Question: What was the originality of the "Karamzin era" in Russian literature at the end of the 18th century? What was the main conquest of sentimentalism as a literary movement? The essay “The Age of Karamzin was the Golden Age of Russian fable.

Question: What was the originality of the "Karamzin era" in Russian literature at the end of the 18th century? What was the main conquest of sentimentalism as a literary movement? The essay “The Age of Karamzin was the Golden Age of Russian fable.
06.06.2019

The Lafontaine style in Russia was introduced by Sumarokov and then Russified by Chemnitser. But at the end of the 18th century and in the early years of the 19th century, everyone was literally obsessed with composing fables. Anyone who knew how to rhyme two lines began to write fables. Even Zhukovsky, completely alien to the spirit of La Fontaine, in 1805-1807. wrote many fables.

In Russian literary development the fable is playing important role: she was the school where he received his first lessons in that realism, which became the main feature of Russian literature in later times. Healthy, sober realism already distinguishes Chemnitzer's fables. In Dmitriev's fables created for the living room, he was softened, ennobled, adjusted to conventions. He regained his strength in the rude, but juicy rogue fables of Alexander Izmailov (1779-1831) and in the works of the greatest Russian fabulist - Krylov.

Ivan Andreevich Krylov was born in 1768. He was the son of a poor army officer who had served from the rank and file. Krylov did not receive a systematic education and, as a boy, entered the civil service as an official (in a very small rank). At the age of sixteen, he found a place in St. Petersburg and then began his literary career: he wrote a comic opera. Then Krylov took up satirical journalism, published the magazine Spectator (1792) and St. Petersburg Mercury (1793). Among the plethora of sentimental material of low quality, these journals have printed several poignant satirical articles written in a manner quite different from the skeptical sanity of fables. The satire here is Swift - sharp, angry, coldly passionate. The best of them - the speech of commendation in memory of my grandfather (1792) - a stunning caricature of a rude, selfish, wild landowner-hunter who, like Fonvizin Skotinin, loves his dogs and horses more than serfs. Mercury did not last long and was closed due to the dangerously harsh tone of Krylov's satire. For twelve years, Krylov virtually disappeared from literature. For part of this time, he lived in the houses of various nobles, either as a secretary, or as a home teacher, or simply as a habit, but for a long time he generally disappears from the field of view of biographers. V new school life Krylov, apparently, lost his youthful fury and gained the passive and condescending ironic insight characteristic of his fables. In 1805 Krylov returned to literature. He made his first translation from La Fontaine and made a new attempt to conquer the stage: during the first war with Napoleon, he wrote two comedies ridiculing the French customs of Russian ladies. The comedies were a success, but Krylov did not continue, because he found his real vocation - fables. In 1809, a book was published in which twenty-three of his fables were printed; the book had an unprecedented success in the history of literature. After that, Krylov wrote only fables. In 1810 he received a quiet and comfortable place (in fact, a sinecure) in the St. Petersburg Public Library, where he remained for more than thirty years. Krylov died in 1844. He was famous for his laziness, slovenliness, good appetite, insight and crafty mind. His overweight figure was an indispensable feature of the St. Petersburg drawing rooms, where he sat for whole evenings without opening his mouth, half-closing his small eyes or staring into emptiness. But more often than not he dozed in an armchair, expressing with all his appearance boredom and complete indifference to everything that surrounded him.

Krylov's Fables consist of nine books. Most of them were written between 1810 and 1820: after that, the fabulist's productivity began to dry out and he wrote only occasionally. From the very beginning his fables received universal unanimous recognition; after the first few years they were no longer criticized. They were equally admired by the most cultured critics and the most illiterate ignoramuses. Throughout the 19th century, Krylov's Fables were the most popular book; the number of copies sold can no longer be counted, but it certainly exceeded a million.

Krylov's immense popularity was due to both his material and his artistic manner. The views of Krylov the fabulist represented the views that are probably the most typical of the Great Russian of the lower or middle class. These views are based on common sense. The virtue, which he esteems above all else, is skill and dexterity. The vices that he most readily ridicules are smug mediocrity and arrogant stupidity. As a typical middle-class philosopher, as he was, Krylov does not believe in big words or in lofty ideals. He did not sympathize with intellectual ambition, and in his philosophy of life there is a lot of philistine inertia and laziness. She is extremely conservative; Krylov's most poisonous arrows were aimed at newfangled progressive ideas. But his common sense could not put up with the absurdities and mediocrity of the upper classes and those in power. His satire is smiling. His weapon is mockery, not indignation, but it is a sharp and powerful weapon that can hurt its victim.

  1. New!

    "Melancholy. (Imitation of Delisle) "(1800) - became programmatic for sentimentalists. It describes the state of mind in which a person can find refuge from troubles and worries caused by the contradictions of the surrounding life. This is melancholy, a special spiritual ...

  2. New!

    In 1791, after the publication of the revolutionary book by A.N. Radishchev, a description of the journey of another author began to be published, which played a very important, but completely different role in the development of Russian literature. These were "Letters from a Russian Traveler" ...

  3. New!

    Russian history sentimental prose XVIII century significantly different from the history of prose genres of the XIX century, In the XIX century. first novels appear, and on their basis a novel is formed. Karamzin made a real revolution in the field of sentimental prose ...

  4. New!

    Mine creative way NM Karamzin began as a translator, and the very selection of foreign works for translation already testifies to his tastes and emerging aesthetic principles. So, in Gesner's idyll "Wooden Leg", translated by Karamzin ...

Nikolay Karamzin "Poor Liza"

Sentimentalism penetrated into Russia in the 1780s - early 1790s thanks to the translations of the novels by Werther I.V. Goethe, Pamela, Clarissa and Grandison S. Richardson, New Eloise J.-J. Rousseau, Paul and Virginie J.-A.Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. The era of Russian sentimentalism was opened by Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin "Letters of a Russian Traveler" (1791-1792).

His story Poor Liza (1792) is a masterpiece of Russian sentimental prose; from Goethe's Werther, he inherited a general atmosphere of sensitivity and melancholy and the theme of suicide.

The works of N.M. Karamzin gave rise to a huge number of imitations; at the beginning of the 19th century. appeared "Poor Masha" by A.E. Izmailov (1801), "Journey to Midday Russia" (1802), "Henrietta, or the Triumph of Deception over Weakness or Delusion" by I. Svechinsky (1802), numerous stories by G.P. Kamenev ( "The story of poor Marya"; "Unhappy Margarita"; "Beautiful Tatiana"), etc.

Ivan Ivanovich Dmitriev belonged to Karamzin's group, which advocated the creation of a new poetic language and fought against the archaic pompous syllable and outdated genres.

The early work of Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky is marked by sentimentalism. The publication in 1802 of the translation of the Elegy, written in the rural cemetery of E. Gray, became a phenomenon in the artistic life of Russia, for he translated the poem "into the language of sentimentalism in general, translated the elegy genre, and not an individual work of an English poet, which has its own special individual style" (E. G. Etkind). In 1809 Zhukovsky wrote the sentimental story "Maryina Roshcha" in the spirit of N.M. Karamzin.

Russian sentimentalism had exhausted itself by 1820.

It was one of the stages of European literary development, which ended the era of the Enlightenment and opened the way to romanticism.

[Edit] Key features of the literature of sentimentalism

So, taking into account all of the above, we can single out several main features of Russian literature of sentimentalism: a departure from the straightforwardness of classicism, an emphasized subjectivity of approach to the world, a cult of feelings, a cult of nature, a cult of innate moral purity, integrity, a rich spiritual world of representatives of the lower classes is affirmed. Attention is paid to the spiritual world of a person, and feelings come first, not great ideas.

In 1791, after the publication of the revolutionary book by A.N. Radishchev, a description of the journey of another author began to be published, which played a very important, but completely different role in the development of Russian literature. These were "Letters from a Russian Traveler" by the young writer Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin. Karamzin, although he was much younger than Radishchev, belonged to the same era of Russian life and literature. Both were deeply moved by the same events of our time. Both were innovative writers. Both strove to reduce literature from the abstract mythological heights of classicism, to depict real Russian life. However, in terms of their worldview, they sharply differed from each other, the assessment of reality was dissimilar, and in many respects the opposite, therefore, all their work is so different. The son of a poor Siberian landowner, a pupil of foreign boarding houses, for a short time an officer of the capital regiment, Karamzin found his true calling only after retiring and becoming close to the founder of the "Typographic Company" NI Novikov and his circle. Under the leadership of Novikov, he participates in the creation of the first children's magazine in our country " Children's reading for the heart and mind ”. In 1789, Karamzin travels across countries Western Europe... The trip served as material for him for "Letters of a Russian Traveler." In Russian literature, there has not yet been a book that so vividly and meaningfully told about life and customs. European nations, about Western culture. Karamzin describes his acquaintances and meetings with prominent figures of European science and literature; enthusiastically talks about visiting the treasures of world art. The sentiments of a “sensitive traveler” encountered in Letters of a Russian Traveler were a kind of revelation for Russian readers. Karamzin considered a special sensitivity of the heart, “sensitivity” (sentimentality) to be the main quality necessary for a writer. In the concluding words of Letters ... he seemed to outline the program of his subsequent literary activity. Karamzin's sensitivity, frightened by the French Revolution, which he perceived as a harbinger of a "worldwide rebellion", ultimately led him away from Russian reality into the world of the imagination. Returning to his homeland, Karamzin began to study the "Moscow Journal". In addition to the Letters of a Russian Traveler, it published his stories from Russian life - Poor Li for ”(1792),“ Natalia, the Boyar's Daughter ”and the essay“ Flor Silin ”. These works most forcefully expressed the main features of the sentimental Karamzin and his school. The work of Karamzin was very important for the development of the literary language, spoken language, book speech. He strove to create one language for books and for society. He freed the literary language from Slavism, created and introduced big number new words such as “future”, “industry”, “community”, “love”. At the beginning of the 19th century, when literary youth fought for the language reform of Karamzin - Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, Pushkin-lyceum student, he himself more and more moved away from fiction. In 1803, in his own words, Karamzin "was tonsured a historian." He devoted the last twenty-odd years of his life to a grandiose work - the creation of the “History of the Russian State”. Death found him working on the twelfth volume of "History ...", which tells about the era of "Time of Troubles."

History of Russian aesthetic thought in the 18th century. little researched. Meanwhile, there were no major writers who did not think about the relation of art to reality, about the criterion of beauty, about the object and, about their cognitive meaning and educational function, about the place of the writer in the life of society, about imitation of "models" and ways of creating national - original art, about the method of depicting a person, about questions of theory, and sometimes music and visual arts.

