with the muse, the nationality and democratism of the image are certainly on the side of Tropininsky's “Pushkin”.
Thus, two portraits reflected two trends in Russian art, concentrated in two capitals. And critics will later write that Tropinin was for Moscow what Kiprensky was for Petersburg.
A distinctive feature of Kiprensky's portraits is that they show the spiritual charm and inner nobility of a person. The portrait of a hero, brave and strong in feeling, was supposed to embody the pathos of freedom-loving and patriotic moods of an advanced Russian person.
In the front door "Portrait of E.V. Davydov"(1809) shows the figure of an officer who directly manifested the expression of that cult of a strong and brave personality, which was so typical for romanticism of those years. The fragmentarily shown landscape, where a ray of light fights against the darkness, hints at the emotional anxiety of the hero, but on his face there is a reflection of dreamy sensitivity. Kiprensky was looking for "human" in a person, and the ideal did not evoke from him the personal traits of the model.
Portraits of Kiprensky, if you look at them in your mind's eye, show the spiritual and natural wealth of a person, his intellectual strength. Yes, he had the ideal of a harmonious personality, which was also discussed by his contemporaries, but Kiprensky did not seek to literally project this ideal onto an artistic image. In creating an artistic image, he proceeded from nature, as if measuring how far or close it is to such an ideal. In fact, many of those depicted by him are on the threshold of the ideal, are driven towards it, but the ideal itself, according to the ideas of romantic aesthetics, is hardly achievable, and all romantic art is just a path to it.
Noting the contradictions in the souls of his heroes, showing them in anxious moments of life, when fate changes, previous ideas break, youth leaves, etc., Kiprensky seems to be experiencing along with his models. Hence - a special involvement of the portraitist in the interpretation of artistic images, which gives the portrait a soulful shade.
In the early period of Kiprensky's work, you will not see persons infected with skepticism, analysis corroding the soul. This will come later, when the romantic time outlives its autumn, giving way to other moods and feelings, when hopes for the triumph of the ideal of a harmonious personality collapse. In all portraits of the 1800s and portraits executed in Tver, Kiprensky has a bold brush that easily and freely builds a form. The complexity of the techniques, the character of the figure changed from piece to piece.
It is noteworthy that on the faces of his heroes you will not see heroic elation, on the contrary, most of the faces are rather sad, they indulge in reflections. It seems that these people are worried about the fate of Rossi, they think about the future more than about the present. In female characters representing wives and sisters of participants in significant events, Kiprensky also did not strive for deliberate heroic elation. The feeling of ease, naturalness prevails. Moreover, in all the portraits there is so much true nobility of the soul. Women's images attract with their modest dignity, integrity of nature; in the faces of men, an inquiring thought is guessed, a readiness for asceticism. These images coincided with the maturing ethical and aesthetic ideas of the Decembrists. Their thoughts and aspirations were then shared by many (the creation of secret societies with certain social and political programs falls on the period 1816-1821), the artist knew about them, and therefore we can say that his portraits of participants in the events of 1812-1814, images of peasants , created in the same years - a kind of artistic parallel to the emerging concepts of Decembrism.
Marked with the bright stamp of the romantic ideal "Portrait of V. A. Zhukovsky"(1816). The artist, making a portrait commissioned by S.S. Uvarov, conceived to show contemporaries not only the image of the poet, who was well known in literary circles, but also to demonstrate a certain understanding of the personality of the romantic poet. Before us is the type of poet who expressed the philosophical and dreamy direction of Russian romanticism. Kiprensky introduced Zhukovsky at a moment of creative inspiration. The wind ruffled the poet's hair, the trees splash alarmingly in the night, the ruins of ancient buildings are barely visible. This is how the creator of romantic ballads seemed to look. Dark colors add to the atmosphere of the mysterious. On the advice of Uvarov, Kiprensky does not finish painting individual fragments of the portrait, so that “excessive completeness” does not extinguish the spirit, temperament, and emotionality.
Many portraits were painted by Kiprensky in Tver. Moreover, when he painted Ivan Petrovich Wulf, a Tver landowner, he looked with affection at the girl standing in front of him, his granddaughter, the future Anna Petrovna Kern, to whom one of the most captivating lyrical works was dedicated - A.S. Pushkin's poem “I Remember wonderful moment .. ". Such associations of poets, artists, musicians became the manifestation of a new direction in art - romanticism.
Kiprensky's “Young Gardener” (1817), Bryullov's “Italian Noon” (1827), “The Reapers” or “The Reaper” (1820s) by Venetsianov are works of the same typological series. They are oriented towards nature and were written explicitly with its use. each of the artists - to embody the aesthetic perfection of a simple nature - led to a kind of idealization of images, clothes, situations for the sake of creating an image-metaphor. Observing life, nature, the artist rethought it, poeticizing the visible. masters, giving birth to images not known to art before, and is one of the features of romanticism of the first half of the 19th century.The metaphorical nature, generally characteristic of these works of Venetsianov and Bryullov, was one of the most important features of the romantic when Russian artists were still new to Western European romantic portrait ... "Portrait of a Father (A. K. Schwalbe)"(1804) was painted by Orest Kiprensky of art and portrait genre in particular.
The most significant achievements of Russian romanticism are works in the portrait genre. The brightest and best examples romanticism belong to the early period. Long before his trip to Italy, in 1816, Kiprensky, internally ready for a romantic world embodiment, saw the paintings of the old masters with new eyes. Dark coloring, figures highlighted by light, burning colors, intense drama had a strong influence on him. "Portrait of a Father" was undoubtedly inspired by Rembrandt. But the Russian artist took only external techniques from the great Dutchman. "Portrait of a Father" is an absolutely independent work, possessing its own inner energy and power of artistic expression. A distinctive feature of album portraits is the liveliness of their execution. There is no picture - the instant transfer of what he saw on paper creates a unique freshness of graphic expression. Therefore, the people depicted in the pictures seem to be close and understandable to us.
Foreigners called Kiprensky the Russian Van Dyck, his portraits are in many museums around the world. The successor to the work of Levitsky and Borovikovsky, the predecessor of L. Ivanov and K. Bryullov, Kiprensky gave European fame to the Russian art school with his work. In the words of Alexander Ivanov, "he was the first to bring the Russian name to Europe ...".
The increased interest in the personality of a person, characteristic of romanticism, predetermined the flourishing of the portrait genre in the first half of the 19th century, where the self-portrait became the dominant feature. As a rule, the creation of a self-portrait was not an accidental episode. Artists repeatedly wrote and painted themselves, and these works became a kind of diary reflecting various states of the soul and stages of life, and at the same time, they were a manifesto addressed to their contemporaries. Self-portrait was not a custom genre, the artist wrote for himself and here, more than ever, he became free in self-expression. In the 18th century, Russian artists rarely painted author's images, only romanticism with its cult of the individual, the exclusive contributed to the rise of this genre. The variety of self-portrait types reflects the artists' perception of themselves as a rich and multifaceted personality. They either appear in the usual and natural role of the creator ("Self-portrait in a velvet beret" by A. G. Varnek, 1810s), then they plunge into the past, as if trying it on themselves ("Self-portrait in a helmet and armor" by F. I. Yanenko , 1792), or, more often, appears without any professional attributes, affirming the significance and intrinsic value of every person, liberated and open to the world, seeking and rushing, as, for example, F. A. Bruni and O. A. Orlovsky in self-portraits 1810s. The readiness for dialogue and openness, characteristic of the figurative solution of the works of the 1810-1820s, are gradually replaced by fatigue and disappointment, immersion, withdrawal into oneself ("Self-portrait" by M. I. Terebenev). This trend was reflected in the development of the portrait genre in general.
Self-portraits of Kiprensky appeared, which is worth noting, at critical moments of life, they testified to the rise or fall of mental strength. Through his art, the artist looked at himself. At the same time, he did not use, like most painters, a mirror; he mainly painted himself on the basis of representation, he wanted to express his spirit, but not his appearance.
“Self-portrait with brushes behind the ear” built on refusal, and clearly demonstrative, in the external glorification of the image, its classical normativity and ideal construction. Facial features are roughly outlined, in general. The side light falls on the face, highlighting only the side features. Individual reflections of light fall on the figure of the artist, extinguished on the barely distinguishable drapery that represents the background of the portrait. Everything here is subordinated to the expression of life, feelings, moods. It is a look at romantic art through the art of self-portrait. The artist's involvement in the secrets of creativity is expressed in the mysterious romantic “sfumato of the 19th century”. A peculiar greenish tone creates a special atmosphere of the artistic world, in the center of which is the artist himself.
Almost simultaneously with this self-portrait was written and "Self-portrait in a pink neckerchief" where another image is embodied. Without direct reference to the profession of a painter. The image of a young man who feels at ease, naturally, free has been recreated. The picturesque surface of the canvas is subtly constructed. The artist's brush applies paints with confidence. Leaving small and large strokes. The color is superbly developed, the colors are dull, harmoniously combined with each other, the lighting is calm: the light gently pours onto the young man's face, outlining his features, without unnecessary expression and deformation.
Another outstanding painter was Venetsianov. In 1811 he received the title of Academician from the Academy, appointed for "Self-portrait" and "Portrait of K. Golovachevsky with three students of the Academy of Arts." These are outstanding works.
The true skill of Venetsianov declared himself in "Self-portrait" 1811. It was painted differently than other artists painted themselves at that time - A. Orlovsky, O. Kiprensky, E. Varnek and even the serf V. Tropinin. It was common for all of them to imagine themselves in a romantic halo, their self-portraits were a kind of poetic opposition to the environment. The exclusivity of the artistic nature was manifested in the posture, gestures, in the extraordinaryness of a specially conceived costume. In Venetsianov's "Self-portrait", researchers note, first of all, the strict and tense expression of a busy person ... Correct efficiency, which differs from the ostentatious "artistic negligence" indicated by the dressing gowns or flirtatiously shifted caps of other artists. Venizianov looks at himself soberly. Art for him is not an inspired impulse, but above all a matter that requires concentration and attention. Small in size, almost monochrome in its olive tones, extremely accurately written, it is simple and complex at the same time. Not attracting with the external side of painting, he stops with his gaze. The ideally thin rims of the thin gold frame of the glasses do not hide, but rather emphasize the sharp-sighted sharpness of the eyes, not so much directed towards nature (the artist depicted himself with a palette and a brush in his hands), but into the depth of his own thoughts. A large wide forehead, the right side of the face, illuminated by direct light, and a white shirt-front form a light triangle, primarily attracting the viewer's eye, which in the next instant, following the movement of the right hand holding a thin brush, slides down to the palette. Wavy strands of hair, bows of a shiny frame, a loose tie round the collar, a soft shoulder line and, finally, a wide semicircle of the palette form a movable system of smooth, fluid lines, inside which there are three main points: tiny glare of the pupils, and the sharp end of the shirt front, almost closing with palette and brush. Such an almost mathematical calculation in constructing the composition of a portrait gives the image a partial inner composure and gives reason to assume that the author has an analytical mind, inclined to scientific thinking. In "Self-portrait" there is not even a trace of any romanticism, which was then so frequent when the artists depicted themselves. This is a self-portrait of an artist-researcher, artist-thinker and hard worker.
Another piece - portrait of Golovachevsky- conceived as a kind of plot composition: the older generation of masters of the Academy, represented by the old inspector, gives instructions to the growing talents: a painter (with a folder of drawings. An architect and a sculptor. But Venetsianov did not allow even a shadow of any far-fetched or didacticism in this picture: the good old man Golovachevsky is friendly interprets to adolescents some page read in the book. Sincerity of expression finds support in the picturesque structure of the picture: its subdued, subtly and beautifully harmonized colorful tones create an impression of serenity and seriousness. Beautifully painted faces full of inner significance. The portrait was one of the highest achievements of Russian portraiture. painting.
And in the work of Orlovsky in the 1800s, portraits appear, mostly in the form of drawings. By 1809, there is such an emotionally rich portrait sheet as "Self-portrait"... Filled with a luscious free touch of sanguine and charcoal (illuminated with chalk), Orlovsky's Self-Portrait attracts with its artistic integrity, character of the image, and artistry of execution. At the same time, it allows us to discern some of the peculiar aspects of Orlovsky's art. Orlovsky's “Self-portrait” certainly does not have the goal of accurately reproducing the typical appearance of the artist of those years. Before us - in many ways deliberate. The exaggerated appearance of an “artist” opposing his own “I” to the surrounding reality, he is not concerned with the “decency” of his appearance: a comb and a brush did not touch his lush hair, on his shoulder there is the edge of a checkered cloak right on top of a home shirt with an open collar. A sharp turn of the head with a “gloomy” gaze from under shifted eyebrows, a close-up shot of a portrait in which the face is depicted in close-up, light contrasts - all this is aimed at achieving the main effect of opposing the depicted person to the environment (and thus to the viewer).
The pathos of affirming individuality - one of the most progressive features in the art of that time - forms the main ideological and emotional tone of the portrait, but appears in a peculiar aspect that is almost not found in Russian art of that period. The affirmation of the personality goes not so much through the disclosure of the wealth of her inner world, but rather through a more external way of rejecting everything around her. At the same time, the image undoubtedly looks impoverished, limited.
Such solutions are difficult to find in the Russian portrait art of that time, where already in the middle of the 18th century civil and humanistic motives sounded loudly and a person's personality never broke strong ties with the environment. Dreaming of the best, democratic social structure, the best people of Russia of that era did not break away from reality at all, they deliberately rejected the individualistic cult of "personal freedom" that flourished on the soil of Western Europe, ripped up by the bourgeois revolution. This clearly manifested itself as a reflection of the actual factors in Russian portraiture. One has only to compare Orlovsky's Self-Portrait with the simultaneous "Self-portrait" Kiprensky (for example, 1809), so that the serious internal difference between the two portrait painters was immediately apparent.
Kiprensky also “heroes” the personality of a person, but he shows its true inner values. In the face of the artist, the viewer discerns features strong mind, character, moral purity.
The whole appearance of Kiprensky is covered with amazing nobility and humanity. He is able to distinguish between “good” and “evil” in the world around him and, rejecting the second, love and appreciate the first, love and value like-minded people. At the same time, we have before us, undoubtedly, a strong individuality, proud of the consciousness of the value of their personal qualities. Exactly the same concept of the portrait image underlies the famous heroic portrait of D. Davydov by Kiprensky.
Orlovsky, in comparison with Kiprensky, as well as with some other Russian portrait painters of that time, more limitedly, more straightforwardly and outwardly resolves the image of a "strong personality", clearly focusing on the art of bourgeois France. When you look at his "Self-portrait", the portraits of A. Gro, Gericault involuntarily come to mind. Orlovsky's profile “Self-portrait” of 1810, with his cult of individualistic “inner strength,” however, devoid of the already harsh “sketchy” form of “Self-portrait” of 1809 or "Portrait of Duport". In the latter, Orlovsky, just as in Self-portrait, uses a spectacular, “heroic” pose with a sharp, almost cross movement of the head and shoulders. He emphasizes the irregular structure of Duport's face, his disheveled hair, with the goal of creating a portrait image that is self-sufficient in its unique, random characteristic.
"The landscape should be a portrait", - wrote K. N. Batyushkov. Most of the artists who turned to the genre adhered to this attitude in their work. landscape. Among the obvious exceptions that gravitated towards the fantastic landscape were A.O. Orlovsky ("Sea View", 1809); A. G. Varnek ("View in the Environs of Rome", 1809); PV Basin ("The Sky at Sunset in the Vicinity of Rome", "Evening Landscape", both - 1820s). Creating specific types, they retained the immediacy of sensation, emotional saturation, reaching monumental sound with compositional techniques.
Young Orlrvsky saw in nature only titanic forces, not subject to the will of man, capable of causing catastrophe, disaster. Man's struggle with the raging sea element is one of the favorite themes of the artist of his “rebellious” romantic period. It became the content of his drawings, watercolors and oil paintings from 1809 to 1810. the tragic scene is shown in the picture "Shipwreck"(1809 (?)). In the pitch darkness that has descended to the ground, among the raging waves, drowning fishermen frantically climb the coastal cliffs on which their ship crashed. The color, sustained in severe reddish tones, enhances the feeling of anxiety. The raids of mighty waves, foreshadowing a storm, are threatening, and in another picture - "On the seashore"(1809). It also plays a huge emotional role in the stormy sky, which takes up most of the composition. Although Orlovsky did not own art aerial perspective, but the gradual transition of plans is solved here more harmoniously and softer. The color has become lighter. Red spots of fishermen's clothes play beautifully on a reddish-brown background. Restless and disturbing sea element in watercolor "Sailboat"(about 1812). And even when the wind does not flutter the sail and does not ripple the surface of the water, as in watercolor "Seascape with ships"(about 1810), the viewer does not leave the premonition that a storm will follow the calm.
For all the drama and emotional excitement, Orlovsky's seascapes are not so much the fruit of his observations of atmospheric phenomena as the result of direct imitation of the classics of art. In particular, J. Vernet.
The landscapes of S.F.Shchedrin were of a different character. They are filled with the harmony of the coexistence of man and nature ("Terrace by the sea. Capuccini near Sorrento", 1827). The numerous views of Naples and the environs of his brush enjoyed extraordinary success and popularity.
The creation of a romantic image of St. Petersburg in Russian painting is associated with the work of M. N. Vorobyov. On his canvases, the city appeared shrouded in mysterious Petersburg fogs, a soft haze of white nights and an atmosphere saturated with sea moisture, where the contours of buildings are erased, and the moonlight completes the sacrament. The same lyrical beginning distinguishes the views of the St. Petersburg environs performed by him ("Sunset in the Environs of St. Petersburg", 1832). But the northern capital was seen by the artists in a different, dramatic way, as an arena of collision and struggle of natural elements (V. Ye. Raev "Alexander's Column during a Thunderstorm", 1834).
In the brilliant paintings of I.K. Nevertheless, a large place in the master's heritage is occupied by night seascapes dedicated to specific places where the storm gives way to the magic of the night, a time that, according to the views of the romantics, is filled with a mysterious inner life, and where the artist's pictorial searches are aimed at extracting extraordinary light effects ( "View of Odessa on a moonlit night", "View of Constantinople by moonlight", both - 1846).
The theme of the natural elements and the person taken by surprise - a favorite theme of romantic art, was interpreted in different ways by the artists of the 1800-1850s. The works were based on real events, but the meaning of the images is not in their objective retelling. A typical example is the painting by Pyotr Basin "The Rocca di Papa earthquake near Rome"(1830). It is devoted not so much to the description of a specific event as to the image of fear and horror of a person who is faced with the manifestation of the elements.
KP Bryullov (1799 -1852) and A.A. Ivanov (1806 - 1858). Russian painter and draftsman K.P. Bryullov, while still a student of the Academy of Arts, mastered the incomparable skill of drawing. Bryullov's work is usually divided into before “ Of the last day Pompeii ”and after. What was created before….?!
“Italian Morning” (1823), “Hermilia at the Shepherds” (1824) based on the poem by Torquatto Tasso “Liberation of Jerusalem”, “Italian Afternoon” (“Italian Woman Removing Grapes”, 1827), “Horsewoman” (1830), “Bathsheba” (1832) - all these paintings are imbued with a bright, undisguised joy of life. Such works were consonant with the early epicurean verses of Pushkin, Batyushkov, Vyazemsky, Delvig. The old manner, based on imitating great masters, did not satisfy Bryullov, and he painted “Italian Morning”, “Italian Noon”, “Bathsheba” in the open air.
Working on the portrait, Bryullov painted only the head from life. Everything else was often dictated to him by his imagination. The fruit of such free creative improvisation is "Rider". The main thing in the portrait is the contrast of a flushed, hovering animal with swollen nostrils and sparkling eyes and a graceful rider who calmly restrains the horse's stupefied energy (taming animals is a favorite theme of classical sculptors, Bryullov decided it in painting).
IN "Bathsheba" the artist uses the biblical story as an excuse to show the naked body in the open air and to convey the play of light and reflexes on fair skin. In Bathsheba, he created the image of a young woman full of joy and happiness. The naked body glows and shines surrounded by olive greens, cherry clothes, a transparent reservoir. Soft elastic body shapes are beautifully combined with the whitening fabric and chocolate color of the Arab woman serving Bathsheba. The flowing lines of bodies, pond, fabrics give the composition of the picture a smooth rhythm.
Painting became a new word in painting "The last day of Pompeii"(1827-1833). She made the artist's name immortal and very famous during his lifetime.
Its plot, apparently, was chosen under the influence of brother Alexander, who intensively studied the Pompeian ruins. But the reasons for painting are deeper. Gogol noticed this, and Herzen said bluntly that in “The Last Day of Pompeii”, perhaps, an unconscious reflection of the artist's thoughts and feelings, caused by the defeat of the Decembrist uprising in Russia, found their place. Not without reason, among the victims of the raging elements in the dying Pompey, Bryullov placed his self-portrait and gave the features of his Russian acquaintances to other characters in the picture.
Bryullov's Italian entourage also played a role, which could tell him about the revolutionary storms that swept across Italy in previous years, about the sad fate of the Carbonari in the years of reaction.
The grandiose picture of the death of Pompeii is imbued with the spirit of historicism, it shows the change from one historical era to another, the suppression of ancient paganism and the onset of a new Christian faith.
The artist perceives the course of history dramatically, the change of eras as a shock to humanity. In the center of the composition, a woman who fell from a chariot and crashed to death apparently personified the demise of the ancient world. But near the mother's body, the artist placed a living baby. Depicting children and parents, a young man and an old woman, a mother, sons and a decrepit father, the artist showed old generations that are going down into history and new ones coming to replace them. The birth of a new era on the wreckage of an old world crumbling into dust is the real theme of Bryullov's painting. Regardless of the turning points that history brings, the existence of mankind does not stop, and its thirst for life remains unfading. This is the basic idea behind The Last Day of Pompeii. This picture is a hymn to the beauty of humanity, which remains immortal in all cycles of history.
The canvas was exhibited in 1833 at the Milan art exhibition, it caused a flurry of enthusiastic responses. Well-worn Italy was conquered. Bryullov's pupil G. G. Gagarin testifies: “This great work aroused boundless enthusiasm in Italy. The cities where the painting was exhibited organized ceremonial receptions for the artist, poetry was dedicated to him, he was carried around the streets with music, flowers and torches ... Everywhere he was received with honor as a well-known, triumphant genius, understood and appreciated by everyone. "
English writer Walter Scott (representative romantic literature, famous for her historical novels) spent an hour in Bryullov's studio, about which he said that this was not a picture, but a whole poem. The Art Academies of Milan, Florence, Bologna and Parma elected the Russian painter as their honorary member.
Bryullov's canvas evoked enthusiastic responses from Pushkin and Gogol.
Vesuvius opened its mouth - the smoke poured out in a club-flame
It has developed widely as a battle banner.
The earth is agitated - from the reeling columns
Idols are falling! ..
Pushkin wrote under the impression of the picture.
Starting with Bryullov, turning points in history became the main subject of Russian historical painting, where grandiose folk scenes where each person is a participant historical drama, where there is no main and secondary.
"Pompeia" belongs, in general, to classicism. The artist masterfully revealed the plasticity of the human body on canvas. All the emotional movements of people were transmitted by Bryullov primarily in the language of plastics. Individual figures, given in a stormy movement, are collected in balanced, frozen groups. Flashes of light accentuate the shapes of bodies and do not create strong painterly effects. However, the composition of the picture, which has a strong breakthrough in the center, depicting an extraordinary event in the life of Pompeii, was inspired by romanticism.
Romanticism in Russia as a perception of the world existed in its first wave from the end of the 18th century to the 1850s. The line of the romantic in Russian art did not end in the 1850s. Opened by romantics for art, the theme of the state of being was developed later by the artists of the "Blue Rose". The direct heirs of the Romantics were undoubtedly the Symbolists. Romantic themes, motives, expressive techniques entered the art of different styles, trends, creative associations. The romantic outlook or worldview turned out to be one of the most lively, tenacious, and fruitful.
Romanticism as a general attitude, characteristic mainly of young people, as a striving for the ideal and creative freedom, is still constantly living in world art.
c) Music
Romanticism in pure form Is a phenomenon of Western European art. In Russian music XIX in. from Glinka to Tchaikovsky, features of classicism were combined with features of romanticism, the leading element was a bright, original national principle. Romanticism in Russia gave an unexpected rise when this trend seemed to be a thing of the past. Two composers of the 20th century, Scriabin and Rachmaninov, once again revived such features of romanticism as the unrestrained flight of fantasy and the sincerity of lyrics. Therefore, the XIX century. called the century of musical classics.
Time (1812, the Decembrist uprising, the ensuing reaction) left an imprint on the music. Whatever genre we choose - romance, opera, ballet, chamber music - everywhere Russian composers have said their new word.
The music of Russia, with all its salon elegance and strict adherence to the traditions of professional instrumental, including sonata-symphonic writing, is based on the unique modal color and rhythmic structure of Russian folklore. Some - widely based on everyday song, others - on original forms of playing music, and still others - on the old modality of the old Russian peasant modes.
The beginning of the 19th century - these are the years of the first and bright flourishing of the romance genre. Until now, humble sincere lyrics sound and pleases listeners Alexander Alexandrovich Alyabyev (1787-1851). He wrote romances to the verses of many poets, but they are immortal "Nightingale" to the verses of Delvig, "Winter road", "I love you" on the verses of Pushkin.
Alexander Egorovich Varlamov (1801-1848) wrote music for dramatic performances, but we know him better from famous romances “Red sundress”, “At dawn, don't wake me up”, “Lonely sail is white”.
Alexander Lvovich Gurilev (1803-1858)- composer, pianist, violinist and teacher, he owns such romances as "The bell rings monotonously", "At the dawn of foggy youth" and etc.
The most prominent place here is occupied by Glinka's romances. No one else had yet achieved such a natural fusion of music with the poetry of Pushkin and Zhukovsky.
Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804-1857)- a contemporary of Pushkin (5 years younger than Alexander Sergeevich), a classic of Russian literature, became the founder of musical classics. His work is one of the pinnacles of Russian and world musical culture. It harmoniously combines the wealth of folk music and the highest achievements of composing. Glinka's deeply popular realistic creativity reflected the powerful flourishing of Russian culture in the first half of the 19th century, associated with the Patriotic War of 1812 and the Decembrist movement. Light, life-affirming character, harmony of forms, beauty of expressive melodious melodies, variety, brilliance and subtlety of harmonies are the most valuable qualities of Glinka's music. IN famous opera "Ivan Susanin"(1836) the idea of popular patriotism was brilliantly expressed; the moral greatness of the Russian people is glorified in the fairy-tale opera “ Ruslan and Ludmila"... Orchestral works by Glinka: "Waltz-Fantasy", "Night in Madrid" and especially "Kamarinskaya", form the basis of Russian classical symphony. Remarkable for the power of dramatic expression and the brightness of the characteristics of the music to the tragedy "Prince Kholmsky". Glinka's vocal lyrics (romances "I remember a wonderful moment", "Doubt") is an unsurpassed embodiment of Russian poetry in music.
6. WESTERN EUROPEAN ROMANCE
a) Painting
If the ancestor of classicism was France, then “in order to find the roots ... of the romantic school,” wrote one of his contemporaries, “we should go to Germany. She was born there, and there modern Italian and French romantics developed their tastes ”.