These problems were posed in different ways. The government intervened in the solution of the main issues. To block the path of reflection in the literature of the real conflicts of autocratic-serf Russia, to make writers the servants of the autocracy and, most importantly, the reigning autocrats - these are the narrow, but definite tasks of semi-official "aesthetics". Fiercely fighting against the principles of truth and truth, preaching either nationalism or cosmopolitanism, she tried to close the road to realism, but willingly used the techniques and genres of classicism and sentimentalism, the external forms of Shakespeare's drama, relied on the folk art she mutilated.

It is impossible not to take into account the inhibiting influence of this "aesthetics", which was introduced through the press, theater, monetary incentives, censorship and Sheshkovsky's casemates. But she did not manage to subdue to the end not one major artist, for there is no art without truthfully cognized reality and humanism. The reaction was directly opposed by the aesthetic views and creativity of representatives of the Russian Enlightenment, and even more so the first Russian writer-revolutionary A.N. Radishchev, the founder of Russian materialist and realistic aesthetics. The position of such prominent writers as A.P. Sumarokov, G.R.Derzhavin and N.M. Karamzin, whose work is increasingly attracting the attention of researchers, is more complex and contradictory.

Questions of artistic creativity, ways and methods of cognition of reality were especially acute by the time of Karamzin's speech due to the complexity of the literary process of the transitional era, which was the 70s-90s years XVIII v. Sentimentalism, classicism, nascent realism not only lived at the same time, but also often coexisted in the work of one writer, and sometimes within one work. MM Kheraskov is the creator of Rossiada and tearful dramas. The author of Vadim Novgorodsky paid tribute to sentimentalism in lyrics and comic opera.

The realistic picture of Russian life in The Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow is conveyed through the perception of a “sensitive traveler”. In the statements of I. A. Krylov, the principles of realism are formed, he destructively ridicules the classical tragedy - and censures Karamzin for deviating from the "rules" of classicism. All efforts to clearly define Derzhavin as a representative of classicism, realism, and loreromantism inevitably fail, for some convincing arguments are opposed by others, no less convincing. Karamzin immediately took a very definite position.

Summing up almost twenty years of searches of his predecessors (primarily M. H. Muravyov and Kheraskov the playwright), he acts as a canonizer of Russian sentimentalism, talks a lot and willingly about art, arguing openly “whether it is hidden with his contemporaries. The purpose of this article is to understand the essence, evolution, and meaning of the basic principles of the aesthetic views of this great and controversial writer.

Karamzin stressed his independence from political parties. “An evil royalist is no better than an evil Jacobin. There is only one good party in the world: friends of humanity and kindness... They are in politics what eclectics are in philosophy, ”he wrote already in 1803. 1 The writer himself wanted to be“ a friend of humanity and goodness ”all his life. He recognized the depth of the feelings of the peasant girl, tried to understand as best he could not only the truth of John III, but also the Novgorodians fighting for freedom. After the arrest of Novikov, he appealed to the mercy of Catherine IÎ, under Paul he was indignant at the ridiculous censorship restrictions, under Alexander he did not come to bow to Arakcheev. He proudly spoke about his heated disputes with the emperor over military settlements, taxes, "the ministry of education or eclipse", financial policy, laws in papers united by an expressive title: "For posterity".

He spoke bitter truths in the "Note on the Ancient and new Russia", Denounced tyranny, taught the kings, threatened them court of offspring in the "History of the Russian State"... But both an insightful mind, and honesty, and personal courage, "loyalty to the ideals of" humanity and good "were placed at the service of strengthening the prevailing public relations with the same certainty with which Radishchev strove to destroy them.

The evolution of Karamzin's worldview was correctly noted in the literature, but one should not exaggerate the free thinking of either the translator of Julius Caesar or the denouncer of the tyranny of Ivan the Terrible. The change in the views of the writer, associated with the stages of the French Revolution and the maturation of the liberation movement in Russia, goes along the line of increasing offensiveness, more open support of class interests.

The ideas of the Enlightenment touched on Karamzin. He uses formulas and terms: “Man was born for community life”, “Man was born for activity”, “freedom”, “tyranny”. But the worldview is determined not by formulas, but by the content that is embedded in them, and the attitude of a person to the main issues of the era. The main one for the second half of the 18th century. there was the issue of serfdom. Karamzin did not hesitate in his decision.

If people were equal, then everyone “would suffer hunger, want and would not love one another,” this was written when Karamzin was translating Julius Caesar. "Poverty is, on the one hand, the misfortune of civil societies, and on the other, it is the cause of good: it makes people be useful ... the poor are ready to serve in all ranks in order to only avoid severe poverty," Karamzin argues "dialectically" later. "Poverty, fields, very poorly cultivated, empty granaries, rotting huts" are not the result of slavery, but, on the contrary, of the will of the peasants, for they are "naturally lazy," teaches "A Letter from a Rural Resident," Karamzin's most outspoken apology for serfdom. Only in "Conversation about Happiness" does the recognition of the humiliated position of the peasants break through, but its acuteness is softened by the argument that each class has its own advantages. The idea of ​​equality is a chimera. This is what Karamzin thinks at the beginning of his career and at the end of it. His attitude to the "invaluable gift" - freedom is different. The content of reasoning about freedom changes, but the idea remains unchanged: freedom, like happiness, depends on the person himself, that is, it is only an ethical concept, not a political one. The final statement of Karamzin about equality and freedom is “Thoughts about true freedom”: “The foundation of civil societies is invariable: you can put the bottom at the top, but there will always be bottom and top, will and bondage, wealth and poverty, pleasure and suffering. There is no good for a moral being without freedom, but this freedom is not given by the sovereign, not by the parliament, but by each of us to himself with the help of God.

We must win freedom in our hearts by peace of conscience and trust to providence. " Just as Karamzin is invariably convinced of the inevitability of social inequality, so he carries throughout his life faith in the general progress of mankind. The events of the French Revolution are not destroying it either. True to the point of view that in any evil one must look for good, he already in 1794 tried to calm those to whom the revolution seemed like a flurry that threatened to destroy humanity.

Through the mouth of the wise Filalet, Karamzin suggests remembering that nothing happens without the will of God. The mistake of the people of the 18th century. consisted in the fact that they overestimated the capabilities of the human mind, and the revolution showed what "terrible delusions" it is still subject to. But humanity is on the way to progress and one should expect that "reason, leaving all chimerical enterprises, will turn to the arrangement of the peaceful good of life, and the present evil will serve the good of the future." This unequivocal expectation of counter-revolution in the days of Thermidor gains more confidence after the approval of the constitution of the third year of the Republic in 1795.

In 1797, acquainting readers of a French émigré magazine with Russian literature and Letters of a Russian Traveler, Karamzin writes: “The French Revolution is one of those events that determine the fate of mankind for a long series of centuries. A new era begins. I see it, but Rousseau foresaw it. " At that moment, Karamzin still does not define what exactly this new consists of. He deciphers his thought after Napoleon came to power in 1802 in the article "Pleasant Views, Hopes and Desires of the Present Time." From the middle of the 18th century. "Extraordinary minds longed for great change." Astute observers anticipated the storm: "Rousseau and others predicted it." Thunder struck in France and freed from delusion. The revolution proved that "the civil order is sacred" for all its shortcomings, that "its power is not tyranny for the peoples, but protection from tyranny." The revolution refuted "bold theories" and proved "that at one time and the good will of legitimate governments can correct the imperfections of civil societies ... That is, the French Revolution, which threatened to overthrow all governments, approved them." In this "explanation of ideas" Karamzin sees historical meaning French Revolution.

Remembering the revolution that threatened to crush "all governments", Karamzin understands that "it is impossible to live like an old man." He considers the spread of education to be the main step on the road to progress. All classes must be taught. Serfs should be given basic general knowledge, and most importantly - familiarized with the basics "Moral catechism" that would show them their responsibilities towards their masters.

Repeatedly interpreting the historical merits of the Russian nobility, Karamzin bitterly speaks of his inattention to national culture, selfishness, and ignorance. He invites the nobles to build rural schools, to take on the payment of poor students in the cities, and happily greets the first noble professor, G.N. Glinka. The desire to communicate knowledge, to broaden the reader's horizons determine the difference between Letters of a Russian Traveler and Stern's Sentimental Journey. The idea of ​​the need to develop domestic culture guides the activities of Karamzin — a writer, publisher, historian, and allows Pushkin to dedicate Boris Godunov to “the memory of Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin, precious for Russians,” and to Belinsky about Karamzin's beneficial influence on Russian literature.

At the same time, the recognition of enlightenment as the "Palladium of good manners", "an antidote for all the disasters of mankind" allowed Karamzin to turn a blind eye to the real causes of human suffering are social contradictions... It seems to him that it is enough to enlighten the Russian peasants and their "stinking and unkempt" huts will turn into cozy huts, it is enough for the nobles to absorb the appropriate dose of morality and "abuses of master's power" will disappear, enlightened officials will turn into guardians of justice, for "not so much an evil intention as gross ignorance is the cause of injustice ”(8, 353).

Karamzin's political views determine the nature of his philosophical, ethical and aesthetic views. The Rosicrucian disciple, having left Masonic mysticism, from all kinds of "Egyptian teachings", remained forever faithful to idealism. A. M. Kutuzov called all materialists scoundrels. Karamzin calls Lametrie insane, disparages the philosophy of Helvetius, condemns Spinoza, Hobbes, Holbach. Philosophy, according to the writer, should strengthen faith in God and refuse to resolve all issues: "The Creator did not want to remove the veils from his affairs for man, and our guesses will never have the power of assurance." And therefore Karamzin condemns the materialistic philosophy of the 18th century. for her belief in the power of all-conquering reason in the 90s, ridicules the controversy about the truth in the era of Decembrism.

The task of philosophy is not a search for truth, but consolation. The essence of consolation is unwise. You need to know that nothing is done on earth without the will of providence, but a person's task is to avoid evil and do good... Literature and art face similar tasks. They are designed to comfort a person in sorrows, to multiply joys in days of happiness, to ennoble the soul, to teach to love goodness and beauty. Based on this point of view, Karamzin pays considerable attention to the "graceful sciences". According to Baumgarten and Platner, he defines the concept of "aesthetics" as "the science of taste", which, "leaving to logic the formation of the higher abilities of our soul, that is, reason and reason, is engaged in the correction of feelings and everything sensual, that is, imagination with its actions. ...