Shattered Germany did not know the revolutionary upsurge. Many of the German romantics were alien to the pathos of advanced social ideas. They idealized the Middle Ages. Surrendered to unaccountable mental impulses, talked about abandonment human life... The art of many of them was passive and contemplative. They created their best works in the field of portrait and landscape painting.
An outstanding portrait painter was Otto Runge (1777-1810). The portraits of this master, with external calm, amaze with their intense and tense inner life.
The image of the romantic poet is seen by Runge in "Self-portrait". He carefully examines himself and sees a dark-haired, dark-eyed, serious, full of energy, thoughtful, self-absorbed and strong-willed young man. The romantic artist wants to know himself. The manner in which the portrait is executed is fast and sweeping, as if the spiritual energy of the creator should be conveyed in the texture of the work; in the dark color scheme contrasts of light and dark appear. Contrast is a characteristic pictorial technique of the romantic masters.
A romantic artist will always try to catch the changeable play of moods of a person, to look into his soul. And in this respect, children's portraits will serve as a fertile material for him. IN portrait of the children of Hulsenbeck(1805) Runge not only conveys the liveliness and spontaneity of a child's character, but also finds for a bright mood special welcome which delights plein air openings 2nd floor. XIX century. The background in the picture is a landscape, which testifies not only to the artist's coloristic gift, an admirable attitude to nature, but also to the emergence of new problems in the masterful reproduction of spatial relations, light shades of objects in the open air. The romantic master, wishing to merge his “I” with the vastness of the Universe, strives to capture the sensually tangible appearance of nature. But with this sensuality of the image, he prefers to see the symbol of the big world, the “artist's idea”.
Runge, one of the first romantic artists, set himself the task of synthesizing the arts: painting, sculpture, architecture, music. The ensemble sound of the arts was supposed to express the unity of the divine forces of the world, each particle of which symbolizes the cosmos as a whole. The artist fantasizes, reinforcing his philosophical concept with the ideas of the famous German thinker 1st floor. XVII century. Jacob Boehme. The world is a kind of mystical whole, each part of which expresses the whole. This idea is related to the romantics of the entire European continent. In verse form, the English poet and artist William Blake put it this way:
See eternity in one moment
A huge world in a mirror of sand
In a single handful - infinity
And the sky is in the cup of a flower.
Runge's Cycle, or, as he called it, “a fantastic musical poem” "Seasons of the Day"- morning, noon, night, is an expression of this concept. He left in poetry and prose an explanation of his conceptual model of the world. The image of a person, landscape, light and color are symbols of the always changing cycle of natural and human life.
Another outstanding German romantic painter, Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), preferred landscape to all other genres and during his seventy-year life painted only pictures of nature. The main motive of Frederick's work is the idea of the unity of man and nature.
“Listen to the voice of nature that speaks within us,” the artist instructs his students. The inner world of a person personifies the infinity of the Universe, therefore, having heard himself, a person is able to comprehend the spiritual depths of the world.
The listening position determines the basic form of human “communication” with nature and its image. This is the greatness, mystery or enlightenment of nature and the conscious state of the observer. True, very often Friedrich does not allow a figure to “enter” the landscape space of his paintings, but in the subtle penetration of the imaginative structure of the spreading expanses, the presence of a feeling, a person's experience is felt. Subjectivism in the depiction of a landscape comes into art only with the creativity of romantics, foreshadowing the lyrical disclosure of nature by the masters of the 2nd floor. XIX century. Researchers note in the works of Friedrich "expansion of the repertoire" of landscape motifs. The author is interested in the sea, mountains, forests and various shades of the state of nature at different times of the year and day.
1811-1812 marked by the creation of a series of mountain landscapes as a result of the artist's journey to the mountains. "Morning in the mountains" picturesquely represents a new natural reality that is born in the rays of the rising sun. Mauve tones envelop and deprive them of volume and material weight. The years of the battle with Napoleon (1812-1813) turned Frederick towards patriotic themes. Illustrating, drawing inspiration from Kleist's drama, he writes "Tomb of Arminius"- a landscape with the graves of ancient Germanic heroes.
Frederick was a subtle master of seascapes: "Ages", "Moonrise over the sea", "The death of" Hope "in the ice".
The artist's latest works - "Rest in the Field", "Big Swamp" and "Remembrance of the Giant Mountains", "Giant Mountains" - a series of mountain ridges and stones in the foreground darkened plan. This, apparently, is a return to the experienced feeling of a person's victory over himself, the joy of ascension to the “top of the world”, a striving for luminous unconquered heights. The artist's feelings compose these mountain masses in a special way, and again the movement from the darkness of the first steps to the future light is read. The mountain peak in the background is highlighted as the center of the master's spiritual aspirations. The painting is very associative, like any creation of romantics, and suggests different levels of reading and interpretation.
Friedrich is very precise in drawing, musically harmonious in the rhythmic construction of his paintings, in which he tries to speak with emotions of color and light effects. “Many are given little, few are given much. The soul of nature opens up to everyone in a different way. Therefore, no one dares to transfer his experience and his rules to another as a binding unconditional law. Nobody is the yardstick for everyone. Everyone carries within himself a measure only for himself and for natures more or less akin to himself, ”- this reflection of the master proves the amazing integrity of his inner life and creativity. The uniqueness of the artist is palpable only in the freedom of his work - this is what the romantic Friedrich stands for.
It seems more formal to differentiate with artists - "classics" - representatives of classicism of another branch of romantic painting in Germany - the Nazarenes. Founded in Vienna and settled in Rome (1809-1810), the Union of St. Luke united the masters with the idea of reviving the monumental art of religious issues. The Middle Ages were a favorite period in history for romantics. But in their artistic quest, the Nazarenes turned to the painting traditions of the early Renaissance in Italy and Germany. Overbeck and Geforr initiated a new alliance, which was later joined by Cornelius, J. Schnoff von Karolsfeld, and Faith Fürich.
This movement of the Nazarenes corresponded to their forms of confrontation with academic classicists in France, Italy, and England. For example, in France, the so-called primitivist artists emerged from David's workshop, in England, the Pre-Raphaelites. In the spirit of the romantic tradition, they considered art to be an “expression of the time,” “the spirit of the people,” but their thematic or formal preferences, which at first sounded like a slogan for unification, after a while turned into the same doctrinaire principles as those of the Academy, which they rejected.
The art of romanticism in France developed in special ways. The first thing that distinguished it from similar movements in other countries was its active offensive (“revolutionary”) character. Poets, writers, musicians, artists defended their positions not only by creating new works, but also by participating in magazine and newspaper polemics, which researchers describe as a “romantic battle”. Famous V. Hugo, Stendhal, Georges Sand, Berlioz and many other writers, composers, journalists of France “sharpened their pens” in romantic polemics.
Romantic painting in France arises as an opposition to the classicist school of David, academic art, called the "school" in general. But this needs to be understood more broadly: it was the opposition to the official ideology of the epoch of reaction, a protest against its bourgeois narrow-mindedness. Hence the pathetic nature of romantic works, their nervous excitement, gravitation towards exotic motives, to historical and literary plots, to everything that can lead away from "dull everyday life", hence this play of imagination, and sometimes, on the contrary, daydreaming and complete lack of activity.
Representatives of the “school”, academics, rebelled primarily against the language of the romantics: their excited hot color, their modeling of the form, not the one usual for the “classics”, statuary-plastic, but built on strong contrasts of color spots; their expressive design, deliberately abandoning precision and classic polish; their bold, sometimes chaotic composition, devoid of majesty and unshakable tranquility. Ingres, the implacable enemy of the romantics, until the end of his life said that Delacroix "wrote with a mad broom", and Delacroix accused Ingres and all the artists of the "school" of coldness, rationality, lack of movement, that they do not write, but "paint" your paintings. But it was not a simple clash of two bright, completely different individuals, it was a struggle between two different artistic worldviews.
This struggle lasted almost half a century, romanticism in art won victories not easily and not immediately, and the first artist of this trend was Theodore Gericault (1791-1824) - a master of heroic monumental forms, who combined in his work both classicist features and features of romanticism itself. and, finally, a powerful realistic beginning, which had a huge impact on the art of realism in the middle of the 19th century. But during his lifetime, he was appreciated by only a few close friends.
The first brilliant successes of romanticism are associated with the name of Theodor Zhariko. Already in his early paintings (portraits of the military, images of horses), ancient ideals receded before the direct perception of life.
In the salon in 1812 Gericault shows a painting "Officer of the Imperial Horse Rangers during the Attack." It was the year of the apogee of Napoleon's glory and the military might of France.
The composition of the painting represents the rider in unusual perspective“Sudden” moment, when the horse reared up, and the rider, keeping the almost vertical position of the horse, turned to the viewer. The image of such a moment of instability, impossibility of posture enhances the effect of movement. The horse has one point of support, he must fall to the ground, screw himself into the fight that brought him to such a state. Much converged in this work: Gericault's unconditional belief in the possibility of owning a person on his own, passionate love for the image of horses and the courage of a novice master in showing what previously could only be conveyed by music or the language of poetry - the thrill of battle, the beginning of an attack, the ultimate tension of the forces of a living being ... The young author built his image on the transfer of the dynamics of movement, and it was important for him to tune the viewer to “conjecture”, to finish painting with “inner vision” and a sense of what he wanted to portray.
Traditions of such dynamics of pictorial narration of romance in France practically did not have, except in the reliefs of Gothic temples, therefore, when Gericault first came to Italy, he was stunned hidden power compositions by Michelangelo. “I was trembling,” he writes, “I doubted myself and for a long time could not recover from this experience.” But Stendhal had pointed out Michelangelo as the forerunner of a new stylistic trend in art even earlier in his polemical articles.
Gericault's painting announced not only the birth of a new artistic talent, but also paid tribute to the author's enthusiasm and disappointment with the ideas of Napoleon. Several other works are related to this topic: “ Carabinieri officer ”,“ Cuirassier officer before the attack ”,“ Portrait of the Carabinieri ”,“ Wounded cuirassier ”.
In the treatise "Reflection on the state of painting in France" he writes that "luxury and arts have become ... a necessity and, as it were, food for the imagination, which is the second life of a civilized person ... needs are met when abundance arrives. The man, freed from everyday worries, began to seek pleasure in order to get rid of the boredom that would inevitably overtake him in the midst of contentment.
This understanding of the educational and humanistic role of art was demonstrated by Gericault after returning from Italy in 1818 - he began to engage in lithography, replicating a variety of topics, including the defeat of Napoleon ( "Return from Russia").
At the same time, the artist turns to the depiction of the death of the frigate "Medusa" off the coast of Africa, which excited the then society. The disaster was due to the fault of an inexperienced captain, who was appointed to the post under patronage. The surviving passengers of the ship, the surgeon Savigny and the engineer Correar, spoke in detail about the accident.
The dying ship managed to throw off the raft, on which a handful of rescued people reached. For twelve days they were carried on the stormy sea, until they were rescued by the ship "Argus".
Gericault was interested in the situation of the utmost tension of human spiritual and physical forces. The painting depicted 15 surviving passengers on a raft when they saw the Argus on the horizon. "Raft" Medusa " was the result of a long preparatory work by the artist. He made many sketches of the raging sea, portraits of rescued people in the hospital. At first Gericault wanted to show the struggle of people on a raft with each other, but then he settled on the heroic behavior of the victors of the sea element and state negligence. People bravely endured the misfortune, and the hope of salvation did not leave them: each group on the raft has its own characteristics. In constructing the composition, Gericault chooses a point of view from above, which allowed him to combine the panoramic coverage of the space (the sea distances are visible) and to depict, very close to the foreground, all the inhabitants of the raft. The movement is based on the contrast of powerlessly lying on foreground figures and impetuous in the group giving signals to the passing ship. The clarity of the rhythm of the growth of dynamics from group to group, the beauty of naked bodies, the dark coloring of the picture set a certain note of the conventionality of the image. But this is not important for the perceiving viewer, for whom the convention of language even helps to understand and feel the main thing: a person's ability to fight and win. The ocean roars. The sail moans. The ropes are ringing. The raft is cracking. The wind drives the waves and tears the black clouds to shreds.
Isn't this France itself, driven by the storm of history? - thought Eugene Delacroix, standing at the picture. “The raft of“ Medusa ”shook Delacroix, he cried and, like a madman, rushed out of Gericault's workshop, which he often visited.
The art of David did not know such passions.
But Gericault's life ended tragically early (he was terminally ill after falling from a horse), and many of his plans remained unfinished.
Gericault's innovation opened up new opportunities for conveying the movement that excited romantics, the latent feelings of a person, and the coloristic textured expressiveness of the picture.
Gericault's successor in his search was Eugene Delacroix. True, Delacroix was released twice as long as his life span, and he managed not only to prove the correctness of romanticism, but also to bless a new direction in painting, the 2nd floor. XIX century. - impressionism.
Before starting to write on his own, Eugene studied at Lerain's school: he wrote from life, copied in the Louvre the greats Rubens, Rembrandt, Veronese, Titian ... The young artist worked 10-12 hours a day. He remembered the words of the great Michelangelo: "Painting is a jealous mistress, it requires the whole person ..."
Delacroix, after Gericault's demonstration speeches, was well aware that times of strong emotional turmoil had come in art. First, he tries to comprehend a new era for him through well-known literary plots. His picture Dante and Virgil presented in the salon in 1822 is an attempt through the historical associative images of two poets: antiquity - Virgil and the Renaissance - Dante - to look at the boiling cauldron, the "hell" of the modern era. Once in his "Divine Comedy" Dante took Virgil as his guide to all spheres (heaven, hell, purgatory). In Dante's work, a new renaissance world arose through the experience of the Middle Ages in the memory of antiquity. The symbol of the romantic as a synthesis of antiquity, the Renaissance and the Middle Ages arose in the “horror” of the visions of Dante and Virgil. But a complex philosophical allegory turned out to be a good emotional illustration of the pre-Renaissance era and an immortal literary masterpiece.
Delacroix will try to find a direct response in the hearts of his contemporaries through his own heartache. Burning with freedom and hatred of the oppressors, young people of that time sympathize with the liberation war of Greece. The romantic bard of England, Byron, is going there to fight. Delacroix sees the meaning new era in the image is already more specific historical event- the struggle and suffering of freedom-loving Greece. He dwells on the plot of the death of the population of the Greek island of Chios, captured by the Turks. At the Salon of 1824, Delacroix shows a painting “Massacre on the island of Chios”. against the backdrop of the endless expanse of hilly terrain. Still screaming from the smoke of conflagrations and unabated battle, the artist shows several groups of wounded, exhausted women and children. They were left with the last minutes of freedom before the approach of enemies. A Turk on a reared horse on the right seems to hang over the entire foreground and the many sufferers who are there. Beautiful bodies, faces of full people. By the way, Delacroix would later write that the Greek sculpture was turned by artists into hieroglyphs, hiding the real Greek beauty of the face and figure. But, revealing the “beauty of the soul” in the faces of the defeated Greeks, the painter dramatizes the events that are taking place that, in order to maintain a single dynamic pace of tension, he goes to the deformation of the angles of the fig. These “mistakes” were already “resolved” by Gericault's work, but Delacroix once again demonstrates the romantic credo that painting is “not the truth of the situation, but the truth of feeling”.
In 1824 Delacroix lost his friend and teacher - Gericault. And he became the leader of the new painting.
The years passed. One by one the pictures appeared: "Greece on the ruins of Missalunga", "Death of Sardanapalus" and others. The artist became an outcast in the official circles of the artist. But the July Revolution of 1830 changed the situation. She ignites the artist with the romance of victories and achievements. He paints a picture “Freedom on the Barricades”.
In 1831, at the Paris Salon, the French first saw the painting by Eugene Delacroix "Liberty on the Barricades", dedicated to the "three glorious days" of the July Revolution of 1830. Power, democracy and courage artistic solution the canvas made a stunning impression on contemporaries. According to legend, one respectable bourgeois exclaimed: “You say - the head of the school? Better say - the head of the rebellion! " After the Salon was closed, the government, frightened by the formidable and inspiring appeal from the painting, hastened to return it to its author. During the 1848 revolution, it was again put on public display at the Luxembourg Palace. And they returned it to the artist again. Only after the canvas was exhibited at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1855, it ended up in the Louvre. It still houses this one of the best creations of French romanticism - an inspired eyewitness testimony and an eternal monument to the people's struggle for their freedom.
What is artistic language found a young French romantic to merge together these two seemingly opposite principles - a broad, all-embracing generalization and a concrete reality cruel in its nakedness?
Paris of the famous July days of 1830. Air saturated with gray smoke and dust. A beautiful and stately city disappearing in a powder haze. In the distance, barely noticeable, but proudly rise the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral - a symbol of history, culture, and the spirit of the French people. From there, from the smoky city, over the ruins of the barricades, over the dead bodies of their dead comrades, the rebels stubbornly and resolutely step forward. Each of them can die, but the step of the rebels is unshakable - they are inspired by the will to victory, to freedom.
This inspiring power is embodied in the image of a beautiful young woman, in a passionate impulse calling for her. With inexhaustible energy, free and youthful swiftness of movement, she is like the Greek goddess
Nike's victory. Her strong figure is dressed in a chiton dress, her face with perfect features, with glowing eyes, is turned to the rebels. In one hand she holds the tricolor flag of France, in the other - a gun. On the head is a Phrygian cap - an ancient symbol of liberation from slavery. Her step is swift and light - this is how the goddesses step. At the same time, the image of a woman is real - she is the daughter of the French people. She is the guiding force behind the movement of the group on the barricades. From it, as from a source of light in the center of energy, rays radiate, charging with thirst and will to victory. Those in close proximity to it, each in their own way, express their involvement in this inspiring and inspiring call.
On the right is a boy, a Parisian gameman brandishing pistols. He is closest to Freedom and is kind of kindled by her enthusiasm and the joy of a free impulse. In a swift, boyishly impatient movement, he is even slightly ahead of his inspirer. This is the predecessor of the legendary Gavroche, portrayed twenty years later by Victor Hugo in Les Miserables: “Gavroche, full of inspiration, radiant, took on the task of putting the whole thing into motion. He scurried back and forth, went up, went down
down, rose again, made noise, sparkled with joy. It would seem that he came here to cheer everyone up. Did he have any incentive for this? Yes, of course, his poverty. Did he have wings? Yes, of course, his gaiety. It was some kind of whirlwind. He seemed to fill the air, being present everywhere at the same time ... Huge barricades felt him on their ridge. "
Gavroche in Delacroix's painting is the personification of youth, "a wonderful impulse", a joyful acceptance of the bright idea of Freedom. Two images - Gavroche and Svoboda - seem to complement each other: one is a fire, the other is a torch lighted from it. Heinrich Heine related how Gavroche's figure evoked a lively response from the Parisians. "Hell! cried a grocery merchant. "These boys fought like giants!"
On the left is a student with a gun. Previously, it was seen as a self-portrait of the artist. This rebel is not as swift as Gavroche. His movement is more restrained, more concentrated, meaningful. Hands confidently grip the barrel of the gun, the face expresses courage, firm determination to stand to the end. This is a deeply tragic image. The student realizes the inevitability of losses that the rebels will incur, but the victims do not frighten him - the will to freedom is stronger. An equally brave and determined worker with a saber stands behind him. There is a wounded man at the feet of Freedom. He rises with difficulty in order to once again look up, at Freedom, to see and with all his heart feel the beauty for which he perishes. This figure brings a dramatic start to the sound of Delacroix's canvas. If the images of Gavroche, Svoboda, a student, a worker are almost symbols, the embodiment of the unyielding will of freedom fighters - inspire and call on the viewer, then the wounded one appeals to compassion. Man says goodbye to Freedom, says goodbye to life. He is still an impulse, movement, but already a fading impulse.
His figure is transitional. The viewer's gaze, still bewitched and carried away by the revolutionary determination of the rebels, descends down to the foot of the barricade, covered with the bodies of glorious fallen soldiers. Death is presented by the artist in all the nakedness and obviousness of the fact. We see the blue faces of the dead, their naked bodies: the struggle is merciless, and death is the same inevitable companion of the rebels, like the beautiful inspirer Freedom.
But not quite the same! From the terrible sight at the lower edge of the picture, we again raise our gaze and see a young beautiful figure - no! life wins! The idea of freedom, embodied so visibly and tangibly, is so directed into the future that death in its name is not terrible.
The artist depicts only a small group of rebels, alive and dead. But the defenders of the barricade seem unusually numerous. The composition is built in such a way that the group of combatants is not limited, not closed in itself. She is only part of an endless avalanche of people. The artist gives, as it were, a fragment of a group: the picture frame cuts off the figures from the left, right, bottom.
Usually, color in Delacroix's works acquires an acutely emotional sound, plays a dominant role in creating a dramatic effect. The colors, now raging, now fading, muffled, create a tense atmosphere. In Liberty on the Barricades, Delacroix departs from this principle. Very accurately, unmistakably choosing paint, applying it with wide strokes, the artist conveys the atmosphere of the battle.
But the color scheme is restrained. Delacroix focuses on the relief modeling of the form. This was required by the figurative solution of the picture. After all, depicting a specific yesterday's event, the artist also created a monument to this event. Therefore, the figures are almost sculptural. Therefore, each character, being a part of a single whole picture, is also something closed in itself, is a symbol that has been cast into a complete form. Therefore, color not only emotionally affects the feelings of the viewer, but also carries a symbolic load. In a brownish-gray space, here and there, the solemn triad of red, blue, white - the colors of the flag of the French Revolution of 1789 - flares up. The repeated repetition of these colors maintains the powerful chord of the tricolor flag hovering over the barricades.
Delacroix's painting "Liberty on the Barricades" is a complex, grandiose work in its scope. It combines the reliability of a directly seen fact and the symbolism of images; realism, reaching brutal naturalism, and perfect beauty; gross, terrible and sublime, pure.
The painting "Liberty on the Barricades" consolidated the victory of romanticism in French painting. In the 30s, two more historical paintings: "Battle of Poitiers" and “The assassination of the Bishop of Liege”.
In 1822 the artist visited North Africa, Morocco, Algeria. The trip made an indelible impression on him. In the 50s, paintings appeared in his work, inspired by the memories of this journey: "Lion Hunt", "Moroccan Saddling a Horse" etc. A bright contrasting color creates a romantic sound for these pictures. The technique of a wide brushstroke appears in them.
Delacroix, as a romanticist, fixed the state of his soul not only with the language of picturesque images, but also literally framed his thoughts. He described well the creative process of the romantic artist, his experiments in color, reflections on the relationship between music and other forms of art. His diaries became a favorite reading for artists of subsequent generations.
The French romantic school made significant changes in the field of sculpture (Rud and his relief "Marseillaise"), landscape painting (Camille Corot with his light-air images of the nature of France).
Thanks to romanticism, the artist's personal subjective vision takes the form of a law. Impressionism will completely destroy the barrier between artist and nature, declaring art an impression. Romantics talk about the artist's fantasy, “the voice of his feelings,” which allows you to stop work when the master considers it necessary, and not as academic standards of completeness require.
If Gericault's fantasies focused on the transfer of movement, Delacroix - on the magical power of color, and the Germans added to this a certain "spirit of painting", then spanish romantics represented by Francisco Goya (1746-1828) showed the folklore origins of the style, its phantasmagoric and grotesque character. Goya himself and his work look far from any stylistic framework, especially since the artist very often had to follow the laws of the material of execution (when, for example, he made paintings for woven tapestry carpets) or the requirements of the customer.
His phantasmagorias came to light in etching series "Caprichos" (1797-1799),"Disasters of War" (1810-1820),"Disparantes (" Madness ")(1815-1820), murals in the House of the Deaf and the Church of San Antonio de la Florida in Madrid (1798). Serious illness in 1792. entailed the complete deafness of the artist. The art of the master after the endured physical and spiritual trauma becomes more focused, thoughtful, internally dynamic. The outer world, closed due to deafness, activated Goya's inner spiritual life.
In etchings "Caprichos" Goya achieves exceptional power in the transmission of instant reactions, impetuous feelings. The black-and-white performance, thanks to the bold combination of large spots, the absence of the linearity characteristic of graphics, acquires all the properties of a painting.
The painting of the Church of St. Anthony in Madrid Goya creates, it seems, in one breath. The temperament of the stroke, the laconic composition, the expressiveness of the characteristics of the characters, whose type was taken by Goya directly from the crowd, are striking. The artist depicts the miracle of Anthony Florida, who made the murdered man rise and speak, who named the murderer and thereby saved the innocent convict from execution. The dynamism of the brightly reacting crowd is conveyed by Goya both in gestures and in the mimicry of the depicted faces. In the compositional scheme of the distribution of murals in the space of the church, the painter follows Tiepolo, but the reaction that he evokes in the viewer is not baroque, but purely romantic, affecting the feeling of each viewer, urging him to turn to himself.
Most of all, this goal is achieved in the painting of Conto del Sordo ("House of the Deaf"), in which Goya lived since 1819. The walls of the rooms are covered with fifteen compositions of a fantastic and allegorical nature. Perceiving them requires deep empathy. Images appear as some kind of visions of cities, women, men, etc. Color, flashing, pulls out one figure, then another. The painting as a whole is dark, white, yellow, pinkish-red spots prevail in it, disturbing feelings in flashes. The etchings of the series "Disparantes" .
Goya spent the last 4 years in France. It is unlikely that she knew that Delacroix never parted with his Caprichos. And I could not foresee how Hugo and Baudelaire would be carried away by these etchings, what a huge impact his painting on Manet would have, and how in the 80s of the XIX century. V. Stasov will invite Russian artists to study his "Disasters of War"
But we, taking this into account, know what a huge impact this “styleless” art of the bold realist and inspired romantic had on the artistic culture of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The fantastic world of dreams is also realized in his works by the English romantic artist William Blake (1757-1827). England was the classic land of romantic literature. Byron. Shelley became the banner of this movement far beyond the borders of “foggy Albion”. In France, in the magazine criticism of the "romantic battles" romantics were called "Shakespeareanists". The main feature of English painting has always been an interest in the human person, which allowed the portrait genre to develop fruitfully. Romanticism in painting is very closely related to sentimentalism. The romantics' interest in the Middle Ages gave rise to a great historical literature. The recognized master of which is W. Scott. In painting, the theme of the Middle Ages determined the appearance of the so-called Perafaelites.
Ulyam Blake is an amazing type of romantic in the English cultural scene. He writes poetry, illustrates his own and other people's books. His talent sought to embrace and express the world in a holistic unity. His most famous works are illustrations for the biblical Book of Job, Dante's Divine Comedy, Lost paradise”Milton. He inhabits his compositions with titanic figures of heroes, which correspond to their surroundings of an unreal enlightened or phantasmagoric world. A sense of rebellious pride or harmony difficult to create from dissonances overwhelms his illustrations.
The landscape engravings for the Pastorals by the Roman poet Virgil seem somewhat different - they are more idyllically romantic than their previous works.
Blake's romanticism tries to find its own artistic formula and form of the world's existence.
William Blake, having lived his life in extreme poverty and obscurity, after his death was ranked among the host of classics of English art.