In a word, aesthetics teaches us to enjoy the graceful. " Separating sensory cognition from intellectual, imagination from reason, Karamzin, together with his teachers, takes a step back in comparison with Lomonosov, who back in the 40s tried to put an end to the imaginary conflict between reason and imagination, logical and sensory cognition. In the story "Flower on the coffin of my Agathon" aesthetic sense is defined as a true and subtle taste, able to distinguish "mediocre from graceful, graceful from excellent, learned from natural, false gifts from true."

Karamzin's idealism is especially evident in his attitude to music and the question of the origin of poetry. Aesthetic perception musical harmony- evidence of the immortality of the soul, capable of rising to a pure holy emotional pleasure (4, 208-209). The voice is the "immediate organ human soul". “What is it like for a materialist to listen to human chanting? He needs to be deaf or overly stubborn, ”the writer triumphs. There is some evolution in Karamzin's solution to the question of the origin of poetry. In the poem "Poetry" in 1787, he proceeds from the biblical interpretation of the universe. The man, created by God, felt the beauty of the world, realized the greatness of the creator and glorified him. After the fall of the first people, poetry merged with prayer. Centuries passed, people fell into delusions, glorified soulless substance - matter, but the voice praising the creator of the world did not stop:

In all, in all countries Poetry is holy
The mentor of people, their happiness was ...

The most important idea of ​​the poem is the idea of ​​the direct suggestion by God of poetic inspiration, a gift left to the chosen ones, so that a person immersed in sins does not forget about his divine origin. In moments of inspiration, the poet approaches God, and his voice teaches good, truth, raises souls, helps to rise above worldly interests.

This theory arose on the basis of Karamzin's closeness to the Freemasons, and by its nature brings him closer to the romantics of the beginning of the 10th century. In the works of the second half of the 90s (the poem "Talent", article "Something about the sciences, arts and education") Karamzin seeks a more rationalistic explanation of the origin of poetry and art. But even now, paying tribute to sensationalism, he opposes materialistic philosophy. It seems to him humiliating the point of view of Helvetius and Radishchev that "the guide to reason" were the hands of man, and "the first teacher in inventions was a shortage."

No, argues Karamzin, even in remote times people thought not only about physical needs. Even then, they admired the sun, the moon, the murmur of a stream, flowers. All this was the source of sensory concepts, which “are nothing more than a direct reflection of objects” (7, 30). These initially disordered sensory perceptions awaken the dormant mind. A person learns to compare phenomena, objects, and by comparing, he learns them. The accumulated knowledge is a prerequisite for the formation of a language, the emergence of which requires "the refined actions of Nature." Starting with cognition of the environment, a person turns from “feelings to a sender and, not being Descartes, says:“ Sogito egro sum ”-“ I think, consequently I exist: what am I? ””. Man's cognition of nature and himself leads to “feeling the eternal creative Reason,” the source of life. The "sense of the graceful" has led humanity to progress. Primitive people, like animals, killed their neighbors “for a piece of dried up fruit,” they did not know love. The birth of the arts was the birth of humanity.

The arts in the world shone:
Man was born again!

Arts, according to Karamzin, influenced enlightenment, morality, taught how to pray, love, elevated the wisest to the throne. The question of which genre was created earlier than others is being solved in a new way. In Poetry it was said that first of all spiritual poetry was born. Later, a hypothesis was put forward that elegiac poetry was the first, as “the outpouring of a languid, sorrowful heart,. ... All the funny poems occurred in later times, when a person began to describe not only his own, but also other people's feelings, not only the present, but also the past, not only real, but also possible or probable. "

Thus, unlike Radishchev, who saw the basis of art in "participation" - the ability of a person to sympathize with the suffering and joy of other people and linked the emergence of art with the social character of a person, Karamzin considers the personal experiences of the individual to be the beginning of poetry. The assertion of the subjective essence of art, the recognition of the poetry of sorrow as the primary source, which in itself “is already, so to speak, poetry,” the poetry of the beauty of intellectual suffering predict the pathos of Zhukovsky's poetry.

What is the essence of art?"Imitation of nature," Karamzin repeats, unchanged for the 18th century. formula. The fused branches were the basis of architecture, the singing birds taught music, "the turtledove, lamenting the branches about its dead friend, was the mentor of the first elegiac poet." The purpose of art is to sprinkle flowers on a person's life path, to be a source of pleasure. A person receives pleasure by contemplating beauty. And therefore, the most important task of art is to develop in a person the ability to "feel the beauty of the physical and moral world." Thus, in his theoretical reasoning, Karamzin does not reduce the beautiful to a subjective category, does not deny the cognitive significance of art.

Recognizing the most high art literature, the writer does not skimp on epithets. "Holy poetry" - "mentor of people", "messenger of heaven, which carries useful ideas from country to country, unites minds and hearts", etc. Highly appreciating literature, Karamzin makes high demands on writers. In addition to talent, education, vivid imagination, a writer must have a kind heart, a wonderful soul, because no matter what he writes, he will still write "Portrait of his soul and heart"... The lie will break through the insincere loud exclamations of the author and "never will the ethereal flame pour from his creations into the gentle soul of the reader." What is needed for the "ethereal flame" to unite souls, that is, for the work to have the power of emotional impact? “But if all the sorrowful, all the oppressed, all the tears open the way to your sensitive chest; if your soul can rise to a passion for good, can nourish in itself the sacred, unlimited desire for the common good, then boldly invoke the goddesses of Parnassus. ... ... you will not be a useless writer - and none of the good will look with dry eyes at your grave. "

Respond to grief, sympathize with the oppressed, wish for the common good- these tasks were set before the writers and Radishchev. But if for Radishchev the incompatibility of the common good with the exploitation of man by man was a mathematical truth, then Karamzin considered inequality an inevitable condition for the existence of society. Radishchev saw the task of the writer in the struggle to destroy the real source of the suffering of millions, Karamzin in consolation and reconciliation.

And therefore one opens his eyes to people, showing terrible life autocratic-feudal Russia, the other reduces the object of art to the image of the beautiful. Art "should be engaged in one graceful, depict beauty, harmony, and spread pleasant impressions in the sensitive area." The position expressed in this article casually, somewhat varying, is repeated in other works and is fundamental for Karamzin's aesthetics. It directly repeats the aesthetic principles of M. H. Muravyov, who stated that the main task of art is to reveal "the beauty diffused in the creations of nature and human deeds," and literature "puts perfection of moral or mental beauty (la beau idéal) into its subject matter."

"Beauty ... is the only object of art," proclaimed the publishers of the magazine "Reading for Taste, Reason and Feelings."

Karamzin's voice was woven into the general chorus, but was heard louder than the others. The recognition that only the beautiful should be an object of art is the axis, the cornerstone on which the aesthetics of the 90s is based. Behind the ghostly shadow of beauty hid everyone who was afraid of life, who witnessed the peasant unrest of the 90s, the Jacobin terror in France, the growing oppression of absolutism in the last years of the reign of Catherine II and Paul I.

The struggle for the right to reflect only the beautiful in art led away from the contradictions of reality called "dirt", "impurity", opposed realistic tendencies and the idea of ​​direct civil service of literature and art. But Karamzin demanded that writers serve the common good. How can these requirements be reconciled? There is no contradiction in them, because beauty for Karamzin, like Muravyov, is in itself good and good: it opposes greed, cruelty, softens souls and hearts. A person with a developed aesthetic sense will not be seduced by wealth, he will not be blinded by vanity, he will not cause suffering to another. When Muravyov, and after him Karamzin, equate beauty and goodness, they repeat one of the basic tenets of the Enlightenment aesthetics, most clearly formulated by the English enlighteners - Shaftesbury and Hutchinson.

With Diderot, the same idea grew into a program for the revolutionary-democratic education of the masses. Radishchev also recognizes the active educational power of beauty. The discrepancy between him and Karamzin follows a different line, reflects the contradictions not only of Russian life and is not only a national dispute. Karamzin and Radishchev were brought up by one country and one era. They had to give answers to the questions posed by the time, the time of the beginning of the disintegration of the feudal-serf system in Russia, the time of the French Revolution, the first, according to Engels, uprising of the bourgeoisie, “which completely threw off its religious clothes and in which the struggle was carried out on openly on political grounds. " The question of the relation of art to politics was the main aesthetic question, no matter how confusing forms it took. His decision determined the essence of all other categories.

Radishchev took a clear position with his contempt for "creeping art", with his conviction that literature should educate "social virtues" that lead a person to the camp of fighters against autocracy and serfdom. We meet, perhaps, only one contemporary of Radishchev, the great artist of revolutionary France David, with such clear formulations. The goal of art is "to promote and pass on to posterity striking examples of the lofty efforts of a huge people, led by reason and philosophy, to restore the kingdom of freedom, equality and laws on earth," David said in 1793 in a report commissioned by the Jacobin Committee for Public Education. David's report is the most vivid expression of the aesthetic principles of the heroic period of the bourgeois revolution. Fear of revolutionary battles led to the spread in Europe of the "German theory of the French Revolution" - the philosophy of Kant and his aesthetic views: the doctrine of the isolation of a pure sense of beauty, disinterest in aesthetic experiences, subjectivity of aesthetic categories, independence of form and content, etc.

In a renewed form, Kantian aesthetics was developed by Schiller, who in the same 1793 began writing Letters on Aesthetic Education. Schiller admits that the most pressing issue of the time is the question of political freedom, but the path to it, in his opinion, goes through aesthetic education. Only it can save humanity both from the corruption of the aristocracy and from the "gross and lawless aspirations" of the masses and lead humanity into the realm of "aesthetic appearance", where "the ideal of equality is realized, which the dreamer would so willingly see realized in reality."

In 1795, in the foreword to the magazine "Ora", Schiller formulated the tasks facing art. At that time, he says, “when the struggle of political opinions and interests provokes war in almost all corners of the homeland and expels muses and graces from them, when it is impossible to get rid of the demon of criticism of the state that persecutes everyone in conversations or in topical writings, when limited interest modernity excites minds, narrows and enslaves them - the need, with the help of a more general and higher interest in the pure and human, standing above the mortal interests of the day, is becoming more and more urgent to free minds and unite the politically divided world under the banner of truth and beauty. ”15 the desire to put art above politics, to replace the topical content with "universal", to oppose it to the "demon of state criticism" lurked the horror of the events in France in 1792-1793, and hostility to the spirit of mercantilism and money-grubbing that capitalism carried with it, and the desire to flee from the stagnation of economically and politically backward Germany.

Karamzin does not have the sharp criticism of capitalist society inherent in Letters on Aesthetic Education, although he also sees the contradictions of the bourgeois West. Unlike Schiller, he does not dream of bourgeois democratic transformations, and his sympathy for the republic always remains purely platonic. But he is close to the idea of ​​uniting the politically divided world, the desire to get rid of the "demon of state criticism" and to separate art from politics, the idea of ​​education through familiarizing with the good and beauty of a person who is devoid of selfish interests, harmoniously developed, spiritually free. Therefore, he accepts Schiller's declaration with deep satisfaction and informs a wide circle of readers about the publication in Germany of a magazine “whose purpose is to raise the feeling of goodness and beauty in the hearts of people. Not a word about politics, not a word about scholastic metaphysics! " During this period, if Karamzin does not believe, then at least he hopes that enlightenment, an integral part of which is the upbringing of a sense of goodness and beauty, will defeat the dark forces and, “maybe the golden age of poets, the age of good deeds, will come - and where they rise now bloody scaffolds, virtue will sit there on a bright throne "

The mention of the bloody scaffolds in the 90s clarifies all the euphemisms and reveals the political background of the theory of the principled apoliticality of art.

Since in the XVIII century. All Russian writers, without exception, considered the essence of art to be "imitation of nature", then the criterion of beauty is often determined by the idea of ​​the beauty of nature itself. And since the landscape is usually the background on which people act, then by the nature of the ideal landscape one can understand how the writer solves the question of how close art is to reality, about the method of depicting it. Asserting the principles of classicism, Trediakovsky contrasted nature with “a simple and almost rude species that knows no beauties other than natural ones” - “combed, dressed up, reddened prudence” of the geometrically correct outlines of a French park.

Lomonosov spoke with enthusiasm about "nature in a wonderful mixture of different trees", invited artists to depict the fields and "working farmers", taught to see the beauty of the universe. Bogdanovich made the magic gardens of the Amur look like Peterhof. Radishchev experienced aesthetic pleasure, looking at the "fat fields", "cultivated fields", "the ocean of blond grain", and grieved, remembering that "the peasant cultivated an alien field and he himself is alien, alas!"

Karamzin loves nature, does not get tired of talking about its beneficial effects on humans, creates a variety of landscape sketches... His reasoning about nature is polemical. He continues in them the struggle with the "French blush" of classicism, declaring that in the countryside "all art is disgusting", that the forest, meadows, gullies are better than French and English gardens. The transplanted tree is like a slave chained in gold chains. "No no! I will never decorate nature, ”the writer vows. "Wildness is sacred to me: it magnifies my spirit." The art, which is spoken of with such contempt in The Village, is amnestied in the article On Gardens, perhaps inspired by Delisle's poem Gardens, where it comes about gardens as "imitation of nature." “Your marble and bronze do not seduce me, proud rich men! Decorate your houses with them, if you like; but in the garden I want to see one gracefulness of nature, brought by art to the highest degree of perfection. Cover the earth with carpets of velvet greenery, sow them with flowers, equally amiable for the eyes and smell; plant woods, dark, frequent; lead their silver streams and light rivers into the thick; lure birds, nightingales and robins - and when I hear their concert - when I see the nests of turtle doves on an ancient elm tree that overshadows a mirror pond - then I will say: you have a taste; your garden is beautiful, then I will often come to you, sometimes with a book, sometimes with a friend, sometimes alone with my thoughts; I will sit on the bank of the river and forget the vanity of the world in the dreams of my imagination. "

The article is characterized by everything: and the idea of ​​the function of nature - to serve as a place for solitary reflection of the poet-dreamer; and more sincere than in "The Village", the resolution of the question of the ideal landscape: "the elegance of nature, brought by art to the highest degree of perfection"; and the continuing denial of the classic courtyard park. Even more clearly Karamzin expresses his attitude to nature in "Letters of a Russian Traveler." He does justice to the beauties of Versailles, but is much more impressed by the Trianon. “There is no cold symmetry anywhere; everywhere a pleasant disorder, sweet simplicity and rural beauty.

The waters play freely everywhere, and the flowering banks seem to be waiting for them, shepherdesses. " Here the traveler finds "nature, himself, his heart and imagination." "I have never seen anything more splendid than the Palace of Versailles with its park and nicer than Trianon with its rural beauties." “Rural beauty” and the simplicity of Trianon - this is the true aesthetic ideal of the sentimentalist writer, which ultimately turns out to be an updated version of “. not everyday nature ", which was called upon to imitate Karamzin's" mentor of taste "- Batte.

And it is no coincidence that the painted "wild" nature in the "Village" is similar to the "rural beauties" of Trianon. What Karamzin calls "natural nature" is as far from Russian nature as "a peasant resting on balsamic grass", from a serf working in corvee, like "tender Lisette preparing breakfast for her Palemon", from a real reaper, as poor Liza is from a Russian peasant woman, just like the whole “non-everyday nature” of Batte is from everyday reality. And therefore it is natural to recognize that art is higher than reality: "A copy is sometimes better than the original."

And often the charm in imitation is dearer than in nature to us: The forest, the flower in the description is even nicer to the eyes.

Asserting that the object of art is "the beauty of the physical and moral world", Karamzin was perfectly aware of the existence of phenomena that go beyond the beautiful. Therefore, he recognizes the artist's right to live a double life: “A poet has two lives, two worlds; if he is bored and unpleasant in the essential, he leaves for the land of the imagination and lives there according to his taste and heart, like a pious Mohammedan in paradise with his seven houris. " "

With this attitude to the gap between the real and the imaginary world special meaning acquire dream and fantasy. “A beautiful, eternally young, diverse, winged goddess, a blossoming Fantasy ... A beneficent goddess, a comforter of men! You remove the chains from a slave who is groaning on the African coast. ... ... you delight the sorrow of the tears shed by an orphan; you, with a single stroke of your wing, lift the last of the shepherds to the king's throne. " The apology of fantasy - a sweeter and a consoler - opposed the long-standing traditions of "righteous speeches" of the satirical trend. Moreover, Karamzin's point of view was polemical in relation to Radishchev, who demanded help from literature in the knowledge of the truth, necessary to combat the causes that give rise to the suffering of mankind. Karamzin believes that the search for truth is not part of the tasks of poetry and asserts the poet's right to a poetic whim, a different assessment of the same phenomena of life, depending on the mood: You want the poet to always think only, Always sing only one thing: an insane man! ...

The recognition of the rights of fantasy, of poetic willfulness, conditioned by the philosophical skepticism of Karamzin, makes it possible for the writer to deviate from his original positions and generate formulas that affirm the subjectivity of the “beauty of truth” and “truth of beauty”: Read poetry and believe only what you like, what is said beautifully, And that according to the need of your soul. The image of a poet-liar, a sorcerer who adorns the "poor essence", a priest of Fantasy and a minister of Beauty was created by Karamzin in the 90s. It does not exhaust Karamzin's relationship to poetry, but its significance is great. Of course, he is opposed to the poet-citizen, the judge of society, about whom Kantemir, Novikov, Fonvizin, Krylov spoke, and even more so to the Radishchev revolutionary poet. But his image is no less contrasted with the troubadours of the greatness of the Russian empress, who demanded that poets serve not to beauty, but to the monarchy, more precisely, to the reigning monarchy.

“The ode and voice of the Patriot are good in Poetry, not in Subject. Leave, my friend, writing such songs to our poetrymen. Do not humiliate the Muses and Apollo, ”wrote Karamzin to Dmitriev, unequivocally expressing his attitude to odic poetry. It is impossible not to take into account this feature of Karamzin's theory, because the rejection of flattery, the appearance of independence, the opposition of beauty to greed and servility is one of the main reasons for Karamzin's success in reading circles and hostility on the part of Catherine II.

The general attitude of Karamzin to reflect in art "the beauty of the physical and moral world" affects his private assessments of literary phenomena and general requirements imposed on writers. In the most important article for understanding the literary and theoretical views of Karamzin - the preface to the second book "Aonides" - he says: "Poetry consists not in an inflated description of the terrible scenes of Nature, but in the liveliness of thoughts and feelings.

If the poet does not write about what occupies his soul; if he is not a slave, but a tyrant of his imagination, forcing him to chase alien, distant, not peculiar to him ideas; if he describes not the things that are close to him, and by my own strength attract his imagination; if he forces himself or only imitates another (that everything is the same): then in his works there will never be that liveliness, truth or that consistency in parts that makes up the whole and without which any poem (despite many happy phrases) looks like a strange the creature described by Horace at the beginning of the epistle to the Piso. "

Undoubtedly important and fruitful was the indication that the work will not be truly artistic if it is not marked with the stamp of originality, if the author does not have his own poetic voice, his attitude to the depicted, if what he writes about is not thought out, not felt. The idea that a true poet “finds the piitistic side in the most ordinary things”, knows how to “do small things great,” justified and substantiated Derzhavin's life, opened the way to the poetry of the private life of an ordinary person. For the 18th century, the century of odic poetry, the mockery of the "bombast", the "thunder of words," deafening the reader was useful. “You also don’t need to constantly talk about tears,” warns the author of the poem “To the Nightingale,” seeing the streams flooding the pages of magazines. A talented poet is irritated by the monotonous form of expression of thought, the transfer of only the external manifestation of feeling, stereotyped. No matter how different the epithets are, the word "tears" will not excite anyone: "We must strikingly describe their reasons."

You can talk about grief as much as you like and not touch the reader with general words. We need the words “special”, which have “to do with the character and circumstances of the poet. These features, these details and this, so to speak, personality assure us of the truth of the descriptions and often deceive; but such deception is the triumph of art. "

The word “personality”, used outside the debate about satire, the posing of the question of character and circumstances as applied to poetry, is encountered in a Russian literary-theoretical article for almost the first time. The poetic autobiography created by Muravyov, the poetry of Neledinsky-Meletsky with its dominant theme of failed love, individual touches in the works of Lvov, and most importantly, all of Derzhavin's work and the publisher Aonid's own lyrics made it possible to raise the question of the need to find such words and images that could reflect the personality of the poet, his tastes, moods, character, shades of feeling that change depending on the circumstances.