In the work of English landscape painters of the early 19th century. romantic hobbies are combined with a more objective and sober view of nature.
The romantically elevated landscapes are created by William Turner (1775-1851). He loved to portray thunderstorms, showers, storms at sea, bright, fiery sunsets. Turner often exaggerated the effects of lighting and intensified the sound of colors even when he painted the calm state of nature. For greater effect, he used the technique of watercolors and applied oil paint in a very thin layer and painted directly on the ground, achieving iridescent shades. An example would be the picture "Rain, steam and speed"(1844). But even the well-known critic of that time Thackeray could not correctly understand, perhaps, the most innovative picture in design and execution. “The rain is indicated by spots of dirty putty,” he wrote, “sprinkled on the canvas with a palette knife, the sunlight shimmers dimly out from under very thick lumps of dirty yellow chrome. Shadows are conveyed by cold shades of scarlet crimson and muted cinnabar spots. And although the fire in the locomotive furnace looks red, I do not presume to say that it was not painted in cabalt or in pea color ”. Another critic found Turner's color scheme “scrambled eggs and spinach”. The colors of the late Turner generally seemed completely unthinkable and fantastic to contemporaries. It took more than a century to see the grain of real observations in them. But as in other cases, it was here as well. A curious story of an eyewitness, or rather a witness of the birth of "Rain, Steam and Speed", has been preserved. A certain Mrs. Simone rode in a compartment of the Western Express with an elderly gentleman seated opposite her. He asked permission to open the window, stuck his head out into the pouring rain and was in this position for quite a long time. When he finally closed the window. Water flowed from him in streams, but he blissfully closed his eyes and leaned back, clearly enjoying what he had just seen. An inquisitive young woman decided to experience his feelings on herself - she also stuck her head out the window. She got wet too. But I got an unforgettable impression. Imagine her surprise when a year later, at an exhibition in London, she saw “Rain, Steam and Speed”. Someone behind her critically remarked: “Extremely typical of Turner, right. No one has ever seen such a mixture of absurdities. " And she, unable to resist, said: "I saw."
Perhaps this is the first depiction of a train in painting. the point of view is taken from somewhere above, which allowed for a wide panoramic coverage. The Western Express travels across the bridge at a speed that was absolutely exceptional for that time (exceeding 150 km per hour). In addition, this is probably the first attempt at depicting light through rain.
English art of the mid-19th century. developed in a completely different direction than Turner's painting. Although his skill was generally recognized, none of the youth followed him.
Turner has long been considered the predecessor of Impressionism. It would seem that his search for color from light should have been further developed by French artists. But this is not at all the case. In fact, opinion about Turner's influence on the Impressionists goes back to Paul Signac's book From Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism, published in 1899, where he described how “in 1871, during their long stay in London, Claude Manet and Camille Pissaro discovered Turner. They marveled at the confident and magical quality of his colors, they studied his work, analyzed his technique. At first they were amazed at his rendering of snow and ice, shocked by the way in which he managed to convey the sensation of the whiteness of snow, which they themselves could not manage, with the help of large spots of silver-white, flat laid with wide brush strokes. They saw that this impression was not achieved with whitewash alone. And a mass of multicolored strokes. Inflicted one next to the other, which made this impression, if you look at them from a distance ”.
During these years, Signac looked everywhere for confirmation of his theory of pointillism. But none of Turner's paintings that French artists could see in the National Gallery in 1871 contain the pointillism technique described by Signac, just as there are no “wide spots of white.” In fact, Turner's influence on the French was not stronger in 1870 -e, and in the 1890s.
Paul Signac studied Turner most carefully - not only as a forerunner of Impressionism, about which he wrote in his book, but also as a great innovative artist. Signac wrote to his friend Angran about Turner's late paintings Rain, Steam and Speed, The Exile, Morning and Evening of the Flood: wonderful sense of the word ”.
Signac's enthusiastic appraisal laid the foundation for the modern understanding of Turner's pictorial quest. But in recent years it sometimes happens that they do not take into account the subtext and the complexity of the directions of his search, one-sidedly selecting examples from really unfinished Turner's “underpaintings”, trying to discover in him the predecessor of impressionism.
Of all the newest artists, a comparison naturally suggests itself with Monet, who himself recognized Turner's influence on him. There is even one plot that is absolutely similar for both - namely, the western portal of the Rouen Cathedral. But if Monet gives us a sketch of the sunlight of a building, he does not give us Gothic, but some kind of naked model, in Turner you understand why the artist, completely absorbed in nature, was carried away by this topic - in his image it is precisely that combination of the overwhelming grandeur of the whole and the infinite that is striking. a variety of details, which brings the creation of Gothic art closer to the works of nature.
The special character of English culture and romantic art opened up the possibility of the appearance of the first plein air artist who laid the foundations for the light and air depiction of nature in the 19th century, John Constable (1776-1837). The Englishman Constable chooses landscape as the main genre of his painting: “The world is great; there are no two similar days or even two similar hours; from the creation of the world on one tree there were no two identical leaves, and all works of true art, like the creations of nature, differ from each other, ”he said.
The constable painted large sketches in oil on the plain air with a subtle observation of different states of nature, In them he managed to convey the complexity of the inner life of nature and its everyday life ("View of Highgate from Hempstead Hills", OK. 1834; "Hay cart", 1821; "Dethem Valley", circa 1828). Accomplished this with the help of writing techniques. He painted with moving strokes, sometimes thick and rough, sometimes smoother and more transparent. The impressionists will come to this only at the end of the century. Constable's innovative painting influenced the works of Delacroix, as well as the entire development of the French landscape.
The Constable's art, as well as many aspects of Gericault's work, marked the emergence of a realistic direction in the European art XIX century, which originally developed in parallel with romanticism. Later, they parted ways.
Romantics open the world of the human soul, individual, unlike anyone else, but sincere and therefore close to all sensual vision of the world. The instantaneousness of the image in painting, as Jelacroix said, and not its consistency in literary performance, determined the artists' focus on the most complex transfer of movement, for the sake of which new formal and coloristic solutions were found. Romanticism left a legacy to the second half of the 19th century. all these problems and artistic individuality, liberated from the rules of academism. The symbol that the romantics had to express the essential combination of idea and life, in the art of the second half of the 19th century. dissolves in the polyphony of the artistic image, capturing the diversity of ideas and the surrounding world.
b) Music
The idea of a synthesis of arts found expression in the ideology and practice of romanticism. Romanticism in music developed in the 20s of the 19th century under the influence of the literature of romanticism and developed in close connection with it, with literature in general (an appeal to synthetic genres, primarily to opera, song, instrumental miniature and musical programmaticity). The appeal to the inner world of a person, characteristic of romanticism, was expressed in the cult of the subjective, emotionally intense craving, which determined the supremacy of music and lyrics in romanticism.
Music of the 1st half of the 19th century evolved rapidly. A new musical language has appeared; in instrumental and chamber-vocal music, miniatures have a special place; the orchestra sounded with a varied spectrum of colors; the possibilities of the piano and violin were revealed in a new way; the romantics' music was very virtuoso.
Musical romanticism manifested itself in many different branches associated with different national cultures and with different social movements. So, for example, the intimate, lyrical style of German romantics and the "oratorical" civic pathos characteristic of the work of French composers differ significantly. In turn, representatives of new national schools that emerged on the basis of a broad national liberation movement (Chopin, Moniuszko, Dvorak, Smetana, Grieg), as well as representatives of the Italian opera school, closely associated with the Risorgimento movement (Verdi, Bellini), in many ways differ from contemporaries in Germany, Austria or France, in particular, the tendency to preserve classical traditions.
And nevertheless, they are all marked by some common artistic principles that allow us to speak of a single romantic structure of thought.
Due to the special ability of music to deeply and penetratingly reveal the rich world of human experience, it was put in the first place among other arts by romantic aesthetics. Many romantics emphasized an intuitive beginning to music, ascribed to it the ability to express the “unknowable”. The works of the outstanding romantic composers had a solid realistic foundation. Interest in the life of ordinary people, the fullness of life and the truth of feelings, reliance on the music of everyday life determined the realism of the creativity of the best representatives of musical romanticism. Reactionary tendencies (mysticism, escape from reality) are inherent in only a relatively small number of works of romantics. They manifested themselves in part in the opera "Euryant" by Weber (1823), in some of Wagner's musical dramas, the oratorio "Christ" by Liszt (1862), and others.
By the beginning of the 19th century, fundamental studies of folklore, history, ancient literature appeared, medieval legends that had been forgotten were resurrected, gothic art, the culture of the Renaissance. It was at this time that many national schools of a special type were formed in the composing work of Europe, which were destined to significantly expand the boundaries of common European culture. Russian, which soon took, if not the first, then one of the first places in world cultural creativity (Glinka, Dargomyzhsky, "Kuchkists", Tchaikovsky), Polish (Chopin, Moniuszko), Czech (Smetana, Dvorak), Hungarian (Liszt), then Norwegian (Grieg), Spanish (Pedrell), Finnish (Sibelius), English (Elgar) - all of them, merging into the general channel of European composer's creativity, in no way opposed themselves to the established ancient traditions. A new circle of images has emerged, expressing the unique national features of that national culture, to which the composer belonged. The intonation structure of the work allows you to instantly recognize by ear the belonging to a particular national school.
Composers involve the intonation turns of the old, predominantly peasant folklore of their countries into the common European musical language. They, as it were, cleansed the Russian folk song of lacquered opera, they introduced song turns of folk genres into the cosmopolitan intonation system of the 18th century. The most striking phenomenon in the music of romanticism, which is especially clearly perceived when compared with the figurative sphere of classicism, is the dominance of the lyric and psychological principle. Of course, a distinctive feature of musical art in general is the refraction of any phenomenon through the sphere of feelings. Music of all eras is subject to this pattern. But the romantics surpassed all their predecessors in the meaning of the lyrical principle in their music, in strength and perfection in conveying the depths of the inner world of a person, the finest shades mood.
The theme of love occupies a dominant place in it, for it is this state of mind most versatile and fully reflects all the depths and nuances of the human psyche. But it is highly characteristic that this topic is not limited to the motives of love in the literal sense of the word, but is identified with the widest range of phenomena. The purely lyrical experiences of the heroes are revealed against the background of a wide historical panorama. A person's love for his home, for his country, for his people - a continuous thread runs through the work of all composers - romantics.
A huge place in musical works of small and large forms is given to the image of nature, closely and inextricably intertwined with the theme of lyrical confession. Like the images of love, the image of nature personifies the state of mind of the hero, so often colored by a feeling of disharmony with reality.
The theme of fantasy often competes with images of nature, which is probably generated by the desire to escape from the captivity of real life. Typical for romantics are the search for a wonderful world, sparkling with the richness of colors, opposing the gray everyday life. It was during these years that literature was enriched with fairy tales, ballads of Russian writers. For the composers of the Romantic school, fabulous, fantastic images acquire a unique national color. The ballads are inspired by Russian writers, and thanks to this, works of a fantastic grotesque plan are created, symbolizing, as it were, the seamy side of faith, seeking to break the ideas of fear of the forces of evil.
Many romantic composers also appeared as music writers and critics (Weber, Berlioz, Wagner, Liszt, etc.). The theoretical works of the representatives of progressive romanticism made a very significant contribution to the development of the most important issues of musical art. Romanticism found expression in the performing arts (violinist Paganini, singer A. Nurri, etc.).
The progressive meaning of Romanticism during this period lies mainly in the activities Franz Liszt... Liszt's work, despite the contradictory worldview, was fundamentally progressive, realistic. One of the founders and classic Hungarian music, an outstanding national artist.
In many of Liszt's works, Hungarian national themes are widely reflected. Liszt's romantic, virtuoso compositions expanded the technical and expressive possibilities of piano playing (concerts, sonatas). Liszt's connections with representatives of Russian music were significant, the works of which he actively promoted.
At the same time Liszt played an important role in the development of world musical art. After Liszt “everything became possible for the piano”. The characteristic features of his music are improvisation, romantic uplifting of feelings, expressive melody. Liszt is appreciated as a composer, performer, musical figure. Major works of the composer: opera “ Don Sancho or the castle of love"(1825), 13 symphonic poems" Tasso ”, ” Prometheus ”, “Hamlet”And others, works for orchestra, 2 concertos for piano and orchestra, 75 romances, choirs and other no less famous works.
One of the first manifestations of romanticism in music was creativity Franz Schubert(1797-1828). Schubert went down in the history of music as the greatest of the founders of musical romanticism and the creator of a number of new genres: romantic symphony, piano miniature, lyric-romantic song (romance). Highest value in his work has song, in which he showed especially many innovative tendencies. In Schubert's songs, the inner world of a person is revealed deepest of all, the connection with folk music of everyday life is most noticeable for him, one of the most significant features of his talent is most clearly manifested - the amazing variety, beauty, charm of melodies. The best songs of the early period include “ Margarita at the spinning wheel ”(1814) , “Forest king”. Both songs are written with words by Goethe. In the first of them, the abandoned girl remembers her beloved. She is lonely and deeply suffering, her song is sad. The simple and soulful melody is echoed only by the monotonous hum of the breeze. "The Forest King" is a complex piece. This is not a song, but rather a dramatic scene where three characters appear in front of us: a father galloping on a horse through the forest, a sick child whom he carries with him, and a formidable forest king who appears to a boy in a feverish delirium. Each of them is endowed with its own melodic language. Schubert's songs "Trout", "Barcarolla", "Morning Serenade" are no less famous and loved. Written in more later years, these songs are distinguished by surprisingly simple and expressive melody, fresh colors.