In putting forward these demands, Karamzin not only entered into polemics with the theorists of classicism, but also wanted to prevent epigonism in sentimentalism itself. However, the call “to find poetry in ordinary things” is revealed in such a way that it focuses the attention of poets not on the variety of manifestations of “great in small”, but on the narrow world of chamber, necessarily “beautiful” feelings. "It is better for a young pet of muses to portray in verse the first impressions of love, friendship, gentle beauties of nature, rather than the destruction of the world, a general fire of nature, and so on."

The tiny range of thoughts and feelings outlined by Karamzin directly opposed the broad program of Radishchev, who argued that the object of poetry is "the infinity of dreams and possibilities." Calling for originality, the preface to "Aonids" left such a narrow circle that they inevitably led to cliches. That is why the sentimentalists of the 18th century are so similar to each other, that is why it was so easy for Shishkov to find vulnerabilities in the work of the Karamzinists of the 10th century. Karamzin poses somewhat broader tasks for prose. He defines the novels as "life", speaks of their significance for broadening the horizons of the reader, who can climb step by step from "Unhappy Nikanor" to "Grandison". The novels introduce a variety of human characters, talk about unknown countries, contribute to enlightenment, develop a "moral feeling": "The tears shed by readers always flow from love for good and feed it."

All of the above explains the character of the Letters of the Russian Traveler, their going beyond the boundaries of the “mirror of the soul,” the simplicity of composition, the appearance in them of pictures of the life of Europe at the end of the 18th century. does everything to captivate wide circles nobility to read. The concretization of the concepts clearly indicates what kind of enlightenment the writer wants to spread: literature should raise the soul, make it more sensitive and tender, awaken in the heart “love for order, love for harmony, for good, therefore, hatred for disorder, disagreement and vices. that upset the wonderful connection of society ”(7, 63).

Fearing "disorder", disagreements, advising young writers to devote their pen to "virtue and innocence", Karamzin naturally adheres to the line of Russian literature, which from the 30s to the end of the century denied satire. "The disposition of my soul, thank God, is completely contrary to the satirical and abusive spirit," the writer says in his article "On love for the fatherland and national pride." The same thought is repeated many times in verse:

Don't be too strict about anything;
Have mercy on the proud madmen,
Have mercy on the proud ignorant;
Expose vice without anger….

Anger and contempt are alien to the meek muse:,. ... with a hearty tear The poet with a trembling hand Removes the veil from weaknesses. Karamzin replaces the word "vice" with the words "weakness", "shortcomings". The "trembling hand" should talk about how reluctant the poet is to address this topic, how hard it is for his philanthropic heart, ready to understand everything and forgive everything, to point out someone's shortcomings. This is all façon de parler, a form of poetic expression. But the thought behind it is quite serious. Karamzin may tolerate a harmless humor, but satire is deeply alien to him. It is no coincidence that he preferred Novikov-Mason to Novikov-satirist in 1787. 25 and 30 years later he called Novikov's "best creations" and called "Vivlifika", "Children's Reading" attended by Catherine II.

It is no coincidence that Karamzin always finds flaws in satirical works. "Disgusting descriptions", he sees absurdities in "Gargantua and Pantagruel", he calls Voltaire's "Candida", "The Marriage of Figaro" as a witty and ugly novel - strange comedy, the wittiest and most disgusting work - "The Beggars' Opera" by Gaea, etc. Only Swift avoided censure, and that was probably only because the author of "Letters of a Russian Traveler" did not understand "Gulliver's Travels".

At the beginning of the X I X century. Karamzin reconsiders his positions, makes an attempt to expand the theme of art by referring to history, publishes journalistic and even satirical articles in Vestnik Evropy. The most interesting are his attacks on ... sentimentalism. So, among the "Extracts from English journals" published a review of new poem Delisle and a collection of his poems. Recognizing talent French poet, the reviewer notes repetition, monotony of thoughts, feelings, images. "La pitié s'enfuit en pleurs" is incessantly, and there is no phrase that does not include "douleurs, larmes, malheurs". Talent does not always win over the difficulty of the subject; does not always excuse his bad choice. "

The extremes of sentimentalism are mocked even more sharply in the parody (also translated) Letter to an English Journalist. It is proposed to create a ten-volume "scientific work" - "History of Tears". The first volume should contain “The origin and duration of tears. Their property was before the flood ”; in the second - “Achievements of tearfulness between the most ancient peoples. The origin of sobbing and whimpering ”; in the ninth - "The effect of tears on the deeds of nature, mystical floods"; in the tenth - "'The division of tears into genera and species, genera and species: bitter, sweet, hearty, bloody, touching and others, chemically prepared in the laboratories of new travelers and novelists. Waterfalls of tears of sensitivity ", etc.

According to the usual notions, it would seem more logical if this parody, more evil and poignant than the satirical attacks of the Shishkovists or the Journal of Russian Literature, appeared in the anti-Karamzin edition. But it, like the review of Delisle, was found, translated and published by the author of Poor Liza and Melancholy. It is impossible not to notice and ignore this.

Karamzin began his career as a translator of Zhanlis's stories, Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar and Lessing's drama Emilia Galotti.

Shakespeare, Nature's friend!
who knows the hearts of people better than yours?
Whose brush painted them with such art? - exclaims Karamzin in the poem "Poetry".

"Few of the writers penetrated so deeply into human nature as Shakespeare ... Every degree of people, every age, every passion, every character speaks in his own language," he admired in the preface to Julius Caesar, which was Karamzin's literary manifesto, with which he declared his break with classicism.

In this first in Russian literature of the 18th century. and the best article about Shakespeare, Karamzin emphasizes the all-encompassing character of Shakespeare's genius, “who embraced both the sun and the atoms with his gaze. With equal skill he portrayed both the hero and the jester, the clever and the mad, Brutus and the shoemaker. His dramas, like the immeasurable theater of Nature, are full of diversity; nevertheless, together they make up a perfect whole that does not require correction from today's theatrical writers. "

Fifty years later, the article, which is rare in its depth of understanding of Shakespeare, aroused an enthusiastic response from Belinsky, who, not knowing the author's name, admired the independence of his judgments and said that he "was far ahead of his time with his ideas about art." Karamzin's subsequent statements about Shakespeare correct the first. Still in the fight against classicism, he, like representatives of advanced German aesthetics, leaves Shakespeare as his banner and surrounds the name of the great playwright with admiring exclamations. As before, he highly appreciates "the revelations of the human heart in King Lear, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet." But the growing fear of "low ideas" makes Karamzin marvel at the tastes of English audiences, who like the conversation of the gravediggers in Hamlet, and attribute the image of "butchers, shoemakers, tailors, monsters and spirits" to the "ugliness" of Shakespeare's drama.

Apparently new estimate is the reason that Karamzin did not include either the tragedy or the preface to it in the collected works, which included the stories of Zhanlis and Marmontel. Passion for Shakespeare allowed Karamzin to outline the tasks facing the theater and to pose the problem of character in a new way. Karamzin pays tribute to Racine's "delicate and delicate taste", but notes that the drama of classicism is more designed for reading than for theater. An abundance of sentences does not atone for a lack of action.

The viewer does not believe the feat, which he learns about from the narration of an outsider, calmly looks at the hero, whom death throes do not interfere with making a magnificent speech. The character unfolds in action, the writer continues, but the monotony of the "adventure" blurs the distinction between the characters. Playwrights should be concerned with creating new but natural situations. The monologue of King Lear is cited as an example. Why does he care about the viewer? What gives his words a tremendous power of influence? ”Karamzin asks and answers:“ The state of emergency of the royal exile, a vivid picture of his disastrous fate. And who after that will ask again: "What character, what kind of soul did Lear have?"

The attention to the problem of character, outlined in the articles about Shakespeare, leaves an imprint on Karamzin's work and on his critical assessments. Any work Karamzin examines primarily from the side of an in-depth display of the character of the human person. How he understands the depth of character, what kind of content he puts into the very concept of character, becomes clear when one gets acquainted with his article on "Emilia Galotti".

Karamzin notes the individual characteristics of each of the images created by Lessing, their depth, versatility, and vital truthfulness. The reviewer's particular attention is attracted by images endowed with internal contradictions: "a weak woman, but a gentle mother", "an honest robber and a murderer", and most importantly: "a voluptuous, weak, but, moreover, a good-natured prince who can agree to a great atrocity when it contributes to his satisfaction. passion, but always worthy of our regret. " The last characteristic contains the basic principles of Karamzin's aesthetics and ethics. "A living sense of truth" obliges the artist to show a person with all the contradictions inherent in him, good and evil, fighting in his soul. Genuine philanthropy forgives "weaknesses" —that is why a weak, voluptuous prince is to be pitied. Both of these provisions formed the basis for the image of Erast, guilty of the death of poor Liza and not entirely guilty of her. The historical significance of the image of Erast, the first image in Russian literature that went beyond the boundaries of schematic positive and negative characters... A huge role for literature was played by the idea of ​​the need to depict not a diagram, but a person "what he is", with his merits, vices, variety of passions, an idea that Pushkin had to defend already in the 20s of the 10th and 10th centuries.

However, the ethics of forgiveness and the analysis of the work outside the social content contained in it lead to the fact that, having devoted seventeen pages to Emilia Galotti, the reviewer did not mention the tyrannical pathos of the play. “The main action is outrageous, but no less natural. Roman history presents us with an example of such a terrible deed. Odoardo was in the same circumstances as that Roman, had the same great spirit, proud sensitivity and pompous notion of honor, "- this is how the conflict of the tragedy is characterized. It is not the tyranny of the feudal princeling that turns out to be “outrageous”, “terrible”, but only the murder of a daughter. Analyzing Odoardo's feelings in detail, sympathizing with him, Karamzin does not hear protest in his monologues, does not see that the murder of Emilia itself is a form of protest against feudal violence, and reduces everything to a "pompous notion of honor."

The problem of character is central ‘And in other reviews of Moskovsky Zhurnal. Regarding Brandes' comedy "Count Olsbach" 33 it is noted that there are many characters in it, but in "the characters you will not find a single strong feature", attention is drawn to the fact that the stencil in the expression of feelings weakens the impression that "the behavior of the hero is in the private. the case must correspond to his character in general and cannot, for example, make him cry endlessly courageous man". It scarcely needs to be said how important such instructions were for Russian drama. Their timeliness is confirmed by the articles of Krylov and Plavilshchikov. Karamzin's opponents turned out to be his involuntary allies, also constantly proving that the basis of a dramatic work should be action, and not talk, that the character of the character should be revealed in his actions. In a review of Kheraskov's novel Cadmus and Harmony, Karamzin notes that much in it “echoes with novelty ... contrary to the spirit of those times from which the fable was taken.” Kheraskov's disciple did not dare to complete his just thought and returned to it in 1802. in the article about Sumarokov.

Recognizing the right of the creator of the Russian theater to the gratitude of posterity, Karamzin lists in detail the shortcomings of Sumarokov's drama: “In his tragedies, he tried to describe feelings rather than represent characters in their aesthetic and moral truth; did not look for emergencies and great subjects for tragic painting, but ... he always based the drama on the most ordinary and simple action ... and, calling the heroes by their names of ancient Russian princes, did not think to understand their properties, deeds and their language with the nature of the time. ”36 Karamzin judges the works of the founder of Russian classical drama from different positions than they were written, but in his words there is a lot of important and significant. Contrasting the description of feelings characteristic of classicism - characters in their "aesthetic and moral truth", interest in "states of emergency and great subjects" repeats articles about Shakespeare and Lessing.

The requirement that deeds, qualities of character and character's language correspond to the historical era, "the nature of the time" is one of the basic principles of realistic art. alive to this day. Karamzin recalls that a dramatic work lives on the stage and the actor's manner of acting depends on the play. There would be no good actors in Germany, he says, were it not for “Lesing, Goethe, Schiller and other dramatic authors who so vividly represent their man in dramas as he is, rejecting all unnecessary adornments or French blush, which cannot be pleasant to a person with natural taste ”.

Statement of a character problem, advice that playwrights reveal it not through monologues, but through actions, actions, so that they create situations that help reveal character in certain circumstances, the requirement to portray a person without unnecessary adornments, "what he is", the desire to focus on compliance the character of the era, the circumstances, the requirement of individualization of the language - all this seems to lead to the creation of realistic aesthetics. But in addition to the ethics of all-pervasiveness, on the way of Karamzin, there is an idea of ​​character as a “random form of manifestation of temperament” and the consequent conviction that character does not change from cradle to grave. The most direct artistic embodiment of these thoughts was in the story "Sensitive and Cold". And even in "Martha the Posadnitsa", written with a clear focus on Shakespeare, the appearance of character evolution is removed by the heroine's confession. Circumstances change Martha's behavior, but not her character. Passionately loving her husband in her youth, the heroine with the same strength of passion and in the name of the same love fulfills the oath given to her husband - to be "the enemy of the enemies of Novgorod freedom."

This is the "secret source" of her actions. Considered outside of development, outside the influence of the environment, the character turns out to be a unique in particular form of manifestation of the same eternal human nature, the same eternal passions that classicism spoke of. And the reduction of the diversity of characters to variations of several temperaments led to the static and monotony of the images created by the writer. Karamzin's story about the impression made on him by Kotzebue's drama "Hatred of People and Repentance" brings to mind Sumarokov's famous review of Beaumarchais. Twenty years separating the reviews have left an indelible imprint on the views of the writers, but on one issue they agree: both deny the possibility of combining the tragic and the comic.

The theorist of Russian classicism suggested that lovers of the "tearful comedy" drink tea with mustard. The leader of noble sentimentalism winced: “It's a pity that he (Kotzebue, - LK) at the same time makes the audience both cry and laugh. It is a pity that he has no taste or does not want to obey him! " Regardless of whom the reproach is directed to, it sounds strange in the mouth of a Shakespearean admirer and discovers that noble sentimentalism was not separated from classicism by an impassable chasm. There remained the threads connecting them, and, despite his militant antagonism, Karamzin in a number of issues turned out to be dependent on the "taste" and ridiculed "rules" of classicism.

The basic aesthetic principles of Karamzin are preserved in his attitude to the visual arts, although he considers painting to be a less high art than poetry, because, in his words, it speaks less "to the heart about the heart", less subtly conveys the spiritual life of a person. As always, Karamzin denies the principle of “imitation of models” and wants to see the individual traits of the human personality: “… it's a pity that he (Giulio Romano, - LK) followed antiques more than nature! We can say that his drawings are too correct, and because of that all his faces are too uniform. " And as if clarifying the idea to what extent the artist has the right to follow “nature”, Karamzin on the same page says about Veronese: “Nature was his model; however, as a great artist, he knew how to correct her shortcomings ”(2, 158). These words brilliantly convey the main position of Karamzin's aesthetics, they are the thought that determines his assessments of artists and writers, paintings and poetry, guides his own creativity and, taking various forms, is presented as advice to young writers. Despite the abundance of exclamation marks scattered on the pages dedicated to the Dresden Gallery, one can feel the writer's indifference to the masters of the Renaissance.

Michelangelo's paintings are "not so much pleasant as amazing"; Correggio's brush “is set as an example of tenderness and pleasantness”; Titian “is considered the first colorist in the world”, etc. “I looked with attention to Raphael Mary, who is holding a baby in her arms and in front of whom are kneeling St. Sixtus and Barbara ”is all he can say about Raphael's Sistine Madonna. .. Maybe Karamzin doesn't like painting at all? No. There is a work that really excites him - "Mary Magdalene" by Lebrun. For her, the writer finds a different tone, different words. “Oh, the miracle of incomparable art!

I see not cold colors and not a soulless canvas, but living, angelic beauty, in sorrow, in tears that pour from her heavenly blue eyes onto my chest; I feel their warmth, their heat, and I cry with it. She recognized the vanity of the world and the ill-fated passions! Her heart, cooled for the light, burns before the altar of the Most High. It is not the torments of hell that terrify Magdalene, but the thought that she is not worthy of the love of the one who is loved by her so zealously and ardently: the love of the heavenly father is a tender feeling, known only to beautiful souls! Forgive me, says her heart. Forgive me, - says her gaze ... Ah! not only God, perfect goodness, but also people themselves, rarely cruel, no matter what weaknesses they forgive such sincere holy repentance? .. I never thought, never imagined that a picture could be so eloquent and touching, ”exclaims the writer and admits that of all he has seen, it is this picture that is dearer and dearer.

Her one “I would like to have; would be happier with her; in a word, I love her! " (5, 13-15). At first glance, it seems strange that the enemy of "French blush" was captivated by the work of one of the most typical representatives of classicism, and not by the paintings of Chardin, Greuze, etc. But the choice of the picture also suggests that there is no impassable gap between the tastes of Karamzin and classicism, and about how stable his idea of ​​the main function of art is: to awaken the good in the human soul, to help understand and forgive. He attributes to Mary Magdalene feelings similar to those of Eilalia Meinau, and conveys them in almost the same words. The evangelical melodrama is complicated by the historical melodrama. “But will you reveal her secret charm for my heart? - asks Karamzin. - Lebrune in the form of Magdalene portrayed the gentle, beautiful Duchess of Lavaliere, who in Louis XIV loved not the king, but a man, and sacrificed everything to him: her heart, innocence, tranquility, light, "Karamzin begins the story of the" unfortunate "Lavalier, at the end of her life like the Magdalene turning to Christ. Karamzin also demands touching and melancholy from sculpture. He is not satisfied with Pigall's tombstone to Marshal Moritz of Saxony, which Fonvizin and Radishchev considered among the strongest works of art. He does not like "death in the form of a skeleton", nor contempt for death, expressed on the face of the marshal.

But another monument by the same Pigall delights Karamzin. “The angel with one hand removes the stone from the grave of d'Arcourt, with the other he holds the lamp in order to reignite the spark of life in it. The spouse, animated by wholesome warmth, wants to get up and stretches out his weak hand to his sweet wife, who throws herself into his arms. But unrelenting death stands behind d'Arcourt, points to its sand, and lets you know that the time of life has passed. The angel extinguishes the lamp ... Never did Pigallev's cutter affect my feeling so strikingly as in this touching melancholic performance. "

According to Karamzin's description, it is clear that in the first case the sculptor created a strong character, in the second - a family drama with the participation of an angel. But constantly talking about characters, the writer often turns his back on those works of art in which they go beyond strictly defined "beautiful" feelings.< В начале X I X в. Карамзин отказывается от_ декларирования общественной индифферентности искусства и подчеркивает воспитательную функцию его, причем речь идет уже не об абстрактно понимаемой красоте, а об определенном круге идей. "Not only the historian and poet, but also the painter and sculptor are organs of patriotism", - he says in the article "On cases and characters in Russian history that can be the subject of art", published in 1802 in the "Bulletin of Europe". “The closest and most amiable thing to a Russian talent is to glorify Russian things,” Karamzin repeats almost literally the words of one of his opponents of the 1990s, PA Plavil'shchikov. The article is of a programmatic nature. Just as Lomonosov did in 1764, 37 Karamzin outlines the subjects for the paintings and gives direct instructions to the artists. Since both of them refer to the annals, some plots are repeated, but there are also characteristic discrepancies. Lomonosov, in accordance with his desire to present in art "the ancient glory of our forefathers, happy and disgusting appeals and cases", stops at depicting events, battle scenes that made it possible, along with central characters depict the heroism of ordinary Russian people ("The Capture of Iskorest", "The Victory of Alexander Nevsky on Lake Peipsi"," Overthrow Tatar yoke"," Getting rid of Kiev from the siege by bold sailing across the Dnieper ").

Episodes of this kind do not appeal to Karamzin. His plots speak of the personal courage of the people of antiquity (pictures of battles), or they paint the triumph of monarchical power and Orthodox faith- “The Calling of the Varangians”, “The Baptism of Rus”, “Yaroslav”: “Yaroslav unrolls the scroll of laws with one hand, and in the other he holds a sword, ready to punish the criminal. The nobles of Novgorod get down on their knees and with an air of humility accept them from the prince and his sword. " Emphasizing the ideas that will form the basis of the "History of the Russian State", Karamzin still reads the chronicles through the eyes of the author of "Letters of the Russian Traveler" and the publisher "Aonid". Lomonosov only reminded of the "difference in passions", Karamzin focuses on the psychological characteristics. Breaking the canons classical aesthetics, Lomonosov takes the artist away from the antique conventional "correctness" of persons, reminds that Mstislav was "fat, white and red-haired."