Schubert also wrote two cycles of songs - “ Lovely miller"(1823), and" Winter path”(1872) - to the words of the German poet Wilhelm Müller. In each of them, the songs are united by one plot. The songs of the cycle "The Beautiful Miller" tell about a young boy. Following the flow of the stream, he sets out on a journey to seek his happiness. Most of the songs in this cycle have a light character. The mood of the cycle "Winter Path" is completely different. The poor young man is rejected by the rich bride. In despair, he leaves his hometown and leaves to wander the world. His companions are the wind, a blizzard, ominously croaking crows.
The few examples given here allow us to speak about the peculiarities of Schubert's songwriting.
Schubert was very fond of writing music for piano... For this instrument he wrote a huge number of works. Like songs, his piano works were close to everyday music and just as simple and understandable. His favorite genres were dances, marches, and in the last years of his life - impromptu.
Waltzes and other dances usually appeared with Schubert at balls, in country walks. There he improvised them, and recorded them at home.
If you compare Schubert's piano pieces with his songs, you can find many similarities. First of all, it is a great melodic expressiveness, grace, colorful juxtaposition of major and minor.
One of the largest French composers of the second half of the 19th century was Georges Bizet, creator of an immortal creation for musical theater - opera “Carmen"And wonderful music for the drama by Alphonse Daudet" Arlesian ”.
Bizet's creativity is characterized by precision and clarity of thought, novelty and freshness of expressive means, completeness and grace of form. Bizet has a spice psychological analysis in comprehension human feelings and deeds, characteristic of the work of the great compatriots of the composer - the writers Balzac, Flaubert, Maupassant. The central place in the work of Bizet, diverse in genres, belongs to the opera. The composer's operatic art arose on national soil and was nourished by the traditions of the French opera house. Bizet considered the first task in his work to overcome the existing French opera genre restrictions that hinder its development. The “big” opera seems to him a dead genre, the lyric one irritates with its tearfulness and philistine narrow-mindedness, the comic deserves attention more than others. For the first time in Bizet's opera, juicy and lively everyday life and crowd scenes appear in the opera, anticipating life and vivid scenes.
Music by Bizet to the drama by Alphonse Daudet “Arlesian”Is known mainly for two concert suites, composed of her best numbers. Bizet used some authentic Provencal melodies : "March of the Three Kings" and "Dance of Frisky Horses".
Opera Bizet " Carmen ” – musical drama, which unfolds before the viewer with convincing truthfulness and with breathtaking artistic force the story of the love and death of her heroes: the soldier Jose and the gypsy Carmen. Opera Carmen was created on the basis of the traditions of French musical theater, but at the same time it also brought a lot of new things. Relying on the best achievements of the national opera and reforming its most important elements, Bizet created new genre- realistic musical drama.
In the history of the opera house of the 19th century, the opera "Carmen" occupies one of the first places. Since 1876, her triumphal procession begins on the stages of the opera houses in Vienna, Brussels, London.
The manifestation of a personal attitude towards the environment was expressed in poets and musicians, first of all, in the spontaneity, emotional “openness” and passion of the statement, in the desire to convince the listener with the help of the incessant tension of the tone of confession or confession.
These new trends in art had a decisive influence on the appearance lyric opera... It arose as the antithesis of “big” and comic opera, but it could not ignore their conquests and achievements in the field of operatic drama and means of musical expression.
A distinctive feature of the new opera genre is the lyrical interpretation of any literary plot - on a historical, philosophical or contemporary theme. The heroes of the lyric opera are endowed with the features of ordinary people, devoid of the exclusivity and some exaggeration characteristic of a romantic opera. The most significant artist in the field of lyric opera was Charles Gounod.
Among the rather numerous opera heritage of Gounod, the opera “ Faust " occupies a special and, one might say, exceptional place. Her worldwide fame and popularity is unmatched by any of Gounod's other operas. The historical significance of the opera Faust is especially great because it was not only the best, but essentially the first among the operas of the new direction, about which Tchaikovsky wrote: “It is impossible to deny that Faust was written, if not brilliantly, then with extraordinary skill and without significant identity. " In the image of Faust, acute contradictions and “duality” of his consciousness, eternal dissatisfaction caused by the desire to cognize the world are smoothed out. Gounod was unable to convey all the versatility and complexity of the image of Goethe's Mephistopheles, who embodied the spirit of militant criticism of that era.
One of the main reasons for the popularity of “Faust” was that it concentrated the best and fundamentally new features of the young genre of lyric opera: an emotionally direct and brightly individual transmission of the inner world of the opera's heroes. The deep philosophical meaning of "Faust" by Goethe, who sought to reveal the historical and social destinies of all mankind on the example of the conflict of the main characters, was embodied by Gounod in the form of a humane lyrical drama of Marguerite and Faust.
French composer, conductor, music critic Hector Berlioz entered the history of music as the largest romantic composer, creator program symphony, an innovator in the field of musical form, harmony and especially instrumentation. In his work, they found a vivid embodiment of the features of revolutionary pathos and heroism. Berlioz knew M. Glinka, whose music he highly valued. He was on friendly terms with the leaders of the "Mighty Handful", who enthusiastically accepted his works and creative principles.
He created 5 musical stage works, including the opera “ Benvenuto Cillini ”(1838), “ Trojans ”,”Beatrice and Benedict”(Based on Shakespeare's comedy“ Much Ado About Nothing ”, 1862); 23 vocal and symphonic works, 31 romances, choruses, he penned the books “The Big Treatise on Modern Instrumentation and Orchestration” (1844), “Evenings in the Orchestra” (1853), “Through Songs” (1862), “Musical Curiosities” ( 1859), “Memoirs” (1870), articles, reviews.
German composer, conductor, playwright, publicist Richard Wagner went down in the history of world musical culture as one of the greatest musical creators and major reformers of operatic art. The goal of his reforms was to create a monumental programmatic vocal and symphonic work in a dramatic form, designed to replace all types of opera and symphonic music. Such a work was a musical drama, in which music flows in a continuous stream, merging together all the dramatic links. Having abandoned the finished singing, Wagner replaced them with a kind of emotionally rich recitative. An important place in Wagner's operas is occupied by independent orchestral episodes, which are a valuable contribution to world symphonic music.
Wagner's hand owns 13 operas: “ The Flying Dutchman "(1843)," Tannhäuser "(1845)," Tristan and Isolde "(1865)," Gold of the Rhine "(1869) and etc.; choirs, piano pieces, romances.
Another outstanding German composer, conductor, pianist, teacher, musical figure was Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy... At the age of 9 he began performing as a pianist, at the age of 17 he created one of the masterpieces - the overture to the comedy “ C he is in summer night” Shakespeare. In 1843 he founded the first conservatory in Germany in Leipzig. In the work of Mendelssohn, "a classic among romantics", romantic features are combined with classical system thinking. His music is characterized by bright melody, democratism of expression, moderation of feelings, calmness of thought, predominance of bright emotions, lyrical moods, not without a slight touch of sentimentality, impeccability of forms, brilliant skill. R. Schumann called it “Mozart of the 19th century”, G. Heine - “a musical miracle”.
Author of landscape romantic symphonies (“Scottish”, “Italian”), program concert overtures, the popular violin concerto, cycles of pieces for piano “Song without Words”; opera "Camacho's Wedding." He wrote music for the dramatic performance "Antigone" (1841), "Oedipus at Colon" (1845) by Sophocles, "Atalia" by Racine (1845), "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by Shakespeare (1843) and others; oratorios "Paul" (1836), "Elijah" (1846); 2 concertos for piano and 2 for violin.
IN italian musical culture a special place belongs to Giuseppe Verdi - an outstanding composer, conductor, organist. The main area of Verdi's work is opera. Acted mainly as an exponent of heroic-patriotic feelings and national liberation ideas of the Italian people. In subsequent years, he paid attention to the dramatic conflicts generated by social inequality, violence, oppression, denounced evil in his operas. Characteristic features of Verdi's work: nationality of music, dramatic temperament, melodic brightness, understanding of the laws of the stage.
He wrote 26 operas: “ Nabucco ”,“ Macbeth ”,“ Troubadour ”,“ La Traviata ”,“ Othello ”,“ Aida" and etc . , 20 romances, vocal ensembles .
Young Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) strove to develop national music... This was expressed not only in his work, but also in the promotion of Norwegian music.
During his years in Copenhagen, Grieg wrote a lot of music: “ Poetic Pictures " and "Humoresques", sonata for piano and the first violin sonata, songs. With each new work, the image of Grieg as a Norwegian composer becomes clearer. In the delicate lyrical Poetic Pictures (1863), national features are still timidly breaking through. The rhythmic figure is often found in Norwegian folk music; it became characteristic of many of Grieg's melodies.
Grieg's work is vast and multifaceted. Grieg wrote works of various genres. Piano Concerto and Ballads, three sonatas for violin and piano and sonata for cello and piano, the quartet testifies to Grieg's constant craving for the large form. At the same time, the composer's interest in instrumental miniatures remained unchanged. To the same extent as the piano, the composer was attracted by the chamber vocal miniature - a romance, a song. Do not be the main one for Grieg, the area of symphonic creativity is marked by such masterpieces as suites “ Per Gounod ”, “From Holberg's time”. One of the characteristic types of Grieg's work is the processing of folk songs and dances: in the form of simple piano pieces, a suite cycle for piano four hands.
Grieg's musical language is distinctive. The individuality of the composer's style is most of all determined by his deep connection with Norwegian folk music. Grieg enjoys widespread use genre characteristics, intonation structure, rhythmic formulas of folk song and dance melodies.
The remarkable mastery of the variation and variant development of the melody, characteristic of Grieg, is rooted in the folk traditions of the repeated repetition of the melody with its changes. “I wrote down folk music my country ”. Behind these words lies Grieg's reverent attitude towards folk art and recognition of his defining role for his own creativity.
7. CONCLUSION
Based on the above, the following conclusions can be drawn:
The emergence of romanticism was influenced by three main events: the Great French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the rise of the national liberation movement in Europe.
Romanticism as a method and direction in artistic culture was a complex and contradictory phenomenon. In every country, he had a vivid national expression. Romantics occupied different social and political positions in society. They all rebelled against the results of the bourgeois revolution, but they rebelled in different ways, since each had its own ideal. But for all the many-sidedness and diversity, romanticism has stable features:
All of them came from the denial of the Enlightenment and the rationalistic canons of classicism, which fettered the artist's creative initiative.
They discovered the principle of historicism (the enlighteners judged the past in an antihistorical way for them there was "reasonable" and "unreasonable"). We saw in the past human characters shaped by their time. Interest in the national past gave rise to a lot of historical works.
Interest in a strong personality, which opposes itself to the entire surrounding world and relies only on itself.
Attention to the inner world of a person.
Romanticism was widely developed both in Western Europe and in Russia. However, romanticism in Russia differed from Western European for the sake of a different historical setting and a different cultural tradition. The real reason for the emergence of romanticism in Russia was the Patriotic War of 1812, in which the full force of the people's initiative was manifested.
Features of Russian romanticism:
Romanticism did not oppose the Enlightenment. The educational ideology weakened, but did not collapse, as in Europe. The ideal of an enlightened monarch has not exhausted itself.
Romanticism developed in parallel with classicism, often intertwining with it.
Romanticism in Russia in different types of art has shown itself in different ways. In architecture, he was not read at all. In painting - dried up by the middle of the XIX century. It manifested itself only partially in music. Perhaps only in literature did romanticism manifest itself consistently.
In the visual arts, romanticism manifested itself most clearly in painting and graphics, less expressively in sculpture and architecture.
Romantics open the world of the human soul, individual, unlike anyone else, but sincere and therefore close to all sensual vision of the world. The instantaneousness of the image in painting, as Delacroix said, and not its consistency in literary performance, determined the artists' focus on the most complex transfer of movement, for the sake of which new formal and coloristic solutions were found. Romanticism left a legacy to the second half of the 19th century. all these problems and artistic individuality, liberated from the rules of academism. The symbol that the romantics had to express the essential combination of idea and life, in the art of the second half of the 19th century. dissolves in the polyphony of the artistic image, capturing the diversity of ideas and the surrounding world. Romanticism in painting is closely related to sentimentalism.
Thanks to romanticism, the artist's personal subjective vision takes the form of a law. Impressionism will completely destroy the barrier between artist and nature, declaring art an impression. Romantics talk about the artist's fantasy, “the voice of his feelings,” which allows you to stop work when the master considers it necessary, and not as academic standards of completeness require.
Romanticism left a whole era in the world art culture, its representatives were: in Russian literature Zhukovsky, A. Pushkin, M. Lermontov, etc .; in the fine arts of E. Delacroix, T. Gericault, F. Runge, J. Constable, W. Turner, O. Kiprensky, A. Venetsianov, A. Orlorsky, V. Tropinin and others; in music F. Schubert, R. Wagner, G. Berlioz, N. Paganini, F. Liszt, F. Chopin and others. They discovered and developed new genres, paid close attention to the fate of the human person, revealed the dialectic of good and evil, masterfully revealed human passions, etc.
The forms of art in their importance more or less equalized and produced magnificent works of art, although the romantics in the ladder of arts gave priority to music.
Romanticism in Russia as a perception of the world existed in its first wave from the end of the 18th century to the 1850s. The line of the romantic in Russian art did not end in the 1850s. Opened by romantics for art, the theme of the state of being was developed later by the artists of the "Blue Rose". The direct heirs of the Romantics were undoubtedly the Symbolists. Romantic themes, motives, expressive techniques entered the art of different styles, trends, creative associations. The romantic outlook or worldview turned out to be one of the most lively, tenacious, and fruitful.
Romanticism as a general attitude, characteristic mainly of young people, as a striving for the ideal and creative freedom, is still constantly living in world art.