"Rededya, naturally to judge, must be dark, like an Asian." Karamzin does not care about the portrait resemblance, and is only interested in the external appearance to the extent that the "beautiful soul" is reflected in it, according to which the appearance should also be beautiful. For the sake of this, sometimes you have to give up the plot. So, Karamzin refuses the idea of ​​reproducing Olga's revenge for Igor's death or the moment of the princess's baptism on canvas, because at that time Olga was no longer young, and "artists do not like old female faces." And therefore Karamzin advises to portray a conspiracy: “Oleg brings her to young Igor, who with admiration of a joyful heart looks at a beauty, innocent, bashful, brought up in the simplicity of ancient Slavic customs. "

One middle-aged woman's face nevertheless, it should have appeared in the picture: the writer recommends portraying Olga's mother. “By her appearance, she must give us good idea about Olga's moral education, because in every age and condition, one tender parent can raise her daughter in a public way. " Details of the collusion Karamzin gives free to the imagination of the artist. Complex psychological experiences were to be conveyed in a picture dedicated to the separation of Prince Yaroslav from his daughter Anna. The image of the Russian princess - the French queen attracted the writer. Even in Letters of a Russian Traveler, he spoke about her fate and his careful, but unsuccessful search for her tomb. In the picture, Karamzin recommends portraying "this very kind Russian woman" at the moment when she weepingly accepts the blessing of Yaroslav, who gives her to the French ambassadors. “It is entertaining for the imagination and touching for the heart.

To leave forever the fatherland, family and the lovely skills of a modest girlish life in order to go to the end of the world, with strangers who spoke in an incomprehensible language and prayed (in the then way of thinking) to another god! .. here the sensitivity should be the inspiration of the -artist ... The prince wants to appear solid; but parental fervor at this very moment prevails over politics and ambition: tears are ready to pour out of his eyes ... The unhappy mother is fainting. " The chronicles have not preserved evidence of how often 11th century women fainted. The tears in Yaroslav's eyes do not fit well with his historical appearance, but the sentimentalist writer paints Anna's experiences with truly inspiration. In even more detail than about Anna, Karamzin says about the Horn, and even draws some details of the situation. Rogneda is presented at the moment when the prince pulls out "a deadly weapon from her trembling hands", and she "in a frenzy of despair" lists the insults inflicted on her. “I seem to see in front of me the astonished and at last touched by Vladimir; I see an unhappy, heart-inspired Gorislava, in a mess of night clothes, with disheveled hair ... ”Karamzin ends the series of proposed plots with the founding of Moscow, enveloping this event with a romantic flair. He tells the legend about the love of Yuri Dolgoruky for the wife of the nobleman Kuchka. “Love, which destroyed Troy, built our capital,” is a thesis that Karamzin wants to make central, but “the artist, observing strict moral decency, must forget the lovely hostess”.

We have to confine ourselves to the image of the landscape, the beginning of the building, a small village of the nobleman Kuchka with a small church and a cemetery, Yuri, who shows Prince Svyatoslav that it will be built on this site great city... The function of everything described is understandable, except for the cemetery, but in Karamzin's plan it plays an important role: “... in the distance, among the crosses of the cemetery, the artist can depict a person in deep sad thoughts. We would have guessed who he was - we would have remembered the tragic end of a love story - and the shadow of melancholy would not have spoiled the action of the picture. " It was difficult to recall the episodes fanned by the "shadow of melancholy" from the tragic period of the Tatar-Mongol yoke. This is probably why Karamzin believes that, having come to this time, the painter must give way to the sculptor. The sculptor's job is “to preserve the memory of Russian heroism in misfortunes, which most of all reveal strength in the character of people and nations.

The shadows of our ancestors, who wanted to perish rather than accept chains from the Mongol barbarians, await the monuments of our gratitude on the spot stained with their blood. Can art and marble find a better use for themselves? ”- asks Karamzin, thus delimiting the tasks of painting and sculpture. Painting falls to the image of "touching", "sensitive", "melancholic" - everything that the happy Karla, the hero of Karamzin's fairy tale, could depict: the slumber of a weary shepherd with a shepherdess. " Human suffering that goes beyond family drama or sin and repentance, Karamzin finds no place in painting, as well as paintings battle genre and others related to the depiction of the masses.

An in-depth psychological characteristic, enclosed in a narrow circle of strictly defined feelings - this is what he orients artists to. Selecting plots of paintings from national history, Karamzin tried to expand the limits of art and nevertheless went far beyond the limits of the usual ideas. Preferring a beautiful fiction to reality, he dwells on poetic, but not playing a role in history, persons (Rogneda, Anna), on legends, which in “History” he will call unreliable (Oleg's death, the founding of Moscow). Even referring to strong characters, he will offer to portray them in touching moments invented by him (collusion of Olga, Yaroslav at the moment of Anna's departure), etc. And Karamzin himself is already cramped within the framework of "decorating nature."

Saying that Napoleon killed the "monster of the revolution", he understands that it is far from all over, and does not believe now that the shadow of the guillotine can be removed by preaching goodness and beauty. Rejecting the "metaphysical" title of cosmopolitan, he intervenes in life as a Russian nobleman, publishes a magazine thoroughly imbued with politics, tries to refute the ideas of the French and Russian Enlightenment, the ideas of Radishchev, condemns the "errors of tsarist complacency", glorifies the sacred rights of Russian nobility, proves the beneficence of serfdom ... But “you can't live like your grandfather.” All this was supposed to lead to a revision of the view on the social function of art and literature. Having made some steps in this direction, Karamzin did not take the position of Shishkov, did not lead the writers along the path, which he had previously considered a humiliation of art. He makes a mouthpiece for his political ideas. With her help, he wants to teach rulers how to curb the "rebellious passions" that "have agitated civil society from time immemorial," and govern in such a way as to give people the happiness possible on earth. History must reconcile its subjects "with the imperfection of the visible order of things, as with an ordinary phenomenon in all ages."

So, history is a lesson for kings, and for subjects, like philosophy and literature, it is a means of consolation and reconciliation. But history, according to Karamzin, is broader than literature. "History is not a novel and the world is not a garden where everything should be pleasant: it depicts the real world." The dark sides of life, like "barren sands and dull steppes" in nature, will not attract the poet; the historian is obliged to talk about everything without correcting the defects of nature. "History abhors fiction, depicting what is or was, and not what could be." The writer did not pass judgment, the historian judges. “Thin kings are punished only by God, conscience, history: they are hated in life, they are cursed after death. This is enough for the good of civil societies without poison and iron. " This maxim, like many others, has its purpose to prove the crime of attempts on the power and life of the crowned heads, but it explains the tone of the book. Perhaps, imperceptibly for himself, Karamzin uses Radishchev's image, distinguishing "the language of court and flattery from the language of truth."

And having switched to the language of truth, he does not call vices weaknesses, his hand does not tremble, tearing off the veil of flattery from the rulers, whom neither power nor severity save from contempt, his voice is filled with unusual strength when he judges tyrants. Now he needs rhetoric, civic vocabulary, and a high syllable. They are also needed in the purely conservative reasoning that the author uses to direct his thought. the reader, disturbed by the facts. There is a lot of reasoning in the "History of the Russian State". Karamzin, however, believed that the main thing in the historical book was not them, but the talented portrayal of "actions and characters", merging the issue with literature in the main.

The writer tries to fulfill his own behest and draw the deeds and properties of people of the past in accordance with the "nature of the time", which is hindered by the antihistorical nature of the general concept of the book, lack of understanding of the driving forces of history, a very narrow definition of "circumstances", etc. to "Emilia Galotti" the method of showing the variety of passions, combined with the emphasized objectivity of the historian: "History is not word of honor and does not represent the greatest men as Perfect ”.

Accordingly, it turns out that more than one virtue sits on the "bright thrones". So, Olga is not only wise, but also a cruel and cunning ruler. Svyatoslav is a great commander, but not a great sovereign. Yaroslav is wise, but devout to the point of superstition; Even the hotly glorified Ivan III “does not stand on the highest degree of greatness”; his son Vasily Ivanovich, a "kind, affectionate" ruler, knew about injustice in the courts, about cruel torture... The struggle between good and evil in the soul of Ivan IV turns into a tragedy for the country. The conflict of sin and repentance in the story of Boris Godunov, whose soul is a “wild mixture of piety and criminal passions,” has been raised to the height of tragedy. 41 It is hard not to recognize in this manner how to individualize historical figures of the past by contrasting, first of all, moral qualities - “a living sense of truth ", Transferred by the translator of Shakespeare to the vast expanses of history.

Not a single writer who turned to historical topics could bypass Karamzin's experience. Pushkin did not bypass him in developing the "poetic side" of Godunov's character. Most of the issues solved by Karamzin were of direct importance for the literature and art of his time; much has gone into the past along with sentimentalism, the narrowness of which the writer himself was able to unravel a few years after the creation of Poor Lisa.

For the next generation, the reform of the language remained to live, in its strengths and weaknesses inseparable from Karamzin's views on the object and tasks of literature and his attention to human psychology. From a theoretical point of view, two have acquired the longest life. Isolation of art from “low” ideas, the idea of ​​beauty as the only object of art, which, by the power of beauty itself, has a beneficial effect on man and humanity, formed the basis of the theory and practice of “pure art”. The posing of the character problem, the attempt to penetrate into the diversity of the human soul did not pass without leaving a trace for realism.

In 1791, after the publication of the revolutionary book by A.N. Radishchev, a description of the journey of another author began to be published, which played a very important, but completely different role in the development of Russian literature. These were "Letters from a Russian Traveler" by the young writer Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin.
Karamzin, although he was much younger than Radishchev, belonged to the same era of Russian life and literature. Both were deeply moved by the same events of our time. Both were innovative writers. Both strove to reduce literature from the abstract mythological heights of classicism, to depict real Russian life. However, in terms of their worldview, they sharply differed from each other, the assessment of reality was dissimilar, and in many respects the opposite, therefore, all their work is so different.
The son of a poor Siberian landowner, a pupil of foreign boarding schools, and for a short time an officer of the capital regiment, Karamzin found his true calling only after retiring and becoming close to the founder of the “Typographic Company” N.I.