8. REFERENCES
1. Amminskaya A.M. Alexey Gavrilovich Vnetsianov. - M: Knowledge, 1980
2. Atsarkina E.N. Aleksdr Osipovich Orlovsky. - M: Art, 1971.
3. Belinsky V.G. Compositions. A. Pushkin. - M: 1976.
4. Great Soviet Encyclopedia (Chief editor A. Prokhorov).- M: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1977.
5. Vainkop Y., Gusin I. A Brief Biographical Dictionary of Composers. - L: Music, 1983.
6. Vasily Andreevich Tropiin (edited by M.M. Rakovskaya)... - M: Fine Arts, 1982.
7. Vorotnikov A.A., Gorshkovoz O.D., Yorkina O.A. Art history. - Mn: Literature, 1997.
8. Zimenko V. Alexander Osipovch Orlovsky. - M: State Publishing House of Fine Arts, 1951.
9. Ivanov S.V. M.Yu. Lermontov. Life and art. - M: 1989.
10. Musical literature of foreign countries (under the editorship of B. Levik).- M: Music, 1984.
11. E.A. Nekrasova Turner. - M: Fine Art, 1976.
12. Ozhegov S.I. Dictionary of the Russian language. - M: State Publishing House of Foreign and Russian Dictionaries, 1953.
13. Orlova M. J. Constable. - M: Art, 1946.
14. Russian artists. A.G. Venetsianov. - M: State Publishing House of Fine Arts, 1963.
15. Sokolov A.N. History of Russian literature of the XIX century (1 half). - M: High School, 1976.
16. Turchin V.S. Orest Kiprensky. - M: Knowledge, 1982.
17. Turchin V.S. Theodore Gericault. - M: Fine Arts, 1982.
18. Filimonova S.V. History of World Art Culture - Mozyr: White Wind, 1997.
Romanticism is one of the most significant literary movements of the 19th century.
Romanticism is not just a literary trend, but also a certain worldview, a system of views on the world. It was formed in opposition to the ideology of the Enlightenment, which reigned throughout the 18th century, in repulsion from it.
All researchers agree that the most important event that played a role in the emergence of Romanticism was the Great French Revolution, which began on July 14, 1789, when an angry people stormed the main royal prison of the Bastille, as a result of which France became first a constitutional monarchy, and then a republic ... The revolution became the most important stage in the formation of a modern republican, democratic Europe. Subsequently, she became a symbol of the struggle for freedom, equality, justice, and the improvement of the people's life.
However, the attitude towards the Revolution was far from unambiguous. Many thinking and creative people soon became disillusioned with it, since its results were revolutionary terror, civil war, wars of revolutionary France with almost all of Europe. And the society that emerged in France after the Revolution was very far from ideal: the people still lived in poverty. And since the Revolution was a direct result of the philosophical and socio-political ideas of the Enlightenment, the Enlightenment itself was disappointed. It was from this complex combination of charm and disillusionment with the Revolution and the Enlightenment that Romanticism was born. Romantics retained faith in the main ideals of the Enlightenment and Revolution - freedom, equality, social justice, etc.
But they were disappointed in the possibility of their real embodiment. There was an acute sense of the gap between the ideal and life. Therefore, romantics are characterized by two opposite tendencies: 1. reckless, naive enthusiasm, optimistic belief in the victory of lofty ideals; 2. an absolute, gloomy disappointment in everything, in life in general. These are two sides of the same coin: absolute disappointment in life is the result of absolute belief in ideals.
Another important point regarding the relationship of romantics to the Enlightenment: in itself, the ideology of the Enlightenment at the beginning of the 19th century began to be perceived as outdated, boring, and did not live up to expectations. After all, development proceeds according to the principle of repulsion from the previous one. Before Romanticism was the Enlightenment, and Romanticism pushed away from it.
So, what exactly was the effect of pushing away Romanticism from the Enlightenment?
In the 18th century, in the era of the Enlightenment, the cult of Reason reigned - rationalism - the idea that reason is the main quality of a person, with the help of reason, logic, science, a person is able to correctly understand, know the world and himself, and change both for the better.
1. The most important feature of romanticism has become irrationalism(anti-rationalism) - the idea that life is much more complicated than it seems to the human mind, life defies a rational, logical explanation. It is unpredictable, incomprehensible, contradictory, in short, irrational. And the most irrational, mysterious part of life is the human soul. A person is very often ruled not by a bright mind, but by dark, uncontrolled, sometimes destructive passions. In the soul, the most opposite aspirations, feelings, thoughts can illogically coexist. Romantics paid serious attention and began to describe strange, irrational states of human consciousness: insanity, sleep, obsession with some kind of passion, a state of passion, illness, etc. Romanticism is characterized by a mockery of science, scientists, logic.
2. Romantics, following the sentimentalists, highlighted feelings, emotions that defy logic. Emotionality- the most important quality of a person from the point of view of Romanticism. A romantic is one who acts contrary to reason, petty calculation, romance is driven by emotions.
3. Most enlighteners were materialists, many romantics (but not all) were idealists and mystics... Idealists are those who believe that in addition to the material world there is a certain ideal, spiritual world, which consists of ideas, thoughts and which is much more important, more paramount than the material world. Mystics are not just those who believe in the existence of another world - mystical, otherworldly, supernatural, etc., they are those who believe that representatives of another world are able to penetrate into the real world, that in general a connection is possible between worlds, communication. Romantics willingly let mysticism into their works, describing witches, sorcerers and other representatives of evil spirits. In romantic works, there are very often hints of a mystical explanation of the strange events taking place.
(Sometimes the concepts of "mystical" and "irrational" are identified, used as synonyms, which is not entirely correct. Often they really coincide, especially among romantics, but still, in general, these concepts mean different things. Everything mystical is usually irrational, but not everything irrational mystical).
4. Many romantics have inherent mystical fatalism- belief in Fate, Predestination. A person's life is controlled by some mystical (mostly dark) forces. Therefore, in some romantic works there are many mysterious predictions, strange hints that always come true. Heroes sometimes do things as if not themselves, but someone pushes them, as if some outside force is infiltrating them, which leads them to the realization of Destiny. Many works of romantics are imbued with the feeling of the inevitability of Destiny.
5. Duality- the most important feature of romanticism, generated by the bitter sense of the gap between the ideal and reality.
Romantics divided the world into two parts: the real world and the ideal world.
The real world is an ordinary, everyday, uninteresting, extremely imperfect world, a world in which ordinary people and bourgeois feel comfortable. Bourgeois are people who do not have deep spiritual interests, their ideal is material well-being, their own personal comfort and peace.
A characteristic feature of a typical romantic is dislike for the bourgeoisie, for ordinary people, for the majority, for the crowd, contempt for real life, detachment from it, not fitting into it.
And the second world is the world of a romantic ideal, a romantic dream, where everything is beautiful, bright, where everything is the way the romantic dreams, this world does not exist in reality, but it should be. Romantic getaway- this is an escape from reality into the world of the ideal, into nature, art, into your inner world. Madness and suicide are also options for romantic getaways. Most suicides have a significant element of romanticism in their character.
7. Romantics do not like everything ordinary and strive for everything unusual, atypical, original, exceptional, exotic. The romantic hero is always different from the majority, he is different. This is the main quality of a romantic hero. He is not inscribed in the surrounding reality, not adapted to it, he is always a loner.
The main romantic conflict is the confrontation between the lonely romantic hero and ordinary people.
Love for the unusual also concerns the choice of plot events for the work - they are always exceptional, extraordinary. Romantics also love exotic surroundings: distant hot countries, sea, mountains, sometimes fabulous invented countries. For the same reason, romantics are interested in the distant historical past, especially the Middle Ages, which the enlighteners did not like very much as the most unenlightened, unreasonable time. But the romantics believed that the Middle Ages was the time of the birth of romanticism, romantic love and romantic poetry, the first romantic heroes are knights serving their beautiful ladies and composing poetry.
In romanticism (especially poetry), the motive of flight, separation from ordinary life and the desire for something extraordinary and beautiful is very common.
8. Basic romantic values.
The main value for romantics is Love... Love is the highest manifestation of the human personality, the highest happiness, the most complete disclosure of all the abilities of the soul. This is the main goal and meaning of life. Love connects a person with other worlds, in love all the deepest, most important secrets of life are revealed. Romantics are characterized by the idea of lovers as two halves, of the non-coincidence of the meeting, of the mystical destiny of this particular man to this particular woman. Also the idea that true love it can only be once in a lifetime that it appears instantly at first sight. The idea of the need to remain faithful even after the death of a beloved. At the same time, the ideal embodiment of romantic love was given by Shakespeare in the tragedy "Romeo and Juliet".
The second romantic value is Art... It contains the highest Truth and the highest Beauty, which descend to the artist (in the broad sense of the word) at the moment of inspiration from other worlds. The artist is an ideal romantic person endowed with the highest gift with the help of his art to spiritualize people, to make them better, cleaner. The highest form of art is Music, it is the least material, the most indefinite, free and irrational, music is directed directly to the heart, to the feelings. The image of the Musician in romanticism is very common.
The third most important value of romanticism is Nature and her beauty. Romantics sought to spiritualize nature, endow it with a living soul, a special mysterious mystical life.
The secret of nature will be revealed not through the cold mind of a scientist, but only through the feeling of her beauty and soul.
The fourth romantic value is freedom, inner spiritual, creative freedom first of all, free flight souls. But also social and political freedom. Freedom is a romantic value because it is possible only ideally, but not in reality.
Artistic features of romanticism.
1. The main artistic principle of romanticism is the principle of re-creation and transformation of reality. Romantics show life not as it can be seen, they reveal its hidden mystical, spiritual essence, as they understand it. The truth of the real life around us for any romantic is boring and uninteresting.
Therefore, romantics are very willing to use a variety of ways to transform reality:
- straight fantastic, fabulousness,
- hyperbola- various types of exaggeration, exaggeration of the qualities of the characters;
- plot improbability- an unprecedented abundance of adventures in the plot - unusual, unexpected events, all kinds of coincidences, accidents, disasters, rescues, etc.
2. Mystery- widespread use of mystery as artistic reception: special whipping up of mystery. Romantics achieve the effect of mystery by hiding some part of the facts, events, describing events in dotted lines, in part - so that a hint of interference in the real life of mystical forces becomes obvious.
3. Romanticism is characterized by a special romantic style... Its features:
- emotionality(many words expressing emotions and emotionally colored);
- stylistic adornment- many stylistic decorations, pictorial and expressive means: epithets, metaphors, comparisons, etc.
- verbosity, lack of specificity - many words with abstract meaning.
Chronological framework for the development of romanticism.
Romanticism arose in the second half of the 1890s in Germany and England, then in France. Romanticism became the dominant literary trend in Europe from about 1814, when the works of Hoffmann, Byron, Walter Scott began to appear one after another, and remained so until about the second half of the 1830s, when it lost ground to realism. Romanticism faded into the background, but did not disappear - especially in France, it existed for almost the entire 19th century, for example, almost most of the novels of Victor Hugo, the best novelist among romantics, were written in the 1860s, and his last novel was published in 1874. In poetry, romanticism prevailed throughout the nineteenth century, in all countries.
1. Romantics rejected the most important artistic principle of realism - believability. They reflected life not as it is, but as if re-creating it in their own way, transforming 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; in) 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 of the 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 of the second half of the 19th century - Tyutchev and Fet - are pure romantics.
_ _ _ _ _ _ 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 THE. 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 nineteenth 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 is a special kind of worldview, at the same time an artistic direction in the art of the end of the 18th - first quarter of the 19th century, formed in Germany. Gained worldwide significance and distribution. The direction of romanticism involved the opposition of the classicist requirement of the rules. Romanticism also opposed the Enlightenment verbally: the language of romantic works, striving to be natural, "simple", accessible to all readers, was something opposite to the classics with its noble, "sublime" themes, characteristic, for example, of classical tragedy.
An essential feature of romanticism as a literary trend is the so-called romantic duality, understood most often as striving for the sublime and the earthly at the same time, in addition, as a discord between ideal and reality, or, in other words, the opposition of reality and dreams, what is and what is, what is possible. Romanticism always opposes the real reality that it rejects with another, poetic reality. For some romantics, incomprehensible and mysterious forces dominate in the world, which must be obeyed and not try to change fate (Chateaubriand, V.A. Zhukovsky). For others, world evil evoked a protest, demanded revenge, struggle (early A.S. Pushkin Byron, Lermontov).
Romantics discovered the extraordinary complexity and depth of the spiritual world of man; it is a whole universe full of contradictions. Romantics were interested in all passions, both high and low, which were opposed to each other. High passion is love in all its manifestations, low passion is greed, ambition, envy. Romanticism is characterized by the assertion of freedom and increased attention to the individuality of a person.
Interest in strong and vivid feelings, all-consuming passions, in secret movements of the soul - these are the characteristic features of romanticism.
Romantics turned to different historical eras, they were attracted by originality, attracted by exotic and mysterious countries and circumstances. A significant place is occupied by the landscape - first of all, the sea, mountains, sky, stormy elements, with which the hero has a complex relationship. Nature can be one with the hero, but it can also resist him, turn out to be a hostile force with which he is forced to fight. Romanticism is a cultural phenomenon in Europe and America. In different countries, his fate had its own characteristics.
2. By the beginning of the second decade of the 19th century, romanticism occupies a key place in Russian art, revealing more or less fully its national identity. Russian romanticism arose in different conditions than Western European. In the West, he was a post-revolutionary phenomenon and expressed his disappointment with the results of the changes that had already taken place, in the new, capitalist society. In Russia, it was formed in an era when the country was yet to enter a period of bourgeois transformations. The military events of 1812 had a huge impact on the development of Russian romanticism.
The Patriotic War caused not only the growth of civil and national consciousness, but also the recognition of the special role of the people in the life of the national state. And the uprising of the Decembrists of 1825, which had a huge impact on the entire course of the artistic development of Russia, determining the range of issues and topics that worried Russian romantics. The topic of the people became very significant for Russian romantic writers. The creativity of all Russian romantics is marked by the desire for nationality, although their understanding of the "folk soul" was different. For Zhukovsky, nationality is, first of all, a humane attitude towards the peasantry and, in general, towards poor people. He saw its essence in the poetry of folk rituals, lyric songs, folk signs and superstitions. In the work of the romantic Decembrists, the idea of the people's soul was associated with other features. For them, a folk character is a heroic character, a nationally distinctive one. In their work, the main theme was not the fate of an individual, but the fate of the people, not personal happiness, but public good. The poetry of the Decembrists sounded like an alarm, called for battle and feat, it glorified the joy of the struggle for freedom.
Romanticism, like sentimentalism, paid great attention to the depiction of a person's inner world. But unlike writers-sentimentalists, who praised the "quiet sensitivity" of romantics preferred the portrayal of extraordinary adventures and stormy passions. Such a character was, for example, the work of the English poet J. Byron, whose influence was experienced by many Russian writers of the early 19th century.
One of the important achievements of romanticism is the creation of a lyrical landscape. For romantics, it serves as a kind of decoration that emphasizes the emotional intensity of the action. The originality of the themes of romantic works contributed to the use of metaphors, poetic epithets, symbols. So, the sea, the wind appeared as a romantic symbol of freedom; happiness - the sun, love - fire or roses; in general, pink symbolized love feelings, black - sadness. The night personified evil, crimes, enmity. The symbol of eternal change is a wave of the sea, insensibility is a stone; the images of a doll or masquerade meant falsity, hypocrisy, duplicity. Russian romantics, to a high degree, were inherent in the desire for a moral ideal. This ideal for them was philanthropy and independence of the individual. The names of its greatest representatives are associated with romanticism in Russian literature - Pushkin His first ghosts, albeit still timid, are found in the stories of N. M. Karamzin: "Bornholm Island", "Sierra Morena", "Martha Posadnitsa ". In them, the writer sympathetically depicts the dissatisfaction of the human person with the constraining conditions of the environment. These tendencies are developed more consistently and deeply in the poetry of V.A.Zhukovsky and Batyushkov. Zhukovsky is famous for his ballads, magnificent descriptions of nature and, of course, the unusual plot. A large place in his work was occupied by lyrical images native nature. In one of his early poems, the elegy "Evening", the poet reproduced a modest picture of his native land as follows:
Everything is quiet: the groves are asleep; peace in the neighborhood,
Prostrated on the grass under a bent willow,
I listen to how it murmurs, merged with the river,
Stream shaded by bushes.
You can barely hear the reeds swaying over the stream,
The sound of a loop in the distance awakens the villages asleep.
Russian romanticism literary
In the grass of the corncrake I hear a wild cry ... [Bestuzhev-Marlinsky A. Soch. T. 1. M., 1952. P. 119 This love for the image of Russian life, national traditions and rituals, legends and tales will be expressed in a number of subsequent works of Zhukovsky. Batyushkov, at the beginning of his career, glorified rural solitude, dreaminess, melancholy. Later, the character of his poetry changes and he now glorifies wine and love, joy, pleasure and passion.
3. The problem of periodization of the literary process of the XIX century. is one of the most difficult problems faced by literary critics both in the past and at present. Historical and literary science has put forward a number of principles of periodization. They do not replace each other at exact calendar dates, but this or that year acquires the character of a border epoch. And yet, Russian romanticism is usually divided into several periods: the initial (1801-1815), the literary life of this period is characterized by an increasingly aggravated struggle between the “new” and the “old”. In the early years of the new century, sentimentalism dominated literature. And the classicists are trying to defend the old literary positions.
Since the 1840s, rum has been losing its former positions and giving way to realism, but it does not cease to exist.
Almost all of the major realist writers of the second half of the century: Turgenev, Goncharov, Ostrovsky, Nekrasov, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, turned to the heritage of rum, in one way or another reworked its artistic experience. Often they created works that, to some extent, were close to rum in their ideological and artistic principles. Later, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Russian Symbolists became the successors of the romantic traditions. rejection of modernity, the bourgeois system that was established by this time in Russia, dreaming of a complete re-creation of life and the transformation of humanity - all this brings the Symbolists closer to the romantics. Traditions manifested themselves with great force in the works of young Gorky, such as Makar Chundra, the old woman Izergil, the song about the falcon. Rum traditions live on in the Soviet lit. They are attracted by writers striving for the direct. direct expression of their ideals. This influence is noticeable in the works of Paustovsky and other writers.
Stage from 1815 to the revolution of 1848-1849. in the cultural life of Europe is associated with the dominance of romanticism. The term "romanticism" was first applied to literature, later this concept spread to music and the visual arts. As applied to painting, it was first applied to the work "The Raft of Medusa" by the French artist Theodore Gericault. Unlike classicism, which relied on a clearly developed theory, on a system of strictly regulated rules, romanticism did not have such a theory. Already contemporaries, and then later researchers, often invested different content in this period. The variety of phenomena that were united by this concept, the contradictions of aesthetic, philosophical and political nature inherent in the views of romantics, gave rise to doubt the necessity and validity of such a unifying term.
However, with all the diversity and sometimes contradictions, romantic art was a certain integrity, it had a number of features that make it possible to speak of it as a single literary and artistic movement. The main prerequisite for this integrity was that romanticism was a product of the French Revolution, those storms that thundered over France and awakened the whole world. Just as the revolution of 1789 heralded a radical upheaval in social life society, and romanticism heralded a revolution in culture. The slogan of the new direction was the liberation of art from conformism, freedom and independence of creativity from regulations.
Thus, romanticism was in an atmosphere of serious ideological shifts that took place in Europe at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries. The crisis of the ideology of the Enlightenment began during the years of the French Revolution. The inconsistency of the assertions of the enlighteners about the close triumph of the principles of reason, equality and justice became more and more obvious. These disappointments were reflected in the images of romantic heroes who were infected with melancholy, mental anguish, “world grief”, in the images of rebellious freedom-loving natures who suffered as a result of the discrepancy between high spiritual aspirations and the imperfection of the world. The spirit of continuous objection was most fully and vividly reflected in Byron's work.
The sharp means of romantic criticism of reality were grotesque, satire, irony, they were brilliantly used by Hoffmann and Heine. These writers ridiculed the poverty and narrow-mindedness of the bourgeois bourgeoisie. Romanticism in general criticized the anti-aesthetic, prosaic character of the bourgeois way of life. However, the significance of romanticism was much broader than the rebellion against philistinism and official classicism. Romanticism was associated with democratic movements, with the ideals that prepared the revolution of 1830, with the national liberation and national uniting popular movements of that time. The struggle of the individual and the people for freedom, for their rights inspired such outstanding artists of the era as poets and writers Shelley, Byron, Stendhal, artists Delacroix, Rud.
Romanticism is characterized by a more personal, emotional artistic speech compared to the harsh discipline of classicism. Revealing the dramatic world of personality conflicts with a mercantile society, with the hypocrisy of the official values of this society, the romantics sought to reveal characteristic originality people's life of their nation, its historical destiny. Thus, they played a huge role in affirming the theme of nationality and nationality in art, in addressing real story- both past and present.
Romantics rejected the limiting literary canons of classicism, proclaimed complete freedom of artistic creation. Special meaning they gave imagination, fantasy, but at the same time demanded historical accuracy. A constant reference to the historical past is one of the most characteristic features of romanticism. Interest in the past resulted in an upsurge in historical knowledge. Historians of the French romantic school (Thierry, Minne, Guizot, Thur), who studied the consequences of a deep social breakdown in France, came to the conclusion that the French revolution of the 18th century was regular. At the same time, some romantics (writers Chateaubriand, Novalis, etc.) came out with an apology for Christianity (Catholicism), portraying it as an alternative to educational and revolutionary ideas, a source of higher spiritual, moral and aesthetic values that can open the way to peace and harmony. ... They praised the Middle Ages as the day of an orderly society with a monolithic Catholic church, noble knightly customs, and a patriarchal way of life. The idealized view of the Middle Ages was contrasted with the disgusting bourgeois reality.
A new genre of literature arose - the historical novel (Walter Scott), there was a great interest in the expression of high moral ideals. On this basis, there arose an attraction to the study of folklore - the "archive of peoples", as the German romantic poet Herder called it. Numerous editions of folk songs, legends, fairy tales, epic poems, dictionaries of the national language are associated with the poeticization of the national past.
Great importance for European peoples little interest of romantics national traditions, folk languages, customs, events of the past. Romantic writers opened an idealized past to Europeans, interested them in wanderings (DF Cooper "The Last of the Mohicans"), in the knowledge of the unknown. Romanticism contributed to the emergence and popularity of new genres (the birth of professional journalism and criticism by E. Po), opened up new opportunities for creative experimentation (folk tales by the brothers J. and V. Grimm, fairy tales by E. Hoffmann). The majestic figure of the period of romanticism is french writer... Hugo (1802-1885). The heroes of his novels ("Notre Dame Cathedral", "Les Miserables", "The Man Who Laughs") have a powerful fortitude, capable of self-sacrifice, are the winners of circumstances and creators of their own happiness.
Fundamental shifts took place at this time in the repertoire of theaters and in the performing arts. Romantic art, having become a sign of the era, gave rise to various versions of the romantic hero on the stage: a disappointed, who in vain seeks peace, a mournful young man, but at the same time an ardent supporter of freedom who challenges the entire world around him. With the inspiration of the sense of personality, characteristic of the world outlook of a person in the new bourgeois society, the associated cult of feeling and imagination, which caused the breakdown of all the usual types of genre norms. The innovative quests of romantics contributed to the abandonment of the abstract-rationalistic principle of constructing the performance. The romance of the poetics of contrasts, the requirements of "local color" were found in the free solution of mise-en-scenes, in the clash of opposites, in showing the realities of life.
Figures of romantic literature and romantic drama are irreconcilable opponents of classicism. The latter's connection with the ideology of the legitimate monarchy, his alienation from democratic tastes, his routine and inertia, which hindered the free development of new trends in art, explain the temperament and social passion that were inherent in the struggle of romantics against the classics (Stendhal's work "Racine and Shakespeare", preface Hugo to the drama "Cromwell").
Romanticism was not only an artistic movement, it expressed a special worldview that opposed the rationalism of the 18th century, special moods generated by the turbulent events of the post-revolutionary era. Romanticism evolved along with the era, and this evolution was complex and contradictory, because that was the reality itself. In an atmosphere of political repression, art was often the only refuge, only in art could they find the embodiment of the idea of protest against cruel reality. This is how the rebellious works of Hugo, heroic symphonies and cantatas of Berlioz were born, the art of Gericault, Delacroix and Rude is full of courageous drama. A special place in the musical culture of the day is occupied by the work of Beethoven, imbued with the idea of a tragic confrontation between the rebellious human spirit and forces hostile to it. The creativity of these masters, as well as their life, is an eternal battle with the forces of reaction. their art embodied the angry protest of a generation that was oshukane in their hopes. Hence the spirit of rebelliousness, active confrontation, which united time very different phenomena artistic life. This fiery call for freedom and justice, a call for effective humanism resulted in a powerful spiritual movement that most clearly manifested itself in the forms of romantic art.
Romanticism in painting was distinguished by the dynamism of composition, the rapid movements of images, bright colors, the contrast of light and shadow, and exotic subjects. Traits works of art the era of classicism - greatness, careful drawing of details, static figures - are a thing of the past. Artistic romantic works of the first half of the 19th century. depicted in portraits characteristic features, confusion of feelings, drama and tragedy of the image. In romanticism at that time there was no definite system of principles, it was more of a sensation, an emotional work.
The heroes of romanticism were outstanding and special. they were distinguished by lyricism, loneliness, the ability to sacrifice, to rebellion. The real circumstances of people's lives were of little interest to the romantics. The bright, extraordinary characters of their heroes were revealed against the background of the elements of nature, social upheavals, and ancient events of history. The romantic hero was lonely. Such are Gyaur, Corsair, Cain, Manfred with George Gordon Byron (heroes of Oriental Poems and Manfred), Konrad Wallenrod in Adam Mitskevich, Ruy Blaz with Victor Hugo, ernst's wandering musicians. People of stormy titanic passions, rebels - these are the heroes of Percy Bysshe Shelley, the second Byron ("The Rise of Islam", "Prometheus Freed").
The romantics sought to create the unattainable in art - an ideal and perfect world of human relationships. Therefore, romantic works have two dimensions - the idea of the highest human virtues and the rejection of the distorted real life (D. G. Byron, "The Adventures of Charles Harold"). Nature was an eternal value in the work of romantics, its element fascinated, coincided with human passions, but always remained free and unrepentant (G. Lermontov, "The Demon", "Dumas"). With the beauty of art, they wanted to save the world. It was a time of triumph in poetry.
In the 30-40s. significant changes have taken place in romanticism. There was a literary movement in which the active principle came to the fore. The new generation of romantics was distinguished by an optimistic outlook on the future, sympathy for the oppressed, and an active upholding of the ideals of truth and justice. On the eve of the “spring of nations” and the revolutions of 1848, political motives in art became dominant. Artists in countries that fought for national liberation often turned into National symbols(composers F. Chopin F. Liszt, D. Verdi, poets A. Mitskevich, S. Petofi). The dramas and novels of Hugo and Georges Sand seem to provide for the imminent revival of humanity as a result of the revolution of the peoples of Europe.
In general, romanticism contributed to a deeper and more multifaceted - artistic and philosophical - knowledge of the world and man with their inherent contradictions. Romantics have enriched the culture of the New Age with significant spiritual values and paved the way for its development.