Novikov and his circle. Under the leadership of Novikov, he participates in the creation of the first children's magazine in our country, Children's Reading for the Heart and Mind.
In 1789, Karamzin traveled to the countries of Western Europe. The trip served as material for him for "Letters of a Russian Traveler." In Russian literature there has not yet been a book that so vividly and meaningfully told about the life and customs of European peoples, about Western culture. Karamzin describes his acquaintances and meetings with prominent figures of European science and literature; enthusiastically talks about visiting the treasures of world art.
The sentiments of a “sensitive traveler” encountered in Letters of a Russian Traveler were a kind of revelation for Russian readers. Karamzin considered a special sensitivity of the heart, “sensitivity” (sentimentality) to be the main quality necessary for a writer. In the concluding words of "Letters ..." he seemed to outline the program of his subsequent literary activity.
Karamzin's sensitivity, frightened by the French Revolution, which he perceived as a harbinger of a "worldwide rebellion", ultimately led him away from Russian reality into the world of the imagination.
Returning to his homeland, Karamzin began to study the "Moscow Journal". In addition to the Letters of a Russian Traveler, it published his stories from Russian life - Poor Li for (1792), Natalia, the Boyar's Daughter, and the essay Flor Silin. These works most forcefully expressed the main features of the sentimental Karamzin and his school.
The work of Karamzin was very important for the development of the literary language, spoken language, and book speech. He strove to create one language for books and for society. He freed the literary language from Slavism, created and introduced into use a large number of new words, such as "future", "industry", "community", "love".
At the beginning of the 19th century, when literary youth fought for the language reform of Karamzin - Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, Pushkin-lyceum student, he himself more and more moved away from fiction.
In 1803, in his own words, Karamzin "was tonsured a historian." He devoted the last twenty-odd years of his life to a grandiose work - the creation of the “History of the Russian State”. Death found him working on the twelfth volume of "History ...", which tells about the era of "Time of Troubles".

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  1. At the end of the 18th century and in the first decade of the 19th century, the name of Karamzin was widely known. Contemporaries recognized the great influence of Karamzin on the development of the Russian literary language. Indeed, instead of a language that was heavy in construction, filled with Slavism, which was written in the 18th century, the works of Karamzin Read More ......
  2. "Melancholy. (Imitation of Delisle) ”(1800) - became programmatic for sentimentalists. It describes the state of mind in which a person can find refuge from troubles and worries caused by the contradictions of the surrounding life. This is melancholy, a special state of mind, intermediate between grief and joy: Read More ......
  3. He is convinced that the fighting classes, feudal lords and the bourgeois, are equally right, that the “ideal” shell of their aspirations is a lie, that their declarations cover up selfishness. “Aristocrats, servilists want the old order: for it is beneficial to them. Democrats, liberals want a new Read More ......
  4. 1. The first steps in psychological prose. 2. Artistic features of the story. 3. New techniques used by Karamzin. N. M. Karamzin, the founder of sentimental-realistic literature, was a recognized master of creating wonderful stories telling about the fate of his contemporaries. It was in this genre that Read More ...
  5. An innovative writer who developed a new direction in European literature, N. M. Karamzin showed himself in the artistic and publicistic composition Letters of a Russian Traveler, which stood on a par with the main work of English sentimentalism - the novel Sentimental journey”L. Stern. To the unusual reader of the 18th century brought up on classicism. it seemed Read More ......
  6. As in previous years, with a small knapsack on his shoulder, Karamzin left for whole days to wander without purpose and plan through the lovely forests and fields near Moscow, which came close to the white stone outposts. It was especially attracted by the surroundings of the old monastery, which towered over Read More ......
  7. In Karamzin's works of art, characteristic features of Russian sentimentalism were revealed with particular completeness and completeness. The most popular of Karamzin's stories was the story “ Poor Lisa”(1792). It was a huge hit with readers. Not only Muscovites, but also people who came to Moscow who read Read More ......
  8. The so-called reform of the literary language, carried out by Karamzin, was expressed not in the fact that he issued some decrees and changed the norms of the language, but in the fact that he himself began to write his works in a new way and place translated works in his almanacs, also written Read More ......
Features of creativity N.M. Karamzin

To the general public, Karamzin is known as a prose writer and historian, author of Poor Liza and History of the Russian State. Meanwhile, Karamzin was also a poet, who managed to say his new word in this area as well. In poetry, he remains a sentimentalist, but they also reflected other aspects of Russian pre-romanticism. At the very beginning of his poetry, Karamzin wrote the program poem Poetry (1787). However, unlike classicist writers, Karamzin asserts not a state, but a purely personal purpose of poetry, which, in his words, “... has always been a delight to the innocent, clean souls". Looking back at the history of world literature, Karamzin assesses its centuries-old heritage in a new way.

Karamzin seeks to expand the genre composition of Russian poetry. He owns the first Russian ballads, which would later become the leading genre in the works of the romantic Zhukovsky. The ballad "Count Guininos" is a translation of an old Spanish romance about the escape of a brave knight from Moorish captivity. It was translated from German by a tetrameter chorea. This size will be chosen later by Zhukovsky in his "romances" about Side and Pushkin in the ballads "There lived a poor knight" and "Rodrigue". The second ballad of Karamzin - "Raisa" - is similar in content to the story "Poor Liza". Her heroine is a girl, deceived by a loved one, ends her life in the depths of the sea. In the descriptions of nature, one can feel the influence of the then popular gloomy poetry of Ossean: “A storm raged in the darkness of the night; // A formidable ray sparkled in the sky. " The tragic denouement of the ballad and the affectation of love feelings anticipate the manner of "cruel romances of the 19th century."

The poetry of Karamzin is distinguished from the poetry of the classicists by the cult of nature. The appeal to her is deeply intimate and in some cases marked by biographical features. In the poem "Volga" Karamzin was the first of the Russian poets to glorify the great Russian river. This work was created from the direct impressions of childhood. The range of works devoted to nature includes "Prayer for Rain", created in one of the terrible dry years, as well as the poems "To the Nightingale" and "Autumn".

The poetry of moods is affirmed by Karamzin in the poem "Melancholy". The poet refers in him not to a clearly expressed state of the human spirit - joy, sadness, but to its shades, "overflows", to transitions from one feeling to another.

The reputation of a melancholic was firmly established for Karamzin. Meanwhile, sad motives are only one of the facets of his poetry. In his lyrics, there was also a place for cheerful epicurean motives, as a result of which Karamzin can already be considered one of the founders of "light poetry". The basis of these sentiments was enlightenment, proclaiming the human right to enjoyment, given to him by nature itself. The poet's Anacreontic poems, glorifying feasts, include such works as “ Fun hour"," Resignation "," To Leela "," Inconstancy ".

Karamzin is a master of small forms. His only poem "Ilya Muromets", which he called "a heroic tale" in the subtitle, remained unfinished. Karamzin's experience cannot be considered successful. Peasant son Ilya Muromets turned into a gallant refined knight. And yet, the poet's very appeal to folk art, the intention to create a national fairy-tale epic on its basis are very indicative. From Karamzin also comes the manner of narration, replete with lyrical digressions of a literary and personal nature.

Features of the works of Karamzin.

Repulsion Karamzin from classicist poetry was reflected in artistic identity his works. He strove to free them from the shy classicistic forms and bring them closer to a relaxed colloquial speech. Karamzin wrote neither one nor a satyr. His favorite genres were message, ballad, song, lyric meditation. The overwhelming majority of his poems do not have stanzas or are written in quatrains. Rhyming, as a rule, is not ordered, which gives the author's speech a relaxed character. This is especially true for the friendly messages of I.I. Dmitriev, A.A. Pleshcheev. In many cases, Karamzin refers to the rhymeless verse, which Radishchev also advocated in "Journey ...". This is how both of his ballads, the poems "Autumn", "Cemetery", "Song" in the story "Bornholm Island", and many anacreontic poems were written. Without abandoning the iambic tetrameter, Karamzin, along with him, often uses the chorea tetrameter, which the poet considered a more national form than iambic.

Karamzin is the founder of sensitive poetry.

In verse, the reform of Karamzin was taken up by Dmitriev, and after the latter - by the Arzamas poets. This is how Pushkin's contemporaries imagined this process from a historical perspective. Karamzin is the ancestor of "sensitive poetry", poetry of "heart imagination", poetry of the spiritualization of nature - natural philosophy. In contrast to the poetry of Derzhavin, which is realistic in its tendencies, Karamzin's poetry gravitates towards noble romanticism, despite the motives borrowed from ancient literature and partly the tendencies of classicism preserved in the field of verse. Karamzin was the first to instill in the Russian language the form of a ballad and romance, and instills complex dimensions. In poems, chorea was almost unknown in Russian poetry until Karamzin. The combination of dactylic and choreic stanzas was also not used. Before Karamzin, there was also little use of white verse, to which Karamzin refers, probably under the influence of German literature. Karamzin's search for new dimensions and a new rhythm speaks of the same desire to embody new content.

The main character of Karamzin's poetry, its main task is to create subjective and psychological lyrics, to capture the subtlest moods of the soul in short poetic formulas. Karamzin himself formulated the poet's task as follows: “He correctly translates everything dark in hearts into a language that is clear to us, // Finds words for subtle feelings”. The poet's job is to express "shades of different feelings, not to agree" ("Prometheus").

In the lyrics of Karamzin considerable attention is paid to the sense of nature, understood psychologically; nature in her is spiritualized by the feelings of a person living with her, and the person himself is merged with her.

The lyrical manner of Karamzin predicts the future romanticism of Zhukovsky. On the other hand, Karamzin used in his poetry the experience of German and English literature XVIII century. Later, Karamzin returned to French poetry, which at that time was saturated with sentimental pre-romantic elements.

The experience of the French is associated with Karamzin's interest in poetic "trifles", witty and graceful poetic trinkets, such as "Inscriptions on the statue of Cupid", poems for portraits, madrigals. In them, he tries to express the sophistication, subtlety of relations between people, sometimes to fit in four verses, in two verses an instant, fleeting mood, a flickering thought, an image. On the contrary, Karamzin's work on updating and expanding the metric expressiveness of Russian verse is connected with the experience of German poetry. Like Radishchev, he is dissatisfied with the "dominance" of the iambic. He himself cultivates trochee, writes in three-syllable scales, and in particular imposes the white verse that has become widespread in Germany. A variety of sizes, freedom from the usual consonance should have contributed to the individualization of the very sound of the verse in accordance with the individual lyric task of each poem. Played a significant role poetry Karamzin and in the sense of developing new genres.

P.A. Vyazemsky wrote in his article about Karamzin's poems (1867): “With him was born the poetry of a feeling of love for nature, gentle outflows of thought and impressions, in a word, poetry is inner, sincere ... , then he had the feeling and consciousness of new poetic forms. "

Karamzin's innovation - in the expansion of poetic themes, in its boundless and indefatigable complication - then echoed for almost a hundred years. He was the first to use white poetry, boldly turned to imprecise rhymes, his poetry was constantly inherent in "artistic play".

At the center of Karamzin's poetics is harmony, which constitutes the soul of poetry. The idea of ​​her was somewhat speculative.